The Candidates (12 page)

“Right. I happened to be around.” Jack leaned against the wall by the stairwell and exhaled a bored sigh. “Anything good for lunch today?”

A wave of gratitude passed over me.

Cam crossed his arms over his chest as he looked back and forth between us. “I didn’t notice,” he said sternly. “Why don’t you go take a look?”

Jack shrugged. “Fine by me.” He ambled away with his deceptively easy stride.

As soon as he was out of earshot, Cam dropped his arms, his eyes dark with concern. “I don’t mean to sound like a parent here, but are you sure you know what you’re doing? With Landry, I mean?”

Oh no! He did think we were together. “I just bumped into him, Cam,” I stuttered. “He’s on my team. We’re friends. But I’m not
doing
anything with him.”

Cam ran his fingers through his hair. “I didn’t mean to imply anything. He just strikes me as a tough kid. I don’t want to see you get into trouble.”

“Don’t worry,” I said, emphasizing the words. “It wasn’t a big deal.” I gave him the most sincere, believable, and earnest look of which I was capable. “We went into a couple of classrooms looking for my book. I got confused as to where I had left it.”

It seemed to work, because his shoulders relaxed and his voice loosened. “It’s easy to get confused up there. The school is a big square, you know, so the rooms all look the same.”

“Except the practice rooms, right?”

He laughed. “Well, they don’t have windows. I guess that’s different.”

I hesitated, dying to ask about what Jack and I had discovered. But asking Cam would have meant admitting that Jack and I had lied about the lost book. And even though I had the sense that Cam would have been happy to blame the lie on Jack, that didn’t seem right. I had already let Jack lie for me.

Besides, it seemed like such a stupid question. I’m sure there was a simple reason why the rooms were different sizes.

“Anyway,” he continued, “I’m just a little worried about you hanging out with Jack.” He put his hand on my shoulder and looked intently at me. “It isn’t that he’s done anything wrong, but you know how you get a sense from people? Well, I get the sense that Jack is bad news. I hate to see you going down the wrong road because of someone like him.”

I nodded, my entire body wilting at his touch. “You don’t have to worry about me, Cam. I won’t do anything stupid.”

He laughed, and we headed down the stairs together.

I had the feeling he was waiting for me to say something more, like promising I would stay away from Jack, but I just couldn’t do it.

I thought about what Hennie had said, that Jack seemed sad. I felt that in him too, today more than ever.

How was I supposed to stay away from him when my heart said that, like me, Jack really needed a friend?

Cam went down to lunch, and I headed for the pay phone by the office so I could call Grandma. With all my confusion, I needed to hear her voice, even if it was only for a second. As I picked up the receiver, I heard voices coming from inside the office.

“So I missed my adviser appointment this morning,” Jack said. “What’s the big deal?”

It was horrible of me, but when I heard Jack’s voice I leaned closer to the window.

“The big deal is that we expect our students to follow the schedules we give them. This isn’t a voluntary program, Mr. Landry, and you don’t get to choose which appointments you attend.” It was Mr. Judan.

“Fine, whatever.”

I cringed. Jack was using his cold, I-don’t-give-a-crap voice, the one I’d heard him use on Trevor and teachers who tried to get him to behave in class. I couldn’t imagine Mr. Judan would appreciate that.

Mr. Judan dropped his voice, and I had to strain to hear. “Mr. Landry, I took you from whatever bridge you were living under and offered to pay your way to Delcroix. In return, you promised that you’d live by our rules. You do intend to keep up your end of the bargain, don’t you?”

There was silence from Jack. I wondered what he was doing, where he was looking. I sent a silent plea to him to look down, to nod, not to pick a fight.

“If I were you,” Mr Judan continued, “I would drop that tough-guy attitude and start thinking about how you’re going to make it here at Delcroix. Something needs to change, and it better be you. I would start by apologizing to me and to Mrs. Harbiner.”

That voice gave me a shiver, deep in my bones. There was a muffled sound that I hoped was Jack apologizing, and then nothing. I hurriedly dropped my change into the phone and pushed the numbers. The phone was just starting to ring when Jack came out of the office.

