Chapter One: Sandalwood Chateau
"Are you sure the map said left, Ash?" Emily Cheney demanded from her vantage point in the backseat of Sarah Towers’s tiny Toyota Corolla. She was wedged in between the door and a stack of luggage, but she did not seem to mind, for her notebook was open on her lap and she was absently gnawing on her pen cap.
Ashley Newhall peered hard at the paper in her hands in the last bit of daylight. "I assure you that I can read perfectly well." Her finger stabbed at the directions. "Ha! Right there, clear as day! Turn left onto Barkley and go about seven blocks!"
"Lemme see that!"
Barkley Place was a wide, paved road (perhaps the only one in town, the natives joked) with well-to-do houses blossoming on either side. Even though the houses were surrounded by well-manicured lawns, the trio could smell the distinct tang of the salty ocean breeze. They could not see the ocean yet, though. Although they had already been in Florida for several hours, Ashley could not help but point out the obvious. "Ooh, palm trees!" she cried, pointing.
"Yes, palm trees," Sarah, the driver, replied in the same placating voice she had used the first nineteen times Ashley had felt it within herself to point out that there were palm trees along the road. "Now, I know that you’re used to Missouri and life without palm trees, but could you keep giving me directions so we don’t end up in a ditch? On second thought, just tell me where the hell we are!" They were rapidly coming up to a stop sign.
"Can’t!" said Ashley a bit haplessly. "Em’s got them."
Emily was currently scratching her head and staring down at the handwritten directions. "Would you believe it?" she asked, a note in her voice akin to awe. "Ash was right for once. We’re going the right way." She passed the directions back to Ashley. "For once, Ash didn’t get us lost." Ashley did not deign to stick her tongue out and instead stared intently at the directions.
Four college students living in a beach house for an entire summer could be compared to sending a bunch of ants into a candy factory—not smart (or adhering to health codes). However, Sarah, Ashley, and Emily had packed up their bags and headed off to Florida for the entire summer. Their friend Kerry Dearmont had an uncle that had given her free reign of his beach house in Florida. The four girls would be staying in Terrence Dearmont’s beach house, Sandalwood Chateau, for the entire three-month period in between semesters at their college. It was a bit of a terrifying prospect, but an exciting one nonetheless.
"Well, you turn right—and yes, I read that right, thank you, Em—on the road marked ‘Haven Avenue’ and then it’s an almost immediate left onto ‘Bainbridge Trail.’" Ashley looked up at the palm trees, but for once did not draw the others’ attention to the massive fronds. "Sandalwood Chateau is off on its own cul-de-sac, it appears. Sandalwood Street, how imaginative." She set the directions on the dashboard in front of her (where it buried itself in with the chips bags and fast food wrappers that had accumulated throughout the trip) and looked out the window.
"Kerry didn’t say how big this house was," Emily remarked. She leaned forward and shoved her notebook into a backpack. "Do you think we’ll have our own rooms?"
Sarah’s only answer was a shrug as she turned right onto Haven Avenue. The houses on Haven Avenue were not unlike those on Barkley Place, so they did not provide much of a change in scenery. When they made their way onto Bainbridge Trail, however, Emily let out a yell. "I see the ocean!" she cried. She let out a whoop. "We must be almost there!"
It had been a long car drive, made longer by the fact that they had gotten lost around Georgia and had had to turn around. They had not made up for lost time and were instead nearly an hour behind their proposed arrival time. They had taken turns driving (much to Sarah’s dislike; she was extremely possessive of her minuscule Toyota) and had joked around like normal college students on a road trip. Sarah was a year ahead of the other two in the car; she would be a senior, but both Emily and Ashley would only be juniors. Kerry was also a junior.
It was amusing, how alike and different they were. Although she was the shortest of the group, Sarah had the longest hair (it went all the way down her back by now). They were all brunettes, but only Ashley and Emily eyes. Emily had the darkest complexion of the group; her hair was pulled back into a messy half-bun at the moment, and the top of her head was covered by a blue bandana. Ashley’s hair curled inward at chin length, when it wasn’t pushed under some ski-cap or another. Kerry’s hair fell to her shoulders and curled mercilessly.
