Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea by April Genevieve Tucholke Page B

during a two-hour movie? I thought, watching him go. 
    And he didn’t come back right away. He was gone for almost a half hour. Tick tock. Tick tock. The minutes dripped by. And then, just like that, he was at my side again for the last “Here’s looking at you, kid . ” He didn’t tell me where he’d been, or why, but he did grab my hand. And he held it through the last scene of the film, which was all right with me. 
    The movie ended and there was no sign of Luke or Maddy. All around us people were drifting into the dark, repeating classic Casablanca lines to each other. River and I were the last ones left. 
    “So where is this town’s cemetery?” River asked me. 
    “Why?”I packed the last of the night’s supper back in the picnic basket and threw it over my arm. 
    “I want to see it. I like cemeteries.” 
    “Me too.But I think it’s illegal to be in them after sunset.” 
    River didn’t say anything, just slid the basket handle down my arm and took it from me. 
    “Okay,” I said, caving, just like that. I didn’t care that much about breaking cemetery laws, so it was pretty easy to persuade me.“It’s sort of on the way home, anyway.” 
    Echo had a gorgeous cemetery. It was big and old, with tall, ancient trees and a couple of mausoleums, one of them belonging to the ex-illustrious White family. I never visited it,although I should have,since Freddie was buried there. The cemetery spread itself out over a hill facing the sea,and had a view that rivaled Citizen Kane’s.It was the kind of place someone like Edgar Allan Poe would want to rot away in . . .drippy green leaves and twinkling starry silence. 
    The cemetery was surrounded by a wrought iron fence, which I thought would be locked. It wasn’t.The gate was wide open. We went inside, and River set the picnic basket down beside the first headstone he saw.Then he reached forward and took my hand. His fingers wove between my own, and mine tingled where River’s wrapped around them. 
    “I like you,Violet,” he said, in a low voice. 
    “You don’t even know me,” I said back. 
    River looked at me, and he was wearing his sly, crooked half smile that was becoming very familiar. “Yes, I do. I can learn all I need to know about a person in two minutes. And we’ve had hours.” He paused. “You’re careful. Thoughtful. Perceptive. More honest than most. You hate recklessness, but are impulsive yourself, when it suits you. You hate your brother, and you love him more than anything in the world. You wish your parents would come home,but you’ve learned to live without them. You like peace, but are capable of toecurling violence, if pushed far enough.” 
    River paused, again, and his hand squeezed mine. So hard, it almost hurt. “But the thing I’m really into—the part that makes you different—is that you don’t want anything from me. At all.” 
    “I don’t?” 
    “No. And I find it . . . relaxing.” 
    I had no response to that. I supposed I should have gotten nervous, what with River knowing so much about me already.But I didn’t.I just took it in,and tried to figure out how to enjoy it. 
    We walked up a hill and came to stop by the Glenship mausoleum. It was covered in ivy and so old that a person expected the stones to fall apart any second and drop a pile of bones on the ground. The moon disappeared behind a cloud and everything went pitch-black.I couldn’t see anything, not even River. I felt him next to me, though. Heard him breathing. Felt his heat . . . 
    Something hard slammed into my back. I choked, and choked again, fell, rolled over, and suddenly there were shadows on top of me, all over me, everywhere, moving and grabbing at me— 
    “River,” I cried out. Cold hands gripped the skin of my legs, and hard palms pressed on my stomach. “What are they? They’re all over me, God—”  
    “Its all right, Vi, it’s all right.They’re just kids. It’s just a bunch of kids.” 
    I stopped