Summer Nights (11 page)

“
Your
company,” added Jere, when she didn’t answer.

Which was a phrase that, even to Beth, did not require heavy analysis.

The thing Kip Elliott loved about sports was that the goal was so definite. You knew where you were going. There was a finish line, or a basket, or a post. And you didn’t labor on forever. You had a timer, or a quarter, or a ten-second limit.

All her life she had swum off Swallow Island. Now she swam with all her strength, to get away from the fears this party had aroused. She did not want to think of what could go wrong in her life. Only of what must surely go right.

She wanted to beat Con. She wanted to beat everybody.

Was it wrong to want to be a winner all the time? But who would want to be a loser? Who would wake up in the morning, crying, “Hey, great day, sun is shining, think I’ll go out and be mediocre!” Of course not. Normal people wake up and cry, “Hey, think I’ll take on the world!”

So why, thought Kip in grief, why do they just accuse me of being bossy? Can a person take on the world and not be bossy? Are presidents ever not bossy? Would you hire a captain of industry if he didn’t like to be the boss? Would you elect a senator if he said he didn’t like taking charge?

I am what I am, thought Katharine Elliott. Con may insult me all he likes, and call me bossy, but that’s not what I am. I am organized to win, is what I am.

She swam with powerful strokes that pulled her swiftly through the water. The currents in Westerly River were gentle. She knew in a moment it would be shallow, and she’d flounder a little, staggering out on the sand, yelling to Con that she had made it. Kip kicked deeper, but felt nothing. It was strange, swimming in the dark. She could hardly tell where Swallow Island was, and she could no longer hear Con.

Because I’m ahead of him, thought Kip.

No other reason was acceptable.

Anne Stephens was beginning to be painfully aware that Con had not been by her side in a long time. She detached herself from the group that had gathered around her and wandered around the
Duet,
trying to be casual. Con was not with Gary and Mike, his buddies. Not flirting with Molly. Not near Beth Rose, who herself was extremely near to that camera boy.

How amazing, Anne thought. Beth came aboard with that new boy Blaze and now she’s kissing that new boy Jere. Imagine Beth Rose, on a social whirl!

Anne checked the cabin, below decks, the dance deck. No Con.

Great, she thought. He’s so mad at me he jumped overboard. (Which was actually a rather flattering thought.)

The boat reached Lincoln Bridge. It swung gently in a long slow circle for the return journey to its dock. All the shadows slid in dark slithery shafts to face the other way. The boat’s lights were bright but every rail, step, stair, and cabin cast pools of dark that changed and deepened.

Light washed over Beth Rose’s face, and then Beth drowned in the dark, and Anne could see only a fraction of Beth’s face.

A ship of ghosts, Anne thought.

“Anne, come over here!” Beth called. “Have you met Jeremiah Dunstan?”

“No. It’s so nice of you to be taking films for us, Jere,” she told him, as if she thought this was a friendly good-bye gesture on his part, and not a paid job.

Jere said he hoped she’d have a great time abroad, and asked about her itinerary.

It was less than twelve hours till her New York flight, but it seemed less real than ever. Anne said instead, “I was looking for Con.”

“You won’t believe this,” Beth Rose told her, “but he and Kip are having a race to see who can swim quickest out to Swallow Island and back.”

“I can’t hear them,” Jere said. “Probably got to the island and are out on the sand arguing about who touched land first.”

Anne disliked swimming. If she had to swim, she used only pools where you could see the bottom, the sides, and everything else in the water with you. Nothing would make her swim in Westerly River—and at
night
!

“They’re crazy,” she said.

Nobody argued.

S
OMEHOW, IN THE DARK,
they had swum apart. Perhaps it was early on, when they hit the wake of the
Duet.
Small waves, but Kip had headed slightly to the right, and Con to the left. Con was sure she was going to miss the whole island if she kept at that angle and he called to her, “Hey, where you going?”

“To win the race, dummy.”

She was closer than he had thought, but still he could not see her. Con was wasting valuable time worrying about it; in a race you had to think of your own speed and destination, not somebody else’s. He swam hard. He loved the pull of his own muscles. Con loved athletics. No matter how angry or irritable you were, if you ran hard, fought hard, or hit hard, you felt so much better.

