“Thank God,” Jennifer said, and seemed to sag against me. Lance had gone visibly pale beneath his dark tan. Marco, for his part, yawned and went to open a new can of Coke for himself.

  We sat in tense silence until Will returned. At least, Jennifer and I did. Lance kept up a running commentary on what was going on over on the other boat: “Okay, they got the kid back on board. He’s heaving up a lot of saltwater, but he’ll probably be fine. Looks like Will’s gonna swim on back. Okay, here he comes….”

  Marco just ate another crab roll and fiddled around with the radio, trying to find a station that wasn’t playing oldies. When Jennifer looked at him in annoyance, he went, “What?” all innocently, like he couldn’t imagine what was wrong with her.

  When Will finally got back to the Pride Winn, his face was tensely drawn.

  “They’re not going to call the harbor police,” Will said, after Lance had helped him back onto the deck.

  Marco made a derisive sound. “Why should they?” he wanted to know. “Then the cops would know they were flagrantly flaunting shipboard safety regulations, cramming that many people onto such a small boat. Besides, it was that stupid kid’s own fault. He shouldn’t have been sitting so—”

  “That ‘stupid kid’ nearly drowned,” Will interrupted, his blue eyes crackling. “Come on, Marco. What were you thinking?”

  “Gee, I don’t know.” Marco lifted a single brow. “Maybe I just couldn’t take the tension anymore.”

  “What tension?” Will asked exasperatedly.

  “The sexual tension,” Marco replied.

  And I saw his dark-eyed gaze flick toward Jennifer, who stood near the bow. She had been getting a towel for Will, but now she froze, the towel limp in her hands, watching Marco warily.

  “Oh, don’t tell me you haven’t felt it,” Marco said, glancing from Will to me to Lance and then to Jennifer, and then back again. “My God, it was making me nuts!”

  “I think,” I said loudly, certain I knew what was coming next, and wanting to avoid it at all costs, “that we should go back now. Don’t you, Jennifer?”

  Jennifer hadn’t taken her eyes off Marco. It was like she was watching…well, a snake, wondering if it was the nice kind, like the one I’d fished from the pool, or the deadly kind that was going to send her into a coma.

  “Yeah,” she said, at last. “I agree with Ellie. I think we should go.”

  Lance started to say something, but happened to glance at Jennifer. She must have sent him a warning look—although I didn’t see it—because he fell silent. Will, who’d crossed to take the towel from Jennifer and now stood with it around his neck, said, sublimely ignorant of what was really going on, “The girls want to go, we’ll go. Lance, let’s take down the sail. I think we should power back—”

  “Oh, right,” Marco burst out, as Lance began untying the knots that held the sail in place. “Better take down the sail, Lance. Better not think for yourself, Lance.”

  Lance suggested that Marco do something I’m not entirely sure was anatomically possible.

  Will glared at Marco with dangerously narrowed eyes.

  “What is your problem?” he asked his stepbrother, in the same voice I’d heard him use with the jock, that day outside Mr. Morton’s classroom. It was so cold, it seemed to come from the very depths Will had just snatched that kid out of. It scared me a little.

  “What’s my problem?” Marco let out a bitter laugh. “Why don’t you ask Lance what his problem is?”

  “Because I don’t have a problem, Campbell,” Lance said. “Except for the one I’ve got with you.”

  But Marco just laughed some more at that.

  “Oh, right,” he said. “I forgot. You like being Will’s lapdog, doing everything he tells you to.”

  Lance was beginning to flush. “I don’t—”

  “Oh yes, you do, man,” Marco said. His voice dropped into a somewhat uncanny imitation of Will’s: “Take the sail down, Lance. Tackle that lineman, Lance. Gotta protect the QB, Lance.” Then, in his own voice, he said, “God, it’s no wonder you couldn’t take it anymore. I don’t blame you, man. I really don’t.”

  My heart starting to pound, I looked at Lance, silently begging him not to respond—

  But it was too late.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lance began, the muscles in his neck bunching menacingly. “But—”

  “Just ignore him, Lance,” Jennifer said quickly. “He’s just trying to cause trouble.”

