Saratoga Woods 02 The Edge of the Water (13 page)

“We made an agreement.”

“Come on,” Jenn said, “you’re taking her and you know it.”

Eddie yawned. He removed his baseball cap and scratched his head.

Worm, Jenn thought. Slug. Banana slug. She said, “Okay. Forget it. Looks like that Possession Shores cabin’s your only option, Annie. It’s not as close as Possession Point, but it’s not bad. Close enough, don’t you think?”

Annie’s lips curved. “It’ll be fine. Good thing the owners—”

“You’re not pulling one over on me,” Eddie told them. “But I think we c’n come to an agreement anyways.”

“What kind of agreement?” Jenn asked shrewdly.

“A diving agreement.”

“What about it?” Annie asked.

Eddie pointed vaguely in the direction of Saratoga Passage to the east and miles away. “Find my boat,” he said. “Get me proof that you found it and your stay in that trailer is
f-r-e-e
for as long as you want. Don’t find it, and the rent stays what it is.”

“How’s she supposed to find that damn boat?” Jenn demanded.

“Not a clue,” Eddie replied. “I was her, though, I’d get someone to help, someone with a boat has all the bells and whistles. That’s what
I’d
do. It’s up to her.”

“With all of Saratoga Passage to look at?” Jenn said dismissively. “No way, Eddie.”

“That boat went down off Sandy Point,” he said. “I’d start there. But she can do what she wants.”

D
ating Courtney Baker was heady stuff for Derric. She was smart and committed to more things than anyone Derric had ever known. But what he liked most about her was that there was a private side to her. She had her demons just like everyone else, and since Derric had his own demons, it was a relief to be with her.

She told him things: what it was like to be Courtney beyond what it seemed like to be Courtney. Sometimes, for example, she completely hated her sister. She knew that she was
supposed
to love her but she didn’t and she thought she never would. Sometimes she hated her parents, too. She tried to stay true to the childhood principles she’d grown up with, but often she blew it. She wanted to live a bigger life and a fuller life than Whidbey Island afforded her. But she wanted the protected life of the island as well, and she didn’t really know what this meant. Plus, she wanted Derric. Big Time All the Time, was how she put it. But she’d always thought that she’d be saving herself for one man only and what did it mean, she asked, if instead she did with Derric what she wanted to do? More, what did it mean that she really, truly, and actually
wanted
to do it? God, they were only sixteen years old! Shouldn’t they have more on their minds than getting into each other’s pants?

Derric tried to tell himself that he
did
have more on his mind, and most of the time this was true. He got reminded of it every time Courtney opened the old Star Wars lunch box he’d given to her. He’d gotten rid of it from his parents’ house by filling it with candy, a scented candle, two jazz CDs, and an I-love-you note for Valentine’s Day, but that idea had sprung to his head when his mom found the lunch box beneath his bed and asked what he wanted “this old thing for.” He’d had to come up with something fast, and Courtney was it. Now, however, Courtney carried it around like a vintage purse and she’d even started a fad among some of the girls at school, who were doing the same thing. But when Derric saw that stupid lunch box, what he thought of was what had been hidden within it. This led him almost daily to thinking of his sister. Thinking of his sister led to thinking of Becca. But he and Becca were
through
and that was how he wanted it.

He’d changed his Facebook page to reflect this at the beginning of March. Becca had never liked her picture on it anyway—she was weird like that about a lot of things—so he was happy enough to remove the three Christmas shots of them and replace them with pictures that he and Courtney took of themselves and of each other. On Facebook, they were at Double Bluff Beach building amazing driftwood structures with her family. They were sitting in the stands at a basketball game. They were at a party in Clinton and in line for a movie at the Clyde Theater. They were arm in arm, they were getting it on with a serious lip lock, they were posing in their finery on the way to a dance. Not all their shots made it onto Facebook, naturally, since some were way racy and didn’t belong there. Only the ones fit for public viewing were posted. The others . . . ? Those pictures showed how hot things had really become between them.

