Circle of Secrets

  When I look at Jett and Ambrose and T-Beau racing up and back, I can tell they’ve run this bridge many times. Even though it sways a lot, they’re zigzagging back and forth and laughing like maniacs.

  All at once, T-Beau pretends he’s going to fall in, then Ambrose pulls on his sleeve to save him. I let out a gasp when they both nearly teeter over the edge and fall into the water. They just laugh and snort some more.

  I’m sweaty and afraid just watching them. Chewing on the inside of my cheek, I ask, “So how did the pier cave in?”

  “That’s the most sad story of Bayou Bridge,” Tara says dramatically. “There was a bad storm one year, don’t know when exactly, but a long time ago. Lightning hit the pier and cracked it to smithereens. All the cypress planks splintered into a million pieces and floated down the bayou.”

  “Worst part was —” Alyson says, jumping in. “A girl died when the pier got hit by lightning and broke all to pieces.”

  I stop walking my tiny baby steps and hold out my arms for balance, fighting the dizzying urge to run back to shore. Or jump into the water like a crazy person. “That’s awful. And nobody fixed the pier after that?”

  “Nope, the whole family moved away after that, like to New Orleans or somewhere. The house is haunted by the girl who drowned and nobody wants to live out there.”

  T-Beau shoots past and I stand stock-still as the bridge bounces up and down.

  Think I’m going to throw up right then and there. “Stop!” I cry. “Please!”

  “Sorry!” T-Beau says, running backward again in the opposite direction to the shoreline.

  “You guys are crazy,” I tell Jett as the rest of the kids run back and forth past one another, creating a breeze on my face, their whoops and yells piercing the air.

  “Mebbe. But it’s fun. Now you gotta try it. Run all the way to the end and back without fallin’ into the water.”

  “Can I just walk real fast?”

  Jett considers this and gives me a little smile. “For today. But no tellin’ ’bout tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” I agree. “Just walk with me so I don’t fall off the edge.”

  The pier feels like a mile long even though I know it’s not. The closer I get to the middle of the bayou, and the farther away from the bank, the more unsteady I feel. My legs are shaking, my stomach flip-flopping like a fish, my steps slowing down, slower, slower.

  Abruptly, I stop about ten feet away from the end where the planks have fallen in, half submerged under the chocolate-colored water. I gaze out across the wide bayou, the water practically rolling like ocean waves from the wind out here in the middle.

  “What’s wrong?” Jett asks me.

  “I am most definitely nau-se-a-ted,” I whisper.

  “You just gotta get used to it. Tara and Alyson got a little green first time they walked out here, too, but they’d never admit it.” He grins at me sideways when he says that, like it’s our little secret.

  When I look the rest of the way to the island, there’s no bridge left at all. Just two narrow rows of pilings, empty between them where the planks used to be. I wonder how many gators are swimming back and forth between those pilings just waiting for supper. The pilings look like they’re floating even though I know they’re submerged into the muddy bottom below.

  My eyes follow the pilings back to the pier where I’m standing. I can see the broken planks where they crashed into the water, nails and splinters rising up like monster’s teeth.

  “Creepy, huh?” Jett says, wiggling his eyebrows.

  Ambrose and T-Beau are suddenly standing next to me and I get the crazy feeling they might just shove me right off the end.

  “Lightning did all that? Just broke it all up?” My voice sounds really small so I pinch my arms to make myself stop. I don’t want them to throw me in just to scare the heck out of me so’s they can laugh.

  “Yep, it was a bad storm,” T-Beau says. “My mamma and daddy talk about it sometimes. Worst storm ever, long as anybody can remember.”

  “Show her the blood marks,” Ambrose says next, like we’re in a spook alley or a haunted house.

  “What blood?” I squeak, grabbing for Jett’s arm and feeling only air. He’s not as close as I’d hoped.

  “The blood of the dead girl, ’course,” T-Beau tells me. “The girl who got hit by lightning. Biggest goll dern lightning bolt ever seen on the Bayou Teche. Like it was looking jest for her. Like it wanted her.”

  I edge backward a few inches. Away from the scary, moldy planks and rusted nails. “Lightning don’t go lookin’ for someone to hit.”

