Someone sat down on the bench. Robin looked up to see who it was.
Nate.
He smiled at her. He didn’t look haggard or troubled anymore. “How’s it going?” he asked.
“Okay.”
“Sorry about before. I shouldn’t have talked to you that way.”
“It’s all right,” Robin said. Her heart was pounding hard.
“I was worried about you. That’s why I blew up. See, I know what can happen to people around this place. I don’t want you getting hurt. And sleeping on the beach…you’re just asking for it.”
You don’t have to worry anymore, she thought. I’ll be out of Boleta Bay by dark. Gone forever.
And I’ll never see you again.
Frowning, he stared into her eyes. He pressed his lips into a tight line and shook his head. “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea,” he said.
“About what?”
“I want you to take this.” He dug into a front pocket of his pants and brought out a key attached to a big oval of green plastic. He put it into Robin’s hand.
She turned the tab over. On raised white-painted letters were the words “Wayfarer’s Inn” and an address. The key had a room number on it.
“No argument,” Nate said. “The room’s already paid for. I knew it wouldn’t do any good just to give you the money and ask you to use it on a motel.” He shrugged. “You’d just save the money for breakfasts.”
Robin’s throat felt tight. Her heart felt like a fist punching inside her chest.
“You don’t have to worry,” he told her. “I’m not going to show up there and try to put moves on you. Hell, I don’t even know the room number. I just want you to stay safe.”
She took hold of his hand and squeezed it. “That’s…awfully nice of you,” she said. Her voice was shaking. “You shouldn’t have done it, but…”
“You will use it, won’t you? The room?”
“Okay. But let me pay you for it.”
“No way.”
“Really. I’ve got some money to spare now.” She heard herself laugh. Her eyes were suddenly wet. “I was going to buy a bus ticket this afternoon, but now I guess I’ll stay.”
“You were going to leave?” He looked stunned, and she felt his hand tighten.
“Well, yeah, but…Can’t leave now, can I? Not with a motel room waiting.”
“You were just going to go away? I thought you’d be sticking around here.”
She sniffed. She shrugged.
“I have to get back to the arcade,” Nate said. “But you promise you’ll use the room?”
“I promise.”
“Great.”
“But you’ve got to let me pay for it. You can’t be spending so much money on me. Geez, you’re busting your hump working for peanuts at that arcade…”
“My family owns it,” he said, smiling. “The arcade, the Hurricane, the Ferris wheel, and the Tilt-a-Whirl. We’re pretty well-off. In fact, we’re filthy rich. I drive a Trans Am, for God-sake, and live in a twelve-room house with a swimming pool and tennis court. So I can afford a motel room for you, don’t worry.”
“You convinced me,” Robin said, staring down at the key. “I accept the gift. Thank you.”
“My pleasure.” He pulled his hand away and rose from the bench. “So I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
“If not sooner?”
“This isn’t some kind of a trick, Robin. I told you, I didn’t even look at the room number.”
“I believe you.”
“Hope you enjoy it,” he said, and turned away.
“It’s two-forty,” she called. “Room two-forty.”
Nate looked over his shoulder. He gazed at her with wide eyes. His mouth hung open slightly.
“Just in case you want to check up on me,” Robin said, “see if I’m really there.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.” Shaking his head, he hurried away.
“You’d better wake up and turn over, or you’ll burn.”
Jeremy opened his eyes. Shiner was on her elbow, smiling down at him.
“I can’t believe I fell asleep,” he said. He felt hot and heavy, as if weighted down by the sun.
“You were zonked. Didn’t you get any sleep last night?”
“Loads,” he said.
Shiner laughed. “Roll over,” she said. “I’ll put stuff on your back.”
When he heard that, the weight seemed to vanish. He quickly turned onto his stomach and rested his chin on his crossed arms.
“What time did you get home?” she asked.
“About three.”
“Me too.”
He squirmed as a warm stream of oil zigzagged his back. Then he felt Shiner’s hands. They slid over his skin, spreading the fluid.
There was nothing
romantic
about the way she touched him. She swept the oil around as if this was an ordinary task, and Jeremy wondered if maybe she was trying hard not to let it seem like anything more. But the smooth rubbing felt wonderful to him.
