Figment (9 page)

Later, we sat on our blanket, with the sun on our heads and the strong wind blowing in our faces, and fed each other hot, salty French fries with vinegar, which felt very British. I’d taken off my wet jeans, and Davis had changed into dry clothes in one of the handy little beach huts scattered all along the shore. When we were done, I put the empty fries container aside and lay back on the blanket with a sigh.

“This is the most perfect day.” I crossed my arms over my eyes against the sun.

“That’s what you said yesterday,” Davis teased, leaning over me. His shadow blocked the light. I opened my eyes to see him gazing at my abdomen where my shirt had ridden up.

He trailed his fingers along the eight-inch scar, purplish-red, with little marks like pinpricks. “What was here?”

“Stitches.” I pushed myself up on my elbows. The nerve endings must not have been healed—the scar tingled at his touch.

He nodded, his face sober. “Was it
. . . ?”

“A piece of the hood pierced me there, they think.” Saying the words made me feel vaguely ill.

“I can’t stand to think of you in pain like that.” Davis’s eyes were clouded over now.

I twined my fingers in his blond hair. “It’s okay. Let’s not talk about it.” Something dark moved in my peripheral vision, and I looked around. A man was standing several feet away, partially hidden by a large beach umbrella. I got the impression he had been watching us, though he slipped behind the umbrella when I turned around. He was slender and obviously hadn’t planned for the beach, because he was wearing a gray suit. Something about his appearance clanged in my head. Then I realized—it was the same guy I’d thought was watching us at the Secret Cinema. “Davis, look, quick. Do you see that guy?”

He twisted around, just as the sun moved out from the clouds, dazzling us with a single brilliant ray. We squinted, shielding our eyes with our hands. Then the sun slid behind the clouds again. “Who are you talking about, Zo?”

The spot by the beach umbrella was empty. “Damn it!” I climbed to my feet and scanned the shore. “That man. I swear, he was right here.” I stared at the line of beach cafés and changing huts behind us. “It’s so weird—I think it was the same guy I saw in the Secret Cinema crowd.”

“Oh, yeah?” Davis rummaged in his backpack and pulled out a book. He lay back on the blanket. “How much sleep did you get last night?”

“Davis, seriously, do you think someone’s following us?” I sat back down. “I mean, that guy being at the movie thing and then here, too—it’s so weird. Who wears a suit at the beach?”

“Zo, forget it, okay? No one’s following us. Jesus. You know how paranoid you sound?” He flipped the book open and held it up in front of his face.

I subsided, but as we sat there, surrounded by happy beach-goers, I wondered why he was so quick to dismiss me. And as the minutes ticked by, I wondered, too, if there was more to Davis’s visit than he’d told me.

I’m back in the car again, but this time we are not on the slick and twisty road. We are driving through the abandoned farm fields that stretch for miles at the base of the hills. I have been here before; I can sense it. “Please, let’s turn around,” I plead with Davis. I can see the hills rising ahead of us. Dread is choking me. We must not drive into the hills. “Turn around!” I yell.

He isn’t listening, though. He’s staring into the rearview mirror, but the road behind us is empty. “We have to get away,” he says, and even in my dream state, I feel faint surprise that I can hear him. He isn’t garbled the way he was before.

“Get away from what?” I ask. He is driving too fast. I can sense it. I can feel the looseness of the steering wheel as if my own hands were on it. “Stop. Stop, Davis, go back.”

But still he does not hear me; he watches the empty road behind us. “They found me. They’ve found me out, Zo.”

“Who? Who?” I ask over and over. The car hurtles down the road, and inexorably, the hills draw closer and closer. All I can do is watch and wait.

My eyes flew open, and, for a long moment, I stared into the dark with the sense that my bed was moving. It was the dream, I realized. I groaned and rolled over, pulling the pillow over the back of my neck. My head was throbbing. A different part of the same night. I tried to force my mind back. Why were we on that stretch of road? What was Davis talking about, that they found him? Who found him?

