Melody (32 page)

He pulled his head up to look down at me disdainfully.

“You are a tease,” he said, “and Adam Jackson is not to be teased.”

I thought I would pass out beneath him. My eyes rolled, my mind went dark for a moment, and then, suddenly I felt him rise off me, his head going back first and then his lower body lifting. I opened my eyes to see Cary pulling him away, clutching his hair, and grasping his right arm. He jerked him so hard he fell back on the sand.

“Get off her!” he cried.

Adam turned over on the beach quickly and got to his feet. I sat up, my stomach gurgling. The two boys faced each other. Cary's hands were clenched into small mallets. With his shoulders hoisted like a hawk, he stepped toward Adam.

“Come on,” he said. “Let's see how you protect that precious handsome face of yours.”

“Get out of here!” Adam whined. “She wanted it,” he said pointing at me. “She came here, didn't she?”

Cary gazed at the bottle of vodka on the blanket.

“You got her drunk, you bastard. You took advantage of her.”

Cary lunged at him and Adam jumped back.

“You're crazy!” he cried. “Your whole family's crazy, including her!” He backed away. “I'm not going to fight over her.” He continued to back toward his boat. Cary stood glaring at him. Then he turned, reached down for the bottle of vodka, and heaved it in Adam's direction. The bottle smashed against the side of the boat and splattered.

“You're out of your mind! You'll be sorry,” Adam threatened, but he pushed his boat away from the shore and quickly jumped into it when Cary threatened to come after him. “This isn't the end of this. You'll hear from me!” he screamed.

“Sue me!” Cary retorted, his hands on his hips.

Adam started his engine and turned the boat away. A moment later he was bouncing over the water, fleeing.

I turned over on my left side and buried my face in the blanket. I felt Cary kneel down and touch my shoulder.

“You all right, Melody?” he asked softly.

“No,” I said. I felt sick and embarrassed and suddenly very, very tired.

“Come on. I'll help you home,” he said.

“I don't want to go home. That's not my home!” I cried. “I don't have a home!”

“Sure you do. You're with us until your mother comes back.”

“I don't care if she ever comes back.”

“Sure you do.”

“Stop saying sure I do. You don't know what I want. None of you know or care.”

“I care,” he insisted. “Come on,” he urged. He started to zip up the back of my dress. “You'll feel better after you walk a while.”

“I'll never feel better. I don't want to feel better. Just leave me here on the beach and let the water come in and pull me out to sea. I'd rather drown.”

He laughed. “Come on. You're just a little drunk.”

“I am not drunk,” I said and spun around, only when I did, the whole world spun with me and kept spinning. I moaned and fell into his arms. The gurgling in my stomach turned into a volcano and it began to erupt. He held me as I heaved. All the vodka I had drunk on top of a relatively empty stomach came up like molten lava. It burned its way up my throat and poured out of my mouth. The pain of heaving doubled me over. If it had not been for Cary holding me, I was sure I would have fallen face forward into the sand.

Finally, it stopped. I took deep breaths, gasping for clean air.

“You all right now?”

I was feeling better after getting rid of the vodka. I nodded and he lowered me to the blanket.

“Just rest a moment,” he said.

I took shorter breaths, the heaviness in my chest lessening, but there was an ache in my eyes and my stomach felt as if I had been punched a dozen times. The good thing was that the spinning had stopped.

“How did you find us?” I asked, starting to realize all that had happened.

“I followed you. I had a suspicion you were going to meet that creep,” he said. “He has trouble keeping his bragging tied at the dock. He was telling some of his friends that he was going to have a good time tonight on the beach and he would have a big story for them tomorrow. He didn't mention your name, but I was afraid it was you, and then, when you told me you couldn't go to town with me because you had made other promises, I was even more suspicious. That lie you told at dinner clinched it. I knew you wouldn't go to Janet Parker's house to study.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I'm sorry I made trouble for you.”

“No trouble for me,” he said with a laugh. “Trouble for Mr. Perfect.”

