Replica (Replica #1)(70)
“Wow,” Pete said as they passed a single motel, the M in its sign burned out, buzzing the word vacancy at them like a threat. “Great vacation spot. Very, um, authentic.”
“It’s more of a working vacation,” she said, because she knew he wouldn’t drop it otherwise.
“What kind of work? You a world-class fly fisherman or something? Or trying to re-up on ammunition?” This as they were passing a lean-to advertising both farm-fresh eggs and major firearms. “Do you want to tell me what you’re really doing here?”
Gemma hesitated. “I can’t,” she said. It wasn’t a lie. She didn’t know exactly what she expected to find, only that the universe seemed to be pointing here, toward Haven. A battered sign showed the way to the marina. “Turn right here.”
She kept the window down, straining for a glimpse of Spruce Island, but the buildings kept intruding and the ocean was only visible in brief flashes. Here, at least, the town was not nice, exactly, but nicer: another motel, this one with all its letters intact; diners and bars, stores with colorful lures displayed in the windows, a T-shirt shop and a restaurant with outdoor seating. In the distance she heard a sound she thought must be the roar of waves, but as they grew closer she made out human voices. A helicopter passed overhead, then another.
The road curved and they were prevented from going any farther by a series of sawhorses in the road and cops grimly gesturing them to turn around. Beyond the roadblock was the marina, and hundreds and hundreds of people gathered there, shouting and chanting and waving homemade signs. Beyond them, the spiky masts of small sailboats bobbing up and down in the water. A column of smoke was visible here, tufting up into the sky from somewhere up the coast and smearing the sun to a strange orange color.
A cop rapped on the driver’s-side window, and Pete rolled it down. “You’re going to have to turn around,” the cop said. He was suited up in riot gear and carrying three guns that Gemma could see.
“That’s where we’re going,” Gemma said, gesturing to the angry crowd at the marina, and Pete gave her a look like, We are?
“Turn around,” the cop said. “Nothing to see here.”
“Except for the huge fireball and all the people going nutty,” Pete said. Gemma elbowed him as the cop leaned down to stare at them through the window. “But otherwise you’re right, nothing to see. Nothing at all.” A second cop was moving toward them, and Pete quickly put the car in reverse. “Have a nice day!” he shouted, even as he was backing haphazardly up the street. The two cops stood there, staring after them, until they’d turned around in the parking lot of a hardware store and started back in the direction they’d come.
“Well, that was a lovely day trip,” Pete said as they left the marina behind. “Where to now? Any natural disasters you want to visit? Prison camps? Political riots?”
Gemma spotted a vacant parking lot behind a long line of low-ceilinged storage units. “Pull over here,” she said.
Pete turned to stare at her. “Are you serious?”
“Please. Just do it.” It felt good to give orders, to have a plan, to be out on her own, to do what she wanted without having to beg for permission. Something leapt to life in her chest, a force beyond the guilt and the fear. It was like she’d been living in a cartoon, in two dimensions, her whole life, and had just fought free of the page.
He did, barely making the turn, and rolled to a stop. “Most people think of spring break, they think bikinis, virgin pi?a coladas, spray tans . . .”
“Not me,” Gemma said, trying to make a joke of it. “I’m allergic to coconut. And I don’t even own a bikini.”
“Why not?” His eyes were very clear when he turned to look at her. “You’d look great in a bikini.”
Once again, she couldn’t tell whether he was making fun of her. There was an awkward second when Gemma was acutely aware that she was imagining Pete imagining her in a bikini, fat rolls and thighs that rubbed together and everything. She wanted to die of embarrassment. Her cheeks felt like someone had put a torch to them. She could hardly stand to look at him, but she had to know whether he was smirking.
He wasn’t. He was fiddling nervously with the radio, even though he’d shut off the car ignition. It occurred to Gemma that he was nervous—actually nervous. Because of her.
Germ Ives. The Frankenstein monster.
“I’ll be fine,” she said, and opened the car door. She didn’t know where all the tension had come from, but she was desperate to escape it. Her whole body was torch-hot now. Immediately, the faint scent of burning reached her, and beneath it, the smell of swampland—sunbaked mud and belly-up fish and microorganisms wiggling deep in the earth. “Thanks for the ride. Really.”
“You are serious,” he said, as though he couldn’t believe it. He raised his hands. “All right. Whatever gets your goat.”
“Whatever gets your goat?” She shook her head, amazed.
“Yeah. You know. Whatever wets your whistle, gets your rocks off, brings you to your happy place—”
“Pete?” she said. But she couldn’t help but smile. “Know when to stop. Seriously.”
She got out of the car, half expecting him to call her back. But he popped the trunk when she rapped on it and she slung her backpack over her shoulder, still with that weird sense of guilt and fear arm-wrestling with excitement in her stomach. Pete rolled down the window and called out to her before she could walk away.