Saratoga Woods 02 The Edge of the Water (19 page)

When they were alone, she said in a low voice, “You told them, didn’t you?”

He said, “What? No way!”

“Then how do they know?”

“Those guys? Court, I got no idea what they’re talking about.”

“You didn’t text back.”

“Because I already said. A thousand times I said.”

“It’s over, isn’t it?” She turned then and she walked away from him, and there was nothing for it but to follow, which was what he did.

He said, “Hey, nothing’s over,” but her reply told him that her mind had gone to another place. She said, “I shouldn’t have. I knew, I
knew
, but I did it anyway,” and to his horror she began to cry. He looked around the corridor and knew that, of all places, they couldn’t have this conversation here where anyone might walk by and then every soul in the school would know.

He took her arm. She jerked away. He took it again. “Come on,” he murmured.

They walked to the line of big double doors that served as entrance to the school, and they went outside. It was very cold, and rain had begun to fall.

“It’s like they always said.” She fumbled in her Star Wars purse. She dropped her textbook. He picked it up. She brought out a package of tissues but then she didn’t use them. She used her arm instead to wipe her eyes, the tissues in her hand ignored. “Boys want what they want and when they get it from you . . . It’s like they said.”

He swore soundly and he didn’t regret it. “That’s
not
how it is,” he said.

“I love you. That’s why I did it. I
love
you. I thought and I prayed and I thought. I read the Bible. And I prayed some more. I asked my heart and I asked my soul. My soul told me it was a kind of giving. D’you get that? I wanted to
give
to you. But all you wanted was . . . well, I guess we know, don’t we?”

“You’re not giving me a chance,” he said. “That’s not fair.”

“A chance to what?”

“To explain how I feel.” He walked away from the school, but he took her with him, into the parking lot where she had her car. He said, “Come on. Let’s get out of the rain.”

She said, “Why?”

“Because we need to talk.”

She cooperated with this. She unlocked her car. They got inside. She said, “The flowers should’ve told me and they did and I didn’t listen because I didn’t want to know.”

“That didn’t
mean
anything,” he said. “The flowers were flowers. That’s it. They didn’t mean . . .” He sighed and rubbed his head. He said, “Court, I didn’t want it to happen. Not like it happened.”

“Oh thanks,” she said bitterly.

“Please, please listen. I don’t even want to
have
this conversation now because I’m all twisted up inside and I don’t know why or what it means.”

“Good thing I do. It means you got what you wanted and you’re ready to move on.”

“It
doesn’t
mean that. It means I need time.”

“For what?”

“To figure out how I feel.”

“I thought you
knew
how you feel. You acted like it.”

“That was . . . before. Look, after we did it . . . It’s just that I didn’t expect . . . I mean, come on. We were reading the Bible and talking about those guys in the bushes and what they wanted from the bathtub lady and I can’t remember her
name
even because I’m so messed up about you. But what I’m trying to say is it doesn’t make sense to me. That’s what I want to tell you, Court. I can’t pretend to be praying and reading the Bible and making pledges to be pure and holy while all the time . . . Come on, Courtney. You know what I mean. I know you do.”

“You’re saying I’m a hypocrite,” she whispered. She’d gone so pale, he thought she might faint. “You got what you wanted and now you’re saying it’s over between us because I’m a hypocrite.”

He said in protest, “You’re not being fair. And that’s not what I’m saying at
all.
” But he understood suddenly and with perfect clarity that part of what she was saying was true. Only it wasn’t the hypocrite part. Or if it was, it really had nothing to do with her at all.

She seemed to read his dawning knowledge on his face. She turned her own away. She said, “Just go, okay?”

“Court, come on . . .”

“Go, okay? I need to get home.”

F
rom all the texting that was going on and all the whispering that accompanied it, Jenn figured out fast enough that Gossip Central was passing along a message of vital importance to the life of the South Whidbey student body. It turned out to be the big breakup of Derric Mathieson and Courtney Baker. Since she and Derric had once been friends, Jenn might have cared about this or even spoken to Derric about it, but he’d dumped her friendship for SmartAss FatBroad’s months ago, so she gave him ten seconds inside her head and then waved bye-bye to his heartbreak, or whatever it was. She had other things on her mind.

