Wildefire (11 page)

Ash gave him a look. “My head?”

He peered at her. “Last night you grabbed your head, mumbled something about a migraine, and then ran for the door like your dress was on fire. Unless it was all just a ruse, and you were just so flustered from talking to such a handsome and astonishingly single park ranger that you needed fresh air.”

Ash coughed in disbelief and held up a warning finger. “First of all, don’t flatter yourself. Second of all, you want to waste one of your questions on whether or not I took an aspirin when I got home?”

He smiled. “Pardon me for devoting one question to your well-being. It’s my question to ask. Now you have to answer it.”

She laughed. “I skipped dinner last night, and the cocktail just went straight to my head. The headache went away as soon as I got some fresh air, and I called it a night. Happy?” She felt bad lying to him on his first question, but in fairness her statements were at least half-truths.

“I guess that wasn’t as fulfilling an answer as I thought it would be,” Colt said with mock disappointment. He looked out to the court at the two freshmen who were flopping about; Ash gave them an A for passion but a D- for form. They were probably hoping the coach would 99

come out and take notice. For their sake Ash hoped Devlin had closed the blinds in her office.

“Two more,” Ash taunted him in a singsong voice.

He opened his mouth to ask a question, and then immediately shut it and racked his brain for a new one.

Ash tapped her wrist.

Colt massaged his five o’clock shadow, as if the whiskers themselves would impart some kind of ancient wisdom. “So . . . how long have you been playing tennis?”

Ash giggled. “You are
really
bad at this game. No

‘Where are you from?’ No ‘Why did you send yourself to a prep school in the middle of nothingness?’”

“Well, first of all, you’ve got a slight but noticeable New York accent, and the attitude to match, so the first question is unnecessary. And as for the second, you clearly had dreams of falling for a rough-and-tumble nature-loving tree-climbing wilderness kind of guy.” He winked at her. “Which brought you to Blackwood.”

“Rough-and-tumble?” Ash plucked at his shirt. “You rock the lumberjack vibe fairly well, but let’s not pretend that your ranger-issue button-down isn’t purposely one size too small, to show off your guns.”

“Mom taught me to look stylish, even when I’m chasing bears out of campgrounds. Now, how about that answer?”

He was sharp, Ash had to give him that. “Four months,” she answered. “Every student is required to 100

have some sort of activity here at Blackwood. I can’t draw even the simplest of stick figures; I can’t act to save my life; and I write on a second-grade level, so the newspaper was out. Then one day Coach put a racket in my hand, and I discovered that I was actually good at something.

And the best part? I’m even better at it than my loser ex-boyfriend.”

“Damn, girl,” Colt said, earnestly impressed. “You had me fooled. For someone who just picked up a racket for the first time, you look like you could give Pete Sampras a run for his money.”

“I’m a long way from Wimbledon,” Ash said. “But I have a grudge match next week against this girl, Patricia Orleans, who goes to our rival school. . . . Apparently fate decided that it would somehow be politically correct
and
hilarious to match up the two islander girls in the Northern California prep school scene for a tennis match to the death.”

“So I take it you two are friends?” Colt asked.

“Tricia and I? Hell, no. She beat me last time,” Ash replied. “That bitch is going down.”

“I guess I don’t need to ask if you’ve got a competitive streak.”

“You want to pick up a racket and find out?” Ash pointed to the court. “I’ll even let you serve . . . if you can get the ball over the net.”

“Enticing as that invite sounds,” Colt said, “I have a feeling I’m the one who would get served in the end.”

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Colt laughed at himself after a pause. “Wow, that didn’t sound quite so lame in my head.”

“If you’re not going to take me up on my challenge, then I guess that means you have one question left, Ranger Halliday.”

“The one thing I’m dying to know”—the smile died from his lips and settled into something serious without being solemn—“is how long am I going to have to wait until I find out what’s underneath the sarcasm and wit?

Until I get to know the real Ashline Wilde from New York?” He reached out and touched the small of her back. “Not that I don’t enjoy the banter.”

Ash shifted in her seat. She was enjoying the electricity of his fingers against her spine, but this talk of defense mechanisms unnerved her. “Maybe what you see is what you get.”

