Vivian Divine Is Dead (13 page)

Chapter Nineteen

I
CAN’T BELIEVE MY EYES
. I’ve never been so happy to see someone in my life. I blink and pinch myself, in case he’s an illusion, but he doesn’t go away. He floats a little closer, his tiny wooden boat barely big enough for him.

I want to run, to dive into his arms, but I’m afraid to attract attention. So I walk slowly, casually, and climb into the boat beside him. The wooden bench is damp under my thighs, but I hardly notice. We’re only inches away, his skin radiating heat near my skin.

“You’re alive.” Adrenaline races through my body, quivering every inch of me. I want to trace my finger up his arm, over his shoulders, up his neck, onto his lips . . .

“I am now,” Nick says, and smiles a heartbreaking grin. I glance down at the lake, watching how the kerosene lamp throws his reflection in the water, my blush too bright to look him in the eyes.

“Where’d you get this boat?”

“Borrowed it.”

I don’t care if he stole it. He’s here. With me.

“How’d you get here?”

“Long story,” Nick says.

“Me too,” I sigh, finally drawing my eyes up to his. “I’m just glad you’re not hurt.” I don’t want to tear my eyes from his ever again.
He could’ve been killed because of me.
But he wasn’t, and now he’s here, and I’m never letting him go. And by the way he’s looking at me, I don’t think he wants to let me go either.

“I’ve been so scared,” Nick says. “I was afraid that you—”

“Ines?” Isabel calls. She’s on the dock, two tickets in her hand. Her bags sag around her feet, apples leaking out the sides. She looks so helpless, standing there alone, her eyes roaming over the dozens of crowded boats.

“I’ll be right back,” I say to Nick as I climb out of the boat, leaving my mask on the bench beside him. “Isabel!” I call over the crowd. She turns and looks at me as I jog up to her, her face tight with worry.

“Where have you been?”

“Remember the friend I told you about? The one who helped me when my bag was stolen?”

“Sí
.
”
Isabel nods, her voice heavy with confusion.

“He’s here! I just want to ride over to the island with him,” I say. “I’ll meet you on the dock, I promise.”

“Too crowded. We’ll never find each other there,” Isabel says. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

I nod.
Her concern would be sweet any other time, but now I just want to get back to Nick.

“Okay,” she says. “Just meet me at the entrance to the cemetery. I’ll be easy to find.” She gestures to her bright purple dress.

“I’ll be there,” I say.
With Roberto, after I find him on the dock.

“I understand,” she says, glancing at Nick’s boat. He’s looking out at the lake, his back to us. She squeezes my hand. “It’s always about a boy, isn’t it?”

As Isabel turns and hands her ticket to a boat conductor, I nod, trying to contain my smile.
I can ride with Nick. She’s so cool! Mary would have totally broken his arm and dragged him screaming from the boat by now.

After Isabel waves, I sprint back to Nick’s boat and jump in. The boat rocks under us, the oars knocking lightly against the side, but I’m not scared. I have Nick back, and we’ll find Roberto together. Maybe Nick can even help me find out what Marcos knows about Mom’s death—if he knows anything at all.

As Nick rows us into the lake, weaving in and out of boats, I watch Isabel’s boat float away, and soon we look like everyone else in the dark night: a small wooden boat among hundreds of small wooden boats.

I watch the stern slice through the dark water, the oars bringing up blackness and dumping it, again and again. There’s so much I want to ask Nick, but I don’t know where to start.

“What are you thinking about?” he asks, staring at the disappearing and reappearing wooden oars.

“Nick? After we found the, you know, body,” I say, “what happened to you?”

He pulls his gaze from the water. I notice, for the first time, that he looks beat-up and exhausted. “I don’t remember much. I know someone knocked me out.”

How terrifying.
My hand automatically reaches for his arm. I let my fingers rest on his damp skin, feeling the electricity move between us.

“I’m not sure how long I was out, but the next thing I knew, I was on the side of the road. And I got this.”

