Christabel
“You are not bringing a book to a bonfire party at the beach,” Lucy said from the doorway to my room. She was wearing a long skirt with a tank top and a jean jacket decorated with a huge pink silk rose brooch.
“Nope,” I agreed. I was wearing my usual torn jeans and combat boots. “I’m bringing two.”
“How are you even going to read in the dark?”
I waggled my battery-operated booklight at her before dropping it into my favorite black knapsack. I’d written bits of poetry all over it in silver marker. “The only reason I’m even going is because you won’t stop bugging me about it.”
“Careful, all that enthusiasm will wear you out,” she said drily.
I slung my bag over my shoulder. “How did you convince your parents to let us out after dark?”
“Nicholas and his brothers will be there. And dozens of people from school. Plus, I told them you needed to get out and do something normal.”
I stared at her. “You blamed this on me?”
“Hell, yeah.” She shrugged unrepentantly. “Anyway, I’m right. And I promise, beach parties are way cooler than the lame field parties where drunk idiots grope each other.”
“You guys actually have field parties? Cars parked in a circle with their headlights on and everything? I thought those were only in the movies.” I really missed the city. We had normal parties in people’s living rooms.
“At the beach we have bonfires, and you can see all the stars, and the lake always looks like it’s full of glitter. You’ll love it.”
“It doesn’t sound entirely horrid,” I admitted.
Aunt Cass was in the front hall trying not to look worried. Her jeans were covered in mandala patches. “Be careful, girls.”
“Mom, it’s just a party,” Lucy said. But there was something in her tone. I suddenly felt as if I were missing out on the actual conversation.
Aunt Cass’s smile was forced. “I know.” She handed Lucy a batik bag. “I packed snacks for you. And water. You know how I feel about soda.”
I had to grin. She didn’t mention alcohol like normal mothers.
Lucy didn’t take the bag, though; she just narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “Do you swear there are no condoms in there?”
I coughed. “What?”
“Mom’s obsessed,” Lucy replied without looking at me. “You know, because I’m sixteen and a big old slut.”
“Lucky!” Aunt Cass exclaimed. “That’s not it at all and you know it.” She sighed, rummaged through the bag, and withdrew a handful of packets she stuffed into her back pocket. Then she handed the bag back. “Here.”
Lucy grumbled all the way to her car. There were fake flowers glued to the roof inside. It was like driving with a ragged garden as a hat. She turned the ignition and loud music thrummed around us. I checked my cell phone as we went down the driveway, even though I knew my mom wasn’t allowed to have outside contact for another month at least. She was allowed to write me letters, but I knew she wouldn’t. And the staff would’ve kept any of mine until she was out of lockdown or whatever they called it. It was weird not to have contact, not to check that she hadn’t passed out on her back or left a candle burning. Not to help her stumble to the bathroom. Not to hold her hair and pass her tissues when she fell into a weeping fit about what a bad mother she was.
I didn’t have anything to do but go to a party.
A Jeep pulled out of the woods behind us, headlights flashing. Lucy stuck her arm out of her window and waved.
“It’s Nicholas,” she explained loudly, over the music. She squinted into the rearview mirror. “And Quinn, I think. I can’t tell from here.” The car swerved toward the ditch. I grabbed the dashboard.
“Hey, pay attention!” I squeaked.
She yanked on the wheel. “Sorry.” She winced sheepishly. “The Drake boys can do that to a girl.” We drove past orchards, a scraggly looking vineyard, and lots of pumpkin patches. We went past the only street into town and took a dirt road instead, winding around a sleepy neighborhood toward the lake. We parked next to an ice-cream stand, closed up for the season. I saw the fires already burning on the beach and the glitter of the lake. We could have been stepping into a painting, or better yet one of those poems about fairy queens and mermaids. The smoke made the air feel dangerous, like a rusted sword that looks innocuous but could still cut right through your skin.
“ ‘I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me,’ ” I quoted T. S. Eliot under my breath.
“Told you,” Lucy said smugly, unperturbed. She was as used to me quoting poems as I was to her quoting old John Hughes movies. “Sometimes, my friend Patrick brings his drum.” She went around and popped open the trunk, pulling out a guitar case as the Jeep screeched to a halt beside us, kicking up dust and pebbles.
