The Red Garden
Page 61Johnny waved from the garage. “Car’s all ready,” he called to Ava.
“Great,” Ava called back.
“Don’t tell Tessa,” Carla said.
“What?” Ava was distracted. She grabbed the cake tin to take out to the garage.
“Don’t tell her I work in a gas station.”
“There’s nothing wrong with working. You should be proud of it.”
“Please don’t tell her,” Carla begged.
Ava looked at Carla, her brow furrowed. “Okay. Fine. You tell her.”
AT THE END of the day Carla ran all the way to the river. She and Tessa always wore their bathing suits, but they never went swimming. There were the eels in the water, and if that wasn’t enough to keep a person out of the river, there were fast eddies and little whirlpools even in the summertime. Carla had warned Tessa that the Eel River was dangerous. But on that Saturday, Tessa and Jesse Mott were in the water. Carla could hear them whooping as they encountered the shock of the cold currents. She stopped at the edge of the pine forest. The sunlight was blinding. There they were, swimming around, laughing. Then Jesse moved in close, as if he was going to tell Tessa a secret. Tessa laughed and swam away to the bank. She pulled herself out. She stood there in her slip, now see-through in the sunlight, water dripping from her arms and from her long pale hair. She looked like a nymph. She had an unreadable expression, but she broke into a grin when she spied Carla standing in the woods.
Carla could hear Jesse mutter “Shit” under his breath as he dragged himself onto the riverbank. He certainly wasn’t pleased to see her. Carla walked toward them with a sour look.
“There are eels in there,” she said of the water. “Where’s Frank?” she asked Jesse. Just the two of them meant something. She felt as if she had stepped into a pool of treachery even though Tessa seemed glad to see her.
“He’s going to meet us tonight,” Tessa said.
“Tonight?” Carla said.
“We’re going to have a party,” Jesse remarked. “Unless you can’t come,” he said pointedly to Carla.
They were to meet at midnight on the steps of the museum. Carla and Tessa walked home together, slowly, for the day was still brutally hot. “What if it’s haunted like people say?” Carla wanted to know of their planned nighttime foray. “What if we see the sister who ran away?”
“Then we’ll prove there are ghosts, and I can write to Jack Kerouac and he can come here and rescue me.”
Carla was surprised to hear that Tessa of all people thought she needed rescuing.
“Not from Blackwell.” Tessa made a face. “From myself.”
When she stopped, Carla did, too.
“You promise you won’t tell?” Tessa said.
Carla crossed her heart, which was pounding against her chest. Tessa lifted up the sleeves of her red shirt. There were marks on both wrists.
“Is that from the eels in the river?” Carla said, confused. “Were you bitten? That stupid Jesse, he should have never taken you swimming.”
Tessa smiled, then shook her head sadly. “It’s from before we moved here.”
Suddenly Carla realized these were the marks of a razor blade.
“Why would you cut yourself?” she asked.
“Tiger, tiger,” Carla murmured softly.
“Exactly.” Tessa glowed. “You understand me, Carly. But it was a mistake. My father never even showed up at the hospital. And they made me leave school. That’s the real reason we moved here.”
“Sometimes I feel like leaving school,” Carla admitted. “People make fun of me because I work in my father’s gas station.”
There. It was out in the open. Carla looked sideways at her friend.
“They’re probably just jealous because you have a job,” Tessa said. “You’re more mature and responsible.”
Carla didn’t think that was the reason, but she was pleased to hear that Tessa did.
“Hey, you two,” Ava said when they approached the cottage. She signaled them into the kitchen, where she’d been baking all day. The owner of the Hightop Inn had been interested when Ava went up there with a sampling of cakes. He said he might be willing to take six cakes per week. “Try this,” Ava said, cutting them slices of yellow coconut cake. “Envy Cake. Everyone wants the recipe.”