Delta Girls (34 page)

H
E’S OUT, YOU KNOW,” SAID BEN. “NATHAN MAIN. HE
got out of jail last week—it was all over the media.”

I felt a chill just hearing the name. “I think I may have seen him, across the slough,” I said. “I think he may have been the one who broke the bottles.”

Ben closed his eyes.

“You should probably turn yourself in,” he said quietly.

“I can’t turn myself in.” I jumped out of the chair. “They’ll take Quinn.”

“What are you going to do, then? Wait for him to poison you both?” He stood up, too, took a step closer to me.

“I don’t know …”

“Do you want me to help you hide? Your face is all over the media now, too.”

“Is that how you knew who I was?” As much as I hoped no one else had recognized my face, I felt something deep inside my chest relax. Ben had seen me. He had really truly seen me, all the
way to the darkest corner of my heart. And he hadn’t run away; he was still right there.

“I always thought you looked familiar.” His eyes were soft, pained. “When I saw the news last week, something clicked. I even asked my dad if he thought you looked like that skater girl, but he said I was crazy, so I put it out of my mind. Tried to, at least. Then I saw you skate …” He let out a heavy sigh. “We really need to get you out of here, Izzy.”

“You’d be an accomplice.”

“An accomplice to an accomplice.” He chuckled softly. “That probably isn’t so bad. One year, maybe? Five? I’ll get off on good behavior.”

“If that’s what does it for you.” I couldn’t seem to help myself.

He shot me a look and I started to laugh until I started to sob, and he took me into his arms. I wondered if he was thinking about how he was holding the same body from the video he had seen, if he got some charge out of that, but he shouldn’t, it wasn’t; it wasn’t the same body. A body’s cells are replaced every seven years. He was holding someone new.

IT WAS ALMOST
4 a.m. by the time I went back to my room.

“Did you get lucky?” Abcde mumbled as I walked past her bed. I didn’t answer, let her drift back to sleep. I wouldn’t call it getting lucky so much as getting clear. Coming clean.

I crawled into bed with Quinn and hoped she wouldn’t be able to smell Ben all over me, but I relished the smell myself, breathed it in deep.

If a leaf touches a pear as it’s growing, even just after the blossom has fallen, it leaves a mark. Sometimes you don’t see it right away, but as the pear ripens, a dark spot will rise on its skin.

If I could see all the past touches on my body, I’d be one big bruise. Nathan’s handprint would appear on just about every
inch. Quinn’s fingers would carve a deep, sweet shadow into my palm. Wherever Ben touched me, it felt as if he left a smear of light. I could almost feel myself glowing beneath the sheets.

QUINN AND ABCDE
woke me much earlier than I would have liked. “Can we go swimming, Eema?” Quinn asked. When I opened my eye a crack, I saw she was already in her bathing suit. There was a small pool in the back of the hotel, the concrete pool area covered with a canopy of netting, presumably so people wouldn’t try to dive in from the second floor.

“I guess so,” I said. “Just be careful.” I slipped easily back into sleep.

“EEMA.” WHEN I
opened my eyes again, at first I thought I was still dreaming. Quinn’s lips were swollen, like some Hollywood starlet’s. The smell of chlorine made me realize I was actually awake, that time had passed. And something crazy was happening to Quinn’s face.

“Did you get stung?”

“I don’t know …”

“I didn’t see anything,” said Abcde. “Her lips just starting blowing up. And she has a rash on her chest …”

I fumbled for the EpiPen. I thought I had left it on the nightstand, but it wasn’t there. I jumped out of bed to search and finally found it in the drawer, next to the Gideon’s Bible. I removed the gray locking cap, and willed my hand to stop trembling as I swung my arm back, then jabbed it against the side of her thigh. It bounced right off—the needle didn’t come out like it was supposed to. I tried again, as Quinn said, exasperated now, “Eema.” Nothing.

“Should we take her to a doctor?” asked Abcde.