“I didn’t know you played,” I said.
“I had kind of a stressful summer,” she answered. “So Mom gave me her old guitar. She decided I needed a creative outlet. Didn’t she give you her ‘creativity heals’ speech?”
“Thank God, no. But she knows I write poems.”
“Don’t leave them out—she’ll put them on the fridge.”
“What am I, six years old?”
“She put one up a few months ago.”
I blinked. “What? How?”
“I think your mom sent it to her.”
“My mom sent her one of my poems?” I wasn’t sure what to think about that. My mom knew I still wrote?
Nicholas unfolded from the front seat, grinning. “No folk songs,” he teased Lucy, reaching out to carry the guitar for her. She elbowed him. He glanced at me. “Her mom keeps teaching her all these old hippie songs.”
“That’s all she knows. I’m in a whiskey beatnik mood anyway,” she informed him loftily.
“Is that even a type of music?” I asked.
“Sure, it’s when I make my voice all scratchy and interesting.”
“Actually, she’s pretty good,” Nicholas’s brother admitted. “For a brat.” I thought he was Connor at first; he had the same blue eyes, the same jaw. But his hair was longer and the smile was all wrong. It was way too charming, for one thing.
“Christabel, do you remember Quinn?” Lucy asked as we started to climb down to the beach. “He’s Connor’s twin. And he’ll flirt with anything with boobs, so be careful.”
“She’s just jealous because I don’t flirt with her.” Quinn’s smile was lazy. “She’s territorial when it comes to us Drake brothers.”
I remembered all too well. Even when she was little, Lucy used to kick anyone playing with us who even looked at them wrong. I could never figure that out. It wasn’t like they were defenseless. For one thing, they outnumbered everyone else. Plus, their mother was kind of scary.
Quinn deserted us when we reached the sand, heading straight for a girl with long blond hair. Nicholas put down the guitar and reached for Lucy’s hand instead. The first fire was way too crowded; people bumped elbows and spilled drinks on one another. Others danced to tinny music trying bravely to blare out of cracked speakers. The lights of Violet Hill hung like lanterns through the trees behind us, drifting up the mountain before they went out entirely. Several different kinds of smoke braided together and hung thickly in the air. I drifted over to a smaller fire and sat on a bench, the red paint peeling away in strips.
I barely had time to pull out my novel when someone sat next to me on the ground, kicking sand over my boots. “Does your T-shirt say ‘Heathcliff is a prat’?”
I started. Connor Drake was suddenly taking up most of the space, his long legs nearly in the flames, his body crowding mine. He had a habit of taking me by surprise. His hair fell into his eyes, which were blue, even in the wavering, uncertain light of the fire. His smile was crooked and slightly self-deprecating, so different from his brother’s. It was hard to believe they were twins. He just screamed “good guy.”
“Isn’t Heathcliff the one girls get all giggly over?” he continued while I just sat there and stared at him like an idiot. I wasn’t usually this moronic around guys. I hadn’t been like this last night when he’d scared the crap out of me. I’d been too busy trying to pretend my heart wasn’t trying to squeeze through my rib cage. Now I couldn’t stop trying to figure out what exact shade of blue his eyes were; not quite turquoise, as pale as a robin’s egg, but more like sapphires. Or cerulean? I had to stop myself from leaning forward to have a better look.
What the hell was wrong with me? I went for guys with tattoos and sneers.
“You’ve never read Wuthering Heights, have you?” I finally asked before the silence became this ridiculous thing that crushed us.
“No.” He leaned back against the bench, angled away from the crazy girl cataloging his eyeballs.
“Well, Heathcliff’s an ass. He’s not a romantic hero at all. I mean, he hangs a puppy off the back of a chair!” I sounded as if I knew Heathcliff personally, but I couldn’t help it. I took this stuff seriously. “Good book though,” I conceded. “And at least he doesn’t jump out of bushes and grab girls just for fun.”
Connor winced. “Oops. Sorry.”
A grin twitched at the corner of my mouth. He was kind of disarming, in a lean, intelligent way. You just knew he was a genius under all the casual slouching. He had that look: good heart, smart head. “It’s okay,” I said.
