Rites of Spring (38 page)

Within a day—thanks to Odile’s no-fail detox diet—I felt back to normal, with nothing more than the scabs on my wrists and ankles to show what had happened to me. From what I was conscious for, there had been a lot of debate among the other members of the club about whether or not they could pursue a case against Darren Gehry without my consent, or barring that, if they could just leak it to the media.

The oath of fidelity was invoked quite a lot. It was my secret, and they were sworn to keep it. As soon as I felt up to the argument, I told them all about Darren’s confession to me on the island, and explained his strange conviction that everything he was doing was par for the course in society pranks.

“But how could he possibly conflate kidnapping and what we do?” Clarissa asked, baffled.

“What we do?” Demetria said, and I practically saw the bulb light itself over her head. “Like breaking and entering? And robbery?”

“And vandalism,” said Ben.

“And hacking and stalking, and…assault.” Jenny bit her lip, and I could see the figure of Micah Price looming large before all of us. “We’re pretty bad.”

No one wants to be shown just how low their moral high ground really is. After that, most of the others came around to my way of thinking, and those who didn’t at least respected my decision.

It bothered me a lot that Poe never called. I don’t remember seeing him on the dock that night, but then again, I couldn’t remember much beyond the stricken faces of the Gehrys.

I stopped Clarissa the following afternoon. I was sitting on the couch of the suite, pretending to watch videos and veg out while I fretted over the situation. “Do people…know where we are?” I asked.

“Malcolm called yesterday,” she said. “I thought you wouldn’t want visitors yet. He’s going back to Alaska, but I’m sure…”

“No, that’s fine,” I said. Malcolm had called. But what about Poe?

That evening, while we were repacking to leave for Louisiana, Josh and Lydia phoned from Spain. The knights had left him a message earlier, asking about the legal ramifications, and Lydia was frantic to know that I was okay. I allayed their fears and reiterated to Josh that there was no way I was pursuing charges against Darren, but all the while I wondered what our patriarch who was
actually
in law school thought about the matter.

During the long drive up the Gulf Coast with the other Diggers, I finally got to hear bits and pieces of the story from the others’ point of view.

W
HAT
I K
NOW
F
OR
S
URE

1)
They
hadn’t
decided that I’d broken the plates in the tomb that day. In fact, Poe had never even brought it up. They were still blaming the campers on the other island by the time Clarissa and Odile reported that I was missing late that afternoon.

2)
In his rush, Darren had left his backpack (name conveniently sewed inside) behind on the beach, along with the bottle of bright blue Gatorade and my flip-flops, which must have fallen off when he dragged me to the boat. Inside the backpack was the empty bottle of ipecac syrup and some broken pieces of china. “Trophies,” Demetria had said with a shudder.
^*14

3)
They’d gone to the Gehrys to see if Darren knew where I was, but found the Gehrys had little clue as to their son’s whereabouts, which is when Demetria and Ben put two and two together about the location of the backpack and the missing rowboat.

“But how did you know that he’d taken me against my will?” I asked Demetria.

“Well, Amy, it’s not exactly a secret that you don’t like the water,” Jenny said.

Odile looked up. “It was Jamie. Jamie knew you weren’t about to get into a boat.”

“Where’s Jamie now?” I asked.

But no one knew the answer to that question. And I wasn’t sure if I wanted to ask them where he’d been while I was being rescued that night. Would they find it odd that I cared? And, more important, would I hate the answer?

Two days later, I was enjoying the catharsis one derives from a well-stocked nail gun in a small bayou town in Louisiana. The days were long and no one in the Diggers’ crew (who, for the purposes of the trip, were undercover as nothing more than a group of friends) was going to win any cuisine awards at the end of the week. Still, the work and lifestyle kept my mind off all the things I wanted to obsess about: the future, Darren, and Poe. I’ll tell you this: I hadn’t had one nightmare about drowning since I’d started sleeping on a church floor with fifteen other ersatz construction workers. (And only once had the memory of Poe and me in the shower house made me flush red from something other than the southern sun.)

I was stacking roofing tiles when George approached, hands in pockets. “Your tattoo is showing,” he said.

I yanked my tank top down in back, but then wondered why I’d bothered. Clarissa had been sailing around all week with her shoulder-blade symbol flying free. Demetria’s tattoo was almost always on display, but you barely recognized it in the midst of all her other ink. And still, no one had seen Jenny’s. I was starting to suspect she didn’t have one.

George looked at the ground for a second. “Have you spoken to Jamie recently?”

“No.”

He nodded, slowly. “I was just wondering what he thought about the no-pressing-charges thing.”

“Yeah, I was wondering myself,” I said, then laughed. “He’s probably fine with it, though. He’s so gung ho about our status above the law. Wouldn’t want me to do anything to hurt the society.”

George’s expression turned confused. “What do you mean, Amy? He’s the one who called the police.”

“What?”

George shook his head. “Didn’t you know? Jenny couldn’t get any reception with her battered cell phone, and Salt wouldn’t let anyone use the radio on the island’s boat. He insisted he be the one behind the wheel if we went out to the other island to look for you guys. Such a bastard. I can’t wait until we’re on the Trust board and can fire his ass.”

“But…Jamie?” I asked.
Stay on subject, George.