"I think we’ll have our own rooms. A ‘chateau’ is a French castle, or a manor," Ashley reasoned now, answering Emily’s question. She stared at the ocean, not really noticing that the car was turning onto Sandalwood Street. "Unless it’s somebody’s idea of a cruel joke, the house will probably be fair-sized."
Emily’s voice was once again awed. "Or massively huge."
"Or massively…" Ashley’s voice trailed off as she turned her head and got her first good look at Sandalwood Chateau. Even Sarah’s mouth had dropped. "Wait. We’re staying there for the summer?"
The utter amazement in her voice did nothing to carry the weight the magnificent splendor Sandalwood Chateau held. When coming up with a word to describe the house itself, one would first arrive on "big" and later on "monstrously large." By the time Sarah had pulled her less-than-dependable Toyota up Sandalwood Chateau’s sandy driveway—which was long enough to have had a separate street name for itself—Ashley had concluded that the house was "magnificently grand." Sarah just thought it was "cool."
It truly was a very gigantic manor, much too large for four college students. Three stories in all, it stood almost as an impregnable fortress of white-wash paint, brick, and blue shutters. A door—painted bright red—stood in the direct center of the first floor, and the three could see obviously elegant rooms through tall, slim windows. A twisting walkway led up to the door, and Ashley nearly bounced out of the car to examine a fountain sitting very conspicuously in the middle of the lawn beside the walkway. "Sarah!" she cried upon thorough examination of the fountain. "Fairies!"
"The fairy manor," Sarah remarked, climbing out of the car and standing on the sand. She immediately shucked off her flip-flops and tossed them onto the driver’s seat, grinning as her toes curled in it. "We’re here! This has to be Sandalwood Chateau!" She pointed to Kerry’s new Jeep Liberty further up the driveway.
Emily let out another whoop as she extracted herself from the luggage and her backpack. "I can see the beach!" she hollered, and did an Emily-class victory dance right there outside of the Corolla.
"Hi, Kerry!" Ashley had moved her fascination in the fountain to the front door, where their friend stood with her arms crossed—the very picture of indignation. Kerry was the tallest one of the group, about three inches taller than Ashley, and her normally disheveled curls were elegantly pulled up out of her face. She wore what the others immediately supposed to be the outfit she sang in, for Kerry normally did not wear dresses. Although she looked happy to see them, she did not look thrilled that they had taken so long to get there. Sensing this, Ashley added, "We only got lost once! Aren’t you proud of us?"
"You didn’t call!" Kerry moved down the steps—painted dark blue—and stomped over to the car. "You were supposed to call if you got lost!"
"We figured it out on our own," Sarah protested even as she was swept up into a hug. At a mere five feet and two inches above the ground, Kerry almost towered over her. "Geez, Kerry. You’re like a mother—you worry too much!" She pushed herself out of Kerry’s choke-hold and moved around the trunk. "Luggage, everybody!"
But Ashley and Emily just rolled their eyes at her and then smiled at each other. "Race you to the beach," Ashley offered, her grin devilish.
Although she was a little tired from the drive, Emily’s competitive nature got the best of her. "Sure!" she replied, taking off at top speed.
Sneakers and flip flops flying, the two raced around Sandalwood Chateau and to the beach, which was dark against the graying sky. "Maturity of five-year-olds!" Kerry called after them, but received nothing more than a rude gesture from Emily as the two disappeared from sight behind the house. "I guess we’ll just leave their luggage out here then. I’m not carrying it in."
"It’s a nice enough night, and I don’t think there’s any houses for at least two miles," Sarah remarked. "It should be fine." She hauled a briefcase covered in pictures of fairies out from underneath a laundry basket of food. "Grab the basket, will you?"
Carrying the basket of food, Kerry led Sarah into the chateau and it was then that Sarah got her first glimpse of the inside of Sandalwood Chateau. Her jaw nearly dropped as Kerry led her into the grand entrance hall. A hardwood floor complemented off-white walls and translucently blue curtains hanging up on a grand window. Looking down through the window, Sarah could see a sort of family room with an entertainment unit and three couches bunched around cozily. To the right stood a small table with an ensemble of silk roses arranged along the top. Sarah paused to admire the flowers (such pretty pink and blue buds) before hurrying after Kerry.
The ground floor of Sandalwood Chateau had a very open feeling to it. Branching directly right off of the entrance hall was a dark corridor filled with bookshelves. There was one room on the right and one room down at the end of the hall. Past the corridor was a kitchen with an island and a bar; behind that stood a laundry room that led out onto a deck.
