The Devil You Know (7 page)

My bladder has just about reached critical mass when the rangers let me go. I'm halfway to the bathroom when Justin catches up with me on the road. “Hey, Cadie,” he says. “Thanks for taking care of my brother. You are, um—I miss you.”

For months after he broke up with me I'd have given everything to hear those words come out of his mouth and to see him standing in front of me with his eyes all soft and sweet. But not today.

“Do you really? Or is it because you saw me kissing another guy?” I say. “Because now is the wrong time to be talking about this. You could have called me two months ago or maybe—maybe you could have not dumped me. What I did for Jason is what any decent human being should do. It wasn't about you. And—I just really need to pee, so you should go back to your girlfriend and pretend we never had this conversation.”

I don't wait around for Justin's reply.

Matt comes out of the bathroom building just as I get there, and he waits outside while I take a hobo bath in the sink using paper towels and pink liquid hand soap. Face. Chest. Underarms. Girl bits. It doesn't really help because my dress is smeared with Jason's snot and tears, and I hate wearing denim shorts without underwear, but at least I'm a little less grungy.

“So that was a bizarre start to the day,” Matt says, as we head back to the campsite. “You doing all right?”

“I think so, yeah,” I say. “I mean, who would do something like that?”

Around here we all know the stupid pranks Jason Kendrick pulls don't mean anything. He's a harmless goofball. A clown. And, really, if anyone had been out for revenge last night, it would have been me. Except I would never do that because I love Jason like an annoying brother. He drives me crazy, but never to the point of revenge.

“Maybe it was a prank that got out of hand,” Matt says. “Or payback. You can't tell me that of everyone at the party last night, there aren't a few of them who'd like to tie him to a tree.”

I want to defend Jason, but there's probably a waiting list of volunteers. “I guess you're right. Yesterday I'd have been one of them.”

“So would his brother.”

“No way.” The idea is so absurd I have to shake my head. “Jason was basically tortured last night. Justin would never do that.”

Matt shrugs. “Everyone has their breaking point, Cadie. Maybe he humiliated Jason as punishment for embarrassing you.”

“No. I don't believe that.”

He doesn't say anything more, so I change the subject. “Even after a wash, I still feel pretty gross. I'm ready to go home and shower.”

“Does this mean you're not going to Disney World with us?”

“Haven't decided yet,” I say. “But if I'm hanging out with you guys today, I need a change of clothes.”

Matt smiles, and the rabble of butterflies that seem to have taken up residence in my stomach since I met these boys from Maine go on a fluttering spree. My mind travels back to last night, to what Noah said about Matt liking me. My skin doesn't feel crowded to near-bursting the way it does when I'm around Noah, and maybe if I'd stuck around at the party with Matt … I don't know. Maybe.

“Thanks for helping me this morning,” I say.

“It was the least I could do.” The wattage on Matt's smile amps up, and the butterflies do another crazy little dance. “So maybe you know this already,” he says. “But
Bar Harbor, where we live in Maine, is part of a national park called Acadia.”

“I've heard of it.”

“What you might not know is that back in the sixteenth century it was a much larger area that included parts of Canada and was named Arcadia because it was considered an unspoiled wilderness, a kind of utopia. Later, the French dropped the letter
r
and it became Acadia.”

“I didn't know that part.” The geography nerd in me loves this trivial tidbit of information, especially since it relates to my name, and I can't say I'm not a little charmed. “Acadia, huh?”

“Yep,” he says. “The sunsets there are some of the best, especially when the sky turns red over Cadillac Mountain. “You should see it.”

“I'm adding it to my mental to-visit list as we speak.”

“Put Disney World on the list, too,” Matt says as we reach the campsite. “Because I really hope you'll come with us.”

Noah sits on a log beside the fire, drinking coffee out of a blue-speckled camp mug and prodding at the smoldering wood with a stick. Lindsey is hunched over her own steaming mug at the other end of the log, her hair tangled around her shoulders. She looks tired, and it occurs to me that it's still really early. Barely seven.