He stopped outside the door and let his backpack fall to the ground at his feet. I assumed he didn’t see me, because he let out a deep breath, and his shoulders seemed to collapse. He looked so dejected, I took a step toward him without realizing what I was doing. The phone cord snapped me back. Jack’s head shot up, and he stared at me just as Grandma answered the phone.

“Hello? Is that you, Dancia?”

“Yes, Grandma.” I gave Jack an apologetic look. With an abrupt shake, he threw back his hair and assumed his old uncaring stance. He picked up his backpack, gave me a nonchalant salute, and then strolled toward the front door.

THE NEXT
two weeks were exhausting, as I tried to juggle my desire to please Cam and my worry about Jack’s increasingly despondent looks. Cam started showing up regularly at my cube at the library, and we’d go for little walks around campus before cross-country practice or after dinner. It took us forever to walk anywhere, because everyone in the school knew him and stopped to say hello. They treated him like a combination of hero, kid next door, and best friend. He was too unassuming to be intimidating, yet too perfect to be normal. I figured it was only a matter of time before he became the leader of the free world.

He introduced me to everyone and made a point of calling me his friend. I figured this was both good and bad. Good, because the entire school now knew that Cam liked me. Bad, because it sounded like he was serious about the “friend” thing. I never did tell Esther and Hennie about the eggs and the “I’m looking out for you” comment. I knew they’d make a big deal about it, and since nothing really happened with him, I didn’t want to sound stupid because I’d gotten my hopes up about the whole thing.

Then there was Jack, in all my classes, with increasingly dark circles under his eyes and a wary look about him. He was acting out more, getting in trouble, and not turning in homework. I was worried about him, but I didn’t know what I could do to help without losing my chance to be with Cam. I started avoiding him around the cafeteria, and trying to talk to him less during class, but then he’d drop me a note and make me laugh, or I’d need his help with a chemistry problem, and we’d end up studying together and talking all evening long.

The weekends became a kind of salvation. At least then I didn’t have to worry about who I was talking to or who might be watching.

Halloween fell on a Sunday, so half the class was wearing costumes that Friday when we rode the Silver Bullet to the parking lot. Allie and Marika wore fairy costumes, which naturally required tiny bodysuits and see-through gauze skirts. Yashir and some of his friends dressed like guys in a band I didn’t know. They wore leather pants and ripped shirts, but they didn’t look very different from usual, so I thought the costumes were pretty lame. Esther and Hennie and I were matching witches. It was fun doing makeup together and fixing our hair, but my heart wasn’t really in it. Cam and Trevor and some of their friends got football uniforms, and Anna and her friends dressed like cheerleaders.

Jack didn’t dress up at all.

Neither did Catherine.

Grandma was waiting when we pulled into the parking lot. It was raining, so I sprinted from the bus to her car, gave Jack and Hennie and Esther a wave, and then dove inside.

I gave her a peck on her baby powder–scented cheek, and settled with relief into the seat. The bus ride had been painful, and it felt good to be going home. Jack had ridden up in the front, barely acknowledging me when I got on with Esther and Hennie. I could practically feel the frustration and anger spilling out of him, even though he tried to hide it behind an uncaring facade.

I forced myself to think about Cam instead of Jack, but that didn’t make things easier. Cam had given me a hug before I’d left that afternoon, but then disappeared with Anna and his other friends. Most of the upperclassmen stayed at school over the weekends, and they were having a Halloween party. I had horrible visions of him hooking up with Anna at the party, as would be fitting for the quarterback and the head cheerleader.

“How was your week?” Grandma asked as she inched the old Volvo into traffic.

Driving with Grandma was always a bit of an adventure. Half the time she drove so slowly, people honked at her and shook their fists as they passed. The other half of the time she raced through stop signs and intersections like she didn’t even notice they were there.

Which, of course, she didn’t.

I struggled to find something unexciting yet true to say to Grandma. “It was okay. We’re starting a new unit in algebra. Something about vectors. And Esther and Hennie and I are doing a project together for World Civ. We’re doing a report on the Mayan ruins.”

