Out back, the night was quiet, steady rain hushing everything. Eureka and Brooks drifted to the white swinging bench, which was sheltered by the upstairs deck. It creaked under their weight. Brooks kicked lightly to start it swinging, and they watched raindrops die on the begonia border. Beyond the begonias was a small yard with a bare-bones swing set Dad had built last summer. Beyond the swing set, a wrought-iron gate opened onto the twisting brown bayou.
“Sorry I missed your meet today,” Brooks said.
“You know who was sorrier? Maya Cayce.” Eureka leaned her head against the worn pillow padding the bench. “She was looking for you. And hexing me simultaneously. Talented girl.”
“Come on. She’s not that bad.”
“You know what the cross-country team calls her?” Eureka said.
“I’m not interested in names called by people afraid of anyone who looks different than they do.” Brooks turned to study her. “Didn’t think you would be, either.”
Eureka huffed because he was right.
“She’s jealous of you,” Brooks added.
This had never occurred to Eureka. “Why would Maya Cayce be jealous of me?”
Brooks didn’t answer. Mosquitoes swarmed the light fixture over their heads. The rain paused, then resumed in a rich breeze that misted Eureka’s cheekbones. The wet fronds of the palm trees in the yard waved to greet the wind.
“So what was your time today?” Brooks asked. “Personal best, no doubt, now that you got that cast off.” She could tell from the way he was watching her that he was waiting for confirmation that she’d rejoined the team.
“Zero point zero zero seconds.”
“You really quit?” He sounded sad.
“Actually, the meet was rained out. Surely you noticed the torrential downpour? The one about fifty times wilder than this? But, yeah”—she kicked the porch to swing higher—“also I quit.”
“Eureka.”
“How did you miss that storm, anyway?”
Brooks shrugged. “I had debate practice, so I left school late. Then, when I was going down the stairs by the Arts wing, I got dizzy.” He swallowed, seeming almost embarrassed to continue. “I don’t know what happened, but I woke up at the bottom of the stairs. This freshman found me there.”
“Did you hurt yourself?” Eureka asked. “Is that what happened to your forehead?”
Brooks pushed the hair back from his forehead to expose a two-inch square of gauze. When he peeled back the bandage, Eureka gasped.
She wasn’t prepared to see a wound that size. It was deep, bright pink, almost a perfect circle about the size of a silver dollar. Rings of pus and blood inside gave it the appearance of an ancient redwood’s stripped trunk.
“What did you do, dive into an anvil? You just fell down, out of the blue? That’s scary.” She reached to brush his long bangs back from his forehead and studied the wound. “You should see a doctor.”
“Way ahead of you, Toots. Spent two hours in the ER, thanks to the panicked kid who discovered me. They say I’m hypoglycemic or some crap like that.”
“Is that serious?”
“Nah,” Brooks leapt from the swing, pulling Eureka off the porch and into the rain. “Come on, let’s go catch us an alligator.”
Her wet hair was slung down her back and she yelped, laughing as she ran with Brooks off the porch, down the short flight of stairs to the grassy yard. The grass was high, tickling Eureka’s feet. The sprinklers were going off in the rain.
The yard around them was punctuated by four huge heritage oak trees. Orange hallelujah ferns, shimmering with raindrops, laced their trunks. Eureka and Brooks were out of breath when they stopped at the wrought-iron gate and looked up at the sky. Where the clouds were clearing, the night was starry, and Eureka thought there wasn’t anyone in the world who could make her laugh anymore except for Brooks. She imagined a glass dome lowering from the sky, sealing the yard like a snow globe, capturing the two of them in this moment forever, with the rain eternally falling down, and nothing else to deal with but the starlight and the mischief in Brooks’s eyes.
The back door opened and Claire stuck out her towhead.
“Reka,” she called. The porch light made her round cheeks glow. “Is the alligator there?”
Eureka and Brooks shared a smile in the darkness. “No, Claire. It’s safe to come out.”
With extreme caution, the girl tiptoed as far as the edge of the doormat. She leaned forward and cupped her hands over her mouth to project her voice. “There’s someone at the door. A boy. He wants to see you.”
7
REUNION
“You.”
Eureka dripped on the doorway’s marble tile, staring at the boy who’d hit her car. Ander had changed back into the pressed white shirt and dark jeans. He must have hung up that creaseless shirt in the locker room; no one did that on her team.
Standing on the trellised porch in the dusk, Ander looked like he’d come from another world, one where appearance wasn’t subject to the weather. He seemed independent of the atmosphere around him. Eureka became self-conscious of her tangled hair, her bare, mud-splattered feet.
The way his hands were clasped behind his back accentuated the span of his chest and shoulders. His expression was inscrutable. He seemed to be holding his breath. It made Eureka nervous.
Maybe it was the turquoise of his eyes. Maybe it was the absurd commitment with which he’d averted that squirrel’s doom. Maybe it was the way he looked at her, like he saw something she hadn’t known she yearned to see in herself. In an instant, this boy had gotten to her. He made her feel extreme.
How had she gone from being furious at him to chuckling with him before she’d even known his name? That wasn’t something Eureka did.
Ander’s eyes warmed, finding hers. Her body tingled. The doorknob she gripped felt like it was heated from within.
“How did you know where I lived?”
He opened his mouth to reply, but then Eureka sensed Brooks behind her in the doorway. His chest brushed her shoulder blade as he rested his left hand against the doorframe. His body spanned hers. He was as wet as she was from the storm. He peered over Eureka’s head at Ander.
“Who’s this?”
The blood drained from Ander’s face, making his already pale skin ghostly. Though his body hardly moved, his whole demeanor changed. His chin lifted slightly, sending his shoulders a centimeter back. His knees bent as if he were about to jump.
Something cold and poisonous had taken hold of him. His glare at Brooks made Eureka wonder if she’d ever seen fury before that moment.
No one fought with Brooks. People fought with his redneck friends at Wade’s Hole on weekends. They fought with his brother, Seth, who had the same sharp tongue that got Brooks into trouble, but none of the brains that got him off the hook. In the seventeen years Eureka had known Brooks, he had never once thrown or received a punch. He edged closer against her, straightening his shoulders as if all that were about to change.
Ander flicked a gaze above Brooks’s eyes. Eureka glanced over her shoulder and saw that Brooks’s open wound was visible. The hair that usually fell across his brow was wet and swept to the side. The bandage he’d peeled back must have come off when they were running through the rain.
“Is there a problem?” Brooks asked, laying a hand on Eureka’s shoulder with more possession than he’d used since their one date to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at the New Iberia Playhouse in fifth grade.
Ander’s face twitched. He released his hands from behind his back, and for a moment Eureka knew he was going to punch Brooks. Would she duck or try to block it?
Instead he held out her wallet. “You left this in my truck.”