Diana Peterfreund - Rites of Spring (Break)

This called for chocolate. I was pouring hot fudge over my ice cream when the beeps started up again. Proximity alert.

“You’re drowning your scoop,” came his voice from behind me.

“Well, you know me and drowning,” I replied without looking back, and put down the bottle of sauce.

His next words were almost too soft to catch. “I’m sick over what that spray paint said about you.”

That was unexpected. No, that was…mind-blowing. I was glad I was looking away, since it took me a second to recover. At last, I turned toward him. “There was stuff all over, about all of us.”

“They knew about yesterday.”

“Yeah, imagine that. It’s all anyone could talk about.”

“So someone sneaking around could have overheard it.”

“Why do you think it was an intruder? You know very well—”

“The campfire. The tape recorder. Amy, someone is infiltrating this island.”

I rolled my eyes. “But they’re harmless, like you said. The person who trashed the room is sitting right over there. You know it.”

“I’ve spoken to both of the Myers. They aren’t my favorite people, but they aren’t violent, either. This was violent.”

“You take an awful lot upon yourself, you know.”

“Yeah. I do.”

“What was up with the meeting today? Why were you acting like you were in charge?”

“Because I am.”

“What does that mean?”

He blinked. “I’m in charge. I called the meeting, I ran it. I’m in charge.”

“You’ve barely graduated.”

“So? I’m on the board of the Trust.”

“You never told me that.”

“Every Secretary is the year after he graduates. But I was in the doghouse all last semester, remember? I couldn’t even go to TTA meetings. Now, ever since Gehry’s been out, I’ve finally been able to do my job properly. And,” he added, “I don’t exactly tell you everything about my life.”

Or anything at all. I returned to my seat and wolfed down my ice cream so fast, I almost choked.

I’m sick over what that spray paint said about you.

Poe had called the meeting. He’d talked to everyone on the island. Even Kurt Gehry, whom he had more reason to hate than the rest of us combined, considering how Gehry had canceled his White House internship and shoved him off the TTA board. While we were busy scrubbing paint off the mattresses, he’d conducted a full investigation. For me.

George was wrong. Poe wasn’t a jerk. But he wasn’t like anyone I knew, either.

My internal radar indicated that Poe had left the dining room, and soon after, the girls followed suit, heading back to our semi-clean cabin to finish surveying the damage and make plans for tomorrow, since a yacht trip was clearly off the table. (The regular meeting had been usurped by the emergency summit, and no one had any interest in returning to the stuffy tomb that night.) I found I was too antsy to sit, though, so I grabbed my towel. “I’m going to take a shower.” My allotted daily ten-minute shower.

Clarissa looked up from the remains of her purse, which, if not ruined by the paint, had definitely been destroyed by a thorough if unproductive scrubbing. “Wait for one of us. You shouldn’t be going anywhere alone at night.”

“I’m fine. I’m just going to the compound.”

“But you have to walk through the woods.”

“Jesus, Clarissa. Let the poor girl take a shower alone.” Demetria rolled over and glared at the ceiling.

And with that, I stepped out into the night. Though as soon as I passed beyond the circle of light cast by the cabin windows, I shivered. Maybe Clarissa was right.

No. That was silly. There were no intruders. I didn’t care what Poe said about someone targeting me. Those slurs had been written about all four of the Diggirls. And I’d seen Kadie playing Monopoly in the dining hall when we’d left, so I was safe. Yet the deeper I walked into the woods, the more my ears strained for every bit of sound. Every rustle of leaves or snap of twigs. Even the sound of the shells crunching beneath my feet gave me the creeps. There had, after all, been that campfire, though Ben insisted it was more than a week old.

Nevertheless, I was practically running by the time I reached the compound yard. Yellow lights shone from all the windows of the main house, from the boys’ cabin, and even from a tiny porch light over the entrance to the tomb. Salt hadn’t turned off the generators yet, but the shower house was dark. Natch.

Inside, it was cool and shadowy, and the fluorescent bulb I flipped on was of the variety that gave out only a dim, flickering, violet-tinted swath of illumination. Horror movie lighting. Perfect.

A quick wash later, I was wrapping up in the towel when I did hear something outside the window. A definite footstep, then a few more. The door opened.

“Hello?” I called. It was just someone else looking for a late-night shower. Surely. I pushed the curtain aside and tiptoed into the changing area. Maybe they were scared, too.

I tried again. “Hello? It’s Amy here.”

A figure stepped from the shadows. “I know.”

I didn’t have time to draw breath before hands clamped down on either side of my face and I was pushed roughly against the wall. Fingers tangled in my hair, protecting my skull from the tile behind my head.

“Jamie…” I cried out, as he pressed his mouth to mine.

Poe lifted his head. “Aww, you called me Jamie.”

“I don’t have that much money left,” I said, and pulled him close.

The wall was cold against my wet back, and the knobby weave of the towel cut into my breasts and rubbed hard against my belly and thighs. The fact that, except for said towel, I was completely naked didn’t bother me at all. Poe was dressed in slacks and a tee, and I twisted my hands in the fabric of the shirt, balling my fingers into fists as if I could tear it from his shoulders. His kisses were fast and frenetic, moving from my lips to my throat and back again, and he supported all of my weight between his body and the wall. I hooked my ankle behind his knee and arched my back.

He moaned a bit into my mouth and I almost lost it, then and there. This was beyond ridiculous.

1)We were in the shower house. The very open, very public shower house.

2)We were not at the point where he should be kissing me in a towel.

3)We shouldn’t be getting to that point, ever, what with all the bickering and general not-getting-along.

4)Being stalked is not generally one of my turn-ons.

But my body responded to none of that as much as it responded to the way Poe was sucking stray droplets of water off my collarbone. I sank a bit on the wall, which put the rest of my body into a very interesting position in relation to his thigh.

Okay, this was swiftly getting out of hand. How recently had I promised to instill a moratorium on the Y chromosome? “Wait, wait,” I gasped.

He pulled away, doing a bit of gasping of his own.

I tightened the knot on my towel, since I wasn’t sure what else to do with my hands. “What the hell? What was that?”

He smiled, a smirk so wolfish that I thought for a second he’d been taking lessons from George Harrison Prescott. “I wanted to make sure. That this afternoon wasn’t a dream.”

“It wasn’t.”

“I know that now.”

“But this is—what are we doing?”

“I have no idea,” he admitted.

“All we did today was fight. Fight and make out.”