“Hey.” Noah hands me his mug as I sit down beside him. I take a sip, then hand it back. Our shoulders and upper arms press together as if they're made of Velcro, and I want to kiss his sleepy face. “Where ya been?”

I tell him about Jason.

“That's some messed-up shit,” Noah says. “Any idea who did it?”

“No one's talking.”

“My money's still on the brother.” Matt pours himself some coffee. “He didn't look happy when you two left the party last night.” He gestures toward Noah and me with his mug. “And he was pretty pissed off at the river yesterday.”

“So was Noah.” Lindsey's face turns pink when all three of us look at her. “I didn't mean—oh my God, I'm sorry. I don't mean you would do that. I meant that I don't think Noah or Justin would hurt Jason.”

“I wouldn't.” There's a sharp edge to Noah's denial. “I didn't.”

Still, I think about the way his fist curled and uncurled as he stood on the dock yesterday. Like he really wanted to hit Jason.

“Cadie.” The quiet way Noah says my name makes me turn in his direction. He looks me in the eye and says the words again. “I didn't.”

He was with me all night in the tent, and I woke with
his tattooed arm curled around me, the same way it was when we fell asleep. There were dents on my skin this morning from where the wooden mala beads pressed against my arm. Molly would have stirred and tried to follow him. I would have felt the wobbly mattress shift if he left, wouldn't I?

“Have we considered that he might have accidentally tangled himself up?” Noah asks, echoing my initial thoughts when I first discovered Jason.

“Totally plausible.” Lindsey giggles, because she knows that tying himself to a tree is within Jason's wheelhouse of stupid.

Except the rope was wrapped too tight, too neatly, for him to have done it himself. And knotted at the back of the tree where he couldn't have reached. Not to mention the duct tape on his mouth. It couldn't have been an accident.

“Well, it wasn't one of us because we were all here together,” Matt says. “And since the paramedics said your friend will be okay, why don't we head into town, grab some breakfast, and then do something fun. Lindsey, are you in?”

“Definitely.” Her face shines with adoration as she nods, making me wonder exactly what the two of them were doing last night while Noah and I were sleeping. Not that it's any of my business, but I'm curious.

“Cadie?” Matt directs the same question at me, and I snap back to reality.

Dad's going to be expecting me at home—even though it is Rhea Chung's morning to open the store and he doesn't have to go in until two—but I'm not ready for this to be over yet. “I'm in.”

“This is it.” I lean between the front bucket seats, between Noah and Matt, and point to my house. Noah parks the Cougar in our empty driveway—strange, considering the early hour—and they all follow me to the front door, including Molly, who pauses to squat on the lawn. Her back half practically disappears in the embarrassing grass. Viewed through the eyes of a pair of well-off strangers, yesterday's shabbiness seems even worse. I notice the dirt around the doorknob we touch every day. How the bottom of one of the wooden roof supports has broken off. One of Uncle Eddie's cigarette butts, smashed out among the overgrown hibiscus shrubs, glares at me like neon. I don't even know if Matt and Noah see these things, but I can't unnotice them, and I wonder if they think of me as some kind of white-trash girl.

Inside is better. I vacuumed a couple of days ago, there are no dirty dishes in the sink, and the door to the laundry room is closed, so they can't see the mountain of clothes
on top of the dryer. I find a sticky note on the refrigerator door from my dad, telling me he took Daniel Boone—it makes me smile that he actually wrote Daniel Boone instead of Danny—to the IHOP up in Lake City for pancakes and that I should enjoy my day off. Not sure what happened to make Dad's attitude do a one-eighty, but I'm not questioning it.

