Diana Peterfreund - Rites of Spring (Break)

“But how did you know that he’d taken me against my will?” I asked Demetria.

“Well, Amy, it’s not exactly a secret that you don’t like the water,” Jenny said.

Odile looked up. “It was Jamie. Jamie knew you weren’t about to get into a boat.”

“Where’s Jamie now?” I asked.

But no one knew the answer to that question. And I wasn’t sure if I wanted to ask them where he’d been while I was being rescued that night. Would they find it odd that I cared? And, more important, would I hate the answer?

Two days later, I was enjoying the catharsis one derives from a well-stocked nail gun in a small bayou town in Louisiana. The days were long and no one in the Diggers’ crew (who, for the purposes of the trip, were undercover as nothing more than a group of friends) was going to win any cuisine awards at the end of the week. Still, the work and lifestyle kept my mind off all the things I wanted to obsess about: the future, Darren, and Poe. I’ll tell you this: I hadn’t had one nightmare about drowning since I’d started sleeping on a church floor with fifteen other ersatz construction workers. (And only once had the memory of Poe and me in the shower house made me flush red from something other than the southern sun.)

I was stacking roofing tiles when George approached, hands in pockets. “Your tattoo is showing,” he said.

I yanked my tank top down in back, but then wondered why I’d bothered. Clarissa had been sailing around all week with her shoulder-blade symbol flying free. Demetria’s tattoo was almost always on display, but you barely recognized it in the midst of all her other ink. And still, no one had seen Jenny’s. I was starting to suspect she didn’t have one.

George looked at the ground for a second. “Have you spoken to Jamie recently?”

“No.”

He nodded, slowly. “I was just wondering what he thought about the no-pressing-charges thing.”

“Yeah, I was wondering myself,” I said, then laughed. “He’s probably fine with it, though. He’s so gung ho about our status above the law. Wouldn’t want me to do anything to hurt the society.”

George’s expression turned confused. “What do you mean, Amy? He’s the one who called the police.”

“What?”

George shook his head. “Didn’t you know? Jenny couldn’t get any reception with her battered cell phone, and Salt wouldn’t let anyone use the radio on the island’s boat. He insisted he be the one behind the wheel if we went out to the other island to look for you guys. Such a bastard. I can’t wait until we’re on the Trust board and can fire his ass.”

“But…Jamie?” I asked. Stay on subject, George.

“Yeah, so we figured Salt was trying to protect the Gehrys at that point, and we were all pretty angry, but when Salt wouldn’t budge, Jamie jumped on the Myers’ yacht and released the rope so Kurt Gehry and Salt couldn’t follow him aboard. It drifted out and he radioed the police. That’s when we left to get you.”

“And he couldn’t get back?”

“Well, docking’s pretty hard,” George explained. “Even for people who have driven boats before.” And Poe hadn’t. “Malcolm had to actually swim out to get him, I heard. By the time they came back to the slip, you were asleep, I guess. Didn’t you talk to them when we got on the boat to leave?”

I shook my head. I didn’t even remember getting on the boat. Had I brushed past Poe without even acknowledging him, without even thanking him for trying to help?

No wonder he hadn’t called me! After he went out of his way to get to the police, endangering himself and a significantly pricey piece of the Myers’ property, I’d refused to press charges.

“I’m surprised you haven’t talked to him,” George said. “Considering.”

I bit my lip. “That’s over.” More like a nonstarter.

“Oh.”

“What, does that surprise you?” I said, getting annoyed now. “You’re the one who told me he was a jerk.”

George looked at me in surprise. “Do you really care what I think?”

No. No, but…“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said at last. “Not with you.”

“Fine,” he said, and picked up a box of nails. “But you should know that I don’t think he’s a jerk anymore.”

“Thank you,” I said. As he turned to go, I touched his shoulder. “And thank you, also, for saving my life.”

George smiled his gorgeous smile. “That was cool, huh? I’ve never done anything like that before.”

“It was very, very cool.”

He walked away and I stared after him, watching various women on the crew drifting in his direction. I smiled. They absolutely couldn’t help it. Gorgeous, funny, charming, and in his spare time, he saved the lives of innocent coeds. And yes, I was completely grateful for that. But I didn’t feel the slightest compulsion to sleep with him again.

I put down the nail gun and grabbed my cell phone, dialing the number from memory. It rang and rang, and when at last the answering machine played Poe’s voice, I hung up. What I had to say didn’t belong on a machine.

“I’m never going to get the feel of powdered drywall out of my hair,” Clarissa whined. “And my manicurist is going to shoot me for what I’ve done to my nails.”

“Do you regret it?” Demetria asked, pulling off I-91 and onto the quiet streets of New Haven.

Clarissa grinned. “Not a minute.”

“You’d better get it together,” Jenny said in mock warning. “I don’t want a CFO who isn’t presentable.”

I smiled out the window. While others had used the road trip to get their futures in order, the drive up to Connecticut had given me too much spare time to ruminate on all the questions that remained unanswered. How long had Darren been spying on Poe and me to overhear our hypothetical plate-smashing plot? Would Gehry keep his promise to punish, rehabilitate, and, moreover, help his son? And what in the world would I say when I saw Poe?

As the van rolled down Danbury Road, I came to a decision. “Hey, Demetria, can you pull over?”

Demetria checked me out in the rearview mirror. “What? Why?”

“There’s something I have to do.” I saw Poe’s block on the left. “Right here.”

Odile checked out the neighborhood. “What do you have to do here? Buy crack?”

“Isn’t this graduate student housing?” Jenny frowned and Harun covered her hand with his. “Oh.”

George looked at the house. “Amy, do you think he’s even home?”

“Who?” Clarissa asked.

“Jamie Orcutt,” George said softly. He looked at me. “I’ll get your bags back to your room.”

“Thanks,” I said, sliding open the door and slipping out. My sneakers sank into the last of the March slush. I felt through the fabric of my purse for the remainder of the cylinder inside. Life Savers.

“I’m not leaving her down here alone,” Demetria said. “We can wait to see if he’s there.”

But we didn’t have to. The door opened, and there was Poe, framed in the screen. He was wearing khakis and a dark blue Eli hoodie, and his arms were folded across his chest. I waved back at my friends and headed up the path to the porch. I didn’t even see them take off.

“Hi,” I said. “Can I come in?”

He stepped aside and I entered the apartment. It was much as I remembered it from last semester. The same worn furniture, the same bookshelves and red-bound law texts, the same giant aquarium with the giant snake. Lord Voldemort, if I recalled correctly. And next to it, the smaller cage for the little white mice Poe fed the snake. Except now, when I looked, I saw only one mouse in the cage, and a hamster wheel, and a little colorful ball. I leaned in closer.