The Devil You Know (9 page)

She never called him Danny in front of me. Only Dan. So I crept across the room and pressed myself against the door, listening as Dad answered back. “Beautiful girls are easier because you know you're batting in the minors.”
His words were slurry but tender. “Girls like you, Marie … most of the time you're an ordinary girl and the reasons you love me back make sense, but sometimes you shine so bright it hurts and I worry that I'll never, ever be able to keep you.”

“You're the only one,” Mom said that night. “I will tell you a million times until the day I die, if I have to. You are the only one.”

Their words were like a secret language I didn't understand until now. This boy in Lily Spring does not love me the way Dad loved my mom. Love to the point of being paralyzed without it. Love doesn't enter into what's happening here because we barely know each other, but Noah's still the same kind of jealous. “It's tomorrow,” I say. “Do you think you might ask me to run away again?”

“Guess it all depends on whether you're running away with me or my cousin.”

“Don't be like that.” This time I whisper it. “Ask me.”

“Will you?”

I nod. “Absolutely.”

His smile is a mile wide as he reaches for me. I'm thinking he's going to kiss me, but instead he lifts me up and tosses me into the deep water of the spring. I come up laughing as Lindsey ducks underwater and tries to grab him by the ankles. But Noah is big. Solid. And when he doesn't go down, Matt cannonballs off the dock,
sending a spray in Noah's face. It takes three of us to dunk him—even then I think he lets us—and for a good long while we all take turns trying to drown each other. Until Matt suggests chicken fights.

The first round starts with me on Noah's shoulders, but Matt is smaller and Lindsey's not as strong as I am, so we take them easily. Then we swap teams and I get flustered, thinking that the way Matt's hands are wrapped around my calves means something—or that it bothers Noah—and I lose my advantage. Lindsey knocks me off Matt's shoulders with embarrassing ease until I finally get over myself.

We eat lunch on the sandy embankment and, before we continue on our way down the river, pose for pictures with Naked Ed. He gives me a hug as he encourages Lindsey and me not to be strangers.

“And if things don't work out with those fellas,” he calls out as we paddle away, “you know where to find me.”

Long before Mom found out she had cancer, Dad and I would come to O'Leno a couple of times a summer for campouts. Dad would drive us up after dinner when it was still light out and pitch the old musty-smelling tent that spent the rest of the year buried in the garage. The metal-on-metal sound of his hammer hitting the stakes would ring through the trees. The sound of anticipation.

When he finished the tent, he'd build a fire and tell me stories. Ghost stories that made me burrow my face into the safety of his side. Fairy tales of evil mermaids with sharp teeth who lived in the Santa Fe River sinkholes and kept alligators as pets. And, as I got older, real-life stories about his sister, Suzanne, who ran away from High Springs and didn't come back until Mom's funeral.
Suzanne, who makes me wonder if there is a wanderlust gene in the Wells DNA that passed over Dad completely. In the morning he would cook eggs and bacon in an old cast-iron skillet right on the orange-hot firewood, and I was convinced he knew how to do everything in the world.

These days it's an event if we're both at the dinner table at the same time. And I kind of wish we could rewind time. I mean, in a perfect world we'd get Mom back, too, but even if Dad and I could just be close again it would be okay. I'm thinking about this as Matt flips the alligator kebabs on a grate over the top of the fire pit, and the dripping, sizzling marinade brings me back to the campsite.

“This smells amazing,” he says. “Just for making my alligator dreams come true, Linds, you get to pick the first thing we do at Disney.”

“I want to ride Space Mountain. Or, no … wait. Maybe we could go to the Harry Potter park first, but I've always wanted to go to Epcot Center because I doubt I'll ever actually get to go to Paris. Would it be weird if I wanted to get my picture taken with Ariel?” Until now, the total sum of words I've heard her speak since we met Matt and Noah could fit on a sticky note, but the words come out of her like she's been saving them up. “I mean, I know I'm too old for Disney princesses, but—”

“Don't hurt yourself,” Matt teases. “There's time to figure it out.”

