Sacred (13 page)

I felt things too; I felt the crunch of the topmost layer of sand as my body shifted slightly; I felt the cooler, softer sand beneath, molding to my body; I felt the gentle touch of the breeze pushing through my hair, caressing my back, my legs, my feet.

I breathed in the particular salty-wet smell of the seaside and purposely filled my lungs as full as I could, holding my breath for a long moment before releasing it. I felt empty. I felt good.

“Oh, Scarlett,” Lily said. Her voice sounded so forlorn, almost horrified. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Tell you what?” I murmured, on the brink of sleep.

When she didn’t answer, I looked up. Lily was sitting, still almost naked, and staring at me. Her eyes were brimming with tears.

“What is it?” I asked, alarmed.

“Scarlett, where have you gone?” she asked, reaching out toward me, her fingers trembling as they ran across my bare shoulder.

Suddenly, I saw myself through her eyes—all angles and elbows, each knob of my backbone pressing against my skin, my ribs threatening to protrude.

It was as if I were suddenly more naked than naked, as if my very flesh had been pulled back to reveal my shame, my hidden horrors, and I reached with shaking hands for my shirt and clutched it to my chest.

It was no use pretending with Lily, not now, when she’d seen me like this.

“I don’t know where I’ve gone,” I admitted, my voice as small as a child’s. “Far, far away, I think.”

This time, when the tears came, I didn’t brush them off as I had in front of Will. I let them come, and they coursed silently down my cheeks.

Overhead, a gull shrieked mournfully, circling again and again and again.

“Oh, Scarlett,” Lily cried, and she leaned across to me, unabashed in her nudity in a way that seemed so beautiful and yet impossible at the same time. Her warm arms embraced me, her dark curls brushed against my tearstained cheeks, and she rocked me as if I were a baby. “Scarlett, this can’t go on. I mean, I noticed you’d lost some weight, but I had no idea it had gone this far. This is, like, nineties heroin-chic, and that really wasn’t a good look for
anyone
.”

I knew what she was doing—she was trying to make me laugh so I would feel better—but I didn’t feel like laughing. I felt like wrapping my arms around my gangly, undernourished nakedness and running and hiding behind a tree.

I pulled away from Lily’s hug. “I’m okay,” I sniffed. “I’m just not beach-ready right now, I guess, okay?”

I tried to shove my arms into my thermal but the shirt was all tangled and wrapped up in itself, and it was like I was trying to punch through a wall of fabric.

Lily watched me, still gloriously unrobed, her eyes filled with pity. She reached out to try to help me untangle my shirt, but I pushed her hands away and turned my back to her.

“Scarlett, don’t be mad,” she begged. “I want to help you.… I won’t tell anyone … just let me help!”

But how could I explain that I was angry not at her desire to help me, but rather at the vision she was just then, so completely at ease in her own skin, so beautifully curvy, so obviously in the bloom of life? I felt like a very old lady, withered and preparing to die.

“I’ll call you later,” I mumbled as I pulled on my jeans and skirt, shoving my bra into my back pocket and stumbling into my flip-flops. “I’ve got to go home.”

I’d tell my dad I was sick. It wasn’t a lie; it was all too true.

The rocks shifted beneath my feet as I scrambled back up toward the road. I heard pebbles clattering down the cliff and I struggled to find a toehold. I wasn’t going to fall, I would have found my footing after another moment, but suddenly a strong hand reached down and grasped my upper arm, hauling me up to the road.

“I had it,” I snapped at the do-gooder, and looked up to glare at him.

After all the times he’d snuck up on me, I shouldn’t have been surprised to find Will standing there on the side of the road. He released my arm and took a step back from me, as if it was difficult for him to stand too close.

“You’re starting to creep me out,” I said. “Find someone else to stalk.”

“I wish I could.” His mouth twisted in a wry smile. “But it seems that, for the time being, at least, we’re stuck with each other.”

