Tainted Love (16 page)

Lydia felt a tingling of misgiving. “Only if you—”

“Only if I do it with you and keep it a secret—cross my heart and hope to die,” Martina put in. “But can I please tell Kevin? Please, please, please?”

“Absolutely not.”

Martina was crushed. “But that was the whole point.”

“The point, sweetie, is for you to feel stronger and more powerful and more confident. If you aren't old enough to keep this secret then you aren't old enough to—”

“I know, I know. I promise.”

Lydia handed Martina the blowgun. For the next half hour Lydia offered expert instruction, guiding Martina's hands, showing her where to look, how to focus and aim. Martina took a number of shots, and the last one came within a few feet of the apple, which was a big improvement from where she had begun.

“Okay. Gather your darts,” Lydia instructed.

Martina scrambled around, looking for the darts. “But I want to practice more.”

“Too dark. Time to go.”

Her cousin protested, but when Lydia suggested how little fun it would be to negotiate the path down the hill in the dead
of night, Martina moved swiftly. It didn't take long until they were back on home turf near the pool patio.

“If Momma Anya asks what hand-eye exercises we were doing, you're going to say we used magnetic darts and a dart-board,” Lydia explained.

“Okay. This was the greatest, Lydia. I can't wait to go back and practice some more.”

Lydia told Martina that it would be unfortunate if one of the maids was to uncover the weaponry in Martina's room during their daily cleaning. They wouldn't understand, and neither would Kat or Anya when the maid told them. Martina quickly saw the wisdom of what Lydia was saying, and was happy to relinquish custody of the box to her cousin. “But you'll let me take it out to practice?”

“If you follow my rules. Strictly.”

“Thanks.” Once again, Martina threw her arms around her cousin. “I love you, Lydia.”

“Love you, too, sweet pea.”

Lydia watched with a grin as Martina bounded off toward the main house, happier than she'd been all summer. Then she checked her watch: 9:15 p.m. Not too late. If Eduardo hadn't ruined Billy's evening by making him work late, there might still be time for him to pick her up for a hamburger and some extracurricular activities.

She went back to her guesthouse to call him, but found the doorstep blocked by an enormous envelope—five feet wide, four feet high, with her name scrawled in elegant calligraphy on the outside.

“Billy!” Lydia exclaimed.

Did the boy rock, or what? She had to turn the envelope on its side in order to open it; it held a card that was equally elegant and equally huge.

It was beautiful. It was romantic. It was thoughtful. Lydia would have been turning cartwheels of joy except for one thing.

It was from Luis.

“Hello. I'm Roger Goldman, and I'll be your scuba instructor here at the club for the next five days.” Roger was cut from the cloth of Hollywood central casting: tall, buff, and blond. He even wore a red bandanna pirate-style on his head.

“Get ready for the time of your life,” he continued, running a tan hand over his ripped six-pack, as if to make certain it hadn't disappeared in the last five minutes. “ 'Cuz you're about to learn the greatest sport in the world that doesn't involve two people on a bed.” He winked. “Scuba diving!”

Kiley figured Roger had done that intro-wink-thing a zillion times. Personally she found it beyond cheesy, but she noticed that Bruce had a huge grin on his face, as did the two friends he'd talked into joining him for scuba class. The guy was named Jerry—he proudly explained that he'd been named for the counterculture leader Jerry Rubin, whom his father
idolized both in his hippie and capitalist periods. He had incredibly bushy hair and an enviable soul patch. The girl was named Sedah, and rolled her eyes when she explained that it was Hades spelled backward. Tall, model thin, and with skin the color of café crème, Sedah was the offspring of an aging British rock star who'd gone through more career transformations than Rod Stewart yet still managed to escape unscathed. He'd married a fashion model from Gabon, and Sedah was their only child. She looked great in a white bikini strewn liberally with real pearls.

“Okay,” Roger went on, flipping through some permission slips on his clipboard. “Let me call roll, make sure no one's been eaten by the sharks in the pool.”

Sedah laughed and batted her eyes at Roger.
Conquest number one
, Kiley thought as Roger called out the names on his list. His flirtations really didn't interest her, though learning scuba did. It was a crucial step toward her brilliant career as an oceanographer or marine biologist.

The night before, after the concert/picnic, she'd had the most vivid dream of her life. She was on a dive boat off some exotic island in the Seychelles. Tom was with her. They jumped off the dive boat hand in hand, and found themselves in an underwater wonderland. There was a sunken vessel on the ocean floor, but it wasn't a wreck—more like a life-sized version of the boats she used to float in her bathtub when she was a kid back in Wisconsin.

All around them, fish cavorted, and then two larger-than-life sea horses swam in their direction. Kiley knew what they had to do, which was to climb on the backs of these sea horses
and go for an underwater pony express ride wherever the sea horses took them. That's exactly what they did, the fish following them in two long columns that finally merged into one.

The dream hadn't ended until Kiley's alarm clock sounded. Most of the time, Kiley staggered around the guesthouse like a zombie early in the morning because she'd never gotten used to the colonel's penchant for a pre-seven virtual reveille. Today, though, rising had been a pleasure. She'd been full of confidence. Maybe that dream had been her subconscious telling her that she and Tom were supposed to be together. Even before she'd had her first cup of coffee, she resolved to talk to Jorge very soon, to tell him they should stay friends, but no more. Anything else would be unfair. Thank God they'd parted last night with just a chaste kiss.

Once roll call had been completed, Roger asked all the students to get into the water and swim four laps in the Olympicsized pool without touching the sides. Any stroke would be fine—he just wanted to check their endurance. Swimming was the only sport Kiley had ever really enjoyed. She passed this test easily. In fact, she was the first one done.

