Avalon High (6 page)

I thought about the little scene I’d witnessed in the hallway that day at school, and the way Will had handled Rick. It seemed to me like he was already making a difference in the world.

“I can understand that,” I said.

“Sorry,” Will said with a sudden laugh, running one of his hands through his dark hair. “I shouldn’t complain.
My dad wants me to go to one of the best schools in the country, which he’s completely willing to pay for and which I shouldn’t have any trouble getting into. Everyone should have my problems, right?”

“Well,” I said. “It kind of is a problem, if the only school your dad’s willing to pay for is the one you don’t want to go to…. Especially, you know, if you don’t want to be in the military. Because shooting off guns and stuff seems like a big part of being at the Academy. At least judging by all the noise I hear from the gunnery every day.”

“Yeah,” Will said. We’d reached the footpath by then. A lady walking a Jack Russell terrier hurried past us, clearly freaked by the fact that we had been in the woods, since she refused to look at either of us as she passed by in her pink jogging suit.

I glanced at Will to see if he’d noticed, and saw him grinning.

“Probably thinks we were in there making a sacrifice to Satan,” he said, when the lady had power-walked out of hearing distance.

“And her dog’s our next victim,” I agreed.

Will laughed. We emerged from the woods, and headed toward the parking lot and Will’s car. After the darkness of the forest, the last rays of the setting sun seemed especially bright. They seemed to be setting the baseball diamond on fire. There was a hint of smoke in the air, from someone’s barbecue. Crickets, just getting started on their evening serenade, trilled.

“Listen,” Will said, breaking the companionable silence into which we’d fallen. “What are you doing Saturday night?”

“Saturday?” I blinked at him. It was true those crickets were loud. But I didn’t think they were loud enough for me to have mistaken the question.

Because it had sounded…well, it certainly sounded to me as if Will were about to ask me out.

“I’m having a party,” he went on.

Or maybe not.

“A party?” I asked stupidly.

“Yeah,” he said. “Saturday night. After the game.” I must have looked blank, since he smiled and added, “The football game? Avalon against Broadneck? You’re going, aren’t you?”

“Oh,” I said. I had never been to a football game in my life. You know that eating glass thing? Yeah, I’d much rather do that than watch a football game.

Unless, of course, A. William Wagner happened to be playing in it.

“Sure, I’m going,” I said, wondering frantically what one wears to a football game.

“Great. Anyway, I’m having a party afterwards,” he said. “At my house. A back-to-school thing. Can you come?”

I stared at him. I’d never been invited to a party before. Well, not by a boy, anyway. Nancy used to have parties, but no one ever came to them except our other friends, who were all girls. Sometimes at my old school
a guy on the men’s track team would have a party and invite everyone on the women’s team. But we’d all just end up standing around while the boys ignored us and hit on whatever cheerleaders had shown up.

I wondered if Will’s party would be that kind of party, and if so, why he’d bothered singling me out for an invitation.

“Um,” I said, trying to think up an excuse why I couldn’t go. On the one hand, I desperately wanted to see where Will lived. I wanted to know everything about him.

On the other hand, I had a pretty good feeling Jennifer Gold would be there. And did I really want to watch Will with another girl? Not so much.

Will must have sensed my hesitation—sensed it, and misinterpreted it—since he went, “Don’t worry, it won’t be wild, or anything. My parents’ll be there. Come on, you’ll like it. It’s a pool party. You can bring your raft.”

I couldn’t help smiling at that.

Or at the friendly fashion in Will elbowed me in the side as he said it.

Oh yes. I was that far gone that even the guy’s elbow seemed hot.

“Okay,” I heard myself saying. “I’ll be there. Um, without my raft, though. It has a curfew. It has to be home by nine.”

He grinned. Then, looking past me, said, “Oh, hey. Want some lemonade?”

I glanced in the direction he was pointing, and saw
that some kids—whose small, somewhat rundown house sat on the edge of the park’s property—had set up a folding table with a large hand-drawn poster hanging from it that said
LEMONAID
:
25
CENTS
.

