The Other Side of Blue(45)

Roberto and Loco climb out of sight. Mayur’s in sight, not that far ahead of me.

“Hey!” I call after him, but he doesn’t turn around.

I walk faster and feel my face getting warmer. My shirt is damp where my backpack hugs my shoulders. At the next switchback, I look up the trail to see Mayur right above me. He’s stopped to look back down. He’s twirling a twig between his fingers. He’s breathing hard, and his pudgy face is red. He knows, though, that I was trying to catch up. I can see it in his eyes.

Part of me wants to tease him about how he’s not first up the trail, about how Roberto and Loco are in better shape. I don’t, though. I need him to tell me what he knows.

I take a swig of water from the bottle Martia packed for me.

“At the beach party, you said something. You said you know something.”

He digs in his pocket for a candy bar, rips the paper off, and stuffs the candy in his mouth. He nods, chewing.

“Wineglasses...” he mumbles, talking around the candy.

“That was in the police report. All that information. The champagne bottle, the broken glass.” I don’t tell him I found a shard in the blue boat, something missed by the investigators.

He swallows.

“Was there a note?” I ask him.

“A suicide note?”

That’s what I was thinking, but I say, “Any kind of note?”

He grins and starts hiking up the trail.

At that moment, I hate him. I want to push him off the side of the trail. He wouldn’t die—it’s not that steep—but he’d slide a long way, over clumps of ground cactus and stinging bushes. I’d watch him all the way down, and then I’d tie my scarf to the closest bush on the trail to mark the spot. I’d hike back to meet Dr. Bindas and tell him there’d been an accident. He would be shocked. Mrs. Bindas, too, when she heard later. Then Mayur would tell them I’d pushed him, just like I pushed him into the pool last year. And after they’d been so kind.

I grab his backpack from behind. “Tell me.”

He wrestles out of my grasp and faces me. “What’ll you do for me?”

“What do you want?” I hate that I even ask him that question.

“Oh, maybe it’s not me who wants something,” he says. He pushes my chest, but not too hard. If he hadn’t been afraid, he might have touched my breast. Maybe that’s what he meant to do.

“Yeah, right,” I say.

Mayur’s eyes narrow. I bet he thinks he’s supposed to hold something over me, and sex is the only thing he thinks having power over a girl is all about.

I try another tack. “I don’t think you really know anything. If you did, you’d tell me right now.”

He laughs.

“Does my mother know?” I ask.

He sobers, seeming to think a moment before shrugging.

I step back. It’s an answer and not an answer. If my mother does know, she hasn’t told me. Why not? And if she doesn’t know, should I share the information with her?

“How do you know my mother knows? If she knows, she’d tell me.”

“Are you so sure?”

I jerk past him up the trail. I imagine I feel a hand touch my butt as I go by.





Chapter Twenty-Three


SWEATING feels good as I pound up the trail, leaving Mayur behind. I don’t even look at the trees, the vines. I barely hear the sound of parrots or wonder what color they are. Now I know what Zoe means about running track. The sweating makes you start to feel good after a while. Not even my anger at Mayur takes that feeling away.

I don’t catch up to Loco and Roberto. I see them, though, as the ascent becomes rockier and less vegetated. Roberto makes it to the top first, Loco close behind him. They raise their fists in the air like conquering heroes. Then they dart out of sight, probably to explore the surrounding views from the summit.

I’m next, breathing hard as I scuttle up the last rocky section. On top of Mount Christoffel, I’m at the point farthest from the sea on the island. From here, the ocean looks the same color blue as the sky. The trade winds stir the air, cooling my skin. A pebble tumbles down the rocks below. Instead of Mayur, I see Kammi pulling herself toward me, hunching slightly under the weight of the art supplies in her backpack. She has this streak of stubbornness I’m beginning to like.

“You didn’t wait for me,” she says.

This is the second time I’ve seen her angry with me. There’s hope. She can get angry.

For the first time, I hold my hand out to Kammi, and it feels good when she takes it and scrambles up the last few feet to stand next to me. I see Mayur so far down the trail he looks like a speck—or a mountain goat. I laugh out loud. Saco is with him.