Drinking Life (Keeper of the Water Book 1) (13 page)

“Since we moved here, I suppose I have talked of you often,” he says. I can hardly believe what he’s saying and I don’t have the courage to look him in the eye. I don’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed when he quickly changes the subject. “Your shot was only better than mine because your bow is much newer. Mine is so old it could’ve been used by the Spanish Armada.”

He shoots another arrow that strikes even closer to the bull’s-eye. It’s so close to mine that my arrow shakes a little. The class quickly turns into less of a teaching clinic and more of a shooting competition. We take turns firing arrow after arrow. To make it fair, I switch to one of the older bows but that doesn’t slow me down. Every arrow he shoots, I shoot just a little better. When he finally hits dead red, I take aim for his arrow and shoot it right off the target. His satisfied grin vanishes just as suddenly.

“If I had a white flag, now would be the time I’d wave it,” John says. “I concede defeat.”

“And what do I win?” I ask. I blush before the last word even leaves my mouth.

“What do you
want
to win?” he asks, taking a step toward me. I think back to the moment we shared that first day in history class. So much has happened in the last week that it feels like
forever
ago. But all of my problems seem to fade away and I feel just as excited that he’s leaning toward me as I did the last time.

But today, Celeste plays the role of interrupter instead of Jeff.

“We’re losing the day,” she says accusingly. “I thought you wanted the best tour possible.”

“Yes, ma’am, I do,” John says politely.

“Then let’s get moving,” she says. Celeste’s eyes flash on me, the first time I can ever remember her looking angry at me. “You sure are giving
VIP
lessons. Your classes don’t even last half that long when you have groups ten times as big.”

I look at the sun in the sky and realize John and I have been here for at least an hour. I understand right away why she’s so upset with me; both of us wanted to get away from here as soon as possible. Celeste spins and marches away; it’s the first time I’ve seen a bit of Cassie in her. John looks at me and turns his hands up, a quiet way of asking ‘What did I do?’ I just shrug my shoulders like I have no idea, though I’m still annoyed with myself for opening my big mouth and telling Celeste about him. I wave John along and we follow her to the area in front of the trailer, where the van is packed and ready to go.

I breathe a sigh of relief that Cassie is still nowhere to be found.

“Go get your mother so we can leave,” Celeste says quietly.

I don’t like leaving John alone with her but at least Dad is nearby and he doesn’t seem to pick up on Celeste’s dislike of John. I hurry into the trailer to get my mother, who will drive us twenty miles upriver.

“We’re ready to…” I start to say but find the trailer empty. It’s weird that she’s not in here but I head back out, wondering if she could be giving another life-jacket warning. I still don’t see her as I walk toward our house. But I don’t make it halfway there when I see the front door of the
other
cabin swing open. Mom emerges but she’s not alone.

My heart sinks when Cassie follows her out.

Her hair is crazy and she rubs her eyes. She plods more than walks, clearly half asleep. The sight of her confirms she has no idea John was coming: she would
never
let him see her looking so out of it.

“Do you
know
what time it is?” Cassie whines. “The sun is barely up,
God!
I want to go back to sleep.”

She stops only a few feet outside her front door and doesn’t seem to notice much of what’s going on around her. I glance toward the van, which shields her view from John, who’s too busy talking to Dad to notice her.

“I thought you’d want to know that the tour is about to leave,” my mother tells Cassie.

“So?” Cassie asks.

Mom walks by me. “What are you doing?” I whisper to her. But she doesn’t even pay attention to me.

“You’ll be stuck helping me with paperwork
all weekend
unless you go on the tour,” Mom tells her. I suddenly realize that spending two days alone with Cassie is the
last
thing my mother wants. We’ll both do whatever it takes to avoid her but this time Mom has really screwed me over.

“I could care less about going on some stupid tour,” she whines. “I’d rather do paperwork until my fingers fall off than go. So just let me go back to bed.”

“Let her go,” I chime in. “She’s obviously exhausted for some reason.”

This earns me a dirty look from both of them but for different reasons.

“I would hate for her to be
stuck alone with me
…” Mom growls these four words at me. “…
all
weekend long.”

My eyes go wide and I shake my head just enough so hopefully my mother will understand. But I’ve left her alone with Cassie too many times to garner any sympathy from her now.

