Cryer's Cross (3 page)

Nico nods. “Yep. Pretty much.”

Kendall smiles and starts walking. “Let’s go. I’ve got chores and homework. Felt good to play again, though, didn’t it?”

“It was awesome. You get hurt at all?”

“No. I can take it. . . .” She trails off.

“What?”

Kendall looks over her shoulder as they cross the dirt road and cut the corner of a barley field. “Marlena said they moved here right before Tiffany disappeared, and that Eli’s dad suspected Jacián might have had something to do with it.”

“What? That’s crazy.”

“Is it? I mean, how would we know? He’s mean. Maybe he’s unstable.”

“Kendall.”

“Seriously, what if he has her all tied up in the woods. Or maybe he chopped her up into little pieces. . . .”

“Kendall, stop it. That’s ridiculous.”

She’s not convinced.

They walk until they reach the halfway point between their respective family farms—directly across the road from each other. For a moment they stand in the middle of the road facing each other and holding hands. Nico leans in and kisses her sweetly.

“Don’t work too hard,” Nico says.

“You either. Call me at eleven?”

“Always.”

Kendall smiles, and they part company, each down their long driveways.

At home Kendall throws her backpack onto the big oak kitchen table. “Hi, Mom,” she sings, and gives her mother a kiss on the cheek.

“How was your first day?” Mrs. Fletcher stands at the sink watering her herb garden. She’s tall and dark-haired like Kendall, wearing capri jeans and a red-checked short-sleeved shirt, knotted at her waist.

“Fine.”

“Was it hard without Tiffany there?”

“Yeah, a little. Everybody noticed but nobody said anything—pretty much what I figured.”

“How’s the OCD? Do you feel a little better now that you’re back into the school routine?”

Kendall breaks off a piece of a bran muffin and shoves it into her mouth. “Immensely. Shit, I’m starving.”

“Honey. Inside language, please.”

“Sorry. Man, I’m starving. Better?”

“Yes. What else is new? Did you meet Hector’s grandkids?”

Kendall tilts her head. “You know about them?”

“They’ve been around for a couple months.”

“Why am I the last to know everything?”

“I didn’t know you didn’t know. The girl’s been sitting at their market stand all summer. Such a striking young woman.”

“Well, I’ve been on that damn tractor all summer, watching my leg muscles atrophy. I’m all wobbly.”

“Language, Kendall.”

“Sorry. Got used to farm talk again. Maybe you shouldn’t make me work so hard with all those swearers.”

Mrs. Fletcher looks like she’s trying not to grin. “I know. But the work is good for you. Builds character.”

Kendall rolls her eyes and pulls the milk jug from the refrigerator. Its label reads
FRESH AS HECK FROM HECTOR FARMS
. How could anybody not adore Hector Morales? She pours an impossibly large tumbler full and drinks it all. Slams it on the counter, empty. “Any mail?”

“Nothing from Juilliard.”

Kendall screws up her nose, disappointed. “Okay.
Well, what needs to get done before I start practicing?”

“Dad’s checking the southwest field today to see how close we’re getting to harvest. He wants you out there to show you how he does that. Then dinner. Then homework. Then you can practice.”

“Big sigh, Mummy,” Kendall says. “I am so sick of potatoes, I could scream.”

“Another six weeks and it’ll all be pretty near over.”

Kendall starts jogging to the field, but the milk sloshes in her stomach and her thighs burn from the soccer scrimmage, so she slows down to a walk. Even out here, on her home turf, Kendall feels uneasy walking alone. She heads for the southwest field, looking nervously over her shoulder every thirty paces or so.

After a few minutes she hears her father’s familiar yell and catches up to him. “Hey, Daddy!”

“How’s my girl?” Mr. Fletcher air-hugs Kendall. His hands are filthy.

“Good, now that I’m with you,” she says, demure. “Whatcha got?”

“This here is what we call a potato,” Mr. Fletcher says.

“Fascinating.”

They walk the field together a few rows apart, stopping now and then to check for ripeness, rot, and bugs. Kendall’s mind wanders, remembering earlier in the
day, picking up random thoughts to obsess over.

