Twisted Heart (14 page)

‘It’s OK, you don’t have to come with me,’ I told Jean-Luc who had got up to hold open the door. ‘I can find my own way.’

So I shrugged off the invitation to join the River Stone band and walked alone along the lake shore towards the parking lot, recalling how much I loved the water since I first learned to swim, lost in a world of my own as I enjoyed the sound of small waves lapping over smooth stones, picking out the pinkest of the pink granite pebbles, marvelling at the richness of the colour amongst the pale brown and grey.

I was on the part of the beach where the triathlon had started – a wide stretch backed by junipers and lodge pole pines that partly hid the trail leading up to the row of cabins where the Explorer kids lived. I was in the moment, back to the old feeling I had about the place when Orlando and I swam together, simply loving it.

Then Jarrold walked out from under the trees and suddenly everything got complicated.

He came towards me, hands in pockets, not looking at me but walking across my path so that I had to stop. He was fifteen centimetres taller than me and impossible to step around.

‘Hey,’ I said.

He stared at me. A breeze from the lake blew a lock of fair hair across his forehead. ‘What was in the envelope?’ he asked.

I opened my eyes wide. ‘What envelope?’

‘The one Holly snatched from you and handed over to Aurelie.’ Jarrold didn’t blink. And he wasn’t about to move out of my way.

‘Oh that. How did—’

‘I was back there, watching.’ Jerking his head towards the trees, he made it clear he’d been spying on Holly and me and had most likely been hanging around during the leaving ceremony until he could finally get me on my own.

‘It was Holly’s witness statement about Conner Steben,’ I told him straight, trying to carry on meeting his gaze. I didn’t exactly stick out my chin in defiance, but that was pretty much how it felt. ‘Are you even supposed to be talking to me?’ I challenged. ‘Isn’t it against the rules?’

‘Fuck the rules,’ he said then fell silent, which was worse. I mean, some silences are way more intimidating than any words you care to come up with.

I tried to sidestep and walk on towards my car. He let me but then walked with me, stepping in front of me again when we reached the gate. Honestly, it was like a flyweight coming up against a champion heavyweight in a pre-fight press conference, him freaking me out with his muscles and the intensity behind the grey eyes.

‘What was in the statement?’

‘Nothing, I don’t know.’

‘Yeah, you do.’

‘Ask Aurelie.’

‘They won’t let me speak.’

‘Oh yeah, I forgot.’ And so did he, it seemed. Staring up at him, crumbling under his gaze, I felt my knees go weak. ‘I have to leave,’ I said.

‘What did your buddy say?’ he muttered. ‘Did she mention me?’

I shook my head and let slip a piece of information that I should probably have kept to myself. ‘Aurelie told her not to.’

Jarrold nodded then grunted. ’Anyway, it wasn’t me. I didn’t touch the guy.’

Whoa! Did I ask to have this conversation? Did I look like I wanted it? ‘I have to go!’ I repeated breathlessly.

‘Some people think I did.’

So does Holly, deep down, if you want the truth, until something happened or she was collared by Ziegler and became a convert.

‘You want to know why?’

I shook my head.

‘Conner and I had a fight. It was stupid. But it was on the video so they got to know about it.’

‘When you were out on the mountain?’ Suddenly I was one step ahead. Jarrold couldn’t know that I’d seen the footage of the Black Crow walk, of him wrapped in a blanket – a small, dark figure striding through the blizzard. And I’d also seen the confrontation between Kaylee and Conner over the no-relationships deal. I played dumb, so I could hear it from Jarrold himself. ‘So what did you two fight over?’

His mouth twitched and he pushed back the stray strand of hair. ‘What do guys normally fight about?’

‘Girls?’

He nodded. ‘I know it’s different here, or they say it is. There’s a no-relationship rule, a guiding principle.’

‘But?’

‘What do you think? It happens anyway.’

‘So which girl?’ I prompted.

‘No comment,’ he muttered.

I liked that – the fact that though Jarrold came across as Tarzan swinging through the jungle, he had enough sense of honour to protect Kaylee. ‘Conner found out?’ I asked. ‘Your secret wasn’t safe?’

‘We fought over it. I won. Game over.’

I pictured the caveman contest on the snowy mountain slopes and repressed a shudder. ‘You won and made Conner promise not to tell? But you both forgot it would come out on the video footage.’

Jarrold shrugged. ‘So anyway, out on the lake – I didn’t touch the guy.’

I frowned, backtracked to where I wanted to be. ‘And maybe Conner did tell someone after all. That’s why Ziegler and the others made you an Outsider.’