“She's got a point, though,” I say. “There are three or four parks, so if we're only there for a day, we kind of need a plan.”

“I found an app.” Lindsey taps her phone screen, and as we lose her to technology, Noah frowns at the fire. I feel bad talking about Disney World when he clearly doesn't want to go.

“Lindsey and I shouldn't come.” I keep my voice low so only he can hear me, my cheek against his upper arm. This is a hard admission because I want to go. Disney World isn't a big adventure, but it's at least a step away from here. “We've taken over your trip and it's not fair.”

“No. I definitely want you to come.” He moves his arm around me, and I want to burrow my face into his side for a whole different reason than way back when I was with my dad. “It's just that this is getting complicated when all I wanted to do was go camping.”

“Maybe we can convince them to do something else.”

Except Lindsey's face shines in the glow of her cell phone as she GPS-tracks “princesses” or whatever it is she's doing, and I don't have the heart to talk her out of this.

“Yeah.” Noah laughs softly, as if he's read my mind. “Good luck with that.”

Matt finishes cooking the gator kebabs, and we devour them almost before they're cool enough to eat. Paddling left us all hungry, tired, and a little bit sunburned, so it's not long after we're done eating that we start yawning.

“So now what?” Matt asks. “Movies? Ice cream? Bingo? Weed?”

“We don't have an ice cream shop, and the movie tonight is lame,” Lindsey says, as she stacks all the dirty paper plates in a pile.

“Your theater only shows one movie?”

“Sadly.” I nod. “We roll up the sidewalks pretty early around here, and the guy with the weed went to the hospital this morning, so unless you want to drive to Gainesville for something to do, we're going to have to get creative.”

“Not driving,” Noah says, as he gives Molly a bite of leftover alligator. “I'm perfectly content doing nothing right here.”

“This is where one of you two is supposed to pull out your travel guitar so we can sing around the campfire,” I say. “Dazzle us with original lyrics and covers of too-cool-for-High-Springs songs.”

Noah's laugh is low and rumbly. “I don't have a guitar, and I left my trombone back in California.”

Now it's my turn to laugh. “Trombone?”

“When I was in fifth grade we had to choose between
music class or orchestra,” he says. “Since I was a dirty little ska kid who wanted to be in a band, I opted out of music class and learned the trombone. I quit after a year, though, because you can only play ‘Red River Valley' so many times before you want to hang yourself.”

“Did you end up joining a band?” Lindsey asks.

“In ninth grade.” Noah makes Molly give a high five before he rewards her with another piece of gator. “We called ourselves the Trojan All-Stars—”

“That explains the T-shirt,” I say.

“Yep,” he says. “We recorded a three-song ska EP in one guy's basement that completely sucked, and we took it around to all the local record shops and clubs. Everyone rejected us except my friend's cousin who booked shows for this one club. Our only paying gig was as first opening band for The Slackers, but we went on so early that no one came to see us and, seven years later, we still have nearly all the T-shirts left.”

“I keep telling you,” Matt says. “You offer those things online as rare and vintage, there are idiots who will pay good money for those shirts.”

“I want to hear the songs,” I say.

Noah shakes his head, but the corner of his mouth turns up. “You really don't.”

“I really do.”

“I don't have them.”

“Lies.” I whisper the word in his ear, and the ticklish
little shrug of his shoulder makes me feel as if I've discovered fire. “I bet a million dollars they're on your phone.”

He kisses me with soy-and-ginger lips as he digs into his pocket for his cell. “You win.”

He was right. All three tracks sound as if they were recorded in someone's closet. The words are mostly unintelligible, and the best part is the way Noah's trombone drowns out the singer. They're awful songs.

“God, that was … painful,” Lindsey says.

“We were better live,” Noah says, and then a beat later, “but not much.”

Our laughter trickles to silence, and I'm pretty sure all four of us are racking our brains to come up with something else to do when all we really want is sleep. Or maybe that's just me.

“I hate to throw a wet blanket over this wild time we're having,” I say. “But I'm really tired. I think I'm going to go use the bathroom and then crash.”

