Poison Ink (2 page)

Caryn balled up her fists and started for her. Sammi grabbed her arm and held her back. Jill and Regan both flinched. Caryn had a Jewish mother at home who would have tortured her with guilt for a year if she ever actually hit anybody, but the senior girls didn’t know that. They saw an angry black girl, and their presumptions made them nervous. Jill and Regan were shallow and stupid, but Caryn seemed pleased that they’d lost their cruel grins. Her temper had gotten her into trouble before, but Sammi figured Jill and Regan had earned a tongue-lashing.

“You want to look for some girl love, check out your own locker room,” Caryn said. “Never know who’s eyeing you in the shower while you’re soaping up.”

Regan wore a look of horror. T.Q. covered her mouth, trying not to laugh.

“I guess you’d know, though, wouldn’t you?” Jill retorted with a sneer.

Sammi shook her head in pity. “I can’t imagine anyone wanting to see you naked, Jill, guy or girl. Maybe that’s why you’ve gotta ride Simone, because you know once a guy sees her, he’s not giving you a second look.”

Jill rolled her eyes. “Oh, please.”

But Sammi could see that she’d hit a nerve. Caryn and Regan were staring at each other as if at any moment they might start rumbling around the parking lot.

The door at the top of the stairs opened and two decent-looking guys came out, one of them carrying two pizza boxes and the other with a paper bag of Krueger’s takeout. Sammi didn’t know his name, but she recognized the pizza boy as Jill’s boyfriend, a college freshman.

“Hey,” Sammi said, friendly as could be. “I know you guys.”

“You do?” Pizza Boy said.

Sammi smiled. “Totally. You graduated last year. In fact, my friend Simone over here? She had a mad crush on you.”

Pizza Boy glanced over at T.Q., and a wolfish smile spread across his face. He nodded once. “Really?”

The fury on Jill Barbieri’s face was glorious to behold. She flushed red, and her lips pulled back like a snarling dog.

Sammi grinned, took T.Q. by the hand, and led her up the stairs, purposely brushing past the guys as she went.

“You have a nice night, now,” Caryn said sweetly, and then she followed them.

As they stepped into Krueger’s and the door swung shut behind them, they could hear Jill yelling at her boyfriend. The three girls turned to look at each other and started laughing.

“Can I help you?” the fortyish hostess asked with a bemused grin.

Caryn cleared her throat. “Sorry. We’re meeting some friends here. The reservation’s under my name—Adams.”

The hostess glanced at the podium where the map of the tables lay, then nodded for them to go in. “They’re in the back, around behind the bar.”

“Thank you,” Sammi said.

The fans were spinning lazily on the ceiling and the air conditioner hummed. It felt chilly inside the restaurant, but fortunately Letty and Katsuko were sitting near the blazing brick oven where the flatbread pizza was cooked. Katsuko’s hair shone damply, and Sammi figured she’d just come from swimming, getting ready for competition once the school year started. As they crossed to the table, Letty Alecia smiled and got up to hug each of them. Her milk chocolate eyes were bright and wide, her best feature, and she always dressed conservatively—even more so than Katsuko, whose parents were very careful about what they let her wear. Katsuko came off as arrogant sometimes, mainly because she was. Her parents had raised her with a superior air, and though she could be judgmental at times, ever since Sammi had met her she’d been doing her best to fight her inner snob.

Jill and Regan teased them all about being lesbians because they hung out with Letty. She had come out the year before. Las Reinas—the name the Puerto Rican girls at Covington High had given themselves—hadn’t exactly ostracized her. They still spoke to her, still looked out for her as a girl from the neighborhood. But they didn’t go out of their way to include her anymore. Letty never showed it, but Sammi felt certain that beneath her smile, she’d been hurt by Las Reinas.

Sammi had always been a floater. Not a loner; that was something completely different. A loner spent all her time by herself, grew uncomfortable in crowds, and got totally squirmy in the spotlight. Sammi had never been that. She got along with almost everyone, floating from group to group but never quite fitting in. T.Q. had coined the expression “No-Cats” to describe kids like Sammi, impossible to slot into one of the categories everyone seemed to want to put teenagers into. It wasn’t just her classmates at Covington who did it. Everyone did. Teachers, parents, coaches. Everyone.

