01 Untouchable - Untouchable (3 page)

“
Hi, guys!” came a welcomed
voice from behind Evan, and I knew I’d soon be released from this
uncomfortable moment. Jewels had found us.

“
Hey, Jewels,” I laughed,
glad for once to have her bouncy presence. “Evan was asking me
where he could grab a bite.”

“
Nah, that’s okay, I...” he
started to say, clearly uncomfortable that he was getting ready to
be put back into her grasp.

“
Nonsense,” Jewels said with
a dismissive wave of her perfectly manicured hand. “I’m meeting
Kevin, Carlie, Nate and Natasha at Sonic in like 10 minutes. You
can follow me or…” Her eyes suddenly lit up as she considered what
she had watched Mr. Hunk crawl out of this morning, “I could ride
with you and then you could drop me back off here at
school.”

“
I don’t know,” he began.
“Do you think you could talk Leese into joining us?”

I gave him a blistering
stare.

“
Ah,” she sighed. “I only
wish. Leese is the gotta-do-my-homework-babysitter-extraordinaire.
I have a hard enough time just getting her to go out with us on the
weekends.”

Ah, crap! I watched the grin spread
across his face.

“
So, you do have a life. I
just have to wait for the weekend, huh?”

I had a feeling that this
was payback for returning him to Jewels clutches. If I could have
only slipped my fingers around her dainty throat, I would have
choked her. All I could think was that she should have waited to
ask me if I had any interest in this guy
before
mentioning
weekends.

“
Yeah,” she continued,
oblivious to the look of discomfort on my face. “There is a group
of us going to the movies Friday night. Wanna come?”

“
And you’re going?” He
asked, looking down at me.

I wanted to say, ‘I
was
’ instead of ‘I am’
but then actually avoiding him would have been way too apparent.
“Yeah,” I sighed. “Unless the earth falls apart first.”

His hand slapped the roof of my car,
“Great, I’m in for Friday night!”

Jewels let out a squeal of
delight.

I honestly don’t think she cared so
much about the fact that he only seemed interested in whether I was
going or not. She was the type of person who liked to surround
herself with the cool or gorgeous people from school. Yeah, he was
right—she was shallow. I started my car and told them
goodbye.

I stopped by the grocery store to grab
milk, bread and cat food for Beverly, my aunt-for-show. And then I
headed over to the elementary school to pickup my six-year-old
sister, Kimmy. The pickup line for car riders was long, as usual. I
sat there inching my way forward every few moments, but the whole
time I was thinking about Evan. I kept thinking about driving his
car and seeing the surprise on his face. I chuckled to myself, but
realized I needed a new game plan for tomorrow. I needed to act
like I had no interest in him. I would have to be the
stick-in-the-mud that Jewels had called me earlier this morning.
I’d have to be more than a stick-in-the-mud—I’d have to be just
plain old mud. I sighed as I made my decision for tomorrow; no
makeup. Yeah, that should do it.

The car door opened and Kimmy jumped in
with her Hello Kitty backpack in hand.

“
Have a good day,” Ms.
Brenderson said as she prepared to shut the door. “And don’t
forget,” she added, pulling it open again. “Wear your seat belt.”
She did that every day, and every time Kimmy would
laugh.

She buckled her seat belt as I check my
side mirror for an opening to pull out. “So did you have a good
day, kiddo?”

“
Oh, yes,” and she began
rattling off everything she did in her first-grade classroom. I was
listening, kind of. I couldn’t help it though when my mind would
drift back to the smell of his cologne, the way he reached into my
car, and the smile on his face when he knew I was going out Friday
night.

“
Snap out of it, Leese,” I
said aloud.

“
Snap out of what?” Kimmy
questioned.

“
Sorry, Kimmy. I was just
thinking about someone from my school.”

“
A boy?” she asked with a
funny little lilt to her voice.

“
No, of course not.” And
here I thought she was too young to figure that out.