  T-Beau just shrugs and pushes his hair off his face.

  I swallow hard. “So what happened next? Did the lightning kill her right off?”

  “All that blood means it got her good. Probably split her skull and then she fell into the water.”

  “She couldn’t help falling in,” Jett adds. “The lightning zapped this pier but good. Right where you’re standing. Wood and stuff went flyin’ sky-high into orbit.” He pulls an apple from a pocket on the leg of his baggy pants and starts crunching, spraying juice with each mouthful.

  Ambrose’s been standing quiet, listening to the story he’s probably heard — or told himself — his whole life. Now he says, “After all these years, all them wooden planks been falling into the bayou. One. By. One.”

  I am way too far out. The bank feels two miles out of reach, so far I’ll never make it back because there are just too many steps, too much water whispering at me to jump in and get eaten by gators or get sucked down by the pier. I can practically see all those planks rotting away down below, full of rusted nails, waiting to tear up my toes.

  Alyson and Tara are right behind me, hanging on T-Beau’s every word, their eyes intense and bright.

  “You can see the blood right down there,” Alyson says, waving me closer.

  “See those red spots,” Jett points out. “About a dozen splatters. That mess of splintered planks is right where the lightning hit. Down she went. Must a hit her head going down, too. Never had a chance.”

  Sure enough, there are spots of red, like tiny sprays of paint, faded in the sun. I wonder why they’d still be here years later. Unless it wasn’t that long ago.

  “Are y’all allowed out here?” I suddenly ask. “Is it legal?”

  They all look at one another and then back at me again, and then they laugh.

  Tara shrugs her dainty shoulders and tugs at her pink and silver embroidered top. “Not really. Nobody’s allowed on the pier. Used to be a sign warning people away, but it got torn down.”

  “Who’s gonna stop us?” T-Beau adds. “Long as we’re not here during a storm, we’re okay.”

  “Now it’s time for the Official Pier Games,” Tara says importantly.

  “What’re those?” I ask.

  “Just watch,” she answers with a smile.

  Jett and Ambrose and T-Beau grin at one another and slap hands. Then all three boys take a giant step forward and land on one of the round piling stumps, their arms stretched out for balance.

  I let out another scream and cover my eyes with my hands, peeking through my fingers. “Those wood posts are only a few inches around!”

  “Look at this, Shelby!” Ambrose says, grinning over his shoulder.

  Jett spits his apple core into the water, where it bobs under the pier and floats away into the rushes nearer the banks.

  Then he swings his arms, gets ready, and jumps onto the next piling a few feet away. The bayou laps at the edges of each piling.

  I can’t catch my breath. “Are they crazy?”

  “Yep,” Alyson says. “Totally crazy.”

  T-Beau and Ambrose follow suit on the opposite row of piling stumps.

  “They’re gonna fall in one a these days,” Tara says, but she speaks with a certain fond admiration.

  We watch the boys leap down the row of pilings until they get about twenty feet away from us.

  “Look!” Jett cries out, stop
ping on the next stump and rocking his feet back and forth. The piling is loose and wiggly, but he manages to keep his balance.

  “What a show-off,” Alyson says, but she sounds impressed.

  I’m impressed, too. They’re idiots, but they’re impressive idiots.

  “Now it’s your turn!” Ambrose yells back at us.

  “Come on, scaredy-cat girls,” T-Beau adds, balancing on one foot.

  I realize that Tara and Alyson have inched forward to the end of the pier where the broken, jagged planks are staring up at me from the depths of the water.

  Getting dizzy, I blink and glance away, but when I look at the boys jumping to the next pilings, I feel my own feet wavering.

  Don’t look down, don’t look down, I tell myself.

  The next instant, Alyson has taken a huge step and is now standing on the first piling away from the pier. A breeze whips her hair around her shoulders and she gives a thumbs-up sign to Tara, who steps out to the piling directly opposite from Alyson.

  Locking hands across the water, they stand there until they get their balance, and then a moment later, the two girls jump to the second pilings.

  Alyson lets out a screech and Tara giggles.