“I don’t mind having a weekend without my mother,” Cassie says. I can already see her formulating how to sneak out to the next party tonight. “I’m going back inside.”

Cassie turns and heads back to her front door. With each step she takes, my spirits rise a little higher. But just before she walks inside, Mom adds one more thing.

Et tu, Mother?

“I just thought you’d be excited to go on the tour with one of your other classmates,” Mom says.

Cassie stops and spins, looking straight at me. No longer appearing so exhausted, a look of curiosity forms on her face. I can tell right away that she
knows
and I quickly look away.

“Who?”

I know she’s asking me but I refuse to answer on the impossible chance that she’ll drop the subject. My mother has no problem answering though.

“Some handsome boy on a motorcycle,” Mom adds, the final punch to my gut.

Cassie’s eyes widen and she scowls at me.

“John? You weren’t going to tell me
John
is here?” she hisses at me. Cassie is suddenly wide awake and marches toward us. If she was the type to get physical, I might be worried she wants to fight me on the spot. Instead, she attacks with her eyes only. For a split second, it’s almost as if I can
feel
a rush of anger that surges through her. But she blows right by me and heads toward the van. “You’re right, Katina. Maybe some fresh air
will
do me some good.”

Cassie transforms into her perky, fake self as she pulls her hair back into a ponytail. Apparently she doesn’t want to give me a single minute more alone with John since she doesn’t even go inside to put on one of her cute outfits. I can’t hide the fact that I’m disappointed with my mother for dropping a Cassie-bomb on my potentially perfect weekend. We may as well get this over with.

“We need you to drive us upriver now…
all
of us,” I say morosely.

“I’m sorry but I always get stuck with her,” Mom says.

“Whatever.”

I’m sure she doesn’t understand what she’s done but that doesn’t make me any less upset. And I’m not the only one.

“What are
you
doing here?” Cassie asks John, her voice so bubbly it makes me want to puke.

Celeste steps around the van when she hears her daughter. From twenty feet away, I can see her jaw clenched. John smiles but I can tell it’s forced. He glances at me for only a moment, but it’s long enough for me to see the disappointment, even if he tries to hide it from Cassie.

“It seemed like fun,” John says.

“The better question is what are
you
doing here?” Celeste asks her daughter.

Cassie snaps at her. “You always want me to come on these boring tours and when I finally do, you don’t want me to?”

Cassie huffs but doesn’t give her mother time to answer. Instead, she takes John by the hand and leads him into the back of the van. With Celeste eyeing the two of them, John puts his big sunglasses back on and lets his hair fall back over his face. Cassie snuggles up to John in the van’s middle row while Mom climbs into the driver seat and Dad in the front passenger seat. I look to Celeste, who appears as disgusted as I feel. I guess I’m not the only one reluctant to get in the van, which now seems like a horrible idea.

“Maybe I’ll just stay behind since you guys only packed for four,” I say and start to walk away. The disappointment is crushing but Celeste does not let me wallow for very long. She puts her arm against the van to block my path.

“You must be joking,” she says. “I need you to go to help me keep an eye on those two.”

The idea makes me want to be sick but I begrudgingly agree. Celeste and I climb into the back row of the van. Cassie does not try at all to mask her feelings for John—in fact, when Celeste and I are near, she snuggles up to him even closer. I’m not sure who it angers more but it clearly makes John uncomfortable. He tries to shimmy away from her but Cassie doesn’t take the hint. Each time he slides over a few inches, she follows. It only takes a few minutes until they’re squeezed against the side of the van.

The twenty-mile ride takes nearly forty-five minutes; it feels more like ten hours. I stare out the window the entire time but can’t stop myself from looking at the reflection of John in the glass. Whenever he speaks, he’s overly polite to my parents and Celeste. He wins no points with her though, especially since Cassie so obviously flirts with him. I would rather be sitting on the canoe or raft than in the van and they’re both strapped to the roof!

Cassie leans over her seat and grabs one of the bright orange life-jackets. She pulls it on and does her best model pose.

“Do I look cute?” she giggles.

“You look… bright,” John answers.

I can’t hold back a snicker, which earns me a quick sneer from her. But when Cassie turns back to him, she giggles and rolls her eyes girlishly.

