Unwritten Books 2 - Fathom Five (4 page)
Peter cast one more look behind him, and stopped dead.
Rosemary stopped when she realized she was walking ahead alone. She came back.
“I didn’t realize,” said Peter. “I’ve never walked this road this late. It’s beautiful.”
They stared down the 45th Parallel Road. Clarksbury clung to a thin space between the escarpment and Georgian Bay. This late at night, Georgian Bay was normally an expanse of black, broken only by isolated lights of boats straggling home, and occasionally a Great Lakes freighter. Now the bay was white. A low cloud swept over Clarksbury, taking on the orange glow of the streetlights.
“Fog’s rolling in,” said Rosemary.
Peter nodded. “Toronto’s got nothing on this.”
Rosemary took his hand. Peter felt his fingers tingle in her grip. He looked at her face, and he forgot all about looking behind him.
“Come on,” she said. “Dad will be getting worried.”
Holding hands, they walked the rest of the way home, reaching the top of the escarpment and enjoying the fresh breeze and the clear night sky. He saw her to her mailbox, then hesitated as he said goodbye.
“Are you all right, Peter?”
“Listen ....” He struggled for the right words. “I just wanted to thank you. You’re a really good friend. High school and Clarksbury would be a lot lonelier without you.”
She smiled. “Come on, Peter. I should be thanking you. People don’t tease me nearly so much as they would if I weren’t … you know … around you.”
“Whatever the case, thank you,” he said. And impulsively, he hugged her.
She hugged him back. “You’re welcome.”
Then Peter tilted Rosemary’s chin up, lowered his head, and kissed her, gently, on the lips.
The scent of her washed over him. He thought it was a wonderful perfume, but then he realized that Rosemary didn’t wear perfume. The feel of her lips against his felt like the most right thing in the world.
Rosemary’s arms went around him. She pressed up against him and her hands traced his shoulder blades. He held the kiss and breathed her in. He could hear his pulse rush like the ocean …
Suddenly Rosemary tensed beneath him. She planted her hands on his chest and pushed away. She stared at him in shock.
Peter felt the colour drain from his cheeks.
I’ve ruined it, he thought. I’ve ruined it all.
He let go. “Oh! God! I’m sorry!”
“It’s okay,” said Rosemary. “It’s okay.”
“I got … I didn’t … I’d better go home, now.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow?” There was a nervous edge to Rosemary’s question.
“Yeah,” said Peter, backing away. “See you tomorrow.” He turned away and walked so fast down the country road, he was almost running.
***
Rosemary stood on her porch, staring down the road where Peter had gone. She touched her lips, wondering why they tingled so. “What just happened?”
Peter just kissed me, her mind replied. He. Kissed. Me. And I freaked. Why? For seven-eighths of the time it felt so right. And then it felt so …
After another moment of staring, Rosemary slipped inside. She brushed past her father’s greeting and went directly to her room, where she stood in front of her computer, her hand hesitating on the keyboard. In the window behind, she could see fog rising up the escarpment. Clarksbury was just an orange glow.
She took her hand off the keyboard. “No. This is too personal for e-mail.” She sat at her drafting table desk and dug out a pad of graph paper. She chewed the cap clean off her pen before she finally began to write.
Peter,
This isn’t an easy letter for me to write. You’re one of
(she crossed this out and replaced it with)
You are the most special friend I’ve got. We’ve been through so much and you mean so much to me. I don’t want to risk that.
Which is why I freaked out. I guess I’m scared. I don’t want you to change from my friend to my boyfriend, only to have us break up and lose everything.
She paused for a long time, tapping the nib of her pen on the paper. Then she added:
I think we should stay like we are. Our friendship is something I cherish more than anything else, and I don’t want to mess it up. I hope you understand.
Your friend,
Rosemary
Rosemary read over the letter and then folded it and slid it into an envelope. She sealed it and wrote “Peter” on the front. Then she sat for a long time, staring out her window and tapping the envelope against her lips.
The lips that Peter had kissed.
She closed her eyes. “Rosemary Ella Watson, you are a complete and utter
idiot
!”
She tossed the letter in her wastebasket, and left the room.
The envelope sat on top of crumpled paper. Then it fluttered. As though picked up by a breeze, it lifted, and twisted through the room to Rosemary’s open window. It slipped through the crack beneath the screen. Then it vanished into the night.
T
here was a sickening thump.
Peter scrambled forward on the icy path, clutching his broken arm, struggling for the gate and the crowd of people surrounding the scene. He cried out for his mom and his dad, prompting some of the crowd to look at him. Arms were around him, holding him back.
“There’s nothing you can do, Son!”
“Stay back! The ambulance is on its way!”
“No!” he squealed. “Mom!”
In the distance, sirens wailed.
Fog curled around his waist and blurred the faces of the people around him.
“Come home, Peter.”
He turned. Fiona was standing by the gate of the park. Trees and buildings blurred in a sweeping mist until they looked like cliff faces. A lighthouse waved a wand across the sky. A foghorn wailed. A ship bell tolled.
“Come home.”
Peter woke with a gasp. His clock radio was already playing. He gaped at the display.
He had missed the school bus.
***
Caught in the sunlight, Rosemary stood atop the Niagara Escarpment. Clarksbury, beneath, was covered in fog. She felt as though she was atop a mountain, looking down on clouds.