Matt and Lindsey hang out in the living room, looking at the collection of artwork hanging above the couch. Mom dabbled in photography, so there are some black-and-whites of me and of Dad, and even one when my brother was learning to crawl and she was getting too sick to take pictures. There's my first painting of a trio of red and yellow tulips, and a scribble Danny made with chunky crayons before he could talk. And a framed Charley Harper print of an opossum mother carrying her babies on her back that's actually a page from an old calendar. I think possums are satanic fur-covered skeletons, but my mom thought they were crazy adorable.

Noah follows me into my room.

“So this is where the magic happens, huh?” The ordinarily normal-size space seems so small around him as he sits on the edge of my bed, unbothered that it's a rumpled mess of sheets and quilt. I don't even remember the last time I made it. And there hasn't been a guy in my room since Justin.

“If by magic you mean sewing and collecting names of places I'd like to visit before I die”—I open my closet door and rummage around on the floor for my favorite cutoffs and through the hangers for a crochet and cotton tank top that used to belong to my mom; I've always been a little afraid I'll ruin it if I wear it, but I want Noah to see it—“then yes, this is the most magical place on earth.”

He removes the redheaded pin from New York City on my someday map. “Nothing wrong with having a dream, Cadie.”

“Yeah? What's yours?”

“Not sure yet,” he says. “I mean, I wanted to go to college but I've accomplished that, so now I have to figure out what's next. I don't know. I wouldn't mind being a park ranger.”

“I've never really wanted to go to college, but I'm not going to marry my high school boyfriend, have kids before I'm even old enough to drink, and never leave High Springs, either.”

“It doesn't have to be one or the other,” he says, pushing the pin into the map all the way out in Montana. I wonder if there's any significance to the placement, but before I can ask, Noah speaks again. “You'll find the in-between.”

Molly wanders into my room and slumps with a little
sigh to the floor at Noah's feet. It's weird seeing an animal in the house again. We had an orange-striped, mostly outdoor cat named Tangerine who went missing a couple of days after my mother's funeral. Dad speculated the cat was hit by a car, but I wonder sometimes if she missed Mom too much to stick around. And whether that's true for me, too.

Molly looks up at Noah with utter devotion, and I so understand that feeling. He catches me staring and hooks his finger around my pinkie, pulling me toward him until I'm standing between his knees. He smells good. Like soap and coffee, and as I trace the hole along the collar of his T-shirt I feel like I'm just too gross right now for this. Noah doesn't seem to mind because his arms wrap around my middle and he tumbles backward on the bed, dragging me with him. On top of him. Laughing. I kiss him and he kisses me until we're a tangle of lips and tongue, and his fingers plow shivery paths through my hair. I've never been afraid of kissing boys or afraid of saying no, but Noah makes me want to give in to the impulses swarming inside my skin like bees.

“Noah—”

“I know.” He blows out a long, slow breath, and his body goes slack beneath me. “We should get moving, anyway.”

“I need to take a shower.” I peel myself off him and
grab my towel from the back of the desk chair. “But that was pretty magical.”

Noah's face goes a little pink as he runs his hand across the top of his head, and the bashfulness is unbearably cute. “Yes, it was.”

Ten minutes later, I'm clean, properly dressed for a day at O'Leno, and my hair smells like everlasting sunshine. At least that's what it says on the bottle. This time my knapsack is loaded with a change of clothes, sunscreen, a bathing suit and towel, an extra pair of underwear. I stick a return note on the fridge—with extra
x
's and
o
's on the bottom for Daniel Boone—telling Dad I'll be home tomorrow in time for work.

From my house we go to Lindsey's, and I feel thankful it looks more redneck than mine with her dad's camouflage-colored gator boat sitting on a trailer in the side yard beside an algae-green swimming pool that's probably filled with tadpoles. Then I feel guilty because after Mom died, Mrs. Buck brought us a mountain of casseroles to keep in the freezer. I feel even worse when Lindsey just jumps out of the convertible and tells us she'll be back in a few minutes, like maybe she's embarrassed, too.