Saratoga Woods 02 The Edge of the Water (25 page)

She looked over at Becca who was, at that instant, turning toward her. Their gazes met and Becca nodded. She’d seen something too.

Ivar was saying, “You’re telling us it’s not dangerous, Miss Taylor, but Becca here was in the water with Nera, and so was Jenn over there. So maybe we should hear from them before we make any decisions about anything.”

“What we should be deciding—what
you
should be deciding—is just to leave her alone,” Annie said. “You wouldn’t be deciding something about an orca, would you? Why’re you deciding something about her?”

“If we’re deciding anything,” Eddie Beddoe declared, “then we should decide to shoot the damn animal like she should’ve been shot years ago when she started hanging around.”

“Would that be when she sank your boat, Eddie?” someone called out.

General laughter ensued. Eddie turned crimson. He hiked up his jeans. It was a movement that prefaced his attack on someone, and Ivar Thorndyke interrupted him.

He said, “Let’s hear from Becca and Jenn. They’re the ones who tangled most with the seal. Jenn? Come on up here. Tell us what happened.”

Jenn was reluctant, but she moved to the front of the room. Becca, she saw, had that earphone of hers plugged into her ear. Whatever music she was listening to, Jenn thought, she wouldn’t have minded hearing it herself just now.

Becca rose when Jenn joined her. She murmured, “Same story, right?” and Jenn murmured back, “Sounds good to me.” Since Chad and Annie were there, they could hardly tell another tale. She let Becca explain that they’d merely been spooked.

Becca said, “We didn’t see her at first. She was down at the boat with Annie and—”

“That boat is mine!” Eddie Beddoe’s words came out like a screech. “Everything
on
that boat is mine!”

“What d’you got down there?” an old fisherman called out. “Pirate’s treasure?”

“Old booze, more like it,” someone replied.

At this, Eddie Beddoe stormed for the exit. At the door he paused for a final swipe at the crowd. “You don’t want to do something about that animal? Okay. Not a problem. Because I’m telling you, someone will.”

E
verything having to do with Eddie Beddoe felt wrong to Becca. First, you didn’t tell people a seal sank your boat because seals
didn’t
sink boats when boats were under power. How the heck could they? Second, you didn’t ask someone to find your boat and then threaten them when they actually found it. Third, you didn’t fixate on eliminating a seal that wasn’t doing you any harm unless, of course, you thought it
could
do you harm. And fourth, if you did any of those things, you had a good reason for doing them. In this case, a reason seemed to equate to a secret, and a secret seemed to equate to that sunken boat. When she and Jenn had been on their check-out dive, Nera had been at that boat, she’d been above that boat, she’d been swimming around that boat. So . . . how outrageous was it, then, to conclude that Nera and the boat had something important to do with each other? And if Nera and the boat had something to do with each other, and if Nera was hanging around that boat, and if Nera returned to Langley year after year because of that boat, didn’t it also stand to reason that she wasn’t just making some strange pilgrimage to it? Something had to have been on that boat when it sank in Saratoga Passage. That seemed to Becca the only reasonable conclusion to reach when the facts were laid out.

Of course, she’d reached completely rotten conclusions in the past, so she needed to be careful with where her thoughts were taking her. But this time, at least, her thoughts
seemed
to have followed a logical progression. And this time, she decided, she would allow someone else
into
those thoughts to make sure she wasn’t heading off in another wrong—and a disastrous—direction.

She couldn’t talk things out with Ivar. One mention of the seal in connection with Eddie Beddoe and more trouble would ensue. Sharla, she thought, had way too many secrets to guard, starting with those little OshKosh overalls, and Annie Taylor was way too focused on getting to Nera’s DNA to be at all helpful in any other matter. Seth thought the entire subject was nuts. Chad Pederson was too caught up with thinking about Annie Taylor. Diana Kinsale would probably advise her maddeningly to wait for more to be revealed. And so, much as Becca absolutely hated the whole idea, that seemed to bring her to Jenn.

She wanted a private conversation with the other girl, but that couldn’t happen at school. So she followed her onto the bus the next afternoon, and when Jenn flopped onto a seat near the back, Becca removed the AUD box earphone from her ear and flopped down next to her, saying, “Hey.”

What the . . .
began Jenn’s whisper. Becca was encouraged when the following part of the whisper was less obscene than usual and didn’t have anything to do with her weight. She interrupted the flow of Jenn’s swear words, since most of them seemed triggered by her surprise. She said, “I need to talk to you.”