Unbidden, my mind flew back to the man on the beach, his small, closed face. Davis’s automatic dismissal. Shouldn’t he have been at least a little curious when I told him I thought we were being followed? Shouldn’t he have cared?

* * *

My mother found me in the kitchen, my eyes barely open, staring at the incomprehensible European coffeemaker.
I heard her footsteps and stiffened automatically. I had nothing to say to her—nothing sincere, that is.

“It’s the red switch,” my mother said from behind me. “The one at the back.”

I thumbed it without turning around. The coffeemaker burbled on, and brown droplets started falling into the carafe. I watched it intently as she bustled around behind me, clanking plates and silverware. I could tell there was something she wanted to say. There was nothing I wanted to hear.

“I thought maybe we’d do a little shopping today, you and me.” Jostling of pans. “We’ve hardly spent any time together here.”

Her light, casual tone rankled. My fingers tightened on the edge of the counter. The coffee was done. I poured myself a mugful without answering.

Eggs and toast were steaming on my plate when I turned around. I sat down, cut open one of the yolks, and watched the runny yellow soak into the bread. I set my fork down, got up, poured wheat flakes into a bowl, and sat back down.

Across the table, my mother watched me over the rim of her teacup. “Covent Garden has some nice shops, I’ve heard.”

“Really?” I spoke politely, as if to a stranger, and spooned up some cereal. With a pang of cruel pleasure, I watched her flinch.

“I thought maybe you might want a chain for the . . . the charm Davis gave you?”

I looked up from my bowl quickly. “What?”

She twirled her coffee cup in her hands. “A chain. Do you have one?”

“No,” I said slowly. “No, actually, I don’t.”

“Well, maybe you should. I’m sure that . . . memento is very special to you.”

I could feel the core of ice around my heart beginning to crack. Was she maybe, just maybe, starting to come around to the thought of Davis and me together?

“Zoe.” My mother set her teacup down and reached out her hand. “I know this has been a god-awful summer.”

I looked at her hand. The skin was soft, wrinkled, splotched here and there with age spots.
“The worst.” It felt good to just say it out like that.

She nodded. “I’m sorry for that.”

“Me too.” I sighed.

She turned her hand palm up. “I want to go shopping with my daughter. Just for today, maybe we can pretend the last few weeks haven’t happened.”

A little laugh slipped out of me. “That’s not too likely, Mom. But we can go shopping.”

“Oh, good.” She got up from the table, her face alight. “I haven’t had anyone to go with. Your father, as you know, falls asleep as soon as he enters a shop.”

Within an hour, we were getting out of the Tube near Covent Garden. I’d heard about this famous shopping spot, with the vast, old, glass-covered open market, and I was pretty excited to see it. It felt surprisingly okay to be with my mother, after our talk that morning. Putting aside my anger felt like laying down a large, heavy package I’d been carrying around. Only last night’s dream kept poking at the back of my mind.

“Oh,” we both breathed as we approached the open end of the big market. The beautiful old glass ceiling soared above us three stories, peaking at the center. We saw airy stalls selling jewelry, soaps, scarves, handmade leather goods, candles—anything lovely you could want filled the space, giving it the colorful, delicate quality of a fairyland.

“Zoe, look at this.” My mother pulled me over to a stall selling handmade filigreed earrings. She held some big pear-shaped drops to her ears. “What do you think?”

“They look like something I’d make in art class in middle school, Mom,” I murmured, smiling at the stall owner and urging her away. “Here, check out these soaps.” The delicious-smelling blocks were laid out on a gleaming white tablecloth, each in its own little dish, wrapped in charmingly rustic butcher paper. Their names were scrawled on the paper: lemon balm, ginger, tea tree, peach-vanilla.

The stall owner had blond braids down to her waist. She sliced a bit off one bar with a paring knife and held it out to us. “This is my newest one.”

I held it under my nose. “Mmm.”

“Almond and lily of the valley.”

