The Bone House (3 page)

    He
could have stayed here forever, but nothing lasted. He knew it was time to go
back to the hotel. Hilary was alone, and she'd wonder where he was if she
awakened. He'd slipped silently out of bed when he couldn't sleep. He'd
shrugged on swimming trunks and a yellow tank top and walked out their patio
door, which led directly down the flat stretch of sand past the palm trees to
the water. The sea had helped clear his head, but the relief was temporary, as
it always was. Things never changed. They only got worse.

    Mark
heard the voice again. 'We Didn't Start the Fire.'

    The
teenage girl in the bikini wandered closer to him. She had a wine bottle in her
hand, and he watched her drink from it like Gatorade. Watching her swaying
motions on the beach, he realized she was drunk. She was only thirty yards away
now, her skin bronzed and damp. She tugged at the bottom of her swimsuit and
adjusted it without self- consciousness. Her wet hair had fallen across her
face, and when she pushed it away, their eyes met. Hers were wild and
unfocused.

    He
knew who she was.

    'Oh,
son of a bitch,' he murmured under his breath.

    It
was Glory Fischer. Tresa's sister.

    Instinctively,
Mark looked up and down the beach. The two of them were alone. It was almost
three in the morning. He eyed the tower of the hotel, and in the handful of
rooms where he saw lights, he didn't see the silhouette of anyone looking out.
Even in the moonlight, it was dark enough that no one could see them here. He
hated the idea that his first thought was self-protection, but he felt guilty
and exposed being this close to a young girl. Especially this girl.

    She
took a long time to realize who he was, but then she offered him a teasing
smile as she recognized him. 'You,' she said.

    'Hello,
Glory. Are you OK?'

    The
girl ignored the question and hummed to herself. 'Did you follow me here?' she
asked.

    'Follow
you? No.'

    'I
bet you followed me. That's OK.'

    'Where'd
you get the wine?' he asked.

    'You
want some?' She looked at the bottle and realized it was empty. She overturned
it, and a few red drops sprinkled on to the sand. 'Shit. Sorry.'

    'You
shouldn't be out here,' he said. 'Let me take you back to the hotel.'

    Glory
wagged a finger at him, and her torso swayed unsteadily. 'Tresa wouldn't like
that, would she? Seeing you and me together. Troy wouldn't like it either. He
gets so jealous. If you want to do it with me, we should do it right here. Do
you want to do it with me?'

    Mark's
body tightened with anxiety. He knew he shouldn't be here. He had to get away
before this got worse, before anyone saw them together.

    'Come
on, let's go,' he told Glory. 'I don't want you on the beach alone. It's not
safe. You've been drinking.'

    'What's
the problem? You'll keep me safe, won't you? You're big and strong. No one's
going to mess with you.'

    He
reached for her arm, but she spun out of his grasp. He ran a hand back across
his short hair in frustration. 'I'm not going to leave you out here by
yourself,' he said.

    'So
don't leave. Stay. I like being here with you.'

    'It's
late. You should be in bed.'

    Glory
grinned and stuck out her tongue at him. 'See, I knew that's what you wanted.'

    'You're
drunk. I don't want you hurting yourself.'

    She
hummed again. The same Billy Joel song. 'Tresa saw you on Friday, you know.'

    'What?'

    'She
saw you and Hilary in the auditorium. That's why she choked. She was really
upset. She couldn't concentrate knowing you were there.'

    'Not
winning isn't the end of the world.'

    'Yeah.
I know.' Glory didn't look distressed by Tresa's failure. Her face had a
drunken brightness to it, as if she was drowning her sorrows. 'Hey, I read a
poem once that said the world would end in fire.'

    'Robert
Frost,' he said.

    'You
know it? Oh, yeah, duh, English teacher.' She looked at him like a broken toy.
'I mean, you used to be. Tresa felt bad about what happened.'

    'Let's
go, Glory.'

    'Tresa
never thought they would do anything like that.'

    'We
should get back to the hotel.' He put his hand out.

    Glory
took his hand in hers, but then she slid a damp arm around his waist. Her face
came up to his neck. She tilted her chin toward him. Her breath smelled of
alcohol, and her white teeth were stained darker by the wine. 'Kiss me.'

    He
reached round to his back to disentangle himself. He looked over his shoulder
toward the hotel again and felt an uncomfortable sensation, as if he was being
watched from the darkness. Or maybe someone was testing him.

    'Stop
it.'

    'Tresa
says your lips are soft,' Glory whispered.

    Mark
pried her hands away from his body. He took an urgent, awkward step backward in
the sand to separate himself. When Glory reached out to hold him, she was too
far away, and she stumbled and sank to her knees. Her stringy brown hair fell
across her face. Her skin was pale, and he saw disorientation in her eyes.

    'Are
you OK?' he asked.

    Glory
didn't say anything.

    He squatted
in front of her. 'Glory?'

    She
looked up at him. Tears streaked down her face. She wiped her nose with the
back of her hand. On her knees, crying, she looked like a pretty, lost girl
again. A typical teenager with blemishes on her forehead. A kid pretending to
be an adult. He reached to touch her shoulder but pulled his hand back, as if
her skin would be on fire.

    'What's
wrong?' he asked. 'Why are you out here by yourself?'

