The Devil You Know (2 page)

I realize my attitude kind of sucks, and God knows my dad works as hard as I do, but it feels like I'm always the one making concessions. Back when I was a freshman and Danny was a baby, he got his days and nights mixed up. It was me who cut a path in the carpet trying to get him to sleep, and I missed so much school we got a warning letter from the district. I get that we need Dad's income from the store, but sometimes I think he forgets Danny is his child. And that I am his child, too.

My white undershirt and shorts end up in a heap on the floor as I rummage through my closet. I have this whole second wardrobe I've collected but never really worn because I'm saving it for someday. I don't know. Maybe tonight is when someday begins.

I choose a vintage navy-blue polka-dot dress I picked up at a consignment shop in Gainesville and the brown motorcycle boots that set me back an entire grocery store paycheck. I could use a shower and I'm not completely sure my day-two bangs will pass for shiny, but Dad is still on the other side of the door, lecturing me about responsibility and family sacrifice. I've given up soccer. I've given up Justin. I'm not sure what's left to sacrifice, but it definitely won't be my night off.

My bangs get braided away from my face before I pause in front of the mirror to check out the new me. Then I roll my eyes at myself because I'm just the old me in a dress. I've never worn one for a campfire party before, and all this exposed skin will be a feast for mosquitoes and deer ticks, but I look good. Maybe even a little better than good.

I shove Justin's denim jacket—one he won't ever be getting back—into my inherited-from-Mom leather knapsack, along with my wallet, keys, and a bottle of bug lotion, and then call Duane Imler.

“You wouldn't happen to be going past O'Leno, would you?” I ask when he answers. “I could use a lift.”

Duane graduated a year ago and drives a flatbed tow truck for a local company. He was my second boyfriend for about three weeks when I was in eighth grade and he was a newly minted freshman. Even though we never went anywhere because he couldn't drive—he'd ride his bike over to my house to hang out—I thought I was so cool “dating” a boy in high school. My first kiss was with Duane. I've never told him that it was like having a plunger stuck to my face, but clearly he must have refined his technique, since Jessica Shiver is marrying him this coming Christmas.

Anyway, our friendship survived the breakup and I still have the butterfly necklace that turned my neck green that Duane gave me for my fourteenth birthday.
He's one of those guys who's okay with spending the rest of his life in High Springs, and I'm not looking down my nose when I say that because some of us are meant to stay. He's happy. Maybe more than I can say about myself.

“Where are you?” he asks.

“About to climb out my bedroom window.”

He laughs. “I'll be right over.”

I wait until the tow truck comes around the corner, then slide up the screen and lower myself the short distance to the ground. I run through the too-tall grass and climb into the cab as Dad comes out the front door, wearing his Zeus-about-to-throw-lightning-bolts face. Our walls are like paper. There was no way this was ever going to be a clean getaway.

“I'll see you tomorrow,” I call out, waving at him through the open passenger window as Duane accelerates away from the house. “And don't forget that Daniel Boone won't eat his eggs if they're even a little bit runny.”

From the driver's seat, Duane whistles, low and wolfish, eyeing my dress. It's got a scoop neck edged with a little plaid ruffle. “Damn, Cadie. You're going to break some hearts up there at the campground tonight.”

“Really? You think?” I'm secretly thrilled at the idea of being capable of breaking someone's heart. Maybe that's the new Arcadia Wells. Beautiful. Dangerous. Duane brings me back to reality with a well-placed flick to my temple.

“Don't let it go to your head,” he says. “And don't go thinking you're going to win Justin back, either, because that ain't happening.”

“I wasn't thinking that.”

“Liar,” he says, as his walkie-talkie-type phone chirps
and the dispatcher from the towing company tells him about a blown tire out on I-75. Duane acknowledges the job, then looks at me. “He's headed for Gainesville in the fall, and you'll bust outta this town the first chance you get, so there's no point to messing with his feelings.”

“He broke up with me, remember?”

“And you know why, Cadie, so don't play stupid.”

Between work, school, and raising a little brother, I didn't have time enough for my boyfriend. Truth be told, I still don't, not even with school no longer a part of the equation. I've stepped into my mom's shoes while my own grow dusty in the back of my closet.

