Ricochet (20 page)

“No.”

“What? But you just said—”

“You have to earn it.”

Huh… “That’s kind of mean.”

“I never said I would be nice. I’m done enabling you, which
means we’re not going to have sex whenever you want it. You’ll have to find the
strength to hold out until the time is right.”

“And you get to choose when the time is right. How is that
fair?”

“I’m not the sex addict.”

Touché. “Jeez. I thought sober Lo would be nicer.”

“I’m nice when it counts,” he says. “You love me anyway.”

“I do,” I agree. “But if you wait another month before we
have phone sex, I might hate you.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Ryke knocks on the door frame, and I jump at his sudden
presence. I forgot he was even still here. “You done? You’re killing my battery
charge.”

He hates that I’m talking to Lo, but I actually feel a
thousand times better. Dr. Banning must have known that he’d be the one to say
the right things and in the right way to make me believe the words. He’s given
me hope again. That I’ll kick this addiction. And I won’t have to be alone when
I do it.

“Lo, your brother wants his phone back,” I tell him.

“
Half
-brother.”

I smile and climb out of the bathtub.
 

I needed this.

“I’ll call you later. I love you.”

“Love you too.” I hand Ryke the phone with an added glare.

He touches his chest. “Hey, I called him for you.” He
snatches the phone. “You shouldn’t be scowling at me. You should actually kiss
my toes.”

“With this,” I say, pushing past him into the room. My
comforter lies in a ball at the base of my bed. I tug the tangled blanket out
and wrap up in it, hopping on the mattress. I close my eyes but can’t seem to
wipe the silly grin off my face.

No more self-love, sure. I’ll probably be in a world of pain
tomorrow, but for right now, I feel like I’m in the clouds.

{9}

I almost peed my pants. Ziplining should be banned
from all civilized cultures. What I thought was a mild fear of heights
intensified to the millionth degree as I propelled across a rainforest.
Never again.

I almost had a heart attack as well. Only it spurned from
watching my little sister gliding on the line completely upside down. All her
friends kept yelling at me for screaming at
her
as she zipped headfirst over the hundred foot drop. Am I really the insane one
in this scenario?

When we decide to go eat lunch back in the village, I could
nearly kiss the safe, flat ground. Daisy chose an outdoor café with tiki lights
and Mayan-themed masks dangling from umbrellas. We gather around a long picnic
table, and I barely concentrate on the menu. My nerves have fried from all the
anxiety, and the craving for a release irritates my skin. It’s like someone
keeps pinching me, and my mind just responds
go to the bathroom. Release. Release and you’ll feel better.
I hate
it.

And I know that I can’t do it anymore. Time to make better
choices or at least ones that do not involve ditching a table of girls to
masturbate in the bathroom. Thinking the words actually causes guilt to
surface. Yeah, I want to avoid that shame. Besides, Lo says I have to earn
phone sex. Giving into the urges the day after I make a commitment to stop will
award me zero points.

So I try harder.

I take a deep breath and train my eyes on the menu, debating
between fish tacos and a chicken enchilada. The girls start discussing boys in
their grade and successfully ignore Ryke and me since we have nothing to add to
the conversation.

The sun causes my forehead to bead with sweat, and one of
the girl’s complains about needing a fan moved out here just to cool them down.
Ryke orders an extra pitcher of water to shut them up.

As the waiter leaves, Ryke nudges my arm and asks in a low voice,
“How was Lo?”

“Mean,” I reply. “But good mean, I think. Does that make
sense?”

“Yeah. With Lo, it does.”

I wish he was here in Mexico with us. Maybe next year or
during spring break we can enjoy a trip together. If he’s at a place where he
can be surrounded by alcohol, that is. Him, sober. Me, not as compulsive about
sex. It sounds quite nice even if it’s a little hard to picture.

“Hey, has anyone seen Daisy?” Cleo asks.

I look up from my menu and glance frantically around the
table, noticing her empty chair.

“I thought she went to the bathroom,” Harper says.

“I just came back from the bathroom. She wasn’t there. I
checked the stalls,” Cleo tells us.

My head whips to Ryke, my eyes bugging. And he immediately
says, “Calm down. She’s probably around here somewhere.” He rises from the
table. “I’ll go ask the hostess if she’s seen her.” He slips his wayfarers off
and enters the café with stiff shoulders. I see his muscles flexing a little
from his red tank. At least if he finds her with a guy, he may be able to
intimidate him with pure brawn.

I dial Daisy’s number, trying to push away nagging thoughts
about how we’re in a foreign country. And even though we’re staying in the
touristy parts, anything can happen. Daisy takes French in prep school. Not Spanish.
If someone kidnaps her, she won’t be able to understand what’s going on.

My anxiety peaks at the fifth ring.
Pick up!

