Coldwater Revenge, James Ross [books for 9th graders txt] 📗

the upstairs windows. Both wings and all three floors were pitch. Below the sweeping lawn, Coldwater Lake glistened like polished pewter under pale moonlight.

Making his way by a remembered path to a stone bench at the end of the upper terrace, Tom’s eye found Pocket Island, a dark mushroom cap on silvery liquid a mile offshore. His mind conjured memories of summer afternoons where he and Susan would tie a canoe to the branches of centuries old beech trees and swim in the privacy of the narrow inlet that gave the island its name. Surprised and embarrassed at the unexpected surge of nostalgia, he pulled himself short: Okay, Tommy. The woman is smart, sexy and she’s been keeping tabs on you. But you let each other go a long time ago because neither would follow the other, and she says she’s happy with the path she chose.

A wobbling flicker of light at the water’s edge disappeared into a shaft of moonbeam, reappearing for an instant before disappearing into the boathouse. Leaving the bench, he picked his way across the dewy lawn, his heart racing as it always had when he approached this place in darkness. Though in the past it had been with passion, not apprehension. A light most certainly meant that someone was in the boathouse—someone who had heard the truck, or spotted Tom’s silhouette when he came around the back of the house.

Placing his hand on a cold metal knob, wet with evening dew, he eased the door open. Moonlight shone through the arched boat entrance and reflected off the water of the empty boat slip. Above it, an old mahogany runabout hung cradled in canvas straps, and an equally ancient cedar canoe lay covered in dust against the far wall. Tom moved toward the stairs that led to the loft overhead. Old boards squeaked a greeting. Or warning.

A door that had not been there years ago, blocked the top of the wooden steps. Opening it and confronting what lay beyond was arguably imprudent. As was being there at all. But as the pugilistic philosopher, Billy Conn, once opined, “what’s the point of being Irish, if you can’t be stupid?” Tom turned the handle, opened the door and stepped into the darkness.

“AWK! AWK! AWK!”

A tattoo of pointed blows peppered the crown of Tom’s head. A deafening thut, thut, thut, pounded above him like an unbalanced ceiling fan.

“AWK! AWK! AWK!”

Milling his arms, as much in confusion as defense, Tom felt one of them connect with something solid. “Shit!”

As if to a password, a lamp flickered on. A large, white bird landed on a headboard beside it. Pressed against the headboard, covered to the neck in a bright, patchwork quilt, was a vision he might have expected.

“Tom!”

Motionless, speechless, and for the moment without a coherent thought, he put his hand to the top of his head and removed it covered with blood.

Susan threw off the quilt and hurried to him. His attention automatically shifted from his hand to the short, green nightshirt that was the only thing between them.

“I saw the headlights coming up the driveway,” she said. “I didn’t want to see anybody, so I came down here.”

He watched her walk to the small half-bath and return with a handful of tissues. He felt lightheaded.

“Sit,” she ordered, taking his hand and leading him to the bed.

“AWK! AWK! AWK!”

Tom threw his arms in the air and covered his head. “Shush! Roger!” Susan hissed. Tom tried to laugh, but it came out a groan. She sat him down on the bed. “You remember Roger?”

How could he forget? The sly Dr. Pearce had given each of his children a large, white cockatoo as a high school graduation present. As Tom and others had quickly discovered, cockatoos are unshakably loyal and fiercely protective. No one came into Susan’s dorm room unless Roger was safely in his cage. He learned the hard way never to touch, much less crawl into bed with, Susan without putting a heavy cloth cover over Roger’s cage. Even then, the bird would often go batshit in there. He had often thought that the worldly Dr. Pearce knew exactly what he was doing with that unlikely gift. The damned things could live eighty years.

While Susan worked on his scalp, Tom tried to keep his head still and his view unobstructed.

Susan laughed. “Look, if you must. But there’s no cage down here for Roger.” She pulled his head forward so that she could apply tissues to the back of his skull. Her breasts massaged his forehead. The ripple went straight down his spine.

“This isn’t going to work.” She sat back and surveyed his bloody scalp. “You’re going to need stitches.”

He placed a hand on her thigh to steady himself.

“AWK! AWK! AWK!”

Throwing his hands in the air, he gasped and swiveled his head. “Billy had one of these things, too, didn’t he? Where is it?”

Susan climbed from his lap. “I haven’t seen Ruby since Friday. I don’t know where she is. Let me take Roger to the house and get some gauze and disinfectant. I’ll be back.”

Tom held the bloody tissues to his head and watched Susan leave, thoughts and feelings hopelessly fragmented. A small voice in the back of his mind whispered caution.

He tried to bring order to jumbled impressions by taking mental inventory of the loft’s contents: a queen sized bed, a kitchen table that served as some sort of work desk, an elaborate video and music system, one large, overstuffed chair and a small, cramped bathroom. On the narrow porch on the other side of a sliding glass door, a pair of beach chairs faced the water.

Susan was away long enough for the wounds on his scalp to begin to throb and for the brain beneath it to demand an answer to the question it had posed when he first turned into the Pearces’ driveway. “Why are you here?” The possibilities were finite, but what he knew for sure was that he didn’t want to leave.

When Susan finally returned,