“He threatened you.”

“He'll be too embarrassed to tell anyone what really happened. Don't worry.”

I tried to sit up.

“Think you can walk?” Cary asked.

“Yes,” I said. He had pulled the zipper of my dress up, but my bra was still undone. For the moment it didn't matter. I started to stand. He came around behind me and lifted me at the elbows until I was on my feet, but I wobbled and fell against him.

“Whoa,” he said. “Steady as she goes. Seas are a bit rough tonight.”

“Maybe I should be wearing a life jacket,” I said and he laughed. We started away. “What about the blanket and the radio and all?”

“Leave them to the ocean. She has a way of cleaning
up the messes left on her beaches,” he said. He held my right arm as we continued walking.

“I must look like a mess,” I said. “My stomach feels as if I swallowed a beehive.”

“We'll get you home and to bed, but you'll probably feel crummy in the morning.”

“Your mother will be very upset with me, and if your father sees me—”

“He won't,” Cary promised.

“It's too soon. Your mother will wonder why I'm back from studying already.”

“We'll smuggle you in,” he promised.

I walked with my eyes shut, my head against his shoulder, feeling heavy with the burden of shame I carried. He held me as if I were made of spun glass and any second I'd break. When I stumbled, he held me even tighter and more firmly. It seemed to take forever to go back over the hill, and then when we started to descend the second one, he abruptly stopped. “Wait.”

I opened my eyes.

“What?”

He squinted at the darkness.

“My father,” he whispered. “He's coming back from the dock.”

“Great. Now all I'll hear is how this proves I'm my mother's daughter. He'll have me reading the Bible all night.”

“Shh! Just don't move for a moment.” Cary was quiet a long moment. “All right, he's just about to the house. Let's go to the boat for a little while,” he said. “You'll clean up and straighten up and then we'll go in. Come on. You'll be all right,” he promised. His words spread a magic shawl of comfort about my shoulders. I relaxed and followed his direction.

He turned me right and we moved down the hill toward the ocean again. Moments later, we were at the dock. He helped me onto the lobster boat. It bobbed gently in the water, but I was still too unsure of myself to walk without Cary's support.

“Easy.” He guided me into the cabin, leading me to a cushioned bench. He turned on a small oil lamp. “How are you doing?”

“I feel as if I'm stuck on a runaway roller coaster. My ribs ache, my head feels like a hunk of coal, my stomach wants to resign from my body . . . I've never been drunk before. Lucky you were there for me,” I said. “Thanks.”

He stared at me. “I hate guys like Adam Jackson. They think everything's coming to them because they were born with silver spoons in their mouths. They all oughta be harpooned, or taken out to sea and left there floating on their egos.”

I laughed, but it hurt and I moaned.

Instinctively, he reached for my hand. “You want a drink of water?”

“Yes, please,” I said and he rose to get it. That was when I looked down and saw the mess I had made on the front of my dress. “Oh, Cary, look. Aunt Sara will be devastated. One of Laura's dresses. It will be stained.”

He turned and gazed at me. He thought a moment. “I got a tub on deck, and some soap. We'll scrub it clean and then I'll put it on the kerosene heater for a half hour and that'll dry it enough.” He poured me a glass of water and handed it to me. “In the meantime,” he took a rubber raincoat off a hook, “you can wear this.”

I drank the water.

“I'll go fill the tub and get a brush.”

“I'll wash it,” I said. “You don't have to do that.”

“It's all right. If I can wash smelly fish guts off the deck, I can wash off some used vodka.”

“Ugh,” I said, laughing.

He left, and I took off the dress, fastened my bra and put on the raincoat.

“All set,” he called out.

“I'll do it,” I insisted.

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

He took me to the tub and I scrubbed the dress clean
while he lit the kerosene heater in the cabin. When I thought the dress was clean enough, I brought it in and he draped it carefully over the heater.