“Besides,” Duane continues, “he's happy with Gabrielle.”

That's her name, the girl from Alachua, but I like to pretend I don't know it. Immature, I know, but it's impossible to be graceful
all
the time over being dumped. Sometimes I'm a jerk.

“I don't want him back anyway.” It's a lie. Half lie. I don't even know anymore. Seeing Justin at the store today has me all twisted up, but honestly, most days I really don't think about him all that much.

Duane still looks skeptical. “Good.”

Even though it's already a fifteen-minute drive from my house to the park entrance, he pays the five bucks so I don't have to walk all the way to the campsite, which is
a really sweet thing to do. Parked beside the ranger station is a black convertible muscle car that swivels Duane's neck. “Damn. That's a '69 Cougar.”

“It's pretty.”

“Sweetheart, that car's more than pretty,” he says. “And that one right there's gotta be worth about twenty-five grand. Probably still has the original 351.”

“Now you're just talking gibberish,” I say. “What I'm wondering is why someone would use a testosterone machine like that to haul canoes.”

Hitched to the back bumper, below a Georgia license plate, is a trailer loaded with a pair of red boats, and standing beside the driver's door is a guy who looks like he stepped right off page eleven of the L.L. Bean catalog. Dark-brown outdoorsy hair, red plaid shirt with rolled-up sleeves, expensive hiking boots, excellent calf muscles. I stop thinking about how he doesn't match the car when he aims a boy-next-door smile in my direction and my insides shimmer like a New Year's Eve sparkler.

“Hey! There's a party on the Magnolia campground loop.” I shout it out the window at him. “You should come.”

The guy gives me a thumbs-up, which could mean he's coming or he's humoring the crazy girl in the tow truck. Either way, I asked him to the party. That's what the all-new Arcadia Wells would do. Although she might have been a little more sophisticated about it.

Duane laughs. “Subtle.”

“Shut up.” I turn away from the window, embarrassment creeping warm up my neck, and punch him on the shoulder. The guy at the ranger station probably isn't into girls who bum rides from tow truck drivers, but I sure do like his smile.

“Here's fine to drop me,” I say when we reach the Magnolia loop. The Jake brakes
whoosh
as Duane stops the truck and I lean over to kiss his scruffy cheek. “You're the best. Thanks.”

“Anytime,” he says. “You know that.”

“You think you'll come by later to hang out?”

“Nah.” He shakes his head. “Soon as I answer the call on I-75, I'm going home for dinner and a movie with Jess. Besides, you'll probably be making out with '69 Cougar before too long. But if you need a ride home, or anything at all, you let me know, okay?”

“Yes, sir.” I give him a little salute. “Love you.”

He tells me to shut up—which has always been his way of letting me know he loves me, too—and then his truck rumbles away.

I follow the dirt-and-gravel road, my boots making a satisfying and badass gunslinger-at-high-noon kind of sound as I pass RVs, campers, and tents—most of them from out of state—until I reach the campsite. The fire and the party are already crackling, with people sprawled out
on blankets and sitting on lawn chairs in a ring around the fire pit. I recognize almost everyone, except for a dreadlocked hippie couple who may or may not be smoking pot.

A few people call out to me as I make my way beneath the cypress trees to the galvanized feed trough full of ice and beer. At the sound of my name, Justin looks up from the grill where he's cooking hot dogs and burgers.

“Hey, uh—hey, Cadie,” he stammers.

I nod in his direction and throw him my sweetest smile. “Justin.”

A couple of steps more and I turn to see if he's watching my ass. He is. Happy, my foot. But as I thrust my arm deep into the ice to find the coldest beer, I think Duane is right. Maybe I could get Justin back tonight (or maybe my dress-wearing, inviting-cute-boys-to-parties ego is a little out of control), but I need to leave him alone. I don't want backward drama. I want forward adventure.

I'm popping open my can when Jason crashes out of the woods, zipping up his fly. When he sees me, he gets a big dumb smile on his face. “Arcadia Wells, gracing us with her presence at our little soiree.”

“Sometimes it's good to walk among the peasants,” I say, then take a sip of beer. Being the coldest in the trough still doesn't make it taste very good. “And listen to you, talking all fancy. Seems like just yesterday you were
sounding out the words while reading. Oh, wait. That
was
yesterday.”