“Probably,” I said, but then I realized I probably shouldn’t go
to such a public place—not with fake papers. Not with Nathan looking for me, maybe advising other people to be on the lookout, too. “Can you go get Ben? He’s in room 234.”

“Sure thing.” She raced off in just her bathing suit, haunches jiggling majestically.

“Can you breathe okay?” I asked Quinn.

“I think so,” she said, her voice impeded by her inflamed lips.

“Your throat isn’t closing up, is it?”

She shook her head.

Abcde and Ben burst into the room. I wanted to run straight into Ben’s arms, but I also didn’t want to leave Quinn’s side.

“Hey, Angelina Jolie,” Ben said to Quinn, and she smiled, even though it looked painful.

“She needs to see a doctor.” I clicked the EpiPen mindlessly in the air—this time it worked, but it sent its cache of medicine out into the room.

“You shouldn’t go.” He understood immediately.

“Why not?” asked Abcde.

“I’ll tell you later,” I said.

“Izzy!” I could tell she was ready for some juicy gossip.

“Can Abcde come with us?” Quinn asked.

“Of course, sweetheart.” Abcde tossed a filmy sundress over her bathing suit. “But that doesn’t mean your mom’s off the hook.”

On the hotel stationery, I quickly scribbled a letter giving Ben and Abcde permission to make medical decisions for Quinn on my behalf, gave Quinn a huge hug that made her squawk, made sure they all had my cell number, and they took off for Ben’s truck. I ran out to the balcony and watched them drive away, waving until long after they were out of sight.

I DIDN’T KNOW
what to do with myself in the hotel room. I paced and paced, my limbs frantic with worry, and finally called Ben on his cell and asked him to hold it up to Quinn’s ear. She wasn’t comfortable talking, but I was happy to listen to her
breathe, to hear Abcde and Ben joke around in the background; their laughs made me less concerned—they wouldn’t be laughing so hard if she were in dire trouble.

Ben finally got back on. “We’re in the ER,” he said. “We can’t use our cellphones inside, but I’ll come out to give you updates.”

“Thank you so much, Ben,” I said.

“No problem,” he said. “Just watch out for yourself.”

I CONTINUED TO
pace around the room, restless, bereft. It made me feel crazy to think of Quinn being so far away from me, especially with something scary happening. I made myself a cup of tea to try to settle down and noticed the pen and stationery still out on the table. Abcde had said we all wanted to write about the whales—I figured I might as well take a stab.

———

I FELT EXHILARATED
when I put down the pen, as if I had just swum with the whales myself. I wondered if Abcde ever had that feeling when she wrote, that feeling where you think you’re writing to someone else, but it turns out you’re really writing to yourself. It turns out you’re really writing to teach yourself what you need to learn.

THE CELLPHONE RANG
.

“It’s an allergic reaction,” said Ben. He sounded calm, which comforted me. “They’re not sure to what—something in the water, probably.”

“Is she okay?”

“She’s doing great. They’re giving her Benadryl by IV—her lips are going down already, but they want to keep her here a few hours just to be on the safe side.”

“I wish I could talk to her,” I said.

“I wish you could, too,” he said. “Maybe there’s a hospital phone we can use—I’ll find out. But she said to say hi, for now. Oh, and she wants you to find her Norse mythology book. She said she left it on the boat, but I don’t think you should go over there by yourself right now, Izzy. I can look for it when we get back.”

I KNEW BEN
was right—I shouldn’t go back to the Vieiras’ by myself, but I was going stir-crazy in the hotel room. I tried to write a second piece, but I couldn’t concentrate. I needed to get out, to do something that would help Quinn, even in the tiniest way. I knocked on the door of Mrs. Vieira’s room, the room next to Ben’s. I hoped she hadn’t been able to hear too much the night before.

“Would you like to go back to the orchard for a little bit?” I asked her. “I have to get something in the houseboat.”

She was wearing the same loose floral dress she had worn the day before. She nodded.