  “I’m causing trouble?” Marco flung a disbelieving look in Jennifer’s direction. “You think I’m the one causing trouble? What about you?” he demanded. “Why don’t you ask your precious friend Lance here where he was during most of your party last night, Will? Huh? Go ahead. Ask him.”

  Jennifer blanched, while Lance’s flush, on the other hand, increased. But he managed to choke out, “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Campbell.”

  “Really, Marco,” Jennifer said, her voice sounding uncomfortably shrill. “Just because you don’t have any friends of your own—”

  “Yeah, well, then I’m a lot better off than old Will here, aren’t I?” Marco’s smile was snide. “I mean, with friends like you guys, who needs—”

  “Marco,” I said, taking a step toward him, my heart in my throat. “Don’t.”

  “You really do have it bad, don’t you, Lily Maid?” Marco’s gaze on me was almost pitying. “But you still don’t seem to realize you’ve fallen for the wrong one….” Then he raised his eyebrows. “Or is Lance the one you’re trying to protect, and not Will?”

  Lance went for him then. I doubt he even knew what Marco was talking about. But to Lance, it clearly didn’t matter. The QB was under attack, and it was Lance’s job to protect him—even if, as in this case, the fault was all his own. Lance lunged—all two hundred pounds of hard muscled guard, aimed at Marco’s gut.

  Who knows what would have happened if the two of them had connected? Surely at the velocity Lance was moving, they’d have both plunged over the side of the deck and into the cold water of the bay.

  But they didn’t connect. Because at the last possible moment, Will reached out to seize Lance, pinning both his arms behind his back.

  Meanwhile, a slim, tanned shadow slipped in front of Marco, crying, “Stop it! All of you! Just stop it!” Jennifer’s voice broke off with a sob.

  “Campbell started it.” Lance hurled the words at the world in general, breathing hard as Will struggled to hold him back.

  “Oh, I think we all know who started it,” Marco said insinuatingly.

  “Have you both gone insane?” Will wanted to know.

  “Don’t listen to him, Will,” Jennifer cried urgently. “Everything he says is a lie, and always has been.”

  “Oh, that’s rich coming from you, Jen,” Marco sneered. “Why don’t you just tell him where you were last night when he looked all over the house but couldn’t find you? Why don’t you tell him?”

  Will had let go of Lance now. Not because Lance had stopped struggling to be set free. But because it was like suddenly Will forgot to hold on.

  “What’s he talking about?” Will asked, looking from Jennifer to Lance with a stunned expression on his face. Then, when neither of them replied right away, he said, “Wait. Why do you guys look so—”

  “Because they’re in love,” Marco said, with obvious relish. “They’ve been seeing each other behind your back for months now, while you just—”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Or when the moon was overhead,

  Came two young lovers lately wed;

  “I am half sick of shadows,” said

  The Lady of Shalott.

  Marco never got to finish his sentence. Because Lance, without Will to hold him back, flung himself at Marco with all his might. The two of them crashed to the deck of the Pride Winn with enough force to cause the boat to lurch. I had to grab on to some rigging to keep from falling overboard at the impact of their bodies.

  By the time I righted myself, Lance had managed to subdue Marco. All it took, apparently, was a single blow to the face. Marco lay in a ball, moaning.

  I can’t say I felt too sorry for him.

  But Will. Will, on the other hand, my heart went out to at once. Because he had fallen back onto one of the boat’s padded benches as if his legs had simply given out beneath him, his face as white as the sail snapping above us, despite his tan.

  “It’s not true,” Jennifer was saying to him. She had hold of both his shoulders, and was crying. Really crying. And not prettily, either, the way the cheerleaders at my old school had cried after losing a game or whatever. There was actual snot involved.

  “He’s lying,” Jennifer was saying, in an impassioned voice. “We would never do that to you. Would we, Lance?”

  When Lance didn’t answer right away, Jennifer flung a nervous glance at him.

