Sunset Island - Sunset Secrets Part 20

"Don't worry about that." Billy laughed, and Carrie knew he was thinking of the night the summer before when she had tried to impress him with her drinking, and ended up being sick as a dog. She laughed, too, and they made their way to the kitchen.

Emma was holding court near the counter where the wine was set out. With Kurt on one side and Kevin on the other, she was feeling charming and uninhibited. Both guys were ex- tremely attractive, but Emma knew it was Kurt who had claim to her heart. They were even getting along better than they had all week. In honor of the party, she supposed, he wasn't giving her any trouble about drinking, and had even refilled her gla.s.s for her.

Kevin was telling a funny story, and suddenly Emma wished she had a picture of the three of them laughing and talking together. With her all-girls private-schooling education, she had never had the chance to know boys as friends. Now she realized that the attraction she felt for Kevin had to do with his being such a likeable person.

"The guy actually expected me to talk to this turtle," said Kevih, finis.h.i.+ng the story about his first interview a.s.signment.

Emma watched Kurt laughing and thought, I'm happy just being near him! The winegla.s.s she was turning in her hand drew her momen- tarily into thoughts of their quarrel. He's right, she thought, / need to think about this-but not tonight.

Sam, too, was having a grand time. Slightly buzzed from the beer she'd been drinking, she had taken over the job of DJ. Since everyone else seemed even less sober, no one minded giving her the job, and she played one dance tune after another: funkyi blues, hard rock, Motown, and even a Broadway number or two, just to keep the crowd on their toes.

Danny watched with amus.e.m.e.nt as she tried to get the crowd to follow a Disney dance routine.

He was the only one in the room who could appreciate her exact impersonation of Mr. Chris- topher, and she felt a strong, warm connection flowing between them. She ran back to the stereo and chose a slow dance, so she could enjoy the rhythm of their bodies moving together in time to the music. Funny, the change in then* relation- s.h.i.+p didn't feel strange to her at all. She could tell he didn't even mind when she roped Pres into being her partner for the twist a couple of numbers later.

By midnight, everyone was dancing, and an hour later, Carrie noticed that there were begin- ning to be casualties. She rallied her fellow hostesses to start winding things down before they ended up with an all-night party on their hands. Sam was resistant at first, but reluctantly put on an alb.u.m of ballads, and helped a.s.sess the damages.

A few guests were lolling in armchairs, and had to be helped to their feet and walked to the door.

Someone had broken a beer bottle in one of the bathrooms, and someone else had thrown up in the shower stall of another. Upstairs, Kurt and Danny found a couple in the guest room who had undressed and gone to bed as if they were home.

Emma found an unidentified bra.s.siere flying like a flag from the edge of the deck.

"I'd say we had some fun," Sam announced as she cleaned a salsa spill from the hardwood floor in the dining room. "But how did we end up drunking so mich?"

Her remark drew a laugh from the last few stragglers who were still on their feet; most had congregated at the buffet for a final munch. Now they wandered off to find shoes, purses, and jackets for the trek home.

Carrie had marshaled Kevin and Billy into a crew to sweep through the outlying areas of the house for used cups and empty bottles. They returned as she was running a sinkful of soapy water to start was.h.i.+ng a few of the serving dishes.

"What's this, the party's over?" Kevin ribbed her. "Hey, don't clean up now. We can come back and help with this tomorrow."

"I think you mean later today," yawned Carrie.

"It must be four in the morning or something.

Anyway, I'd like to get started on it tonight, but I'm not sure I can stay awake."

"What you need is some fresh air," Kevin claimed, grabbing her by the waist and waltzing her toward the door. "I hereby, forthwith-and also right now-proclaim a beach walk!" he went on to announce in a booming, comical voice.

"Yes!" cried Emma as the idea grabbed her imagination. "Throw caution to the wind! It's almost our last night on the island! Let's do it. We can watch the sunrise!"

"I'm in!" Sam decided.

"Sounds like fun to me," said Danny.

"Only one problem," Kurt pointed out. "No beach."

For some reason, that struck everyone as being hilarious. No beach! Maybe they were just a little drunk . . .

"What do you mean? We're surrounded by beaches!" Billy exclaimed. "It's just a question of getting to one."

"We can use my car," offered Emma, "but I'm not sure we can all fit. Unless ..."

Like a chorus being directed by a single hand, the cry went up in unison: "Unless we put the top down!"

It took only a minute to decide it was a great idea.

Grabbing up whatever they could find in the way of warm clothing, they tumbled out the door and into the driveway. Emma was weaving as she tried to fit the key in the lock.

"One requirement," said Kevin, coming up behind Emma. He placed a hand over hers and gently extracted her keys. "I drive. Friends don't let friends, and all that."

"Man, are you sure you're okay?" asked Billy.

"I'd offer myself, but I'm honestly a little pol- luted."

"No problem," said Kevin, opening the door and sliding in behind the wheel.

