Avalon High Part 12

I wasn't the only one it bothered, either. Hearing a low sound coming from somewhere near my feet, I looked down and saw Will's dog, Cavalier-who hadn't, as I'd thought, followed her master downstairs-crouching on the white carpet, growling softly up at Marco.

Really. Growling. At Marco.

He noticed, too, and said, in tones of disgust, "Leave me alone, you stupid mutt," to the dog.

Then Marco thrust me away from him, hard enough to cause me to stumble to my knees and have to grab hold of the banister to keep from falling.

But Cavalier stopped growling. She hurried over to me and licked my arm where he'd touched it.

"Oh, please," Marco said very sarcastically, when he observed this. Then, staring at me-my rapid breathing, my white-knuckled grip on the banister-he shook his head once more and said, "You aren't even supposed to be on his side. You're supposed to like the other one. What kind of lily maid are you, anyway?"

I just blinked at him. Lily maid? Oh, right. The Lily Maid of Astolat, which was another name for the Lady of Shalott-the one I was named after. Funny.

Not.

And sort of random, for a guy with a tattoo.

"I don't know what you're talking about," I said, in a shaky voice. I felt a little bit braver with Cavalier beside me. "B-but I think you should leave Will alone."

Marco seemed to find this hilarious.

"You think I should leave Will alone?" he asked, in a voice dripping with derisive laughter. "Is that how it is, then? Christ, did Morton ever have it all wrong."

Morton? Mr. Morton? What was he talking about?

"You think what Will's going through now is bad?" Marco shook his head, the wolfish grin back, wider than ever. "Are you in for a surprise."

Then the door to the spare room opened, and Jennifer came out, tucking some of her hair back into the clip it had slipped out of.

"Hi, guys," Jennifer said breezily-too breezily. "Sorry, I was just on the phone with my mom. Somebody was looking for me?"

I just stared at her. I couldn't believe anyone could look so great, and be so...

Well, cold.

Then, when Marco didn't say anything, and Jennifer looked from him to me questioningly, I stammered, "Y-you need to move your car." I was still feeling sick to my stomach, but I tried not to let it show. "It's blocking their neighbor's driveway."

Jennifer looked blank. "But I parked in the Wagners' driveway," she said.

I glanced at Marco. He winked.

"Sailing tomorrow's going to be fun," he said. "Don't you think, Elaine?"

CHAPTER TWELVE.

And sometimes thro' the mirror blue

The knights come riding two and two:

She hath no loyal knight and true,

The Lady of Shalott.

Stacy and Liz weren't exactly thrilled about how long it took me to join them at the car.

"G.o.d, what'd you do?" Stacy said, when I finally staggered down the hill toward them. "Take the long way?"

"Sorry," I said to them. I really meant it, too. I was sorry.

Just not for the reason they thought.

I was quiet on the ride home. Maybe too quiet, since Liz asked, "Are you okay, Ellie?"

I said I was. Except I knew it was a lie. How could I be okay after what had happened?

Which was part of the problem. What exactly had happened? I didn't even know, really.

So I had found out Jennifer was cheating on Will. With his best friend. So what? It didn't have anything to do with me.

And so what if I'd met Will's stepbrother and had had a fairly strange conversation with him? Big deal. Guys are weird in general. And guys whose fathers were killed by their mothers' new husbands are probably weirder than anybody. I mean, what did I expect?

But the thing with Marco just seemed-I don't know, weirder than anything that had ever happened to me. The way the dog had growled when he'd touched my arm. And the way he'd been talking to me as if we were continuing a conversation we'd had in the past-except that we had only just met! And what had that thing he'd said about the Lady of Shalott been all about? And his reference to Mr. Morton. What did Mr. Morton have to do with anything?

Unless...

"Hey," I said, leaning forward in the backseat of Stacy's car. "Who was the teacher Marco Campbell was supposed to have attacked?"

Liz was fiddling with Stacy's CD player, trying to find a track she liked. "I heard it was Mr. Morton."

"G.o.d, Liz!" Stacy burst out laughing. "Gossip much?"

"Well," Liz said defensively, "my mom heard it from Chloe Hartwell's mom who heard it from her cousin who's a dispatcher on the Annapolis police force."

"Oh," Stacy said, still laughing. "Then it must be true."

"Why did he do it?" I asked. "Try to kill Mr. Morton, I mean?"

Liz shrugged. "Who knows. Marco's not exactly all there, you know what I mean?"

Did I ever.

Stacy pulled up in front of my house and said, "Don't forget, you still have to let us know when you want to be initiated."

"I will," I said. "And thanks, you guys. For coming with me tonight."

"My first party with the In Crowd," Liz said with a sigh.

"And my last," Stacy said dryly. Then she waved, and they drove away.

When I got inside, my mom and dad were still up, watching the news.

"Hi, honey," my mom said. "How did it go? Did you have a nice time?"

"Great," I said. "I had fun. Avalon won. Tomorrow I'm going sailing with Will."

"That sounds nice," my mom said. "Is Will an experienced sailor?"

"Sure," I said, though technically I had no idea whether or not this was true-just that he and Lance had sailed up the coast over the summer.

"You're not going to wear that skirt on the boat, are you?" my dad called to me, as I ran up the stairs to my room.

"Don't worry, I won't," I called back. "'Night!"

