Teardrop

11 SHIPWRECK

“I never meant to scare you.”

Brooks sat on the side of Eureka’s bed, his bare feet propped on her windowsill. They were alone at last, partway recovered from the scare that afternoon.

The twins were in bed after hours of Rhoda’s concentrated scrutiny. She’d grown hysterical one sentence into the story of their adventure, blaming both Eureka and Brooks that her children had been so close to danger. Dad tried to smooth things over with his cinnamon hot cocoa. But instead of it bringing them together, everyone just took mugs to their own corners of the house.

Eureka sipped hers in the old rocking chair next to her window. She watched Brooks’s reflection in her antique armoire à glace, a wooden wardrobe with a single door and a mirrored front, which had belonged to Sugar’s mother. His lips moved, but her head was resting on her right hand, blocking her good ear. She lifted her head and heard the lyrics of “Sara” by Fleetwood Mac, which Brooks was playing on her iPod.

… in the sea of love, where everyone would love to drown

.

But now it’s gone; they say it doesn’t matter anymore.…

“Did you say something?” she asked him.

“You seemed mad,” Brooks said, a little louder. Eureka’s bedroom door was open—Dad’s rule when she had guests—and Brooks knew as well as Eureka what volume they could speak at to avoid being heard downstairs. “Like you thought the wave was my fault.”

He reclined between the wooden posters of her grandparents’ old bed. His eyes were the same color as the chestnut-colored throw draped over her white bedspread. He looked like he was up for anything—a velvet-rope party, a cross-country drive, a swim in cold darkness to the edge of the universe.

Eureka was exhausted, as if she’d been the one devoured and spat out by a wave.

“Of course it wasn’t your fault.” She stared into her mug. She wasn’t sure if she’d been mad at Brooks. If she had been, she didn’t know why. There was a space between them that wasn’t usually there.

“Then what is it?” he asked.

She shrugged. She missed her mother.

“Diana.” Brooks said the name as if he were putting the two events together for the first time. Even the best boys could be clueless. “Of course. I should have realized. You’re so brave, Eureka. How do you handle it?”

“I don’t handle it, that’s how.”

“Come here.”

When she looked up, he was patting the bed. Brooks was trying to understand, but he couldn’t, not really. It made her sad to see him try. She shook her head.

Rain pelted the windows, giving them zebra stripes. Rhoda’s favorite meteorologist, Cokie Faucheux, had predicted sun the whole weekend, which was the only thing that seemed right—Eureka was content to disagree with Rhoda.

From the corner of her eye, she saw Brooks rise from the bed and walk to her. He extended his arms in a hug. “I know it’s hard for you to open up. You thought that wave today was going to—”

“Don’t say it.”

“I’m still here, Eureka. I’m not going anywhere.”

Brooks took her hands and pulled her to him. She let him hug her. His skin was warm, his body taut and strong. She laid her head against his collarbone and closed her eyes. She hadn’t been embraced in a long time. It felt wonderful, but something nagged at her. She had to ask.

When she stepped away, Brooks held her hand for a moment before he let go.

“The way you acted when you stood up after the wave …,” she said. “You laughed. I was surprised.”

Brooks scratched his chin. “Imagine coming to, coughing up a lung, and seeing twenty strangers looking down at you—one of whom is a dude getting ready to give you mouth-to-mouth. What choice did I have but to play it off?”

“We were worried about you.”

“I knew I was fine,” Brooks said, “but I must have been the only one who knew it. I saw how scared you were. I didn’t want you to think I was …”

“What?”

“Weak.”

Eureka shook her head. “Impossible. You’re Powder Keg.”

He grinned and tousled her hair, which led to a brief wrestling match. She ducked under his arm to get away, grabbed his T-shirt as he reached around his back to pick her up. Soon she had him in a headlock, backed up against her dresser, but then, in one quick move, he’d tossed her backward onto her bed. She flopped against the pillow, laughing, like she’d done at the end of a thousand other matches with Brooks. But he wasn’t laughing. His face was flushed and he stood stiffly at the foot of the bed, looking down at her.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing.” Brooks looked away and the fire in his eyes seemed to dwindle. “What do you say you show me what Diana gave you? The book, that … wonder rock?”

