Page 21 of The California Dreamers

20

Kulldasack

2002

The island

Day 2, late afternoon

Pauline stood on a small knoll above us. She was sunburnt, wobbly, panting. Sweat stains bloomed on her short-sleeved fuchsia shirt, and she waved a crumpled white paper at us, seemingly too tired to talk.

Griff collected himself first, walking up to her and beckoning all of us to follow. “Ms. Cowley, welcome!”

Mag asked bluntly, “How did you get over here?” At a sharp look from me he covered quickly, “I mean, wow, you’re a good hiker!”

“Rest,” I urged her, spreading a clean towel in the shade and helping her sit. I offered her my water canteen and she glugged gratefully.

At last she spoke. “I feel so foolish. I found this map in the shed. And it didn’t seem far. I wanted to see you. Explain.” A cough—she’d gulped too fast. “It’s…harder than it looks on the map. Excuse me.” She was still pale, faintly green, in fact.

Charlie burst through the trees behind me, panicked. “You won’t believe it, but that fucking reporter’s disappeared! I left her alone for five minutes and—”

“Charlie, look who’s here!” Griff said, and Charlie strode over, coming to a stop between Mag and me. Now we formed a tight circle around our visitor. A nervous, embarrassed foursome.

“I’m sorry,” Charlie started. “I was worried about you, so—”

“So foolish,” Pauline repeated, cutting Charlie off as if she hadn’t heard her cussing her out. “Those rocks were something. And then the elevation.”

“The terrain’s difficult, especially those rocks on the west side of the island,” Griff said kindly. Now that we needed the money, we had to put on the right face for Pauline.

“So you write for SWELL ?” Mag asked. He towered over her, and maybe that’s why it sounded more aggressive than he’d intended.

We were all thinking it…but with a disbelieving emphasis on you that Mag had, luckily, resisted.

You write for SWELL ? With her prim, short-sleeved pantsuit, her salon-highlighted blond coif, and her general air of “indoor infection,” as Cap used to put it, Pauline hardly looked like a surfer. Or even someone who dabbled in surf writing.

“I.” Pauline swallowed. She was definitely green. “I freelance. This will be my first—first piece for SWELL . I usually write for…”

I took the map from her—it still had tape on the edges from where she’d peeled it from the workshed wall—and waved it at her neck to cool her, while Charlie pulled an energy bar from her pack and unwrapped it. Pauline pursed her lips and shook her head with a polite “No thank you, Charlie.”

It was hard not to feel for her. Summoned here by Cap, and from the looks of her outfit and gear he hadn’t told her how rugged the setting for her interview would be. We’d stuffed her in an old tin-roofed shed on the other side of the island, assuming she’d wait for us. You had to admire her pluck. But even as I wafted the map up and down at her and she nodded at me gratefully, I reminded myself, She is not our friend.

“I’m Magnus,” Mag said. “And that’s Griffin, and this is…” He cast a confused glance at me, wondering, I guessed, if he should say Ava, or Ronan, or some alias. Mag settled on no name at all, hurrying on, “And Dylan.”

Except there was no Dylan, we realized, looking around at the bushes and trees surrounding us. He must have bolted again when Pauline appeared.

Already this was not the controlled, carefully planned interview we’d discussed five minutes ago.

Pauline said, with great effort, “I’m so glad to meet you all. I—I recognize you from.” A nervous swallow. “From the photo.”

Then she threw up.

***

“Finally, someone outside the family gives their honest reaction to that photo,” I whispered to Mag.

He snorted, covered his mouth just in time. “Not funny, Ro.”

Griff and Charlie had taken charge of Pauline, who insisted she was fine now. Charlie had declared her overheated and maybe a little altitude sick from her too-quick climb uphill. She rested in the shade with them with a damp cloth on her forehead, all apologies for her “impulsive” decision to hike over to our side of the island alone.

Mag and I, out of her view, scribbled notes on the back of a LeClair Lavender Farm brochure I’d found in my duffel. Safe things to talk about during our interview, topics to avoid. We figured we could eat up half an hour just detailing the surf conditions where Dreamers was shot.

Now that Pauline was here, a fuchsia presence on our side of the island, I couldn’t stop thinking about how we had underestimated her.

“I hope I didn’t insult her too much with that SWELL comment.” Mag checked over his shoulder to be sure Pauline was still out of earshot. “It just came out.”

“She’s hard to read. She’s so genteel on the surface, but there’s something tenacious about her.” Tenacious and hard to trust. It seemed unlikely that she only wanted a sweet story to match the photograph, so the more time we could eat up with preplanned answers, the better. “Oh! We could tell her how Cap taught us to respect locals before we could even swim. Surf etiquette.”

“That’s good, write that down.”

“And we throw technical surf terms at her. That’s another half hour, at least.”

“Hey, what if we do the interview on the boat? Pretend it’s so we won’t be spotted. She doesn’t know anything about the marine traffic here, or where the government workers visit…”

“Then whenever we want, we say, time’s up and the Merricks disembark!” I said. “Mag, you’re brilliant.”

“And Charlie ferries her back to Santa Barbara on the Kai before dark. Easy.”

Griff came over. “I’m going to grab one of our boards so we can carry her to camp. It’ll work as a stretcher. She says she doesn’t need it, but I’m not taking any chances. And—”

“Let’s take her down to the west-side dock instead,” Mag interrupted. We filled Griff in on the plan to conduct the interview on the boat so we’d have an easy getaway.

“Good thinking,” Griff whispered. “If we carry her, it won’t take long. Let’s get this charade over with.”