“Shouldn't take too long,” he said. I sat on the bench. He went to a closet and took out a pillow. “Here,” he said placing it on the corner of the bench. “Lie back, close your eyes, and rest.”

“Thank you. You're a regular rescue service,” I told him.

He sat at the base of the bench, his back against it, his arms around his legs. The small flame in the oil lamp flickered, making the shadows dance on the walls of the cabin. I could hear the water licking at the sides of the boat. The pungent odor of seaweed and salt water was as refreshing as mint at the moment. I took a deep breath and sighed.

“I'm a mess,” I said.

“You're not. You're bright and pretty. Everything is going to be all right.” He said it with such assurance, I wondered if everyone else could see my future clearer than I could. “Don't feel bad about what happened. Guys like that fool girls every day,” he added bitterly.

I thought about Laura and Robert Royce and imagined that was what Cary meant.

“I read a letter Robert Royce wrote to Laura,” I confessed.

“That garbage?” Even in the dim light, I could see his frown.

“It didn't seem like garbage, Cary. I read only one, but I thought he was sincere.”

“He knew how to use sincerity to get what he wanted,” Cary said sharply. “He was a conniving, sneaky—”

“How can you be so sure?”

“I can,” he said firmly.

“I'm not even confident about people I've known all my life, people I've seen on a daily basis. You can't possibly know what things Laura and Robert said to each other, what they told and promised each other, and
from what I've learned about her, she must have been a very bright person, Cary. Maybe you were just—”

“Just what?”

“Overly worried. It's only natural, I suppose. Tell me about the accident.”

“There's nothing to tell. They went sailing, a storm came, and they got caught in it.”

“They had no warning?”

“They were out there too long. He was probably . . .”

“Probably what?” He didn't answer. “Cary?”

“Probably trying to do to her what Adam Jackson tried to do to you tonight. She resisted and he kept her out there and they got caught in the storm. He's responsible for what happened. He's lucky he died too, otherwise, I would have killed him with my bare hands. In fact I wish he hadn't died. I wish I could have been the one to kill him.”

I was quiet for a moment. His shoulders, hunched up with rage, relaxed a bit.

“Don't you think that if Robert Royce were that sort of a boy, Laura wouldn't have continued seeing him, Cary?” I asked softly. “I certainly don't want to be alone with Adam Jackson again.”

He didn't reply for a while. Then he sighed, lowered his head and shook it. “She was confused, is all. She was in a rush to have a boyfriend.”

“Why?”

“Because of those . . . busybodies in school always teasing her about not having one, saying nasty things to her about. . .”

“About what?” I held my breath.

“About us. They spread dirty stories about us and she thought it was because she didn't have a boyfriend. So you see, she didn't really like Robert that much. She was just trying to please everyone and get them to stop. She thought it was bothering me and she blamed herself.”

“That's terrible,” I said. He nodded. “Why did they make up those stories about you two?”

“Why? Because they're dirty, mean, selfish. They couldn't understand why Laura and I were so close, why we did so much together and for each other. They were jealous so they made up stories. They're as responsible for her death as Robert was,” he concluded.

“I'm sorry, Cary.” I touched his shoulder.

He nodded. “Don't bother reading any more of those phony letters. They're full of lies. He wrote and said whatever he thought would get him what he wanted,” Cary assured me.

“Why doesn't your mother throw them out, then?”

“She wouldn't touch anything in that room. For a long time afterward, she refused to believe Laura wasn't coming back. They've never found her body, so she refused to accept her death. And then, my father had the gravestone put in and forced her to go there with him. Finally, she accepted that much, but she still clings to the room, to her things, her clothes. I was surprised she wanted to take you in and let you stay in Laura's room, but it's almost as if she thinks . . .”

“What?”

“Laura's come back through you. That's another reason why my father hasn't been the most hospitable person. It's not that he dislikes you for any reason.”

“There's a reason,” I said prophetically. “Something happened that has made him so bitter about my mother, and I want to know what it was. Do you know anything else?” I asked.