“Did you see that boy that you like—what was his name? Christopher?”

Weird as it sounds, I think Grandma really wanted me to find a boyfriend. It was the one thing she always asked me about when we were going home for the weekend. Of course, she forgot what I had said the minute I said it, and asked me the exact same questions the next week, but it was nice. At least she cared enough to ask.

“Cam. His name is Cam. And yeah, we hang out sometimes. But we’re just friends.”

Grandma and I did not talk about boys—not that there had ever been anything to discuss. Even though I wouldn’t have minded talking about my problems with Cam and Jack, I figured that was one line I should never cross. If I told her how much I liked Cam, but how I liked Jack too, and didn’t know how to choose between them, I’d have to tell her everything. It was the classic slippery slope.

She waited a minute for me to say something more, but I managed to keep my mouth shut. “I see. And what about the others? What about that boy that you waved good-bye to in the parking lot? What’s his name?”

Trust Grandma to push all the right buttons.

“His name is Jack. We’re in most of the same classes. We’re friends too, but I’m not sure he’s someone I should hang out with. He gets into trouble a lot.”

Grandma turned back to the road. “Trust your instincts, dear. You’ll be meeting a lot of new people at Delcroix, and they will be very different from the people you’ve met before. Don’t let yourself be taken in by appearances.”

“What does that mean?”

Grandma flicked on her blinker, even though our street was six blocks away. “You must be tired after such a long day. I made meatballs and spaghetti for dinner.” She ignored my question, which either meant she had already forgotten what she had said, or didn’t feel like answering. She did that sometimes. It was infuriating.

“Fine.”

The incessant clicking of the blinker filled the silent car. Finally, Grandma turned down our street.

“Grandma, how do you know what your instincts are? I mean, what if you have two different instincts? What do you do then?”

I suppose I threw out the question because I didn’t think she’d respond, and because I was annoyed that she’d brought up trusting your instincts and then dropped it. But as soon as I spoke the words, I realized I really needed to know the answer.

Cam obviously thought Jack was trouble, and part of me believed him. But another part of me wondered if Jack was just saying what I felt. When I was at school and we were busy studying and doing after-school activities and homework, and behaving like normal teenagers, Jack’s suggestions about Delcroix seemed ridiculous. But in the car on the way home, I couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe Jack was right. Something seemed odd about Delcroix, with all its gates, and keys, and locks, and all the students with their crazy talents. Not to mention creepy Mr. Judan, who happened to recruit both me and Jack, and the uneven sizes of the rooms on the third floor.

And if Jack was right about all that, could Cam be wrong about Jack?

It was all so confusing, it made my head hurt.

Grandma slowly pulled the car into our driveway, ran over the hose and an empty pop bottle I’d left outside the week before, and stopped inches from the garage door. She turned off the car and we sat there, neither of us moving. We sat there so long, I had almost forgotten my own question when Grandma finally spoke up.

“I suppose there’s no good answer to that, Danny. I wish there was. But if you take the wrong path, something deep inside you will feel twisted. There are times when that will be the only way to know the right from the wrong.”

Her words sat heavy in my chest. “You mean I won’t know until after I’ve done something if it was the wrong thing?”

“I didn’t say that.”

I threw up my hands. Sometimes it felt like Grandma spoke in a code only she understood. “How do you know, anyway?” I asked. “Did you ever do anything wrong?”

“Of course,” she replied, a little tear running down her cheek. “We’ve all done things we regret. But I left the meatballs on the stove. We should get inside before they burn.”

GRANDMA LEFT
me alone all day Saturday, except for a quick trip to Goodwill to look for a new blanket to cover the holes in our couch, and a visit to the hospital to pick up some new prescriptions.

On Sunday afternoon we went to Walmart to get a couple of bags of Halloween candy. Grandma asked if I needed any new clothes for school, so I wandered around aimlessly, watching other girls shriek and coo as they held up outfits for their friends. They made it look so easy. I lingered over the shirts, rubbing the smooth cotton of a snug-fitting pink hoodie between my fingers, and wondering whether Cam liked bright colors. He probably didn’t like brown, gray, and more brown, which pretty much described my wardrobe.