Sammi had friends among the jocks, the geeks, the potheads, the skaters, the cheerleaders, the Shop-Boys, and Las Reinas. Maybe “friends” was too strong a word. After elementary school, she had never been tight with anyone, really. It wasn’t something she had become on purpose, it was just a natural evolution that started in kindergarten and steadily grew until it reached full bloom when high school began.

In her heart, she had wished things could be different but had fully expected to spend her life that way, without any close friendships. And then, during sophomore year, the group had slowly begun to coalesce. Letty had come out and Las Reinas had begun to distance themselves from her. Sammi had always gotten along well with her and had made it a point to sit with her in the cafeteria. T.Q. had done a profile in the school paper on student artists, covering Caryn’s art and designs and Sammi’s music—she had played one afternoon to entertain the shoppers at Cruel and Unusual Books. One day, they had all ended up at a table together for lunch.

It had just felt right.

They all had their faults, of course, but who didn’t? Sammi found a kinship with the other girls that she had never realized was possible, and unlike with most groups, it wasn’t because of what they had in common. They shared little beyond how different they were from most of their classmates. Their common trait was that they had nothing in common with anyone. And then they found many things they shared—thoughts and experiences and emotions, hopes and ambitions—and the bond became unbreakable.

“Sorry we’re late!” Caryn said, sitting down.

“We were about to call the police,” Katsuko said.

“Seriously,” Letty said. “T.Q. went out to look for you, and I thought someone, like, kidnapped all three of you.”

Sammi slid into a chair across from her. “Nah. Caryn just has to window-shop at the art galleries.”

Despite the opening Letty had given them, no one brought up the incident in the parking lot. They all loved her too much.

“So this is it,” Sammi said. “The year we rule the school.”

Katsuko shot her a dubious look. “What, did we skip a year and nobody told me? We’re juniors.”

Sammi shrugged. “Yeah, but the seniors are all gonna be totally focused on getting into college or just getting out of high school, they’re not going to be paying attention. Give them a month, maybe, and they’ll abdicate power. Juniors are the top of the food chain.”

“Maybe some juniors are,” T.Q. said. “Something tells me I’m not ruling anything. I don’t even think I’m part of the food chain.”

Letty took a sip from her glass. “Nah, Sammi’s right.” She smiled mischievously. “It’s gonna be a hell of a year.”

Saturday morning, Sammi and her mother packed up the car and drove to Kingston State Park in New Hampshire, only half an hour’s drive from home. The other girls were all headed off with their families for the balance of the weekend, Katsuko all the way down to Cape Cod and the others to various spots along the coast of Maine. Labor Day weekend offered the last taste of summer, and everyone wanted to savor it. But Sammi’s father had to work, so there would be no hotel rooms, no visits to relatives, no bodysurfing for her. Just a few hours at the lake with her mom.

Sammi didn’t mind. Her mother had mood swings and a strict sense of propriety, and she tended to give even the most casual acquaintances the third degree, making them uneasy. In spite of all that, Linda Holland could be very cool. Sammi’s friends all loved her mother, and Linda made them feel very much at home when they visited.

Until recently. Things had been tense at home over the past few months. Sammi had a feeling her father could have avoided working today if he had really wanted to, but instead, he’d wanted to avoid his wife. It made Sammi sad, so she tried not to dwell on it. She’d always been much closer to her mother than to her father, which seemed sort of inevitable, since her father wasn’t around much. Her dad could be charming and funny when he wanted to be, but much of the time, it seemed like his mind was somewhere else. Her mother had told her a thousand times that it had nothing to do with her, but Sammi couldn’t help thinking she’d disappointed her father somehow. Otherwise, why didn’t he make more of an effort to be home with them, to act the way Sammi thought a dad was supposed to act?

Lately he’d been more distant than ever. But at least one good thing had come from that: at a time when a lot of kids she knew were doing their best to avoid their parents entirely, Sammi and her mother had become closer than ever.

Today was the perfect example. A picnic at the lake, lazing around together, a splash in the water—it had all sounded great when her mom had brought it up. Sammi knew it was just what her mother needed, especially with the escalating tension at home. So they chatted like girlfriends and drank lemonade and ate mozzarella and tomato sandwiches on focaccia bread from the cooler.