“Yeah, so we figured Salt was trying to protect the Gehrys at that point, and we were all pretty angry, but when Salt wouldn’t budge, Jamie jumped on the Myers’ yacht and released the rope so Kurt Gehry and Salt couldn’t follow him aboard. It drifted out and he radioed the police. That’s when we left to get you.”

“And he couldn’t get back?”

“Well, docking’s pretty hard,” George explained. “Even for people who have driven boats before.” And Poe hadn’t. “Malcolm had to actually swim out to get him, I heard. By the time they came back to the slip, you were asleep, I guess. Didn’t you talk to them when we got on the boat to leave?”

I shook my head. I didn’t even remember getting on the boat. Had I brushed past Poe without even acknowledging him, without even thanking him for trying to help?

No wonder he hadn’t called me! After he went out of his way to get to the police, endangering himself and a significantly pricey piece of the Myers’ property, I’d refused to press charges.

“I’m surprised you haven’t talked to him,” George said. “Considering.”

I bit my lip. “That’s over.” More like a nonstarter.

“Oh.”

“What, does that surprise you?” I said, getting annoyed now. “You’re the one who told me he was a jerk.”

George looked at me in surprise. “Do you really care what I think?”

No. No, but…“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said at last. “Not with you.”

“Fine,” he said, and picked up a box of nails. “But you should know that I don’t think he’s a jerk anymore.”

“Thank you,” I said. As he turned to go, I touched his shoulder. “And thank you, also, for saving my life.”

George smiled his gorgeous smile. “That was cool, huh? I’ve never done anything like that before.”

“It was very, very cool.”

He walked away and I stared after him, watching various women on the crew drifting in his direction. I smiled. They absolutely couldn’t help it. Gorgeous, funny, charming, and in his spare time, he saved the lives of innocent coeds. And yes, I was completely grateful for that. But I didn’t feel the slightest compulsion to sleep with him again.

I put down the nail gun and grabbed my cell phone, dialing the number from memory. It rang and rang, and when at last the answering machine played Poe’s voice, I hung up. What I had to say didn’t belong on a machine.

“I’m never going to get the feel of powdered drywall out of my hair,” Clarissa whined. “And my manicurist is going to shoot me for what I’ve done to my nails.”

“Do you regret it?” Demetria asked, pulling off I-91 and onto the quiet streets of New Haven.

Clarissa grinned. “Not a minute.”

“You’d better get it together,” Jenny said in mock warning. “I don’t want a CFO who isn’t presentable.”

I smiled out the window. While others had used the road trip to get their futures in order, the drive up to Connecticut had given me too much spare time to ruminate on all the questions that remained unanswered. How long had Darren been spying on Poe and me to overhear our hypothetical plate-smashing plot? Would Gehry keep his promise to punish, rehabilitate, and, moreover, help his son? And what in the world would I say when I saw Poe?

As the van rolled down Danbury Road, I came to a decision. “Hey, Demetria, can you pull over?”

Demetria checked me out in the rearview mirror. “What? Why?”

“There’s something I have to do.” I saw Poe’s block on the left. “Right here.”

Odile checked out the neighborhood. “What do you have to do here? Buy crack?”

“Isn’t this graduate student housing?” Jenny frowned and Harun covered her hand with his. “Oh.”

George looked at the house. “Amy, do you think he’s even home?”

“Who?” Clarissa asked.

“Jamie Orcutt,” George said softly. He looked at me. “I’ll get your bags back to your room.”

“Thanks,” I said, sliding open the door and slipping out. My sneakers sank into the last of the March slush. I felt through the fabric of my purse for the remainder of the cylinder inside. Life Savers.

“I’m not leaving her down here alone,” Demetria said. “We can wait to see if he’s there.”

But we didn’t have to. The door opened, and there was Poe, framed in the screen. He was wearing khakis and a dark blue Eli hoodie, and his arms were folded across his chest. I waved back at my friends and headed up the path to the porch. I didn’t even see them take off.

“Hi,” I said. “Can I come in?”

He stepped aside and I entered the apartment. It was much as I remembered it from last semester. The same worn furniture, the same bookshelves and red-bound law texts, the same giant aquarium with the giant snake. Lord Voldemort, if I recalled correctly. And next to it, the smaller cage for the little white mice Poe fed the snake. Except now, when I looked, I saw only one mouse in the cage, and a hamster wheel, and a little colorful ball. I leaned in closer.

“I named her Reepicheep,” he said abruptly.

“What?”

“The mouse. I named her Reepicheep.”

“Reepicheep was a boy mouse.”

He shrugged. “Details.” He joined me in front of the cage. “He was a really brave mouse. Brave and noble and dutiful, and a little bit too much into self-sacrifice.”

I swallowed. Well, there was answer number one.

“And anyway,” he went on quickly, “I couldn’t very well feed her to anyone after that lecture you gave me in November.”

I nodded. “And after naming her.”

“Right.” He looked at me. “What do you want?”

“To see you.”

He turned away from the cages and sat down on the sofa. “Okay.”

“And talk to you.” I turned around, too, but there didn’t seem to be anyplace to sit where I wouldn’t touch him. There didn’t seem to be anyplace to put my hands, anywhere to look that wasn’t at his face. I focused my eyes on the bookshelves, on the vegetarian cookbooks there, and I remembered why we’d fought that day. I felt so stupid now. He had eaten the lobster that night. He’d eaten it as a peace offering to the Myers. Poe was also a little too much into self-sacrifice.