Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (10 page)

Only one boy remained.He had yellow hair and thin arms; he stood by the gate and fidgeted, as if unsure whether to leave. He eyed the sky, and the trees, and didn’t move. But then River took the boy by the shoulder and gently pushed him out onto the road. 

The fog had cleared and I could see the ocean far, far below the graveyard. It was bright and blue and full of promise. River and I stared at it for a while. 

I wondered how he knew where Charlie’s sister was. And how he got Jack to believe him so fast. 

I wondered what Jack meant when he said that River told him to look for the Devil in the cemetery. 

I wondered where that beautiful, buttery, fluttery feeling I felt in River’s presence had gotten itself off to. 

Because it was gone now. Completely gone. 

River pulled on my hand and we headed out of the cemetery and down a trail through the woods that skirted the main road. The woods were dark and silent, none of the dawn able to reach through the thick trees. Children wove in and out of the shadowed path in front of us, always keeping their distance. 

Seven minutes later we were in downtown Echo. I turned to go to the café, which opened really damn early—but then I saw a group of the cemetery kids heading down one of Echo’s side streets,with Jack leading the way.They were following River’s orders.They were going down Glenship Road. And Glenship Road only led to one place. Glenship Manor, and the tree house. 

Chester and Clara Glenship had been the wealthy folks in town, back at the turn of the last century, along with my grandpa’s parents. They also built a big mansion on the ocean, closer to town than Citizen Kane, and threw rollicking parties for all their city friends up from Boston and New York, like characters in an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. But the Glenships ran out of money before my own family. And, to make matters worse, Chester and Clara’s charming, bright-eyed eldest son brought his young lover down to the wine cellar and slit her throat with a jackknife. For reasons unknown. It was lurid and the papers loved it, and the grand manor had sat empty and abandoned for decades, with overgrown ivy and broken windows, and an air of long-ago happiness. 

I had a fantasy when I was younger that one of the Glenships would come back and fix the place up. He would be young and beautiful, and not at all insane like his throat-slitting ancestor. He would have slicked-backed hair, an expensive education, and a sharp tongue. The two of us would meet and fight and fall in love and live and have children and grow old in Echo’s second mansion by the sea. 

I was pretty stupid, when I was younger. 

Behind the Glenship, spreading out to the edge of the woods,were the remains of the manor’s extensive grounds. The lawn had grown wild in the last lonely decades, savage almost, with fountains covered in green mold and monstrous, untended shrubbery. The Citizen looked slightly better than this. But not by much. 

To the back and right of the grounds stood the tree house.And it wasn’t just any old tree house.Chester and Clara had a daughter, as well as a son, and they loved her more than life itself. So of course she had no choice but to grow up rotten to the core, or die young. She died young. Her parents built her a miniature mansion in the trees, where she played, pretty and spoiled and oblivious, until one day she fell out of the tree house, broke her neck, and died. 

River and I followed Jack. We followed him and the other kids right up to the kid-killing tree house. The paint was long gone. The wooden boards were warped and gray, with rusted nails sticking out, dying to give someone lockjaw. The gable roof was sagging in the middle, one strong wind away from caving in. 

The kids fanned out around Jack,forming a circle around the tree. River and I drew close and rounded out the edges. Jack put two hands on the tree and scrambled up what remained of the wooden boards that had been nailed into the trunk as steps. We all watched, necks craned upward. Jack kicked in the rotted-out door of the tree house and went inside. 

My heart beat once. Twice. 

The door opened, and there he was again, Isobel next to him. She smiled a shy smile and waved at the crowd of kids below, as if the whole thing was nothing. As if kids went missing and spent two long nights in decaying, grandiose tree houses all the time, eating God knew what and sleeping on the hard floor and worrying everyone half to death. 

Isobel hopped down the tree and was swallowed by the throng of kids. They shouted and whooped and congratulated her on not being kidnapped and possibly dead and taken to hell. I saw her brother Charlie give her a bear hug, their black curls blending into each other until you didn’t know where one ended and the other began. 

But Jack stayed where he was, up in the tree house. I squinted up at him and then looked at River,and saw that they were looking at each other. 

My heart beat once. Twice. 