Both of them knew it was only a matter of time. Derric had taken to being prepared. He carried condoms with him 24/7, and he waited for Courtney to give him the word. So far the word had been no. Sometimes it had been
Derric, we can’t
. Once it had been
I think it’s just that I’m scared for some reason.
But it always came down to the same ending for him: badly sore in all the wrong places and struggling to get his jeans back on.

What made it worse was that his mom absolutely knew what was going on. Every time he got back from a date with Courtney, she was waiting for him. She didn’t ask where they’d been, and she didn’t ask what they’d been doing. What she did do was say, “Talk to him, Dave,” to his father.

“Rhonda, he knows what he’s doing,” was his father’s reply.

Well, he did and he didn’t know what he was doing. Sure, it had been drummed into his head from the time he’d started looking at girls that
whatever
happened, he had to use a condom. What hadn’t been addressed was the pull and the push that went along with being with Courtney and wondering when and if and how and where. Everyone thought they were doing it, anyway. Guys at school said, “So . . . ?” and leered, waiting to hear what it was like with her naked. Girls at school smiled knowingly when they walked by. They said, “Hi,
Der
ric. Hey,
Court
ney,” and the tone they used was as good as asking, “Where’re you two actually
do
ing it?
His
house?
Her
house? The back of her
car
?”

“We might as well,” was what Derric said to her.

What Courtney said was, “I feel like a hypocrite.”

One of her problems was her prayer group at school. She was the group’s leader. She’d started the group as part of her church’s outreach program. They met once a week in one of the classrooms, and there they prayed for whatever needed praying for. When he’d been in the hospital in the autumn, they’d prayed for him. Before they’d prayed for him, they’d been praying for the family of a South Whidbey High graduate killed by gunfire one night in West Seattle. When they didn’t have something or someone
specific
to pray for, they prayed for each other and for the strength to uphold the Pledge.

Courtney hadn’t told him about the Pledge at first. She waited until what they wanted was each other naked and flesh to flesh, and then she explained how she’d thought he wouldn’t want to go out with her if she’d been completely honest with him. When he asked what she meant, she cast her gaze downward and explained that her prayer group had promised chastity. That was the Pledge. Nothing until marriage, she told him. At least, not the
real
thing.

He’d said no problem because he’d
thought
no problem. But that was before the night she’d lifted her sweater and unhooked her bra and said, “I don’t
care.
” Which was shortly before she said, “We can’t.” Which was a week before she said she was scared.

So he was turned around. He was inside out. And when she said to him, “Maybe we
both
should pray,” he went along with the idea because the truth was, by March something
had
to give.

He’d never been to a prayer group. He went to church with his parents on some Sundays, but the truth was that they missed the service about as often as they went to the service. Other than knowing his mom’s church had been what had taken her to Uganda in the first place, he had no religious instruction. Spiritual life meant nothing to him. But if going to a prayer group would help him know what to do about Courtney, not to mention
with
Courtney, then he was willing to give it a try.

The prayer group met in a classroom at lunch with their brown bags and their Bibles. Derric had neither, so he felt immediately out of place. But he knew the kids and they knew him, and when someone offered him half a sandwich and someone else offered him a Bible, he figured things would be all right.

At first, they ate their sandwiches and read their Bibles and were completely silent. It was only after they’d finished their lunches that they bowed their heads and got ready to pray. They were sitting in a circle of desks, and each of them reached for the hand of the person sitting next to them. One by one, they began to speak.

Derric felt a moment of horror. He’d thought prayer group was all about praying in a general sort of way, but these were deeply personal prayers. He had an immediate bad feeling about where the situation was going to head.

It headed there when Courtney’s turn to speak arrived. “Lord Jesus,” she said quietly, her eyes closed and her head lowered, “you know that Derric and I want to have intercourse. You know that we’ve done everything short of the real thing and I feel . . . I feel bad about that. I’ve wanted to and I
haven’t
wanted to and I promise myself when I’m with him that I
won’t
put my hands on his—”

Derric leaped to his feet. He did it so fast that the kids sitting on either side of him jumped half a foot. Everyone’s head lifted and he looked at each of them and he felt more naked than he’d ever felt when he’d actually been naked. He knew he had to get out of the room.

