Ander crawled through a web of wide, crooked branches—straddling one, ducking under another, until he seemed to disappear. Eureka realized that beneath the tangled canopy of branches was a second, secret bench. She had a partial view of Ander as he reached it agilely, sat down, and draped his elbows over the back.
Eureka tried to follow his route. She started off okay, but after a few steps, she stalled. It was harder than it looked. Her hair tangled on the knob of a branch. Sharp twigs jabbed her arms. She pushed on, swatting moss from her face. She was less than a foot from the clearing when she reached an impasse. She couldn’t see how to go forward—or back.
Sweat formed on her hairline. Find your way out of a foxhole, girl. Why was she even in this foxhole to begin with?
“Here.” Ander reached through the tangled branches. “This way.”
She took his hand for the second time in five minutes. His grip was firm and warm and still fit hers.
“Step there.” He pointed at a pocket of mulchy ground between two curving branches. Her shoe sank into the dank, supple soil. “Then slide your body through here.”
“Is this worth it?”
“Yes.”
Annoyed, Eureka craned her neck to the side. She swiveled her shoulders, then her hips, took two more careful steps, ducked under a low branch—and was free.
She righted herself to stand inside the oak lagoon. Dark and secluded, it was the size of a small gazebo. It was surprisingly beautiful. A pair of dragonflies appeared between Eureka and Ander. Their slate-blue wings blurred; then the insects came to rest, iridescent, on the bench.
“See?” Ander sat back down.
Eureka stared at the branches forming a dense maze around them. She could barely see the pond on the other side. From underneath, the tree was magical, otherworldly. She wondered if anyone else knew about this spot, or if the bench had gone unnoticed for generations, ever since the tree tucked it away.
Before she sat down, she looked for the quickest way out. It couldn’t be the way she’d come in.
Ander pointed to a gap in the branches. “That might be the best exit.”
“How’d you know I was—”
“You seem nervous. Are you claustrophobic? Me, I like being cocooned, secluded.” He swallowed and his voice dropped. “Invisible.”
“I like open spaces.” She barely knew Ander, and no one knew where she was.
So why had she come here? Anyone would say it was stupid. Cat would punch her in the face for this. Eureka mentally retraced her steps. She didn’t know why she’d taken his hand.
She did like looking at him. She liked the way his hand felt and his voice sounded. She liked the way he walked, by turns cautious and confident. Eureka wasn’t a girl who did things because a hot boy said to. But she was here.
The place Ander had pointed out did look to be the largest gap in the branches. She imagined herself bounding through it, running for the woods beyond the pond, running all the way to Avery Island.
Ander swiveled on the bench. His knee dragged against her thigh. He quickly jerked it away. “Sorry.”
She glanced down at her thigh, his knee. “Good heavens,” she joked.
“No, I’m sorry I snuck up on you here.”
She wasn’t expecting that. Surprises confused her. Confusion had a track record of making her cruel. “Do you want to add the lawyer’s office parking lot? And your very subtle sneak-up at the stop sign?”
“Those, too. You’re right. Let’s complete the list. The disconnected number. Not being on the track team.”
“Where did you get that ridiculous uniform? That was maybe my favorite touch.” She wanted to stop being sarcastic. Ander seemed sincere. But she was nervous about being there and it was coming out in ugly ways.
“Garage sale.” Ander leaned down and ran his fingers through the grass. “I have an explanation for everything, really.” He picked up a round, flat stone and wiped the dirt from its surface. “There’s something I need to tell you, but I keep chickening out.”
Eureka watched his hands polish the stone. What could he possibly be afraid to tell her? Did he … did Ander like her? Could he see past her sarcasm, to the mosaic of the broken girl inside? Had he been thinking about her the way she’d been thinking about him?
“Eureka, you’re in danger.”
The way he said it, a reluctant rush of words, made Eureka pause. His eyes looked wild and worried. He believed what he’d just said.
She drew her knees to her chest. “What do you mean?”
In one smooth motion, Ander wound up and released the stone. It rocketed impressively through the gaps among the branches. Eureka watched the stone skip across the pond. It dodged lily pads, ferns, and slicks of green moss. Somehow, everywhere it skimmed the surface, the water was clear. It was startling. The stone skipped a hundred yards across the pond and landed on the muddy bank on the opposite side.
“How did you do that?”
“It’s your friend Brooks.”
“He can’t skip a stone to save his life.” She knew that wasn’t what Ander meant.
He leaned close. His breath tickled her neck. “He’s dangerous.”
“What is the deal with guys?” She understood why Brooks had been wary of Ander. He was her oldest friend, looking out for her, and Ander was a bizarre stranger who’d suddenly appeared at her door. But there was no reason for Ander to be wary of Brooks. Everyone liked Brooks. “Brooks has been my friend since my first breath. I think I can handle him.”