“I need to wear this so I won’t get lost,” she says, batting her eyes.

“You
all
should wear them for insurance purposes,” Mom calls back from the front.

This time Celeste rolls her eyes and I’m sure Dad is doing the same.

“At least you’ll be here to protect me if something bad happens,” Cassie says, rubbing John’s arm.

“I’m not so sure I’d be the best one to help,” he says, trying to back away even though there’s no place to go.

Cassie finally backs away and pouts. “You didn’t have trouble helping
Nia
fight off the lacrosse players.”

Dad turns around in his seat and I can see the worried expression on Mom’s face in the rearview mirror. I try to crouch down in my seat but there’s nowhere to hide. Speaking of nowhere to hide, Cassie doesn’t try to hide the grin on her face.

“What is she talking about? Some boys tried to fight you?” Dad asks, his face skewed in anger. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so mad. This is exactly what I never mentioned the brawl to either of my parents.

“It was nothing. Some of the guys gave me a hard time, the whole ‘girl trying out for a guy’s team’ thing. I took care of it and John helped me out,” I explain.

Dad’s anger eases and I think there’s even a bit of pride there. He would’ve gotten a kick out of the way I handled the entire team of jocks. Mom isn’t quite so impressed.

“This is why I didn’t want you playing sports. It always ends in trouble.”

I want to snap at my mother and tell her this was
nothing
compared to the attack on the field hockey field. But I don’t bother wasting my breath. Besides, I’m surprised my mother mentions it in the first place. We all put that incident behind us once we moved here.

“You had other trouble?” John asks me.

Celeste ignores the question and focuses on Cassie. John looks at me but I just shrug.

“Your little friend here is right about one thing,” she says. “If you ever find yourself in trouble, Zannia or I will help you.”

Celeste and I are
both
severely annoyed with Cassie but I feel just as strongly about her mother’s last statement.

“What am I going to be if there’s trouble? Invisible?” Dad asks from the front seat.

But at the moment, that’s exactly how Celeste treats him. She finally turns to John, looks at him suspiciously.

“Unless you’re secretly an outdoors expert?” she asks.

The tension fills the back of the van like a heavy fog. Celeste challenges John at every turn and I wouldn’t blame him if he finally snapped at her. But he remains calm and stone-faced.

“I’ve barely ever camped,” he says.

“Uh huh,” Celeste says, clearly not believing a thing he says.

I want to say something to end the awkwardness but Cassie jumps in and still flirts with John even though a blind person could see how much this angers her mother. In the reflection of the window, I can see Cassie touch a spot on John’s arm.

“Where did you get this scar?” she asks.

John glances in my direction before pulling down his sleeve.

“I don’t remember. I’ve had it for years.”

I smile and can’t help being satisfied that he doesn’t open up to her. He didn’t exactly give me his entire life story but he didn’t shut me out the way he did Cassie. But she’s not deterred and blabs on and on the whole ride. By the time we reach the small shore of the river twenty miles from home, I all but leap out of the van just as we stop. I start unloading the supplies and helping Dad with the canoe and raft. Apparently Cassie is allergic to working so this at least keeps her away from me for a few minutes. John tries to help but Dad tells him to check out the river, to take in the sights. I’m not sure how much he can enjoy with Cassie talking his ear off.

Once the van is unloaded and we’re ready to go, Mom climbs back into the van.

“Have fun and be careful,” she tells me. “And don’t forget to – ”

“Wear our life jackets, we know,” I finish.

“Katina is about to leave,” Celeste calls out to Cassie. “This is your last chance: are you sure you want to come with us? It’s going to be a lot of hard work and you’ll need to do a lot of rowing. Plus I notice you didn’t bring your cell phone so you won’t be able to send a million texts the next few days.”

“So?” Cassie snaps at her. She grabs John’s phone from his pocket and holds it up. My cell phone is an old piece of junk that barely gets reception in the mountains; John’s looks like one of the fancy new ones that costs hundreds of dollars. “Besides, John has the new Tracker 4.0—it even has built-in GPS. We won’t even need you,
Mom
, to avoid getting lost.”

Cassie plays with the phone though John clearly wants it back. Mom slams on the gas and speeds away before Cassie has the chance to change her mind. Unfortunately, that was my last chance to escape, too.