Second Child (11 page)

Kent Fielding knelt down next to her. “What happened?”

Teri shrugged. “I went out too far. Melissa warned me what would happen, but I guess I didn’t listen. The tide caught me, and I panicked. I thought I was going right out to sea.” She looked up at Brett Van Arsdale, standing a couple of feet away. “Thanks,” she said. “I was so scared—I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been there.”

Brett grinned. “Nothing to it,” he said, holding out his hand. “I’m Brett Van Arsdale.”

Teri scrambled to her feet. “I’m Teri MacIver—Melissa’s half sister.”

The rest of the kids began introducing themselves to Teri, and soon she was in the midst of the crowd, telling them what had happened. “I was just floating with my eyes closed, almost asleep. And then I decided to look around and see where I was, and I’d gotten so far out, I just panicked. It was really stupid to start screaming
like that, I mean, it’s not like I was drowning or anything.”

“Well, you might not have been then,” Brett told her. “But if you’d drifted out of the cove, you could have been in real trouble. The rips get really bad out there, and if you drift south, there’s nothing but rocks. Last summer a guy was surfing out there, and a wave took him right in. Tore all the skin right off his chest and stomach. He was lucky he wasn’t killed.”

“Oh, come on,” Teri protested. “I wasn’t anywhere near the point. I just got scared. I—I’m really sorry I made you swim all the way out there.”

Brett’s face reddened. “I didn’t mind—really!”

“He’s not lying, either,” Kent Fielding crowed. “The way he’s been talking about you, we all thought he was going to try to drown you himself, just so he could save you.”

Brett groaned. “Will you shut up,” he said, his blush deepening. “Jesus, she’s going to think I’m some kind of nerd!”

“Well, aren’t you?” Cyndi Miller teased, ducking away as Brett kicked sand at her.

Melissa watched for a few minutes, and noticed that Teri seemed instantly to meld into the group, chattering along with them, falling immediately into their idle banter. Finally, as the group seemed to close around Teri, Melissa wandered away, Blackie trailing along after her.

Ten minutes later Teri, now sitting on a huge beach towel with Brett Van Arsdale and Ellen Stevens, glanced around. “Where’s Melissa?” she asked. “She was here a minute ago.”

“Who cares?” one of the kids replied.

Teri frowned, and turned to Brett Van Arsdale. “What’s wrong with Melissa?” she asked. “How come no one likes her?”

Brett’s face flushed and his eyes shifted away from her. It was Ellen Stevens who answered her question, her voice dark with scorn.

“Oh, come on—just take a look at her. She’s got to be at least twenty pounds overweight, and she always looks terrible. I mean, that hair of hers is so gross—does she ever even wash it? And she’s such a klutz. She can barely
swim, and she can’t play tennis at all. She never even has anything to say. Everyone thinks she’s crazy.”

“And her mother!” Cyndi Miller groaned.

Instantly, a tiny alarm sounded in the back of Teri’s mind. “Her mother?” she asked. “What’s wrong with Phyllis?”

Cyndi’s brows arched in an expression that was older than her years. “Well, I suppose there’s nothing wrong with her,” she said in an almost perfect imitation of her own mother’s inflections. “I mean, if you like that kind of person. But she’s not one of us, and she never will be.”

“You mean because she didn’t grow up here?” Teri asked, certain she already understood exactly what was meant.

“She didn’t grow up
anywhere,”
Ellen Stevens replied. “My mother says no one knows where she came from or who her family is.” Her voice dropping just the way her mother’s did when she was about to say something cutting, she went on, “And she’s always trying to push her way in, just like she was one of us!”

Teri got to her feet, her mind furiously at work, sorting out everything she’d heard in the last few minutes. “I—I better be going,” she said. She started up the beach toward the Holloway house, but turned back when she heard Brett calling to her.

“Why don’t you come over to the club this afternoon? Maybe we’ll play some tennis.”

Teri hesitated, then shrugged. “I’ll see,” she said. Then turning away from the group of kids once more, she hurried on up the beach.

A few minutes later she found Melissa sitting on the sand, staring out to sea, with Blackie at her side. As Teri approached, the big dog growled softly and Melissa glanced up. But she said nothing, her eyes quickly returning to the water.