  “Would we, Lance?” she repeated. “Lance?”

  But Lance still didn’t answer. That’s because he was standing in the middle of the boat deck, his fists at his side, staring at a point just between Will’s feet. As I stood there watching, Lance slowly lifted his head, as if he were straining beneath a great weight, until, finally, his gaze met Will’s.

  And then Lance said the words that were to change everything forever after:

  “It’s true.”

  One of Jennifer’s hands flew to her mouth. She swung her stricken gaze from Lance to Will—both of whom were completely immobile—and then back again.

  No one spoke. No one breathed. The ocean breeze snapped at the sail above our heads, but that was the only sound on the Pride Winn…except for the tinny noise from the radio Marco had been playing with earlier.

  Finally Jennifer took her hand away from her mouth and said in a voice I will never forget, it was so filled with genuine sorrow and remorse: “Will. Will. I’m so sorry.”

  Will didn’t even look her way. He was still staring at Lance.

  “We couldn’t help it,” Lance said, with a shrug of his heavy bare shoulders. “We tried not to. Honest, Will.”

  Jennifer, tears running freely down her face, said, “We did. Really. We were going to tell you. But with everything—well, with your dad, and…Well, there just never seemed to be a right time—”

  “Is there ever a right time?” Marco inquired nasally from where he lay with his hands over his face. “To tell a guy you’re scamming on his girl, I mean?”

  “Shut up, Marco,” I said.

  Marco took his hands from his face and looked at me with a lopsided smile. One side of his mouth was rapidly swelling.

  But I had no interest in whatever he was about to say. I had eyes only for the scene unfolding in front of me.

  “Will.” Lance still stood where he was, his gaze never having strayed from his friend’s face. “Say something, man. Anything. Or hit me. I don’t care. I deserve it. Just…do something.”

  Will was the one who lowered his gaze first. He looked down at his bare feet. He hadn’t yet had a chance to put on the shoes he’d shed to dive overboard and save the Crew-cut Kid’s life.

  When he spoke, his voice was devoid of any emotion at all. It was still as cold as the sea.

  “Let’s go back,” he said.

  And he got up to start undoing the main sail.

  The ride home was terrible. Terrible and silent. Well, except for Marco, who complained bitterly about his split lip, until I fished out one of the cooler packs and handed it to him, just to shut him up.

  There’s as much to do, it turns out, when you’re coming back from a sailing trip as when you’re heading out on one. So we wrapped and tied and cleaned and put things away, all in utter silence—except for when Will asked one of us to do something…and Marco, of course, who continued to whine about his lip and how everyone shoots the messenger—until finally, when the Pride Winn was safely anchored in the harbor, Will said, “Let’s head to shore.”

  So we climbed into the motorboat and headed for shore. We were probably the soberest group ever to head down Ego Alley. As the afternoon had worn on, more and more people had gathered in the deck chairs belonging to the bars around the dock. I could feel the tourists’ envious gazes on us as we motored by. They all sat there in their white slacks and loafers, clutching beers and diet sodas, with no idea that in our boat—the one going by them right at that very moment, the one they were so jealous of—three hearts were breaking.

  I wasn’t counting my own heart, even though it seemed to hurt a little more every time I looked at Will’s drawn face. As Marco put it, when he turned to help me from the dinghy once we reached shore, “Don’t look so stricken, Lily Maid. This doesn’t have anything to do with you and me.”

  “Which is exactly why,” I said to him, “you should have stayed out of it.”

  “Hey, you had your chance at Lancelot,” he said. “It’s not my fault you blew it.”

  How was I even supposed to reply to that?

  Behind us, Will was lashing the boat to a nearby mooring post. Jennifer reached out and tried to touch his shoulder.

  “Will,” she said, in a voice that—in my opinion, anyway—could have melted the hardest heart.

  But Will just turned away and started walking toward his car.

  He and Marco had apparently come in the same vehicle together, since the latter gave me a courtly bow and said, “It was a pleasure, Lady Elaine,” before trailing after Will’s departing figure.