With each powerful stroke he calmed down.

After a while he heard noise from Kip. Then she shouted, “I made it, I’m first, Con.” He swam harder but did not touch bottom. Kip splashed loudly as she raced back in for the return swim. He touched sand, staggered onto the beach, and resisted the temptation to cheat. Fully out of the water he yelled back, “Swim harder, Katharine Elliott! You’ll never win this one!”

He raced back in. It was strangely difficult to get his bearings. The
Duet
was out of sight, probably by Lincoln Bridge where the water widened and turns were easy. But this was a dark stretch of river, and the few twinkling lights on shore told Con nothing. He swam hard, but nervously. A racer without a goal in sight has no real speed.

Midriver he stopped. He could hear nothing. “Kip?” he called.

No answer. Sound carried well over open water. It was not possible that Kip had not heard him. “Kip!” he shouted. No answer.

Con tread water.

There was no splashing sound. The river was eerily quiet, smooth as oil slicks.

“Kip!” he screamed.

Faintly he could hear water lapping the shore. Faintly, too, the repetitive drone of the
Duet
’s engines. If Kip was in the river, she, too, was treading water in silence. But Kip never played jokes. She did not have a mischievous bone in her over-achieving body. “Kip?” Con said. “Are you all right?”

Molly struggled to think up a logical fiction to explain why she was wearing somebody else’s engagement ring. Blaze was already very edgy in this gathering of hostile strangers. If the girl he had just asked to squire him around town was in fact engaged to somebody who was not even here—who had not ever been mentioned—Blaze would vanish like rain in August.

Blaze didn’t want a girlfriend. He just wanted fun. A temporary companion.

What is a friend? Molly thought. Do I have to have a yearlong calendar for a boy to qualify? Does he have to include school dances to count? Can you have a ten-day friendship? Would it be a waste of time? Was friendship ever a waste of time?

She was overwhelmed by a world of school that was gone, and a new world she seemed to have no access to. Thickly Molly Nelmes said, “Oh, this! Oh, Blaze. It’s a good thing you noticed it. I had completely forgotten.”

Blaze looked at the substantial, glittering diamond. It would be a hard thing for a girl to forget.

“It’s my friend Emily’s,” Molly said. “She dropped it. I picked it up and put it on my hand for safekeeping.”

Blaze did not have a girl’s knowledge of rings to realize that dropping one’s diamond ring was a rather unlikely event. He said, “Emily? Didn’t I meet her?”

“Yes.” Molly jumped up. “I’d better give it back now while I think of it. Come on.”

What on earth do I say? she thought. What will Em and Matt say back to me? Does Matt even know?

Blaze took her hand. It was a sexless sort of thing, as if she were the teacher and he the child, and they were on their way to assembly. She yearned for the touch to be something more intense, to be far more than guidance. But what Blaze needed was a friend, not a girlfriend. Molly had been a girlfriend to more than she could count, but a friend—almost never.

How do I turn nice? Molly thought. Is it like turning a steak on the coals? Are you done on one side and raw on the other?

They found Emily and Matt alone in the dark beneath the dancers. The drums throbbed, their rhythm meeting the rhythm of the engines, so that the entire lower deck trembled. Molly’s skull trembled with it, and her thoughts jounced.

She yanked the ring off her finger before Em and Matt noticed her. Blaze was obviously planning to enjoy himself. Probably figured he would be witness to a reunion between fiancée and ring, and everybody would cry with delight and hug each other forever.

Molly, who could crash any party and split any couple, was shocked to see Matt and Emily. They were leaning on each other, and both their faces were wet, but with whose tears, she could not say. Sharing grief made them impenetrable. She could hardly step toward them. “Emily?” she said in a high voice completely unlike her usual bright, brittle tones.

Emily stared at her, expressionless. It was worse than a fierce expression. It was dead. Matt simply looked weary, as if he was worn down, and there was nothing left of him.

“I’m sorry I took so long,” said Molly desperately. “You—you dropped your ring. I picked it up to give you and somehow it slipped my mind. Here it is. I know you must have been worried sick.”