One of the girls from across the fire leaned forward. Her cleavage threatened us from all the way over there. Even her lip gloss was vaguely aggressive. “Are you one of the Drake brothers?” she asked breathlessly. I nearly asked her if she had asthma and needed an inhaler.
Connor nodded.
“Is it true that Lucy’s dating your brother Nicholas?” she pressed, sounding doubtful. I narrowed my eyes. If she was about to insult Lucy, she’d get more than she bargained for. I wasn’t nice like country folk. I once made a guy cry on the subway.
“Yeah,” Connor confirmed, not looking particularly interested. If the girl leaned over any farther, she’d fall right into the coals. I wondered briefly if he realized she was flirting with him. “He’s definitely into her. We all are,” he added pointedly.
The girl and her friends giggled. Connor glanced at me and leaned slightly toward my knee. He seemed disinclined to make them giggle further. He looked like he actually wanted to talk to me instead.
“You know those girls are flirting with you, right?” I whispered.
He blinked. And then he squirmed. “They are not.”
I laughed. “Are so.”
He looked utterly flummoxed. It was adorable.
“Save me,” he hissed.
Even more adorable.
“I’m serious,” he added.
“So what are you doing here, then?” I asked, still laughing. Even the guy hanging out by the water’s edge looked briefly interested in Connor. He might not be my type, but I wasn’t blind. I could see the appeal. “You don’t go to school in town, right?”
Connor shook his head. “I was homeschooled. I took my equivalency test when I was sixteen.”
Knew it. He was one of the smart ones. Suddenly he was even cuter, even if he hadn’t read Wuthering Heights.
“Do you like Violet Hill?” Connor asked as we watched a girl twirl devil sticks over her head. She could have traveled with a circus with her multicolored dreads and all the silver studs in her face. She was cute, as if she belonged in Alice in Wonderland. She was the part of Violet Hill I actually liked, and I told Connor that. “And I like all the art and the photocopied zines in the cafes,” I admitted. “But you don’t have enough bookstores. And your library is tiny.”
“You say that like we sacrifice babies.” He laughed. “And there are at least four bookstores in town.”
“Yeah, but they’re mostly full of vegetarian cookbooks and crystals. Which is fine, but I have Aunt Cass for that kind of thing.”
“I know how you feel. Getting decent comics or computer parts is always a challenge.”
I groaned. “Don’t remind me. My laptop has PMS.”
He chuckled. “I can take a look at it, if you want. And Guilty Pleasures in town has a second floor full of novels,” he added. “The first floor’s all chocolate and Johnny Depp memorabilia. There’s also a poetry stall in the farmer’s market on Saturdays.”
“Okay, that’s cool.” I felt a small seedling of hope that I’d survive the year.
“I can take you,” he said, somewhat shyly. “If you want.”
“Okay. Sure.” The seedling turned into a rosebud. It would be nice to have a friend here, even if he didn’t go to our school.
The wind shifted slightly, fanning the fire and shooting delicate sparks. I couldn’t smell the lake anymore, or the smoke, just Connor. It was something spicy and sweet, like black licorice. I wouldn’t have thought he wore cologne. And usually I hated cologne. But this one was different. I inhaled surreptitiously. There was something else, like sugar melting or a bakery first thing in the morning. And cinnamon? No, not cinnamon. Something else.
Now I was sniffing him?
Clearly having all this free time to sit around at parties wasn’t good for me.
He sat up suddenly, rising into a crouch. Something about the way he moved made my heart race. I couldn’t help but think about wolves and tigers and animals with a lot of teeth. Adrenaline and something that made me feel like blushing warred inside my body, confusing me. This was poetry, this push and pull, this mysterious need.
Clearly there was another side to Connor.
He stood up, oblivious to the fact that I was apparently losing my mind.
He tilted his head as if he were listening to something I couldn’t hear, something beyond the chatter of voices, the crackle of the fire, and Lucy’s friend playing his drum.
“I have to go,” he said quietly and maybe just a little regretfully. “Stay by the fire.” He’d leaped over the bench and was prowling through the crowd before I could say anything.
“ ‘We have lingered in the chambers of the sea, By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown, Till human voices wake us, and we drown.’ ” I quoted T. S. Eliot again, feeling bewildered.