Nick pulls the hair off his forehead. At his hairline is a deep purple bruise, crusted around the edges with dried blood.
It’s my fault. He could’ve been killed because of me.
I touch his bruise lightly, but he still winces.

“Does it hurt?”

He shakes his head. “Not much.”

I level him with my gaze, my eyebrows lifting in disbelief. He tries to look away, but there’s something between us, an invisible magnet, and he’s drawn back to me again.

“Maybe a little,” he admits.

I smile at him on the outside, but inside I’m cursing at myself for getting him involved in something so dangerous.
Why did I have to meet Nick now, of all times? When just being around me could have gotten him killed?

“So how’d you get here?” I ask, trying to keep the conversation away from me.

“I hitchhiked,” he says, “hoping you’d made it here. I’ve been so worried about you.”

“Me too. About you, I mean.” I blush in the timid darkness. I want to tell him that I missed him every moment I was away from him, but I don’t.

“What happened to you?” Nick asks, his voice so concerned it makes me want to cry.

Should I tell him that I’m not the girl I say I am; that there’s someone who wants me dead, and almost killed him instead? Will he blame me?
I glance at the wound on his forehead.
It’s not worth taking the chance.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I say. “Not now.”

Nick nods and rows the boat farther into the lake. When we’re far enough away from shore, and the land looks like a thousand twinkling fireflies, he rows us into a small rock cove. Nestled into a pocket of trees dripping with moss, I feel completely hidden from the world. Nick rests the oars on the edge of the boat, lowers the anchor, and blows out the kerosene lamp.

“I have to admit something,” Nick says, and I wonder if it is anything compared to what I’d have to admit, if I had the courage to do so. “When I met you on the bus, I thought you were just another rich American,” he continues. “But you’re not. You’re . . . different.” Nick reaches for my hand, and I’m surprised by how soft his hand is, and how the warmth of his skin seeps into mine. “I think that ex-boyfriend of yours was a real fool, to let someone like you go,” he says.

“Someone like me?”

“You may be all gristle, but you’re pretty and kind and, um . . . a good listener, too.”

Wow! Nicks thinks I’m pretty and kind and . . . what was the other one?

“I promised I’d get you here to meet your uncle, but I failed,” Nick continues. “You could have died—”

I put my finger on his lips. “Shhhh . . .” I can feel the water rocking the boat beneath us. It feels unreal for a moment: Marcos, Scars, everything.

Everything but Nick.

“When nobody’s watching,” I say, “you’re actually pretty sweet.”

“Nobody can see us here,” he whispers.

I’ve never been so glad to be invisible. I feel the strong muscles in his arms, the soft skin under his wrists. He sighs and runs his hand through my hair and down my arm, and then his fingers slide between mine.

The silence between us is as comfortable as my own skin. We wrap ourselves in it. His touch is so soft it feels like wind coming off the water. His scent—sweat, earth, and sunshine—tangles up with the smell of wet wood, and I close my eyes and breathe it in. I lean back against him, his hard chest holding us both up in the blackness of the boat.

I’m not sure how long we float there, in the safe, quiet darkness. I just know there’s no place else I want to be. And I even start to believe a lie: that nobody can hurt me when he’s around.

Drifting in the darkness, all I can see are the stars above me, below me, and inside of me. Make that exploding stars. Because he does just what he did in my dream: he turns me around and traces my lips with his fingertips. Then he leans into me, and I become his kiss.

When he becomes such a part of me that I can’t remember my lips without his, he strips down to his boxers and slides into the black water.

“Ines,” Nick whispers, only his eyes visible in the darkness.

My dress comes off easier than I had imagined, making me grateful for the dark night between us. I wait until his back is turned, and then I wrap the yarn bundle with Mom’s earring in my dress and slip into the cold water, welcoming it around my fevered skin. Alone with Nick in the chilly darkness, the rest of the world seems so far away.

