Abandon (20 page)

I just stared at her. This was such a joke. None of these people even knew what they were talking about. Safe? I was the least safe person in the world.

Especially right now, with my necklace gone.

Oh, yeah. And the guy who’d given it to me, whom I’d met while I was dead, didn’t like me anymore because we were having a huge fight. Or something. Which was fine, because I was making a new start. New Pathways. I needed another soda.

“It’s just until we get it painted anyway,” Seth added hastily.

“Then we’ll move it somewhere else. We can’t keep it too long in any one place, in order to avoid detection. After your house, we’ll probably move it to an airplane hangar over at the Isla Huesos airport — my dad’s got a plane, and those wipes will never make it past FAA security — and then maybe over to the Navy base —”

“My dad’s a colonel,” Nicole said, batting her eyelashes at me.

“— then maybe up island for a bit,” Seth said.

I could see them going on like this all night.

“What happens if they don’t find it?” I interrupted. “The juniors, I mean.”

“If they don’t find it,” Serena said, looking at me as if I had
asked something extremely stupid, “we bring out the coffin as part of the halftime show during the game and parade it around in front of everyone, while the band and dance team, of which I am captain, perform MC Hammer’s 1990 signature hit song, ‘U Can’t Touch This.’ ”

“Which you can’t. Because the Wreckers rule!” Bryce and Cody did another chest bump.

I stared at them, unable to believe my mom had looked back on Coffin Night with so much sentimentality.

But I tried not to let my true feelings show. I still needed to find out why Alex hated Seth so much. Besides the fact that they all considered everyone in D-Wing such freaks.

Although the term
freak
was subjective. Kind of like
normal
and
crazy.
I, for instance, might consider a freak someone who ran around an island trying to hide a homemade coffin, then paraded it around to a twenty-year-old MC Hammer song during halftime at a sports event.

But that was just me. And it was well known that I was crazy.

And I suspected that when Alex found out Seth Rector wanted to keep the senior class coffin at my house — and he was bound to if I agreed to do it and he noticed so many A-Wingers hanging around my garage — he was probably going to tell me the reason pretty fast.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’d have to ask my mom first. You know how it is.…”

“Of course,” Seth said, his blue-eyed gaze steady. “Totally. We wouldn’t want to do anything to upset your mom.”

“I’m sure she’ll say it’s okay,” Farah said. “Didn’t your mom go to IHHS? I thought I saw her name in the trophy —”

“I have another question,” I interrupted. “Why a coffin?”

Farah and Nicole looked at me as if I’d just asked why the sky is blue. “What?”

“Why a coffin?” I asked. “Why build and hide a coffin?”

Now
everyone
was staring. But I didn’t see what was so odd about the question.

“Why not a boat?” I persisted. “Aren’t we the Isla Huesos High School
Wreckers?
Wreckers are people who used to pillage ships that sank offshore between here and the reef, right? And then they resold whatever they managed to plunder back to the ship’s owners, for a profit? So wouldn’t it make more sense for us to build and hide a
boat?
Since the school mascot is a pirate-looking guy, not a skeleton?”

In the silence that followed, I could hear the waves as they lapped at the beach behind us. Isla Huesos didn’t usually get the kind of big, rolling waves you would typically expect in Florida because the island sat inside a coral reef — the third largest in the world.

But for some reason, I noticed that today, the waves were larger than usual. Maybe they, like me, sensed the unease in the air.

“Hey,” Bryce said, raising his eyebrows. “She’s right. It
would
make more sense if it was a boat. Why
is
it a coffin?”

“You know what?” Seth lifted his backpack. “I don’t know. And I don’t care. All I know is that it’s always
been
a coffin.”

“It’s probably for the best,” Bryce said thoughtfully. “Because
Boat Night doesn’t have the same ring to it as Coffin Night, you know?”

They all laughed.

I didn’t know then that I was about to find out why it was a coffin. And if any of them had known what Coffin Night was really about, they definitely wouldn’t have been laughing.

A
s I lowered
myself out of Seth’s black F-150 — a birthday gift from his father, he’d explained casually as he drove me home — I spied Uncle Chris in the driveway, one of our wooden lawn chairs in his arms.

“Who’s that?” Farah asked curiously, as she crawled into the front seat I’d just vacated.