We left the kids. We walked back to the town square and stood in front of the café. I fidgeted for a while, not saying anything. Luke and Sunshine were inside; I could see them through the café window, standing by the counter. They must have wandered into town while River and I were in the cemetery. 

I didn’t stand close to River,and he didn’t stand close to me.I turned to face the square while he stayed at the window. A ray of sunshine broke through the gray sky, darted around a cloud, and hit me full in the face. 

Silence. 

Silence. 

“So, is she going to be all right?” 

“Who?” 

“River, you know who. Isobel.” 

“Yeah.” 

“Should we tell anyone, like the cops or anything? Tell them that she’s been found?” 

“No. Word will get around fast enough.” 

I paused.“So . . . there’s no Devil?” 

“No.” 

I tried to catch River’s gaze, to read his expression, but he was still facing the café and wouldn’t look at me. 

“How did you know where Isobel was? How could you possibly have known where she was?”I stepped closer,put my hand on his arm. “River. What did Jack really see in the cemetery? He wasn’t lying. I know he wasn’t. What’s going on? And how did you become part of all this? What did Jack mean, when he said you told him to go look for the Devil in the cemetery?” 

River just shook his head and continued to stare at the café window. “Look, I’ll tell you about it later. I promise. But right now all I want to do is get Luke and Sunshine, and have a bonfire by the sea.” He paused. “Yeah, that sounds like a great idea.I like to have a bonfire after exciting events. It calms people down.” He caught my eye then. “Me included.” 

I looked down at Freddie’s dress. I was wearing the faded blue-flowered one. I gripped a bit of the fabric in my hand and squeezed it tight. Pushing River was only going to get me less of what I wanted, not more. “All right. Let’s have a bonfire.” 

I turned and waved at Sunshine through the café window. She and Luke left the counter and headed outside. Gianni was working instead of Maddy, and he gave me a small nod and a smile. Which I returned. I could just make out a copy of
Fresh Cup Magazine
on the counter— the latest issue, no doubt. I wondered if Gianni hoped I would come in, so he could talk to me about it. 

“Did you hear?” Sunshine said, sidling in between me and River.“Turns out the missing girl wasn’t missing at all. She spent the last few nights in the Glenship tree house, drinking dew and eating nothing but wild strawberries, according to my sources.” 

River looked at me, one eyebrow raised in a cocky way that, for a second, reminded me of Luke. And I liked River a little bit less for it. 

“How did you find that out already, Sunshine? It
just happened.
River and I were there, we—” 

Luke interrupted me. “So I guess those boys made the whole Devil thing up. The one chance our town has at fame, and we blow it. Figures.” 

“Shut up, Luke. Maybe those boys really did see the Devil.” I paused. “Like how Sunshine saw Blue, in the tunnel.” 

Sunshine glared at me for a second. Then her eyes went sleepy again as she turned to River. “So where have you been? Luke said Vi’s been doing nothing but wandering around the house, wringing her hands and wailing since you took off.” 

Luke grinned at me. 

Sometimes I really hated my brother. 

“Luke is lying,”I said to River.“I didn’t even notice you were gone.” 

River smiled. “And I thought I was the only liar around here.” He stepped forward and put one arm around Sunshine’s shoulders and the other around Luke’s. “Enough about devils and tunnels and mysterious travels.The sun’s come out and I’ve decided to have a bonfire on the beach. Everyone’s invited.” River’s brown eyes were lit up like July fireflies.The serious,shadowed River from earlier was gone. Completely gone. As if he’d never even existed. 

I was worried, I was. I felt a sharp tingle in the pit of my stomach that said All Is Not Right Here, even as I looked at River’s smiling face and firefly eyes. 

But he had come back, and the truth was . . . the truth was that it made me happy. Maybe it shouldn’t have, I don’t know.But then,who was I to slap a bit of joy in the face? We were going to have a bonfire together on the beach, and everything else could just go to hell.
≈≈≈
 

The bonfire. A steep trail led from the road by Sunshine’s house to the ocean, winding down the cliff and ending in a small, secluded cove. There was a much bigger public beach down the coast a mile or so, but I liked my little private spot because it couldn’t be seen from above, and so no one knew it existed. I often visited it by myself, just to read, alone, in the sand, the waves crashing nearby. 