Jenn gave her a look.
God is she queer or something
came out so clearly that Becca nearly said, “No, I’m
not
, as if it’s any of your freaking business.” But instead she said, “Just listen, okay? Five minutes and I’ll get off at the next stop that comes up.”

Jenn rolled her eyes in a classic Jenn way. “Whatever,” she said.

“Will you listen?”

“Do I have a choice? You’re practically sitting on my earlobe. C’n you at least move over an inch?”

Becca had to smile. “Okay. Sorry.” She gave Jenn more space, heard her whisper of
Kissing . . . cute enough . . . whoa . . .
and looked at her, confused. Jenn’s face, however, was a blank.

“
What?
” she said. “What, what, what?”

Becca said, “Nothing. You seemed like . . . Never mind. Here’s the deal.”

“Thank God. You’re going to have a long hike back to town if you don’t get to the point.”

“Right. Got it. I think something’s on the boat.”

“What boat?”

“Jenn . . . There’s only one boat. You know what boat.”

“Oh crap.
That
boat.”

“Yeah, that boat. I think there’s something down there with that boat. It’s the only answer to what’s going on. Obviously, Eddie Beddoe’s flipped out about someone finding whatever’s there. But Nera knows what it is, and she probably knew it was there the night that boat sank.”

Jenn blinked. “D’you know how totally flipped out you sound? Next you’ll be telling me she sank that boat just like Eddie Beddoe’s been saying. She sank it to get what she wanted off it.”

“I know it sounds completely bizarre, but listen for a second. There was something about the way stuff happened during the dive. First, she was hanging around Annie and Annie was taking her picture along with the boat’s picture, right?”

“Guess so.”

“And she was all . . . cooperating with Annie. But when she came toward us, it was like she was tired of
trying
with Annie. It was like she’d been trying to tell her something, to say something to her only she couldn’t ’cause, of course, she’s a seal. But she needed something. She wanted something.”

“Off the boat,” Jenn said. “That’s what you’re saying?”

“It’s crazy. I know. But you know how Annie has that one picture of Nera, the one where she’s looking right at the camera? The one where there’s something in her eyes? Well what I think is that she was trying to tell Annie about the boat, but all Annie wanted was her picture. So she came to us, to you, really.”

“Oh great. And what am I, the Seal Whisperer? And d’you know how stupid this is? There can’t be anything on the boat because there is no boat. It was just the hull and part of the bridge and hardly anything else.”

“So it’s in the sand or the mud or whatever the bottom of the passage is made of. But it’s there.”

“Okay, why doesn’t she get it? Why’s she
never
gotten it? The boat’s just sitting there, a wreck on the bottom. She’s swimming around it. Why doesn’t she—”

Becca waggled her fingers in front of Jenn’s face. “Because she doesn’t have these? Because she’s a seal? How’s she supposed to pick something up?”

“With her mouth. I don’t know. With her flippers. Whatever. How about with her nose? Who
cares
?”

“Eddie Beddoe does. He cares enough to try to shoot her. Jenn, what if the reason she comes back to Langley every single year has to do with that boat?”

“Then considering that Langley’s built an entire festival around her, we’d better make sure that
whatever
it is, it stays there.”

“But she’s desperate,” Becca said. “You felt that from her and you saw it in her and so did I. Don’t pretend that you didn’t. No one’s gotten as close to that seal as you and I have, and we
both
know how it feels to be desperate.”

“Oh we do, do we?” Jenn asked tartly. “What d’
you
have to be so desperate about? What do
I
have since you know so much?”
Off this island . . . scholarship is the only way . . . God God God I have to get back to soccer or I’m . . . loser for good and that can’t . . . s
aid it all, Jenn’s whispers becoming clearer and clearer.

“What I mean is,” Becca said, seeing how close she’d come to the core of Jenn McDaniels, “we both know how it feels when you want something bad. Everyone knows how that feels, don’t you think?”

Jenn shrugged. “Guess so.”

“So why don’t we help her? Because
if
we do, maybe Eddie Beddoe will leave her alone. Maybe Annie Taylor will, too. ’Cause between you and me . . . I don’t think Annie’s intentions toward her are all that noble.”

Jenn considered this.
All those pictures and she didn’t even notice
 . . .
Someone taking bait from the pools and if she did that to my dad
 . . .
But she says it’s okay and for science and it can make her name
 . . .

