13 to Life (23 page)

“A
vampire,
” Mr. Luxom snorted. “Then send him to work for me. The business world is full of bloodthirsty types!” He laughed then—so loudly we recognized the cue for us to laugh, too. So we did.

But I knew that as little as I really understood Pietr and his family, he certainly was no vampire.

We turned down Main Street. It was always my favorite part of any ride. Main Street was the redeeming feature that both split Junction in half and still united it, making it somehow feel like a community.

Although Junction couldn’t boast a long or even an often-bustling main street, it was still interesting. Lined with its artists’ co-op, free-trade and organic stores, restaurants, bagel shops, and continually burgeoning cafés, it had even recently added a bookstore selling brand-new books in contrast to the used books store on the street’s opposite side. To me, Junction was the epitome of a college town.

I enjoyed looking at the window displays, especially when a holiday was coming up. And since traffic on Main Street rolled by at only twenty miles per hour, there was time to look.

“Ugh. It’s not just confined to the mall,” Amy sighed. “Halloween’s been vomited all over town.”

I didn’t mind. Halloween signaled that my birthday was just
around the corner. And as weird as my birth date was, I still looked forward to it.

Passing Summer’s Café, I gawked. Sitting at the window table was Weird Wanda. And a guy that was definitely not my dad. Was he that cop—Officer Kent? He wore khakis and a rumpled polo shirt. Plain clothes made people look so much different than a uniform—it messed with my perception. At a glance all I could tell was they were deep in conversation. Driving past I saw her hand him something. A key? A note? I strained to see, turning in my seat. Something rectangular gleamed like glass between her fingers before it disappeared into his. A microscope slide?

Stuck in my own neurotic musings and wondering if I should mention spotting her to Dad or not, I didn’t really witness the rest of the drive until the car turned up the long driveway leading to my house.

“When are you going to get this driveway paved, Jessica?” Mr. Luxom asked, adding, “The gravel is hell on a car’s undercarriage.”

“We don’t plan on paving the driveway, Mr. Luxom. Asphalt leaches some nasty stuff we don’t want on our farm, and cement doesn’t always hold up.” More important, it was too expensive for us to consider—but I’d never willingly admit that. I shrugged instead. “Sorry.”

Mr. Luxom brought the car to a stop and announced our arrival. We laughed again. Right when we should, and nearly convincingly.

Amy and I stepped out. Sarah followed us with a “Just a minute, please, Daddy,” to her father.

I froze, watching as she turned. She put her back to the car, her face stone, her eyes all flash and fire. “So what’s
really
going on between you and my boyfriend?” she demanded.

I swallowed hard. When Pietr had lain dying in front of me, I’d made a promise. I swallowed again. A promise to
God.
Surely there weren’t many loopholes in a contract like that. Did I confess here, then, on my gravel driveway, as her parents waited in a running car?

“Is Pietr your
boyfriend
?” Amy asked, ready to help out however she could.

“Yes, he is,
you little—
”

“Whoa!” I said, between them both. “There’s no reason—”

“I can’t believe you,” Sarah fumed. “Pietr’s the
reason.
A very good reason,” she hissed.

“There’s nothing—” I began the lie, words falling out of my mouth against my wishes.

“Everything okay out there, dumpling?” Mr. Luxom called out the skylight.

“Fine, Daddy,” Sarah sang back. “Pietr’s the best thing I have—” she snapped, just as angry as a moment before.

“I thought it was the promise of a Beemer for your eighteenth birthday,” Amy tossed into the mix.

I shot her a look of warning.

Sarah ignored Amy, focusing her most intense glare on me. “
You’re
trying to steal him away,” she accused, every word filled with bitterness.

I sighed. “No.” At least I could be honest about that. “I’m
not
trying to steal him away.”

“Then what is it between you two?” she demanded.

“Look. She keeps trying to push him your way and he keeps coming after her harder and harder,” Amy revealed. “It’s not totally her fault.”

“You think you have to
push
him my way?” The fire had died in her eyes, replaced with an iciness I’d seen only before the accident.

That first day I’d visited Sarah in the hospital (for reasons I still don’t totally understand) I was moved by the warmth and fear in her eyes. She couldn’t remember a thing then. A few names. Some spotty stuff about a handful of places.