“Machines are good,” Mr. Fletcher says, taking on a teaching tone, “but they don’t compare to the human eye, or the touch of a hand. That’s the real way to keep crops, to be one with them, to create potatoes that love you back.”

“Yeppers,” Kendall says, but she’s not paying attention. She’s picturing Jacián sneaking off to kidnap, murder, and chop poor innocent girls into pieces.

By the time she gets her homework done, it’s nine thirty p.m. and her legs ache, but she’s not done. She slips a DVD into the player and sits down on her bedroom floor to stretch and warm up. By nine forty-five she’s running through ballet positions, and then she works into her routine, the one she choreographed herself for the Juilliard application video. It feels good. But she’s exhausted.

By the time Nico calls her phone line at eleven to say goodnight, she’s already asleep. But it’s a good sleep. Being busy and exhausted is about the best thing for Kendall’s brain.

She even forgot to check her window lock six times.

Thirty-five. One hundred. Thirty-five. One hundred. We know. The weight, the heat. There is life heavy against Us again. A heartbeat, a pulse through taut skin.

Please.
Help me.

In the morning Kendall rises at six. She gets online and looks up the youth theatre in Bozeman, wondering what productions they’re doing this fall and if there would possibly be time to squeeze in a play on top of soccer and life. Last spring she got the part of Miss Dorothy in
Thoroughly Modern Millie
. It was the most fun Kendall has had in her entire life. The director called her a natural, and she even got nominated for a local youth theatre award. Not bad for her first musical.

But Kendall has always known she wants to sing, dance, act. She’s been doing it on her own since she was a little kid, always doing productions in the barn,
using cats as her other actors if she couldn’t talk Nico, Eli, Travis, or even stupid Brandon into participating.

Nico usually played along. He is the closest neighbor, and their mothers have been friends since before Kendall and Nico were born. Nico was agreeable to doing almost anything Kendall requested, except when it came to singing or dancing, which Kendall thought was probably good, since he’s terrible at both.

Kendall pulls up the theatre’s website and sees they are auditioning for
Grease
. She scans the rehearsal schedule but knows it’s impossible. She can’t drive all the way out to Bozeman multiple times a week during harvest and soccer season. Too far away. Too many conflicts.

Too many stupid potatoes.

She checks her e-mail and then closes her laptop and gets ready for school.

At school things are pretty much just as they were yesterday. Kendall turns the wastebasket, straightens the markers, opens the curtains, tugs to check the windows, and runs her fingers over each window lock. “All checked and good,” she whispers. Then she makes minor adjustments to the desks.

She watches the students arrive, many of them walking, some driving cars or pickup trucks. Kendall tries to see Cryer’s Cross through the eyes of a newcomer like
Marlena. Some of the students wear cowboy hats and boots, others wear Gap or Levi’s or Target or home sewn. It’s not that strange, she guesses.

When Nico comes walking up to the school, Kendall smiles. She’s really proud of him wanting to be a nurse. He’s been bandaging cats and farm animals since the two of them were little. The other guys aren’t jerks about it like Brandon.

The school day progresses. Ms. Hinkler assigns the upperclassmen various things to read and work on, and then she spends the most time with the freshmen, which she’ll do for this first week, until they get used to her and how things work.

In the senior section Brandon and Travis sleep. Eli Greenwood reads for a while, then jiggles his leg and doodles in the margins of his English book. Jacián does trigonometry problems on scratch paper until his work is done, and then he slumps in his seat and traces his finger over the desk graffiti. Nico props his head up with one arm and rests the other on the desk next to his open physics textbook. His eyes close. Kendall pretends to read, but she’s daydreaming about Broadway.

There is something about performing that soothes Kendall’s overactive brain. It’s like the concentration necessary for acting takes the attention away from the
never-ending circle of thoughts that drives her sometimes irrational behavior. And she wants it—she wants that relief. That control over her list of obsessions and compulsions. Maybe this winter she can do another show once soccer and potatoes are done. Maybe.

In the sophomore section Marlena glances over her shoulder, catches Kendall’s eye, and smiles.

At noon everybody heads outside to eat lunch or hit the locker rooms for a bathroom break. Some go home for lunch if they live close to town. Nico and Kendall live just a little too far away to make that worthwhile.