“C’mon,” Will said. “I’ll buy you a lemonade.”

“Whoa,” I joked. “Big spender.”

He was grinning as we approached the table, which someone had gone to great trouble to decorate with a checkered tablecloth and a small, half-blown garden rose in a vase, along with the inevitable plastic pitcher and collection of Dixie cups. The three kids behind the table, the eldest of whom could only have been nine, perked up at the sight of customers.

“Wanna buy some lemonade?” they chorused.

“Is it any good?” Will teased the kids. “I’m not spending a whole quarter on it if it isn’t the best lemonade in town.”

“It is!” the kids shrieked. “It’s the best! We made it ourselves!”

“I don’t know,” Will said, feigning skepticism. He looked at me. “What do you think?”

I shrugged. “Might as well try it.”

“Try it, try it,” cried the kids. The oldest one said, assuming authority over the situation, “Look, we’ll give you a taste, and if you like it, you can buy a cup.”

Will appeared to think about this. Then he said, “Okay, deal.”

The oldest kid poured a small amount of lemonade into a cup, then handed it to Will, who made a big deal
out of smelling it first, then swishing it around in his mouth the way wine tasters do.

The kids ate it up. They were giggling, loving every minute of the show.

As, I have to admit, was I. Well, how could I not?

“Nice bouquet,” Will said, after he’d finally swallowed. “Tangy, and not too sweet. A most excellent year for lemonade, obviously. We’ll take two cups.”

“Two cups!” the kids cried, scrambling to fill them. “They’ll take two cups!”

When the cups were filled, Will took one and presented it to me with a flourish.

“Why, thank you,” I said, curtsying back to him.

“My pleasure,” he said, and reaching into the back pocket of his jeans, drew out a black leather wallet, from which he pulled a five-dollar bill.

“And you three,” he said to the kids, placing the bill on the table, “can keep the change, if you’ll give me that rose there.”

The kids stared, goggle-eyed, at the five. The oldest one recovered herself most quickly, and plucked the rose from the vase and thrust it at him.

“Here,” she said. “Take it.”

Will did so, with a polite “Thank you.” Then he picked up his cup of lemonade, and turned to go, while behind him, the kids tried to smother their delighted giggles and cries of “Five dollars! That’s more’n we’ve made
all day
!”

Grinning, I fell into step beside Will as we headed
toward his car. “You know they’re just going to spend that money on candy that’ll rot their teeth,” I informed him.

“I know,” he said, looking straight ahead, even as he did what he did next. Which was to hand me the rose. “For you.”

I looked down at the rose—so tiny and pink and perfect—in astonishment.

“Oh,” I said, suddenly consumed with embarrassment. “I couldn’t. I mean—”

He turned his head to look at me then, and I saw laughter on his lips.

But not, strangely, in his eyes. His gaze was strong and steady on mine, the way his voice had been earlier that day, when he’d spoken to Rick. It was clear the time for joking around was done.

“Elle,” he said. “Just take it.”

I took it.

It was the first flower any boy had ever given me.

Which was why, even after he dropped me off at home and drove away, it was hours before my heart started to beat anything like normally again.

As I studied up on old Arthur for my World Lit project that evening—which wasn’t easy, considering that I’d put Will’s rose in a vase by my bed, and my gaze kept straying over to it every two minutes or so—I found out a few surprising things. Such as the stuff from the musical
Camelot
—which my mom loves, and has made me listen to ten thousand times—like how King Arthur performed all of these heroic feats, basically bringing his people out of the Dark Ages and defending them against the Saxons and stuff? And how he had this arranged marriage with this princess named Guinevere, and how she eventually ditched him for his favorite knight, Lancelot (who, in turn, ditched Elaine of Astolat, the Lady of Shalott, for
Guinevere, causing Elaine to become the subject of my mom’s new book)?

That stuff probably really happened.