    'I
don't want to go home,' she said.

    'Why
not?'

    She shook
her head. 'I don't know what to do.'

    Mark
started to press her for details, but he realized he was letting himself get
sucked into this girl's life and problems. That had always been his weakness.
He was a fixer.

    'I'll
take you back to the hotel,' he murmured. He took her elbow and helped her to
her feet. Her legs were rubbery, and she grabbed him for balance, clinging to
his neck so tightly that her nails dug into his skin. He guided her into the
dry sand with an arm around her waist, but she yanked free and skipped
unsteadily back into the water. Trails of sand clung to her knees and thighs.
She held her arms out to him.

    'Let's
swim,' she said.

    'I
don't think so.'

    'One
quick swim, then we'll go.'

    'No.'

    'Oh,
come on.' She was a coquette again. Her moods changed like clouds passing over
the moon. 'I won't bite. Unless you're into that.'

    'Get
out of the water,' he told her sternly. 'You're drunk. You could hurt
yourself.'

    'I
think you're afraid of me,' she said. 'You want me.'

    'Stop
playing games, Glory.'

    'You
think I'm too young, but I'm not.'

    'What
are you, sixteen?'

    'So
what? All the parts work.'

    Mark
didn't feel vulnerable to her, but he remembered what Hilary had told him about
teaching teenage girls.
You think they're kids. They're not.
He wanted
this encounter to be over. He wished he had never got out of bed and never
taken a walk on the beach. Nothing good could come from being here with Glory.

    'It's
OK to play with fire,' the girl said.

    'I'm
leaving.'

    Glory
scrambled out of the water. She sprinted up to him and stood, dripping, in
front of him. Her voice was young now. 'Don't go.'

    'We're
both going inside.'

    'Why
don't you want to have sex with me?' she asked. 'Is it Tresa? I won't tell
her.'

    'Oh,
for God's sake, Glory,' he muttered in exasperation.

    'I'm
not a virgin,' she went on. 'Troy wasn't even the first. You know what the boys
call me at school? My nickname? It's Glory Glory Hallelujah.'

    'You
shouldn't brag about that,' he said, before he could stop himself. He didn't
want to lecture her or be drawn into a discussion of her sexuality. He just
wanted to turn around and go. Things were getting out of control.

    He
saw her eyes focused on the palm trees over his shoulder, and he flinched. He
turned, expecting to see someone watching the two of them together. He knew it
would be the same as last year if they were discovered. Suspicions.
Accusations.
You're a predator,
they would say. Instinctively, he
thought of ways to explain his behavior, to defend himself, even when he'd done
nothing wrong.

    Instead,
he saw no one. They were alone. Weren't they?

    'I'm
leaving, Glory,' he insisted.

    'If you
go, I'll just tell everybody we had sex anyway,' she said. 'Who do you think
they'll believe? If you stay, it can be our secret.'

    Glory
reached behind her back. He didn't realize what she was doing, but when her
hands came forward, they held the strings to her bikini top, which dangled at
her hips. She tugged the ties at her neck, undoing the knot, and shrugged her
torso, letting the red top peel away and fall to her feet. Her eyes were
serious and confident as she cupped her naked breasts.

    'No one
will ever know,' she whispered.

    'You're
quiet this morning,' Hilary Bradley said to her husband.

    They
sat at an outdoor table by the pool with plates filled from the hotel's
breakfast buffet. It was early morning, just after seven o'clock, and the patio
cafe was sparsely populated. Both of them were early risers. Hilary sipped her
orange juice and watched her husband, whose blank eyes were focused on the wide
stretch of beach and the placid GuIf water.

    'Anyone
in there?' she asked when he didn't answer her.

    Mark's
head snapped toward her. 'Oh, sorry. I'm not quite awake yet.'

    'Drink
your coffee.'

    He
sipped from a ceramic mug, not saying anything more.

    'You
OK?' she asked.

    'Sure.
Fine.'

    Hilary
didn't push him to talk. She tried the jalapeno-laced scrambled eggs, which
were spicy and delicious, and she picked up a piece of crispy bacon with her
fingers. The buffet meant an extra hour on the treadmill tomorrow, but the
trade-off was worth it. Hilary was tall, and she would never be thin. Even when
she'd danced in school, she hadn't been a waif; instead, her muscular physique
had been an asset in winning competitions. That was a long time ago. Now she
was only two years away from forty, and she found herself waging a daily battle
to maintain a weight where she could look at herself in the mirror and not
wince. Each year the battle got a little harder, but she wasn't about to starve
herself.

    She
studied her husband, who had shown surprising willpower at the buffet this
morning. Mark was a rugged man, the kind who turned women's heads. She felt
satisfaction when she thought about his toned body, but she also felt mild
jealousy and annoyance. He carried his own weight well, but he had the
advantage of being three years younger than she was. He was a man, too, and a
lifelong athlete. When he gained ten pounds on a vacation, he added half an
hour to his weightlifting regimen, and the pounds miraculously vanished on the
second day.

    Annoying.

    Hilary
followed Mark's eyes to the beach, where she saw a large cluster of people half
a mile away near the water. They weren't dressed like swimmers. She thought
they looked like police. 'I wonder what's going on,' she said.

    'I
don't know.' Mark sounded distracted.