One of them was Annie Taylor. She’d been gone from her trailer two nights in a row, not all night but till really late. The sound of her car door closing when she’d arrived home had awakened Jenn. The clock said two-thirty when Jenn padded to the window to see Annie just going to her trailer’s door, and while Jenn knew it was none of her business, it felt like her business when Annie wasn’t there because it
felt
like Nera was the reason why. The last meeting of the seal spotters had been only too insane. Once it ended, Annie had doubled and tripled her intentions toward the seal. She had to contain her, she had to have pictures, she had to score a bit of her DNA. She talked nonstop about it and how she was going to do it and why it had to be done
N-O-W
. People were totally
crazy
because of that seal, Jenn thought. There had to be a reason beyond the obvious ones: To Langley she was a moneymaker and to Annie she was her ticket to finishing a PhD. Jenn could accept these as reasons for part of the craziness, but she sure as heck couldn’t accept them as reasons for all of it.

It seemed to her that
everything
started and finished with the coal black seal, so that was what she did, too. After gagging down a PBJ on stale bread with inadequate J and way too much PB, she headed for the school library, where she accessed a computer. As luck would have it, the only other people in the place were SmartAss FatBroad Becca King and Extra Underpants Schuman, who were whispering fiercely in a corner. Jenn smiled to herself when she saw them at it because she knew that whatever they were up to, it had to do with the Western Civ project that was looming ahead of them. That would be the same Western Civ project that promised her an A and promised FatBroad something much less than an A. Extra Underpants Schuman would sink their ship. It was, after all, what he did best.

Jenn went for the computers under the watchful eye of the PTA volunteer mom. She said to Jenn, “Watch yourself because I’ll be watching you,” which Jenn took to meant that the computers were for serious users and not for kids wanting to surf the Net. Whatever, she thought. She said, “Science project on seals,” and the volunteer mom said, “Make sure of that please.”

Suck on a few rotten eggs, Jenn thought. But she smiled and nodded and got down to work.

Nera was a big deal to everyone. That was a given. But the why of her being a big deal was different, and Jenn figured that detail was worth exploring. She didn’t know why she was so big a deal to Langley other than the money she brought it. She also didn’t know why she was so big a deal to Eddie Beddoe aside from Eddie being a general nutcase. But she did know that the fire lit under Annie at this point had to do with the transmitter she claimed Nera was wearing, so she figured that was a good place to start. “She should have shed it,” had been Annie’s words.

It didn’t take Jenn long to understand what this meant and why the presence of the transmitter was unusual. It took her a while of shifting among websites and following links, but she was able to work out a singular fact, one that she hadn’t known ever, despite living in proximity to sea mammals all of her life: Seals molted. They shed their skin every year. They came up with new skin to replace it, and bits of the old skin were a good source of DNA for scientists who wanted to study them.

So far so good, Jenn thought. It came to her when she read that last point that Annie’s excitement could well have to do with just scoring a piece of Nera’s old skin and getting her DNA from that. Except that Annie had been lit up over the transmitter that Nera was wearing, so before she drew any conclusions from the shedding of skin, Jenn decided she should search out transmitters.

She was interrupted by, “Come on, Tod. Stop acting like this, okay?” which came from across the library. She glanced over and saw that Extra Underpants Schuman was on his feet, slamming things into his backpack as the FatBroad tried to stop him.

“I told you six times and I’m done telling you,” was Extra Underpants’s reply. “And if you ever stopped listening to that
stupid
music for three minutes, maybe you’d actually start hearing me, cow pattie.” He leaned forward and ripped the FatBroad’s earphone out of her ear. Jenn stifled a smile and thought, Go for it, dude, because she could never figure out why Fattie didn’t get busted daily for the iPod she used.

“It’s
not
music,” the FatBroad said, “and will you please sit down so we can work this out?” She grabbed a couple of his books.

He grabbed them back. “Nothing
to
work out. I’m outa here.”

He was as good as his word. The volunteer parent said, “You two quiet down or I’m afraid I’ll have to—” and Extra Underpants interrupted with, “Ohhh, I’m so scared,” as he banged his way out.

The FatBroad looked at Jenn and then away. If you only knew, was what Jenn thought. Fattie turned back. She said, “What?” to Jenn in that nasty kind of way that meant What are you looking at. Jenn said, “What
what
? I’m working here. You got a problem with that?” What a loser, she thought.

The FatBroad put her arms on the table and her head on her arms. Things looking bad? Jenn thought. Ohhhh,
so
sorry.

She saw Fattie fumble for the earphone and smash it back into her ear. Maybe, Jenn thought, she’d rupture her eardrum and not be able to have another scuba lesson.