So clear, Becca thought. Why were this one girl’s whispers becoming so clear? She said to Jenn, “Eddie Beddoe’s trying to keep her from what’s on that boat. I think we need to get it for her.”

“That frigging boat.” Jenn looked out the window. “That boat started everything. I don’t even know how he bought it.”

“What d’you mean?”

“You need to see where he lives. Or where he used to live. It’s a dump. Boats cost big money. I sure as hell don’t know where he came up with the bucks to buy it.”

“Was it insured when it went down?”

“Probably not. He’s one dumb bunny, that’s for sure.”

“D’you know exactly when it happened?”

“The boat? When it sank?” She shook her head. “Before I was born. I could try to find out from my dad. But why? Is that important or something?”

“Might be. So. Are you in?”

“For what?”

“For finding out what’s on that boat, or near that boat, or wherever it is.”

“I guess. But he’s not going to tell us.”

“I got that,” Becca told her. “We’re certified now. We’re going to dive.”

Jenn said immediately, “No way. It’s not for me, Becca. I—” She stopped.
Becca . . . did I just call the FatBroad Becca?

Becca smiled inwardly. She thought about saying, Yeah, you did. Very first time. What d’you think that means? But instead she ignored the use of her name and said, “I need a dive buddy, Jenn, and you’re my dive buddy. I can’t go down there alone. It won’t take long. But we’ve got to do it and we’ve got to do it before Eddie Beddoe gets to her. Or anyone else, for that matter.”

“You mean Annie.”

“Well . . . yeah, Annie.”

Jenn rubbed her forehead. She looked out the window at the forest they were entering. She finally said, “All right, all right.”

When Becca threw her arms around her, she didn’t pull away.

W
hen Becca waved to her from the side of the road as the bus pulled off, Jenn automatically waved back. Then she knocked herself upside of her head. She said, “What the
hell
?” and wondered when things had shifted. She didn’t even
like
Becca King. What the heck was she doing waving bye-byes at her?

As far as Jenn was concerned, Becca was turning out to be like everyone else when it came to that stupid black seal. It was as if the seal put a spell on people the moment they saw her, and Jenn absolutely could not work out why. She got the whole Nera Festival thing. Nera’s miraculous yearly appearance in the waters around Langley meant money to everyone. She understood that. What she didn’t understand was the degree of passion inside everyone
else
besides merchants and B&B owners when it came to the seal.

Even Squat, who was the very personification of reason, was starting to get behind the Nera equation. He’d said to her this very morning before Western Civ, “We
need
those numbers on that transmitter, Jenn. We get them, we get information. Didn’t you tell me Annie Taylor was taking pictures of her? Well, you got to put your hands on those pictures. ’Cause if there’s a close-up, we might be able to get the numbers from it.”

Argh, she thought.
More
on that damn seal. And how was she supposed to put her hands on those pictures? Accessing what Annie had on her laptop was the only way, but Jenn didn’t see how she could do that without Annie knowing what she was up to. She’d have to try for it when Annie wasn’t there, but when she wasn’t there, the trailer was locked. Course, she could break the lock or shove in the door because the thing was so rusty and flimsy it barely held anyway. But that would be something of a giveaway . . . unless she could sneak in when Annie was on the property: down at the beach, talking to her dad, doing
something
that took her outside. An emergency would be nice. Four flat tires on her car? A broken windshield? A fire near the trailer? A boat in trouble out in Possession Sound? What else was there? Someone conveniently thrashing around in the water would be nice, but considering its temperature, they’d probably be dead before Annie Taylor got to them. Jenn couldn’t think of anything else that might work. It would, she decided, be way convenient if there was simply an extra key.

Her dad might actually have one, Jenn realized, since Eddie Beddoe had put him in charge of the wreck of a trailer in the first place. So when she finally reached home after the hike down Possession Point Road from where the school bus had dropped her, she went in search of him.

Bruce was in his brew shed, checking on six huge glass jugs of newly made beer. He was taking down information from a gizmo at the top of each of the enormous containers, and he was murmuring to himself. “Papa’s best yet” he was telling one jug. “And you, fair friend, are a gold medal winner,” he said to another.

When Jenn first spoke, he didn’t hear her. She had to say, “Dad?
Dad!
” to draw his attention away from the row of his “little beauties,” as he called them. He roused, turned, and gave her a lopsided salute. She sighed and figured he’d been doing some serious sampling of beers that were further along in their brewing cycle. Her mom wouldn’t be pleased to discover this when she got home. Jenn knew she had to be quick, then, for her mom usually showed up in the island taxi just before dinnertime.