“I hope you take it as a compliment when I say, that’s the biggest crock of bullshit I’ve heard in my life.”

“Compliment half-taken,” she said. “I guess the answer to your question is, when I feel like you can handle me.” She stood up, mildly regretful to part from the sensation of his touch, longing to feel it against her bare back instead.

He stood too, his eyes ablaze with curiosity. “When do I get to see you again?”

“That would be question number four. But you seem like a resourceful guy, so I’m going to do you a favor. If you can find a way to set it up, I will be there.”

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Colt made a throwing motion. “Rocks to your dorm room window?”

“If that’s how you throw, then you’d better hope I don’t live any higher than the first floor.” Ash punched him playfully in the arm. “See you around, Colt.”

He said nothing as she scooped up her racket and descended the bleachers, but she could sense his eyes on her, reaching out to her, drinking in her silhouette. When she reached the bottom of the stairs, she lingered on the last step and looked back at him. “And by the way . . . if we had played tennis, I would have gone easy on you.”

He crossed his arms and shook his head. “Don’t ever go easy on me. When I win, I want to feel like I’ve really earned it. Victory tastes greater that way.”

She smirked. “We still talking about tennis?”

“Of course,” he replied innocently.

She turned and didn’t look back at him but gave him a friendly wave with the racket as she disappeared off behind the bleachers.

He wasn’t the only one left wondering when they’d meet again.

Ash was counting on her after-practice nap, but by the time she’d gotten out of the shower, toweled off, and slipped into sweats, there was a knock at her door—

Darren and Jackie, ready for dinner. In the end the growls of her stomach won out against her heavy eyelids, and she trudged across the quad to the dining hall.

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The students buzzed from a combination of relief that the week’s classes were over and of excitement for the coming night’s festivities. The campus activity board sometimes organized optional Friday night events—mock casinos, bingo with food-oriented prizes—but these were so poorly attended that Ash wouldn’t have been surprised if they were eventually shucked from the school budget altogether.

No, the students of Blackwood had other, more illicit activities on their mind. One of the perks (or disadvan-tages, rather, depending on whether you asked students or faculty) of attending a school in complete isolation was the sense of independence cultivated among the student body. Sure, the arrival of Headmistress Riley on campus had injected a little fear into the teenagers at Blackwood. But hormones, adolescent rebellion, and seclusion were a powerful recipe for trouble, and in this regard the students were master chefs. With each return from vacations, students smuggled in liquor supplies in their duffel bags, bottles swaddled in sweaters and polos to prevent any rattling or breakage while they were being trafficked onto campus. The students had perfected the art of holding “soirees” in their dormitory rooms. They had memorized the foot patterns of patrolling faculty on weekend evenings, identified which prefects were more lenient than others, which professors were the most careless. Curfew and separation of the sexes were mere formalities.

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And then there were the more adventurous students who rendezvoused in the woods. It was hard to resist the seductive pull of the forest, an open canvas for trouble.

The forest was Ash’s favorite off-limits nocturnal activity, even beyond cocktails and people-watching at the Bent Horseshoe. For her there was nothing better than frolick-ing through the towering redwoods with nothing but a few friends and a couple of electric lanterns. The vague sense of fear, the imperceptibly sinister intentions of the night . . . Maybe it was her tribal ancestry speaking to her, but the thought of the earth under her bare feet as she darted between trees and over roots brought her an unbridled sense of tranquility.

However, tonight the only evening plans Ash had were with two aspirin and her pillow. Ordinarily she lived for the buzz of the dining hall and the endless opportunities for mayhem that Friday night offered. But in her exhaustion the din of the cafeteria echoed in her ears until she developed a throbbing migraine.

“Are you in?” Jackie was asking her, and Ash faded back to reality from her daydream. “Or do you want to just stir your macaroni and cheese for the rest of this fine spring evening?”

Ash looked down at her bowl, suddenly aware of the spoon clutched in a vise grip between her thumb and pointer finger. She’d been stirring so much that she’d traced a spiral trail through the bread crumb coating. Even the macaroni looked ragged from the abuse. “Could you 105

repeat the question?” Ash asked tiredly. “And maybe sum up the essay leading up to it in a few succinct key points.”

