“Counting ants,” Julie said, still trying to brush off dirt from the seat of her shorts, when Alex and Dee met her in the hallway. The kids ran ahead to wash their hands for lunch.
“Brilliant,” said Dee.
Alex just grinned like he hadn’t trapped her into substitute teaching for free. Though she’d had a good time, she had to admit. But not to Scatterbrain. He was too smug as it was.
“Well, I appreciate the help. Lunch is being served in the music/math/nap/reading/lunch room if you’re not averse to cheese sandwiches and chips. We give them breakfast every day and try to feed them something hot and something green at least once a week. We don’t really have kitchen facilities here.”
“Where can I . . .” Julie held up her dirty hands.
Dee fished a key from her shirt pocket. “Staff bathroom. One of the many perks of the job. Down that hall and to the left.”
Julie took the key and walked down the hall, past a door that read director, past the supply room, and finally found the staff bathroom.
After a semi-successful cleanup, Julie made her way back to the main hall. As she reached it she heard voices. Scatter and Dee had moved to the far end and were speaking in low tones. Bodies close, Alex’s head bent almost as if he were going to kiss her.
Really, she had kisses on the brain. And evidently so did Scatter Martin.
Julie jerked her gaze away and strode to the music room, where she found the space now taken over by long folding tables.
Geraldo was helping three older women pass out sandwiches and drinks. The only other adults in the room were two young women who sat at a separate table. Julie went over to join them.
She had just sat down when Dee and Alex came in. Several of the boys called out to Alex to sit with them. He called back something and went to sit at the table with the younger boys.
Dee snagged a sandwich and soda from the volunteers and made her way over to the staff table. “Hope you all introduced yourselves,” she said, and sat down. “And I hope you enjoyed yourself this morning.”
“I did,” Julie admitted.
“After lunch the younger kids have quiet playtime; there’s computer and English for the others. Mary here is helping some with work permits and such. Scatter takes a bunch down to the conference room.”
“Group therapy?”
Dee gave her an odd look. “More like they just hang out and talk about stuff. You don’t approve?”
“Oh, sure I do. It’s just he kind of sprung his profession on me.”
“He doesn’t like to boast.”
“He doesn’t?” You could have fooled her. Actually, he hadn’t exactly boasted to her, just been a cocky, arrogant know-it-all. And he’d let her embarrass herself in front of him and then in front of Lucky and Marie. Something she would never forgive him for. She was having a serious crisis and he . . . oh well, it didn’t matter.
“. . . three times a week,” Dee was saying. “Then the miniature golf place out on the highway lets us come in on Tuesdays, and swimming at the community center, which gives them a chance to interact with the local kids.” She paused. Smiled her high-wattage smile. “And I wouldn’t say no if you wanted to come back again. We meet every day until five. But even a couple of hours would be a huge help. And the kids like you.”
Julie returned her smile, feeling trapped. Kids liked her. She knew that. It was hardly something to build a life on. She liked them, too, but maybe just not enough.
No, that wasn’t true. She liked them; she just didn’t feel excited around them. No, that wasn’t true, either; she’d really enjoyed watching ants this morning. Maybe she should be teaching younger kids.
No, she’d sat in on Kayla’s class one day while Kayla had an evaluation meeting. They were cute, assured, polite, did everything they were told. Not one of them ran off to chase an ant.
Of course, they didn’t have ants at Hillsdale Progressive, unless they were in the biology lab inside a plastic ant farm.
This morning had been kind of fun. Would it kill her to do something to help these kids who didn’t even have permanent homes, much less schools?
“Sure, I guess I might come back for a day or two. But I’ll have to see what my friends are doing. We might be leaving. We were on our way to another beach and just stopped in to see my uncle. I saw him last night so . . . they may want to go on.”
“Lucky’s a great guy. He’s helped more than one of our families.”
“He has? Doing what, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Stuff with the authorities and the kids. Most of them are perfectly well behaved, but with so much time on their hands . . . That’s why we opened the overflow camp. The county gives us the space rent-free and we have a couple of grants, but for the rest we depend on volunteers and donations.
“He and the guys and the whole town have gotten involved at one time or another. The mayor has been especially helpful getting us through the bureaucracy.”
“It’s like a do-gooder town, Lucky’s Beach?”
“You could say that.”
Geraldo stuck his head in the door. “The people with the sports equipment are here.”
“Oh good. Come help carry,” Dee said, and Julie followed her and Geraldo to the front door.
The sports equipment turned out to be several open boxes of hand-me-down junk left over from the equipment swap at one of the local schools. They carried the boxes back to a large storage room, a rectangular disaster area of boxes, large black garbage bags, a long, battered table, and a few metal utility shelves, several of which looked like they might fall down if someone actually put something on them.
