The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady (25 page)

The lifeguard, a little rooster of a guy, sat in his squat lifeguard chair, talking to some teenagers who sat near him on an overturned rowboat. People swam in the designated swimming area and sunned themselves on two platforms anchored out by the far edge of the swimming area, near the ropes. Supposedly, the alligators, waiting on the other side of the river, wouldn’t come into the swimming area because they didn’t like crowds. (The FSU student who’d been eaten had swum over into the alligators’ territory—he must’ve been drunk or on drugs, people said.) You could either believe the unlikely notion that the alligators respected the boundaries and take your chances, or stay safe, hot, and miserable on the beach. Ava always made sure there was somebody between her and the ropes when she went swimming.

There was a loud squeal and some wild splashing right in front of Ava and Travis. A group of white people, some of them wearing T-shirts over their bathing suits, were yelling and dunking each other, and the men were slinging their long wet hair about.

“Rednecks,” Travis observed. “Did you ever notice how many overweight people there are in Wakulla County? Just take a look.”

There were a number of fat people with red necks and, in fact, entire red bodies, out frolicking in the pristine water, people with many tattoos who had no business wearing bathing suits in public. Some of them sat nearby in their beach chairs, swilling beer and eating fried chicken.

“Don’t make fun of fat people,” Ava said, slapping her stomach, harder than she meant to. She shifted so as to hide her pubic hair.

“You’re not fat,” Travis said, his eyes evaluating her body like he’d just been evaluating the rednecks in the water. “All the guys were talking earlier about how hot you are. I told them you’re going to be America’s next top model.”

Ava felt herself relax and well up with happiness. “Let’s go swimming,” she said, standing up. “Let’s jump off the tower.”

Travis adjusted his cap. “That tower isn’t safe. There’ve been thirty-two accidents on that tower since it was built in 1933.”

Ava took his hand and gave it a yank, pulled his hat off his head, and he came stumbling after her. He followed her up the steps of the tower, passing people who’d chickened out and were coming down. At the top the two of them waited in line with other mostly wet, shivering teenagers, and then, when the lifeguard gave them the signal to proceed, not allowing herself or Travis time to stare down and chicken out, she grabbed his hand again and the two of them leaped into the air and plunged down and burst through the surface of the frigid water, and she didn’t even care that her bikini bottoms came down to her knees, she was having so much fun. They were both laughing and whooping when they came up for air, and without even discussing it they swam back to the tower. They jumped off again and then dog-paddled around awhile until Travis suddenly got scared of alligators and beat it back to the beach and Ava floated on her back with her eyes closed, which made her feel better than anything else in the world.

After a while she drifted back to shore and stumbled up onto the
beach, feeling like a frozen fish, and collapsed onto her towel. Travis had taken his towel and moved on. The cute boys and Suzi’s posse had also disappeared, but their towels remained. Ava stretched out on her stomach, thinking briefly about applying more sunscreen, and fell asleep. She woke up, feeling someone spraying something on her back. Travis?

“Hey, there! Sorry to bother you, but you’re burning up, girl!” Buff. He held up a spray bottle of sunscreen.

Ava sat up, groggy, blinking, trying to arrange herself into an unhideous position.

“Thanks,” she mumbled, smoothing down her damp, no doubt crazy-looking hair.

“Having fun?” Buff sat cross-legged in the sand beside her, dry headed, wearing a pair of dry navy blue bathing trunks and his polo shirt and Ray-Ban sunglasses.

“I am,” Ava said, remembering jumping off the tower with Travis, holding hands, and how scared he’d looked the first time, how gung ho he’d looked the second time.

“Me, too,” Buff said. “I’m glad you came.” He dug into the sand with his heel. “Haven’t had a chance to talk to you much.”

Ava made a sound of agreement. What did he want? Was he going to start in about Jesus and being saved? She’d heard all that before—most recently from Suzi—and wasn’t interested in hearing it again.