“How long do you suppose Nate was out there?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“I was starting to think he’d drowned or something. God, it was so spooky, waiting for him.”
“That’s for sure.” Jeremy remembered being so spooked that when he finally saw Nate coming back, he’d thought for a moment that it was the troll surfing toward him through the fog.
Shiner’s hands glided down his sides.
“I’m sure glad you were there,” she said. “I would’ve really freaked out, I think. It almost made it okay, hugging you like that.”
“That part was nice,” Jeremy said.
He felt oil dribble onto the backs of his legs. When her hands began sliding, he squirmed and turned slightly to ease the pressure on his penis. She rubbed the tops of his legs, and the outer sides. She rubbed the inner sides of his calves. Higher up, though—above his knees—she left the inner sides untouched. The very fact that she stayed away from that area confirmed Jeremy’s suspicion that she knew this was a sex thing and didn’t want it to seem that way.
Her hands went away. “All through,” she said. “Would you mind doing my back?”
“No. Sure.”
She lay down and Jeremy knelt beside her, bending at the waist in an attempt to hide his bulge.
She unfastened the straps at her shoulders and flipped them out of the way.
Something like a strip-tease, but innocent too. She wasn’t
really
stripping, just getting the straps out of the way so they wouldn’t leave pale marks on her tan. Girls almost always did that when they sunbathed. It meant nothing.
But Jeremy knew that she knew what she was doing.
She stroked her hair, parting it away from the nape of her neck. She was smooth and bare all the way down to the glossy seat of her suimsuit.
Jeremy squirted curly trails of oil onto her back, stood the bottle between his knees, and began to spread the oil with both hands. Her skin was warm and slippery.
I’ve gotta not think about it, he warned himself, horribly aware of his aroused condition.
This was a lot like wiping the ice cream off Tanya.
Don’t think about that!
He quickly finished her back, leaving her sides unoiled because—God!—that’d be getting awfully close to her breasts and that might be too much to stand. He wondered if he dared to do her legs. But he couldn’t
not
do them.
“Did you walk home alone?” he asked, trying to take his mind off the situation as he moved sideways past her rump and knelt by her legs.
“Yeah,” she said. “It’s not very far.”
He squirted the fluid onto the backs of her legs. It started to trickle down between them. He thought,
Oh, no!
and quickly rubbed away the dribbles, trying not to think about where his hands were. “I wish you would’ve let me walk you home,” he said, his voice shaking.
“Then you’d know where I live.”
“What’s wrong with that?” He quickly spread the oil down her calves.
“I don’t let any of the trollers know where I live,” Shiner said. “Or my real name, for that matter.”
Jeremy stopped.
Done. Thank God.
He capped the bottle. He flopped onto his back and brought his knees up. “Why don’t you want anyone to know?”
“It’s in case something goes wrong. One of us might get caught by the cops. It hasn’t happened yet, but it could. I don’t care what anyone says about promising not to talk. Maybe some of them wouldn’t, but it’d only take one. The cops or D.A. or somebody would promise a lighter sentence for naming names, and that’d be pretty tempting. Next thing you know, they’ve rounded up everyone. Except me.”
“So none of the trollers know who you really are?”
“Or where I live. So I can’t get fingered. I tell you what, too—after what happened last night, I’m really glad I’ve kept it that way.”
“Yeah,” Jeremy said. He felt a little let-down that she didn’t trust
him,
but he could see the wisdom of keeping her identity a secret. “I wish I’d done the same thing,” he said.
“Does anyone know who you are?”
“I told Cowboy my last name. Where I live, too.”
“Well, don’t worry about it. It wouldn’t have worked for you. The only reason I get away with it is that I go to a different school. None of the other trollers go to St. Anne’s. They all attend the public school, and that’s where you’ll be going in September, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“So they’d find out who you are when school starts. You couldn’t have stayed anonymous, no matter what.”
“Man, that’s the pits.”
“You shouldn’t lose any sleep over it. Nobody’s been caught so far, and I have a feeling that the trolling is over.”
“Really?”