IT WAS COMFORTING
to have Mrs. Vieira in the car with me, even though she didn’t speak, even though she looked as if she had been crying all night, her lopsided eyes red and inflamed, her hair a mess.

The distillery was surrounded by police tape, but no police cars were in sight.

“Do you want me to go into the house with you?” I asked Mrs. Vieira, but she shook her head. “Do you mind if I go down to the houseboat to get my daughter’s book?”

She waved me forward.

The levee was covered with spectators—the Vieiras hadn’t been there to take the entry fees, to control the numbers. Thankfully, the whales were a few hundred yards to the west of my boat, so there wasn’t anyone hanging out right where I parked.

I sat in the car, heart pounding, while I scanned the crowd, looking for any familiar body language. It seemed as if there were more men than usual, which made me nervous, especially since some of them had big cans of beer, but they didn’t pay any attention to me. There was too much going on with the whales.

THE MOTHER WHALE
looked like she was having some sort of fit. She was slapping at her baby, the white underside of her long fin making a resounding smack against the baby’s skin, a resounding splash in the water. The baby tried to nurse, but this time, the mother shoved it away, a more gentle shove, but a firm, insistent one. She kept shooing the baby off, her motions increasingly frantic, until the baby did leave, its body a dark submarine torpedoing down the Delta. Faster than I’d ever seen her move, plowing forward with clear determination, hopefully
toward the sea. A group of young men raised their beer cans and cheered.

I saw the people on the other side of the slough lean toward the water, craning their heads to watch the baby enter the Sacramento River. The mother whale turned onto her side, her fin straight up in the air, a stiff white flag. Surrender more than farewell.

When the rumbling began, I thought it was from the whale, her giant organs churning, a wail of grief rippling through her body as her baby swam away. But then the screaming started, the very human screaming, and the levee across the slough crumbled liked dry bread, the whole twenty-foot face of it falling into the water—stones, dirt, all the people on it tumbling down, toppling into the slough, water racing over the levee, flooding the much lower field of dead pear trees in a great whoosh, carrying people with it, the Coast Guard boat with it, the whale with it, sliding sideways over the old orchard like a train off its rails.

I ran to my edge of the levee, wanting to jump into the water, help the people bobbing, crashing into the piles of wood, crashing against the side of the whale, who was stuck up against a heap of trees herself, but I knew if I jumped in, I would get swept away, too.

My houseboat strained at its anchor below, like a dog pulling at its leash. I ran down the metal steps to the dock, unlashed the rope from its post, and jumped onto the deck. I had never driven the houseboat before—I didn’t even know if the engine worked—but it didn’t matter; as soon as the boat wasn’t anchored, it started to move, sweeping across the slough, over what used to be an orchard. I tried to steer as best I could, but the current was too strong. The boat sped toward the whale, its fin still up in the air, waving weakly now. I tried to crank the wheel, but the boat kept barreling forward, and the whale kept looming larger. There was nothing I could do but drop to the floor of the cabin, curl into a ball, brace myself for impact.

———

THE BOAT HIT
the whale with a
thwomp
that sent me reeling, my back crashing against the wall of the cabin. I got up and stumbled to the window; the bow had left a gash in the whale’s side, pink and white beneath the dark skin. I walked onto the deck, slipping on her blood as I made my way to the railing. People were thrashing in the water, some floating facedown. I pulled two life preservers off the side of the boat—they had probably been affixed there for decades—and heaved them over the edge. I hoped they weren’t crumbly inside, like old Styrofoam.

A woman, coughing, sputtering, grabbed onto one, and I pulled the raspy yellow rope to bring her toward the boat. It cut, burning, into my palms.

“Are you okay?” I yelled down at her, but she didn’t appear to hear me.

“Can you climb up the ladder?” I asked. She looked up at me, dazed.

“Just hold on to the ring,” I told her, and thankfully she did.

A man and woman fought over the other life preserver, trying to push each other away.

“You can both hold on to it,” I shouted, even though I wasn’t sure it would support both their weight.