She found the back corner of a bench where she’d be the least claustrophobic. She remembered what Ander had said under the tree about enjoying being cocooned. She couldn’t relate. The entire world was too tight a space for Eureka.
She reached down to touch the bayou, taking comfort in its fragile timelessness. There was little chance a wave bigger than a boat’s wake would come coursing through. Still, her hand shook against the surface of the water, which felt colder than she knew it was.
Cat sat next to her, on Julien’s lap. As she penciled a few leaves on Eureka’s face with gold eyeliner, she made up a Maze Daze song to the tune of “Love Stinks,” accompanied by shimmying against Julien’s chest.
“Maze Daze, yeah, yeah!”
A six-pack appeared while Tim filled the tank. Tops popped around the boat like fireworks. The air smelled like gasoline and dead water beetles and the mushrooms rising from the soil along the bank. A slick-furred nutria cut a tiny wake as it swam past them on the bayou.
As the party barge slowly left the dock, a bitter breeze slapped Eureka’s face and she hugged her arms to her chest. Kids around her huddled together and laughed, not because anything funny had happened, but because they were together and eager about the night ahead.
By the time they got to the party, they were either buzzed or pretending they were. Eureka accepted Tim’s help off the barge. His hand around hers was dry and big. It gave her a twinge of longing, because it was nothing like Ander’s hand. Nausea spread through her stomach as she remembered sugarcane and skin as white as sea foam and ghastly green light in Ander’s panicked eyes the night before.
“Come along, my brittle little leaf.” Cat swung an arm around Eureka. “Let us tumble through this fete bringing all glad men to grief.”
They entered the party. Laura Trejean had classed up her brother’s tradition. Tiki torches lit the pebbled allée from the dock to the iron gate that led to the backyard. Tin lanterns twinkled in the giant weeping willows. Up on the balcony, overlooking the moonlit pool, everyone’s favorite local band, the Faith Healers, tuned their instruments. Laura’s clique mingled across the lawn, passing tin trays of Cajun hors d’oeuvres.
“Amazing what a lady’s touch will do,” Eureka said to Cat, who snatched a mini fried oyster po’boy from a passing platter.
“That’s what he said,” Cat mumbled through a mouthful of bread and lettuce.
You didn’t have to tell Catholic school kids twice to dress up for a party. Everyone came decked out in costume. Maze Daze was explicitly not a Halloween party; it was a harvest celebration. Among the many LSU jerseys, Eureka spotted some more inventive attempts. There were several scarecrows and a smattering of tipsy jack-o’-lanterns. One junior boy had duct-taped sugarcane stalks to his T-shirt in honor of the harvest later that month.
Cat and Eureka passed a tribe of Pilgrim-costumed freshmen gathered around a fire pit in the center of the lawn, their faces lit orange and yellow by the flames. When they passed the Maze and heard laughter inside, Eureka tried not to think of Brooks.
Cat steered her up the stairs to the back patio, past a big black cauldron of crawfish surrounded by kids snapping off the tails and sucking fat from the heads. Shucking crawfish was one of a bayou child’s earliest rites of passage, so its savagery felt natural everywhere, even in costume, even drunk in front of your crush.
When they got in line for punch, Eureka heard a loud male voice in the distance call out, “Make like a tree and leave.”