“I’ve been meaning to get this cleaned up,” Dee said. “We had a lot of donations at the beginning of summer and we haven’t had time to go through them all. But we’ve been waiting for this. Fingers crossed.” Dee reached into one of the boxes, brought out a lacrosse stick. Leaned it against the wall. A bag of T-shirts with numbers on the back and bennie’s bagels written across the front.
“A whole team’s worth,” Dee said delightedly, and put them on one of the metal shelves.
They weren’t new. And Julie felt a little burning in her throat, thinking about her own school’s uniforms, not T-shirts but real uniforms, with players’ names printed on the back.
“Wow!” came voices from the open doorway.
They turned to see several children crowded around the opening.
“Aren’t you supposed to be having quiet time?” Dee asked.
“We’re being quiet,” one said.
“We heard truck,” said another.
“We told them people were bringing equipment today,” Dee explained.
Several more had joined in the doorway.
“Okay, but be quiet and stay right where you are.”
So with half a dozen kids looking on, they pulled out several baseball bats, a bag of scuffed balls. Several mitts. Two pairs of roller skates. Two basketballs, five soccer balls, and one box filled with Hula-Hoops.
“Bless these people,” Dee said, and Julie thought of all the times brand-new state-of-the-art equipment had arrived in her classroom or the gym or the science lab and everyone had just taken it for granted. Well, there had been interest in the digital microscopes for sixth-grade biology . . . but no chasing after ants.
Julie didn’t think of herself as entitled. She’d worked hard all her life, and her mother had worked hard to give her opportunities. But she felt her world tilting; she didn’t know why, she just knew that she had some decisions to make . . . as soon as she recognized what they were.
When they were almost finished unloading the boxes and the mismatched equipment was spread over one long table and several shelves, Geraldo leaned into the last box and pulled out a long rectangular cardboard package. He opened the top and pulled out a metal tube with white bulbs at each end, one large, one small.
“Batons,” Dee said quizzically. “How many?”
“Ten,” Geraldo said.
“I wonder if anybody knows how to twirl them.”
Julie just stared. She knew how, had known how. She’d just been remembering. How weird was that?
Geraldo shrugged. “Guess not.” He slid the box onto a shelf.
“Me, me,” said a little girl, waving her hands.
“You know how to do this?” Dee asked.
She nodded vigorously. Geraldo pulled a baton from the box and handed it to her. She held it in her fist. And twisted her wrist back and forth energetically. Then smiled broadly.
“That’s lovely,” said Dee, a note of acceptance creeping into her voice. She glanced at her watch. “Okay, fun’s over. Time to get back to work. How about some games out in the heat of the day? How’s your duck, duck, goose?”
“Not a clue,” Julie said. She looked down at the little girl who was eyeing the box where Geraldo had returned the baton. Oh hell. “My ducks and geese are pretty bad, but I think maybe I can go around with a baton.”
“You twirl?”
“I did. I might be a little rusty. A lot rusty. But I can get them started . . . if anyone’s interested.”
Dee turned to the group and explained in Spanish, then asked who wanted to try twirling. Several did, boys, too.
“Got yourself a class,” Dee said. “Just make sure the boys don’t turn them into instruments of destruction.”
They all went outside, including Geraldo, who insisted on carrying the Hula-Hoops and the entire box of batons.
Dee took those interested in Hula-Hoops off to the far side of the yard. Geraldo handed out batons to the others, then handed one to Julie, who took a minute to reintroduce her fingers to the lightweight instrument. It was small for her but perfect for little hands. She gave a couple of test twirls. Managed not to drop the thing and turned to her students, who had stopped their mad imitations of drum corps to watch.
“Okay, spread out. Hold it out like this. Thumbs over like this . . .”
A few kids gave up right away and went to join the Hula-Hoop group.
After a few minutes some older girls who had been sitting under the tree came over to give it a try.
It took several minutes just to get them to do the opening pose. Free hand on hip. Baton held in the working hand perpendicular to the ground. They practiced lifting it up and down like a drum major.
The younger kids enjoyed that, but the older ones wanted more splash.
“It takes a long time to learn all those tricks.”
“Show us.”
“I’m pretty rusty.”
Blank looks.
“It’s been a long time since I practiced,” she tried in Spanish. Still, no one spoke, and she realized they were waiting for her to perform. Oh man, she should never have started this. She would probably be awful. What if she couldn’t do it?
And what a stupid reason not to try. She took the baton, gave it a couple more test twirls. Backed away from the group and took her opening stance.
And right there in the dry stubble of the lawn, watched by a handful of children and teenagers, fingering a child-sized metal baton, Julie Barlow twirled like it was her last chance to make the team.
