“What are you talking about? You don’t even like oysters, man. You call them snot on a shell,” Dylan says, hooting at Andy.
Andy flushes red. “And what are you talking about, Brewer? You’ve only lived on Beewick for five minutes.”
“Try four years, dude,” Dylan shoots back.
“Try all my life, dudette,” Andy says.
“I didn’t know this was a contest.”
Mason’s eyes gleam. “Whoa. Do you two need to take this outside?”
“Knock it off, Patterson,” Andy mumbles.
“No, I mean really outside,” Mason says. “On the deck. Speaking of contests, I have a way to prove who’s a true Beewick Islander.”
Dylan looks intrigued, but Andy looks like he wants to go home and bond with his Game Cube. Marigold and Diego finally look up from their deep and boring conversation to notice what’s going on around them.
“If you’re really an islander, you know the tides,” Mason says. “You should be able to gauge whether you can dive off the deck safely or not.”
Andy looks green. “Dive off the deck?”
“Hey, Mason,” Diego says. “Not such a great idea, dude.”
“I think it’s awesome,” Brewer says. “My brother told me that guys used to dive off the decks of all the restaurants on this strip every Groundhog Day.”
“It was extreme radical stuff,” Mason says. “They called it The Gauntlet. You had to dive off at least three to be a member of the club.”
“And they stopped doing it because it was too dangerous,” Diego points out. “Somebody broke his leg.”
“Which is, like, my point,” Mason says. “If you’re a real islander, you can figure out if you can do it by watching the water.”
“Listen to Diego, Mason,” Marigold says.
If Mason had been half-fooling before, now he’s committed. You don’t have to be psychic to see that he isn’t about to let his sister’s boyfriend tell him what to do.
“Let’s go, dudes,” Mason says, pushing back his chair.
Dylan stands up, and Andy has no choice. Diego shakes his head.
I look around for Zed, but he must be in the kitchen. By the time I turn around again, Mason, Dylan, and Andy are outside on the deck, and Dylan is kicking off his shoes.
Suddenly, the room whites out.
Water foaming, arms thrashing…
Panic. Fear. A heart bursting, everything bursting. Everything is red now and through the red I see a body falling through murky water.
When I return to where I am, I see that Dylan is looking over the railing. Diego is trying to talk to him. He puts a hand on his arm, but Dylan shakes it off.
I stand up so quickly, I knock my chair over. Across the room, Zed looks over.
“Zed!” I call. “You have to stop him!”
Zed looks out the window to the deck. He slams the tray onto the nearest table and starts to sprint across the dining room. The couple from Seattle look up from their wine.
I run behind Zed, but we’re too late. Before we can get there, Dylan hoists himself up on the deck rail, balances for a split second, and dives. Diego shouts, and Mason laughs, and Marigold screams.
We all race to the railing and look over. I can see a white shape under the water, but then it’s gone. Ripples are absorbed into the current. It was like Dylan was never even there.
“Diego,” I whisper.
“Call 9-1-1,” Diego tells Zed.
“Just wait a second,” Mason says. “Brewer’s laughing at us, man. He’ll come up. He’s on the swim team.”
Diego gives Mason a look that says you-are-the-biggest-idiot-in-the-known-universe, but Mason doesn’t see it.
“Come up, Dylan!” Marigold shouts.
And then Dylan shoots out of the water, screaming. His eyes are wild, and he strokes toward the beach, shouting. A wash of water hits him in the face, and he chokes.
At first we can’t make it out. And then when we hear it, we can’t believe what we hear.
“There’s a body down there!”
TWO
"I touched it. I touched it.”
Dylan sits shivering under a blanket Zed brought out from the restaurant. The police cars are parked in crazy angles on the street. A bunch of officers are talking behind the yellow POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS tape. Dylan looks as gray as the water. Clouds have formed, blocking the sun, and the wind has picked up. Mason and his friends sit with him, but they don’t know what to say for once. Every now and then, one of them mumbles, “Hang in there, dude.”