“My mom’s brother,” I said.

Uncle Chris had stopped what he was doing and was just standing there staring at us, his mouth slightly ajar, the big wooden chair in his arms, bright blue and green striped cushions and all.

It’s true Seth’s truck was quite a sight. No one in my neighborhood back in Connecticut — let alone the Westport Academy for Girls — had driven one quite like it. Seth had jacked up the body
so it sat a solid foot or so from the wheels, the rims of which gleamed bright silver. The windows had all been tinted the same color black as the paint job, so you couldn’t see who was sitting inside unless the doors were open. Seth had music on — a band that sounded mostly like yelling to me — and the volume was turned up so high, the whole truck seemed to be pulsating.

But I didn’t get the feeling that’s why Uncle Chris was staring.

“Is that Alex’s dad?” Farah asked.

“Yes,” I said. Of course she was curious. Who wouldn’t be curious about a guy who’d been in jail for nearly the same amount of time she’d been alive? “Thanks for the ride.”

“So you have my number,” Seth said. “Call me after you find out what your mom says.” I guess I must have looked at him a little blankly, since he added, “You know. About the
thing
,” throwing me a meaningful look.

“Oh, right,” I said, shaking myself. “The
thing.
Sure.”

I slammed the door. Intellectually, I knew they’d still be able to see me through the tinted windows.

But psychologically, since I couldn’t see them anymore, I felt like they couldn’t see me.

And somehow, that felt good.

“Hi, Uncle Chris,” I said, walking towards him with my heavy book bag. Behind me, I heard the truck’s enormous wheels crunching on some loose bits of gravel in the driveway. The pulse of the music was already getting softer. “What are you doing?”

Alex’s dad hadn’t moved. He was still watching the truck. “Who was that?” he asked.

“Just some people from school,” I said. “They gave me a ride home.”

“I thought Alex was going to drive you to and from school,” he said.

“Oh, he had some other things to do after school today,” I said. It wasn’t necessarily a lie. “So I got a ride with some other people. What are you doing with that chair?”

“Moving it into the garage,” he said. “They just announced on the Weather Channel that there’s a hurricane watch. We’re in the cone.”

“The what?” I hadn’t heard anything about a hurricane. Well, I guess I had, but I hadn’t paid any attention because they hadn’t said it was coming our way. The sun was going down, but there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

“The cone is what they call the
possible
track of the hurricane, since storms can be very unpredictable,” Uncle Chris said. The weather was the interest with which Uncle Chris had chosen to become engaged upon his release from prison. “We’ll probably get hit with nothing but feeder bands — those are the thunderstorms that surround the outer eye of a storm. But they really don’t know yet with this one. We’re in the three-day cone of uncertainty.”

I stared at him, shocked that I’d been so wrapped up in my own concerns, I hadn’t figured this out for myself, especially considering the waves I’d just seen on the beach, not to mention the violence of last night’s storm. Hurricane season lasted from July until November, and it was only September. We were smack in the middle of it.

But in my case, storm season didn’t appear to be just literally but figuratively here, too, as I’d realized when I was following Farah and Seth to his truck after we’d finished at Island Queen, and my cell phone had begun to chirp. The number Richard Smith had scrawled on the flyers he’d given me showed up on my screen.

“Hello?” I’d said, answering it with a thumping heart.

“Miss Oliviera?” The gravelly voice sounded familiar.

“Oh, Mr. Smith,” I’d said. “Thank you so much for returning my call.”

No response.

“Um…” Seth and Farah, before climbing into Seth’s truck, had decided to have a private moment. Only it wasn’t so private, really, since everyone at the Island Queen could see them. They were completely making out against the truck. If this was what I was going to have to look forward to for the next week or so if these people were at my house constantly, building a coffin in my garage, I wasn’t sure it was going to be worth it, even for Alex. I, like Uncle Chris, should have chosen the weather as my hobby.

“So, would now be a good time to schedule that appointment you mentioned in your note?” I’d asked.

“Now would be an excellent time,” the cemetery sexton had said. “When would you be available, Miss Oliviera?”

“Um,” I’d said. I’d glanced back at Seth and Farah. Still kissing. I looked away again. “Now. Now would be very good for me. Would now be convenient for you?”