“I’d like to spend some more time getting to know you,” he said. He gave her a smile, but his eyes were hidden behind his sunglasses.

“Why?” Ava blurted out. She wished to God she’d remembered to bring her own sunglasses.

“I just think you’re an interesting person,” Buff said. “I think we might have some things in common.”

“Like what?”

Suzi and her friends rose up out of the water, Suzi’s friends helping
her hop up the beach, and they all plopped down on their towels again, laughing. Suzi, Ava remembered, had been told by their parents not to go into the water, because it might strain her knee. Suzi herself had told Buff she couldn’t swim, but she must’ve decided to give it a try—good way to get more attention. Ava waved at Suzi, who appeared to be turning to look at her; but if Suzi saw her, she gave no sign.

“Here, look,” Buff said. He opened up his cell phone and clicked around on it. Was he going to show her a picture of his wife, the Playboy bunny? Finally he found what he wanted and held the phone up so she could see.

There was so much glare that Ava couldn’t make out the image at first.

“This is amazing,” Buff said. “Very cool!” His deep voice got squeakier. “I’m totally down with this.”

Ava took the phone and tilted it and saw a picture of herself, one of the ones taken by Mr. Boy. One of the naked ones, where she was lounging in a chair with a big dumb smile on her face. “Oh God.”

“I know the guy who took it,” Buff said. “He forwards me stuff now and then. Don’t worry, I won’t tell.” He nudged her. “And don’t get mad at him. He didn’t tell me your name or anything.”

Ava handed him the phone and glanced up at the river, but the entire scene before her, Suzi, the gallivanting rednecks, swimming tower, the river, the palm trees and pickerelweed on the other side, disappeared in the painful glare. “Then how’d you know it was me?”

“I recognized you from the neighborhood, and then I found out Suzi was your sister. Maybe you could pose for me sometime? I’d really like that.”

“Hey, Buff,” one of Suzi’s friends was calling. “Come here. It’s Suzi’s knee. It’s really hurting her.”

Buff stood up and Ava hid her burning face between her knees. She’d never been so grateful for Suzi’s need to suck up all the attention.

The summer was more than half over. When school started in the fall, Otis would be a senior at Sunny Side High. His guidance counselor, Mr. Wilkins, had been after him all the previous year to start working on college applications, but his parents hadn’t mentioned college to him in a long time—his mom obsessed with Ava getting into Rhodes, and his father fussed after Suzi—so Otis had let the whole thing slide. He had his own plans for the future, and they didn’t involve college.

He, Otis Witherspoon, would be the first person ever, in the history of the world, to single-handedly create a successful (model) breeder reactor, and then … fame and fortune would follow. He could skip the college and graduate school part altogether. He’d be given a job as a prestigious respected young scientist with enough money and staff to build whatever he wanted to. Women would fall all over him.

This day, the day he’d be testing the neutron gun, would be a huge step forward for Project Breeder Reactor. The fuel he was using had been hard to obtain and had taken him weeks to procure and harvest.

First was radium. He’d scraped the radium paint off the old clocks, stirred in the contents of the tube of paint he’d found in the stolen clock, and added that to some radium he’d strained from a chunk of
uranium he’d ordered online at amazon.com. Radium, check. Next, beryllium.

He’d called on a science geek friend, Bucky, a recent Sunny Side High School graduate who now worked at the chemistry lab at Tallahassee Community College, to ask for his help. Without asking questions, Bucky smuggled four strips of beryllium from the lab and sold them to Otis for twenty-five dollars each.

At last Otis had the proper fuel for his gun. Eventually he would fire it at some thorium in order to create the reaction, but first he had to test it. Because the neutrons released by the radium and beryllium through the gun would make no noise and have no charge, it would be hard to tell if it was working. Then he remembered a method he’d read about—one used by the Joliot-Curies in 1932. Paraffin, when hit by neutrons, throws off protons, which do emit a charge and could be detected by his Geiger counter.