It seemed pointless to argue, and in fact, though Kevin had been drinking with them all night, he seemed able to hold his liquor without much effect. In a minute, the top was whirring smoothly into its bed. Kurt grabbed Emma around the waist and pulled her onto his lap in the pa.s.senger seat. Laughing and stumbling against each other, the rest of the group scrambled for s.p.a.ce in the back seat of the open car. A rock station blared out "Twist and Shout," and every- one sang along at the top of their lungs.

"This is living!" Sam hollered over the noise, throwing her arms up to the night sky.

The Beatles song ended and an old Johnny Mathis ballad came on.

"Boring!" Kevin called out as he took the first turn onto the narrow road that led to the beach.

"Find some rap!" Sam yelled from the back seat.

"Rap? Yuck!" Danny put in from next to her.

"Find some good rock!"

"He likes the Grateful Dead!" Sam teased.

"Wow! Huggie-Veggie!" Billy teased him.

"You like the Grateful Dead, too!" Carrie laughed, hitting Billy in the arm.

Sam leaned into Danny impulsively and gave him a kiss on the lips.

"Driver's choice!" Emma called into the wind.

"You pick, Kevin!"

A number of things happened very fast just then. "Let me see," yelled Sam, lunging forward to reach for the tape Kurt had pulled out of the glove compartment. Kevin swatted playfully at Sam's hand, and a pair of headlights appeared directly in front of them, seemingly out of no- where.

"Hang on!" yelled Kevin.

Danny and Billy both reached forward in a vain attempt to take control as Kevin lost his grip on the wheel.

Brakes squealed from every direction. The car seemed to whirl off into s.p.a.ce, and the sky exploded.

Although Sam and Danny would later say they remembered lying in the woods and looking up to see the car bent around a tree, no one else remembered much of anything until the ambu- lance arrived. Even then, what they remembered were pulsing red lights and strange faces looking down at them with the bare tree branches sur- rounding their heads like crowns of thorns.

What all of them would remember with bril- liant clarity for the rest of their lives was the moment in the emergency room's waiting area, where a group of nurses and doctors were helping them fill out forms and preparing to treat the most serious injuries first. They were all suffering from some degree of shock, and the room was already strangely quiet when a tall doctor with wire-rimmed gla.s.ses gave them the inconceivable news that Kevin was dead.

Sunday morning was bright and clear, and so cold that the wind seemed to be singing in the ears of the small crowd at the ferry dock. An eerie unreality cloaked the group, as if this sunny day were something in their imaginations-a movie, maybe.

Please let the screen go dark and the house lights come up, and let us all walk out of here laughing, prayed Sam. But minute to minute, the story kept right on unfolding, leaving the hapless actors to play it out without the helping hand of writer, director, or editor to change the ending.

They were gathered to watch the ferry leave with Kevin's body. Kevin's body. No one could grasp the full meaning.

Danny was going, too, to meet Kevin's parents on the other side. The Logans didn't want to cross the other way and see the island where their young son had died so unexpectedly.

Ken Miner, owner of the Play Cafe, had been a G.o.dsend. He hadn't known Kevin well, but he was old enough to have dealt with death before.

Billy, not knowing who else to call, had phoned Ken from the hospital, and Ken had come right over.

Somehow calls had been made and plans set into motion, with Ken taking charge. The hospital staff had handled the group from the car accident with professional kindness, patching up injuries where they could and acknowledging the grief and shock that follows sudden loss.

Emma had suffered a broken collarbone and a dislocated shoulder. One of Carrie's ears had been partially torn off where her head had sc.r.a.ped a tree as she flew from the car. The skilled hands of the staff surgeon had set Emma's bones and st.i.tched Carrie's ear, and the girls were a.s.sured of complete recovery after a reasonable amount of mending time.

Sam and Danny, tumbling from the side of the car that had leaned into the woods, hadn't had far to fall and had cus.h.i.+oned each other's roll down the embankment. Danny's nose had been bloodied but not broken, and Sam had a patchwork of sc.r.a.pes and bruises along her arms and legs.

Billy had landed outside the car on his right hand, which had been fractured in several places.

Since he used his guitar mostly for songwriting, his injury didn't threaten his livelihood, and the prescribed future sessions of physical therapy didnt seem a high price to pay for walking away with only a small cast.

Kurt, however, had appeared to be in critical condition when the ambulance had first arrived.

He had been propelled straight into the edge of the winds.h.i.+eld, leaving him unconscious and with an angry gash in his forehead. But his eyelids had fluttered as the ambulance reached the emer- gency entrance, and by the time he was wheeled through the doors on a gurney he was able to speak.

"Lucky he didn't break his neck," Sam had overheard one of the policemen remark to an orderly. "I tell my kids again and again that I've yet to unstrap a dead body from a seat belt. I just hope they're listening better than these kids here-it's a crying shame."

Now, watching the -ferry pull away from its moorings and churn off into the sea, the living people left on the dock shared a question that they each sent out to their respective G.o.ds: Why?

Why Kevin, and not us?

