In Too Deep (17 page)

T
here’s an important element in the story of Cinderella that always gets left out. We hear all about her magical evening with the prince, but we never get what she must really be thinking. She has to know she doesn’t belong there, no matter what she looks like. She has to feel like an impostor, knowing that her dress isn’t really a gown and her coach is really a pumpkin and that if not for the presence of a fairy godmother, none of the people at the ball would even look at her.

I walked slowly through the open lobby to the top of the wide stairway leading down to the beach. I stopped for just a moment to take it all in. There was a dance floor. There was a bonfire. There was a band. There were at least forty or fifty people scattered around a dozen tables—far more than I’d seen at the resort up to this point, and some of them appeared to be close to my age—high school or early college. It was nearing dusk; the sun hung just above the rocky horizon, but the air was still tropically warm.

My close personal friend Kenny stood at attention near the top of the steps in front of a marble vase filled with six-foot birds-of-paradise. Like all the bellmen, he had changed into black shorts and a brilliant yellow-and-orange Hawaiian shirt. “You look lovely, Miss Fleet.”

“Thanks, Mr. Kenny,” I said, giving in to the formality. “I like your shirt, too. Very festive.”

“We like to mix it up a little bit at the Hanauma.”

I nodded to the mass of new guests milling about at the tables and on the dance floor. “Where have you been hiding all these people?”

“Saturday night is open to all,” he said. “Not a ton of nightlife on Molokai.”

I had a momentary, reflexive worry that “open to all” might include Wayo, but then it struck me that sticking around the island after finding whatever was in the cavern was the last thing he’d do. In fact, for the first time since Cozumel, I didn’t need to worry about Wayo at all.

Kenny pointed to my feet. “It’s okay to go barefoot, if you’d like. I’ll take care of those.”

I smiled as I kicked off my flip-flops. Who needed a fairy godmother when I had a Kenny? “Can I take you back to school with me?”

He gave me a quizzical look as he pressed my flip-flops together and held them behind his back. He nodded to the festivities. “Now, go have fun.”

Relieved of my inappropriate footwear, I bounced down the stone steps, the day’s residual warmth against my feet. I made a conscious decision to embrace the night, to live in the present moment no matter how out of place I might feel; to revel in the dress, the drums, the stars. Who could say when I was ever going to get another crack at something like this? For all I knew, that’s exactly what Cinderella was thinking, too.

There was a tap on my shoulder, and I spun around, and there was Josh in a floral print shirt and rolled-up khakis, barefoot just like me. “You look amazing.”

I tucked a few tousled beachy strands of hair behind my ear. “It’s different, I know.”

“Not different,” he said. “Just amazing. Here’s where I would normally make the obligatory ‘you clean up real good’ joke, but I don’t want to give you the impression that I thought you needed cleaning up in the first place.”

“I’m glad you didn’t overthink that one.”

I’d made him laugh.

He led me to the tiki bar, where a pair of virgin strawberry daiquiris appeared in no time, and then somehow we started walking away from the party and toward the beach. The drummers began to hammer out a tribal beat, but it was just background noise now. Everything was background noise.

“What did Franklin have to say about you coming down here with me?”

“Who?” I said. The name sounded familiar, but I was distracted by the present moment, and I couldn’t think clearly.

“Franklin Deveraux?”

“Oh, of course.” My fake boyfriend. How could I ever have forgotten? “He’s fine with it. Or, I should say that he doesn’t know.”

“Hmmm,” was all Josh said.

The sand was cool against my feet. The sun sank behind a promontory at the other end of the bay, and gentle waves tickled the shore. We made small talk. I closed my eyes and tried to sear an image of the moment into my brain. Remember this. Remember what it feels like. Remember everything about it.

If only we could have re-created the atmosphere in the cavern. That’s the only way the moment could have been better.

“About what happened today,” Josh said, as if reading my mind. My bosom, as they say, threatened to heave, but then I noticed a hint of resignation in his voice, and it terrified me. “I just want you to know—”

“It’s okay,” I said before the other shoe could drop. I knew what he was going to say, but I couldn’t hear it. Not tonight, with the tiki torches and the beverages. Not after I’d decided to revel. “You don’t have to explain. The emotion of everything and the adrenaline. We can just pretend it didn’t happen.”