‘I didn’t touch him!’ he repeated angrily, moving in to threaten me. ‘I dove down, tried to save him, remember.’

Did I believe him? I don’t know, but I was definitely thrown off balance. For one, I was shocked by the change in Jarrold’s attitude towards New Dawn. When I first stumbled across him at the end of the cabin trail, he’d spouted all the right phrases at me. Now he was the arch rebel, saying fuck the rules. I winced and grew more cautious. ‘It’s OK, Holly actually said in her statement that she saw you try to rescue Conner.’

‘That I didn’t lay a finger on him?’

I nodded. ‘You’re off the hook, Jarrold, if that’s what you want to hear.’ He was officially cleared by Holly’s witness statement, no longer a suspect. ‘Now, can you please stand aside? I have to leave.’

Slowly he gave way and I stepped through the gate. I picked up speed, headed for my car, relieved that he was letting me go, even though he was following close in my footsteps.

Before I turned my key in the ignition, he leaned into the car and said one more thing. ‘So if you join the River Stone walk next week, I’ll tell you the whole me and Kaylee back-story.’

I stared back at him, started the engine, headed for the exit. Did I hear that right? Had Jarrold actually invited me to join his band?

Why would he do that? What kind of sense did it make? I panicked and didn’t look over my shoulder. With a squeal of tyres over rough grit, I drove away.

My friends tell me that I’m like Holly in that I swing like crazy from one point of view to its polar opposite, and I guess it’s true – that I have no fixed purpose, no star to follow. Sorry, Mom.

‘First we agree between us – we won’t volunteer. Now you say yes you will.’ This was Grace speaking to me on the hands-free phone as I drove home to Becker Hill.

‘Hey no – that’s not what I said.’

‘I’m reading between the lines and that’s how it sounded.’

‘No, I only said Jean-Luc and Aurelie tried to
persuade
me to volunteer.’ I was stuck in traffic in the centre of town, anxious to be home and sitting at my computer, ready for Orlando to Skype. ‘And I happened to think the leaving ceremony they gave for Holly’s band was impressive. It was a native American story about searching for your spirit ally, your Weyekin.’

Grace ignored the spirit ally reference. ‘So I’m right – you’re getting sucked in.’

I turned left off Main Street on to Queen Street East. ‘Hand on heart, tell me you don’t find the New Dawn stuff interesting,’ I challenged her.

‘Do I find it interesting? Yeah. Will I volunteer? No.’

‘Why not? And before you say anything, you can forget about lining up Antony Amos alongside Zoran Brancusi. I already went through that with Orlando, plus a hundred times in my own mind and there’s no comparison, believe me.’

‘More specifically?’

I reminded her that Amos didn’t have Zoran’s strutting, glittering eagle-eyed arrogance and charisma. ‘We’re agreed – you don’t look at this serious, new-age type of guy and feel mesmerized or brainwashed. No way does he threaten you.’

‘
Trust no one,’ a soft voice in my head warns me
.

‘Except that he’s made some of the goriest horror movies in the history of cinema,’ Grace reminded me. ‘So you have to agree there’s something dark going on.’

‘Maybe not. Maybe it just means he’s a super-talented director with a direct line into the teen zeitgeist. You know how most kids love a gore-fest. Anyway, New Dawn isn’t Black Eagle Lodge and we’re definitely into a different ball game,’ I insisted as I came off Queen Street on to Becker Hill.

‘
Trust no one
.’

I had five minutes to make it to my computer before midday. ‘Got to go, Grace. Speak later.’

‘Where have you been? Who have you seen? Did you miss me?’

Orlando was thirty minutes late. I’d died a thousand deaths in my imagination. He didn’t want to speak after all. Something more important had come up – a new assignment, a new girl. But here he was onscreen, smiling at me, piling up the questions.

‘I took Holly down to New Dawn.’

‘Uh-oh, crazy girl!’

‘Who, me?’

‘No, Holly. Where is she now?’

‘As we speak she’s halfway up Black Rock, heading towards Carlsbad.’ It wasn’t Holly I wanted to talk about. It was us. ‘So how’s your new room?’ I asked.

‘Take a look.’ Unhooking the camera, Orlando carried it across to the window then back towards the desk. ‘You want to see the kitchen?’

‘No. Let me see your bed.’

‘It’s a mess,’ he laughed.

‘So what’s new?’ I watched the tilting, jerky images and made out a single bed piled high with sports bags, unmatching socks, underwear, books and unpacked boxes. I had a sharp pang of wanting to be there with him, clearing a space, sliding between the sheets, getting naked. ‘When can I visit?’