“Did you follow me here?” I was struck with the image
of myself and Lily, practically naked, on the beach below. “Were you
spying
on me?”

“In a matter of speaking.”

The creep didn’t even bother
trying
to sound embarrassed!

“Did you see me down there?” I demanded.

His gaze slipped from my face. “I didn’t come here to see you naked.”

My face blushed hotly. He didn’t
come here
to see me naked. That definitely wasn’t the same as saying that he
didn’t
see me naked.

“I don’t think Andy’s going to like this very much.” I said, throwing Lily’s earlier taunt at Will.

His eyes narrowed. “I don’t much care what Andy likes,” he said, and though his voice stayed calm, his eyes betrayed him. “I don’t much care for Andy.”

I shook my head. “You have no business coming here, following me like this.”

“You don’t know what my business is.”

“Then tell me,” I challenged.

A car sped by, too close, and Will shifted his body so that he was between me and the road. It was just a couple of steps, but it seemed deeply significant.

He seemed to consider my challenge, and then said, “I can’t.” His voice was tinged with regret. “Just— Scarlett, be careful.”

Before I could snap back a poisonous retort, he stepped in and closed the distance between us. The touch of his lips on my temple, just below my hairline, felt so sweet, yet so charged with electric meaning, that without intending to I
reached out and took his hand. Our fingers interlaced; his hand was warm, strong, and felt familiar in my grasp, as if we had held hands before, in some distant life.

Then I remembered that I was angry at him, that I had a boyfriend, and I pulled my hand away. He held on more tightly, for such a brief second that I might have imagined it, if not for the regret mirrored in his eyes. But he loosened his grasp and let me go.

EIGHT

T
hat was the last really warm day of the fall. After that, the air had a snap to it, foretelling winter, or at least our California version of it. I wasn’t out of place anymore in all my layers. Everyone was more covered up, and I begrudgingly traded in my flip-flops for a pair of Tom’s.

Around school, the hot topic of conversation was Andy’s impending Halloween rager. It turned out that Andy was in luck; his parents would be off the island on Halloween night, accompanying his little brother to an orchestra performance on the mainland. Andy’s brother, Jeffrey, hadn’t followed Andy’s footsteps onto the field. Instead, he’d picked up the French horn, of all instruments, in the third grade, and now, a freshman in high school, he was reaching the level where other school orchestras routinely invited him to play with them. Apparently, French horn players were a pretty hot commodity.

So Andy was to be left to his own devices Halloween weekend.

“I told them I might have a few friends over to help me pass out candy,” he told us at lunch the Wednesday before Halloween.

“That’s not too far off,” joked Connell, “considering the size of our class.”

“Well, the whole class isn’t coming.” Andy’s face looked a little panicky. “I mean, the neighbors are going to notice for sure if sixty-four kids show up.”

“Don’t forget the seniors,” sang Lily, “and a select few sophomores, too.” She was practically humming with satisfaction as she watched Andy squirm.

“This is the first time my folks have left me alone for a weekend,” Andy protested.

“Don’t bet what you can’t afford to lose, Mr. Turlington.”

Sometimes Lily was a bit much. “I’m sure everyone will keep it pretty quiet.” I tried to soothe Andy.

Just then, Mike Ryan, a senior football player who was rumored to have engaged in a threesome with two sophomore girls with low self-esteem, walked by our table and ruffled Andy’s hair affectionately. “Rager at Turlington’s! I’ll bring a keg.”

Andy groaned, thumping his head against the table. “I’m dead.”

Everyone at the table laughed, and I chimed in too, though my laugh sounded hollow to me. No one else seemed to notice, except maybe Lily, who looked at me curiously
from her seat across the table. Without a word, she pushed half of her sandwich across to me.