Because after everything that had happened, the last thing I wanted to do was sit around and chat with Mom and Dad. I needed...I needed...

I didn't know what I needed.

I showered, changed into my pajamas, and climbed into bed. Then I stared at the rose Will had given me. It was in full bloom now, its petals l.u.s.trous in the glow from my bedside lamp.

I was sleepy, and yet I knew if I turned out the light, I wouldn't doze off. I was too wired. All I could think about was Marco. How had he known I'd been named after Elaine, the Lily Maid? This is not a literary character with whom guys his age tended to be familiar.

And was that crack about my liking the wrong guy supposed to mean that it was Lance I should be in love with, not Will? Because Elaine had liked Lancelot?

G.o.d, how lame. It wasn't even funny. I love my parents and all, but why did they have to name me after someone so pathetic? The only thing my namesake and I had remotely in common was a mutual love of floating...although I preferred to do mine on a raft in a pool, whereas Elaine of Astolat favored floating to her death in a boat....

I suppose, by Marco's reasoning, if I were Elaine, and Lance was Lancelot, that meant Jennifer was Guinevere. Which was kind of funny, actually, since the name Jennifer comes from the name Guinevere...just a little something you can't help knowing if you're the daughter of two medieval scholars.

And if you wanted to think along those lines-you know, Lance being Lancelot, me being Elaine, and Jennifer being Guinevere-then Will could only be King Arthur. Which meant Marco had to be Mordred, the guy who ultimately kills Arthur and brings down Camelot, after the whole Guinevere thing.

Except from everything I'd read, Mordred was Arthur's half brother, not his stepbrother.

Still, all that, coupled with the fact that the school we all go to is Avalon High, home of the Excaliburs?

Freaky.

Maybe Marco hadn't meant it to be funny. Maybe he'd meant it literally.

Yeah. And maybe tomorrow, my dad would let me borrow the car and drive it by myself, without a licensed driver in the pa.s.senger seat.

Well, what did I care, anyway, if Will's stepbrother wanted to compare me to some chick who'd killed herself over a mythical knight from Camelot? As insults went, it wasn't even that cutting. He couldn't have known, of course, about my great antipathy toward all things medieval.

Which just made the whole thing even lamer.

Except...

Except that none of this explained the coldness of his fingers. Or the way Cavalier had reacted when Marco had touched me. Or what he'd meant about Mr. Morton. Or why Marco had wanted Will to find out about Lance and Jennifer in that horrible way....

Still feeling a little sick, I rolled over and turned off my bedside lamp. As I lay there in the semidarkness, I heard a thump. A second later, Tig joined me for her nightly snuggle.

Only tonight, for some reason, she couldn't seem to settle down. She kept sniffing where Cavalier had licked me-and Marco had touched me-even though I'd washed all those parts when I showered. When I peered at Tig in the moonlight that spilled in from behind my blinds, I could see she was wearing an expression Geoff called Cat Face-her mouth partly open, like she'd smelled something bad.

Then, giving my arm a last and final sniff, she threw me a look that clearly indicated I'd betrayed her somehow, then stalked off the bed and left to sleep elsewhere.

Which meant she was really peeved.

I lay there thinking to myself that things were really going great if my own cat didn't like me anymore. What had happened at that party, anyway? And what was I going to do about it?

What could I do, anyway? I mean, I supposed I could talk to Lance-I was going to have to talk to him, anyway, about the whole World Lit thing. Maybe while I was doing that, I could convince Lance to come clean with his friend. It had to be better for Will to find out that way than the way Marco had planned on having him find out....

I wished I hadn't agreed to go sailing with Will and the rest of them the next day. I had no desire whatsoever to watch Will and Jennifer holding hands, however sweetly they did it, knowing that the whole thing-well, as far as Jennifer was concerned, anyway-was just a scam.

And I was fairly certain Marco was going to do something to upset everyone-or Will, at least-because he hadn't managed to do so successfully tonight.

But...but part of me wanted to go sailing with Will. The part of me that wanted to do anything with Will, just to be around him. The part of me that was in love with him, despite his having a girlfriend already. The part of me that, every time I saw a rose now, started thinking about Will....

G.o.d, I had it bad.

Sadly, that part of me seemed to be stronger than the rest of me, since, when I woke up the next day, I knew without a doubt that I was going sailing with A. William Wagner and Company.

And not just so I could hang around with Will, either. I woke up feeling like it was my duty to go. Because-or so I told myself-that way I could keep an eye on Marco myself. He was definitely out to stir up trouble for his stepbrother.

Only...why? Why would he want to hurt Will in that way? I couldn't imagine that Will had done anything that hurtful to him. Was it just because of what had happened between their fathers? Was Marco really that resentful of Will's dad marrying his mom? I could sort of see why he would be, if the part about Admiral Wagner a.s.signing Marco's dad to a post where he was sure to be killed or whatever was true. But why take it out on Will? It was Admiral Wagner he should be worried about punis.h.i.+ng, if you ask me.

Just as he said he'd be, Will was waiting for me by the statue of Alex Haley that sits at the end of what the locals call Ego Alley, the city dock at the end of Main Street in downtown Annapolis. I could see as my parents and I pulled up why they call it Ego Alley...there are all these yachts there. And to get them out to sea, you have to sail them past all these outdoor cafes and bars where people sit along the water all day, watching the boats. It's like a fas.h.i.+on show at the mall or something, only with boats.