My mother picked up a soap
block and weighed it in her hand. “These are a nice size, too. I’ll get you one, Zo. It’ll last you a long time.”

The girl wrapped it quickly in tissue and tied it with a lavender ribbon. My mother presented it to me. “A peace offering. Or a bribe, if you like.”

I laughed involuntarily. “Just tell it like it is, why don’t you, Mom?”

We wandered a bit more companionably after that, peering into this stall and that, zigzagging slowly down the huge market floor. We stopped and sorted through piles of flowing scarves. I watched my mother hold up a particularly lovely silk one in a dreamy ice-blue. The same color as Davis’s eyes. Before Davis and I started going out, Mom and I used talk at the kitchen table late at night, with cups of strong, milky tea. She used to give good advice.

“Do you believe in dreams?” I asked her suddenly. “That they . . . mean something?”

She looked around, her eyes sharp, and I dropped my gaze, fingering an alpaca scarf with studied ignorance.

“Why do you ask?”

“No reason.” I discarded the alpaca and drifted over to a small rack of delicate silver chains. One of these would be perfect for the infinity charm. I fastened one around my neck and gazed in a small mirror nearby. “Just something Becca and I were talking about before we left. She’d been having this dream over and over again, and she was wondering if it meant anything.”

My mother handed the blue scarf to the stall owner. “This one, please.” She sorted through her pink five-pound notes. “Well, I’d always heard that recurring dreams mean your subconscious is trying to tell you something.”

My fingers tightened around the chain on my neck. What would my subconscious be trying to tell me about that night? “You know, Becca said that there’s something weird about this dream. She feels like there’s something she’
s supposed to be figuring out, but she doesn’t know what.”

My mom’s gaze dropped to my fingers nervously fiddling with the necklace. “Did you find a chain? Oh, that’s lovely.”

We admired it in the mirror for a moment before I unfastened it from my neck and held the chain out to the vendor. “I’ll take this, thanks.” I’d put the charm on it later, when I was alone.

“Look, cookies!” My mother steered me down the aisle toward a bakery stall. “I’ve always felt that the unknown tends to feel far worse to us than any reality. Tell Becca she’d do well to figure out the dream before her imagination takes hold of it and comes up with some really negative interpretation.”

“Yeah. I’ll tell her.” I stared down at gorgeous marzipan fruit arrayed on trays. The strawberries glistened blood-red.

“What’s she dreaming about?” My mother plucked a sample of lemon pound cake from a tray. “Oh, you have to try this, Zoe. It’s so rich.”

“Patrick.” I selected a piece of the cake. It was buttery and delicious. “She’s been trying to decide whether to go back to Kenya with him next year.” There were shreds of truth in there, at least.

My mother was plucking tiny cupcakes from a tray and fitting them into a box. “It’s important not to define yourself through a boy. Tell Becca that. You girls need to find your own way.” She displayed the cupcakes for me. They were like little flowers in pink, yellow, and lavender. “Aren’t these darling?”

“Darling,” I echoed automatically. Find my own way. The words swam into my mind, crystallizing the scattered thoughts there. I’d been so focused on spending time with Davis, I’d lost sight of the big picture. If I wanted to figure out what had happened that night—and who was following us—I realized I couldn’t count on Davis. I was going to have to take matters into my own hands.

I felt better than I had in three weeks as my mother and I headed home from Covent Garden, laden with bags. After my mother’s comment, I was clear in my mind for the first time since the accident. I had to find out what my dream meant, but I couldn’t depend on Davis to give me the answers. I was going to have to find them on my own.

“Oh, look—Oliver!” My mother waved at someone ahead, waiting at a light. It was Oliver, in shorts, with a soccer ball tucked under one arm. I quickened my pace to reach him before my mother did.

“Hi.” I was breathless.

He smiled in his disarming way. His hair was disheveled, stuck to his forehead. “Hi. I haven’t seen you in a while. Sorry I’m so sweaty. Been kicking the ball around with some pals.”

“Yesterday—say something about it,” I hissed through my teeth as my mother approached.