  “Me, that’s as far as I’m goin’ today!” Alyson declares. “Wind’s gettin’ too strong.”

  The three boys return to the bridge, jumping from piling to piling until they reach the girls. Then they all sit down on their individual stump and swing their legs, feet skimming the top of the water.

  I shut my eyes because I just can’t look, then pop my eyes open again. “Y’all are insane!” I yell at them. “Just teasing the gators to come and chomp on your toes!”

  The boys just laugh at me and start joking that they can see alligators rising up out of the water. “Oh, look, there’s a gator! He’s comin’ for us — watch out!”

  Alyson starts giggling and can’t stop.

  “There’s them red eyes!” Ambrose screams, and for a moment he looks like he’s gonna fall in, but then he shakes his hair out of his eyes and grins at Alyson, who just keeps laughing like a girl who got bit by the love bug.

  Jett leans way back on his piling, holding out his arms and legs so that he’s practically lying straight out over the water.

  “Hey, Shelby,” Tara says. “Hand me that board over there behind you.”

  I’m shuddering at Jett’s balancing act so I jump a little when Tara calls out to me. Then I spy the board she’s talking about. I hadn’t noticed it when I passed it earlier. Lifting the board, I’m surprised it isn’t heavier, but I guess cypress wood is light and floats. It’s about six feet long and I drag it along the pier, stopping at the broken-up end and trying not to look into all that water and the nails that look like rusted gator teeth.

  The pier creaks under my feet as Tara says, “Hand it out to me and Alyson. We’re gonna set it down across the pilings and then sit on it.”

  It takes me a minute to stretch my arms out with the board, hoping I won’t fall in as Tara and Alyson each grasp an end and then place the board across two pilings behind them. Tara goes first and manages to crawl onto the board and keep it secure while Alyson steps across onto the end of it and sits down.

  “Think there’s room for three?” Alyson asks.

  “’Course there is. Can’t play Truth or Dare while she’s back there staring at us, or running away to tattle.”

  “Why would I do that?” I feel insulted.

  “Never know with new girls,” Tara says, swinging her legs.

  Jett and Ambrose hop back along the pilings and sit on the round stumps closest to Tara and Alyson on their makeshift seat.

  Alyson dips the toes of her sandals into the bayou and flings some water up on T-Beau as he sits down.

  “Shelby,” Tara says, “you have to jump out here and sit with us. It’s part of the rules.”

  “What rules?”

  “Rules for the Bridge of Deserted Island.”

  I glance around, my gut zinging like I’ve got a Ping-Pong ball inside me. There’s no way I can do it. I know I’ll fall in.

  “Actually, there’s no piling for me to step on to get to you,” I say, hiding my relief. “The boys are all sitting on them.”

  Ambrose yells, “Come on, you can do it! Just take a really big leap.”

  “And fall right in, and never come back up again,” I mutter.

  Ambrose and T-Beau laugh hysterically, holding their stomachs.

  Jett calls out, “Jest sit on the edge right there where it’s broken and then we can hear each other better.”

  Prickles of fear run straight up my nervous system. I don’t want to sit and swing my legs over all those jagged, rotting, moldy boards and bent and ugly nails. Submerged like creatures lying in wait to rise up out of the bayou and pull me under.

  I bite my cheek, wishing I was anywhere else but here. Wishing I had the guts to run back across the bridge and head for the town docks.

  Tasting blood inside my mouth, I fold up my legs and sit crossways on the planks of the pier, several feet away from the edge so I don’t have to look down into the water.

  “Cheater,” Ambrose calls out.

  I ignore him, licking at my lips.

  Jett is such a daredevil. He leans back again, holding out his legs and arms and teetering like he’s going to fall into the bayou. Soon all three boys are doing it and Tara rolls her eyes, but I can tell they probably do this every day.

  “So now we play Truth or Dare,” Tara announces. “Everybody has to have a turn.”

  My heart crashes against my ribs. I hate slumber parties where girls play that game. I always end up having to do something stupid with my eyes blindfolded.

  The sun is beating hot as peppers on my head and my stomach growls. It’s almost noon and those grits and toast for breakfast was hours and hours ago. “Isn’t it time for lunch?” I ask, thinking about the sandwich in my backpack on the bank.