"Life is really extremely fragile," the kindly doctor had told them as they had left the hospital before dawn. His brows were knit together in earnest sadness, as if he could somehow get something across to these kids that they couldn't possibly know at such young ages. "There's so much we don't know. I wish I could tell you I had answers. ..."

But he didn't. No one did. All anyone had was theories. And the group on the dock, most of them sobbing openly, could not take much com- fort today in the idea of a higher power.

"Not much point in standing here," said Ken, opening his arms to them all in a gesture of inclusion. "Let's get back to the house. Work is good therapy, and there's a cleanup to do today."

The house, Claudia and Graham's, had been their retreat a few hours ago after the hospital staff had herded them gently toward the door.

Obviously they couldn't stay at the hospital, but no one wanted to leave, as if staying there could suspend them forever in a limbo where Kevin might suddenly reappear. Ken had taken them all back to the Templetons', since the thought of being alone was unbearable to any of them.

Now, seated (and belted) in stunned silence in Ken's car, they were headed back to begin facing reality. Looking out the car window, Carrie found her thoughts repeating like a needle on a scratched record. In her head, she saw a huge clock face, its hands turning backward, and she thought that maybe if she concentrated hard enough, she could make it happen. If only it were yesterday! I'd call off the party. I'd hide Emma's car keys. I'd do the dishes, and make everyone help me. I'd . . .

As if a magnet were pulling them, Carrie's eyes turned with everyone else's as they pa.s.sed the spot where they'd crashed.

No one wanted to look at the tree, but every- body found their eyes riveted to that side of the road. The car, of course, had been removed and towed somewhere by the police. But splintered bark and the fresh white wound on the tree's trunk offered visible proof that the nightmare really had happened.

Emma foraged through her thoughts for a shred of the past that would seem meaningful. All of it-her childhood, her years at Aubergame, her months at Goucher, her parents' quarrels, her mother with Austin Payne, her father with Valeric, her new car-it all seemed cluttered with the most trivial of details. What, exactly, were the crus.h.i.+ng problems that had made her so miserable lately?

In trying to comprehend Kevin's death, a ter- rible truth was descending on her. This is life, she realized. This is why people say it's hard.

She thought of her griping, her self-pity, her drinking-had those times really been so diffi- cult? Compared to how she felt now, her previous troubles seemed silly and indulgent. She almost started crying again when she remembered how cool she had thought she would look in her expensive new car. How foolish I was! Just look where that got us. Just look where it got Kevin.

Ken let them out in the driveway. "I have to get over to the cafe for a few hours-I'm taking estimates on the finish work today. I'll call later to see if there's anything you need." He seemed to have more to say, but in the end let it go at that, and backed around carefully before rolling out of the drive.

Huddling uncertainly in the midmorning sun, Carrie, Sam, Emma, Kurt, and Billy observed the house and the front door they'd have to find the strength to enter once more. For a moment, no one moved or spoke. Then Kurt's voice broke the silence.

"Please, everybody." Kurt's words came choking out. "Please tell me if I'm crazy-is anyone else standing here hoping that we'll open the door and find Kevin telling stories in there?"

"Oh Kurt!" Sam cried, her voice breaking into a sob as she spoke for all of them. "You're not crazy."

With arms linked, the five friends moved to- gether to start back into the world of the living.

Somehow the hours pa.s.sed. Furniture was put back in place, dishes were washed, rugs were vacuumed, counters wiped, and trash hauled out.

Everyone was amazed-and sickened-by the sheer volume of bottles, cans, and gla.s.ses. The thought of how much they'd had to drink the night before horrified them.

"People say it's stupid to feel guilty," Carrie sniffled. "How else are we supposed to feel?"

"I think this is pretty unfair punishment, just for having fun," Sam added shakily.

"We had way too much to drink last night,"

sobbed Emma, "and I'm as guilty as anyone.

Wherever he is now, Kevin has every right to hate us."

"Hold it, guys," Kurt interjected, barely holding his own tears back. "I haven't really got a grip on this yet, but I do know one thing. Kevin had as much fun as anyone last night. I don't know where he is, but I do know he doesn't hate us!"

"I don't know," Billy said, trying to keep his lip from trembling. "We really screwed up."

Suddenly Sam felt angry. "Kevin was drinking, too-why did he say he could drive?"

"Why did we let him?" mourned Emma, feeling especially awful since she would have been at the wheel if she hadn't had so much to drink. // / hadn't been drowning my pitiful sorrows in a bottle of wine all week, she added to herself.

But Sam wasn't finished. "It was his d.a.m.ned idea to go to the beach in the first place!" she cried, winding into a fury. Suddenly s.n.a.t.c.hing a throw pillow from the couch, she held it at eye level and shook it violently. "d.a.m.n you, Kevin Logan! You jerk! You fool! You b.u.t.thead! You, you-" Sam threw the pillow and dissolved into tears.

Kurt and Billy left at about two in the after- noon because the girls said they wanted to be alone for a while.

"Are you sure?" Kurt asked Emma. "I'll stay with you," he offered.

"Thanks," she said, smiling tremulously. "I ...