The Reaping of Norah Bentley (21 page)

“Nice reflexes,” I finally managed to breathe.

“Good thing.” He smiled. “It’s a little cold for swimming.”

“Sorry,” I said sheepishly. “Couldn’t stop.”

A wave broke right beside us, spraying us with an icy mist. I let out a tiny squeal and tightened my grip around Eli’s neck, which made him laugh.

“I told you it was cold,” he said.

“Why are you still standing in it?”

“It doesn’t really bother me.”

“It’s freezing!”

He laughed again and carried me back up the beach a little ways, out of reach of the surging tide, and set me gently back on my feet.

“There,” he said.

“That’s better,” I said. It was still cold though, now that my feet and the rolled bottoms of my jeans were drenched, and bits of wet sand were caked all over my ankles and halfway up my legs. And between that and the smile Eli was giving me, I couldn’t seem to stop shaking.

“Still cold?” he asked.

“I’m okay.” But he brought his arms up around me anyway, and pulled me back toward his warmth.

My arms were still around his neck, and he was agonizingly close now; I’d just have to stand on tip-toes, raise up just a little bit, and his lips would be touching mine. The cold was gone almost instantly, thawed by the heat that spread from under his touch. I hadn’t managed to stop the trembling, though; I was nervous—waiting for him to make the first move and I think he knew it, because he was smiling, teasing me while his hands traveled down from my shoulders, down along the curves of my body and to a stop just above my hips.

“You getting warm yet?” he asked.

“Not yet,” I breathed.

And suddenly his hands were against my skin, lifting me to meet his kiss, his impossibly soft lips, again and again; I stretched as tall as I could and he leaned down, his hands sliding up to my face and pushing back into my hair, his fingers twisting through it. I felt the corners of his lips turning up in a smile, and he drew back and watched me silently for a few seconds. His breathing was heavy, raspy, his fingertips shaking as they glided over my face, pausing over my lips and lingering there until I couldn’t take it anymore and I had to pull him back down to meet my eager kiss. He met me just as readily, his hands falling back down to my hips.

The ocean was reaching towards us, leaving a ribbon of foam in its wake that kept getting closer and closer; we might never have noticed, if it hadn’t eventually reached us in a wave that broke right against the shore, sending a rush of frigid water spilling over our ankles. But even then, somehow moving out of the cold didn’t seem as important as holding on to him, as making sure there was no space between us. So we stayed like that, as one person—both of us in-between, but together at least one definite, living, breathing, beautiful person—until the waves started soaking our clothes and threatening our balance and we finally had to pull apart. Even then I held tight to his hand, and we’d only walked a few more steps up the beach and then I was turning to him again, needing to see his face, to look into his eyes and prove to myself that this was all for real.

“How about now?” he asked. “Warm enough?”

I smiled. “For now.”

“Let me know if anything changes,” he said, smiling back.

“Oh don’t worry, I will,” I said, blushing a little. We walked the rest of the way up the beach in contented silence, stopping once we made it to the dunes and turning back to face the water.

“This is so weird,” I said, sitting down. The fine sand sifted a little under my weight, and I had to dig my feet in to keep from sliding.

“What’s weird?” The sand shifted some more as he sat down beside me.

“I didn’t even really want to come here,” I said. “But now…now I don’t want to leave.”

He was quiet for a minute, his gaze drifting towards the tiny stick-figure of the pier in the distance, and then he asked,

“Why did you come here, if you didn’t want to?”

“You said it last night.”

“Said what?”

“That we would face things in the morning.” I shrugged. “And I figured I had to start somewhere, so here we are.”

“The ocean is a big place to start.”

“I was hoping everything else I had to face would seem small in comparison.”

He looked thoughtful for a moment. “And does it?” he asked.

I frowned and shook my head, picking at a twig of driftwood sticking out of the sand. “That’s why I don’t want to leave, I guess. At least here…at least I know I can face this, now.”

He nodded once and then got to his feet.

“Be right back,” he said.

“What are you doing?”

He didn’t answer; he was already halfway to the water, his eyes trained on the ground and searching. He walked back and forth, bending down and picking things up every once in a while, then tossing them in the ocean and continuing his search. After a few minutes, he finally walked back to me, holding something in his clenched hand.

“Here,” he said, taking my hand and dropping a smooth piece of sea glass into my palm. It was beautiful—a smoky amethyst color, with almost perfectly rounded corners. “You can take a piece of this place with you,” he said. “A reminder of things conquered.”

I stared at the glass, unable to speak or move for a long time. Then my fingers curled over it, and I clutched it close to me, took my other hand and laid it on top too— like I was guarding a diamond instead of a piece of trash the ocean just happened to have tumbled and shaped into something beautiful.

“Thank you,” I said.

“You’re welcome.”

I squeezed my hand a little tighter, smiled at the warm weight of the glass in its center. Eli sat down beside me again.

“Hey,” I said, leaning against him.

“Yeah?” “It’s getting kind of cold again.”

Rachel pounced the second I walked into class Monday morning.

“Did you talk to him?”

I hadn’t even set my stuff down yet, and I didn’t answer right away; instead, I focused on sliding my book bag off my shoulders as slowly as I possibly could, on making eye contact and smiling a hello at our art teacher, Miss Neely. She smiled back, but didn’t stick around long enough for me to use her as a distraction; there was a loud crash from the supply closet before I even got a chance to ask her how she was doing today. Without another glance at me she hurried towards it, muttering to herself, her tie-dye skirt fluttering around her ankles.