He laughs and hugs me, smashing my face against his shirt, which smells of campfire and weed and boy stink. “It's okay to admit, Sparkles, that all those insults are just your way of hiding the fact that you really want to bounce up and down on my johnson.”

“Your johnson? God, you're classy.”

“I know, right? Going skinny-dipping with me later?”

“If you're lucky and I'm desperate.”

He presses sloppy beer lips against my cheek and releases me. “Desperation is my favorite quality in a woman.”

“I know this,” I call over my shoulder as I walk toward the fire pit, where I've spotted a group of my former teammates sitting on a blanket. “I've met your ex-girlfriends.”

“Cadie! Oh my God, I love your hair!” Hallie Kernaghan waves me over and pats the empty spot between her and Carmen Ruiz. I sit. “It's been too long since you've hung out with us. Where have you been? How are you?” Hallie peppers words at me as she rests her head on my shoulder, something she always used to do on bus rides home from games. “We miss you on the team.”

Other voices chime in agreement, but I can't help wondering if they miss the girl or the goalkeeper, because the extent of our interactions at school this past year have been
reduced to quick hellos in the school hallways. Nobody tells you that's how it works when you're no longer on the team, but that's how it works. We're still friendly, but we're not quite friends anymore. Letting go was easier than I thought, and maybe I just miss being their goalkeeper. I'm not sure. “I miss you guys, too.”

Most of the other girls are younger than me so I don't know them very well. And when they start talking about how excited they are about their upcoming training camp at the University of Florida, I sit and half listen for a while so as not to be impolite. It hurts to think about the soccer camps I've missed. The games. The anticipation that would coil in the pit of my stomach when the action started coming down the field toward me. The conversation gets kind of painful, so I excuse myself for another beer, even though the one I have is practically full.

I'm standing at the trough with two beers I am not interested in drinking when the guy with the '69 Cougar walks up to the party. He glances around, and my stomach goes jumping-bean nervous. Should I approach him? Wait for him to spot me? Then I get a little panicked that maybe he's not looking for me at all. Maybe he's already noticed Hallie with her pretty blue eyes. Or Carmen's dark, sexy curls. Or Lindsey Buck, who is the girl most likely to be discovered at a shopping mall by a modeling agency. I've just about talked myself out of him
when his eyes meet mine across the fire. He gives me the same adorable smile as before and skirts the pit to reach me.

“You came.” Handing him my spare beer is oddly intimate considering I don't even know him, but it's only going to waste and he accepts it without a second thought. “I wasn't sure you would, given, you know, the weirdness of the invitation.”

“I've never been hollered at from a tow truck before.” The can hisses as he cracks it open. “How could I resist?”

I laugh. “I'm Cadie.”

He wipes his palm on the side of his shorts before shaking my hand. “Nice to meet you, Cadie. I'm Matt.”

Matt.

I like his name. I like the bony bump of his wrist below his brown leather watchband. I like the barely-there sun freckles trailing across the bridge of his nose. His dark hair curls out every which way from the bottom edge of his Red Sox ball cap. If he took it off, there'd probably be an indentation in his hair, and I'm pretty sure I'd like that, too. But the sum of the parts is almost too much for me to handle. He's so well made, and I'm standing here feeling like half-off day at the thrift store, and my brain just dries up.

“Are you from around here?” Matt asks, and I notice the subtle drop of the
r
sound from the word “here” that
marks him as a New Englander. Maybe Boston with that ball cap.

“Sadly, yes,” I say. “Just a small town girl …”

Matt catches my reference to the old Journey anthem and offers up his fist for me to bump. “Don't stop believing, Cadie,” he says as our knuckles touch.

“So you're wearing a Boston hat, but your car has Georgia plates,” I say, as we claim a pair of upended milk crates on the upwind side of the fire pit. I watch Matt's face, wondering if he thinks we're the biggest group of rednecks he's ever encountered, but he stretches his hiking boots toward the fire like he doesn't notice. Like he's one of us. Except most of the girls at the party are looking at him as if they're thankful he's not. “What's your story?”