Diana Peterfreund - Rites of Spring (Break)

I donned sunglasses and lay on my blanket, flipping idly through a back issue of The New Yorker and watching my fellow knights play in the surf. From this distance, it even looked like fun, all that splashing and awkward balancing on the board. The water was almost turquoise in the sunlight, like the inside of a swimming pool, and looked just cool and inviting enough to counteract the afternoon heat. Maybe if I just dipped my feet in…

“Yo.” Malcolm plopped down beside me. “You keeping dry, Amy?”

“You know it,” I said. “How was the boat?”

“Awesome.” He stretched out beside me, and from behind the safety of my sunglasses, I saw Poe standing above us, shaking out another beach blanket to my left. “Frank taught me how to use a speargun.”

Poe chuckled. “ Tried to teach you, you mean.” He opened a book onto his lap, but I wasn’t quick enough to catch the title. It might have been in French. “We very narrowly missed making a slight detour to the local hospital, the way Mal here shoots.”

“Hey,” Malcolm said, sitting up. “I figured it out. Eventually.” He looked at my back, bare except for the strings of my bikini top, and pressed his thumb against my skin. “Amy, are you wearing sunscreen? You’re going to burn.”

I glanced over my shoulder at the mark Malcolm’s fingertip had left. “Oh, I forgot.”

“I have some,” Poe said quietly.

I looked at him over the rim of my glasses. “Do you want to get my back?”

He never got a chance to answer, as Clarissa returned, dripping wet and on a mission. “Did you see where Jenny went?”

We all looked up at her. “No,” I said. “She’s not down at the water with the rest of you all?”

“No,” Clarissa said. “She’s gone.”

Oh my God. Undertow. I shot into a kneeling position and scanned the shore for signs of her dark head. “Oh, no! Is she a decent swimmer?”

Clarissa rolled her eyes. “I don’t think she drowned, loser. Harun’s disappeared, too.”

Oh. How foolish of me.

“I mean, who does she think she’s kidding?”

I sighed. “Clarissa, why is this such a big deal for you? Let them have their fun.”

“Yeah,” Malcolm agreed. “Are you jealous of them or something?”

Clarissa huffed.

“I think you are,” Malcolm went on, a smile tugging at his lips. “If you had a little Spring Break luvah of your own, you wouldn’t be half so uptight right now.”

“I care about the reputation of this club, is all,” Clarissa said. “Jenny already threatened it once last semester. I don’t want her risking things again.”

Malcolm stood and swung his arm around Clarissa’s shoulders. “You know what we’re going to do right now?” He started leading her up the path to the house. “We’re going to break into the kitchen and I’m going to show you how to make a patented Cabot Cuba Libre using a recipe that, I kid you not, my grandfather got from Fidel Castro himself.”

“Wouldn’t that make it a patented Castro Cuba Libre?” Poe asked. Malcolm shot him a look and led Clarissa away.

“So what do you think is really her problem?” Poe asked me when they were out of earshot and we were, once again, alone.

I shook my head. “No idea.” But she’d always been a tad on the pissy side. Maybe she was just angry that we were harping so hard on Kadie Myer. After all, they had been friends since Kadie was a senior. [11] The confessor is pretty underwhelmed by her fellow knight’s choice of companions. Felicity and Kadie don’t rank high on her list of potential friends. But then again, Clarissa’s not the one making out with Poe.

“Do you still want me to get your back?”

I glanced up at him. “What do you think?” I sat up, slid back until I was facing away from him, and pulled my ponytail out of the way. Seconds later, his hands were on my shoulder blades, spreading the cool lotion over my sand-flecked skin. I scooped up some sand and let it fall between my fingers. “So, I was thinking,” I began. “I don’t really know much about you.”

“Yeah you do.”

“I mean, I know about your parents and stuff…but you have that whole file on me. It’s hardly fair.”

“And it should be fair?” He slipped his fingers under the tie at my back, spread a thin film of lotion there, then moved on.

“Fairer than that,” I said.

“What do you want to know?” His hands were now tracing circles on my lower back, and I was pretty sure that this was the most thorough suntan lotion application ever. “This tattoo of yours…”

“I know, I know… discretion. ” I circled my fingers in the sand to mirror Poe’s hands on my skin. I sneaked a peek at him over my shoulder and found his eyes glued to the ink. “Don’t tell me, that kind of devotion to the society gets you all hot and bothered.”

He lifted his gaze to mine and smiled in affirmation. The moment had kiss written all over it. But the rest of the club was only a few yards away.

“Let’s go have that lesson now,” he whispered, and I shivered, despite the warm Florida sun.

“And put up with the same grief as Jenny and Harun?” I asked.

“I’ll go one way, you go another, and we’ll meet up,” Poe said.

I ratified the plan and watched as he packed up and headed back to the compound. For appearances’ sake, I took the slightly longer route past the girls’ cabin. As long as I was planning a rendezvous, I might as well pause for a quick application of lip gloss. But when I reached the cabin, I found Darren Gehry standing at the door.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

He ducked his head, ashamed to have been caught. “I just wanted to—”

“What?” I strode up to him. “You wanted to what? Break in?” Hadn’t we had enough of that already?

“No!” he said, looking hurt. “God, no. I just wanted to see what had happened. Everyone’s been talking about the damage. I just wanted to see it. Jesus.” He stuck his hands in his pockets and looked past me.

“Oh, well.” I frowned. “Come on, let me show you.” I leaned past him and undid the brand-new combination lock Salt had installed on our door. Thankfully, the code was something other than 312. Salt’s devotion to all things Rose & Grave clearly couldn’t overcome the fact that Master Locks come pre-programmed.

Darren followed me inside and took in the dingy surroundings. “Wow, you guys must have cleaned a lot of this up.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, don’t kill me for saying so, but it’s not nearly as bad as what I’d been hearing.” He traced a line of paint on the wall. “You washed off the swear words, at least.”

Swear words. How cute.

“Which one is Odile’s?” he asked.

I smiled. Someone here had a cru-ush. “The one where the blankets aren’t covered in paint,” I said, gesturing to the freshly made-up bunk.

He looked at her luggage, her pillow (I resisted pointing out that she’d never actually slept on it) and the traveling clothes she’d tossed on the bed.

“Were you expecting something special?” I couldn’t help but ask. “Something other than a Samsonite roll-aboard?”

He shrugged. “Am I being a big dork?”

“No,” I said. “Just normal. I bet I’d be a mess if I met some of the politicians who come to your family’s Christmas parties.”

“That’s different.”

Yeah. Condoleezza Rice hadn’t yet appeared in lingerie in Maxim .

Clarissa materialized at the door, and clutched a hand to her chest. “Oh, Amy! It’s you. You surprised me.” She glanced over at Darren. “Hi.”

He waved back. “Thanks for showing me around,” he said to me, and brushed past her and out into the sunlight.