The police divers are just beginning to search when a dark-blue sedan pulls into the Harborside parking lot. Joe Fusilli gets out. I am glad to see him. Joe is a police detective, and he dates my aunt Shay, and I totally believe he will make sense of this situation and demonstrate to Dylan that he touched an old beach ball, or a sunken buoy, not a dead body.
Because I don’t want to remember the vision I saw.
Because now I know the vision hadn’t been of Dylan Brewer. Deep inside, I know I saw the drowning of that poor body in the bay.
I know it’s a man.
I know he fought to live. I know he fought very hard.
Joe looks annoyed to see that we’re there. He raises his eyebrows at me for a hello and goes to talk to the police officers.
“Maybe we should leave,” Diego says.
“Yeah,” I say. We don’t move.
I would have thought Marigold would go into hysterics—she definitely seems like a hysterics sort of girl—but she hasn’t said much, just looked out at the bay and huddled close to Diego.
“Are you okay?” Diego asks her in a low voice.
She looks up at him and nods bravely, like she was the one who found the body.
A small crowd has gathered in the parking lot. In a small town, word travels fast.
Mason appoints himself the official spokesman. He fills in the passing pedestrians and the waiters from the Crab Shack next door, gradually adding more disgusting details about how the body felt when Dylan’s foot hit it.
Most of the people have somewhere to get to and leave after a few minutes, but Joy Elliott, our town librarian, is hanging right in there, watching the cops and the divers in the water. It’s clear that dead bodies don’t spook her.
Franklin and Jefferson Ferris walk up. They are father and son and own Founders Realty in Greystone Harbor. Franklin Ferris is about a hundred years old. He’s wearing a suit, even though it’s Saturday. Jeff is about Shay’s age, and he looks like a Before picture of his dad, except in casual mode, wearing a tweed jacket and khakis. I think both Ferrises have an extreme case of If Only We Were Brits.
Joy sees them and jerks her head around, and Jeff makes the same maneuver, swiveling his head and looking straight at us, as if she isn’t there. I remember that they dated for a while, and now they can’t stand being around each other. Sometimes small towns can get really, really small.
“Look, son,” Franklin says. “Ten of our fair town’s citizens. Must be a parade.”
“Hey, Dylan. Hey, Mason. Whatssup?” Jeff Ferris is one of those adults who thinks using slang is going to make us like them.
Mason fills him in on the police action. “Hey, coach,” he says. Jeff also coaches part-time at Beewick High. “Dylan here did an awesome dive; you would have been proud. Except that he bumped into a dead body.”
Jeff looks a little green. “Dead body?” He must be thinking how it will impact his real estate business. Diego and I joke about Jeff all the time, because he lives for his work. Every time he sees us, he says, “How’s the house doing?” as though Shay’s house is a person. He sold it to her when she first came to Beewick about twenty years ago. We always say, “Still standing,” just like Shay does.
“A floater,” Joy says. She pushes her red glasses up her nose as she looks out at the bay, watching the divers. “Even though it’s not floating. That’s what the police call a drowned body.”
“Charming,” Jeff says. ??
?Thanks.”
Joy’s neck flushes red.
“What an excellent way to begin lunch,” Franklin Ferris says. “Come on, Jeff. A dozen Greystones are waiting.”
Jeff swallows, as if the thought of oysters at the moment is just about the most unappetizing thing he could imagine. I have to say I agree.
The Ferrises head into the Harborside, Jeff sneaking looks at the bay. Joy looks at her watch and heads off reluctantly.
Marigold shivers. “Imagine eating lunch while they drag the harbor for a body.”
“They’re not dragging it,” I say. “They know where it is. And we were eating lunch while it was down there.”
“We don’t need the details, Gracie,” Diego says to me.
The divers surface for the third time. There’s a flurry of activity among the cops. They talk into radios. They walk from one group to another. Joe goes to his car and comes back again.
It seems to take forever, but Joe finally walks over to us.
