Splendor (12 page)

There was one woman in particular who caught my attention. She didn’t look anything like Lily, but I recognized her as being cut from the same cloth as my best friend. Maybe it was in the tilt of her chin. She had it—or some of it—that Lily energy that I loved so much, that I so admired. She danced like Lily, too—like she was setting herself free.

I thought of the Agatha Christie book I’d borrowed from Martin. It featured an elderly spinster who lived in a little village not dissimilar from my Avalon. She believed that human nature is basically the same everywhere, but that in a village you can view it up close, as if it’s under a microscope. Someone else had said something similar to me once. I struggled to remember who it had been.

Then it came to me. Andy. It had been Andy, at our lunch table last fall. We’d been wondering about Will Cohen and what his life might have been like in New Haven. Andy had said, “You can learn quite a bit about human nature without ever really going anywhere. This little island is a microcosm. If you pay good enough attention, you see things.”

I watched the women dance and wondered if it was true. Were there only so many types of people in the world? And were all of us simply variations of those types?

Suddenly I saw a face. Without warning, it flashed into my consciousness for just a sliver of a moment. But it was
not
the face of God. It had one blue eye and one marbled eye, and it smiled, slow and easy.

Around me, the chanting and dancing went on.

He’d started out just walking, restless. Home seemed far away and he was irritated with his father for bringing him here. In his head he was going over the same argument, again, looking for a new way to convince his dad that one semester would be plenty of time for him to get things under control. They could still get back to New Haven by spring.

The beauty of this island irritated him. The winding shoreline, the chaparral, the disorienting view of the ocean—irritating, all of it. He wanted to see ugliness to match the way he was feeling.

And then, suddenly, there was no room in his head for any of these thoughts—the irritation, the sulkiness—for the hook had dug its way once more into the meat of his brain and he had no choice but to follow its pull.

He didn’t notice when his body went from walking to running. He barely saw where he was going; pain was his everything. Only by running, tripping one foot in front of the other to go faster, faster, could he keep pace with the tug of the hook in his brain.

He ran on and on, one hand extended, stumbling many times and even falling once. A cramp tightened his right side, but the pain of it was an almost welcome diversion from the tugging of the hook. The trail wound up a hill, curving around a gnarled tree.

Thunder. He heard thunder, but it seemed to be pounded out from the dry packed earth rather than from the sky. He stopped abruptly; the pulling pain had slackened. But the hook was still there. If he tried to turn away, it would yank him back. He knew this from experience.

Not thunder. Hoofbeats, coming fast. No time to think, no time to move aside. He held up a hand just as a horse careered around the tree.

The girl who rode the horse had hair the color of wheat. It flew loose behind her; she leaned forward in the saddle, her heels pressed low in the stirrups. Her eyes widened as they connected with his.

“Stop,” Will said, and he stood his ground.

I
sat straight up in bed, my heart pounding. For a moment I was on that trail again, where Will had found me, only…I hadn’t been
me.
In my dream, I’d been Will.

I’d felt the pain he’d described, the pain pulling him to crime scenes, the pain pulling him to me that day. Strung out and miserable, I’d
been
the crime scene.
And
the victim,
and
the criminal, all rolled into one.

Through his eyes, I saw myself. I could see myself now—wild-eyed and shocked by his sudden appearance, my face wan, my arms too thin, my collarbones sharp under my skin.

I glanced at the clock and added three hours. It was just after ten a.m. in New Haven. And this was a Tuesday; Will would be in class. I decided to call him anyway. Just hearing his voice on his message, I thought, would make me feel better.

But he answered. “Scarlett.”

“Will,” I said. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” he said.

He didn’t
sound
all right. He sounded exhausted, like he’d been sick.

“What’s the matter?”

“I’m okay. It’s just—last night, things kind of got out of hand.”

Breathe,
I told myself. We’d known something like this would happen. He’d gotten through almost two months of school without a problem; it had been only a matter of time.

“Where are you?” I asked.

Silence. Then, “It’s okay, Scarlett. Don’t freak out.”

I stayed quiet, shivering even though I was still in my warm bed.

“I’m at the hospital.”

I exhaled. “But you’re okay.”

“Yeah. I’m fine.”

“Okay,” I said. I made my shoulders relax and unclenched my toes, unwound my tangled legs. “Tell me what happened.”

He sighed. “There was a fight. A guy. A girl. Nothing that different. Only…
I
was different.”

“What do you mean?”

“There wasn’t any pain. I didn’t have to go. I was looking for them.”

“Looking for them? For
who
?”

