Aria touched the coal. Black dust came off on her fingers. “How can a piece of charcoal also make jam?”
Graham fiddled with a string on his hooded sweatshirt, which smelled overpoweringly like flowery fabric softener. “Maybe it’s a plant. One part of it is used for charcoal, but maybe another part—the berries—makes good jam.”
“That makes sense!” Aria grinned. “How did you think of that?”
Graham shrugged. “We have to be resourceful at our SCA meet-ups in the woods. I can almost guarantee you that part of this tree we’re looking for probably could provide a decent component for gunpowder, too.” He smiled proudly. “I’m in charge of ammunition within my unit.”
Aria wanted to comment that she was pretty sure people in medieval times didn’t have gunpowder, but she held her tongue. She looked around. “Maybe a local would know what tree around here could be used to make jam.”
Graham nodded, then headed down the uneven sidewalk in the direction of a sign that Aria was pretty sure said juice bar in French. She took in the drawing of a knight on the back of his T-shirt. Besides the gunpowder trivia, she’d had to listen to a long aside about the virtues of makeshift toilets and cooking over a cauldron at his Society of Creative Anachronism gatherings.
It still hadn’t really sunk in that Graham had dated Tabitha. After Gretchen had dismissed them, she’d run back to her cabin and scoured the Tabitha memorial sites for Graham’s posts. Most of them were vague, innocuous—just saying things like RIP and Miss you, Tab. But when Tabitha’s father spoke out about the resort’s negligence, Graham had chimed in, saying he thought The Cliffs shouldn’t have served alcohol to minors. When the news broke that Tabitha hadn’t died an alcohol-related death, Graham’s posts had turned irate. Whoever did this, the cops are going to find you and take you down.
Just reading that post had made the vegetarian chili Aria had eaten for dinner rise up in her throat. Last night, she had a dream of finding Tabitha in the sand. As she’d turned Tabitha’s limp body over, Graham had come up behind her. “Aria?” He’d seemed so surprised. “What are you doing here?” And then, slowly, his face had registered what she’d done. “It was an accident!” Aria had cried. “It was almost like she pitched herself over the side—I hardly pushed her!” Tears had welled in Graham’s eyes. And then he reached out his arms to strangle her. That was when she woke up.
She felt like she needed to do something for Graham. Her friends might have been dead-set against her seeing Graham again, but she’d meant what she said the night before about how this was the only way she could think of to make the overpowering guilt lift. By being Graham’s friend, by being his shoulder to cry on about Tabitha—if that was what he needed—maybe she could make small amends for everything she’d done.
Bells jingled, and Graham emerged from the juice bar, looking triumphant. “The guy running the place says that the sea grape makes good jam. He says sometimes they serve as a natural barrier for sea turtles, too.”
Aria frowned. “I’ve never heard of a sea grape tree.”
Graham pulled out his cell phone, pressed the BROWSE button, and typed sea grape into Google. Pictures of a large-fronded tree with green grape clusters appeared on the screen. “The largest group of sea grape trees is on the southernmost tip of the island,” he read aloud.
“I guess that’s where we’re going,” Aria said, then turned on the sidewalk toward the ocean.
Graham exited out of Google, and his phone returned to the main screen. When Aria saw that the wallpaper was a picture of Tabitha, a scream froze in her throat. Tabitha was sitting on a stone wall, dressed in a pink shirt and skinny jeans.
She turned away, but not before Graham caught her looking. “Oh. That was my girlfriend. The one who was … you know.”
Aria nodded, taking in Tabitha’s familiar blond hair, big blue eyes, and the faint burn scars on her neck from a childhood fire. “She’s, um, pretty.”
“Yeah.” Graham sighed heavily. “She was gorgeous.” His voice got a little choked up.
Aria paused at a corner. “You miss her, huh?”
Graham nodded. “It’s … hard. And weird. I don’t know anyone our age that’s died, you know? I’ve sort of had a hard time with it, which is totally lame, because we weren’t even together when she passed away.”
A car whizzed past, kicking up the ends of Aria’s hair. “You weren’t?”
He shook his head. “We dated in tenth grade, but I always felt like she was just waiting for something better to come along. Even when I asked her to the tenth-grade dance, she was so blasé about it, like she would’ve rather gone with someone else.” He kicked a loose pebble on the ground. “I said some pretty awful things when we broke up, mostly about her being crazy. But then, after she went to the hospital again, I felt like the biggest jerk in the world.”