“Why would I want to do that?” He was legitimately surprised. Almost offended.

“Do what?”

“Pretend it didn’t happen.”

“You don’t want to pretend it didn’t happen?” I said. Had I misread him that much? Was my bosom about to be given permission to heave again?

“Of course not.” He put his arm on my shoulder. “That was amazing.”

Finally!

“I want you to know that I’m not discouraged,” he said. “Not at all. I’m totally committed.”

Uh-oh.
I tried the old take-a-drink-to-stall tactic, but the daiquiri was suddenly too cold and didn’t taste like anything. “Totally committed?”

“To the Jaguar. I know you’re disappointed we got beat to the punch today, but I’m not giving up.” He leaned back as if to get a better view of me. “Why? What did you think I was talking about?”

“Oh. That,” I said, turning back to the ocean so he couldn’t read the truth. I shrugged as if uninterested. “What did you think I thought you were talking about?”

“I’m confused.”

A blinding flash lit up the dusk. The drums stopped. Smoke machines covered the stage in a thick fog, and a shirtless linebacker stomped onstage holding a flaming torch. He wore a green-and-orange kilt-type thing, and his calves were covered by what looked like small grass skirts.

He began to whip the torch around, creating a cometlike tail of yellow flame at least three feet long. The drums returned, and he stomped with the beat.

“We should tell Alvarez,” I said, using the interruption as an excuse to shift gears.

“Are you crazy? I bet he sold us out. Your dad must have talked to him about our trip.”

“You can’t blame this on the faculty lounge,” I said. “Wayo had the disk for long enough. And even if my dad did tell him we were coming here—”

“Which he probably did—”

“I’m pretty sure Alvarez wouldn’t knowingly have gone along with what Wayo did to me in Cozumel. It just doesn’t make sense.”

The fire dancer knelt and leaned his head back so that he was looking straight up. Then he opened his mouth and pulled the flame end of the torch across his face. He was licking the flame. There were
ooh
s. Applause.

Josh said, “I still don’t trust him.”

“I don’t see what choice we have. What if we told him the truth about the sculpture garden? He’s lived and breathed the Golden Jaguar for years. If there’s a connection, maybe he’s the one to find it. Otherwise, we’re stuck. Dead end.”

“We got this far on our own,” Josh said. “We can start over at the beginning. Get back to the primary sources.”

Now the dancer grabbed a handful of fire and brought it down to the other end of the torch, sending flames burning from both ends. He spun it around like a drill teamer from hell, at one point tossing it thirty feet into the air, where it hung for a moment, the deep yellow outline of a sun. The drums grew both louder and faster, and the audience started to clap to the beat.

“The guys who beat us down there were pros,” I said. “They brought tools.”

“Telling Alvarez is too risky.”

“We bribed a captain and pissed off some cops. I’d say we did just about the best we could have done.”

“Maybe there’s another way,” he said.

“Would you rather put something on the Internet? ‘Treasure hunters wanted! Knowledge of Cortés a must. Lack of desire to kill fifteen-year-old girls underwater preferred.’”

The drums reached a fever pitch as another dancer appeared onstage with a flaming baton of his own. They swung their fire at each other, flung the batons back and forth through the air. It was like the ancient Polynesian version of glow sticks and house music, and it was breathtaking. We watched in silence, inching closer to the stage.

“You know something,” Josh said. “I bet you could get any guy out here to dance with you.”

I laughed, but Josh just kept looking at me out of the corner of his eye like he was sizing me up. “Are you serious?” I said.

“As hell. That’s how good you look. Any guy.”

I tried to convince myself that he hadn’t said what he’d just said. “There are about five even remotely close to my age.”

“Then one of the staff, whatever. My point is, you look good enough to get anyone you want.”

“What do you mean?”

“Choose someone, anyone. I’ll bet you a hundred dollars that I can get him to come over and ask you to dance. All you have to do is stand there looking hot.”

The drums stopped, and the dancers howled, and a wild applause came from the audience.

Don’t cry
, I commanded myself.
Don’t let him think
it’s a big deal.