“For
what
is probably more accurate,” he said. “I was looking for a problem.”

I didn’t get it. Martin had spent the past year trying to protect Will from his abilities. And he’d been so relieved when Will had told us last spring that things were changing for him, that the pulling was gone, shifted.

“It’s been too quiet in my head.”

His words sounded like a confession. A terrible thought occurred to me. “Will, this was the first time you’ve gone looking for trouble, right?”

No answer.

“Will?”

“No,” he said.

Now I was quiet. I think he could hear my anger, but he didn’t try to talk me out of it. We were quiet together, but it wasn’t comfortable like it usually was.

Finally I had to ask. “What did you do?”

“You’ve got to understand, Scarlett. When you know you have the ability to help someone, it’s torture to just
sit
there and do nothing.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’m trying to understand. But how do you find them?”

“If it’s quiet out and I can quiet my mind, I can still feel them. Only it’s not like it used to be, that pull. Now it’s like an invitation.”

“An
invitation
?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you do it a lot?”

Silence. Then, “Every night.”

Now I was furious. I tossed back my quilt and spun myself out of bed, pacing as soon as my feet hit the wood floor. “And what does Martin think?”

Of course I didn’t really think he’d told his father. We both knew what Martin would think.

Will didn’t bother answering the question. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, Scarlett. I didn’t want you to worry.”

“So you just lied to me instead.”

“No. Well, yes, I guess—I lied by omission.”

“What happened last night?”

“The girl had a knife. She was going after the guy—her boyfriend, her husband, I don’t know. I managed to get between them.”

“And now you’re in the hospital.” Slowly I sat back down on the bed. “How badly are you hurt?”

“I’ll be fine. The nurse says I’ll be released this afternoon, as soon as the doctor makes her rounds.”

“You said there was a knife.”

Will sighed. “Yeah. There was. She was going for the guy—his neck, it seemed like. I got between them and deflected the knife. But I couldn’t knock it out of her hand. She got me in the thigh.”

“How deep?” I heard my own voice and noted that it sounded calm.

“The doctor said I was lucky. It’ll leave a scar, but I’ll heal.”

I closed my eyes. The image from my dream—of myself astride Delilah, barreling toward Will on the trail—returned to me. It was the reason I’d called Will this morning. But it didn’t seem important anymore.

As if he knew what I was thinking, Will said, “I’m really glad you called. My dad has been reading me the riot act for the past three hours, and he finally stepped out for a cup of coffee. It’s nice to hear someone else’s voice. Someone who’s…not mad at me?”

There was definitely a question there, in the upward cadence of his tone. Was I mad at him? No. I wasn’t his parent. I was his girlfriend.

I wasn’t angry…I was scared.

“I had a dream about you last night,” I said, avoiding answering what he’d asked.

“Was it a good one?”

“It was strange. It was like I was in your head. Looking at
me.
”

“That does sound weird,” said Will. But he didn’t push me for more details.

“So with a wounded leg, I guess you won’t be chasing after any bad guys for a while?”

Will laughed. The warm richness of it, the familiarity of the sound I loved, from the boy I loved, took the edge off my fear.

I stood again and parted the curtains. The sky was wide and blue. It was going to be a beautiful day.

“I’m bored of talking about me,” said Will. “What’s going on with you?”

“Not much,” I said. “But I’ve got to get going. School.”

“Yeah,” said Will.

It wasn’t until after we’d hung up that I realized I still hadn’t told Will about our new foreign exchange student, Gunner Montgomery-Valentine. But it wasn’t like Gunner really constituted
news
of any kind, I told myself.

I dressed in a pair of fitted gray cords with lace-up moccasins and a soft pink wrap sweater. Underneath I wore a T-shirt in case the weather lived up to the promise the blue sky seemed to be making.

As I clicked closed the front door and started down the path, Will’s words returned to me.
I lied by omission.

Grimly, I thought,
That makes two of us
.

In front of the school, Gunner seemed to have taken a break from smoking his clove cigarettes long enough to instruct the island boys in the finer points of rugby. As far as I could tell it wasn’t all that different from football but involved less padding and maybe slightly more profanity.

Andy sat on the steps of the main building, watching glumly.

Since last Halloween night, when Andy hadn’t wanted to hear my change of heart about having sex with him—and Will had helped clarify my decision with a few well-placed blows—Andy and I hadn’t had a lot of cause to speak. I’d kind of expected Andy to make another move now that Will was gone, but ever since Gunner had shown up, it seemed like the wind had been knocked out of Andy’s sails.