“Thunderstone.” Eureka slid off the bed and sat at her desk, which she’d had since she was a kid. Its drawers were so full of keepsakes there was no room for homework or books or college applications, so she’d stacked those in piles she’d promised Rhoda she would organize. But what annoyed Rhoda delighted Eureka, so the piles had grown to precarious heights.

From the top drawer, she pulled out the book Diana had left her, then the small blue chest. She laid them both on her bedspread. With her inheritance between them, she and Brooks faced each other cross-legged on the bed.

Brooks reached for the thunderstone first, releasing the faded clasp on the chest, reaching inside to hold up the gauze-covered stone. He examined it from all sides.

Eureka watched his fingers troll the white dressing. “Don’t unwrap it.”

“Of course not. Not yet.”

She squinted at him, grabbed the stone, surprised again by its heaviness. She wanted to know what it looked like inside—and obviously Brooks did, too. “What do you mean, ‘not yet’?”

Brooks blinked. “I mean your mom’s letter. Didn’t she say you would know when the time was right to open it?”

“Oh. Right.” She must have told him about that. She rested her elbows on her knees, chin in her palms. “Who knows when that time will be? Might make a good Skee-Ball in the meantime.”

Brooks stared at her, then ducked his head and swallowed the way he did when he got embarrassed. “It must be precious if your mother left it to you.”

“I was kidding.” She eased the thunderstone back into its chest.

He picked up the ancient-looking book with a reverence Eureka wasn’t expecting. He turned the pages more delicately than she had, which made her wonder whether she deserved her inheritance.

“I can’t read it,” he whispered.

“I know,” she said. “It looks like it’s from the distant future—”

“Of a past never fully realized.” Brooks sounded like he was quoting one of the science fiction paperbacks Dad used to read.

Brooks kept turning pages, slowly at first, then faster, stopping at a section Eureka hadn’t discovered. Midway through the book, the strange, dense text was interrupted by a section of intricate illustrations.

“Are those woodcuts?” Eureka recognized the method from the xylography class she’d once taken with Diana—though these illustrations were far more intricate than anything Eureka had been able to carve into her stubborn block of beech.

She and Brooks studied an image of two men wrestling. They were dressed in plush, fur-lined robes. Large jeweled necklaces draped across their chests. One man wore a heavy crown. Behind a crowd of onlookers stretched a cityscape, tall spires of unusual buildings framing the sky.

On the opposite page was an image of a woman in an equally luxurious robe. She was on her hands and knees at the edge of a river dotted with tall, blooming jonquils. Hatched shadows of clouds bordered her long hair as she studied her reflection in the water. Her head was down, so Eureka couldn’t see her face, but something about her body language was familiar. Eureka knew she was weeping.

“It’s all here,” Brooks whispered.

“This makes sense to you?”

She turned the parchment page, looking for more illustrations, but instead found the short, jagged edges of several torn-out pages. Then the incomprehensible text resumed. She touched the rough edges near the binding. “Look, it’s missing a few pages.”

Brooks held the book close to his face, squinting at the place where the missing pages would have been. Eureka noticed there was one more illustration, on the back of the page with the kneeling woman. It was much simpler than the others: three concentric circles centered on the page. It looked like a symbol for something.

On instinct, she reached for Brooks’s forehead, pushing his dark hair back. His wound was circular, which wasn’t remarkable. But the scab had been so irritated by the rough wave that afternoon that Eureka could see … rings inside of it. They bore an uncanny resemblance to the illustration in her book.

“What are you doing?” He brushed her hand away, flattened his hair.

“Nothing.”

He closed the book and pressed a hand on its cover. “I doubt you’ll be able to get this translated. Trying to will just send you on a painful journey. Do you really think there’s going to be someone in Podunk, Louisiana, who can translate something of this magnitude?” His laughter sounded mean.