She said to him, “I got to leave Annie a note, Dad. Is there an extra key to the trailer?”

“She i’n’t home?” Bruce McDaniels said and without waiting for an answer, went on with, “Whyn’t you leave a note on the door? She’s got a cell, doesn’t she? How ’bout you call her?”

“How ’bout you tell me if there’s a key?” Jenn said.

“Mouth,” he told her.

“Sorry,” she said. “It’s just sort of important. It’s about the seal.”

Bruce raised his eyes heavenward. “Someone needs to curse the day that animal first showed up. I’m not a cursing man, however, ’cause you know how your mom feels about cursing, so it i’n’t going to be me.” He shook his head and added, “First the oil spill, then the seal, then everything went straight to hell and it’s stayed that way.”

“You mean like Eddie losing his boat?”

“Oh yeah. And Sharla wandering up and down the beach day and night like a widow woman waiting for her man to return from the sea.”

“When’d that happen?”

“After the damn oil.
Everything
happened after the oil. Pollution on the beach, people walking around in hazmat suits, fishermen going elsewhere for bait, and who c’n blame ’em, the seal showing up like a yearly curse, and everything falling apart around here.”

“Eddie’s boat, too?”

“What say?”

“Did he lose his boat because of the oil spill, too?”

“He
bought
the damn thing after the oil spill and God knows how ’less someone was paying him a fortune ’cause of polluting our beach. Doubt that ’cause I sure as hell didn’t see a dime.”

Interesting, Jenn thought. What the hell it all meant was a mystery to her. It also wasn’t getting her any closer to the key to the trailer, if there was one. She said, “So. . . .the key, Dad? Is there one? So I could leave her a note?”

He said, “Nope. Not s’ far as I know. But that’s her car, i’n’t it? Doesn’t sound like your mom’s.”

Jenn listened and heard the car. She popped her head outside the brew shed and saw that her dad was right. Annie Taylor was just arriving home in the late afternoon light. She had her camera in one hand, and her laptop tucked beneath her arm. She entered the trailer without noticing Jenn. Just like yesterday in the water, Jenn thought. There was only one thing on Annie’s mind.

• • •

JENN KNOCKED ON
the trailer’s door about ten minutes after Annie’s arrival. There was no answer. Jenn tried the door and found it unlocked. She opened it and went inside.

Oddly enough, considering the time of day, Annie was taking a shower. Jenn heard the water running from the bathroom and somewhere in the back of the trailer, music was playing. Jenn thought about calling out a hello, but then she realized this was her opportunity. She slinked over to where Annie had left her laptop on the table. She sat on the banquette. Luck was with her. Annie had logged on.

Jenn stared at the screen. The laptop’s screen saver was a picture of Nera, in keeping with Annie’s one-track mind. Life would have been perfect if the picture was a close-up of the transmitter Nera wore, but that wasn’t the case. It was the seal head-on, face-to-face with Annie, the same picture Annie had showed at the meeting. There was that look in Nera’s eyes, the chill-giving look. Perhaps, Jenn reasoned, Becca was right after all.

The shower switched off. Annie
would
be someone who conserved water, Jenn thought. She gazed at the screen and read its files.
Pictures
indicated where she ought to look. She clicked on this. There were dozens of folders, dates beneath them. She began to scroll down.

Annie began humming. A drawer slid open. A hairdryer went on.

Jenn got to the last file and clicked on it. It would be the most recent. If there was a picture of Nera’s transmitter, it would be here.

But it wasn’t Nera. It was, instead, Chad. He was completely naked, completely aroused, and completely grinning at the camera. The berth inside his boat was in the background, its covers tousled, its pillows out of place. On the floor around him was a pile of clothes. Jenn recognized Annie’s olive turtleneck among them.

She stared. She felt sick. There were other pictures. She couldn’t stop herself. She began to click through them. Chad and Annie. Annie and Chad. Chad alone. Annie alone. Posing and laughing, half clothed and naked.
I have a partner, her name is Beth.

What else had Annie lied about? What else
did
she lie about? And why the heck was it so important?

“Jenn?”

Jenn jumped. She hadn’t heard a sound. She hadn’t noticed when the hairdryer was shut off. Naked Annie from the pictures was naked Annie standing in the short hallway that led to the bedroom.