Jenny and Macie came to see her briefly, but when they saw how broken her body was, they took advantage of her momentary weakness. She was suddenly no better than dead to them. Jenny won over Derek, and I got left with the opportunity to save Sarah. She was like our psych teacher, Ms. Wyatt, said:
tabula rasa.
A blank slate.

But standing outside the Luxoms’ running car, Amy and I were no longer talking to the Sarah I’d tried to recover from the remnants of her broken brain. The ice was once again thick in her shimmering eyes. I was face-to-face with the Sarah who saw no point in redemption because she never felt the need for shame. I recognized her easily. I
remembered
this Sarah.

Sarah laughed at me. “Do you
really
believe you’re any competition for me?” She took in the farm, the house—everything I felt was a part of me. She laughed again, cruelty unmistakable in her voice. “Do you think
this
will hold his interest? A muddy farm with shabby horses and a double-wide as a house?
This
is all you are, all you’ll ever be: a hired hand, a manual laborer for people like
my
family—
if we’d
ever even hire you. It’s not a matter of how much you know or read, it’s a matter of
class
and
breeding.
And you don’t have either.”

As I prepared to retaliate verbally, something changed in her eyes and I saw such a crippling sadness, so much tragic remorse. . . . All the hatred and anger seemed to dissipate like fog cleared by an unexpected breeze.

“God, Jessica,” Sarah murmured. “I don’t always know what I’m saying anymore,” she confided, tears in her eyes. “It’s like something’s come loose in my head. I hear these things—like someone else’s voice—and then I realize
I’ve
said those same
things, that it never
was
someone else. It was always me. God, I’m so sorry, Jessica. I didn’t really mean it. Not one word.”

I nodded, feigning forgiveness. Her words had stung. And I knew in her heart she
did
mean it. Not
just
one word.
Every
word. She just didn’t realize. Yet.

I’d been such a liar. The Sarah I’d been so intent on helping—on
creating,
after the accident—wasn’t the real Sarah at all. I’d kept things from her—her past cruelty, her manipulations, her verbal and mental abuse of so many at school. The way she’d happily earned her peers’ fear and hatred as if it were some sick award.

I had protected her, shielding her from the students who would have gladly taken the opportunity to kick her while she was down, while she was trying to find her place again. She’d grown to be so different in such a short time that not even Jenny and Macie noticed her unless it was to torment her. Just like they did everyone else.

I had truly hoped that with time and work, Sarah’s place would be with us. But it seemed my hopes were crumbling as fast as my best friend Sarah’s control.

I grabbed her by the arms, not knowing what else to do. “Sarah, we all have moments when we say horrible stuff, when we act without thinking,” I assured her. “It doesn’t mean we’re horrible people.” I needed to believe that myself. I couldn’t bear the fact Sarah—our Sarah—was slipping away and would once again be the beautiful but demonic angel who terrorized an entire school. “It just means we have to try to be better.”

“I
am
trying,” she said. “I
promise.
”

I hugged her, blinking back the threat of tears. Promises weren’t all they were cracked up to be. If I’d been willing to go back so quickly on a promise made to
God—
even in the heat of
the moment—how could I dare think Sarah would hold firm to a promise made just to
me
?

Sarah got back into the car and Amy and I silently walked the brief remaining distance to my house.

“Hey, Dad!” I shouted, masking my mood as I shoved the door open.

“Hey, kid!” came the regular reply.

Amy and I entered the kitchen.

“Yo, Mr. Gillmansen!” Amy exclaimed, giving Dad a stinging high five.

“That’s: Yo,
dude,
to you, young lady.” He grinned. “How’d the study group do?”

“Dramatically,” Amy proclaimed, falling into a chair.

Dad’s forehead wrinkled as he thought about the proper interpretation. “I’m hopin’ that’s dramatically well. . . .”

“Well.” I smiled, setting the bag with the blood-covered shirt on a chair and sliding it under the table’s edge. “We did get some of the science worksheet done.”

“Hmm. That’s somethin’, I guess. The fact that any of you girls got anything done with that Pietr boy in the same room . . . Even Wanda’s been askin’ about that boy.”

