Island Girl (13 page)

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Authors: Lynda Simmons

BOOK: Island Girl
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I smiled. “Or you’ll what? Tell on me? Beat me up?”
It was her turn to close her eyes and take a deep breath, and if I’d known how to take a picture, I would have done it right then.
“Look,” she said. “I won’t call you retard anymore. I give you my word.”
“You’ll have to give me something else too.”
“What else?”
“Something important. Like your iPod. Give me that and if you don’t call me names for two full weeks, I’ll give it back.”
“Forget it.”
I shrugged. “Have it your way,” I said, and stuck my arm out over the railing again. “Bombs away—”
“Wait!” she called, and I could see that she really wanted to add something else, something worse than anything she’d said yet, but she didn’t. She just took her iPod out of her pocket, unlooped the earplugs from around her neck and held the whole thing out to me. “Two weeks,” she said. “And I know where to find you.”
I wanted to punch a fist in the air and cheer the way Kiley and Brianne had, but that would have been rude, so I just took the iPod with one hand and gave her the phone with the other. The moment she had it, she flipped that thing open, hit a button, and turned away from me.
I told her, “I’m right behind you,” and I stayed there too, turning the wheel on the iPod and trying to get the earplugs to stay in my ears while she talked to her friend about the ferry schedule and when were they coming and how she wished she could get off this f-ing Island.
But she didn’t once call me a retard or anything else and that felt really good because I’d won, all on my own, without the breathing or the focusing or any of that other stuff that never worked anyway.
Even if she told on me later, even if my mom grounded me for a week, I knew I wouldn’t care, and I wouldn’t give back the iPod either. It was mine for two whole weeks, fair and square, and I was going to use it. All I had to do was figure out how turn it on.
RUBY
 
Another flight touched down on the other side of the gap just as Dean Martin’s voice floated by me on a breeze too hot to be refreshing, asking that time-honored question, “Ain’t that a kick in the head?” The taxi driver with the Rat Pack taste snickered. Another grinned and a little boy on the passing shuttle turned in his seat to stare at me—the lone protester on the grassy knoll.
“Fine,” I called to the traitors under Mark’s canopy. “We’ll take a break. But don’t get too comfortable. We reassemble in fifteen minutes.”
Mark saluted me with a bottle of water and Mary Anne had the grace to look guilty, but the rest were too busy checking out what Mark had in his cooler to even hear me. “Fifteen minutes,” I muttered, and carried the drum back to the table. Laid it carefully on the grass and used the edge of my sleeve to wipe the sweat from my face. Pretended not to notice Mary Anne fanning her face with her straw hat as she crossed the no-man’s land between the two camps.
“Ruby, don’t take it personally,” she said, holding out a peace offering as she drew up beside me—one of those bloody bottles of water. “The sun is brutal and a few minutes’ rest won’t hurt a thing.”
“It’s not the rest I object to, it’s Mark.” I eyed the offering. “And doesn’t it strike you odd that we’re marching in the name of air quality yet you’re drinking water from a plastic bottle that arrived in an SUV?”
“Not for an instant.” She plunked the bottle on the table and her hat back on her head. “Now stop being hateful and come sit in the shade. There’s fresh fruit in that cooler. And a box of the most wonderful little pastries.”
“I’m fine right here. I have eco-friendly water, chocolate granola bars, and a perfectly good hat to keep the sun off my head.” To prove the point, I dragged my bag out from under the table and withdrew a stainless steel water bottle, a box of bars, and one hot-pink baseball cap with Foxy embroidered across the front.
Mary Anne laughed and picked up the cap. “You have to be kidding.”
I sighed. If only.
Mary Anne and I have always agreed that no thinking adult should ever wear a baseball cap. They’re unflattering, highly impractical in terms of real sun protection, and they lower your perceived IQ by ten points the moment you pull one on—turn it backward and you can make that twenty or more. Which is why she wears wide-brimmed straw, and I wear a Tilley. One made of sturdy cotton duck with brass grommets and a brim that protects my face
and
my neck.
