“Demetria,” Clarissa said.
“You will do nothing of the sort,” Gehry insisted.
“How you gonna stop us?” Demetria said. “You can’t do anything. You can’t keep us here.”
“Listen, you bitch…” Gehry said.
“You have no idea what a bitch I’m going to be,” she replied.
“Stop.” I pushed to my feet, wavering, and they did stop. I looked at Darren, tearful and bloody, on the other side of the deck. I looked at his mother, cradling him in her arms, the blood from his head soaking into her sweater. She looked all too sober right now. I looked at his father, broken, battered, and crazy with concern over his child.
That was a first. Clarissa’s dad would humiliate her in front of all his Digger friends. Malcolm’s father had dropped him the second his son had declared anything that jarred with his own worldview. But Kurt Gehry, evil patriarch, hypocritical lawmaker, all-around jerk—everything he’d done had been to protect his children, however misguided, however damaging it had ended up being. And nothing had changed. Even after seeing what Darren had done, he was still fighting for him. He’d been a real dad.
No wonder Darren loved him so much. No wonder Darren had gone to such insane lengths to protect his father, in turn. The teen looked so tiny, so lost in the shadows on the deck. I remembered playing darts with him, making costumes. He’d been trying so hard to impress us all. Too hard.
“I’m not pressing charges,” I said.
“What!” shouted voices all around me. I put a hand to my head.
“I’m not,” I said.
“Amy, you aren’t thinking clearly,” Demetria said. “You’ve been drugged—”
“Nothing happened,” I said. “It could have. I’m not going to lie about that. But…” I tried to shake my head and failed. “This was a really bad mistake.”
“It was a crime!” Demetria insisted.
“There are a lot of those going around.”
A couple of months ago, I was terrified that Dragon’s Head was going to call the police because I’d broken into their tomb. And yet, I’d never once considered pressing charges against the society members for ruining my textbooks or pouring drinks all over me. It was all fun and games. Part of the package for society members. Last semester, we’d broken into Micah Price’s apartment and filled it with rats, and none of us was facing jail time. This was society culture. This was what Darren had been taught to idolize. He was just too young to see the distinction between mischievous and truly dangerous.
And maybe there was no distinction. Poe had ended up in the hospital after we’d broken into Dragon’s Head. What if his wounds had been worse? What if Micah’d had his finger bitten off by one of those rats? What if I’d slipped on the icy sidewalk Dragon’s Head had left for me and broken my neck? What if any of our supposedly innocent society pranks had gone horribly wrong? Would it be one of us trying to figure out if we could plead down from felony to misdemeanor and wishing we still had the parachute of under-eighteen to keep us from ruining our lives? Except Darren wouldn’t have that parachute, either. He was too famous. The son of Kurt Gehry was media fodder, and if he got arrested after his father’s fall from grace, given his father’s notoriety, well, he would be destroyed, plain and simple.
Don’t get me wrong, I was angry at him. Furious! And every time I thought about those terrified moments on the other island, every time I remembered the feeling of tipping over the side of the boat, every time I recalled the very large suspicion I’d had that I would not be surviving the night, I wanted nothing more than to see him eviscerated. By the press, by large, mangy dogs—whatever.
But looking at him lying there on the other side of the boat, broken, frustrated, desperate…looking at the whole family…He’d already been eviscerated. What more could a juvenile court probation accomplish? I thought about how he was fourteen, and he thought he knew everything. And how I was eight years older than that and I couldn’t even imagine how much I didn’t know.
Darren had been so wrong, but what he’d showed me was that a lot of what we did in Rose & Grave without even thinking about it was every bit as wrong.
“Amy, please. I’m begging you. Reconsider this,” Demetria said.
She could. She could reconsider it, once I told her that Darren had poisoned them as well. I took a few shaky steps past her, to Kurt Gehry, and spoke in low tones. “You’re going to fix this. Whatever it takes.”
“Yes.”
“For real. If you decide to ignore it, forget it…well, I won’t.”
“I understand.” He grabbed my hand as if to seal the bond. “Thank you.” I winced when his fingers closed around raw skin, and he dropped my hand in horror.
“I want to leave.”
Demetria was shaking her head. “Amy, please, please…”
“I want to leave.” I wavered on my feet. “Please.” I looked around the boat at my friends, but their expressions were unsure. Where was Poe? Jamie would help me. Wouldn’t he?
Except, where was he now?
Demetria sighed. “Fine.” She turned to Kadie Myer, still on the dock. “Have you used your shampoo?”
“What?” The older girl’s eyes narrowed. “No. Why?”
“Don’t. I’m buying you a new bottle. Will you take us off this island? Tonight?”
Kadie looked at her husband, who spoke up. “As soon as we can get the boat. Yes. Anyone who wants to go.”
Demetria turned to Jenny. “Can you pack up?”
Jenny nodded. “Absolutely.” She and Odile took off.
I sat down on the deck again and leaned my head back. Good. We were leaving.
“As soon as we get the boat back…” Frank was saying to Clarissa, and in the distance, I heard sirens.
It was over.
But of course, it wasn’t over. I slept through the police boat’s arrival and subsequent dismissal, but from the story that Kevin told me later, they were all too happy to get off Cavador Key as soon as they were told the police call was a misunderstanding, a “boating accident.” “Salt and Gehry put on an Academy Award level performance,” he said. “Quite astounding, really.”
“And the rest of them?”
“Stayed out of it!”
I remember getting on the Myers’ yacht, but not why it took so long, and blessedly, I don’t remember a single moment of the trip back to the mainland.
Somehow, I wound up in a fine hotel suite in town (possibly on Jenny’s dime and Odile’s reputation), cocooned inside a massive white comforter, while my fellow knights debated about whether or not to send me home to Ohio. I remember that conversation for sure. Because I remember sitting up and telling them no.
“I don’t agree with a lot of your judgment calls lately, Amy,” Demetria said.
“I don’t care,” I replied. If I went home now, I didn’t know if I’d ever come back again.
“But, Amy,” Clarissa said, “you have to tell your parents.”
I compromised and told my folks I’d been in that alleged boating accident (true) and got tangled up in some ropes (also true), and was banged up a bit, but was okay now (remained to be seen). My mother started crying, and my father begged me to spend the rest of Spring Break at home, where they could keep an eye on me. I basked in their parental love and concern, but I told them I’d rather go build houses in Louisiana with my friends, as planned.
Within a day—thanks to Odile’s no-fail detox diet—I felt back to normal, with nothing more than the scabs on my wrists and ankles to show what had happened to me. From what I was conscious for, there had been a lot of debate among the other members of the club about whether or not they could pursue a case against Darren Gehry without my consent, or barring that, if they could just leak it to the media.
The oath of fidelity was invoked quite a lot. It was my secret, and they were sworn to keep it. As soon as I felt up to the argument, I told them all about Darren’s confession to me on the island, and explained his strange conviction that everything he was doing was par for the course in society pranks.