“You’re not mad that I said you were hot, are you?” he said, picking at least something up through his monumental obtuseness.

My smile was as plastic as the girls he was used to dating. “Of course not, Josh. I think it’s sweet that you want to pimp me out to the staff.”

“What?” He whipped his head around to look at me directly. “What? Pimp you out—”

Josh’s mom ran up to us, flailing her hands as though they’d caught fire. “Come on, you two! Dance lessons.”

Stars: They’re Just Like Us! They embarrass the hell
out of their kids!

Josh reached after me. “Annie, wait—”

“Dance lessons,” I said with a shrug as I let his mom pull me away from him.

I ditched my now-flavorless daiquiri and joined everyone on the packed dance floor, all of us facing the stage for our authentic fire dance lessons. There was a lot of clapping and some stomping. From the looks of it, everyone was having a wonderful time. Even Josh. I did my best to play along, but I was in too much of a daze to do much more than stumble through the steps.

By the time the lesson was over, I had composed myself just enough so that when Josh turned to me for the inevitable “that’s not what I meant,” I was able to wave him off and laugh. He said he would meet me with more drinks, and gestured to where Violet and his mom were sitting. I took a moment, dabbed at the corners of my eyes with the tip of my pinkie, and joined them.

Mrs. Rebstock wore a flowing translucent top over an ankle-length floral-print skirt. “You look stunning, Annie,” she said. “Really, that dress is phenomenal.”

“Oh, this old thing?” I said. Then I turned to Violet and mouthed, “Thank you.”

Violet raised her glass and gave me an almost imperceptible cheers.

Josh’s mom leaned over the table and tapped her fingers on the back of my hand. “Before we get anywhere, I know you didn’t spend the day with Violet.”

I struggled for the appropriate response. She didn’t look angry or disappointed. More like she was sharing a juicy little secret. Never mind the fact that she was this famous person. Or that she was the mother of my crazy crush. She was magnetic, and she gave me—and everyone?—the impression that we should be best friends.

“Truth be told, I didn’t expect you to.” She flashed a Cheshire cat grin and said, “I won’t tell your parents if you don’t.”

“No, I…I think that’s fine—”

“Because, really, I got the sense that they didn’t trust me very much.”

The idea that she would care what my mom thought of her made me laugh out loud.

“What’s so funny?” Josh said, pulling up to the table with a fruity drink in each hand. “You’re not talking about me, are you?”

“How was it today?” his mom said when we were all seated. A waiter offered folded napkins from a stack with a pair of silver tongs. “I want to hear everything.”

Josh laid his napkin daintily across his lap as if stalling for time and said, “Violet came with us on the boat. She watched while we dove, and then we came back together.”

I would have stopped him, spared him the embarrassment, but I hadn’t quite gotten over the fact that he saw me as bait in a hundred-dollar bet.

Finally Violet interrupted him. “She knows.”

Josh cleared his throat and smiled at his mom. She shrugged. He licked his lips. “Violet didn’t come with us.”

His mom acted shocked. “You don’t say.”

“We did go diving, though,” he said. He mentioned the sculpture garden only briefly and left out any details about the police boat or the underwater scooter trip up the lava tunnel. “It was amazing. It really was. It’s like you’re flying. You don’t belong down there, but you’re there anyway. It was like magic.”

Hearing Josh talk about diving that way should have been my dream come true. It should have been a sign that we were perfect for each other. That he valued what was most important to me, that we’d spend the rest of our days together, diving and treasure hunting and just being the happiest people on the planet. Instead, his words grated on my ears.

“I could never do it,” Violet said. “I get too claustrophobic.”

“You need to have Annie teach you. She’s the best.” Josh elbowed my arm. “That is, when she’s not trying to kill you.”

“You mean saving your life,” I said reflexively, defensively. A bit too harshly, judging by the rise of Violet’s eyebrows.

Josh continued as if he hadn’t noticed. “People freak out because they don’t trust themselves to handle whatever situation comes up, so the anticipation of trouble causes anxiety, and then it multiplies, and then when something tiny happens, they overreact and panic instead of dealing with it.”

Was he still talking about diving? Or was he reading my face?