Grandma raised her eyebrows when she saw what I was doing. “Pink?” she said with surprise. “Now that’s a change. It would certainly be nice to see you in a pretty color.”

She rifled through the rack and pulled out a large. “Looks like it’s made to fit a third grader,” she sniffed. “Well, try it on. Can’t hurt.” We walked over to the fitting room, and Grandma grabbed a few more shirts on the way. Another pink one, then a blue V-neck, and a purple-striped button-down. She was all business, grabbing shirts from the racks and handing them to me, shushing me with an impatient hand when I started to argue. I finally got to the dressing room with about six shirts, not a single one of them brown.

I tried on the pink hoodie first. It clung to me in a way that none of my other clothes did, but I can’t say it looked bad. All that running had been good for me, I guess. I walked out to where Grandma was waiting. She had a strict rule about approving any clothes she bought for me.

“Good Lord, child, are you sure they let you wear things like that at Delcroix?”

I wasn’t committed to the pink anyway. “Probably not. I’ll go take it off.”

“No, no, no, I was only asking.” She pursed her lips. “Turn around, let me see the whole thing.”

I spun around slowly, hoping no one I knew was within a ten-mile radius to see me modeling clothes for my grandmother, like a six-year-old.

“It’s fine. We’ll get it.”

“But, Grandma, I don’t think …”

She shook her head. “I’m tired of seeing you in brown.”

I was too, I had to admit. There was something beguiling about the color, the way it made my cheeks look creamy instead of washed out. Besides, I was starting to wonder if dressing the way I did was a little silly. Was I really less likely to get into trouble just because I didn’t wear bright colors?

The purple-striped number was a disaster, but the blue one made my eyes stand out. We took it, along with a new pair of jeans that weren’t quite as baggy as the ones I usually wore. Grandma seemed happy. I knew she had always hated my wardrobe.

We picked up a few more things—some notebooks for me, a trashy tabloid and some denture cleaner for Grandma—and headed to the checkout. The woman in front of us had just begun to unload a full cart, so I looked around for a magazine to flip through while we waited.

I turned toward the rack behind me, then stepped back.

Jack was lounging behind the racks of candy and gum, hair falling into his eyes, hands deep in the pockets of his cut-off khaki shorts, pushing a cart almost filled with ramen noodles.

“Are you sure you want that pink one?” he said. “It looks a little flimsy. Might get ripped if they make us go back over the wall.”

Seeing Jack at Walmart was so unexpected, I found myself gaping at him. In my mind, Delcroix was hundreds of miles away—completely separate from my life in Danville. But here was Jack, wearing the same ripped shorts he’d been wearing a couple of days ago at school.

“Eh? Who’s this, Danny?” Grandma thrust her glasses higher on her nose and pushed me aside to take a closer look at Jack. “What’s your name? You look familiar.”

“Jack Landry.” He straightened and extended his hand. “But I’m not sure how we would have met. I only came to town a couple of months ago, just before school started.”

“Where from?” Grandma demanded, shuffling over to shake his hand.

“Portland. I moved here to go to school at Delcroix.” Jack gestured in my direction. “Dancia and I are on the same team.”

“You never lived in Danville?” Grandma asked.

“For a little while,” he admitted. “I moved when I was five.”

Grandma considered him for another moment, then her face lit up. “Aha!” she said triumphantly. “You must be Tom Landry’s son. I knew you looked familiar.”

The smile froze on Jack’s face. “You knew my father?”

Grandma snorted. “He lived a few blocks away from us. Never saw you or your mother much.” She poked me in the side. “You remember Tom, don’t you? Teacher at the high school. He moved to California a year or two ago. How is he doing?”

“We don’t see him,” Jack said, his lips curling as if the words left a sour taste in his mouth.

The woman in front of us was arguing with the clerk, insisting that the nightgown she had picked out was on the clearance rack and should be fifty percent off.