“Are you mad at me?” Teri asked.

Melissa shook her head.

“You are,” Teri insisted. “You’re mad because I was talking to those kids, aren’t you?”

Melissa shrugged but didn’t deny it.

Teri plopped down onto the sand next to her. “They’re not such bad kids,” she said. “They’re a little bit snobby,
but look how they live. They’re all rich.” There was a hint of envy in Teri’s voice that made Melissa look at her.

“They’ll probably like you,” she said, her voice reflecting her pain. “I mean, you’re so pretty, and you look like them. You’ll fit right in.”

Now it was Teri who shrugged. “I don’t know,” she sighed. “I sort of got the feeling that the thing that really counts with them is where you’re from and who your parents are. And I’m from California.”

Melissa finally managed a grin. “No you’re not,” she said. “You were born right here, and so were your parents. So you’re one of them.”

Teri frowned. “But you are, too, aren’t you?”

Melissa shook her head, then took a deep breath, as if trying to make up her mind to say something she really didn’t want to say.

“What is it?” Teri pressed.

“It’s Mom,” Melissa said. “Nobody likes her. She keeps trying to make them, but they won’t. They talk about her behind her back, and laugh at her just like they laugh at me.”

Teri shrugged. “I bet they’d stop if you didn’t let them know it hurts you. Just pretend you don’t hear. Like I pretended to be drowning this morning.”

Melissa gaped at her half sister. “You mean you weren’t?”

A sly smile curled the corners of Teri’s mouth. “Of course not,” she said. “I can swim like a fish. But there’s no better way to meet boys on a beach than to let them save you. So I let Brett Van Arsdale save me.”

Melissa’s mouth dropped open. “But—But that’s like lying, isn’t it?”

“So what?” Teri asked. “I wanted to meet him, and I did. If it works, do it.”

Melissa made no reply, but as she lay back on the sand, feeling the warmth of the sun on her face, she was thinking about what Teri had said.

“If it works, do it.”

It sounded so easy, and apparently for Teri it was. After all, it hadn’t taken her more than a few minutes to make friends with all the kids Melissa herself had grown up with but never fit in with.

So if Teri could do it, why couldn’t she?

But she already knew the answer: even if she knew what it was she was supposed to do, she still wouldn’t be able to do it.

No matter how hard she tried, she’d still mess it up, and once again people would laugh. But not
with
her, like Teri had earlier. No, like all the other times, they would laugh
at
her.

Better not to try at all.

That evening, as dusk was gathering, Teri was in the library with the rest of the family. The television was on, but only Phyllis was watching it. Teri herself was leafing through an old copy of
Town & Country,
while Melissa was playing a game of chess with her father. Teri watched for a moment, both of them intent on the board, apparently oblivious to everything around them.

She looked around the walnut-paneled room, and suddenly the walls seemed to close in around her—she’d been here two days already, and hardly been away from the house at all, except for a few minutes at the beach today.

And then she remembered Brett Van Arsdale’s words that afternoon, when he’d invited her down to the club. She hadn’t gone, of course. Though Melissa had told her to go by herself if she wanted to, Phyllis had told her she shouldn’t—she was still in mourning for her parents, and what would people think?

Well, what were they supposed to think? And how long was she supposed to wait before she started living again? Did they want her to spend her whole life thinking about the past?.

And if Melissa had wanted to go to the club, she’d bet it would have been fine with Phyllis.

Suddenly, she thought if she didn’t get out of the house for a while, she’d go crazy. “I think I’ll go for a walk on the beach,” she said, putting the magazine aside and standing up.

Phyllis’s eyes flicked away from the television screen for a moment. “Don’t go swimming—it can be very dangerous at night.”

“Want me to go with you?” Melissa asked, looking up from the chessboard she’d been studying.

Teri shook her head. “I just want to be by myself for a little while,” she said. “I won’t be gone long.”

A few minutes later, as she walked along the beach listening to the gently breaking surf, she saw the lights of the Cove Club glowing in the distance. Faintly, she could hear music—a hard rock beat she hadn’t heard since she’d left California. Her pace picking up, she started toward the club, drawn by the music and the lights.