“Not into rugby, huh, Andy?”

He looked up at me. “Hey, Scar. Nah, I wanna play baseball next year for Stanford. I can’t risk getting hurt by one of those stupid assholes.” He raised his chin in the direction of Gunner, Connell, and the rest of the guys. Gunner was leaning into Connell, whispering something to him as he pointed to a couple of the others. Then he tossed the ball underhand to Connell and clapped twice.

When the two lines of boys crashed a minute later, Connell was on top of the dog pile and Gunner was nodding, a half smile on his lips.

A group of girls, Kaitlyn front and center, cheered loudly. As if they had any idea what had just transpired. At least Lily wasn’t among them.

“Gunner seems to fit right in,” I said.

“Son of a bitch,” murmured Andy.

I raised an eyebrow and waited for him to say more, but he wasn’t forthcoming. He stood and headed up the steps, yanking hard on the door.

The bell rang loudly a moment later.

As I made my way to my locker and exchanged the books I’d needed for homework for the books I’d need for morning classes, I knew I shouldn’t feel sorry for Andy. Not after the way he’d treated me. But I
did
feel sorry for him. Kind of the way I might feel sorry for a dog that had once bitten me and now found itself the target of a rival pack.

I guess I wasn’t an “eye for an eye” kind of girl. Never had been.

“Morning, Scar,” said Lily. I closed my locker. She was gazing into hers as if she expected to find something way more interesting than schoolbooks inside. Then she turned her head in my direction and grinned. “Hey, we match.”

Only a mind like Lily’s would call our outfits “matching.” I guess they were from the same basic color palette—pinks and grays—but that was where any resemblance ended. Hers involved pink ballet tights, above-the-knee cream-colored woolen socks, gray lambskin ankle boots, and a fluffy pink thigh-length sweater that she seemed to be passing off as a dress.

It wasn’t a dress.

“See?” she said, pointing to her shoes. “We’re both wearing boots.”

“Ah,” I said. “Yeah. We’re practically twins.”

“Well, I wouldn’t go
that
far,” she said. “Have you seen Gunner?”

“You mean since the rugby exhibition on the front lawn? No.”

“Was he playing
rugby
? I missed it. Damn.”

“I’m sure there will be a repeat performance,” I consoled her, “given how popular today’s seemed to be.”

“Kaitlyn?” she asked.

“Uh-huh. She’s going to need a new set of pom-poms if she keeps bouncing around like that.”

Lily smiled devilishly. “She’s going to need more than a set of pom-poms if she thinks she has a chance with Gunner,” she said. “I happened to overhear her asking him to the movies on Saturday. He abjured.”

“He
abjured
?”

“Gunner’s word. Not mine. He said, ‘Thank you for the invitation, but I must abjure a liaison with you.’ I’m pretty sure Kaitlyn had to go home and look it up before she figured out he was turning her down.”

We laughed together and headed down the hall to our first class, French. The only reason Lily stuck with the class for another year was because I let her copy my homework. In her opinion, the rest of the world should just get over itself and learn English.

“Hey, you want to stay at my place this weekend?” Lily asked.

“I’d like to,” I said, “but I’m supposed to go to the mainland to see Sabine.”

“
Again?
Jeez, Scar, I’m going to start getting jealous pretty soon.”

“No need for that, Lily. No one could ever replace you.”

“Well, as long as we both understand that,” she said. “I guess I could see if Gunner is busy.…”

We slid into our seats. Monsieur Antoine looked up disapprovingly at us from his desk. His mustache twitched. Seconds later the bell sounded. It was uncanny, the way his mustache always seemed to know just when class was about to begin. You could set your watch by it.

“Silence, s’il vous plaît,”
he said.

At lunch, Andy wasn’t sitting at his usual table. Connell was there, and Gunner. Gunner didn’t have a tray of food in front of him; his chair was pushed back from the table and his legs were sprawled into the aisle, crossed at the ankles. His neat black trousers were creased; he wore argyle socks with a laced pair of mahogany leather shoes. His white shirt had a crisp collar. Over it he wore a charcoal-gray sweater-vest.

Every other boy at the table was wearing either flip-flops or tennis shoes. Except for Connell, I saw. He was wearing oxfords. They looked like the same pair Gunner had worn that first night, at the Halloween party. They must wear the same size, I thought.

In his left hand, Gunner held an apple. He bit into its flesh.

I had been standing with my tray, not sure where to sit. There was an open seat next to Gunner, but it felt strange to sit there. Then Lily arrived.