That hat is timeless, easy to care for, and has seen me through more canoe races and protest marches than I can count. It is absolutely perfect for days like this, and I’d have been wearing it right then if I’d been able to find it. But it wasn’t on the hook by the door where I always left it, or in the bathroom or any of the bedrooms. And I couldn’t think where else it might be with Grace shoving her damn tube of sunscreen under my nose every two seconds.
“You need protection,” she kept saying, as though there hadn’t been sunscreen in every jar of cream I’d bought since I turned thirty. But who needed to reapply the stuff ten times a day?
I tried reasoning with her, but she only covered her ears and kept shouting, “Use it, use it, use it,” until I finally gave in and dabbed more on my nose. I didn’t argue when she slipped the tube into my bag either, hoping that would be the end of it. But when I still couldn’t locate my Tilley, she dropped the pink baseball cap in there as well, insisting, “You’ll need this too.”
Sadly, she was right. The heat was unbearable and the sun a torture. It was either run into Mark’s shade before I melted or break down and wear the damn cap.
“I rarely kid,” I said, snatching the thing back from Mary Anne and jamming it on my head. “Besides, I can use an image update.” I turned the cap backward. “See? Instantly hip.”
She laughed again. “Whatever you say, Foxy.” But she couldn’t resist turning my hat around the right way. “Are you coming or not?”
“Not.” I sat down and tugged the bill lower on my forehead, grateful there were no mirrors around, that I could only imagine how ridiculous I looked. “One of us should be here in case someone stops by to sign the petition.” I smiled up at her. “You can join me if you want.”
“No one is going to stop by, and you know it.” She sat down beside me anyway and pulled the box of granola bars toward her. “Why are you so annoyed with Mark anyway?”
I flicked up the lid on my water bottle. “Because he’s pushy. First he moves back to the Island without so much as a heads-up. Then he roars in here bearing pastries and shade and everyone acts like it’s perfectly okay.”
“Because it is okay. Mark’s a wonderful man and everyone likes him.” She waited while I took a few gulps of my guilt-free water, then handed me a bar and took one for herself. “While I don’t for an instant believe his story about returning to the Island for his daughter’s sake, having seen the girl, I’m sure it can’t hurt. But judging by the way he looks at you when he thinks no one else is watching, I’d say he’s come to his senses at last and has returned to win fair lady’s heart once more. And how can he do that if he’s not pushy?”
She screwed up her nose at the melting chocolate mess beneath the granola wrapper and dropped the whole thing into the garbage bag beside the table. “Like it or not, that canopy was meant for you, to protect you from the sun, and that is easily the most romantic gesture I’ve seen in years.” She poured water onto her fingers and shook them dry over the grass. “I’m telling you, that man is a knight in shining armor.”
“Well, you know what they say. One woman’s white knight is another woman’s stalker.”
She frowned at me and I was tempted to set the record straight. To tell her everything, starting with Big Al’s invasion into my life and ending with Mark’s objections to my plan for a graceful exit. Point out that a real white knight would have helped me research painless poisons or, at the very least, kept his opinions to himself. But this was neither the time nor the place for such a discussion, so instead I said, “Trust me, Mark’s not here to win anyone’s heart.” But couldn’t resist turning my head just a little, to see what he was up to now.
Telling a story by the look of it, and doing a fine job if the smiles on the faces around him were any kind of gauge. Then again, Mark had always told a good story, turning the simplest bedtime tale into something wonderfully funny and silly. Reading them backward, upside down, changing the endings, the beginnings, sometimes the whole thing, and always with a different voice for each character. That man could get my girls laughing so hard I’d have to go in and threaten to ground all three if they didn’t settle down. He just didn’t understand that bedtime stories were supposed be boring. How else could you get a kid to go to sleep? And it always hurt just a little that they never wanted me to read those books to them.
