Dead Water Zone - Kenneth Oppel [20]
“Don’t get so angry!”
“I’m not angry!”
“You’re shouting.”
He shook his head. He’d thought he could hold his own. His body was the one thing he had confidence in. It worked—it used to anyway. He looked at Monica critically. Under the layers of baggy clothing, there was almost nothing to her. It didn’t seem possible that she could have so much strength or endurance.
“Anyone could do what I did,” she said. “It’s just a trick.”
“Yeah?” His arm was still tender where she’d grabbed him the other day.
“You had two guys on you. They were big. Don’t worry about it.”
All he knew was that since he’d arrived, it was all he could do to avoid snapping ladders, breaking rotted planking, tripping into the water. She was always two steps ahead of him.
“Yeah, well,” he said. “I don’t like getting beat up.”
She was smiling.
“What’s so funny?”
“It’s your nose. You sound like a hand puppet.”
Mortified, he released the tight grip on his nostrils. Short of dressing up in a chicken suit, there weren’t many ways left to humiliate himself.
“So, who were they?”
“The local punks.”
“They sure seem to hate you.”
“We’ve had a few run-ins before. They hate everyone on our pier. We’re doing pretty well for ourselves—makes people jealous. Sked’s half crazy anyway, all the glue he sniffs.”
“Why was he saying those things about you?” Toxic freak. Health hazard. “What was that all about?”
“What kind of things did they say about your brother? People like Sked say anything if they think it’ll cut you. But whoever paid them off is going to a lot of trouble to find your brother.”
Suddenly her face blanched alarmingly, and her whole body sagged slightly, as if something inside had collapsed.
“You all right?”
She leaned against him, just for a moment. She seemed to weigh nothing at all. He felt the chill of her body through the clothing.
“Just winded,” she said. “Let’s get back to the pier.”
Paul walked carefully through the wreckage of the living room. The rugs and tapestries had been torn from the walls and ceilings, chairs overturned, a set of shelves toppled across the floor. He followed Monica as she slowly inspected the stilt house, pausing before doorways, letting her eyes travel over the smashed furniture, the debris on the floor.
“They really did a job on it,” she said in a neutral voice.
“Sked must have told them.”
“No, not enough time. No one could have done all this in fifteen minutes.”
“Decks.”
She shook her head as if in a daze.
“Why not? Maybe they paid him off, too, just like Sked. He could have called them. He had plenty of time!”
“Shut up,” she said sharply. “Just shut up for a second, would you! I’ve got to think!”
“They were obviously looking for something,” Paul persisted, gesturing wildly around the ravaged room. He yanked the diskette from his pocket and shook it in the air. “And Decks was the only person we told about this!”
“They were in my house, Paul! Can you understand what that feels like?”
He was startled by the anguish in her eyes. This was his fault. “I’m sorry,” he said lamely.
“Sorry is a very overrated word.”
“I’ll pay for it,” he blurted. “I’ll get everything fixed or replaced.”
“Yeah, right,” she scoffed. “Out of your allowance, or will Mom and Dad put a check in the mail?”
He had stooped over to right a set of shelves and was now picking things off the floor at random.
“We were broken into once, in Governor’s Hill.” He knew it was a ridiculous comparison, but he wanted to make her feel better, and it was all that came to mind. “You feel violated, dirty.”
“Yeah,” she said softly, “you do. Look, just don’t touch anything, okay? Not right now.” She took a deep breath.
“Decks didn’t tip them off. He wouldn’t do that. They must have been keeping an eye on us all along—maybe even as far back as the boathouse. Must have known we had the diskette.”
She snatched the diskette from Paul and waved it in front of his face. “What’s on here, Paul?”
“I don’t know.”
“I should smash this thing!”
She made as if to crack the plastic casing, and Paul lunged forward to stop her. They tumbled to the