8. Chapter 8 #4
Zed stares one second longer, then casts one last look at the cluster of counselors before turning and walking away.
He moves fast enough that it’s obvious he does not want anyone catching up to him right now.
He doesn’t stop. Doesn’t even look back. He heads up the beach alone and disappears toward the villa before anyone can follow.
Ten minutes later, the panic has mostly burned itself out of the beach.
Not completely. I don’t think it can, not that fast. But the panic is gone.
Sam is okay. I’m sitting on a towel beside him now, close enough that he can lean against my side if he wants to.
He’s wrapped in a giant beach towel that makes him look even smaller, his hair still damp and his cheeks pink from crying and everything that almost happened.
I help him hold a juice box when his hands shake.
“You scared us,” I tell him softly.
He presses his mouth together and chews on the straw. Around us, camp is trying to rebuild itself. The adults are all carrying that overcareful energy people get after disaster brushes past.
Dom is talking to my father a little way off, both of them serious now. Jace is with two of the other players near the dunes, hands on his hips, watching the water with his girlfriend Melody next to him.
Movement higher up the beach catches my eye, and I turn to see Zed. He’s coming back down to the beach in dry clothes, hair still damp but no longer dripping. Jace peels away from the dunes and falls in beside him, saying something low.
The second Sam sees him, he lights up. The fear in him forgotten. He pushes himself up off the towel before I can stop him and takes off across the sand.
“Sam!” I rise, but I’m too late to stop him.
Sam barrels straight toward Zed and throws both arms around one of his legs, because that’s about all he can reach.
“You’re my hero!”
Zed freezes completely. I expect him to awkwardly pat Sam’s head and wait for the counselors to get him, but he doesn’t.
His hands lift halfway, like he’s about to touch Sam back, but they never get there. Something awful moves across his face instead.
Zed steps back quickly, pushing Sam back in the process.
“I’m not your anything, kid.”
My mouth falls open in shock. I look around to make sure I didn’t imagine what just came out of his mouth, and judging by everyone’s faces, my ears work fine.
Sam’s face crumples instantly, and his chin starts trembling. His small hands are still reaching up for Zed, paused midair, frozen and unsure. My heart squeezes painfully at the sight, and I immediately move to get him.
A few feet away, I hear Tanner. “Jesus, Mercer.”
Jace looks like he wants to grab him by the back of the neck and ask him what the hell that was.
I stare at Zed in outright horror, and he must feel it because his eyes lift from Sam and land on me. The look on his face slows me down. I expect to see coldness, annoyance, or something close to it.
What I see is pain. Not a vague heaviness I’m making up because I want there to be something more under the ugliness of what he just did. I see real pain, as though his words hurt him just as much as they did Sam.
His expression closes back over itself, and he looks away from me before I can make sense of it. He turns from Sam and starts walking toward the patio.
I get to Sam as fast as I can and kneel in front of him.
“Hey.” I reach for him carefully.
He looks up at me, lower lip shaking.
“That wasn’t about you,” I say, even though I have no real idea whether that’s true. “Okay? That had nothing to do with you.”
Sam blinks at me, devastated and unconvinced.
I pull him gently back toward the towel and wrap the edge of it tighter around his shoulders.
“Hey, bud.” Jace crouches in front of him too and points at the roster behind him. “You wanna come hang with us for a little bit?”
Sam’s little chin wobbles as he nods. I smooth his wet hair back from his forehead and glance once in the direction Zed disappeared.
Dom comes up quietly, crouching next to his best friend.
“Hey, Sam,” he says, voice lower now. Softer than usual. “You good, buddy?”
Sam shrugs with a sniff.
Dom glances at Jace next to him, who shakes his head.
“You know what this means, right?” Dom turns back to Sam. “Now you’ve got the best story out of everybody here. I’d even add a shark if I were you.”
Sam’s mouth pulls into a small smile. I look from Sam to Dom, then out toward the villa where Zed disappeared.
“What the heck was that?” I mouth silently.
Dom’s eyes lift to mine, and I know before he even answers that he knows. It’s there on his face. He knows exactly what that was.
Dom rises to his feet and offers Sam a hand. “Come on. Let’s get you a snack and go see what the others are doing.”
Dom’s eyes flick back to me with an apologetic press of his lips. Then he turns, guiding the little boy back toward the others.
I stay where I am.
The beach is still loud around me with kids shouting again now that the panic is over. And from the look on Dom’s face, I now have a new piece of information.
Something happened to Zed, and Dom knows what it is.