“Earth to Norah?”

I reluctantly turned around. “What?”

“I asked you if you talked to Luke.”

“…Not exactly.”

“What do you mean, not exactly?”

I glanced around the mostly still-empty classroom and sighed. All of a sudden, I found myself really wishing Rachel and me hadn’t decided to take every class together this year. And this class, especially—because Luke was in here too. He had a habit of skipping it though, so maybe I’d get lucky and he’d decide to sleep in this morning.

“I left him a voicemail last night,” I said, scraping at a bit of dried paint on the table. “Does that count?”

“A voicemail? What, did he not answer?”

“Nope.” The part I didn’t tell her was how I’d waited until as late as I could on Sunday to call, hoping he’d be asleep and that he
wouldn’t
answer.

“Why didn’t you just go to his house, then?”

“Because I had other things to do.”

“…Oh.”

I stopped messing with the paint and looked up at her.

“What do you mean,
oh?
”

She shrugged. “I don’t mean anything.”

I gave her a look. “Don’t do that. Nobody says ‘oh’ like that and doesn’t mean anything by it.”

She started to shrug again, but stopped halfway and, after a quick sweep of the room, she looked back at me and said,

“Okay, fine. Let’s be blunt,” she said with a smug smile. “When do I get to meet him?”

“…What are you talking about?”

“The other guy—the other thing you had to do,” she said, matter-of-factly. “I guess it’s getting pretty serious between you two, huh?”

“Says who?”

Rachel settled back in her seat, still wearing that smile. “I like your necklace,” she said. “When’d you get that?”

My hand lifted automatically to my neck, to clutch the sea glass hanging there. Last night I’d given it to Eli, along with an old silver chain I had in my jewelry box, and while I slept he’d fashioned a necklace out of them so I could always have it with me. When I’d woken up this morning, it was lying on my nightstand beside a note telling me he’d meet me after school so we could walk home together.

“He gave it to you, didn’t he?” Her smile was gone all of a sudden. “What is the deal? I’m your best friend—why are you being so secretive about him?”

I didn’t answer right away; my hand was still clenching the glass, my thumb running over and over its smooth surface. A reminder of things conquered. Somehow, conquering the ocean was nothing compared to the thought of telling Rachel the truth, or confronting Luke about what had happened the other night.

In a few seconds, though, I wasn’t going to have a choice about confronting him; I looked up, trying to get away from Rachel’s pressing stare, and saw Luke standing in the doorway. His back was still to us, and he was talking to somebody, laughing and motioning wildly with his hands the way he always did when he was really getting into a story.

I jerked my gaze back to Rachel. “Don’t say anything to him. Please?”

She folded her arms across her chest and frowned, but after a few seconds of being subjected to my pleading eyes, she finally nodded.

“Fine. I won’t say anything.” I’d already turned away when she added, under her breath: “But
you
should.”

I didn’t look back at her, didn’t say anything—maybe because I knew she was right. I was going to have to talk to him eventually. In the meantime, this was going to be a very awkward art class.

Or so I thought.

But Luke never ceased to amaze me with his acting abilities. I don’t understand how he did it; how, while I was sitting there, sweating and getting dizzy just at the thought of having to look to him, how he could just turn around and saunter in here so easily, walk right over to our table and sit down, his smile never even twitching.

“Hey guys,” he said, pulling a sketchbook out of his bag. He dug around in the bag for a few more seconds, then dropped it to the floor and kicked it under the table before turning to strike up a conversation with the table next to us. He spun his chair all the way around, so there was no way he would have to make eye contact with me.

Rachel watched him for a minute, shaking her head.

“This is going to be a fun class period,” she muttered.

“Stop overreacting,” I shot back in a whisper. “It’s fine.”

Luke actually turned back at the sound of my voice, and our eyes met for a fraction of a second before he dropped his head and focused all his attention on digging his cell phone out of his back pocket.

“Saw you called last night,” he said, holding it up to me, but staring at the space between me and Rachel.

“Yeah.”

“I was already asleep.”

“Sorry it was so late. I was…I had a lot going on yesterday.”

“It’s okay.” He shrugged. “You didn’t need anything important, did you?”

His indifferent tone annoyed me—even though I knew it was just part of his act, and I knew it wasn’t going to solve anything if I played along with him. But I did it anyway.

“No,” I said. “It wasn’t important at all.” I tried to make my voice as cold as his, but mostly it was just quiet, disgusted. I shuffled uncomfortably in my chair, while Luke suddenly became incredibly interested in his phone. After a few seconds of loaded silence, Rachel cleared her throat.

“Were you asleep when I called, too?” she asked. And I said a silent prayer of thanks for my best friend’s uncanny ability to direct every conversation back to herself.

“Nope. I was just ignoring you,” Luke said. He stopped messing with the phone long enough to shoot Rachel a grin, and she replied by sticking her tongue out at him.

“I left a message with your grandma,” she said.

“Which I never got.” He shook his head. “You know how my grandma is—she probably got halfway through writing your message and then remembered the other half of her grocery list and started writing it down instead.” He held up his hand and pretended to write on it. “Remember to tell Luke to call—bread, eggs, prune juice, mil—”

“Okay, I get it,” Rachel said. “I was just calling to see if Parker made it home okay and everything.”

“He’s fine.”

“Well I know that
now
,” she said. “I talked to him this morning.”

“So he told you what a great car ride we shared, then?”

“What are you talking about?”

He grinned. “About how the bastard puked all over my car on the way home,” he said.