I breathe in deeply, filling my lungs with air. My body is tiny, weightless. I feel like I’m floating through outer space, circling the planets, unattached to anything. Water flows through the spaces between my limbs; when they touch, they feel like silk.

He is floating near me; I can feel the heat of his body. He ripples through the water around me until we are touching, palm to palm, then cheek to cheek. We are the only people in the world.

I want to stay here forever, but my legs are already starting to get tired from treading water. He puts his arms around my waist, his fingers pressing against the band of my silk panties.

“
Tranquilo
,” he says. I let my whole body relax. As I float on top of the water, my skin an impossible white in the moonlight, I let myself melt into his arms, and, for the first time since Mom died, I feel some of the ice crack inside me. Warmth flows through my chest, softening parts of me I thought I’d never feel again. That tiny flame, the one I felt in the field of butterflies, flickers more brightly, and I remember, for a brief second, what it felt like to be happy.

I lean back in his arms, and my chest feels lighter, as if part of the sadness that has been locked up in my body is pooling in the edges of my fingertips and toes, and drifting away, into the water.

I inhale slowly, and as my chest inflates, I let myself float on top of the water, and then I exhale, and let myself sink again, Nick’s arms holding me the whole time.

Then the thought comes. But I don’t think it. It flows through me, mixing with the water, until I can’t tell if I’m inside or outside my body.
This is what love feels like.

I want to lie in Nick’s arms forever, but lake water is splashing into my mouth, so I exhale fully and let my legs sink into the water until we’re chest to chest. Nick wraps one arm around me and pulls my body tightly to his. He runs his other hand down my body, feeling the curve of my breasts, my waist . . . I gulp in breath. He presses me up against the boat, his free hand grasping my hair. Against me, Nick’s body is hard where mine is soft, and I almost groan aloud as his lips press against mine. I feel like I am part of him as I wrap my legs around his waist, only my thin silk panties between us. I suck on his lower lip, and he kisses up and down my neck, my back arching with the pleasure of it.

Then a wave crashes over both of our heads, and we look up as a speedboat zips by, drenching us in its wake. The driver doesn’t see us, but a blush spreads over my face anyway.

“We should probably go,” I whisper.

“Just one more,” Nick whispers back.

The last kiss is even better than the first.

Chapter Twenty

I
DON’T KNOW HOW LONG
we floated there, our bodies wrapped around each other, my heart melting into his until we were one being under the stars. Now, wearing my damp dress, with Mom’s earring securely in my bra, I feel my cheeks blush with pleasure as I watch Nick’s shadow on the water, rowing us to shore.

As we get closer to the dock, the smell of fish gets stronger. Above our heads, seagulls shriek as they fight for fish and a mariachi band strums five dueling guitars on the crowded dock. A line of vendors’ voices compete with the guitars, their carts stacked high with sugar skulls and glossy clay skeletons.

When we pull up to the island, Nick ties the boat to the dock and jumps out, holding one hand out to me. I glance down at Paloma’s mask, now wet and trampled on the bottom of the boat, and decide to leave it there.
I don’t want to hide anymore
, I think as I take Nick’s hand, never wanting to let go. A thought forms in my head:
Maybe I never have to.
Maybe I’ll never go back to L.A. Maybe this could be the new me, this wet, dirty girl with a new name and a blank past. Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad.

On the dock, my damp dress sticks to my body, and water pools in my sneakers. In front of us, hundreds of women carrying glowing lanterns climb the marble stairs up the island, disappearing into the darkness at the top.
That must be where the cemetery is.
To the right of the stairs, men in white clothing, with long braids hanging down their backs, are sitting at a small bar. They’re watching a tiny black-and-white TV, which is shoved between two dusty bottles of tequila.

The dock is practically vacant by now, so I scan the guys at the bar for a man in a cowboy hat, but there’s no one remotely close. Rapid pounding starts behind my ears.
What if Roberto left? What do I do then?
Sweat breaks out across my palms, but Nick just rubs his thumb over my skin in soft, soothing circles.
If Roberto never shows up, I can stay here with Nick, and we’ll find someplace safe to hide. At least we’ll be together.
I realize that I’ve never felt this whole with anyone before, so fully
me—
and I don’t want this feeling to end.