An hour later, when the bus came to pick the kids up to carry them to the community center pool, Julie was still holding a baton.
She watched as Alex gave a young boy a complicated handshake, said, “Dos Als,” and lifted him on the bus. Dee and Geraldo waved goodbye as the bus pulled away and went back inside to clean and close up.
“So what’s that?” Alex asked, indicating the baton.
“A donation. A whole box of them. I guess some school lost their majorette corps.”
“Know how to do it?”
She didn’t like the way he was looking at her. Like he already knew the answer. Like maybe he would catch her in a lie. “I learned a little bit when I was nine. The kids wanted to learn how.”
“Does that mean you’re coming back again?”
Julie shrugged. “Dee asked me; the kids were really enthusiastic about learning. How could I say no?”
“Easily, you should do it because you want to, not because you always do what everyone tells you to do.”
“I don’t. Besides, I don’t know what Aggie and Kayla want to do. It sort of depends on them.”
“That’s just what I mean. Show me a few moves.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I thought you knew how to twirl. Come on, just a few moves. Or . . .” He had that kind of cocky grin on his face that made her want to lift the baton and brain him with it.
He was daring her. She’d probably make a fool of herself. What did she care? She’d already done that. She didn’t have to try to impress him—but she would if she could.
“Psychoanalyze this, buster.”
She stepped back, took an opening stance, started with the simple under-over figure eights, moved on to a lunge for pinwheels. It was like riding a bicycle. She stretched to the left then the right, touching the ground with the ball of the baton each time, then turned and threw it up in the air—
And caught Alex’s eye. Her stomach dropped and she was ten years old and devastated at not being chosen for the squad.
The baton dropped to the asphalt, bounced, and rolled to Alex’s feet. He picked it up and handed it back to her. “You’re good at that. Except for that last part. Ready to go?” He didn’t wait for an answer but walked over to the Jeep.
Julie watched him go. He turned back to her. His dark eyes were Alex’s eyes, but in that split second before she let the baton drop, he’d been that raggedy kid in her backyard.
Julie followed him, the baton suddenly just a cheap aluminum toy in her hand.
They drove back in silence, Julie by choice, and who knew about Alex. She’d felt mildly sure of herself until the baton episode in the parking lot. Why had she fallen for that? She went back over their conversation. He’d been baiting her. But why? Professional curiosity? Some double-blind study that she just happened to stumble into?
Was there anything straightforward about Alex “Scatter” Martin? She glanced over from the passenger seat. He looked back and she quickly looked away. He kisses her, dumps her off at her hotel, picks her up first thing the next morning, then takes her to work all day while he disappears.
But he didn’t disappear; he’d played with the kids, held group sessions with them. She wanted to ask about what they did, but she hadn’t gotten the opportunity. And that first talk the night of the bonfire had seemed so promising . . . Oh well, not her summer for love.
She shook herself to clear that notion. She had more pressing concerns, like what to do with her life. Something she was never going to discuss again with a therapist unless it was one she hired for the purpose.
She’d just have to kiss Alex “Scatter” Martin goodbye—in a figurative, not literal, way. The thought flashed hot through her. Of course she was hot; it was summer driving over asphalt, she could practically see the road steaming up ahead.
Denial, whispered a little voice. She ignored it.
It seemed faster coming back than it had going out to the camp, and they arrived in town before she was ready. She’d been here five days, her vacation was halfway through, her tan was lagging behind, and she hadn’t made it through even one book. The one man she realized she was interested in was a family therapist. Not touching that one. The only other man who’d showed any real interest in her was Dougie.
Maybe she’d get a dog.
And who would keep it while she was at school all day? The mere thought of school brought on that empty sinking feeling. What the hell was she going to do?
They had just passed the convenience store, and Julie was about to tell Alex he could just let her off at Lucky’s parking lot, when a black SUV came swerving out of the bar’s driveway and hooked a right.
Alex slammed on the brakes, even though it hadn’t been close to hitting them. He turned around to watch the SUV speed down the street. Looked back to the opening to the drive.
“Dammit. Get out.”
“What?” Julie asked, nonplussed.
“I have to go, can you get back to your hotel by yourself?”
“Of course I can.”
“Then go.” He didn’t wait for her to move, but reached across the seat and opened the door.
She jumped out and barely had time to slam the door before Alex made a U-turn in the middle of the street, nearly clipping a truck that had pulled up behind them, and sped off in the direction they had just come. In the direction that SUV had just taken.
He was chasing the SUV? What the hell had she wandered into?