Directly beyond the entrance hall was an open space surrounding a spiral staircase that twisted up for two floors. Looking up, Sarah could see the ceiling of Sandalwood Chateau—three stories up. For a long moment, she did nothing but gape. Then she looked left and saw the sunken family room she had glimpsed earlier. Beyond that was a dim dining room, with unlit candles and expensive china on the table. Even beyond that, Sarah could see a wall of glass leading to a sun room with a piano and several other musical instruments. She smiled as she noticed a collection of CDs and a computer.
"This house is amazing!" she cried as Kerry put the basket on the kitchen table. "No wonder why you were so adamant to have us come as soon as possible!" She strode around as she said this, peering hard at the pictures on the wall. This house definitely had a lot of character. There was a caricature of Joe DiMaggio, a black and white photograph of the Beatles, various comic strips, a painting of kittens, and several family photographs. Sarah recognized a younger version of Kerry in one and smirked. She could use that for ammunition later. "Does your uncle actually live here?"
"No…" Kerry trailed off. "Sometimes he’ll spend a few weeks here, though. His wife inherited this from some great-aunt or something, so they kind of use this place as a storage space, if you get what I’m saying. They don’t really want it, so it’s all ours whenever we want to use it."
"Cool." This could be quite the bachelorette pad, Sarah noted silently, but mentioned nothing aloud. Judging from the phone call she had received the night before, she assumed that Kerry was seriously looking for a male in the time she had been there. She had also acquired a job singing at some local club that she gushed about for hours. As for the others, Emily had just gotten dumped by her boyfriend of one and a half years (but the girls didn’t put it that crudely—since Em wasn’t very talkative on the subject), and Ashley wasn’t really looking at the moment. That left Sarah as the only true bachelorette.
There was the sound of "heeheehee" laughter outside, the only warning the two inside the house had before the sliding glass door opened and Ashley bounded in, dripping from head to toe. "Sorry," she apologized through a grin when both Sarah and Kerry squawked for her to get back outside. "Erm—fell in." Her grin was just a bit off, and when Emily entered the house in a similar state, both Kerry and Sarah knew exactly what had happened.
"Which of you two lost, then?" Sarah inquired as Emily removed her sopping T-shirt and wrung it out on the floor, sending Kerry into another—louder—rant. Sarah shrieked and backed away when Ashley tried to give her a very wet hug.
"I lost," Ashley offered, her voice somewhat meek as she shook herself like a dog. Emily backed away. "Kind of tripped and took Em down with me. Right into the surf."
"Yeah, thanks a lot," Emily grumbled, wringing saltwater out of her long, dark hair.
Ashley shrugged apologetically and entered Sandalwood, eyes blinking owlishly. She sucked in a breath, awed, and immediately flitted about to investigate. The others could hear her stream of exclamations as she roved through the house. "Cool! They’ve got a computer!" The joy upon this discovery was palpable in her voice.
"Well, that’s the last time we’ll be seeing her all summer," Kerry remarked. She opened the fridge and pulled out a Sundrop soda. "Forget summer on the beach, or getting tan for the first time in her life. Ashley’s got her computer." She rolled her eyes and took a long swig—which she nearly spit out when Ashley emerged from the sun room only seconds after making her ground-breaking discovery. "You’re not going to play on it now?"
"I’m all wet." She gave no further explanation as she wandered about the house, unable to contain herself as she occasionally felt the need to comment. "The Beatles!" Another quick series of footsteps, and they saw a blurred flash of wet blue body before Ashley disappeared down the bookshelf-laden hallway. A few seconds later: "They’ve got Star Wars!"
"Was the drive okay?" Kerry asked Emily, who was still standing in nothing but her sports bra and shorts, clutching her shirt in one hand.
"Yeah. Only got lost once," she shrugged and looked around, obviously impressed by the house. "Is my bag outside?"
"Yeah—hey Pothead! C’mere!"
Ashley came running in, sliding because her feet were still wet. "Yes, Kerry?" she demanded in a falsely innocent tone, rolling her eyes at her nickname.