Lindsey stands. “I'll come with you.”

The campground is pretty quiet as we head down the loop road. A bit of music here. People sitting around fires there. I haven't been alone with Lindsey in years, and I don't know what to say to her. I fall back on something the announcer said at graduation when she walked across the stage to get her diploma. “So I didn't know you wanted to be a nurse.”

Of course, the last time Lindsey and I talked about
what we wanted to be when we grow up, she was going to be a famous ballerina and I wanted to be the girl on
MythBusters.
Mostly because I liked her hair. Even then I clearly had no plan for my life.

“I started thinking about it after your mom died,” Lindsey says.

“Really?”

“It's not like I could have saved her or anything just by being a nurse,” she says. “But I liked the idea of being there for people, you know? Doing what you can, even if it's not fixing them.”

Lindsey has always been a tender heart. She is a shoulder offerer. A giver of hugs. I've seen her bring cookies to school for her friends' birthdays. Being a nurse makes sense.

“My mom would love that,” I say.

“I miss her,” she says. “I remember the first time I came over to your house I thought she was a fairy because of her hair and because she wore dresses on days other than Sunday.”

“See, I always liked going to your house because your mom smells like bread and gives the best hugs.”

Lindsey laughs. “She does give the best hugs, doesn't she?”

“Why did we stop hanging out?”

“I don't know.”

“Seems like we just drifted, and neither of us did anything to stop it,” I say. “But the thing is, if someone asked me if I was friends with Lindsey Buck, I would say yes.”

“Me, too.”

The conversation ends when we reach the bathroom, and I don't want to talk while we're in the stalls because that's just plain weird, but I don't think there's anything left that needs saying. Maybe knowing we're still some kind of friends is enough.

By the time we get back to the campsite all evidence of dinner has been cleared away. Matt is emptying the melt-water from the cooler, and Noah has Molly by the leash.

“We're going for a walk,” he tells me. “Come with?”

“Would you mind if I didn't?”

“Nope,” he says. “I won't be long.”

“I'll come.” Lindsey hangs a washcloth on the clothesline, and the three of them head away from the campsite, Noah's flashlight beam cutting through the darkness.

“Excited for tomorrow?” Matt lowers himself beside me on the big log. Not too close, but enough that I can feel his warmth fill the space that separates us.

“If it wasn't for Lindsey, I wouldn't care if we went to Disney World at all,” I say. “But I think we're going to have a good time.”

“What would you rather do?”

“I don't know,” I say. “I guess—today was really fun.”

Matt nods. “Naked Ed seemed to like you.”

“It's a local thing.”

“No it's not,” he says. “You're just really—”

“After you guys bring us back,” I interrupt, not wanting to hear that I am really anything, “if you want weird stuff, you should check out the Devil's Chair down in Cassadaga. The rumor goes that the devil will appear to anyone bold enough to sit in the chair at midnight. And that if you leave an unopened can of beer on the chair, the beer will be gone by morning. Some people claim the can will still be unopened, but—”

Matt closes the gap and presses his lips against mine. I pull back, but not fast enough and not before my brain registers soft. Warm. Nice.

“We should, um—” I stand quickly. “We should probably leave here early tomorrow. So, I'm going to turn in now.”

“Cadie, wait.”

I don't wait because who is this strange girl who lets two guys kiss her on the same day? I mean, I believe a girl can kiss as many guys as she damn well pleases and not have to feel bad about it. She can even do more than kiss someone if she wants. I'm just not sure I'm brave enough to be that girl. Because right now my stomach is a pit of eels, and I can't even meet Matt's eye. “Good night.”

“Cadie,” he calls after me, as I hurry toward Noah's tent. “I didn't mean to do that. I'm sorry.”

Zipped safely inside, I change into the old white undershirt and school gym shorts combo I usually wear for sleeping. I mean to wait up for Noah, and for a while I'm successful as my brain plays Matt's kiss on repeat. I fret over whether or not I invited it. Whether or not I wanted it. But my shoulders ache from paddling, and eventually I feel myself drifting off.