• • •

HE HEARD HER
call his name. What made it worse was that Becca King—of all people—was passing by the classroom. She was being trailed by Extra Underpants Schuman who was sneering, “Hey, you
said
you wanted to be in charge, cow pattie,” to which Becca was saying, “D’you
always
live in a separate reality or
what
, Tod?” as angrily as Derric had ever heard her talk. She saw him and turned the color of ketchup. Derric saw her and wanted to run. Meantime, Courtney was out of the room, crying, “I thought you understood what the group is about! Prayer is honest. If it’s not honest, it isn’t prayer.” And what he wanted to do most of all was to sink into the floor and disappear.

Becca gulped, looked from Derric to Courtney, and rushed off. Tod went after her, declaring, “No
way
are you getting out of this.” Courtney’s blue eyes filled with tears. Derric said, “Screw it. I need to just
think
.”

• • •

TO MAKE MATTERS
worse, that night his dad decided it was time to have the Talk that Rhonda had been insisting upon. Derric was in his bedroom, attempting to work on the Western Civ project he was doing with EmilyJoy Hall, when Dave Mathieson walked in. When he cleared his throat in that I’m-the-Dad way of his, Derric knew what was about to happen.

Dave sat on his bed. Derric turned from his desk. Dave was frowning down at his shoes. He finally said, “Girls, son,” to which Derric replied, “I know where this is going.”

“Yeah? Where?”

“Mom’s worried about me and Courtney. But nothing’s going on.”

Dave Mathieson looked doubtful, and who could blame him? Derric knew his dad’s story: He’d been first married at nineteen for the only reason a boy of nineteen marries. “Dumbest thing I ever did,” was how Dave usually put it. And then he always added, “No
second
dumbest,” in case Derric misunderstood.

Derric continued. The best idea, he figured, was to tell his dad about the Pledge and the prayer group. Dave Mathieson listened, same way he always did, sitting on the edge of Derric’s bed with his gaze unwavering from Derric’s face, but this didn’t mean he was impressed with the information, and he more or less made this clear when Derric was finished talking about it.

He said, “Pledges don’t mean much when things heat up, son. Things might start with pledging six ways to Sunday, but they don’t end up there.”

“This time they do,” Derric assured him. “She really means it.” And to prove his point, he told his dad about exactly what had happened in the prayer group that day.

His dad said, “How’d you feel about that?”

“The prayer group or her saying what she said?”

“Both.”

“Lame. I mean, I’m not the prayer group type anyway. But I guess . . . well, at least she’s trying.”

“Trying to what?”

“You know. Not to. You
know
. And I don’t think I want to anyway. But I’m not sure why.”

“This have to do with Becca King?”

Derric shook his head. “It was different with her. I mean, it wasn’t so . . . Things weren’t going so fast like they are with Courtney. I don’t know, Dad. Maybe they weren’t going at all.”

Dave nodded. He said, “Hard to know what’s real and what isn’t sometimes.”

“That’s the truth,” Derric admitted. Except, of course, Courtney
felt
so real, every sensuous inch of her.

Dave had shifted his gaze from Derric to the beanbag chair for some reason. Derric tensed as he watched this, knowing what was inside. But Dave made no mention of the beanbag and when he finally looked up, he said, “I want you to take care, no matter what. I’m not just talking about condoms here. You got that? I’m talking about seeing beyond the moment. That’s the toughest thing to master.” He rose from the bed, slapping his thighs as he did so. Then he picked up the beanbag, and Derric froze.

“God,” Dave Mathieson said, “this thing’s been around forever. Don’t you want a new one? Or maybe a recliner or something else more comfortable?”

Derric’s lip felt a bit stiff as he replied. “Nah, I like old stuff. I like stuff with history.”

“Well,” Dave said, “that certainly applies to this old thing.”

He tossed the beanbag back onto the floor. It landed with the repair of duct tape on top. To Derric that repair looked like an enormous
X
. And
X
, of course, always marked the spot.