“Did you move up here with your mother?” Grandma asked.

I threw her a black look. Didn’t she know it was rude to bring up such personal issues in the Walmart checkout line? I’d tried to talk to Jack a few times about his parents, but he didn’t like to talk about them much. He had something against his mother, and he always changed the subject.

“I’m staying with a friend,” he responded.

I’d heard all about his friend, who was really just the older brother of someone Jack knew in Portland. The guy didn’t have a job, and as far as Jack could tell, he spent most of his time doing drugs and crashing out in his house, which his parents had left him when they died.

It didn’t sound like a good arrangement.

The woman in front of us got fed up. She threw the nightgown at the clerk and stomped out. Grandma moved forward and started fumbling through her enormous purse as the cashier rang up our items.

“Are you ready for Halloween?” I asked Jack. “I don’t see any candy in your cart.”

“Nah. I’m just going to turn off the lights. I wouldn’t want any little kids coming to my place.”

“You should come over for dinner,” Grandma said as she took our bag from the clerk and tucked the receipt into her purse. She examined the contents of Jack’s shopping cart, her cloudy blue eyes soft. “You look like you could use a good meal.”

Jack looked from Grandma to me and raised his brows a notch. I could feel the question in his expression.

I couldn’t muster a decent protest. Even though I wasn’t sure what to do about him, the thought of Jack sitting alone on Halloween, eating ramen noodles in the dark, didn’t seem right.

“Sure,” I said. “Come on over.”

Despite my fears that Grandma would do something horribly embarrassing, or Jack would say something weird about Delcroix, dinner proved surprisingly pleasant. Jack turned out to be one of those kids who could charm adults until they were putty in his hands. He entertained Grandma with stories about his childhood, like how he hadn’t learned to ride a bike until he was ten because he was so clumsy, and how he failed kindergarten because he wouldn’t share his toys. She seemed to find this hilarious. He asked her scores of questions, even got her to talk about how she had moved to Danville with my grandpa fifty years ago, when they were young and just starting out.

Grandpa had been a logger. He died before I was born.

Jack praised Grandma’s homemade chicken soup so much you would have thought she was Emeril, and he really seemed to like it, because he ate three bowls. I guess he was awfully hungry. Then Grandma broke out the sherbet, and we all had big bowls.

“Mrs. Lewis, that was the best meal I’ve had in years,” Jack said, sounding sincere.

Grandma smiled, but something underneath her smile was serious. “You come here for dinner anytime you want, Jack. You shouldn’t be eating those noodle things. You need protein, a growing boy like you.”

“I appreciate that. I’m not much of a cook. But you know they feed us pretty well at school.”

Grandma leaned over and patted his hand. “It isn’t home cooking. You come here when you want some real food.”

I’d never seen her fawn over someone like that before. It was embarrassing.

I stood and started gathering our bowls. Grandma pushed back from the table and took them from my hands. “Why don’t you and Jack go sit outside and watch for the trick-or-treaters. I’ll clean this up.”

Now this
was
disturbing. Was Grandma, with that innocent gleam in her drippy eyes, trying to set Jack and me up? That was definitely not on the menu for the evening. Jack and I were friends. Nothing more.

“I don’t think—”

“I’ll need to be getting home soon,” Jack said.

“Go.” Grandma pushed me toward the front door. “You’ve got a few minutes to talk before Jack heads home.”

We walked out onto the porch, where an old wooden bench was slowly decaying by the front door. I sat down on one end, Jack sat next to me. Closer, I thought, than was absolutely necessary. It had been warm and sunny all day, one of our rare Halloweens where we got a last taste of summer weather, and I ran my hands over my bare arms nervously. Somehow things felt different at my house than they did at school. At school we’d sat next to each other hundreds of times while we studied or ate dinner. And it felt like there was always someone watching. Here, it felt too private. Like anything could happen.

“My grandma’s a little pushy,” I said apologetically.

“She’s great. I wish I had someone like her.”

