“Ziplining?”
“Yep, you put on a harness and fly. Come on. We’re going.” He stood and offered her his hand.
She looked at it, felt the ‘no’ bubbling in her throat and then clamped her teeth shut and put her hand in his.
9
As Riza stacked wood in the shed at the Miller property, a spacious A-frame on Elk Lake, she thought of the evening before with Nolan.
The ziplining had been thrilling, whipping through the trees, the gold and red leaves blurring past. For those two hours, she’d thought of nothing. Not the Six, nor Sandy and Jaws, not even her hollow life that seemed ever-present in her mind, constantly calling her to notice it and be disappointed. There’d been no need to make small talk or to be charming. Nolan had expected nothing of her other than that she give it a try. And she had, three times in fact, and she’d loved every second.
When she locked up the A-frame she climbed into her car and drove toward home. Her cell phone rang. She stared at Casey’s name on the screen and shook her head, stuffing the phone in a cup holder. It rang a second time, and then a third. On the fourth, she snatched it up.
“Hello?”
“Riza. Thank God. I’ve been calling you for two days. Why didn’t you call me back? I was worried that something happened to you.”
“I told you before that I can take care of myself, Casey. I’ve been busy. You know, with my job and my life.”
She heard only silence for a moment, and then he spoke. “Ice is coming over tonight. We’re going to grill burgers. I thought you might like to see him.”
Riza hadn’t seen Ice in more than a decade. The thought of seeing him exhilarated her, but also scared her. If she saw Ice, she’d be one step closer to them, to the Six, and to everything they’d done. She imagined Amy then. What would she tell Riza to do? Stay away, do her affirmations, create healthy friendships.
“Okay. I’ve got to go home and change and then I’ll be there.”
Like Casey, Ice had lost his childhood looks. A pale blond goatee covered his chin and his matching hair was spiky as if he’d gelled it. He wore faded blue jeans and a plain black t-shirt. When Riza walked around the back of the house, he grinned and jumped off the porch.
“I thought you would have made a fortune with one of those Cleo psychic hotline things. I swear whenever I’ve stared at the TV during the blue hours, I waited to see your face pop up on the screen and offer to tell my fortune.”
Riza glared at him and then burst out laughing.
He wrapped her in a hug and though he put all of himself into it, the grasp was feeble. Ice stood only a few inches above her own five-feet-four-inch height. She could feel the bones of his ribs pressing against her. Even as children, they’d been the skinny ones of the group. At least in Riza’s case, she was also fierce. Ice was not. He was the funny one, the guy who made them laugh, usually at the worst possible moments and over the most unfunny of things.
“And I figured you’d be fat, but here we are.”
He guffawed and slapped one skinny thigh. “It’s not for want of trying, that’s for sure.” He stopped laughing and studied her for a moment, a shadow passing behind his eyes that she couldn’t read. “I can’t believe he managed to track you down. He’s been going on about it for years and now here you are. Junkyard Dog the magician.”
Riza tipped back on her heels and nodded. “He posted about Jaws and Sandy. I felt duty-bound to step out of the shadows, but I have to admit, I’m not sure it was the right choice.”
Ice nodded. “You always had that solid gold intuition, psychic stuff aside.”
“Beer, burgers and an economy-sized bag of potato chips that maybe will stop you two looking like a couple of skeletons who just wandered out of the boneyard.” Casey held up a paper sack of groceries and walked around the side of the house. “Ice, fire up the grill.”
Ice rolled his eyes. “Bossy too. He’s always been the bossy one.”
Riza followed the men into the back yard where a small square deck protruded from the back of the house. A charcoal grill stood on a large wooden wire reel. There was no table, but three folding chairs sat beside a second wire reel, its surface littered with bottle caps and what looked like the ash of someone’s cigarette.
“Well, let’s hear it, Alley Cat. What became of you?” Ice asked.
Riza shrugged and held out her arms. “You’re looking at it.”
Ice grabbed a handful of potato chips and shoved them into his mouth, crunching loudly. It took Riza back to his endless munching on cups of ice.
Casey opened a beer and watched them from the grill.
“I took a bus south, ended up in Houghton Lake. Had a rough few years. You know, the usual for kids of our pedigree.”
Ice laughed and widened his eyes. “Oh, yes, I am very familiar with that downward spiral.”
“Where did you go, Ice?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t. I stayed put. Casey and I learned how to live lightly. We broke into vacation homes in the winter. Holy shit, we had some posh crash pads. Remember that one out in Glen Arbor? It had an indoor pool, I kid you not. Mind you, it was freezing in the winter, but we got trashed a couple times and jumped in. And then there was Kerry Manor. That place fucked me up for ever staying in an abandoned house again.”
Casey’s face darkened and Riza caught his eye.
“You guys stayed at Kerry Manor? The haunted place?”
Ice nodded and threw a few chips to a robin that had landed in the back yard. “Freakiest two weeks of my life, and that’s saying something… considering.”
Riza frowned. “Why didn’t you tell me that?” she asked Casey, who shifted his gaze to the robin and watched it peck at the scattering of chips.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Does it matter?”
“You tell me,” she snapped. The rip of irritation that had lit up at Ice’s confession had turned to a gaping hole. She knew Casey too well to believe he’d accidentally left out the story.
Ice looked back and forth between them, a sly grin on his face. “You two again? Passions still burning hot?” He winked at Riza.
“Riza, how much shit have we talked about?” Casey asked. “Do you think I have time to tell you every single thing that’s transpired in the last fifteen years? I hate to tell you, but we’d be here for a month. You’re getting the CliffsNotes version and a few things might get left out.”
“Alley Cat, you would not have believed that place,” Ice said. “It sits right on this big stretch of wild beach. It’d be crazy to live there, but, well, the kid, that’s what sent us packing, that weird little kid, who’s dead of course. I didn’t realize that at first and then one night I was sitting there alone on an old mattress rolling a joint. I had an oil lantern because there sure as shit wasn’t any electricity in that place and she comes walking into the room with not a care in the world. She set this old rocking horse swaying, just touched it with a finger, and she watched me the whole time. Stared at me with these black eyes like two coals pressed into a sack of flour and then…” He floated his hand away. “Gone. Disappeared right in front of me.”