“I’m glad you didn’t shoot yourself.” His leg moved—maybe accidentally, maybe not—so that it was aligned with hers, warm and solid. She liked the feel of it and didn’t move away. Maybe Cory was a bit full of himself but he was a key player around here. He was important in the small, contained, sometimes brutal world of high school, and she could do worse than win him over as an ally.
“Where are you from?” Darlene asked.
“Most recently from Corpus, on the Texas Gulf coast. How about you?”
Darlene took a big slug of beer. “All over, like you. Whenever my dad gets orders, off we go. It’s just the two of us.”
“Your mom’s not with you?”
“Nope. She took off when I was a baby and I haven’t seen her since.”
Emma sensed the hurt beneath Darlene’s nonchalant attitude. “So what do you do when your dad goes to sea?”
“Depends. Sometimes I stay with friends or family. One time I had to go to a foster home because there wasn’t nobody.” She shook back her candy-colored hair and took another sip of beer. “This year’s going to be cool, though. Now that I’m eighteen, I get the apartment all to myself while he’s on deployment. Our complex has hot tubs and a pool in the courtyard.”
“That is so bitchin’,” said Shea Hansen, who sat across the fire. “I can’t wait to be out on my own.”
Shea had tanned legs and wore loose nylon athletic shorts, like a runner. Her father was the minister of Trinity Lutheran Church in Oak Harbor, and Shea taught vacation Bible school there. Emma knew the whole community would be shocked by the sight of Shea sitting around and drinking beer. Adults tended to see what they wanted to see. And in hometown girls like Shea, they saw the good girl who could do no wrong.
Emma pointed out the varsity bars, divisional championship and state finals pins on the boiled-wool front of Cory’s letter jacket. “You’ve been at the same high school all four years,” she said. “How’s that work?”
He stretched his feet toward the fire. “We were transferred here five years ago, and my mom decided this was where she wanted to stay.”
“So what happened when your dad got orders?”
“My mom and I stayed put. The old man spent his next two assignments as the oldest guy in the BOQ. He’s back now, learning to be a family man again. He never was much good at it.”
Emma braced her hand on the beach log and turned to look out at the inky water, speckled with reflected stars. She couldn’t imagine her father in the bachelor officers’ quarters. He’d shrivel up and die there. Everyone’s family was different. She was glad her parents believed in staying together, whether the assignment was to Fallon, Nevada, or the wilds of Alaska.
“No way was my mother moving after she found her dream house over on Penn Cove,” Cory explained.
“This place seems to have that effect on people,” she said, thinking of how her mother had looked when they’d gone to see that funky house on the bluff.
“Must be nice, staying in one place for five whole years.” Darlene opened another beer.
“No, you’ve got it nice,” Cory said. “Your own apartment. As soon as they start their cruise, it’ll be party central over there.”
Darlene tossed a stick into the heart of the fire. She watched the flames wrap around it. “You bet.”
Emma couldn’t help feeling sorry for Darlene, who lived alone with her dad and had raised herself without a mother. She drank too much and didn’t quite manage to hide the loneliness in her eyes.
“So do you miss Texas a lot?” Shea asked Emma. “Did you leave a boyfriend behind?”
“No, and yes.” Emma grinned. “Texas weather is too hot for me. And yeah, there was a guy.” She’d dated Garrett for six months, and he’d been the best boyfriend in the world. He was polite, kind and extremely cool. His father was a country club golf pro and his family had never lived anywhere but Corpus. When she left Texas, they had both cried. He promised to write, call and e-mail every day. She promised nothing of the sort. After so many partings, she knew better. But her crazy heart didn’t. It always broke, no matter how hard she tried to protect it.
“You don’t have a boyfriend now,” Cory pointed out.
“That’s right.”
He lined up his leg with hers again. “Maybe you’ll get lucky.”
A shriek that sounded like an Indian war whoop split the air. The thud of bare feet on the wooden planks of the dock, followed by a splash, heralded the evening’s festivities. Jumping off the dock into the icy Sound was a time-honored local sport of murky origin and questionable purpose. At low tide, the pilings were just tall enough to be deliciously scary, and the water still deep enough to be safe.
The first one in, a skinny kid named Theo, bobbed in the dark water, the moonlight glancing off his sleek head. “Come on in,” he yelled. “Don’t let me freeze out here alone.”
“I’m in,” said Darlene, peeling off her shirt and shorts to the swimsuit she wore underneath. More splashes erupted. Screams and shouts rang through the clear night air, and the noise held a special quality of abandon, Emma thought. Monday morning was in the back of everyone’s mind. That, and maybe the thought that had been nagging at Emma lately—in just a short time, they’d all be out in the world, on their own. The prospect was exhilarating, intimidating, inevitable.
With a laugh, Shea jumped up and went to join the others. She moved like a ship in a storm, and Emma imagined she could hear the sound of beer sloshing in the girl’s stomach.
“She can swim, right?” she asked Cory.
“Hell, in that condition, she can probably fly.”
“How much beer did she drink?”
He grinned. “The question is, how much of this did she have?” He held up a tiny Ziploc bag containing six pills marked with a small but recognizable stemmed cherry. He slid one onto the palm of his hand. “Your turn, new girl.”
Emma hated being in this position. It was not a good idea to say no to the big man on campus. However, it was an even worse idea to mess with Ecstasy. “I’ll stick with beer,” she said, and tipped up her can of Rainier just to make her point.
“You chicken?” he asked.
Emma looked around and realized that she and Cory were alone by the fire. Everyone had abandoned them for the dock, and the deep night beyond the circle of fire lent the moment a certain intimacy.
“No,” she said with a laugh, and tossed her head. “You shouldn’t, either. Aren’t you applying for an appointment to the Naval Academy?”
“Hell, yes. It’s a tradition among the Crowther men.”
“Yeah? Last I heard, the Academy frowned on that stuff.”
He put away the bag. “I’ll clean up before my physical.”
“No, I mean, if you’re going in the military—” She broke off and waved her hand. “I’m all for personal liberty, but I’d rest easier knowing people in the military were clean and sober.”
“Dream on, new girl. Some of the best drugs on the market come through the military.”
She dropped the subject. She knew there was a drug problem in the Navy. Plenty of men and women in her father’s command struggled with it; some of them were barely older than her. Her father ordered sailors into drug treatment or AA, probably more frequently than she knew.
“So what about you, huh?” Cory asked. “You applying for college?”
A