My thoughts are interrupted as skeleton puppets as high as my waist bounce toward me, led by an old woman holding wooden sticks. “
¡Marionetas aquí!
” a voice croaks, stopping in front of me. From my other side, kids push packets of fluorescent gum into our hands and ladies thrust loaves of bread topped with ceramic doll heads at us. The sounds of their voices meld into one long cry.
“¡Pan de muerto a la venta! ¿Compre un Chiclet?”

As they crowd closer, I get more nervous, my breath coming in quick, short gasps.

“Don’t worry,” Nick says, wrapping his arm around my waist. He mutters something in Spanish, and the vendors back away quickly, clearing a path.

With Nick by my side, I feel untouchable in a way I never have before. I glance at the shuttered white houses layered into the hillside and wonder what it would really be like to give up everything and stay here with Nick, never again hiding from the press, or avoiding the cameras on a bad hair day, or getting yelled at by a director for forgetting my lines.
Maybe Nick and I can live here forever, drinking out of coconuts and catching fish from the sea. I could be happy with that.
I’m trying to decide if I should spear the fish with sticks or catch them with my bare hands when I hear my name. And I don’t mean Ines.

I glance at the TV on the bar just long enough to see my Oscar picture flashing across the screen. I duck my head, hoping Nick doesn’t recognize me, but he’s watching the crowd hike up the steep marble stairs.

Static shakes across the TV, and then another picture of me fills the screen: the grainy cell phone shot of my dead body in the apartment, a knife sticking through the back of my purple hoodie.

“Vivian Divine
no está muerta
,” a reporter says.

On the screen, the reporter stands a few feet away from my body in the dirty apartment. Through the broken window, I can see police holding off a crowd in the street as the reporter continues
, “Y la revelación de una sorpresa . . .”

Then a gloved hand reaches out and slowly turns the body over. It’s my hair, my purple hoodie, but it’s not me.
It’s my body double. The actress who was in the hospital after the scaffolding collapsed under her.
I feel a rock sink down my chest and settle into a dull ache in my stomach.
But this time, she’s really dead.

I feel Nick’s hand pulling on mine. “Let’s go,” he says, focused on the procession of women climbing the steps up the island. “People are leaving. They’re opening the cemetery gates.”

Take your eyes from the screen. Turn away
. But I can’t. Nothing in the world could distract me (not even the sexiest man alive breathing down my neck), because Pierre fills the screen. He’s gesturing wildly with his hands, his eyes bloodshot.

“What’s he saying?” I hear myself asking Nick.

Nick glances at the TV. “Some movie star was killed,” he says, sounding bored by the topic, “and that kid claims he knows something, but he didn’t say what.”

I remember Pierre’s words as I hung from the harness, and the words that he repeated later, when he tried to stop me outside my trailer:
Sparrow and I heard something strange. Something you should know.
I was so angry at the time that I barely heard his words
. But was he trying to tell me something? What did they hear that night?
After a microphone fumble, Pierre’s face is replaced by Dad’s. He’s wearing a suit—not his normal boots and angel T-shirt, and he’s actually
crying
.

It takes every bit of my strength to make my words sound casual. “What is he saying?”

“Her dad’s begging anyone who’s seen her to contact the number on the screen,” Nick says, pointing to a ten-digit number scrolling across the bottom of the black-and-white TV. He’s running his fingers through his hair, his eyes studying me intensely. “Why do you care?”

I tear my gaze away from the TV and look at him.
Can I afford to tell Nick the truth? Will that put him in more danger, or should he know the danger he’s in, so he can protect himself?
I imagine a knife being plunged into Nick’s back.
Wouldn’t Nick be safer if he knew the truth, if he was ready to fight?
I glance around the empty dock, picturing Nick and I in the crosshairs of a gun.
Maybe it’s time I tell Nick the truth about who I am—before he gets hurt.
I hold my hand out for him to take. “Can we go somewhere private?”