The line clicks. “Hi, it’s Daisy. Not Duck and not Duke.
Definitely not Buchanan. I’m a Calloway. If you haven’t misdialed then leave
your name after the beep, and I’ll call back when I return from the moon. Don’t
wait around. It may take a while.”
BEEEP.

I cut the line off rather than leave her a scathing message.
She’s probably just talking to someone at the bar or something…oh God.

“She’s not texting me back,” Katy grumbles. A couple of the
other girls say they can’t reach her either.

“That’s not like her,” Harper says, her brows cinching in
worry. “She’s a fast texter.”

“Do you think she got Natalie Holloway’ed?” Katy whisper-yells.

“You did
not
just
use her name as a verb,” Cleo chastises.

Ryke returns and throws a wad of bills on the table. His
pissed and worried expression unsettles my stomach, a combination that I do not
like right now. “Girls.” He motions for all of them to rise. “Leave your
drinks. We have to call a cab.”

I shoot up from the table and walk briskly beside Ryke as we
go to the street to hail multiple cabs. “What happened?” I ask. “Where is she?”
Cars swerve in and out of the long, touristy strip, and yellow taxi vans pull
to the side to collect us. The air is thick with humidity, and the palm trees
jut up from the grassy center median, leaning crookedly. Even amid a supposed
tropical paradise, something has to go wrong.

He rubs the back of his neck. “The hostess said she saw her
leave with a man—”

That’s all I hear. I turn to bolt down the sidewalk, about
to run and scream her name at the top of my lungs.

Ryke grabs my arm and tugs me back. “Before you go call the
fucking Coast Guard,” he says roughly, “I think I might know where she is.”

“How?” I ask, fear poking me in the lungs.

He motions for the first group of girls to climb into the
nearest van. “Get in,” he tells them. “Tessa, you too.” The Katy Perry girl
pouts, obviously hoping to ride in the same taxi as him. But from what Ryke
told me,
she
is the one he wants to
stay far, far away from.

“Ryke!” I shout. I need answers. Daisy is my baby sister.
The girl who trailed Rose and me like a little shadow. We pretended to believe
in Santa Claus for five extra years just for her. I can’t lose her to Mexican
drug lords or kidnappers or rapists or fucking anything. Not on my watch. I’d
do more than call the Coast Guard. I’d get the Marines, the Army, the Air
Force, para-fucking-troopers. I’d have twenty choppers flying around the
country for her. Maybe that’s excessive and they have better things to do. But
I don’t care.

“Get in first,” he tells me, motioning to the last taxi. I
climb in after he gives the address to the first and second drivers. Harper sits
to my left. And then Cleo jumps in and squishes to my right. How the hell did I
get sandwiched between them?

Ryke takes the passenger seat by the driver. “Follow those
cabs,” he tells him. “Quickly.” And the van speeds off.

Cleo leans forward, her elbow digging into my thigh. “Is she
okay?” she asks Ryke, sticking her head in between the seats.

I’m wondering the same
thing, Ryke.
I need some info here.

“The hostess said the guy she walked out with is a local
travel agent. She gave me a list of spots he takes tourists to.”

“So she hasn’t been kidnaped?” Harper says.

“Not until he realizes who she is,” Cleo adds.

I shoot them both a glare. “Not helping.” My stomach sinks
and knots. I stare up at Ryke in the front seat. “How do you know which spot he
took her to?”

“I have a feeling—”

“A feeling?” I snap. “Ryke, she’s missing, and you barely
know her—”

“I know her enough,” he says. “She’s fucking impetuous and
daring, a little too bold and way too fucking fearless.”

That sounds about right.

“Trust me, Lily.” He cranes his neck over his shoulder to
look at me, and Cleo backs up a little, leaning against her seat again. “I
promise that I’ll find her. I won’t let anything happen to that girl, okay?”
Confidence and determination pulses in his eyes. I just hope he chose the
correct place. I’d rather not chase her around Mexico to find that the tour
guide had kidnapped her after all.

I nod once, and Cleo actually takes my hand and squeezes
lightly. Compassion—something I’m not used to from people. Especially girls.

I give her a weak smile, and she returns it. The cabs roll
to a stop, and Cleo slides open the door. We crawl out, flip-flops hitting
cement. Girls pool from the other cabs in front of us, and we all gather
together after the vans drive off. I have no idea where we are. At the bottom
of a sloping hill, I spot a group of tourists staring at the side of a
yellowish, brown cliff. I hear the roar of the ocean and the splash as water
crashes into the rock. White capped waves flow into a ravine that separates the
tourists’ lookout point from the cliff. And the crowd watches the rock and the
water. I know what this is, but I don’t want to believe it.
 

Ryke practically runs down the hill towards the tourists,
and the girls take their time following. I sprint to catch up to him.