“Were you serious when you said you didn’t know if you had grandparents?” I looked straight ahead, focusing on the fact that we were outside, in plain view of the entire street. There were little kids in costumes starting down the block with their parents. It wasn’t like Jack was going to jump me right then and there. And it wasn’t as if a little part of me was curious to know what that would be like, if he did.

“Yeah. I guess they’re dead. My mom and I don’t talk much. She never really mentioned them.”

“Is your mom in Portland?” I asked.

“I don’t know where she is. I haven’t seen her since the spring.”

I pulled back, puzzled. “Really? Then who did you live with?”

He shot me a sideways look. “I don’t mean to shock you, Dancia, but some kids don’t have a cozy little house to live in. I bummed around. There are lots of places to go.”

I turned to him, unable to hide my shock. “You mean you were homeless?”

He shrugged. “I usually had a friend I could crash with. I’d rather be on my own anyway.”

“Isn’t that illegal? For you to be on your own, I mean. Don’t they put you in a foster home or something?”

“They didn’t know about me,” Jack said. “They thought I lived with my mom.”

I leaned back on the bench. Jack usually had a friend to crash with? What did he do the rest of the time? I thought about what I’d overhead Mr. Judan say—something about Jack living under a bridge. Was that what homeless kids did in Portland? Lived under bridges?

Jack scowled when he saw the expression on my face. “Look, it’s not so bizarre. Lots of kids do it. I still went to school. I made money doing odd jobs for people. I did okay.”

“But how … I mean, was it scary?”

He turned that half smile on me, the one that he’d used so effectively on Grandma. “I’m telling you, it wasn’t a big deal. Anyway, I don’t want to talk about me. How’s cross-country going? You haven’t mentioned it for a while.”

“It’s fine.” I tried to shake the image of Jack sleeping on the street, or under a bridge. I wondered what kind of “odd jobs” he had done to make enough money to support himself. “We run a lot more than I did on my own. It feels good. It helps me clear my head.”

“I’m not much of an athlete, myself. I doubt I could run to the end of the block.” Jack leaned back and laid one arm on the bench behind him. He practically touched my shoulders as he did, and goose bumps broke out on my arms. I scooted a few inches to the side.

“I’m sure you’ve got a lot to do,” I said. “You probably want to get back home.”

“I guess so.” Jack stared at the street. “I do like it here.” There was something wistful in his voice, and a little part of me felt like reaching out and grabbing his hand.

He must have read my mind, because he turned his head and looked down at me. There was no smile now, just a serious expression no boy had ever aimed at me before.

I swallowed hard, hoping he would look away, but he didn’t.

He was going to kiss me. I knew it. It would be my first kiss.

But this wasn’t right. I fought the invisible fingers that seemed to hold me in place. I didn’t like Jack. Not like
that.
I liked Cam. Cam was the guy for me. Not Jack.

My mind was screaming for me to move, to get out of the way before he leaned closer and touched his lips to mine, but my body seemed determined to stay put.

A million questions ran through my mind. Would his lips be warm? Soft? Wet or dry? Did you tilt your head like they do in the movies? What if I wasn’t good at this—

In the midst of my panic, the shrill sound of the phone ringing cut through the silence.

A second later, Grandma called, “Dancia! Phone for you.”

I jumped up and practically flung myself across the porch. “I’ll be right back.” I bolted into the house; my heart was thumping as if I had just gone running.

Grandma handed me the phone. “It’s Esther.”

I took a few deep breaths before holding the phone to my ear.

“Hello?”

Esther’s voice bubbled through the receiver. “Dancia! Do you have your costume on? Are you ready for Halloween? I couldn’t believe it when I got home—my little sister is going to be a pumpkin and she looks so cute, I can’t stop pinching her cheeks. It’s driving her crazy!”

“Esther, can I call you back? I have a friend over.”

Jack stood in the doorway. The sun was setting behind him, so I could only see a dark outline, not his face. He said something to Grandma as Esther continued to chatter in my ear. Then he grabbed his Walmart bag from the couch. He waved at me from the doorway and turned to leave.