“
I bet it’s a boy. It’s
okay, Leese. You can like a boy if you want to. I like Michael
Peters. He’s in my class. I think about him all the time,
too.”

I looked at her and she looked at me,
and then we both began to giggle.

“
Is he cute?” I questioned
with exaggerated interest.

“
Oh, yes. He’s seven and
he’s missing his front teeth, but I still want to kiss
him!”

“
Kimmy!” I didn’t have to
fake the shock. “You don’t go around kissing boys.”

“
Sure you do, Leese. Don’t
you watch TV?”

“
Apparently not the same
shows that you do, young lady,” I said as I pulled into the
driveway.

“
Oh, come on, Leese: Snow
White, Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid—they all kiss the
boys they love.”

I frowned for a moment, considering
that even though they were cartoons, she was right; it was all
about one great kiss. “I guess, but you should wait until you’re
older. You might not even like Mike what’s-his-name next year.” For
that matter, I was thinking we might not even be here next year,
but I didn’t want to get her hopes up about going home or dash them
about leaving her friends.

“
Peters,” she said as she
trudged up the front steps. “It’s okay, Leese. I’m just livin’ my
life.” She sounded like some mini-scholar who dispensed wisdom to
every dumb teenager that walked by. My eyes began to sting as the
tears filled my bottom lashes; that was mom’s line. She raised us
with the motto to always live your life, don’t just go through
it.

“
Life,” I remembered her
saying, “is a daily experience. God gives us a fresh chance every
morning to discover what’s out there. I hope when you grow old, God
willing, you’ll look back and say, thanks for the memories, instead
of saying wait, let me go back. I was just getting by. Let me go
back and re-do it. This is a one-shot deal.”

I put away the small amount of
groceries while mopping the tears off my face. I thought I was past
all the sobbing and pain, but just five little words reminded me
that I wasn’t living my life. I was stuck here because Mom started
freaking out with the idea that someone was trying to hurt us, or
worse. Ever since her dad took his life two years ago, she had
become convinced that it wasn’t suicide and that someone was after
our money. She started having trouble sleeping, then, when she did
sleep, she’d wake screaming from nightmares. Dad was at his wits
end when she started saying that Kimmy and I had to go some place
safe. We had to go away until whoever it was that was doing this to
our family was caught. The problem was that as far as I could tell
there wasn’t anyone doing anything to our family—Mom was losing her
sanity.

Then, last July, our yacht which was
docked in the backyard in the intercoastal waterway, caught fire,
and she snapped. She called Matt and Beverly. They had all gone to
college together at Florida State University and were still close
friends. I think they were the only friends that weren’t stinking
rich. Somehow that equated to being safe in Mom’s book. She asked
if they could take us in until things got back to normal. And, of
course, with a generous cash offer to cover any needs we might
have, they said yes. I truly think Matt and Bev would have let us
come live with them even if Mom couldn’t spare a nickel, but
Beverly said with the economy going the way it was, she was
certainly grateful to put some extra money in the bank.

I checked on Kimmy. She was seated at
the dining room table working on her vocabulary words. “Need any
help?” I asked, my voice still filled with sadness.

“
Nope, I’m fine.” She sat
there with her pencil in hand, the tip of her tongue poking out the
right side of her mouth and her feet swinging back and forth below
the chair. She didn’t seem to notice the tone of my voice and I
wasn’t going to bring her down by crying in front of
her.

“
I’m going to start my
homework. You can watch TV when you’re done, okay?”

“
Okay, Leese.” She never
looked up, but just kept working to write her words
neatly.

Moments like today I was glad that I’d
taken honors and AP courses. I had plenty of homework to keep my
mind off everything, especially things like Evan. He would just
complicate my life, and it certainly didn’t need any more
complications.