Except that Lancelot didn’t end up killing Arthur over Guinevere: Arthur’s half brother (or son, according to some translations), Mordred, took care of that. See, Mordred was all jealous of Arthur’s accomplishments, and of him being such a beloved king and all, so he plotted to kill him and take over the throne—even marrying Queen Guinevere himself at some point, according to a few sources….

The Pendragons were way dysfunctional as far as families go. Jerry Springer would have
loved
them.

Wild horses wouldn’t have gotten me to admit this in front of my parents, but the whole Arthur thing
was
kind of cool. The reason there’ve been so many movies and books and poems and musicals written about King Arthur—not to mention high schools like Avalon named after the mythical island he eventually went to die on—is that his story is a good illustration of the heroic theory of history: that an individual—not an army; not a god; not a superhero; just a regular Joe—can permanently alter the course of world events.

Which is why, according to another one of my mom’s books, there’s this whole society—I am not making this up—of people who think that Arthur, whose body was sent to the now nonexistent island of Avalon by the Lady of the Lake, is actually asleep, not dead, and is destined to wake again only when he is most needed.

Seriously. This band of losers calls itself the Order of the Bear, the Bear having been King Arthur’s nickname. They think that Arthur’s going to wake up one day and lead the modern-day world out of the Dark Ages and into a new age of enlightenment, just like he did fifteen hundred years ago. The only thing keeping him from waking, according to the members of the Order of the Bear, are the forces of darkness.

Um. Okay.

I tried not to let my skepticism about the existence of forces of darkness show in the outline I wrote for our report for Mr. Morton’s class, though.

And I definitely didn’t mention to my parents that I was doing a project on King Arthur. Because I knew that in their enthusiasm for the subject matter, they’d start chucking source materials at me until I ran screaming from the house. Some things parents are just better off not knowing.

Like the track thing. I never bothered mentioning to them that I was worried about making it onto the Avalon High School women’s track team. I was glad I hadn’t, too, when it turned out rumors about the speed of certain freshwomen proved to be greatly exaggerated. I made it onto the team at tryouts the next day with ease.

Liz was psyched, and high-fived me when the coach read off my name. Although later, while we were waiting for Stacy, another girl on the team who turned out to live nearby and had promised to give us a ride home, Liz warned me about the initiation.

“It’s just this stupid thing Cathy thought up,” she said. Cathy was apparently the team captain, whom I’d met only briefly. “They’ll come in the middle of the night—well, really about ten—and kidnap you, and take you to Storm Brothers and make you eat a Moose Tracks sundae.”

Since this sounded like the kind of initiation I might enjoy—no cat food or raw animal parts involved—I wasn’t too alarmed.

But then Liz said they’d probably do it on Saturday.

“That’s a problem,” I said. “I’m going to Will Wagner’s pool party after the Broadneck game.”

Liz just stared at me.

“YOU got invited to Will Wagner’s pool party?” She sounded completely stunned. Stunned enough that I immediately felt uncomfortable about the whole thing.

“Well,” I said, “yeah. I mean, he invited me.”

“When?” Liz asked, still sounding stunned.

“Yesterday,” I said. “I ran into him running in Anne Arundel Park. Well, I was running. He was sitting—”

“—on that rock?” Liz shook her head. “Oh my God. I’d heard the rumors, of course. But I didn’t think they were true.”

I glanced at her. “What rumors?”

“You know,” Liz said. “About him cracking up.”

“Will?” I asked, startled. “Why do people think he’s cracking up?”

“Because he’s been going and sitting on that rock in that ravine in that stupid park all summer,” Liz said.
“He’s even skipped football practice twice to do it this week. I heard he says he likes to go there to think. Think! Who even does that?”

I knew right then that Liz would never understand about the floating thing.

“But anyway,” she went on. “Some people are saying—”

“What?” I asked more sharply than I meant to.

“Well, some people say he goes there to get away from his dad.”

“His dad?” I feigned ignorance, not wanting to let on that Will had already confided in me about this.

“Yeah. On account of what he did.”

