Diana Peterfreund - Rites of Spring (Break)

“Shut up,” he said, but he let me go.

“Darren, this isn’t a joke,” I said, my face still in the sand. “Untie me. Let’s go back.”

“My dad said they used to play games like this all the time,” he said, as if in argument. “Kidnapping, hostage situations…”

“Games?” I croaked. Okay, clearly Rose & Grave was a little different in the olden days. But I didn’t think Darren had any idea what he was talking about. For all I knew, his dad had just puffed up tales about a few rousing rounds of Capture the Flag. “No, not like this.” Nothing like this, I swear. “Please untie me.”

“And then what?” he asked.

“And then we go back,” I said. I kept working my arms and legs against each other, ignoring the pain in my flesh, in my head. Don’t think about it. Just go. Just go.

“And then what?”

And then someone locks you up and throws away the key, you devil spawn. “I don’t know,” I lied. “Just untie me, okay, and we’ll figure it out.”

No, wrong. Too much. Darren had to be the one to figure it out. He had to be better. I could almost feel his distrust.

I mean, “What do you want? Whatever you want.”

He snorted. “I got what I wanted. Revenge.”

Like The Count of Monte Cristo . That’s the last time I recommended that book to anyone. “Against who?”

“D177, of course,” he said. “What are you, retarded?”

I swallowed. My head felt worse. I was so dizzy. And the knots around my limbs weren’t budging. “Why did you want…revenge against us?”

“I thought you guys would fight back more. I heard about what you did to that kid last semester.”

Micah? “Fight back?”

“But you’re all such pussies. I can see why Dragon’s Head takes advantage of you.”

I fought to wrap my head around what he was saying. “I can’t fight…unconscious.” And tied up. Okay, my feet were definitely looser now.

“Against the pranks I pulled.”

I blinked, slowly. My head felt so heavy, so fragile. “You did the cabin.”

“And the drinks last night.” He sounded proud. “No one even guessed! That’s the part I’m no good at. Half the time, people don’t even notice. Like last night, when I short-sheeted all of the boys’ beds. No one even mentioned it at breakfast. Do you think they slept on top of their sheets?”

Likely. But I was still a step behind him. “The drinks?”

“It wasn’t food poisoning,” Darren said. “It was ipecac syrup. I read about it once on the Internet, but I never saw it before until we got here.”

Ipecac? Did people even make that anymore? Gross. Only on some backward, out of the way island like Cavador.

“That’s how I knew you didn’t get sick. You didn’t have any of the pitcher I made.”

And neither had he. So he’d been faking in his bed last night. And he’d already drugged the Diggers once, and gotten away with it.

“This is why I would join a society like Dragon’s Head instead. From what I hear, their pranks are so much better.”

Their pranks were pranks . Crickets and sodas and library fines. Darren could have really hurt us. Maybe he already had. But the more he talked, the more I doubted he’d done anything untoward to me while I’d been unconscious. He really thought this was equal to Dragon’s Head’s attacks. He sincerely believed that drugging and kidnapping a woman was no different than short-sheeting a couple of bunk beds. “Maybe that’s what’s going on now,” I said, weighing my words carefully. “Maybe the Diggers just don’t know that this is a…prank.”

“I’m thinking that, too,” Darren said, his voice as casual as if he were remarking on climate change.

“Darren,” I said. “Let’s go back. I think I’m really sick. Please? Just untie me and I’ll help you row back to Cavador. It will go much more quickly if we each take an oar.”

“I can’t do that,” he said. “You’ll have too much of an advantage.”

What? I could barely stand. I probably wouldn’t be able to row, even if he did give me a heavy, blunt object to wave around at will. Oh, God, please let me have an oar.

“How much longer are you willing to wait around here, though?” I asked. “I mean, what if they think I just ran off? Because of the plates?”

“Oh, they’d never think that,” Darren said. “You’re too afraid of the water.”

The words broke through the fog of my mind like a spotlight. “What?”

He sighed and spoke again, as if annoyed. “They wouldn’t think you’d leave of your own accord, because you’re too afraid of the water.”

“How did you know…”

“See what I mean?” he said, his voice filled with frustration. “No one even noticed I’d rigged your life jacket! You guys are such losers.”

I almost fell over. He had tried to kill me. He’d been trying since before I arrived on the island. And he was wrong—one person had noticed. Poe. And to think I’d called him paranoid.

Now I really was losing it. My hands and feet hurt from lack of circulation, my head felt ready to explode, and I was alternately fighting to stay conscious and to keep from throwing up. “Darren, do you think I could have some water, at least?”

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t think ahead. I’m thirsty, too.”

“Then let’s go back,” I said, fighting desperately to keep the sob out of my voice. “Please, please, please!” Dammit. There it was. And once I started, I couldn’t stop. My mouth turned sour, and the tears started pouring from my eyes. “Please,” I cried. “Let’s just go back to Cavador. We could go back to the crescent beach. It’s really close, and I’ll stay out there if you want. You can still…play hostage. Just, back on our island. Maybe you can write a ransom note or something…” Anything. Anything, just get me within screaming distance. No one would ever find me out here. And once we were back on Cavador Key, the chance that he’d get tired of the game and go home rose considerably.

“Yeah,” he said. “But there’s no cover on the crescent beach.”

“There is!” I said, hope blooming in my chest to replace the panic. “There’s that grove of pine trees. You know, where the ospreys are nesting. We could go there. It’s nice and thick. No one would ever see us.”

Either my eyes were starting to adjust, the moon had come out, or I was hallucinating, because I thought I could make out Darren’s skeptical expression. “I don’t know…”

“It’s a great idea,” I said. “It’s like what we’ve done in the past. In the tomb.” Crap, was that too far? Should I have said it’s like what Dragon’s Head would do? I couldn’t concentrate.

Darren seemed to weigh this idea in his mind. “Fine,” he said at last. “But you’re getting off easy, I think.”

If I weren’t so scared, I would have laughed.

“But you are going to have to row,” he went on. “I’m too tired.”

He was too tired? Rich. Still…I held out my legs “Are you going to untie me?”

More hesitation. “No, not until we get in the boat. And then just your arms.”

I didn’t know I could be more terrified. He was going to put me in a boat, tied up?

But first, he made me hop down the beach. Hop. My head felt as if it were going to implode with every leap. I practically bit through my lip trying not to scream. How in the world was I going to row back to Cavador Key if I could hardly move?

When we got to the boat, I fell into it sideways, banging my hip and knees hard against the bench. “Owww,” I moaned.

“Move,” he grunted, trying to push the boat into the water. “I’m sick of dragging you around.”