Jackie sighed. “Darren managed to hook his hot plate up to a big portable battery so we can take it out into the woods. He’s got s’mores makings, although he’s not quite sure if the marshmallows are going to melt or just stick to the hot plate. Either way, he invited the guys from his hall. Should be a hoot.”

“Upperclassmen?” Ash asked, half-intrigued.

Jackie let her spectacles slide down to the tip of her nose. “Would I drag you into the middle of the woods to party with freshmen?”

“Good point.”

“Besides,” Jackie continued, “I figured for the finale to the evening we could clip out that picture of Bobby from last week’s newspaper, soak it in kerosene, and then see what the hot plate has to say about Blackwood’s Scholar-Athlete of the Year.”

Ash squinted at Jackie. “I can only envision that ending with one of us getting our eyebrows singed off, and possibly burning down the national park. I’d rather not give Bobby Jones that much credit.”

Jackie shrugged and took a swig of chocolate milk.

Ash wasn’t sure how the girl could drink a gallon of it a day yet still remain so twiggy. “We’ll bring a fire extinguisher,” Jackie cajoled her. “I’m sure the guys will get a kick out of it too. According to Darren’s senior friends, Bobby tries to act like their best friend, but they all think he’s just a thickheaded douche.”

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“If it walks like a duck . . . ,” Ash said.

Darren came wandering back from the next table with a broad grin on his face.

“What’s got into you?” Ash asked. “You look like Jackie at a handbag sale. Did some lucky guy just ask you to next week’s ball?”

“Even better,” he said without missing a beat. “You know how we always suspected that Monsieur Chevalier was an alcoholic?”

“He smells like a liquor store,” Ash replied. “I don’t think ‘suspected’ is really the accurate term.”

His grin intensified; any wider, and Ash figured it would split his cheeks open all the way to his earlobes.

“Well, for Brad Archer’s community service he had to repaint some of the rooms in the faculty lodge . . . and he finagled his way into Chevalier’s apartment.”

“He used his detention sentence as an opportunity for breaking and entering?” Jackie asked.

“Who cares?” Darren said. “Brad Archer’s a moron.”

He grabbed a fork from Jackie’s tray and without consult-ing Ash attacked her macaroni cheese.

“Help yourself,” Ash muttered.

“Thanks.” He pulled the bowl of pasta across the table, shoveling the food into his mouth. “Point is,” he said between mouthfuls, “Brad Archer found a rack in the monsieur’s room
stacked
with bottles of brandy. So he took one.”

Ash rolled her eyes. In the prep school scene it wasn’t enough just to make trouble—it was about continuing to 107

push boundaries. When the thrill of underage drinking waned, what did you do? Steal liquor from teachers.

“Won’t he notice that one of his darling children has gone missing?” Jackie asked.

Darren glanced at her as if this were the stupidest thing he’d ever heard. “This is a dry campus, for students
and
faculty. What’s he going to do? Tell Headmistress Riley that he’s not sure but he thinks one of the students raided his easily accessible liquor stash?
False.
”

“It’s all a moot point.” Jackie sighed. “I get the distinct impression that Ash is going to say no to our little s’mores-making excursion.”

On cue Darren and Jackie turned and gave her identical puppy dog faces, complete with the hopeful eyes and drooping frowns.

Ash huffed. “Okay, okay. I’ll come to your little faux bonfire on one condition: you let me take a nap until ten and don’t wake me one minute earlier.”

“Yes!” Darren thumped his fist on the table. “We’re getting started in Jackie’s room around eight when Brad comes by with the contraband, but we’ll stop by and kidnap you around ten-ish.”

Ash shuddered at the word “kidnap.” That was her cue to return to the womb she called a bed. She mumbled something about getting her rest and ten o’clock to Darren and Jackie and slipped away before they could protest.

When she reached her bedroom, she took a running 108

stumble across the floor and sprawled onto her bed. She was out nearly as soon as her head hit the pillow.

Ash hadn’t dreamed of Lizzie Jacobs in weeks. Normally the dead field hockey player found her in the Scarsdale High School parking lot. The therapist Ashline had visited last fall thought there was a very simple explanation for why the scene in the parking lot was the one she replayed, instead of Lizzie’s tragic “fall” from the rooftop.