  They ignore my request for food.

  “Who’s goin’ first?” Ambrose asks.

  “New kid always goes first,” Tara says. “So, Shelby. Tell us something bad you’ve done. And you gotta make it good. I mean bad. Something real good bad.” And then she and Alyson start giggling.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I TRY TO THINK OF SOMETHIN’ THEY WANT. “YOU MEAN LIKE the time I yelled at my grandmother when she made me do the dishes for a month straight?”

  “Why’d you have to do dishes for a whole month?”

  “Talking back about chores and rules, stuff like that.”

  “Not near bad enough,” Tara says. “That happens every day in my family.”

  Alyson’s forehead wrinkles. “Tell us about your swamp witch mamma. Does she have a black cauldron in the backyard?”

  I snort. “No! That’s just stupid.”

  “Hey, watch who you’re calling stupid,” Tara says.

  “Didn’t mean nothin’ by it,” I mutter. My heart is pounding so hard the sound whooshes inside my ears, making me feel dizzy.

  “I know,” Tara says, snapping her finger. “Let’s give her a Dare instead. She has to make a choice. Bring us back her Mamma’s spell box — or jump off the end of the pier.”

  “Hey, Tara,” T-Beau says. “We never made nobody else jump off the pier their first day.”

  Tara looks me up and down and gives me a sweetly sly smile. “But Shelby’s real brave, don’t you think?”

  My hands close into fists and sweat breaks out on my forehead. No way I’m messing with Mirage’s spell box, let alone taking it out of the house. I’d get in trouble for the rest of my life. And no way I’m jumping off that pier into deep water with gators.

  “Seeing a witch’s spell book would be great,” Alyson says. “We could try a potion, turn Ambrose into a frog or somethin’.”

  Ambrose chortles with laughter, and his stomach jumps up and down. “I’ll make you a toad, Alyson,” he shoots back. “Or a cockroach.”

  “I won’t settle for nothin’ l
ess than a frog princess, Ambrose Guidry,” Alyson says, almost like she’s flirting. I wonder if she secretly likes him.

  I don’t make a single peep, hoping they’ll forget about the dare and the truth they’re asking. The charms of the bracelet cluster against my fingers, as though trying to comfort me. I hold them tight against my palm, trying to figure out what to do. That girl Larissa was right. I shouldn’t have come out here. My whole body feels tense, just waiting for something bad to happen.

  “Oh, look,” Tara says, pointing at me. “New girl’s got a charm bracelet. Hey, let me see it.”

  The whopping in my ears goes a hundred miles an hour now. “It’s my mamma’s,” I say weakly, holding my hand against my chest.

  “Even better!” she exclaims, getting up from her wooden plank seat and jumping from the piling back to the bridge. I’m shocked at how easily she does that. Having long legs has advantages.

  “Let me put it on.” She grabs my hand and uncurls my fingers.

  Instantly, Alyson leaps up and back onto the bridge to hold my other arm so I can’t fight off either one of them. Her fingers curled tight around my arm hurt and leave red marks.

  Tara is good. And fast. In two seconds, she unclasps the bracelet and holds it up, fingering each of the little charms, the silver chain dangling dangerously over the water. I think about that bracelet being passed through so many generations, almost two hundred years old, and feel sick through and through.

  “Please give it back,” I plead. “It’s actually an heirloom.”

  “An heirloom? Don’t you sound like a city girl?” Tara laughs and her pretty white teeth sparkle in the sunlight. She seems to take delight in my agony. She couldn’t care less about making friends or my bracelet or me drowning right in front of her eyes.

  Tara tosses the bracelet back and forth between her palms and any minute now I’m gonna hurl. “Please, please, please don’t drop it in the water!”

  I’d taken that bracelet and worn it against Mirage’s orders. If I lost it, she was gonna hate me forever. ’Course, why’d I care about her feelings now? I’d been hating her all year long myself.

  Standing there on that broken bridge, all them kids staring at me, it hits me hard that I like that old-fashioned bracelet. I want it to be mine for keeps next year on my twelfth birthday. I want to keep it forever and put my own charms on it someday.