I stared at Liz, totally confused. “What his dad did?” What was she talking about? Will’s dad hadn’t done anything. Anything except try to force Will to go to the Naval Academy. But he hadn’t succeeded in doing that. Yet. “What did his dad do?”

“Killed his best friend,” Liz said matter-of-factly. “Some guy Will’s dad has known since basic training, or something. Admiral Wagner transferred him to a combat post overseas a year or so ago, and the guy got killed in a helicopter crash.”

“But—” I blinked. The truth was, I didn’t know whether to believe Liz or not. She liked to gossip. A lot.

But she didn’t strike me as a liar.

“That doesn’t mean Will’s dad killed him,” I said. “He didn’t do it on purpose. It was obviously an accident.”

“Oh, right,” Liz scoffed. “And I suppose it was just an
accident then that six months later, Admiral Wagner married his dead friend’s wife.”

Whoa.

Apparently, I’d said the word out loud, though I don’t remember doing so, since Liz nodded, and went, “Totally. Anyway, now people are saying that Will’s dad transferred his friend to a dangerous post on purpose, because he’d been in love with the guy’s wife for years and years and was just waiting for a way to get rid of her husband before making his move.”

“Geez,” I said, shocked. Will hadn’t mentioned any of this to me. It wasn’t that, after a single dinner and a couple of lemonades, I considered us soulmates, or anything.

But…he’d told me so many other things. Like about not wanting to go to the Academy.

And the rose. What about that rose?

“So,” Liz went on, “you can see why Will doesn’t like to spend a lot of quality time at home. With his new stepmom and a dad who’d do something like that. Not to mention Marco.”

“Who’s Marco?” I asked, totally confused now.

Stacy, the girl who was offering us a ride, finally showed up, sauntering up behind us as if she had all the time in the world. Well, she was a high jumper. They can be that way. It’s not about speed with them, so much as defying gravitational pull.

“Oh my God,” she said, having overheard my question. She looked at Liz and laughed. “She hasn’t heard of Marco?”

“I know,” Liz said, rolling her eyes. “Well, she
is
new.”

“What?” I looked from one girl to the other. “Who’s Marco?”

“Marco Campbell,” Liz said. “Will’s new stepbrother. The dead guy’s son.”

“Town psycho,” Stacy said. She pointed her finger at her temple, then twirled her finger around. “Total head case.”

I knew I was fully gaping at them both, but I couldn’t help it.

“Marco lives with Will and his dad and stepmom?”

“Yeah,” Stacy said. “Though I’m sure they’d like to get rid of him.”

“Why? What’s wrong with him?”

“Stacy already told you,” Liz said. “He’s a total freak. He got kicked out of Avalon High last year, a month before graduation, for—get this—trying to kill a teacher.”

I’d been sitting on the curb in the parking lot next to Liz. Now I got up, and turned to face the two girls.

“This isn’t true,” I said firmly. “This is part of that—what did you call it? Oh yeah. My initiation. You guys are playing Trick the New Girl, or something.”

“Uh,” Stacy said, squinting at me, since I was standing with my back to the late-afternoon sun. “You wish. It’s true. They tried to hush the whole thing up—and I don’t know if there was ever enough evidence to press criminal charges. But the guy got expelled. It was all over school.”

“It really is true, Ellie,” Liz said, getting up from the curb as well. “Although Marco went around claiming it
was self-defense, that the teacher—whoever it was—was trying to kill him, and he was just trying to save himself. Like anyone would believe that. He’s supposed to be starting college this year. That is, if he got in anywhere. Which I highly doubt, since his grades sucked. And not because he wasn’t smart, either. It was his attitude.”

I couldn’t believe Will hadn’t told me any of this. I mean, the thing with his dad wanting him to go to the Naval Academy, sure. That he’d mentioned. But that his dad had purposefully sent his best friend into a war zone, then snapped up his wife for himself after the guy had been killed? And that he had a stepbrother who’d been kicked out of school for trying to kill a teacher?

Well, maybe that’s not the kind of thing you tell a virtual stranger when you run into her in the woods. Even if she did let you have some of her pad thai.

