The Other Side of Blue(31)

“No one knew Dr. Bindas at the commissioner’s office.”

Mayur looks at me sharply. So he didn’t think I’d actually try to find out on my own. “His name isn’t Bindas. I just said he was a cousin.”

“So, tell me.” Mayur would say his cousin was important even if he were just the janitor in the police station. But what if he does know something? And, if so, why wasn’t it reported to Mother? Why wasn’t it in the newspapers?

“If you want me to tell you, you better be nice to me.” Mayur holds out the marshmallow, roasted to perfection, tempting me to take it. And I do.





Chapter Sixteen


I START TO ask him why I should be nice, why he should tell me at all. I think he’s lying. Mayur just likes to be important.

“Hey, what are you talking about?” Loco plops down on the sand in front of Mayur and me. He throws a bottle cap into the fire. He holds a new bottle of soda loosely by the neck. He runs his hand over the lip, as if to brush away sand or salt, then guzzles from it. He burps, long and loud.

Mayur laughs. No, he howls, the way boys do. Some of the cousins laugh, too, punching each other’s shoulders, as if this is the funniest thing they’ve ever heard. Even the taller ones, the older ones, act like little boys. They’re laughing so hard, they act as if they’ve forgotten what Mayur was talking about, why Loco even asked what was going on.

Kammi and Saco wander back into the circle of light around the bonfire. Kammi sits on the log next to me, but farther away than before. Saco sits near her.

I shuffle my bare feet in the sand, burying them in the coolness.

The moment when I could ask Mayur what he means has passed for now.

Mayur speaks into my ear as he pushes his pudgy body off the sand. “Remember, be nice, and I’ll tell you,” he says, seeming to read my mind. “Later.”

“Do you swim at night?” Loco asks. He’s looking at Kammi and me.

“Isn’t that dangerous?” Kammi straightens her back as she sits forward on the log, no doubt thinking about how dark the sea is at night. What things could brush against a leg, or take it of?

Loco shrugs. “What is dangerous? Not peligroso. Not here, no sharks.”

“It’s okay. It’s shallow just here.” Saco sounds reassuring.

Sharks feed in shallow waters at dusk and dawn. That much I remember from the nature shows Dad encouraged me to watch all the time.

“Okay, who’s in?” Mayur asks.

The boys speak all at once.

“For a minute. I’ll go in for a minute,” Kammi says when Saco grins at her.

“What about you?” Loco asks me.

“I don’t swim in the ocean.” I pull my scarf around my shoulders.

“This is just a sea, like a bathtub.” Saco grins, his eyes lit up by the glow from the fire. Kammi’s watching him. She’ll go in the water if he wants her to.

I shake my head.

Mayur narrows his eyes at me. “She’s afraid.”

He thinks he can dare me to go in. His words don’t scare me. I don’t care if they all think I am a coward. At the end of the month, I’ll go back to Maine. I won’t have to see them again. Next summer, I’ll find a way to stay with Zoe while Mother comes back here. Maybe she won’t even bring Howard, since she told Philippa on the phone last year that bringing men here is bad luck. Kammi won’t come, either; she’ll spend time with her mother in Atlanta or have “quality” time with Howard. I can see it now. Like the points of a triangle, we’ll stay in our separate corners.

“She doesn’t have to come in,” Loco says. “She can watch from the beach, yell if she sees a shark.”

As if I could see a fin in the dark water, even with the waxing moon and the phosphorescence on the waves. But Loco is trying to be nice. For a boy.

The boys, including Saco, whoop and race each other to the water. Kammi unties her skirt, steps out of it, and folds it, revealing her pink bikini underneath. She looks toward Mother and Mrs. Bindas. To see if they’re watching the boys run into the surf. To see if they raise a warning flag. They’re too busy laughing around their own fire. The men aren’t looking our way, either.

“Saco said Mayur knows something about your father,” Kammi says, still not looking at me. She pulls her linen blouse over her head, folds it carefully, just like her skirt.

I close my eyes.

“Do you think he really knows?” she asks.

I shrug.

“Do you care?” Kammi’s voice hardens.

I open my eyes. “I do. But why would you?”

Kammi steps backwards. She turns and races to the black water tinged with silver, as if she’ll dive in and swoop it up into her arms. At least it will be welcoming, even if it’s dangerous.