Julie stood watching until both vehicles were out of sight. Realized she’d left the baton in his Jeep. Fine, he could take it back to camp without her. Julie was pretty sure she shouldn’t be going anyplace with him. Therapist or no, the man definitely lived a questionable life.
But a car chase? And what would he do if he caught up to the SUV? Julie shuddered, horrified at the thought. Then realized it wasn’t horror at all. It was excitement. Possibly dangerous excitement, she reminded herself, dousing that bit of her imagination that was saying, Yeah! and she turned resolutely toward her hotel.
But as she passed Madame Marzetta’s, she slowed. She should really apologize for her abrupt exit last night. She’d been so humiliated and embarrassed she could think only of getting away. But that was no excuse for her rudeness. It was only right that she apologize to Marie.
And what about Lucky? She’d ask Marie what she should do. Lucky had seemed glad to see her. She’d had a good time. But was that all it would be? Should she continue on with her vacation and leave him to whatever fix he was in? Because even though Julie dealt with children most of her days, she could still recognize an adult lie when she heard one. And it seemed she’d been hearing plenty of those since she came to town.
She stepped into the psychic’s lair and found the vestibule free of waiting clients. She listened but didn’t hear Marie’s voice.
But the curtains suddenly parted, and there was Marie dressed like a cross between a nomad and a Moroccan belly dancer. She was wearing a veil. It was pulled back from her face, but still . . .
“Hi,” Julie said, and could have kicked herself. She sounded like one of her kids. “I came to apologize for leaving the way I did.”
“No need. I don’t know what’s wrong with Scatter.” Marie smiled briefly, an odd expression that didn’t fit her words. “Lucky shouldn’t have sprung that on you. He didn’t realize—actually, he did—he did it on purpose. Alex isn’t one to talk about himself.”
Marie waited for a reaction, but Julie didn’t know how to react.
“Well, you can imagine how hard it is for a therapist to get a date. Either women are repelled, like you were, or they glom on to him like barnacles.”
“I didn’t think about that. And I wasn’t repelled exactly. Still, he should have told me.”
“That’s what upset you?”
“Yeah. I guess I was already on overload, but that was kind of the last straw.”
“I hope not.”
“I mean we had this long talk on the beach—well, actually, I did all the talking, I was kind of drunk or I would never have said so much.”
“So why did you? I don’t believe for a minute you couldn’t control what you said. No offense, but you are Louise’s daughter and, for that matter, Lucky’s niece.”
Julie frowned at her.
“Don’t be offended.”
“I’m not. There’s no disputing my mother taught me to control my life, but Lucky? I just never thought about him being in control. He did whatever he wanted.”
Marie laughed. “Lucky? Lucky is like a juggler of odd objects. He rarely loses focus. That’s what made him a world champion surfer and good at . . . well, the other things he does.”
“What does he do? Is it something illegal? Is he in trouble? Are you busy? I’d just like to talk for a minute. I’ll even pay you for a reading. But I just want to talk.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Come.” Marie turned over the closed sign and pulled back the curtains.
Julie stepped through. “How do you know when people come into your shop?”
“Trade secret.”
Marie smiled her Marzetta smile, and Julie felt a jolt of disappointment. She hoped she wasn’t setting herself up for another con, because she felt like she was straddling the lunatic fringe as it was.
“Do you mind sitting at the table? I don’t have enough space for a sitting area.”
“No,” Julie said, “but no fortune-telling, psychoanalyzing, or anything, okay?”
“Agreed.” Marie pulled a chair over so that Julie was sitting to her right rather than across from her. It was easier to ignore the crystal ball that sat dark on the table.
Julie sat down.
“Now what would you like to talk about?”
“I just have a few questions.”
“Yes?”
“Is Lucky in trouble?”
Marie gazed into the crystal ball; nothing happened.
“Everything since I arrived has seemed out of kilter. No one fessing up to where he was. Him arriving in the dark of night. That was him in the van, wasn’t it?” She didn’t wait for Marie to come up with an answer. She’d figured that much. “And now Alex chasing after that SUV—”
“What?” Marie asked, sounding alarmed.
“When we were driving into town just now. He’d pretty much kidnapped me this morning to go out to that county day camp, and we were coming back down the street when this SUV pulls out of the drive to the bar and speeds off. Scatter ordered me out of the Jeep and took off after it.”
“Where is he now?”
“I don’t know, I was just walking back to my hotel when I decided to stop here. Marie, please, what is going on? I feel like there’s a secret that the whole town’s privy to but not me.”
Marie looked down at the table and its swirls of paisley as if she might divine an answer there. The crystal ball stayed dark.
“What is it?” Julie pleaded, fear curling inside her.
“Wait here while I lock up. We need to talk to Lucky.”