"Your bag’s out in the car still. If you want dry clothes, you’ll have to go get it." Kerry’s smirk was slightly victorious as both Emily and Ashley trooped outside to collect their luggage from the car. "Do you want to see your room, Sarah?"
Sarah’s room was on the second floor of the house; it was obvious to why this had been picked for Sarah. A twin-sized bed with a blue comforter had been shoved against one wall, with a night-stand perched next to it. There was a writing desk placed perpendicularly against the window, covered with pads of papers and pieces of stationery that Sarah could use. The closet stood in a little alcove; the carpet was a dark blue. None of these were what drew Sarah’s attention, though. Along the walls, somebody had scattered paintings and drawings of fairies, wizards, dragons, even some nymphs. She nearly squealed in delight.
"Figured you’d like the fairy room. My aunt’s got a big thing for them," Kerry said, a smile in her voice. "I think I hear Em and Ash downstairs—better go avert trouble." She disappeared to let Sarah unpack.
Kerry was pleased that she had picked the rooms so perfectly for each of her guests. Both Emily and Ashley had rooms facing west, so that they could watch the sunset from their rooms and not be awakened by the sunrise. Emily’s room was done in shades of red and dark blue, and had a very appropriate picture of monkeys over the bed—she had a bit of a fetish for the creatures. Ashley’s room was slightly smaller, and the room boasted no pictures. There was, however, a hammock strung up between two walls, and the walls were painted a medium shade of green.
Sarah was the first one done unpacking because she had not been covered in saltwater and did not see the need for a shower yet. "What’s for dinner?" she asked, sitting down at the bar and watching Kerry work over the stove. Whatever it was, she reflected silently, smelled good.
"Omelets." Kerry pointed to a plate with two omelets already on it. "I’ve got to be at work in a half-hour, otherwise I’d stick around and make something more extravagant. Omelets will have to work."
"Okay, June," Ashley said, coming in the room. She had obviously just gotten out of the shower, for her hair was slicked back beneath her famous ski-cap, and a slight scent of lavender wafted after her. When both Kerry and Sarah shot her puzzled looks, she explained, "June Cleaver. You know, Leave it to Beaver?" She reached for the plate, but Kerry smacked her hand away with a wooden spoon and pointed at the seat beside Sarah. Ashley pretended to be injured even as she retreated.
Sarah turned towards Ashley, her expression befuddled. "June Cleaver sang in a bar?"
"Club," Kerry corrected absently, still fiddling with the stove.
"Noooo, but…"
Just then Emily walked through the kitchen. "Dude, the bathroom’s bigger than our dorm rooms," she commented, and let herself out the sliding glass door. She had a notebook in one hand, and her hair was wet. Sarah doubted that she had taken a shower, but she had pulled on a fresh T-shirt and shorts. The girls watched her disappear into the darkness.
"Shouldn’t somebody…you know, stop her? Tell her that we have food?" Ashley asked.
Her question was met with shrugs. "You know Emily. Why would she want to spend any time with her friends, or consume any life-sustaining nutrients? Just let her go," Sarah reasoned. She gave a shrug and cocked her head at the omelets. "We’ll call her in before bedtime."
Kerry turned off the stove and doled omelets onto plates. "There’s plenty of Easy Mac for when she’s hungry." Easy Mac—instant macaroni and cheese that could be made in a single serving bowl—was the lifeblood of college students everywhere, especially Emily. "Let’s go eat in the sunroom. I don’t have much time, though."
*
At promptly nine o’clock in the morning, Ashley met a mouthful of pillow that made her splutter in surprise and hit the floor as the hammock overturned. While it normally took her several cups of coffee or a few hours to wake up, the ground was a much more competent awakening device. She spit out a mouthful of beige carpet and glared at the person who had not-so-gently smacked her with a pillow. "Kerry! I was trying to sleep!"
"In the hammock?" Kerry demanded, her blue-green eyes wide. "It’s amazing that your neck’s not permanently bent one way or the other! C’mon, get up. We’re going to the beach."
Ashley popped her neck to prove that it was on straight and pushed past Kerry on her way to the bathroom. She was exceedingly cranky when woken too early, and anytime before three in the afternoon was considered too early. Even splashing cold water onto her face did not drag her out of her stupor, so Ashley slowly brushed her teeth and dragged herself down the stairs. She found an equally blurry-eyed Sarah sitting at the breakfast table, eating some sugary cereal she did not recognize. Kerry had placed a bowl in one of the spots at the bar, but Ashley just sat down and stared at it. Sarah grunted something that could possibly mean "good morning." At least, Ashley hoped it did not mean, "I like squirrels," which it came out like. Sarah did not like squirrels at all.