After lunch, Linda sat in her beach chair reading a novel by Michael Connelly. Sammi had brought her guitar along. She would never have lugged the acoustic to the beach, but the lakeshore—a hundred yards of sand and dirt—didn’t have as much blowing grit and wind as the beach. They sat just at the edge of the shadows thrown by the row of tall trees so they could retreat into the shade if they wanted to. The lake was crowded, but not nearly as busy as the beaches would be today. Radios played, but only distantly, and none so loud that they distracted Sammi.

On the edge of her chair, she sat with her acoustic across her thighs and strummed one of her favorite old Jack Johnson songs, “Banana Pancakes.” When her fingers were limber and her memory had caught up to the rhythm of the song, she sang along quietly.

“Can’t you see that it’s just raining? Ain’t no need to go outside.”

The irony made her smile.

No rain today. The sky stretched into the distance, forever blue, and the sun beat down on them. Thankfully, the humidity that had lingered through much of the summer was gone, and there was a breeze off the lake. Sammi loved the waterfall noise of the leaves rustling on the trees.

Worried about the sun, she dragged her chair into the shade, putting distance between herself and her mother. Wrapped up in her book, Mom didn’t even seem to notice. Most everyone at the lake had slathered himself with sun-block and was enjoying the fry time. Sammi preferred the shade, preferred to be out of the spotlight. Her guitar brought her plenty of attention, but she did not seek it. If people wandered over, drawn by a shared love of music, they were welcome. But guys who just wanted to flirt with the cute blond girl in cutoffs and a bikini top could ogle her from a distance.

“Play something else,” a voice said.

Sammi looked up. A guy stood just at the edge of the shade, dark hair and sleek, muscled body dripping from the water. He pushed a hand through his hair, shedding water, and smiled.

Cute. Very cute.

“What do you want to hear?”

He shrugged. “Whatever you feel like playing.”

Good answer,
Sammi thought.

Her fingers danced along the frets as she picked out the opening notes of Amanda Marshall’s “Love Is My Witness.” Keeping her voice low, not wanting to put on a show for the whole lake, she started to sing.

His smile brightened. Sammi felt warm, even in the shade. Even with the breeze.

Curious, a few other guys and two girls, apparently all friends, wandered over to listen. They kept back from the shade, remaining in the sun, arms thrown over one another. One of the guys twisted around, tripping his buddy, and tossed him on the ground. They laughed and started to wrestle.

Sammi couldn’t help rolling her eyes. She stopped singing, but her fingers kept playing the song.

“What’s your name?” Cute Boy asked.

She switched tunes, playing a bluesy little run. “My mother always told me not to talk to strangers.”

“I’m Adam.”

With a look of shock, she put her fingers over the strings to halt the music. “You’re kidding. My name’s Eve.”

He blinked and for a second almost believed her. Then Sammi smiled and he knew she had been playing with him. Irritation and disappointment flashed in his eyes before he could hide them.

“Sorry. Couldn’t resist,” she said. Her fingers moved on the guitar as if of their own accord, jumping through the rhythm of a song by the Shins. “I’m Sammi.”

“You don’t look like a Sammi.”

“My parents are the only people who’ve called me Samantha and survived.”

“Teachers?”

Sammi gave him a dark look. “Their graves litter the Merrimack Valley.”

Adam grinned. Oh, she liked that grin.

“Pull up some shade, Adam.”

He sat beside her on the sand and they talked while she played, running through tunes from Maia Sharp, Bonnie Raitt, the Strokes, Jason Mraz, and Keane. She sang a little, talked a little, people came by and watched, asked her questions about the music, about her playing, wondered if she ever played for money. As soon as she had a license she planned to head down to Cambridge and start doing the street corner thing. T stations were a possibility, too, but she hated the idea of being down in the subway with the trains rumbling by. On the street, with the people, that’d be nice. Bookstores and cafés, too. But she was too young to play in bars.

Adam turned out to be eighteen and had a car of his own, a junk heap that had gone from his father to his two older sisters before ending up with him. But it ran.

“You feel like hanging out tonight? We could hit a movie. Or there’s this party these guys I know are having. End-of-summer bash.”