Abandon - Meg Cabot [61]
Dad didn’t think that was so funny.
I guess he was right about one thing:
Sometimes I don’t fully understand the consequences of my actions.
Made up a tumult that goes whirling on
Forever in that air forever black,
Even as the sand doth, when the whirlwind breathes.
DANTE ALIGHIERI, Inferno, Canto III
There was no attempt at subtlety.
“Hey, everybody, this is Pierce Oliviera,” Farah announced meaningfully.
Some guy with a blond crew cut, a complexion the same color pink as an Isla Huesos sunset, and a neck that was as thick as a tractor tire said, looking impressed, “Oh, hey, I heard about you. Isn’t your dad that guy that runs that company that keeps the military armed or something? The one who’s always yelling on TV?”
“Bryce.” Farah rolled her eyes, then smiled at me apologetically. “Please excuse him. He doesn’t get off the island much.”
“What did I do?” Bryce looked indignant. “I just asked a question. What’s wrong with asking if her dad is the guy from TV? He is, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” I said, taking a seat beside him. “Zack Oliviera is my dad.”
That was it. I was in.
But not just because of who my father was. There were plenty of other reasons, it turned out.
“Where’d your friends take off to?” Farah asked curiously, looking around for Kayla and Alex.
“Oh, they had to leave,” I said airily, hoping if I kept it short and sweet, there’d be fewer questions.
I needn’t have bothered. No one cared enough to ask any more about either Kayla or Alex (although Bryce finished off both their Gut Busters, then let out an enormous belch, causing all the girls to squeal in protest and throw their wadded-up straw wrappers at him).
What they wanted to discuss was something else entirely.
“So I’ve got the four-by-eights,” Seth said, smoothing out a sheet of paper he’d pulled from the pocket of his shorts and on which the breeze kept tugging. I squinted down at what the drawing on it depicted, but from where I was sitting, it was impossible to tell what it was. Well, not impossible, exactly.
I just couldn’t believe it.
“Where’d you get it?” Bryce demanded. “I thought Alvarez put the hammer down on all wood sales —”
Seth sent him a very sarcastic look. “Dude. Please.”
“Oh,” Bryce said, burping again. “Right.”
“Bryce, really,” a girl whose name turned out to be Serena said irritably. “Must you?”
“I think I have irritable bowel syndrome,” Bryce complained. “Well, I’m not surprised,” she said. “Do you know how many calories are in one of those things? And you just had three.”
Serena. I made a mental note of the name. When I’d been in the girls’ room back at school, making my call to the cemetery sexton, I’d also checked on Kayla’s Facebook page. Just out of curiosity.
The person who’d posted the meanest comments on it had called herself SerenaSweetie.
Was this who Kayla was so afraid of, and why she hadn’t wanted to accept Farah’s invitation?
“I can get access to a circular saw,” Seth went on. “It’s the assemblage, painting, and storage that’s going to be rough. As you probably recall from last year —”
“Right,” Farah said, straightening up in her seat. “That’s how we caught them. Remember? It was so obvious. They were all congregating at Caleb Tarantino’s house.”
“Oh, right.” A girl named Nicole, sitting across from me, brightened. “All the headlights kept waking me up. That’s when I called you, remember, Cody? Because they were pulling in and out of his parents’ driveway at all hours, and I couldn’t sleep, and I was like, ‘What’s with all the parties at Cal’s? And how come we’re not invited?’ ”
“It was a thing of beauty.” Cody, another member of the football team — though nowhere near as large as Bryce, and seemingly a bit more cerebral — nodded his head with relish. “They never knew what hit them.”
“We were like ninjas,” Bryce said. “Ninjas in the night. They learned not to mess with the Rector Wreckers.”
Cody and Bryce stood up at the same time, then bumped chests, hard, across the table. Farah and Serena rolled their eyes.
“Yeah,” Nicole said, her straw noisily