“Bored yet?” Kendall lies down on her back in the grass next to Nico. It’s a beautiful day, a few clouds, maybe seventy-five degrees.

Nico is quiet. Kendall pokes him.

“Hmm?”

“I asked if you were bored yet. With school.”

With visible effort he pulls himself from his thoughts. “Oh. No. I think I’m going to like physics.”

“I wish we had more options. You know. Ceramics. Drama.”

Nico rolls to his side and looks at Kendall. Touches her cheek. “Me too, for you. No mail?”

“Nope.”

“Good.” Nico falls back again. “I don’t want you to go.”

Kendall laughs and punches him in the shoulder. “Stop! You’ll jinx Juilliard.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I just wish you weren’t going to be way out in New York . . . I haven’t gone a whole week in my entire life without seeing you—since before you were born.”

“Well, maybe you should consider coming out that way too. Why do I have to be the one to stay around here?”

Nico winces. “You’re right.”

“Of course I am.” She sits up. Closes her eyes and sighs. “But the truth is, I’m not going to get into Juilliard, and we both know it. So. Saturday I’m checking out State with you.”

Nico grins. “Awesome.”

Back in the classroom, though, Nico acts distracted. He rests his head on his desk, eyes half closed.

Kendall pokes him when Ms. Hinkler is working with the sophomores. “Are you okay?”

Nico turns slowly to look at Kendall, a faraway look in his eyes. “Fine,” he says. He faces forward once again, his fingers sliding across the edge of his desk.

“You’re acting really strange.”

“Shh,” Nico says, distracted. He shakes his head slightly and doesn’t answer further. Then he puts his head back down and closes his eyes.

* * *

At soccer practice Coach works the team hard. They run drills and suicide competitions. It’s hard work, but Kendall savors it. It keeps her mind busy. But as she runs, something Jacián said yesterday keeps repeating in her mind, a syllable with every step.
Stay out of my way, then, if you don’t want to get hurt.

Did Jacián say that to Tiffany Quinn, too, before he killed her? Kendall shakes her head, admonishing herself in jagged whispers as she runs the suicide drills. She glances at him.
Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Just run.

She beats everybody. It’s never happened before, but Kendall’s in her groove today. Jacián comes in second. Eli is third, with Marlena grabbing his shirt trying to pass him, but she ends up fourth. Nico’s off his game, coming in seventh out of the eight. Jacián walks away, gasping for breath.

Kendall smiles triumphantly before half the team shoves her onto the ground and piles on top. She gasps and laughs, trying to shield her face from kicking legs and waving arms. Briefly catches Jacián’s eye as he stands a few feet away, watching the congratulatory pileup. His eyes burn holes into hers. She flails and turns, and sees Nico, but he’s staring off at nothing.

In a minute she wriggles out from under the pile as Coach yells for everybody to get back to work.

* * *

At 11:05 p.m. Kendall calls Nico. “What’s up with you?”

“Huh?”

“You missed the call. You almost never miss the call.”

“Oh. Uh . . . I lost track of time, I guess. Got a lot on my mind.”

“You want to talk about it? Please? You’re starting to worry me.”

“No. No, thanks. I have to go.”

“Okaaay. . . .”

“Good night, Kendall.”

Kendall pulls the phone from her ear and stares at it for a second, and then puts it back up to her ear again. “Are you kidding me?”

But all she hears is a dial tone. Her stomach twists. Nico hung up on her. “Damn, boy,” she says. “This college thing must be huge for you, that’s all I can say.” She calls his private line again. Five times.

All she gets is a busy signal.

She checks her lock six times and then stares through the window, out over the front fields. Toward Nico’s house.

All is dark.

Kendall shivers.

Touch Our face and you’ll hear Us again. You’ll wonder. You’ll let Us into your mind, your thoughts. Your soul. We whisper to you in a single melting voice—the voice you want to hear. You know that voice. You miss it.

You want to save it.

The first week of school nears an end. The unspeakable absence of Tiffany Quinn is mostly forgotten, replaced by new assignments, new students, and a need for life to be normal. Kendall performs her morning routines—the wastebasket, the markers, the windows, the desks—and things are good. Mostly.

Jacián still doesn’t speak in class unless Ms. Hinkler asks him a question.