“You kids should take off,” he says.
“That’s okay,” Mason says. “We—”
Joe hits him with one of his level gazes. Joe isn’t a handsome guy, although Shay probably thinks so. He has a thin, drawn face and a big nose, and he looks as though he might sleep two hours a night, if he’s lucky. But he does have one terrific pair of brown eyes. They can warm you or slice you up like provolone. He used to be a detective in Seattle, and he’s got a certain big-city coolness about him, like he’s seen just about everything there is to see.
“You kids should take off,” he says again. He looks down at Dylan. “Did you call your parents?”
Dylan is too freaked to even mind that he needs his parents called. He nods. “My dad is picking me up. Was it…was it…”
“It was a body,” Joe says. He takes in Dylan’s look of panic. “The first time is hard,” he says to Dylan. It’s the right approach, like Dylan is a cop, too. “I puked.”
“You’re not going to puke, are you, man?” Mason asks, taking a step back.
Dylan shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”
“Listen,” Joe says, “I know this was hard. But the good part is that somewhere a wife or a mother or a brother is going to know what happened to someone they love. That’s going to help.”
“I didn’t think of that,” Dylan says.
“And you’ll have so much cred at school,” Mason says. “You touched a dead body, dude!”
Joe gives him a look of such withering scorn that even Mason is cowed. “Considering the circumstances, I’m not going to bust any of you today,” Joe says. “But if I ever hear of someone diving off the deck of a restaurant again, I’m bypassing the ticket and throwing you in jail.”
Just then, a pickup truck roars into the parking lot.
Dylan looks relieved. “That’s my dad.”
“I’ll talk to him.” Joe walks over and speaks quietly to Mr. Brewer, who just keeps nodding at Joe and shooting glances out to the gray bay and then back at his son. He looks totally freaked. Finally, Dylan hands the blanket back to Zed and goes off with his father. The rest of the guys get into Mason’s car.
Zed stands, holding the blanket against his chest. “I really have to get inside.”
“Thanks for everything,” I say.
“I didn’t do anything.” Zed frowns. “I should have stopped him from diving.”
“You can’t stop that pea brain from anything,” Diego says. “Come on, Gracie. Let’s go home.”
I say good-bye to Zed, and Joe walks us to the car.
“Are they…going to bring it up now?” I ask.
“Yeah,” Joe says. “You really don’t want to be here. Trust me.”
Marigold shudders. “I just want to go home.”
Diego and Marigold get in the car, but I hesitate, my hand on the door handle. “It’s a man, isn’t it?”
“How do you know?”
Because I saw him thrashing. Because I felt his fear.
“Because you said a wife would be worrying.”
“He drowned, most likely. Got snagged on some old lobster traps on the bottom.”
“But it’s so late in the year to go swimming. We barely even swim in the summertime, the water is so cold.”
“Some do, though. They underestimate the cold. Probably happened over on the beach and the tides took him.”
Joe sighs deeply, and I know what he’s thinking. He’s going to have to bring the news to somebody, somewhere. Somebody who loved this man.
I hear his voice in my head, I hope he doesn’t have kids.
“He doesn’t have kids,” I say.
Joe looks startled. Then he sighs. “I really wish,” he says, “you wouldn’t do that.”
When it comes to Joe’s belief in my psychic ability, the jury is out. He no longer thinks I’m a liar, thanks to the fact that I ended up following my visions straight to a kidnapper. Of course the crazy kidnapper kidnapped me, too, but it all worked out in the end. But Joe doesn’t quite believe in me, either. He thinks I have “a special sensitivity” or “good instincts.” He doesn’t like to believe in something he can’t understand. Can’t blame him for that.
“See you later,” I say. I get in the car. When I twist around in the seat, Joe is still standing there staring as we pull away.
“Call me later,” Marigold says. She has already gotten out, but she walks over to Diego’s side to talk to him through the window. She leans in and kisses him. Again. I look out the window the other way.