One afternoon after he left his new job at Arby’s he swung by Walgreens and bought a block of paraffin that was meant to be used in a foot spa. The following morning, he was up by eight o’clock, and soon after his dad left for work, Otis started down to his shed to don his lead apron and test his gun.

It had been nearly a month since he’d stolen the clock from Grandma’s Attic, and he’d stopped worrying about the police showing up to arrest him. He’d decided that the whole shoplifting thing was just an aberration. He’d never stolen before and promised himself he never would again.

He’d also just assumed that he’d continue toiling alone in his wonderfully odiferous, sweltering shed, but his new friendship with Rusty had squashed this assumption. She’d started hanging out in his shed, watching him, asking questions, refusing to be deterred by his rudeness. She usually showed up around one p.m.—she slept until noon—and she’d bang on the shed door saying things like “Little pig, little pig,
let me come in” and “Mr. Sharkey, white courtesy telephone, please” and “What da password today? Unguent? Lima bean? Toblerone?” until finally Otis gave up and let her in.

He was totally mystified. Why was this snarky girl paying so much attention to him? He’d made overtures toward pretty girls over the years—kind, shy girls who professed to love all animals and therefore should love him—usually by writing notes or contacting them on MySpace, but these girls always claimed they could only like him as a friend. Rusty—loud, mean, and self-confident—was the sort of girl he’d never even considered. But he found himself remembering things she’d said and wanting to tell her things, too. He supposed that meant that he liked her. But did he really want to keep explaining to her what he was doing? Let her in on his secret project?

The morning after he’d purchased the block of paraffin, she came knocking early in the morning, as if she’d known he’d be up to something special that day. When he opened the shed door, he stopped her from barging in like she usually did. “There’s gonna be high levels of radiation in here.” He gestured at the lead-lined apron hanging from around his neck. “I’m testing my gun.”

“Cool,” she said, pushing past him. She sat down on the stool that Otis usually sat on. Her stiff black hair looked like she’d brushed it the wrong way on purpose. “I stayed out all night,” she said. “Want to hear what I did?”

“No,” Otis said.

“I was messing with someone. That old lady. Mrs. Archer, right? I’m going to smoke her out of her den.”

“You’re going to set her house on fire?” He was relieved that she didn’t want to talk again about sex or drugs, two things Rusty liked to talk about, two things that the very mention of made him feel inadequate.

“You’re so literal minded!” Rusty said. “No, I’m going to force her to come clean. I mean, like, reveal her true identity.”

“Good luck with that,” Otis said.

Rusty flared her nostrils at him. She wore a black tank top with rips in it, which showed her black bra, and a short black-and-blue-plaid kiltish skirt and black high-top Converse sneakers.

“Don’t you want to know why she needs to be smoked out?”

“She’s a spy,” Otis said. “I caught her snooping around my shed.”

“Nope. She’s a serial killer.” Rusty sat there, waiting for him to ask how she knew that, but he didn’t want to hear it.

“Is there a reason you wear black all the time?” Otis asked her. “If some day you wore something green, or pink, what do you think would happen?”

“Can’t risk it, Biscuit.” She rubbed her thin little hands together. “So, Igor, what are we doing today?”

Otis sighed and slipped on his rubber gloves. “Like I said. I’m testing my neutron gun,” he said. “I told you it’s not safe in here. I don’t have any more aprons.”

“Like that apron is any protection.” She waved away his apron with a flick of her wrist.

Otis started to explain to her about the lead in the apron, but she interrupted him.

“Who gives a shit anyway,” she said. “We’re all gonna die.” She smiled at him with her cracked pink lips, her pale face free of makeup. She had some dark stuff in the tear duct of one eye.

He said, “I love you.”

She snorted. “Yeah, well, you don’t know me, right? Just ask my dad how unlovable I am.”

Otis didn’t want to get into a conversation about moms and dads, so he extracted a paper face mask from the carton and slipped it on. He offered one to Rusty, but she shook her head.