The ring was in the palm of Molly’s hand. She held it out. The circle of gold gleamed, the diamond facing Matt.

Emily did not speak, did not reach for her ring, and did not look at any of them.

It was Matt who, tiredly, took the ring and told Molly how nice of her that was, how thoughtful, how very grateful he and Emily were to her. It sounded like memorized lines from an etiquette book. How to Thank the Person Who Brings Back Your Missing Jewelry.

Taking a breath so deep it could split lungs, Matt asked if Molly and Blaze would not like to join them.

“Oh, no, thanks, gee,” said Blaze, horrified, “that’s nice of you, really, another time. Molly and I, well, we just made a special request of the band, and, um—”

“So we’ll see you later,” finished Molly, and she and Blaze stumbled away.

Tripping on each other and the shadows, they went back up, into the fresh river air, and the breeze. “What was that all about?” breathed Blaze.

“I think she broke up with him.”

“I am so glad,” said Blaze emphatically, “that I am going off to college. If I had to think of things like engagements and diamonds and marriage—” (he said this as if referring to death by dismemberment) “—I would collapse.”

“So would Matt and Emily, I guess,” said Molly. They walked up to the combo to request “Just the Way You Are,” by Billy Joel.

She and Blaze danced, but only momentarily. “I’m not in the mood,” said Blaze, so they sat.

“I’m glad I met you,” he told her. “Westerly doesn’t seem like such a dump anymore.”

Molly laughed out loud. “Believe me, Blaze, it’s still a dump. But I’m glad I’m the one who cheered it up for you.”

He talked to her about New York, and college, and courses, but she didn’t listen this time. She was remembering a plan that shot through her head back when she was following Kip, and figuring out that it had to be a surprise party for Anne. She had wanted enough time to buy Anne a good-bye present. Something really meaningful. She had had in mind baby clothes—just to remind the perfect couple of their not so perfect result.

“…because there’s so much action in a big city, and my parents liked the idea of a small men’s college, but you know how it is…”

I didn’t do it, Molly thought. I didn’t hurt Anne. I don’t know if I can actually be your basic nice person, but at least I can ease off on being your basic mean person.

“What are you doing tomorrow, Blaze?” she interrupted him. “You’ve done the river now. Want to do the golf course at the country club?”

“Don’t know how to golf.”

“You live in a climate like Arizona and you don’t golf? Sick. We have to fix that.”

Blazed grinned. “Tomorrow then. Deal.”

Deal, he said, not date.

Molly made a deal with herself. One date, one only, with Blaze, before he left. And he had to ask or it didn’t count.

K
IP ELLIOTT PAUSED IN
midstream to orient herself. Her feet sank. She treaded water loosely.

Something hard and hooked grabbed her left ankle.

Kip didn’t scream, only because she hated girls who screamed. She jerked her foot frantically and was pulled underwater. Then there was no scream because she had no air to scream with. She fought, hitting water, striking the river, trying to get free.

Every
Jaws, Jaws II,
and
Jaws III
rerun she had ever watched on television played before her. She would have no foot left, there would be blood roiling on the water, and incredible agonizing pain.

But nothing happened. Her foot remained prisoner and she ran out of air. Kip surfaced, nose barely above water, and sucked in air. Distantly she could hear Con calling her name. She had no time to worry about swimming contests.

I’m drowning, she thought.

Something is trying to drown me.

Kip tried to be rational. This was Westerly River. A flat, boring, current-free river with no menaces whatsoever. Her foot could not be moved. Kip took a deep breath, and ducked back underwater, prickling with terror, her air lasting far less time because fear took a lot of the oxygen for itself. She opened her eyes, but it was black as the sky above and she was blind. She surfaced again.

She was amazed how weakened she had become in only a few moments, her energy sapped by horror.

What is happening? Kip thought. She thrashed like an animal in a steel trap, trying to get free. Nothing happened.

She would have to get down to the level of her own ankle and see. Feel, actually.

Kip could not bear the thought of losing her fingers as well as her ankle. She found herself reconciled to going through life without her left foot, but a horror of her hands coming off made it impossible to dive down. She jerked herself backward, at every angle, but was pulled below the surface by the relentless grip on her foot.