The Island of Dangerous Dreams

“Just one more thing,” I said. “There’s something I don’t understand. Why couldn’t the judge show you the artifact here? Why do you have to go to his island? It all sounds weird to me. Urgent telephone calls, secret information, maybe even a boat slipping through the dark water at night—”

“Andrea!” Madelyn snapped. “I told you to comb your hair! No more nonsense!”

But as I left the room I could see the indecision in her eyes. I could guess that I wasn’t the only one who had some questions about the judge’s actions.

1

I strongly objected to spending a whole month of my summer vacation with Aunt Madelyn. Madelyn scared me.

She was Mom’s sister, but she wasn’t the least bit like Mom, who was—well, Mom. Mom had the same red hair that her parents had and that I inherited, complete with freckles. On all the charts she would have been checked off as average, except for ten pounds she constantly kept trying to lose. But Madelyn Forbes, in her designer clothes, was tall and very thin with sleek, black hair, narrow red lips, and deep-set eyes. When I was little I thought she was the wicked queen in Disney’s
Snow White
.

When I grew a little older and discovered Irish folk tales, I became certain that Madelyn was a changeling, left in the real baby’s cradle by evil faeries. Finally, more sophisticated in my knowledge of the world, I decided that the hospital had
mixed up records and sent the wrong baby home with Grandma.

Each time I shared my observations with Mom she’d try to explain. “Madelyn is basically a lonely person. She has—well—a little trouble in her relationships with people. She has problems, Andy. Try to understand her.”

Now, as I faced Mom across the kitchen table, I said, “Aunt Madelyn scares me, Mom. She’s—well, she’s creepy.”

“Nonsense!” Mom sighed and gazed upward, as though the proper answers for me were pasted on the ceiling.

“Yes, she is too.” I tried to make my point. “I still remember when she was here two years ago. She was gloating about some art object that she wanted for that private museum she works for. She said she would have killed to get it, and she chuckled like a mad fiend.”

“Andrea,” Mom warned. “Don’t get so dramatic that you embroider the truth.”

“Okay, okay,” I said. “She did say that, but the point is that while Madelyn was telling us about this art object her eyes got strange and slanty and glittered like those deep blue marbles underwater in the bottom of your fish bowl, and she gasped a lot while she talked, and her fingers dug into the arms of her chair. And that was creepy.”

Mom sighed. “Must you exaggerate like that?”

“I’m not exaggerating. I’m telling what happened.” I paused. “Don’t blame me. Blame heredity.”

Mom blinked. “For what?”

“For the way I describe things. The Irish are great storytellers.”

Mom tried so hard not to laugh that she pursed her lips and rubbed her chin. Finally she said, “Listen, Andy, I mean it. You’ve got things out of proportion. I remember the time you’re talking about. Madelyn was merely excited about her purchase, that’s all.”

I rolled my eyes. “Excited? The understatement of the year. I forgot to say she salivated too.”

This time Mom gave up the fight and laughed. She reached across the kitchen table to beat me to the last chocolate cookie in the package. “When are you going to grow up?” she asked.

“I am grown up. I’m seventeen. I’m old enough to get a job this summer, not go to Palm Beach to visit Aunt Madelyn.”

Mom gulped down the last crumb of cookie and her eyes became serious. “If you’re so grown up,” she said, “then let’s discuss this situation as two adults would. Your father and I are trying to—to work out a problem.”

I nodded, only too unhappily familiar with the frosty silences between them that caught me in the same draft. My dad’s a great guy, so good at working out personnel problems for his Houston company that his boss uses him overtime as a troubleshooter. Mom is probably one of the best student counselors in the nearby Bayport school district, known for getting a lot of kids back on their feet and headed in the right direction. They understand people so well. They just couldn’t seem to understand each other.

It’s awful to think that your parents might split up. At night I’d pull the blanket over my head, as though that would shut out all the unhappiness in our house, and try to pretend that all the smiles and hugs were back in place, but it didn’t work. I’d read the magazine articles that say kids unfairly blame themselves when their parents’ marriages break up, but even so the guilt was heavier than my blanket, and I’d ask myself over and over, “Did I do something wrong? Was it my fault?” There wasn’t anyone to answer.

Mom and Dad weren’t the only ones who were having problems. My throat tightened, and it hurt to swallow, as I thought of the differences I had had with Rick, differences that became arguments, arguments that had suddenly turned into a final good-bye.

“You have to learn to roll with the punches,” Rick grumbled at me. “The world isn’t fair, and part of growing up is accepting that fact. You’re too intense. You take on a cause and don’t let go. Sometimes you drive me crazy.”

“But if something is wrong—”

“Then let someone else handle it for a change. Like that thing with Mrs. What’s-her-name in the library.”

“She’s not Mrs. What’s-her-name!” I shouted at him. “She’s Mrs. Lankersham! And she’s worked as a library aide ever since I was a little kid, and now the mayor wants to make more library cuts and kick her and the other aides out, and—”

“Spare me,” Rick said. He gave a long sigh and I could see him deliberate, then change tactics. He
smiled. “Andy, that civic meeting is the same night as the BeeJay dance.”

I just nodded.

“So make a choice,” he said.

“I don’t have a choice,” I whispered, hoping with all my heart that he’d understand and knowing he wouldn’t. “Mrs. Lankersham has been a friend almost all my life. I can’t let her down. I promised that—”

“You made some promises to me too.”

“But—”

“I told you. Make a choice.”

I shivered, not just because I was hurt. Anger began as a hot, tight lump in my chest and exploded into sharp, red flashes. No one had the right to back me against a wall—not even Rick. “Then I choose Mrs. Lankersham,” I snapped.

I don’t think I really expected Rick to give in. I was just reacting, not thinking at all. Rick isn’t the only one who tells me that I’m stubborn. Mom has said it too. But I couldn’t help my decision. I couldn’t desert Mrs. Lankersham.

Rick stuck his hands in his pockets and stared down at the ground for a few minutes. When he looked up he had a strangely calm expression on his face. “I guess this is it, Andy,” he said.

Now I was scared. “What do you mean?” I asked him. I knew darned well what he meant, but I couldn’t believe it.

“Look, we’ve had a lot of fun together. I guess we really cared a lot about each other for a while—”

I grabbed his arm, interrupting. “But I do care! I love you!”

“Not enough,” he said.