Luke and Sunshine and I swam down there sometimes too. The ocean was usually too cold and fierce for it, but some blue, calm days, it was all right, and we would take a picnic basket to the cove and splash around for a while. Sunshine had a slick white swimsuit that she loved to tuck her curves into and run around in. And I had an old, vintage suit of Freddie’s,of course.It was navy trimmed with white, and it had a little belt. It covered most of me except my arms and legs. 

I liked those swimming days. We were always cold and always laughing. Sometimes Luke held me under the water, or kissed Sunshine in the sand, but mostly we just had a really good time. For all that Luke complained to River about spending the summer with two girls, I think he actually kind of loved hanging out with us. At least, he never bothered finding anyone else. 

It wasn’t nearly warm enough for swimming now, but the sun had shoved the clouds away, and it was bright and blue again and barely past morning. Luke dug up a bottle of port from the Citizen’s dusty Cask of Amontillado wine cellar, and took turns sipping from the bottle with Sunshine while River and I gathered dried-out driftwood into a pile and set it on fire. I’d found an old camping grill in the basement while Luke was looking for the wine, and River made grilled cheese, tomato, and mustard sandwiches for lunch. 

Sunshine had taken some quilts from the Citizen, and after we ate, the four of us curled up on the blankets in the sand and watched the flames dance orange-yellow-red against the blue sea. 

I had my own blanket, and River had his.We didn’t sit near each other and I didn’t even look at him. 

Mostly. 

River was lying on his back, knees bent, his pretty, bare feet tucked halfway into the sand. He must have felt me staring at him, because he turned his head and winked at me, slow and casual, as if he knew that I was beginning to distrust him a bit,and he wanted to show me he didn’t all that much care. 

There was something about sleeping next to a person that was . . . dangerous. More dangerous than sleeping
with
a person, maybe. Not that I would know. But being next to River, in the same bed, and waking up beside him, did bad things to my mind. I felt as if I
knew
him already. Like how I knew Sunshine, and Luke, and my parents. Like how I knew Freddie. 

But I didn’t.At all.And that knowing feeling,based on nothing, was dangerous. And, I felt, not quite sane. 

“So Violet, get this.” 

Sunshine was all tucked up next to my brother, her elbow on his thigh, her hand on the bottle of wine, her long dark hair touching the sand. 

“Get what?” I asked as I shoved her arm off Luke’s leg. 

“I had a dream last night. A dream about a giraffe.” 

I took the bottle out of Sunshine’s hand and set it behind my back. It was almost gone.“A giraffe?” 

“Yeah, this giraffe that I was friends with.You see, this giraffe had a party, and I helped her clean up afterward. I never dream about giraffes. Do little kids even dream about giraffes? But here’s where it gets interesting. I read the front page of the Portland paper at the café and it said some giraffe at some zoo died yesterday. And I just realized that it probably means something. Don’t you think that it means something? I think it means something.” 

Sunshine was drunk. She would never have talked about her dreams otherwise. Sunshine hated illogical things, like dreams and fairy tales and Salvador Dalí. 

“Sunshine, you’re drunk,” I said. 

She raised her eyebrows.“Didn’t you hear,Violet? Boys like drunk girls.” At this, Sunshine turned over on her side in the sand, lifted her arm, and let it fall in a gentle arc onto her hip.Then she wiggled.Just a little bit.Just in the exact right spot. 

Sunshine continued to amaze me with her ability to draw attention to what she considered her most interesting parts. Without seeming to try. 

Luke stood up, reached around me, and took the port bottle. “That’s right, Sunshine. We
do
like drunk girls. What do you think, River? I bet you’ve had a few drunk girls in your time. Less fuss, I say.” My brother paused and took a swig from the bottle. “Women are always making it so hard for us men to get the one thing nature intended for us to have. It’s such a shame.” 

So Luke was at it again. I thought he might give up the man-love talk with River, but the wine had brought it back. River shook his head at Luke’s comment and kind of laughed. Sometimes my brother said things that were so, well,
wrong,
in so many ways, it was impossible to do anything but laugh.