“I’m sorry about before,” she whispers.
“We’ll work it out,” he says.
“‘Bye, Gracie,” Marigold calls. She walks into her house at last. Diego doesn’t pull out until she stands at the open doorway and waves again, then closes the door.
“Should I check your pulse?” I say. “Do you think you can survive until you see her again?”
Diego doesn’t even get irritated at me. He grins. “You’ll know what it’s like someday, Gracie, and then I’ll be laughing at you.”
“I doubt it.” I try to imagine myself hanging on Zed’s every word. I can’t. I like him, but really, there are limits. “So what was she apologizing for?”
“We’re having a difference of opinion,” Diego says as he pulls out onto the main road. “She doesn’t want me to go to Costa Rica.”
Diego put off college for a year. He’s working now, but he’s going to quit in February and go to Costa Rica with a relief youth group that helps villagers build houses. He’ll stay for four months. He’s been looking forward to it since he signed up.
“Why not?” I ask, even though I can guess the answer.
He shrugs. “She thinks when you have something good, you ride it out. You don’t bail.”
“You’re not bailing. You have a life.”
“She knows that. It’s just hard for her. I’ll be leaving right when her senior year heats up. The prom and everything.”
“Oh, now I see,” I say. “Villagers should go homeless so Marigold Patterson can have the date she wants for her prom.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Diego shoots me a look. “She’s not an airhead, even though you try to pretend she is. And what do you think you’re doing, flirting with Zed? He’s too old for you.”
“He’s nineteen.”
“Exactly. You’re fifteen.”
“I’m sixteen!”
“You’re a young sixteen.”
“You’re dating Marigold, and she’s still in high school.”
“Yeah, but she’s eighteen.”
“If I were you, I’d concentrate on my own love life,” I say. “I don’t criticize Marigold to you.”
“No, you just sigh and roll your eyes all the time. You make your opinion pretty clear.”
“Well, you obviously need an intervention. She’s culted you.”
“That’s not even a word.”
“No, but it’s a fact,” I say. “It’s just like you’re in some kind of weird Marigold-worshi
pping cult. You can’t admit that anything is wrong with her.”
“You don’t like her because she’s beautiful,” he says. “She can’t help that.”
“And her brother is an idiot,” I grouse.
“I can’t argue with that one. But she can’t help that, either. Look, I’m not asking you to like her,” Diego says sharply. “I’m just asking you to shut up.”
“Then you can shut up about Zed, too,” I say. This is a weird conversation. In a way, it makes me feel kind of good, because it’s a step forward that we’re close enough to tell each other to shut up. But in another way, we’re still telling each other to shut up.
When I first moved in with Diego and Shay, I was an extremely unpleasant person to be around. I was scared and angry, and mostly afraid of trusting anyone, even my relatives. I thought that my grandparents, who had been taking care of me, just unloaded me on my aunt. What I didn’t know was that my aunt had fought to have me.
I’m better now. Part of that is because Diego has been incredibly cool to me, and Shay has really made me feel at home. You know somewhere is home when you start trying to get out of doing the dishes and somebody says, “No way, weasel.” The minute Diego started to tease me, I knew things would be okay.
Diego pulls into the driveway. Another car is parked there, a beige Volvo that I don’t recognize.
“Did Shay say we were having a guest for dinner?” I ask.
“No, but you never know with her,” Diego says. “She lives to feed.”
The front door opens, as if someone has been waiting for us. A man walks out. He’s tall and handsome, about Shay’s age, with dark hair and eyes. I wonder if Shay is two-timing Joe, but I can’t imagine that, because every time he leaves, she closes the door, leans against it, and says, “I’m smitten.”
“Who’s that?” I ask Diego.
“No idea.”
I open the door and get out. The man walks toward me. There is something about his face that I know.
I begin to feel really, really nervous.
He stops a few yards away. Behind him, Shay appears in the doorway. She lifts a hand like a traffic cop. Is she waving at us, or trying to stop him?