“You can’t stop him,” Heath insisted. “He’s too strong.”
“The trick is not to fight. The trick is to play dead,” she said simply.
Kennedy looked over at her. “Play dead?”
She settled back in her seat. “What fun is torturing someone who doesn’t care?”
“Is it that easy not to care?”
“It can become a habit,” she said.
“You have to let your guard down sometime, Grace.”
The boys had lost the gist of the conversation but were still watching them curiously. “Why?” she asked.
“Protecting yourself that well means you risk missing out on something spectacular.”
“Oh, well.” She folded her arms. “At least I’ll survive.”
Some kind of emotion entered his eyes, but she had no idea what it signified. “That’s no way to live.”
She tossed him an empty smile. “Some people just do what they have to.”
Grace reminded Kennedy of a cactus. She could be prickly, of course. But in his mind, the comparison had more to do with the arid emotional environment she’d experienced in the past, the way she seemed to store what she absolutely needed inside her, and how she tried so hard to take very little from those around her. He wasn’t sure he’d ever met anyone who demanded less from others or worked harder to maintain a tough exterior.
“What would happen if you agreed to pretend we just met?” he asked as they took the turnoff that would lead them, in only fifteen more minutes, to the lake.
She’d been dozing, but when he spoke, she sat up. He could almost hear her defenses snapping back into place. “What do you mean?”
“I’m asking what terrible thing you think might happen.”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“I don’t think anything terrible would happen.”
“Because nothing terrible ever happens to you,” she pointed out. “You seem to have been born under a lucky sign.”
He lowered his voice, even though the boys were so busy with their Game Boys he knew they weren’t listening. “I’ve already agreed not to press you for anything physical. What else do you have to worry about? That you might enjoy yourself? That you might actually let someone get to know you?”
“You already know me.”
He thought of the rumors that had always circulated about her and her family, the Bible she’d dropped in the woods, her guarded manner. “No, I don’t.”
“That’s funny,” she said. “Because I know you.”
“Not really. We never—”
She cut him off. “I remember the presentation you gave in fifth grade on the bottle-nosed dolphin. You made a mosaic out of broken glass. You threw it away after you got your A, but I stole it out of the trash and took it home.” She laughed softly at herself. “To me, it was the most beautiful thing in the world. I hung it on the wall of my room for four years.”
She pulled on her seat belt, obviously lost in thought. “And I remember when you broke your arm playing basketball in seventh grade. I knew you must really be hurt when you started to cry.” Her voice trailed off as though it had affected her deeply. “I watched your mother pick you up from school in her new Cadillac that day.”
“That injury was Joe’s fault,” he said, feeling uncomfortable because he couldn’t remember anything about her except the nasty things his friends used to say. “He fouled me hard when I drove to the basket.”
She didn’t respond to his comment. She was too busy recalling incident after incident. “I can still picture you riding in your father’s convertible T-Bird when you were nominated for royalty in high school,” she said. “I knew you’d win.” She laughed again. “And so did you.”
He wished she’d stop….
“Then there was the time you shaved your head, along with the rest of the football team. Not your best look, for sure, but you pulled it off better than most. And the winning touchdown pass against Cambridge Heights our senior year that put us in the play-offs. And your speech on graduation night—”
“That’s enough,” he said softly. Even he remembered graduation night. She’d come up and offered him a tentative smile as though she wanted to wish him well—and he’d turned away from her as if she hadn’t been standing there.
She didn’t say anything else, and they rode in silence until they reached the campground. When he’d paid the fees and backed into the space he’d reserved, the boys piled out, talking excitedly about the s’mores they had planned for later. But Kennedy caught Grace’s hand before she could open her door. He felt guilty for treating her so carelessly when they were kids, wanted to say something that would somehow erase what he’d done. But he couldn’t find the right words.
Turning her hand over, he traced one of the lines on her palm. “I guess you know me better than I thought,” he said simply and got out.
10
Grace didn’t know what to make of Kennedy. They hiked, they fished, they skipped rocks in the lake. He threw Teddy and Heath in the water. Then he threw her in, too. But he insisted on giving her a piggyback ride to camp so her wet tennis shoes wouldn’t get caked with mud. And he set up her tent and gave her the best pad and sleeping bag they owned. When Teddy and Heath picked her some wildflowers, he even found an old can and filled it with water so they could set them on the wooden picnic table near the campfire.
“Teddy told me you like the outdoors,” he said as she was sitting on a log nearby, doing a crossword puzzle with Heath and Teddy.
“I do.” She smiled, enjoying the smell of the fish he was grilling for dinner. Surprisingly, she couldn’t remember a time when she’d felt so relaxed, so far removed from Stillwater and everything that had happened there. It was the Kennedy Archer charm, and for once, she was basking in his light.
“What’s four down?” Heath asked, drawing her attention back to the holiday-themed crossword puzzle. “A babbling what?”
“It’s some form of water,” she said, hoping to help him figure it out.
“A stream?”
“The answer has five letters.”
Concentration etched a frown on Teddy’s face. “Lake only has four….”
“River has five,” Heath said.
“But the last letter is a k,” Grace reminded him.