Matt arrived home first from work. He
was an environmental engineer, but there wasn’t enough work to keep
him with the firm that he’d been with since he got out of college
seven years ago, so for the last year and a half he’d been working
with a survey company. The problem was that there wasn’t much
happening in the commercial or residential real estate business
either, so the need for surveys had dropped dramatically. I could
tell he was worried, but I also knew that Mom’s monetary gift would
keep them from losing their home, and probably leave enough room to
supplement their incomes for at least a year.

He walked through the door, setting his
dirty work boots in the foyer. I had grabbed him a cold coke from
the fridge and had just popped the top when he looked up at
me.

“
Hey, Leese.” He gave a
little groan as he leaned backward with his hands on his hips
trying to crack his back. “Oh, thanks,” he said, reaching for the
coke.

“
Tired, Matt?”

He made a nasal “Uh-huh,” as he slugged
down the soda. Within moments he handed me back the empty can and
then let out a huge burp.

“
That’s gross, Matt,” I
yelled as he marched down the hallway.

“
Can’t help it, kid,” he
shouted back. “You give me a coke and you know I’ll burp. I’m going
to jump in the shower before Bev gets in.” The bedroom door closed
and reopened a moment later as he peeked down the hallway. “Would
you mind throwing the lasagna in the microwave, Leese? At least
that will be done when Bev gets home.”

I had already set the frozen lasagna
out and had the same idea, so I said, “Sure,” and kept working. I
set the timer for 22 minutes and went to help Kimmy clean up her
mess in the dining room. Bev pulled in just as the timer went off.
It didn’t take long before I heard Matt Junior’s little footsteps
running into the house. I jumped out from the dining room archway
just in time to scare him.

“
Boo!”

He squealed with delight and turned to
run back to Beverly. “Mama,” he called.

“
Matt-Moo,” Kimmy crooned
from behind the living room couch, “Come find me.” And the game
began. Every afternoon she played hide-and-seek with Matt Junior.
He never seemed to grow tired of looking for her, even though the
living room was small and there weren’t many places for her to
hide.

Bev tossed a salad while I warmed a
couple cans of green beans, and dinner was done. One thing I had to
admit was that it was nice to be around so much normalcy in life.
Back in Palm Beach, we were always on the go. Dinner together was
usually at a restaurant between lessons. Mom kept us involved all
the time doing something. Kimmy had taken swimming lessons before
she could even walk. Then there were dance, singing, and art
lessons. I had taken dance, singing, piano, and baton.

Before I turned fifteen, Mom bought me
a Jaguar convertible and sent me to evasive driving school. It just
wasn’t sporty enough, and I couldn’t do some of the cool things
with it that a car with a manual transmission could offer, so when
I got my restricted license, I bought my Porsche.

My driving trainer, Tony Dix, got
special permission (amazing what money can buy) to let me try out
my new car on the Daytona speedway. What a thrill that was! I could
accelerate from zero to sixty in just over four seconds, and could
reach one-ninety on the straightaway.

The last lesson Tony had taught me was
my choice. He asked if there was anything left that I’d like to
learn, and I remembered a move I saw on TV a couple times where the
person would do a quarter-spin and slide into a parallel parking
space at about thirty miles per hour. He thought that was
hilarious, but said sure he could teach me. I spent two days
learning it and one day perfecting it. The only thing he made me
promise was that I’d never try it out in downtown Palm Beach!
Reluctantly, I agreed.

I had been in martial arts since the
week after grandpa died and had earned a black-belt after a year. I
was working toward my second black belt when Mom pulled the plug on
our almost-fairy-tale life and sent us here. It was like doing two
hundred miles-per-hour and then slamming on the brakes full force.
Here it was Normalsville, USA. I got a VW bug, a cheap cell phone,
a department store wardrobe, and a new last name. My only luxury
that I was allowed to keep was a special pre-paid Visa with a
hundred grand in the account.

The weird part was that I never hated
being sent here. I mean, you know, I cried a lot at first, but that
was mainly because I didn’t know what was going on back home. Being
normal took a little getting used to, but in a way it was cool. I
made friends, real friends because I had nothing else to impress
them with, and that felt good.