“What are you looking at?” She moved toward her.

Jenn was frozen. She couldn’t even remember how to get herself out of the file she was in. Annie stood next to her and looked down.

“Oh,” Annie said. “Whoops. I see you found out. Is that what you were looking for? You could’ve just asked me. I would’ve told you the truth.”

The only words that Jenn could come up with were, “What about Beth?”

Annie observed her, not making a move to cover herself up. “What about her?”

“You
said
you had a partner. You said she was Beth. You made me think—”

“I
do
have a partner. Her name is Beth.”

“You’re cheating on her.”

“I guess it looks that way, huh?”

Annie finally left her side and went to her bedroom at the trailer’s far end. She returned in a sweatshirt and sweatpants, a pair of socks on her feet. For once, Jenn thought, she didn’t look stylish. But she also didn’t look the least ashamed or even embarrassed. And she should be
something
, shouldn’t she? Ashamed, embarrassed, regretful, sheepish. What she
shouldn’t
be was casual, comfortable, and completely easy. And yet she was.

“Beth and I aren’t celibate when we’re away from each other,” Annie said. “We don’t have rules. If I know Beth—and I do know Beth—she’s probably doing it right now with some baby-faced intern at the hospital where she’s got privileges. It doesn’t
mean
anything, you know. It’s just . . . well, it’s just sex.”

Unaccountably, Jenn felt tears come to her eyes. She didn’t understand in the least why she was on the verge of crying, and this infuriated her.

Annie said, “You’re upset. I’m sorry. But you shouldn’t have looked at my personal pictures.”

“Why’d you take them?” Jenn demanded. “Everything they show and . . . it’s
disgusting
.”

Annie smiled. “Well it isn’t, really, but I wouldn’t expect you to understand that yet. Unless you’ve had sex yourself. With someone who knows what he—or she—is doing.”

“I’m not a lesbo!”

“I didn’t say you were. But I’ve seen how you look at me and, let’s face it, at my age my gaydar is pretty good.”

“Stop it! I told you to stop it, didn’t I?”

“There’s a way to find out,” Annie told her. “If you’re interested. Are you?” Annie touched her hair.

It was like a shock to her system. Jenn surged from the banquette. She shouted, “You stay
away
from me, you freak!”

She shoved her way past the marine biologist and stormed out of the trailer.

The rain had started to fall.

• • •

OUTSIDE, SHE TRIED
to catch her breath. She tried to stop herself from crying. She tried to make her brain capable of coming up with some kind of plan.

The rain fell on her face and her hair and down her back, and she barely felt it. She knew she needed to get out of it, but she couldn’t bear the thought of walking into her parents’ house. The island taxi was parked to one side of it, which meant her mom was home. If Jenn walked over there and went in the door, one look at her face, and her mom would know something big had happened. And she’d want to know what.

No way did Jenn want to talk about any of it. Not about Annie. Not about Chad. Not about the pictures she shouldn’t have seen. Not about the offer that Annie had made.
That
made her sick, that offer of Annie’s.
She
didn’t know Jenn. No one did.

Jenn realized that she’d blown things in every possible way with her little sojourn in Annie’s trailer. She’d failed even to
find
the pictures of Nera, let alone to scroll through them. So she was not an inch closer to seeing if there was a picture of that transmitter clear enough to read the numbers upon it. In that, she’d let Squat down.

She’d also failed to make any mention of using Annie’s scuba equipment, and she’d needed to do that because of Becca and Becca’s plan of getting down to that stupid boat without anyone being the wiser of what they were up to. So she’d let Becca down as well.

The only way to feel worse at that point was to consider soccer, the upcoming tryouts for the All Island team, and all the ways in which she had failed herself by not preparing for those tryouts daily. Even now, even here in the rain, she should have been practicing. But she wasn’t doing that, she wasn’t doing anything. She was the ultimate loser and in a few short weeks when she didn’t make the team because she hadn’t practiced enough, everyone was going to know that about her.

Who cared? Jenn thought. Who cared, who cared, who cared about anything? She’d never get off this stupid island and she was an idiot to think she ever would. She wasn’t going to get a scholarship—athletic or otherwise—and even if she managed to get one, it would be to the worst college in the country in the worst possible location and when she was finished with whatever degree she decided to go for, she wouldn’t be able to find a job and she’d end up back on the island anyway. She was trapped like a rat on a sinking ship, and the only thing that made
anything
better was—