She hesitated as she came to the grounds of the club itself. There was an outdoor shower at the top of the beach, with a sign saying
FOR THE USE OF MEMBERS AND GUESTS ONLY,
and from the shower an intricately patterned brick walkway wound through perfectly tended gardens to a terrace and swimming pool. From there a series of steps led up the cliff to the clubhouse itself, which was perched at the very end of the point. Even at this distance, Teri could see people inside the clubhouse, dancing to the compelling beat of the rock music.

She started up the path, ignoring the discreet but definite
NO TRESPASSING
sign. After all, her father was a member of the club, and even if he hadn’t been, she’d been invited by Brett Van Arsdale. But as she came to the pool terrace, she suddenly realized that it wasn’t empty. Three people were sitting on chaise longues, quietly talking.

Suddenly feeling like an outsider, Teri stepped off the path and ducked into the deep shadows of a small grove of pine trees. As she was about to slip back toward the beach, she heard a snatch of conversation.

“I still say she won’t go.”

Teri stopped, recognizing Jeff Barnstable’s voice.

“Why not?” Brett Van Arsdale replied.

“Because of Mrs. Holloway,” Ellen Stevens’s voice chimed in. “If you invite Teri to the bonfire, you can just bet Mrs. Holloway’s going to make her bring Melissa with her.”

Teri froze. Were they talking about her? They had to be! Moving carefully, she crept through the trees.

“Well, so what if Melissa comes?” Brett asked. “I mean, she doesn’t do anything.”

“But that’s the whole point,” Ellen replied. “She just sits there and stares at you. Besides, she’s such a little pig—she’d eat all the food before any of the rest of us had a chance.”

“Oh, come on,” Jeff objected. “So she’s not perfect. So what?”

“I don’t care if she’s perfect or not,” Ellen sneered. “But she’s just not one of us. Not like Teri, at all.”

The conversation went on, but Teri had heard enough. She slipped back through the trees, not returning to the beach until she was far enough from the club that she wouldn’t be seen.

She started home, going over and over the conversation she’d just heard.

So now she wasn’t going to be invited to a bonfire, just because the kids didn’t like Melissa.

It wasn’t fair. Why should she be left out just because Melissa didn’t fit in? After all, Melissa already had everything she could possibly want.

And most of it had once been hers.

Melissa had her house. She even had her old room.

And her father, too.

An image flashed into Teri’s mind of Melissa and her father, bent over the chessboard, concentrating only on each other and their game.

A game Teri hadn’t been part of.

And now Melissa was going to keep her from making friends with all the kids she should have grown up with herself.

No, she decided as she approached the big house above the beach once again, it wasn’t fair.

It wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t how things were supposed to be at all.

And it certainly wasn’t how she’d planned them.

The large clock in the library began to chime the hour. Phyllis glanced over at the chess game that had been going on for more than two hours. Her lips tightened in disapproval—how could her husband and daughter just
sit
there, hour after hour, staring at nothing but a bunch of figures on a checkerboard? Never speaking, never doing anything. She got up from her chair and moved to the table, casting a shadow over the board as she blocked the light from the floor lamp a few feet away. “Ten o’clock,” she announced. “Time for you to go to bed.”

Melissa’s eyes flicked up from the board, resting first on her father, then moving on to her mother. “Just a few more minutes? Please? I’ve almost got him.”

Phyllis shook her head. “You know the rules, dear. You need your rest.”

“But it’s just three more moves,” Melissa pleaded. “Look, all I have to do is back Daddy’s king over to the side of the board …” Her words trailed off as her father laid his king down on the board.

“It’s all right, honey,” he said. “I resign. When there’s
no hope, why prolong the agony?” He straightened up in his chair, stretched, then grinned crookedly at his daughter. “I’m starting to wonder if it was such a good idea teaching you this game in the first place. How long has it been since I’ve beaten you?”

Melissa began setting the pieces up on the board, placing each man in the exact center of its starting square. “You almost beat me tonight,” she said. “You could have trapped my queen an hour ago.”

“How?” Charles asked.

Melissa began moving the men around the board, recreating from memory the position that had existed sixteen moves into the game. Then her mother’s voice stopped her.

“Now we’ll have none of that,” she commanded. “You’re not going to replay the whole thing—you’ll both be up all night.”