Clarissa dropped her face into her hands and sighed. “Where’s a gang of conspiracy theorists when you really need them?”

16. Sunstroke

Midafternoon, our club was engrossed in rehearsals for the evening’s skit, Darren had returned to the Gehrys’ house, Salt had reported back from his patrol that there was no sign of any trespassers having infiltrated Cavador Key that morning, and the Myers’ boat pulled into the slip with a rather impressive catch of shellfish. We were all surprised when Kadie approached us on the lawn. She walked right up to Demetria.

“Hi,” she said with perky purpose. “I wanted to apologize for my behavior yesterday. It was pretty inexcusable. Also, we caught a couple of snappers and as many lobsters as our license will allow, and we thought maybe we could all have them for dinner?”

Demetria looked incredibly amused, but before she had gathered her wits enough to cop an attitude, Clarissa accepted on the club’s behalf. After all: lobster.

“Look at it this way,” George said when Demetria protested later. “She’s apologizing. Extending the olive branch. Isn’t that a step forward?” He turned to Jenny. “Explain the whole forgiveness thing to her, will you?”

“To forgive is divine,” Jenny said. “Especially when it involves drawn butter.”

“Yeah,” Harun agreed. “Not that I eat shellfish. But it’s true. She’s not saying, ‘Accept my bigoted principles and join me at the table.’ She’s saying, ‘I was a homophobic bitch and I’m sorry. Lobster anyone?’ There’s a big difference.”

“And now that we’ve endured this very special episode of On Cavador Key,” Odile said, “can we get back to rehearsals?”

Sighing, I climbed back under the rank tail end of the sea monster, inwardly grumbling about being hidden from sight when Poe and Malcolm came by. Soon after, George staged a mutiny, and the whole party adjourned to the beach to relax for the rest of the afternoon. I gave in and joined them (with the stipulation that I’d stay way back on land). Ben and Harun went to coax a cooler full of drinks out of Cook, and we all took off for the nearest stretch of sand, toting reading material, sunscreen, board games, beach blankets, and a few weathered boogie boards.

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]

“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.