“Now would
not
be convenient for me,” he’d said in his grumpy voice. “But at six o’clock, when my office closes, I should be available. I trust you know where my office is.”

“I do,” I’d said, ignoring what was obviously a dig at me, since he knew how much time I spent at the cemetery. “I’ll be there at six.”

“Don’t be tardy,” he said. “I will leave at six o’clock if you aren’t there.”

Then he’d hung up on me.

I’d stared down at my phone, my eyes narrowed. I might look like a honey-eyed schoolgirl on the outside, in my skirt with its regulation four-inch-above-the-knee hem.

But I’ll rip those tassels off your shoes, old man. Just try Googling me.

Okay, well, in my fantasies, that could happen.

“Can’t be too careful with these storms,” Uncle Chris was going on in my driveway. “Depending on what track they take, they can skirt us or hit us dead-on. Usually nothing to worry about, but we wouldn’t want this nice patio furniture to end up in your pool, as much money as your mom spent on it. Seth One.”

“Excuse me?” I needed to hustle if I was going to make it to my appointment with Mr. Smith on time. After Island Queen, Seth and Farah had taken me out to Reef Key to give me a tour of their fathers’ spec development. I’d had to pretend to find it thrilling, shaking both Mr. Rector’s and Mr. Endicott’s hands and acting like I cared about the extremely dull things they were saying, which just sounded to me like
blah, blah, blah,
luxury resort atmosphere!
Blah, blah, blah.
Freedom of a private island.
Blah, blah, blah.
Tennis courts!
Blah, blah, blah.
Private seawater swimming lagoons. Along with the eight little words I’ve gotten
used to hearing wherever I go:
Maybe your father would be interested in investing.

I’d been relieved to escape with my usual “Sure, why don’t you give him a call? Here’s his card.” I always keep one handy now for emergencies. I think Dad likes getting calls from people I give his cards to. He enjoys yelling on the phone as much as he does on TV.

Now Uncle Chris had begun moving towards the open garage door. “Seth One. That’s what it said on your friend’s license plate.”

“Oh,” I said. “Yes. His name is Seth. You know, you don’t have to do this, Uncle Chris. I think Mom pays for a service to come around and board up whenever there’s supposed to be a hurricane —”

“Too early to board up yet. But if you’re not using the furniture, it never hurts to move it inside. You probably want a truck like that,” Uncle Chris said. He stacked the chair on top of several others he’d already placed inside the garage. He didn’t appear to be listening to me. “Like Seth One. Don’t you?”

“Uh,” I said. “No, not really. For one thing, I can’t drive. And for another, that kind of thing isn’t really my style.” That was putting it mildly.

Uncle Chris seemed to look at me — really look at me — for the first time.

“You can’t drive?” His expression was perplexed. “Why can’t you drive?”

“Well,” I said, walking into the garage and setting my book bag down. Why had Alex’s dad chosen now, of all times, to
suddenly get talkative? “Because I don’t really do well on tests, remember?”

I saw his face fill with something I’d never seen in it before: emotion.

“I’ll help you pass the test, Piercey,” he said.

“Oh,” I said, with a laugh. “That’s okay, Uncle Chris.” He followed as I went back around to the front of the house to unchain my bike. “I’m fine. See? I’ve got a ride.”

“I’ll quiz you,” he said. “How does that sound? You come over to Grandma’s — or if you want, I’ll come over here — and I’ll quiz you. I’ll take you out driving, too, over in the parking lot at Searstown, by the Wendy’s. That’s where I learned — it wasn’t Searstown then, of course, because we didn’t have a Sears. But that’s all right. I didn’t have a chance to teach Alex, but, well, I’ll make
sure
you pass the test, Piercey. You just leave it to me.”

“That is so sweet of you to offer, Uncle Chris,” I said, smiling up at him as I moved my bike away from the porch railing. I wasn’t going to have time to change out of my skirt, I realized, which meant I was going to have to ride with one hand holding it to keep it from flying up. But I didn’t want to be “tardy.” “It’s not like other people haven’t tried. But I’m pretty horrible at it.” I didn’t really want to get into the time I’d run into the back of a UPS truck while trying not to hit a squirrel, and how loud my dad had yelled about my destroying the BMW he’d given me. “It’s probably better, all things considered, that I don’t operate any motor vehicles.”