We find a quiet bench at the very end of the dock, where the tip of land meets the water. Once Nick finds out I lied to him, it’s over. He trusted me, even risked his life for me, and I repaid him by lying to him about who I am? But by saving his life—am I ruining mine? I sit down on the bench and look out at the lake, stretching out the last few moments of bliss I have with him, because with me, when the truth comes out, it’s never pretty. It’s bloody, or obscured by yellow police tape, but it’s never nice.
But maybe I’m not a very nice girl.

I take a deep breath. “I have something to tell you,” I begin, unable to look at him. “This is hard for me, but—”

“It was hard for me too,” Nick says.
What the hell is he talking about?
“When I woke up on the road and you weren’t there . . .” I think he’s going to cry, but he rubs his fist in his eyes instead. “I thought someone had done something to you, something really bad, and I couldn’t stand it, thinking that I could have protected you.”

I want to stop him, I really do, but he’s saying everything I want him to say.
How often does that happen?

“I said I’m okay now,” I say softly.

“Are you sure? Did someone . . . hurt you?”

I know the kind of hurt he means. The kind that rips a girl’s soul out and leaves her empty.

“No,” I say, “nothing like that.”
Something else. Something that will drive you away from me, probably forever.
I suck in a breath and slowly let it out, trying to muster up all the courage I have. “That’s what I want to talk to you about.”

I’m hoping he’ll distract me again, maybe even use the L-word.
But shouldn’t Nick know the danger he’s in, even if it means losing him forever?

I start slowly, telling him almost everything: how a man forced me into his car but I got away, how Isabel protected me and took me into her home, how my real name is not Ines. It’s actually kind of fun telling the story, like I’m writing a script “based on true events” that have nothing to do with me.

“But the priest was right, Nick,” I finish, nearly out of breath. “Someone’s trying to kill me.”

“Who?”

“His name was Scars,” I say. “He forced me into his car, and if we hadn’t crashed, I’m sure he would’ve killed me.”

Nick stares at me, the color draining out of his cheeks. He looks like he’s been punched; his mouth hangs open, his wound shining like a branding mark on his rapidly graying face.

“Did you know him?” I ask.

“I know . . . of him.” Nick’s forehead is creased with tense wrinkles. He reaches out and rubs his trembling fingers softly across my cheek, traces the curve of my lips with his thumb. “If you’re sure he was trying to kill you,” Nick says, “we need to get you out of here, now.”

“Now? But Scars is dead,” I insist. “I’ll be fine.”
And if Marcos had Mom’s earring, he might know who killed her. I have to find him, and find out the truth.
“I just need to go to—”

“No!” Nick grabs my hand and pulls me to my feet. “We need to get back to the boat now, and get you off this island.”

“I’m okay now, remember? I’m with you.”

“But I can’t take care of you here,” Nick says. He stares at the empty dock, where the last few people are now climbing the steps, leaving us alone. “I’ll get you back to the mainland. You can hide for the night, and tomorrow we’ll go north together.” He pauses, his eyes suddenly narrowing.

“Nick? What is it?” I turn around, hoping to see Isabel hiking toward us, her smile containing questions that need answering. Or Roberto, my beacon of safety, pacing the dock in a cowboy hat, just like Mary promised he would be. But I don’t see Isabel or Roberto on the vacant dock. Instead, there’s a huge man walking toward us, a snake tattoo slithering up his face. Terror pins me to the bench.

How is he still alive?
My throat closes up, and it feels like something’s crushing my windpipe.
Scars couldn’t have lived through that fire.
Wasn’t he stuck behind the wheel when the car exploded?

“He’s coming,” I hiss, forcing the words out of my throat.
If we leave now, we can try to outrun him.
But before we can move, Scars is looming above us, his burned face a nest of squirming snakes.