“Ew,” Amy said.

“Not like that.” He chuckled. “Just the normal nosy-woman routine: ‘Hey, who’s that boy Jessie’s with—’ ”

“Come on, Dad, you’ve got to get her to stop calling me that.”

“Why? I call you that.”

“You’re my
dad,
” I protested. “You get to take liberties with my name. But not many,” I quipped before he started getting too creative.

His head snapped up and he looked at us suspiciously as if he’d just remembered something. “You didn’t go into Pietr’s room at all, did ya?”

I blushed. “No, Dad. We sat in the den.”

“More like a sitting room,” Amy specified.

“A sittin’ room. That’s a pretty fancy place to have for a boy throwin’ hay to our horses.” He winked. “Looks fit, though, doesn’t he, Jessie? Like he can handle hard work.”

I poured myself a glass of sweet tea.

“Your father asked you a question,
Jessie,
” Amy said. Reveling in it. “Doesn’t Pietr look
fit
to you?”

I blushed again, giving her my wide-eyed
I can’t believe you
look from around the refrigerator door. “Yes,” I said coolly, heading to the table. “He looks fit to me.”

Amy took the tea from me and drank a sip. “Might even say he looks like a healthy, red-blooded American male,” she said with a grin.

“Well, then, you oughta stay clear of him,” Dad said, stirring additional sugar into his own tea. “I used to
be
one of those red-blooded American males. Got into a fair share of trouble, too.”

“So, Dad,” I asked, trying to steer him from the topic of Pietr—and blood, “what did you do so far today?”

“Hmm. More target practice with Wanda. Sightin’ in another beautiful weapon.”

“She seems to have quite a collection,” I said.

“Yep. And that Wanda’s got a dead eye.”

“Ewww . . . ,” Amy said.

“No,” I laughed. “Not
literally.
Dad means she’s a good shot.”

He nodded. “Not as good as you coulda been, Jessie, but nearly always dead-on.”

“Could we not talk about that?” I asked. I picked up the bag and started from the kitchen.

“I just think if you have a talent for somethin’—”

But we were down the hallway and headed for the promise of a mercifully loud laundry room.

“So why didn’t you keep shooting? Weren’t you supposed to train, like, at the Olympic Training Center?” Amy asked once the laundry room door was closed and she had me trapped.

I shrugged. “What? And leave all this?” I tried a smile. “Seriously. I think I gave up enough for the sport already. Leaving my friends—no thank you.” The conversation closed as the washing machine door did. Solidly.

Monday morning was nightmarishly slow. There was no sign of Pietr to help me with the horses. I spent the time I should have been focusing on my chores focusing instead on where he was and
how
he was.
Why didn’t I call him to see if he’s okay?

“Where’s that boy of yours?” Dad asked as I searched through my backpack, trying to make sure I had everything I needed for school.

There was no point proclaiming he wasn’t
my
boy. “Didn’t show,” I muttered.

“Not real dependable, is he?”

“He’s dependable.”

“Probably better he didn’t show. Saves me a few bucks.” He took down his favorite coffee mug. “They’re startin’ layoffs at the factory.”

“What?” I looked up at him, stunned. “Are you on the list?”

“Not so far. I’m a pretty important cog in the works over there, ya know?” He poured some coffee. Stared at it a while before taking a sip. “But we better start tightenin’ our belts in case there’s no holiday bonus and no raise in the new year.”

Tightening our belts?
I was already clipping coupons and stretching everything we had to keep the horses in hay and grain. “Okay,” I agreed.

The bus honked.

“Better run for it,” Dad suggested as I bolted out the door and raced down the driveway.

I bounced up the bus’s steps.

“Almost missed it,” the driver warned.

I didn’t even nod acknowledgment as I headed to my seat. There, with only a modest Band-Aid over his left eyebrow, was Pietr. I flopped down beside him.

“Stitches?” I asked as the bus heaved forward.

“
Nyet
.”

“You’re kidding.” It should have taken at least a couple.

“Must’ve seemed worse with all that blood.” He shrugged.

I gulped.
Everything
had seemed worse with all that blood.

“
Eezvehneetyeh.
Sorry if I freaked you out. I guess I’m accident prone.”