“I thought you liked Podunk, Louisiana.” Eureka’s eyes narrowed. Brooks was the one who always defended their hometown when Eureka bashed it. “Uncle Beau said Diana could read this, which means there must be someone who can translate it. I just have to find out who.”

“Let me try. I’ll take the book with me tonight and save you the heartache. You’re not ready to confront Diana’s death, and I’m happy to help.”

“No. I’m not letting that book out of my sight.” She reached for the book, which was still in Brooks’s grasp. She had to pry it from his hands. The binding creaked from the strain of being pulled.

“Wow.” Brooks let go, held up his hands, and gave her a look intended to convey she was being melodramatic.

She looked away. “I haven’t decided what I’m going to do with it yet.”

“Okay.” His tone softened. He touched her fingers where they encased the book. “But if you do get it translated,” he said, “take me with you, okay? It might be hard to digest. You’ll want someone there you trust.”

Eureka’s phone buzzed on her nightstand. She didn’t recognize the number. She held the face of the phone up to Brooks with a shrug.

He winced. “That might be Maya.”

“Why would Maya Cayce call me? How would she get my number?”

Then she remembered: Brooks’s broken cell phone. They’d found it in two pieces on the beach after the wave had dropped on it like a piano. Eureka had been absent-minded enough to leave her phone at home that morning, so it was intact.

Maya Cayce had probably called Brooks’s house and been given Eureka’s number by Aileen, who must have forgotten how nasty high school girls can be.

“Well?” Eureka held out the phone to Brooks. “Talk to her.”

“I don’t want to talk to her. I want to be with you. I mean—” Brooks rubbed his jaw. The phone stopped buzzing, but its effect did not. “I mean, we’re hanging out and I don’t want to be distracted when we’re finally talking about …” He paused, then muttered what Eureka thought was a curse under his breath. She turned her good ear toward him, but he was quiet. When he looked at her, his face was flushed again.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

He shook his head. He leaned closer to her. The springs beneath them creaked. Eureka dropped the phone and the book, because his eyes looked different—smooth around the edges, bottomless brown—and she knew what was going to happen.

Brooks was going to kiss her.

She didn’t move. She didn’t know what to do. Their eyes were locked for his entire descent to her lips. His weight came down against her legs. A silent sigh escaped her. His lips were gentle but his hands were firm, pressing into her to wrestle in a new way. They rolled into each other as his mouth closed around hers. Her fingers crept up his shirt, touching his skin, as smooth as stone. His tongue traced the tip of her tongue. It was silky. She arched her back, wanting to be even closer.

“This is—” he said.

She nodded. “So right.”

They gasped for air, then went back in for another kiss. Eureka’s history of kisses had been Spin the Bottle pecks, dares, sloppy gropes, and slips of tongue outside school dances. This was galaxies away.

Was this Brooks? It was like she was kissing someone with whom she’d once shared a powerful affair, the kind Eureka had never allowed herself to desire. His hands swept her skin as if she were a voluptuous goddess, not the girl he’d known his whole life. When had Brooks become so muscular, so sexy? Had he been like this for years and she’d missed it? Or could a kiss, done right, metabolize a body, kicking in an instant growth spurt, making them both so suddenly mature?

She pulled away to look at him. She studied his face and his freckles and the cowlicks in his brown hair and she saw that he was someone entirely different. She was scared and exhilarated, knowing there was no going back after anything, especially something like this.

“What took you so long?” Her voice was a hoarse whisper.

“To do what?”

“To kiss me.”

“I … well …” Brooks frowned, pulled away.

“Wait.” She tried to pull him back. Her fingers brushed the back of his neck, which felt suddenly stiff. “I didn’t mean to kill the mood.”

“There are reasons I’ve waited so long to kiss you.”

“Such as?” She wanted to sound sunny, but she was already wondering: Was it Diana? Was Eureka so damaged she’d scared Brooks off?