She waited at the curb, fidgeting as she watched the rolling sea of white. Finally the school bus came. She squared her shoulders and got on. She headed straight for their usual seat, and stopped.
It was empty.
Well, that was a waste of a lot of courage. How was she going to talk to Peter now?
Then the bus lurched forward and she had to sit down or risk falling over.
She slid over onto Peter’s side of the seat and stared out the window until she couldn’t see the other side of the road. The bus crept into town as though floating into nothingness.
***
Peter was not in the habit of coming to school late, but he did know he could come to school, go directly to the office, and be greeted with, at worst, raised eyebrows and the admonition not to do this again if he could help it. Whether he went to the office at ten or ten-thirty made little difference.
There was still no milk in the refrigerator. Peter settled on toast (chewed properly this time) and a tall glass of orange juice, drunk without hurry beside the kitchen table.
The radio reported fog in low-lying areas. Peter looked out his window and saw a clear blue sky.
Gathering his stuff together, he stepped out the front door, walking purposefully but without haste down his walk. He cast a quick glance at his mailbox, and stopped when he saw something inside it.
The envelope just said “Peter.” He recognized Rosemary’s handwriting. He ripped it open and started to read.
Moments later, he closed his eyes.
“Well. At least now I know.”
***
Rosemary hugged her windbreaker against the chill as she walked across the school’s back field. She could hardly see the building in front of her. She could hear the sounds of the harbour. A foghorn wailed. The nearest was off of Cape Croker, ten miles away. She could hear a ship bell tolling — from the Clarksbury marina, she guessed.
The ship bell tolled again. Then Rosemary heard a sound that made her stop and turn. There was a smash of wood against stone, a snap of ropes, and a plosh of objects falling into water. She heard the distant screams of men.
The other students stopped in their tracks.
“That wasn’t a car crash!”
“That came from the harbour!”
“A shipwreck?”
The next sound made Rosemary imagine a tree falling. The ripping of wood and the tearing of cloth faded gradually to silence. Cape Croker’s foghorn wailed again.
“What do you think we should do?” said someone.
“Go for help?”
“What can we do? We’re a mile from the marina.”
A teacher stared in the direction of the harbour. “Students!” he said at last. “Come inside and go to your classes. When we find out what happened, we’ll tell you. Come on, everybody inside.”
***
The fog seemed to follow Rosemary into the school, greying her mood. She gave her history presentation, droning on Laura Secord and her heroic trek through the swamps, but her eyes were on Peter’s empty desk. She thought she’d covered her unease well — everyone else was muttering about the shipwreck — but at the end of the period, Mr. Hunter pulled her aside.
“Nice presentation, Miss Watson,” he said. “Could have used a bit more ‘umph.’”
“Oh,” she said. “Sorry.”
“Something on your mind?”
She shrugged.
“About Peter?”
She felt herself blush. The feeling made her blush even more.
His frown deepened. “Want to talk about it?”
“Um … thanks,” she said. Silence stretched. She swallowed. Then the bell saved her. “Gotta go!” She pulled herself from Hunter’s look and walked out into the hall faster than she’d walked all day.
It was bright in the hallway. For a minute, she blinked, and wondered if lights had flickered on, but the cloud on her mind returned and everything dimmed again.
Rosemary slogged through French, then fled into the girls’ washroom. She splashed her face and cleaned her glasses. It didn’t help. Her reflection looked unfocussed, her brown hair frizzy, her skin tinged grey. She rubbed her eyes and wondered why she was so tired. Last night she’d been restless, but she’d slept. This morning she’d been so keyed up about talking to Peter about their — she swallowed — relationship, that she could hardly sit still. It wasn’t until she’d come in from the fog that the fog surrounded her.
Where
was
he? How
dare
he not be here when she so needed to talk to him?
Rosemary felt the hairs prickle at the back of her neck, and she whirled around. Nobody stood behind her. Still, the feeling of being watched didn’t go away.
She strained her ears to listen over the hum of the fluorescent lights, and she scanned the floor beneath the stall doors. “Is somebody there?” Silence.
She picked up her knapsack and made to go, but something brushed against the back of her neck and she whirled around again.
She found herself staring at the mirror. She was sure something had been there, behind her, reaching for her throat. But looking hard, all she saw was her reflection.
The washroom door burst open. “I’m going to kill Peter McAllister!” Brittney snapped, stomping past Rosemary as if she wasn’t there. “I’m going to murder him! They’re going to find his body in the bay!”
Veronica strode in behind. The two girls began touching up their makeup in front of the mirror. “I thought Mr. Simmons would pop a vein when Peter didn’t show.”
“What about me?” Brittney yelled, looking up from her lipstick. “I had to give the presentation on my own!”
Rosemary’s brow furrowed. Peter wouldn’t miss a deadline like this. Not without calling in sick.
Her heart lurched. Maybe he
was
sick.
“Hey, Rosemary,” Veronica called. “You didn’t do anything to distract Peter, did y—” She turned from the mirror, but Rosemary was already gone, the door swinging shut behind her.
In the office, the administrative assistant looked up from her computer manual. “Rosemary? Is something wrong?”
Rosemary shifted on her feet in front of Miss Stevens’ desk, feeling foolish and paranoid. She took a deep breath. “Could I use the phone? I’ve got to make a call.”
“You sick or something? You need to call your folks?”
“No, not sick,” said Rosemary. She touched her stomach. “I’ve just got to call … home. Yeah. To arrange … things. Okay?”