She went back to transmitters and did more surfing. She found a decent picture of Nera and she located the transmitter on her back. She compared the transmitter that Nera was wearing to the transmitters she found as part of her search. When she read the accompanying material, she understood why Annie was curious.

Nera should have shed the transmitter when she shed her skin. The kind of transmitter she wore was old and it predated a new design that
couldn’t
be shed at all. The new design was sleek and small, looking nothing like the older one. That, Jenn decided, would have been how Annie knew the moment she saw it that something was wrong.

The something wrong, or at least the something different, had to do with Nera. She didn’t shed her skin.

Very interesting
was Jenn’s conclusion. She only wished she knew what any of it meant. One thing she figured was that Annie Taylor wasn’t being entirely honest with her. If she’d found the black seal once on her own simply by following the seal spotters’ sightings, it stood to reason she could find her again. And
if
she was doing this finding at night so that no one could stop her, it didn’t look good.

• • •

JENN HAD A
lot on her mind when she was heading out to the bus at the end of the day. Because of this, she didn’t see Squat sitting on a planter near the line of double doors to the school. She walked right by him, clued in to his presence only when he grabbed her by the back of the neck.

She yelped and swung around, saying, “Hey! Get your filthy hands—” and stopping herself when she saw who it was. “The Squatman,” she said.

“I thought I was Studboy.”

“That’s only when you take off your clothes and display your manly pecs,” she told him. She enjoyed his blush. “Happening?” she asked, looking around to get a clue as to why he was there. “Waiting for that loser brother of yours?”

“Who else?” he said. “He’s late, like always.” He looked as if he wanted to say more. Jenn cast a look at her bus and waited for him to go on. He didn’t.

She said, “
Any
way,” and tilted her head in the direction of the bus. “Got to . . .” She began to head toward it. He followed her. She thought that was a little bit odd. She said to him, “Something going on, Studboy?”

He said, “That.”

“What?”

“The ‘Studboy’ thing.” When she stopped walking and looked at him with a frown, he said, “You never said. I know this is lame, but maybe . . . I figured you didn’t get it, so I asked. They checked and said no, you got it all right.”

She said, “Got what? Who checked what? Why? Uh . . . Squat, the hell’re you talking about?”

He shuffled his feet,
totally
out of character for him. He said, brushing his rusty hair off his face, “That flower.”

She stared. Flower? He wanted to talk about a
flower
? Then she remembered. He’d sent her a carnation, which she’d thrown at Fattie in the commons on Carnation Day. Damn, she’d never thanked him for it. It cost him a buck and he could way afford it, but still. . . .

She said, “Shoot. I forgot. Studboy, thanks. Very cool of you. Want some tongue?”

He looked straight at her. “Well . . . Yeah, I wouldn’t mind. What about you?”

His words caught Jenn completely off guard. When she was able to reply, she said the only thing she could, carrying on with the joke, “Can’t exactly take my clothes off here. It’d start a stampede of guys wanting my bod.” He said nothing in response to this, which prompted her to say, “Hey, you all right, Squat?”

He said, “Yeah. Sure. But . . . Did you like it?”

“What?”

“That I sent you . . . You know. Come on, Jenn, you know what I mean.”

“The flower? Oh hey, who wouldn’t like it? Flowers are cool. I never got one before.”

“I would’ve sent more but I didn’t want you to . . . you know . . . think I was, like, a stalker or something.”

She hooted at this. He looked offended. She said hastily, “I’d never think you were a stalker, Squat.”

“Good,” he said. “’Cause . . .” He looked around, possibly checking for eavesdroppers, but who the hell knew. “Well, I wouldn’t want to you think . . . I mean I just wanted you to know. . . .”

“Hey, we’ve been engaged since kindergarten, remember? You don’t need to remind me of anything,” she told him.

He smiled that sweet Squat smile of his, the nicest boy in the whole ninth grade. Jenn thought about what a
friend
he was. She wished she’d sent him a carnation, too. She was about to tell him this when the family Range Rover roared to a stop next to the sidewalk where they were standing. Its passenger window lowered and Dylan leaned over and bellowed out of the window.

“Will you
quit
hanging around that dyke? Man, there’s a name for idyats like you.”

Squat swung around, and Jenn saw his fist clench. She said, “Save it, Squat.”

“I’m gonna
make
him stop.”

“No need,” she said. “He doesn’t bother me.”

“He bothers
me
,” Squat said.