Probably Will didn’t want to talk about it. I mean, it was the kind of thing maybe you’d want people to forget.

Still. It definitely explained that look I’d seen cross his face a few times.

My parents are going to be home
. That’s what Will had said about his party. That his parents were going to be home. Not his dad and new stepmom. His parents.

“What happened to his mom?” I asked Liz, as we began following Stacy toward her Miata. “Will’s real mom, I mean?”

Liz shrugged. “She died or something, I think. A long time ago, I guess. I mean, I never heard him talk about her, anyway.”

So Will’s mom was dead. He hadn’t mentioned that, either, I noticed.

Maybe that’s why he liked sitting around by himself in the woods, listening to medieval music, so much. Maybe if your dad had killed his best friend, then scooped up the guy’s wife for himself, all the while insisting you have to go to military school to make a difference in the world, you’d feel like you had a lot to think about, too.

I was kind of glad right about then that I had been born Elaine Harrison and not A. William Wagner.

“Why are we talking about Will Wagner, anyway?” Stacy wanted to know, as we piled into her car.

“Harrison here scored an invite to his pool party after the Broadneck game Saturday night,” Liz crowed.

“Whoa,” Stacy said. “Looks like the new girl’s doing pretty well for herself. Hanging with the popular crowd already.”

“I’m not popular,” I said, because the way she’d said it made it sound like it wasn’t a good thing. “And it’s not like that—”

“Yes, you are,” Liz assured me. “If Will Wagner is inviting you to parties at his place, you’re part of the In Crowd, big time.”

“And I heard you have Lance Reynolds as your partner on Morton’s oral assignment,” Stacy said.

“It’s not like I had a choice,” I said. “Mr. Morton assigned us together.”

“Listen to her,” Stacy said, chuckling. “So outraged!
Don’t you know how many girls would die to be in your shoes, Ellie? Lance Reynolds is the school hottie du jour. And he doesn’t have a girlfriend….”

“You have got to be kidding me,” I said. “That guy is a behemoth!”

“Behemoth,” echoed Stacy. “My, that’s a bit harsh.”

“Yeah,” Liz agreed. “For someone going to his best friend’s party on Saturday.”

“I can’t believe people consider Lance hot,” I said. I couldn’t believe it, either. Compared to Will, Lance was like…well, waffles with freezer burn.

“Aw, Lance is all right,” Liz said. “Kind of dopey, but nice. Like a teddy bear. The problem is, he’s chronically single. He just needs the love of a good woman to mold him into the man he has the potential to be.”

“I think that description fits Ellie perfectly, don’t you, Liz?” teased Stacy.

“Totally,” Liz declared.

Then both girls had a good laugh at my stricken expression.

I knew they were just teasing. And even if they weren’t, it was better that they suspected I had the hots for Lance than the truth…that the form I was warm for was Will. I had spent all day hoping to see him in the hallway between classes. I’d even rehearsed what I was going to say to him.
I hear Broadneck’s 2 and 0. Guess you guys better do some serious playing.

Yes, geek that I am, I had looked up Broadneck on the Internet the night before, then practiced the line in the
mirror a few times that morning. So it would seem like I knew something about football, when, in fact, I knew nothing.

But I’d never seen him. And now I realized it wasn’t just football I knew nothing about. I knew nothing about A. William Wagner—the guy I was apparently falling head over heels in love with—either.

But I did know one thing: Anyone who could joke around with a bunch of kids, the way Will had at that lemonade stand, or defend a geek the way he had that day outside Mr. Morton’s classroom, would have my good opinion forever, no matter what his dad—or stepbrother—was rumored to have done.

I knew something else, too: that anyone with as dysfunctional a home life as Will’s needed a laugh or two now and again. It was no wonder that he’d taken to hanging around me, the Queen of the Yuks.

And no matter what Nancy might think about guys not falling in love with girls who make them laugh, I wasn’t changing a thing. Because if that’s what Will wanted, that’s what I was going to give him.