That moment’s hesitation was all it took for Eureka to convince herself that Brooks saw her the way the rest of their school saw her—a freak show, bad luck, the last girl any normal guy should pursue. So she blurted out: “I guess you’ve been busy with Maya Cayce.”

Brooks’s face darkened into a scowl. He rose to stand at the foot of her bed, his arms crossed over his chest. His body language was as distant as the memory of the kiss.

“That is so typical,” he said to the ceiling.

“What?”

“It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with you. It must be someone else’s fault.”

But Eureka knew it had everything to do with her. The knowledge was so painful she’d tried to cover it up with something else. Displacement, any of her last five shrinks would inform her, a dangerous habit.

“You’re right—” she said.

“Don’t patronize me.” Brooks didn’t look like her best friend or the boy she’d kissed. He looked like someone who resented everything about her. “I don’t want to be placated by someone who thinks she’s better than everyone.”

“What?”

“You’re right. The rest of the world is wrong. Isn’t that the way it is?”

“No.”

“You dismiss everything immediately—”

“I do not!” Eureka shouted, realizing she was immediately dismissing his claim. She lowered her voice and closed her bedroom door, not caring about the consequences if Dad walked by. She couldn’t let Brooks think these lies. “I don’t dismiss you.”

“Sure about that?” he asked coldly. “You even dismiss the things your mother left you in her will.”

“That’s not true.” Eureka obsessed over her inheritance night and day—but Brooks wasn’t even listening to her. He paced her room, his anger making him seem possessed.

“You keep Cat around because she doesn’t notice when you tune her out. You can’t stand anyone in your family.” He flung his hand in the direction of the den downstairs, where Rhoda and Dad had been watching the news but were now surely tuning in to the argument above. “You’re certain every therapist you go to is an idiot. You’ve pushed away all of Evangeline because there’s no way anyone could ever understand what you’ve been through.” He stopped pacing and looked straight at her. “Then there’s me.”

Eureka’s chest ached as if he’d punched her in the heart. “What about you?”

“You use me.”

“No.”

“I’m not your friend. I’m a sounding board for your anxiety and depression.”

“You—you’re my best friend,” she stammered. “You’re the reason I’m still here—”

“Here?” he said bitterly. “The last place on earth you want to be? I’m just the prelude to your future, your real life. Your mom raised you to follow your dreams, and that’s all you’ve ever cared about. You have no idea how much other people care for you because you’re too wrapped up in yourself. Who knows? Maybe you’re not even suicidal. Maybe you took those pills for attention.”

Eureka’s breath escaped her chest as if she’d been dropped from an airplane. “I confided in you. I thought you were the only one who didn’t judge me.”

“Right.” Brooks shook his head, disgusted. “You call everyone you know judgmental, but have you ever considered what a total bitch you are to Maya?”

“Of course, let’s not forget about Maya.”

“At least she cares about other people.”

Eureka’s lip trembled. Thunder boomed outside. Was she that bad a kisser?

“Well, if you’ve made up your mind,” she shouted, “call her! Be with her. What are you waiting for? Take my phone and make a date.” She threw the phone at him. It bounced off the pectoral she couldn’t believe she’d just laid her head against.

Brooks eyed the phone as if he were considering the offer. “Maybe I will,” he said slowly, under his breath. “Maybe I don’t need you as much as I thought I did.”

“What are you talking about? Am I being punked or something?”

“The truth hurts, huh?” He knocked her shoulder as he brushed past. He swung open her door, then glanced back at her bed, at the book and the thunderstone in its chest.

“You should go,” she said.

“Say that to a couple more people,” Brooks said, “and you’ll be all alone.”

Eureka listened to him thunder down the stairs and she knew what he’d look like, grabbing his keys and shoes off the entry bench. When the door slammed, she imagined him marching toward his car in the rain. She knew the way his hair would splay, the way his car would smell.

Could he imagine her? Would he even want to see her pressed against the window, staring at the storm, gulping with emotion, and holding back her tears?