“I’ll bet that’s what the meeting tonight is all about. I mean, nobody ever counted on someone getting killed. That changes everything. I think Nate has probably talked Tanya into breaking up the group.”
Jeremy felt a sudden sense of loss, as if he’d just been told that all his friends were moving out of town.
“I know I’m finished with it,” Shiner said.
“But we’ll still see each other, won’t we?”
“I hope so. I don’t know any reason why not, do you?”
“No. Jeez, I’d like to see you all the time.” Speaking those words, he felt a warm rush of guilt. As if he were betraying someone. But who? Tanya? Cowboy? The whole group of trollers? Or Shiner herself?
Straddling the padded bench of her weight machine, Joan adjusted her grip on the bar handles. The pulley squeaked as she drew the bar down to her chin and let it up, lifting and lowering the 110 pounds on the cable behind her back.
Maybe she would give Dave a call as soon as she finished her workout, and see how things had gone with Gloria. It was after seven now. He ought to be done.
She pulled the bar down again.
How many was that, six?
Her heart was pounding with quick solid thumps, she was breathing hard, and her sweatshirt felt sticky inside.
Six more, she thought, and you’re through.
She had already spent half an hour working out. After some simple warm-up exercises, she’d started to run through her karate moves. The karate depressed her, though. She kept seeing her foot smash into Woodrow Abernathy’s chin. She’d been feeling great until those memories started up, so she knocked off the karate and moved on to the weight machine. She’d worked on each muscle group until she ached, and this was the last.
She drew the bar down one more time, let it up, and released the grips. She fluttered the shirt. Air buffeted her hot, moist skin. Then she lifted the shirt and wiped her dripping face.
She felt fine except for a touch of guilt about skipping the karate. Strength was all well and good, but the karate kept her quick, and kept her balance and agility finely tuned. Still, she was reluctant to try it again.
An idea came that cheered her up a lot. She went to the old stereo in the corner of her exercise room, selected an album from the cabinet, and placed the record on the turntable. She carefully lowered the arm onto the band she remembered so well, then stepped to the corner of the mat.
John Denver’s high, clear voice began singing “Calypso.” She danced onto the mat in time with the music and did three handsprings to the opposite corner. Her timing was off just slightly. She staggered off the mat. There goes your ten, she thought. But she whirled around and continued her routine, dancing, kicking, leaping, spinning, doing cartwheels and somersaults, and finishing with a triple back flip that used to bring down the house but tonight landed Joan on her butt.
Clapping came from the doorway.
She saw Debbie standing there, a smirk on her face. “How’d a klutz like you ever make the state finals?”
“I wasn’t five-eleven then.”
“I’d show you how it’s supposed to be done, but I’ve got to get going.”
“Don’t let me stop you.”
“Do I look all right?”
She wore white jeans. The blue of her shiny blouse brought out the blue in her eyes. Her face had a faint reddish glow from her afternoon at the beach. Her blond hair curled softly around her face.
“You look great,” Joan said. “You’ll knock the fellows dead.”
“If any are there.” Debbie wrinkled her nose. “You know Jessica. She’s such a goody-two-shoes, I’ll be lucky if there’s a guy within miles.”
“Well, have fun anyway. And be home by twelve.”
“If it’s too much of a drag, I might be home a lot earlier. You going to see Dave tonight?”
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe you could have him over and show him your floor exercise. I’m sure he’d go ape—especially the way you nearly lose your sweatshirt on the cartwheels.”
“Aren’t you going to be late or something?”
Debbie laughed. “When do I get to meet him?”
“What do you want? I haven’t even gone out with him yet.”
“I’d like to see what he looks like.”
“If you’re all that eager, come over to the boardwalk while we’re on duty tomorrow.”
“Yeah. Thanks, but no thanks.”
“What’ve you suddenly got against Funland? You used to go there all the time.”
“That was before Big Sister started walking the beat.”
Joan grinned. “I cramp your style?”
“Might, if I went there and tried to have fun.”
“Well, sorry about that. But a job’s a job.”
“When’ll you get reassigned?”
“Who knows? But don’t worry, I won’t be there forever.”
“Just all summer, my luck.”
“If you miss the place so much, go on my days off. Or some night, as long as you go with friends.”