"Aren’t you going to eat?" Kerry asked as she bustled into the kitchen. She was wearing a blue swimsuit and shorts over that, and she had a towel over one corner. It was a bit of a contrast to Sarah in her gray shirt and pajama shorts, and Ashley in soccer shorts and a T-shirt reading, "Red Hot New Mexico."
Ashley eyed her tiredly, wondering where her friend got all of her energy so early in the morning. "Too tired," she mumbled, but reached for a spoon. When she managed to force her fingers to work, she just held the spoon and looked blankly at the empty bowl. "I’m going back to bed." The stool scraped back as she stood up.
"But we’re going to the beach!" Kerry protested.
Ashley could barely keep her eyes open, and said so. "This is my vacation," she continued. "After all those gruesome finals, I’m not going to do anything right now but sleep. When I wake up, I’ll go down to the beach."
She was so tired that she did not even attempt to get into the hammock, falling instead onto the unused bed and collapsing into sleep atop the covers. It was several hours before she dragged herself out of the dreamland and to the shower, where she awoke only partially. Kerry and Sarah were in from the beach when she stumbled into the dining room, smelling of salt and sunblock. She was barefoot and her hair was a tangled mess, but she did not care. "Welcome to the world of the living," Sarah greeted as Ashley managed to locate a stool and sat down. She grabbed the cereal box—still sitting where Sarah had left it that morning—and poured herself a bowl. It took a long moment to convince herself to pad over to the fridge and get the milk. "The beach is pretty today."
"Sarah won’t go into the ocean, though," Kerry complained, shooting a look at Sarah.
Ashley returned with the milk and focused all of her concentration on pouring it evenly into the bowl. Despite her focused concentration, some of the milk slopped over the side. Ashley propelled herself across the kitchen to grab a paper towel and clumsily cleaned that up. Without bothering to cap the milk jug, she plunked herself down onto the stool and hugged the bowl close.
"It’s too cold," Sarah replied in a staunch voice.
"So you’re just content to sit on a beach and watch everybody else play in the water?" Kerry finished making herself a sandwich and sat down in between Sarah and Ashley. Ashley, focused single-mindedly on her cereal, did not take heed.
"Yup," Sarah said through a mouthful of chicken sandwich. "That sounds about right—watch everybody else while I get a tan. I don’t have a problem with it, really." She smiled cheekily and dumped a potato chip into barbecue sauce, making Kerry wince.
"Where’s Emily?" Ashley slurred, finally awake enough to notice that one of their number was not present. She looked slowly around the kitchen, as though expecting Emily to explode from one of the walls or jump up from behind the island. No such thing happened; their comrade remained missing.
"Out on the beach," Kerry snorted. "Didn’t come in at all last night. We bought her out some pop-tarts for breakfast, but I don’t think she even ate those."
"Cool." Ashley shoveled another spoonful of cereal into her mouth and tried to wake up even more as she chewed.
Kerry and Sarah bickered playfully back and forth, as they were prone to do, for the rest of the meal. At one point, Kerry reached over and removed the barbecue sauce from Sarah’s clutches, saying that they wouldn’t have enough for the cook-out if she kept devouring it. This, of course, led to Sarah calling Kerry "June" throughout the rest of the conversation. Ashley had explained who exactly June Cleaver was the night before, so Sarah now understood and enjoyed the joke. Kerry’s face turned a bit red, but she laughed with the rest of them.
"Hey, where are you going? Aren’t you coming with us to the beach?" Kerry asked as Ashley put her bowl in the sink and started to move in the general direction of the stairs.
"Need…sleep…" Ashley managed, and clung desperately to the railing as she made her way up the steps. "Be down…later…"
This was just her sort of vacation, she reflected as she passed up the bed and climbed once again into the hammock. Some vacations, she was so busy that she didn’t get any sleep at all. But this was the perfect summer; there was nothing to do but eat, sleep, play on the beach, and write.
Ashley, for one, was content.
Little did she know that it was just the beginning of what could be the most eventful summer of her life.