The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady - Elizabeth Stuckey-French [79]
Three of the girls, who looked to be around Suzi’s age, came rushing over to hug her and help her carry her swim bag and towel since she was on crutches.
Ava was pleased to see Travis climbing off the bus, wearing regular clothes and carrying a balled-up towel. He didn’t see Ava and headed straight for the river.
Ava tried to follow him, just because he was someone familiar to hang out with, but Buff was gathering up the remaining youth group members with his arms. “Buff hug!” everyone said, and Buff prayed aloud right there in the gravel parking lot for God’s guidance and protection and for everyone to have a safe and fun day. “Amen,” all the teenagers chanted, and then they let out a whoop that startled Ava out of her skin.
Somehow, Ava ended up sitting beside Buff on the river ride in one of the white metal boats with open sides and a canopy roof—and she was aware that many of the other kids, who all seemed to want Buff’s attention, were staring at her with unfriendly expressions, which she supposed meant they were jealous. Jealous! Of her! This included Suzi, who, red-faced and sweaty, struggled up the aisle of the boat on her crutches and still managed to shoot Ava a nasty look.
Travis merely smiled at Ava as he passed, not making any effort to sit beside her. He plopped himself down on a bench in the front of the boat, beside another boy, and the two of them passed a pair of binoculars back and forth.
Ava had taken this forty-minute-long ride down the Wakulla River countless times—with her family and visitors from out of state, and on outings in elementary school. The pale green water was always super-clear. You always saw the same things as you floated along—alligators half submerged in the lily pads looking like chunks of radial tires, turtles lined up on logs, egrets, herons, anhingas, and ducks—black snakes dangling from trees. And you heard the same stories about all the movies filmed there—the most famous being Creature from the Black Lagoon. But it never got old, somehow.
Buff took pictures of alligators with his cell phone, he said, to send them to his three-year-old daughter, Angel. He was very considerate of Ava and kept asking her if she could see the animal the guide had just called out.
“Buff. Hey, Buff.” A young woman with a cleavage-revealing tank top tapped Buff on his shoulder. “Why didn’t Rusty and Paula and Angel come?”
Buff turned around with his whole upper torso and flashed his smile at the girl, who had long brown braids. “Hey, Amber. They had a birthday party to go to.”
“Who’s Paula?” Ava asked Buff.
Amber, the cleavage girl, answered the question. “That’s his wife. She used to be a Playboy bunny!”
For some reason, hearing this made Ava feel sick. Playboy bunny! Was that the kind of woman Buff liked? Did all men, even ministers, want to marry women who looked like that? Huge boobs, like Amber’s?
Buff was shaking his head at Amber disapprovingly. “That was before she got saved,” Buff told Ava. “That life’s behind her now. She’s been cleansed in the blood.”
Yuck, Ava thought. And without even thinking about it, she stood and walked up the aisle and slid onto the bench seat beside Travis.
Travis said nothing but companionably handed her his binoculars.
“Anhinga on your left,” intoned the guide, an African American man with a trim gray beard who gunned the boat’s motor to underscore every announcement he made. “Also known as the snakebird. Water turkey.”
* * *
Later, they all ate hamburgers and brats and chips and potato salad and brownies in a picnic shelter behind the Wakulla Springs Lodge—a white, two-story, Spanish-style building housing a restaurant, hotel, snack bar, and lobby where Big Joe, a huge alligator killed by poachers, had been stuffed and was now displayed in a glass case.
Ava sat alone at the end of a picnic table, eating a large, well-done hamburger, delivered to her by Buff himself, watching Suzi and her posse at another table. Even though