Mary Anne got to her feet again. “Say what you want, I still think he’s here for you. And you can sit in the sun and eat melting granola if you want to, but I’m going back to the shade to get myself something cool and cream-filled.”
“You’ve got ten more minutes,” I called after her, then picked up my own bar. Gave it a squeeze and put it back down. Went for more water instead, discovering there was barely a mouthful left. I’d have to walk over to the water fountain to fill it, which was fine. Perfect in fact. I could use the exercise. And so could Mark. Life in the city had not been kind to his health. Although I noticed he wasn’t eating any of his own pastries. I had to smile when he bit into an apple instead. Having to depend on a bike again must have been a rude awakening for a man accustomed to driving everywhere now.
Still with all the money he must have these days, he hadn’t pulled up in a Hummer. His nod to air quality, I suppose, which was significant given the love he’d had for all things motorized. The day we met, he and Eric had talked nonstop about Mark’s 1965 Shelby GT350. I had no idea what that was, but according to Eric, it was the gas-guzzling, ear-blasting, drag-race-winning marvel that had transformed the Mustang from a secretary’s car to a street racer’s dream. Eric could not have been more jealous if Mark had said he wanted to sleep with me—probably less, in fact.
Mark loved that car, but on the day Grace was born he went out and bought a baby seat for the back of his bike and came back with a receipt for long-term storage of his Shelby as well. It was his way of letting me know that he’d be around for a while yet, and it is still the most romantic gesture I have ever known.
He looked over and caught me watching him. Held up the pastry box and signaled for me to come join him. I shook my head and saluted him with the granola bar, even took off the wrapper and bit into the warm gooey mess. We both knew I was being petty, but that will happen when someone pokes his nose into things that don’t concern him—and I was not about to encourage more canopies.
With that in mind, I decided to devote this forced break time to other, more urgent matters. I smiled at him again, even gave him a little wave, then discreetly dropped the rest of the bar into the garbage, wiped my fingers on a flyer, and took my notebook and a pen from the bag. Wrote
more research on painless poisons
under Grace’s password and underlined it. Three times.
I wasn’t completely convinced that poisons were the way to go, so to speak, but in a year of looking I’d failed to find a suitable alternative. It’s not like you can ask your friends for suggestions, casually drop the subject into dinner conversation and not expect them to watch your every move for a month afterward. And apparently librarians have suicide hotline numbers—or maybe it was just the one I spoke to—but I was not about to test that route again.
So eventually I turned to the Internet and was shocked the first time I encountered an alphabetical list of tried and true methods on Wikipedia, covering everything from asphyxiation to venom. And I was frankly appalled to find as many websites dedicated to helping me achieve my goal as those dedicated to helping me change my mind. There was a world of whackos out there, but they had nothing to do with me.
My choice was clinical, not emotional. I wouldn’t be leaving a note or citing a cause or putting the whole thing on tape for posterity, and I certainly wouldn’t be taking anyone else with me. I would just be gone, and it would look like an accident because that was the only way to be certain the insurance would pay. And once Chez Ruby closed, Grace was going to need the money.
Discretion was my top priority, which meant toasters in the bathtub were off the list, along with closet hanging and anything to do with razors and messy cleanup.
CSI
was making it harder and harder to believe that there were any poisons left that couldn’t be traced, so the choices were narrowing quickly. A heart attack while parachuting would be ideal but difficult to guarantee, which brought me right back to
painless poisons
, with
untraceable
printed beside it.
“I’m curious,” a man said, and I jumped. Slapped the notebook closed and jerked my head around. Mark smiled and held out a bunch of red grapes. “Like I said, I’m curious. How late are we marching these days?”
“You’re being polite,” I said, ignoring his latest olive branch. “What you really mean is why are we still doing this?”
“That’s harsh.” He plunked the grapes and a bottle of water on the table, then sat down and mopped his brow with the back of his hand. “It’s just that it’s after five, I’m getting hungry and thought we could grab some dinner when it’s over.” He smiled hopefully. “So is it almost over?”

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