The Other Side of Blue(33)

When I get back to my room, the door is open, and Kammi perches on the edge of my unmade bed. She holds my hinged box of sea glass in her lap. The orange juice sours in my stomach. She jerks when I enter the room.

“You had more of this glass before,” she says, as if she’s going to ask a question about what I did with the rest of it. “You should do something with it.” She holds up a handful of glass pieces.

“Do something?” I slide the tray of fruit and pastries onto my dresser and take the box from her. I snap the lid shut on the sea glass. The box feels cool in my hands.

“Yes, you could turn it into jewelry. I’ve seen some girls do that with beads and glass. They wrap wire around it, make bracelets. You shouldn’t just leave it in a box.”

Kammi’s being nice, even now, and I don’t want her to be.

“Don’t tell me what to do.” I squeeze the closed lid as if it’s Pandora’s box.

Tears well in her eyes. She’s probably thinking this is the month from hell and when is it going to end? Instead of running away or crying, though, she nods and crosses her arms, holding her hands against her sides, protecting herself.

“What are we going to do today?” she asks.

We?

“This is Martia’s day off. She already plugged in Mother’s coffee and set the timer for eight. That’s when Mother will come down, not a minute before,” I say, restoring the box to the top of the dresser. It’s now two hours before Mother is likely to come downstairs.

Kammi nods, as if I’ve told her a big secret.

“After last night, you should stay out of her way,” I say, raising my eyebrows toward the studio above us.

“Why?” Kammi’s face turns up, too, as if there’s a clue written on the ceiling.

“You know, the water. Saco following you around like a puppy.”

Kammi blushes, the pink undertones blossoming on her cheeks. “He wasn’t following me.”

“Right, Kammi. You’re supposed to be the artist, the observant one. Mother said so. You should be able to tell what a boy is up to.”

“How about Loco?” she asks shyly, but with the corners of her mouth upturned. Because of Saco or because Mother said she was an artist, I can’t tell.

“A boy named Crazy. What do you think?”

“It’s just a name. He seemed very nice.”

“Compared to Mayur, who wouldn’t be?”

Kammi scoots over to let me sit on the bed with her. “What should we do?”

“We” again. “We could go back to the Bindases’ and ask to swim in the pool. Mrs. Bindas gave us a standing offer. I’m sure Saco is still there.” That might alarm Mother, which alone would make the trip worth it. More important, though, is what Mayur said. Maybe Saco would tell Kammi if he knows. For Kammi, he might even ask the right questions, get Mayur to give up his secret.

Even though she grins, Kammi shakes her head. “Something else.”

“Ostrich farm?” I say.

Kammi shivers. “Not again.”

“Hato Cave?”

“Are there bats?”

“The bats only fly at night.” At dusk, they swoop out of the cave to hunt. By day, they hang from the ceiling, their guano mounding up on the floor. The cave is cool, I remember, and damp. Mother stayed outside while Dad and I took the tour. The only thing I hated was when the guide took us into one chamber and turned off the lights. Dad held my hand.

“I don’t think so.” Kammi shakes her head. “Not today.”

I hold up the key.

“What’s that for?” Kammi’s nose wrinkles, the funny way it does when she thinks something is off.

“The master bedroom.”

“Why is it locked?”

“Why do you think?”

Kammi stares at the key as if it holds a secret. “It was your parents’ room. Last summer.”

“An A for you. Come on,” I say. “We have time now. Before Mother gets up. We can only go there on Martia’s day off. She misses nothing.” If she found us, she’d shoo us out to the beach. To get out in the sun—“Remember the sun screening,” she would say. Blue curaçao, blue heaven. We shouldn’t be locked away in the house when paradise waits outside.

The doorknob is shiny brass, almost freshly polished, with no fingerprints smudging the golden surface. My face reflected in the handle looks misshapen, as if I’m some circus freak.

I turn the key, and the latch clicks. I twist the handle and push, careful not to let the door bang against the back wall—it sometimes did last summer when Dad forgot that the hinges had been greased. The room seems the same, just musty, like any room unopened for a long time. When I close the door behind Kammi, I turn the handle carefully so that it doesn’t click, even though Martia’s not here. She can hear me from the kitchen crinkling a candy wrapper in my room in the hour before cena. “Basta, child,” she’ll say. “Enough. There will be good food for dinner, wait.” But she doesn’t really mean it, since she shakes her head and lets me finish what I’m eating anyway, hiding the wrapper inside a paper napkin before tossing it in the trash. In case Mother checks. We are allies.