“You're a swimmer, I see,” Roger commented as she climbed out of the pool and brushed water from her thighs and arms.

“A little.”

Roger rubbed his abs again. “Then you'll love this.”

Kiley wasn't sure if he meant his six-pack or scuba. Whatever. She had zero interest in him.

The other students all passed the swim test, too. When everyone had dried off, Roger showed an instructional video
on a monitor that had been set up in a shady area just east of the pool. After the glitzy introductory beginning that Kiley thought looked quite a bit like some elements of her underwater dream, the class got a run-through of the equipment they'd be using. There were the oxygen tanks that would hold her air; the regulators that would deliver a specific amount of air with each breath she'd take; her mask; a snorkel so that she could breathe at the surface without lifting her head; plus weight belt, flippers, and more.

There was a lot to take in, but Kiley was tracking everything with a clarity of purpose she'd rarely felt before. From time to time Roger would stop the video, do some extra explaining, and then make eye contact to make sure that his students understood what they were watching.

Jerry's hand shot into the air.

“So yo, check it out,” he began. “My mom is all freaked because she says this is like dangerous.”

Roger brushed his own abs again. They were still there. “Actually it's an exceptionally safe sport. Way safer than, say, snowmobiling or skling. Does your mom freak when you do those sports?”

“Oh yeah. But that's just how she is. She's already stressing about driver's ed.”

“Well, tell your mom that the biggest issue with scuba diving is probably sunburn,” Roger said.

“She slathers on the SPF five hundred,” Jerry quipped.

The group chuckled, and Roger waited for the laughter to die down. “You're all going to be really well trained,” he promised. “When you're forty feet down and you run into a
problem, you need to keep your wits about you. Last time I checked, human lungs don't mix well with inhaled water.”

Sedah laughed as if that was the funniest thing she ever heard, and swept her magnificent hair off her face in an obvious effort to get Roger's attention. It worked. He gave her a wink of her very own.

“Okay. Sedah and everyone else. You guys ready to get started?”

The class moved to the far end of the pool, where Roger had the equipment stashed in piles for each of his students.

“First we're all going to suit up. Just like in the video. I'll come around and help everyone. Don't be shocked by how heavy your tank is. Once you're in the water, it'll feel weightless. When you're suited up, please sit on the edge of the pool.”

Fifteen minutes later, the entire group had their gear on. Bruce and Jerry helped each other while Kiley and Sedah did the same. Meanwhile, Roger checked everyone's tank and equipment, spending a little extra time with Sedah. Then he slipped into the pool, wading into water up to his waist.

“This end of the pool ramps down toward deep water, obviously,” he began. “One at a time, I want each of you to come in and walk toward the deep end. Put on your masks, but you don't need your flippers just yet. Put the regulator in your mouth, but don't turn it on. This is just for practice. Then, when I give you this signal, I want you to duck underwater like this.” He made a downward motion with his palm, and then slipped underwater. A second or two later, he popped up again.

“Come on, man,” Bruce exclaimed. “That's too easy. Let's get to the real stuff!”

“Tell you what, Bruce, when you want to be an instructor you can try to convince the certification board that you have a better way to teach,” Roger suggested.

“Also known as: my way or the highway, Bruce baby,” Jerry boomed, and everyone laughed again.

Bruce scowled. Roger pointed to him. “Okay, hotshot. You want to be first?”

“Definitely!” Bruce stood unsteadily under the heavy tank but made his way to the near end of the pool.

“Put the mouthpiece in,” Roger counseled as Bruce stepped into the water. It reached his knees, his waist, and finally his chest. Roger motioned him down, and he slid underwater and popped up three seconds later.

He spit out his mouthpiece. “That's amazing. The tank doesn't weigh anything underwater.”

Roger smiled. “Thanks for trusting me. Kiley, you and Sedah next. Side by side.”

Kiley stood easily and then gave a hand to Bruce's friend to help her up.

“Mouthpieces in,” she told the girl, feeling utterly confident. She couldn't wait until they got through this silly exercise and started to actually breathe air from the tank. She couldn't wait for her first real dive, outside the confines of this pool. There would be so much to see. Fish, porpoises, coral, lost wrecks from bygone eras—an entire universe. Her universe.

The water reached Kiley's knees, then her waist, and then the top of her tank suit. She saw Roger give her the okay sign. This was the moment Kiley had been waiting for her whole life. The beginning of something magic, something
she had wished for and dreamed about. She had the hugest grin on her face when she ducked her head under the surface water.

The feeling came over her in waves: dizzy and woozy, then nauseated. The pool was whirling, her head buzzed, her heart pounded. She couldn't—couldn't breathe. She felt her knees buckle. …

“Kiley! Kiley!”

Her name was being called from far away. She opened her eyes. She was prone on the concrete next to the pool. Roger was looking down at her with concern in his eyes; the rest of the class formed a ring around them.

“Wha-what happened?”

“You blacked out,” Roger told her, checking her pulse. “You feeling okay?”

Blacked out? How was that possible?

“I'm okay …I think.” She saw Bruce and his friends just behind Roger and managed to wave at him in what she hoped was a reassuring gesture.

“You taking any medicine? Under a doctor's care? Eat anything strange?”

Kiley shook her head. “No, nothing. Bruce had the same thing I did for breakfast. Juice, cereal …”

“Man, if you tell my mom about this my ass is grass,” Jerry quipped. Kiley laughed weakly, which helped to break the tension.

“Well, your pulse is okay, Kiley,” Roger announced, “that's good news.” He turned to the other students. “Let's take fifteen, you guys. Out of the tanks, go get some water.” He
checked his Casio dive watch. “Back here at twelve-forty-five. Kiley, you rest right there.”

The instructor waited for the class to scatter before he spoke to her again. “How are you feeling now?”