This is how it had been for the past couple of weeks, since our day at the beach. Lily was keeping her promise—she hadn’t told anybody about how I’d looked out there, without my clothes. But she seemed to expect me to do something about it. She still met me outside my house in the mornings, but she was never empty-handed. Some days she gave me a freshly made egg sandwich, wrapped in one of her mom’s pretty cloth napkins; other days, it was a muffin. But there was always something, and although she didn’t directly talk about it, she didn’t leave my side until I’d eaten. She’d make small talk and linger outside the school with me, not exactly watching as I ate, but keeping me company as I downed the food.

And it was working; I felt better, had more energy, didn’t find myself dizzy or light-headed nearly as often.

So I accepted the sandwich as she had offered it—silently—and took a bite.

I knew he wouldn’t be at his table, since he rarely was anymore, but I couldn’t stop my gaze from sliding over to the chair Will sometimes occupied at lunch.

Empty.

I knew where he was. I’d seen him there several times over the last few weeks—in the library, in the chair nearest the window, with a book in his hands. Most days, I stubbornly resisted the urge to watch him read. But occasionally, like today, the pull toward him was too strong, like the tide, and I would make my excuses and find him there.

It seemed that I’d eaten enough of the sandwich to satisfy
Lily. She didn’t comment as I wrapped the crusts in a napkin and stood from the table. Andy stood too, and waved at our friends.

I shouldn’t have been irritated that he wanted to ditch the cafeteria to come with me; he was my boyfriend, after all. But I didn’t want his company. I wanted to be alone.

No—that wasn’t true. I didn’t want to be alone. I wanted to be with Will.

So, on top of everything else, I was a terrible girlfriend, too. My guilt guided my hand to Andy’s, and he squeezed my fingers as they interlaced with his.

Andy seemed to think that what I was looking for was some time alone with him, because he led me back around behind the cafeteria, one of the few truly private places on our small campus.

Of course, the reason it was so private is that this was the nook where the large cafeteria trash cans were kept. Not exactly the most romantic locale on the island, but Andy didn’t seem to notice.

Emboldened, Andy ran his hands from my waist down across my hips as we kissed. I concentrated on matching the intensity of his embrace, still feeling badly about wanting to ditch him.

Even as our tongues battled fiercely, I felt my mind wandering elsewhere, wondering what Will might be reading today.

Last Tuesday, he’d been laughing to himself as he thumbed through the collected plays of Oscar Wilde; on Friday, he’d held a heavy text in a language that looked ancient and
important. Hebrew, I’d guessed. On that day, he hadn’t been laughing. Rather, his brow had been furrowed in deep concentration.

Just before he caught sight of me watching him, he’d raised his hand to massage his temple in a gesture I had come to know intimately. Then his eyes, hawk-like, had raised from the page and found me instantly, half hidden in the stacks.

Had he known I was there all along, or had I made some unconscious noise to alert him to my presence? I didn’t think so. It was more like … he sensed me there.

I remembered my words to him on the cliff above the beach—“Find someone else to stalk”—and I’d blushed hotly, painfully aware of the situation’s role reversal.

I broke away from Andy. It was just too weird to kiss him while I was obsessing over Will, replaying our meetings in my head. Besides, the stench of the decomposing trash wasn’t helping matters either.

“I’ve got to get something from the library,” I murmured, trying in vain to disengage his hands from my backside.

“Oh, yeah?” he said into my neck. “Like what? Will Cohen?”

I laughed too loud, almost braying. “What are you talking about?”

Andy pulled away, but just slightly. “I see the way you look at him.” He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I get it—new guy from the big city, a senior, all that. And I’ve seen the way he looks at you too.” Andy clenched his jaw, then smiled, but not nicely. “That seems to have stopped, though, since Connell and I had a little talk with him.”

I shoved Andy’s chest. “You didn’t!”

“Course I did. Can’t have the new kid sniffing around my girl.”

I was seething now. “
Sniffing around?
What am I, your fire hydrant? Nervous some other dog’s going to lift his leg on me?”

Andy grinned. “Something like that,” he said, leaning in for another kiss.