  Which left me alone with Jennifer and Lance, neither of whom seemed to be able to look at me…or at each other.

  “Um,” I said. Since it seemed like someone needed to say something. “Well. I better go. So. Bye.”

  They didn’t even acknowledge me. I left them standing there together by the statue of Alex Haley. I don’t think I’d be exaggerating, either, if I said it looked to me as if the bottom had just fallen out of both their worlds.

  I called my parents from a pay phone on the corner and asked them to come pick me up. They seemed surprised to hear from me so soon…it was only a few hours since I’d left, and I’d led them to believe I’d be gone through dinner.

  But when they asked me what had happened as I climbed into the car, I just shook my head. I didn’t want to talk about it. I couldn’t talk about it.

  They didn’t press me…even when, five minutes after getting home, I came down the stairs from my bedroom and walked past them in my bikini, headed for my raft.

  To give them credit, they didn’t say anything like, “Not again,” or “I thought we’d finally moved on from the floating thing.”

  Instead, Mom just went, “Pizza for dinner okay, Ellie?”

  And I nodded my assent.

  Then I went outside.

  The sun had disappeared beneath a towering column of gray clouds, but I didn’t care. I climbed onto my raft and lay there, staring up at the leaves above my head.

  I couldn’t believe what I’d just witnessed. I really couldn’t.

  The thing is, stuff like that just doesn’t happen to me. I mean, not that any of it had anything to do with me—Marco was right about that, anyway.

  But the fact that I’d been there…that I’d seen it all happen. That was what I couldn’t believe.

  I knew why Marco had done it. And I couldn’t say I blamed him, really.

  But to have done it like that—in front of Lance and Jennifer…in front of me. Well, that hadn’t really been necessary.

  But then, Marco probably felt that way about the death of his dad.

  I hoped Will was going to be all right. But really, what could I do to help him? Nothing, I guess. Except be his friend. Except be there for him. Except—

  —go to the ravine, where I was sure he’d have gone after what had happened, and ask him if there was anything I could do.

  Yeah, that was it. I needed to go to the arboretum. Now. Right now…

  But no sooner had this thought occurred to me than I’d opened my eyes, and saw Will sitting on top of Spider Rock, looking down at me.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  A red-cross knight for ever kneel’d

  To a lady in his shield,

  That sparkled on the yellow field,

  Beside remote Shalott.

  I didn’t scream this time. I can’t even say I was all that surprised to see him. It seemed almost natural, in a way I couldn’t explain, that he’d be there.

  He’d changed out of the wet clothes he’d worn on the boat. Now he was in jeans and a different T-shirt.

  But he was wearing the exact same expression he’d had the last time I’d seen him…an expression completely devoid of any emotion whatsoever. I couldn’t see his eyes, because he still wore his sunglasses, even though the sun was hidden behind the clouds.

  But I suspected that even if I could have seen his eyes, they’d have been as unreadable as the rest of his face. Even his voice, when he finally spoke, seeing that I’d opened my eyes at last, was totally neutral.

  “Did you know?” he asked me tonelessly.

  No “Hi.” No “How are you, Elle?”

  Not that I supposed I deserved one, since I had known and hadn’t told him. Still. I wasn’t going to lie to him. He’d been lied to enough. So I said simply, “Yes.”

  No reaction. At least, not any that I could see.

  “That’s why you were acting so weird last night?” he asked me. “At the party. Outside the spare room. You knew they were in there?”

  “Yes,” I said, though it felt as if the word had been wrenched from me.

  But what else could I say? It was the truth.

  I leaned up on my elbows, expecting recriminations…prepared for them, even. I deserved them. If nothing else, Will and I were friends, and friends don’t let friends…well, not know that their girlfriend is cheating on them with their best friend.

  But to my surprise, he didn’t say any of the things I expected him to. There was no demanding How could you not have told me? or What kind of person are you?

  I should have known there wouldn’t be, of course. Will wasn’t like everybody else. Will wasn’t like anybody else I’d ever met before.