“Did she go scuba diving?”

“No,” he says tersely, reaching the bottom. He scrutinizes
the faces, trying to find Daisy’s among the people, and I follow their gaze
towards the cliff.

My heart nearly explodes. Because a set of five bronze-skinned
men stand on the side of a forty-foot cliff, some locals even higher at the
top, probably eighty-feet. And one springs off, his body arched as he dives.

Straight.

Into the ravine below.

Oh. My. God.

He makes a little splash, but all I see is rock and then
rock and then the little sliver of water that he could have easily missed.
Holy. Shit.

Where is my sister?! And then, I see her. She’s not standing
with the tourists on the “safe” side where we are. No, she has somehow found
her way on the cliff. Barefoot, she clings to the middle of the rock and scoots
over as one of the divers directs her where to place her feet.

I cup my hands to my mouth. “DAISY!” I scream until my
throat burns. She’s crazy. Certifiable.

Ryke freezes by my side and lets out a string of
profanities.

“I have to go get her,” I say, my ribs constricting around
my lungs. She can’t jump. She’s not a trained diver. We’re in Acapulco, Mexico
where the men have probably dived from the ledge hundreds of times, timing the
rate of the waves into the rock, knowing exactly which spot to hit. She knows
nothing!

“No,” Ryke tells me. “I’m going to get her. You’ll have a
panic attack halfway up the fucking cliff. Just stay here. Watch the girls.
Take a fucking breath.” He looks like he needs one too. He doesn’t waste
another second talking to me. He darts off in the direction where we came from,
trying to find a way to the cliff side.

I just watch her little speck of blonde hair that’s tied in
a braid at her shoulder. She nods as a local diver points to the water below
and then motions to the rock.
At least
he’s teaching her
, is all I think. If she jumps she could die or get a
concussion. This is not in the itinerary.

“Oh my God,” Cleo exclaims, reaching my side. Her fingers
curl around the metal safety railing. “Is that Daisy?”

The girls gasp as they huddle around. They all start
whisking out their cellphones to record my sister’s impending death. Her toes
stick off the rock ledge, not much to brace herself with.

She’s planning on jumping. She’s not just up there for an
intimate tour of the cliff. This is her idea of fun.

“She’s nuts,” Harper says with the shake of her head.

Another local diver springs off the edge and soars in the
air with mastered precision. He dives headfirst into the right spot of water,
and the man teaching Daisy keeps talking, as though that was some kind of
demonstration for her.

Daisy nods, not even a little scared. I can practically see
her eyes lighting up in awe and excitement.

“Is she going to jump?” Harper asks. “There are rocks
everywhere.”

Cleo anxiously clenches the railing. “This isn’t an ocean.
This is like as small as a river. Shouldn’t she be jumping into that?” She
points to the full blue ocean that hits the northern part of the cliff, but
Daisy is on the side, the section where the ocean flows into this little
crevice between our lookout point and the mountain she spiders.

“I’ve seen these types of dives before,” Katy (or rather
Tessa) says, smacking on gum. She sidles up next to Cleo. “There’s a small
radius where it’s like really,
really
deep
and then beyond that it’s shallow and really,
really
rocky.”

Where’s Ryke?!

“Shut up,” Cleo snaps at her. “Seriously, shut up.”

And then, I see Ryke ascending the cliff, grabbing cutouts
in the rock and putting his feet in divots, hiking his body up and then over
with endurance and strength. He doesn’t need a local to show him the way. He’s
free climbing, I realize. Solo free climbing. Without a rope. I guess, in some
way, he was able to do what he had planned before coming on this trip.

Still, I am terrified.

A local says something, and their heads swivel in Ryke’s
direction. The man edges closer and holds out his hand to Ryke when he finds
their path. He shakes it as though he’s a welcomed guest to their club atop a
cliff. Actually, they’re not
on
top.
That would be too high. But the side of the cliff is already too tall for
comfort.

Daisy acknowledges Ryke, and then looks back at the water
when his mouth starts moving. His face grows red and veins begin to pop from
his neck as he rants. If I was closer, I wonder if I would see spit flying from
his lips, beyond furious.
  

The locals let him say what he needs to, and then Ryke turns
to them, speaking a little, but his motions are calm, less irate. They nod and
then point to the water, replying back. God, I wish I could hear.

When Daisy begins talking, I think maybe Ryke has succeeded
in convincing her to return to the parking lot. But her hands start
gesticulating, angry and as irritated as he is.

They’re arguing.

He steps closer, his foot halfway on the ledge as they
straddle the side of the fucking mountain. His nose touches hers as he gets
into her face, shouting. Her chest puffs out and she yells back. Their voices
begin to echo through the ravine but not loud enough to make out words or
syllables.