‘Tonight?’ he invited, reattaching the camera to the computer. He came in close. ‘I’ll fix up the bed specially,’ he grinned. Then he turned to someone who had just come into the room. ‘Hey, Ryan, say hi to Tania.’

A guy with short dark hair and cute, sticky-out ears came into view. He had one of those permanently smiley faces with white, even teeth that showed his parents had chosen orthodontic work over plastic surgery to pin back the ears when he was a kid. ‘Hey, Tania,’ he said to the camera. ‘I want to know – can your boyfriend cook?’

Unexpected question but I didn’t hesitate over my answer. ‘No way.’

‘Not even bacon?’

‘Unless you like it burned.’

‘Oh Jeez.’ Ryan faked massive disappointment. ‘You hear that, Natalie? Orlando can’t cook us breakfast.’

Another figure appeared on the screen – a girl with piled-high, tousled fair hair wearing tiny pale-blue pyjamas. She didn’t have much flesh on her slender frame but what she had was pretty much on show. Ouch!

‘Say hi to Natalie,’ Orlando invited.

‘Hey.’ I made the expected noise but my heart was flip-flopping all over the place. A hot girl in the apartment! How come no one mentioned a girl?

‘OK, you two, give a guy some privacy,’ Orlando told Ryan and cute, pretty, size four Natalie. He wrestled them out of view and came back centre screen.

‘Skyping’s cool,’ he sighed, ‘but it makes me wish you could time-travel and be right here with me.’

I studied his face – that killer combination of wide grey eyes and the sweep of dark hair. ‘Are you still planning to drive home with Ryan?’

‘For sure,’ he murmured. ‘We moved it forward to Thursday. Hey, why aren’t you smiling?’

‘How about Natalie?’

‘How about her?’

‘Will she come too?’

‘Sure. It means we’ll split the cost of the gas three ways instead of two. And listen, Tania, it’s twenty-four hours sooner than we thought. How cool is that?’

‘Cool,’ I said with an attempt at a smile. Oh Jeez, a good-looking girl in the apartment, in the car for the journey north. Sure, she was Ryan’s long-term girlfriend and Orlando loved me, obviously. But put temptation in a guy’s way, throw in a big dose of flirtiness, metres of bare flesh, a beehive of blonde, tousled hair …

Relax, breathe, take your time.

It was straight after the Skype conversation and I was in the garden with Dad, who was feeding Zenaida.

‘Snow again on Carlsbad,’ he pointed out. ‘Dark clouds over Black Rock, already minus three degrees in town. Blizzard coming.’ He’d learned all this from the guy who ran the gas station outside Bitterroot, on his way back from the hospital.

To prove his point there was a strong, icy wind blowing in from the north-west.

‘Holly didn’t pay any attention to Aaron’s dad,’ I said. ‘As we speak her band is wild-walking into a storm.’

‘She’s tough cookie,’ Dad assured me. ‘So no problem.’ Did I say, my father likes extreme weather – ice six centimetres thick on Turner Lake, frozen creeks, cross-country skiing? After a childhood cooped up in grey, concrete, Communist Bucharest, he loves the great American outdoors.

Breathe deep, focus on the dove, I told myself. Banish Natalie and jealousy, ‘the green-eyed monster which doth mock. The meat it feeds on.’ (William Shakespeare –
Othello
). We studied it in literature class, but I forget the act and scene.

With a whistle of wings Zenaida flew down from the bare trees and pecked at the grain on the ground.

‘How was Mom?’ I asked.

Dad threw down his last handful of corn. ‘Moving hand better,’ he reported. ‘But slow. Doctors say OK, maybe home in one, two weeks.’

The tennis club has indoor courts and I arranged to play later that afternoon with Aaron, Grace and Jude. Outside, the promised snow had arrived and Holly was halfway up a mountain.

‘Wow, Tania, where did that mean little shot come from?’ Jude asked as I whacked a forehand down the line.

And, ‘Ouch!’ Grace winced on the next point. She’d been crouching at the net and I’d missed her head by a centimetre. ‘What’s up with that?’

‘Thirty–love,’ Aaron called from the baseline, ready to toss up the ball and serve. He was my partner and keen to ride my wave of unexpected aggression.

I ran, I smashed, I grunted and squealed like a Williams sister. Getting physical is the best way to relieve stress, I find.

Anyway, Aaron and I won the set six games to three. We came off court exhilarated and while Grace and Jude headed off to the locker rooms, we two winners went to the clubhouse, bought Cokes and took them to a window seat where we could watch the snow settling fast.