“Not anymore.”
“So we had a fight the other day. We made up.” She paused. “Not that it’s any of your business.”
“I know you think he’s your friend—”
“I think it because it’s true.” Her voice sounded different under the canopy of branches. She sounded about as old as the twins.
Ander reached down to select another stone. He picked a good one, brushed it off, and handed it to her. “You want to try?”
She took the stone from his hand. She knew how to skip. Dad had taught her. He was good at it, far better than she was. Skipping stones was a way of passing time in the South, a means of marking time’s absence. To be good at it, you needed to practice, but you also needed to develop the skill to identify the good stones lying on the bank. You had to be strong to do it well, but you also needed grace, a lightness of touch. She’d never seen a fluke like the one Ander just skipped. It annoyed her. She flung the stone toward the water without bothering to aim.
The stone didn’t make it past the nearest branch of the oak tree. It ricocheted off a limb and rolled on its side in an arc, stopping near her toe. Ander rose, picked up the stone. His fingers grazed her shoe.
Again he made the stone dance across the pond, picking up speed, sailing absurd lengths between each skip. It landed beside the first stone on the other side of the pond.
A thought occurred to Eureka. “Did Maya Cayce hire you to tell me to back off of Brooks?”
“Who’s Maya Cayce?” Ander asked. “The name sounds familiar.”
“Maybe I’ll introduce you. You could discuss stalking techniques—”
“I’m not stalking you.” Ander cut her off, but his tone was unconvincing. “I’m observing you. There’s a difference.”
“Did you just hear yourself?”
“You need help, Eureka.”
Her cheeks reddened. Despite what her mountain of past therapists suggested, Eureka hadn’t needed help from anyone since her parents divorced years ago. “Who do you think you are?”
“Brooks has changed,” Ander said. “He’s not your friend anymore.”
“And when did this metamorphosis occur, pray tell?”
Ander’s eyes brimmed with emotion. He looked reluctant to say the words. “Last Saturday when you went to the beach.”
Eureka opened her mouth but was speechless. This guy had been spying on her even more than she knew. Goose bumps rose on her arms. She watched an alligator raise its flat green head in the water. She was used to gators, of course, but you never knew when even the laziest-looking one might snap.
“Why do you think you got in a fight that evening? Why do you think he blew up after you kissed? Would the Brooks you know—would your best friend have done that?” Ander’s words came out in rushes, as if he knew if he paused she would shut him up.
“That’s enough, creep.” Eureka stood up. She had to get out of here, somehow.
“Why else wouldn’t Brooks apologize for days after your fight? What took him so long? Is that the way a friend behaves?”
At the edge of the canopy of branches, Eureka balled her fists. It gave her a sleazy sensation to imagine what Ander would have had to do in order to know these things. She’d bar her windows, get a restraining order. She wished she could push him through these branches and into that alligator’s jaws.
And yet.
What had taken Brooks so long to apologize? Why was he still acting strange since they’d made up?
She turned around, still wanting to feed Ander to the alligator. But seeing him now, her mind was at odds with her body. She couldn’t deny it. She wanted to run away—and run to him. She wanted to throw him to the ground—and fall on top of him. She wanted to call the police—and for Ander to know more things about her. She wanted never to see him again. If she never saw him again, he couldn’t hurt her, and her desire would disappear.
“Eureka,” Ander said quietly. Reluctantly she turned her good ear toward him. “Brooks will hurt you. And he isn’t the only one.”
“Oh yeah? Who else is in on this? His mother, Aileen?”
Aileen was the sweetest woman in New Iberia—and the only woman Eureka knew whose sweetness wasn’t saccharine. She wore heels to do dishes but let her hair go naturally gray, which had happened early, raising two boys by herself.
“No, Aileen’s not involved,” Ander said, as if incapable of recognizing sarcasm. “But she is worried about Brooks. Last night she searched his room for drugs.”
Eureka rolled her eyes. “Brooks doesn’t do drugs and he and his mom have a great relationship. Why are you making this up?”
“Actually, the two of them had a screaming fight last night. All the neighbors heard it; you might try asking one of them if you don’t trust me. Or ask yourself: Why else would his mother have stayed up all night baking cookies?”
Eureka swallowed. Aileen did bake when she was upset. Eureka had eaten the proof a hundred times when Brooks’s older brother had become a teenager. The instinct must have come from the same place as Dad’s need to nourish sadness with his cooking.
And just this morning, before first bell, Brooks had passed around a Tupperware of peanut butter cookies in the hall, laughing when people called him a mama’s boy.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” She meant: How could you know these things? “Why are you doing this?”
“Because I can stop Brooks. I can help you, if you’ll let me.”