Gabrielle (7 page)

If only he knew how much stranger things had gotten from there.

“Gabi,” he said, “I hope you're not mad at me.” When I didn't reply immediately, he added, “You know, for saying those things about your family.”

Yesterday I hadn't been mad at him. More stunned—and way out of my element. But by this morning, his question about my mother was just a drop in the bucket.

“Don't worry about it.” Forcing a smile, I said, “Where are you headed next?”

“I've got a free period.” He looked sort of nervous. “I was hoping you'd let me take you somewhere. Buy you a hot dog or something.”

I had calculus next. I liked math, the way numbers always made sense, how there was a clear right and wrong answer every time. I had never skipped a class before. I'd never had a good reason to.

But when my stomach grumbled at the mention of the hot dog, I suddenly realized I hadn't had anything to eat since lunch the day before.

Missing one calculus class wouldn't kill me. “Sure. I'd like that.”

“See,” he said as we left the building, “I told you I'd be a bad influence. I've already got you skipping classes.”

I shrugged. “Whatever.”

That was my new take on life. I was going to let it all wash over me and figure everything out later.

Much, much later.

He gave me a funny look. “You are still pissed at me, aren't you?”

I wanted to say no, that the way I was feeling had nothing to do with him. I wanted to have him put his arms around me so I could spill out the whole sad story. I wanted him to tell me everything was going to be all right.

But unlike Missy, whom I had known my whole life, I was just getting to know Dylan.

And I didn't want to scare him away.

“I just have some things on my mind.” Working to shake off my bad mood, I asked, “So had you been to New York before moving here?”

“Nope. Only California.”

“Do you like it?”

He looked around at people rushing around us, at the trash in the gutter, at the tall buildings. “A place like this, you can lose yourself here.”

“Lose yourself?”

“Yeah. You can just disappear.”

I still didn't get it. I'd lived in the city my whole life and could really only see it one way.

As home. Now, I looked around me through his eyes.

And I supposed that if I wanted to get lost, I could probably do it here.

“So how does your mom like it?”

“She thinks it's better than where we were before.”

On the one hand, I knew he was interested in me. He kept coming to find me, was about to buy me a hot dog. But at the same time, it was so hard to talk to him. To get him to tell me anything about himself.

Thinking that maybe I hadn't found the right subject yet, I asked, “When did you first get interested in music?”

Finally, he smiled. And by the way his shoulders relaxed, it was as if the weight of the world had finally fallen off them.

“I can't think of a time when I wasn't banging on something or trying to play an instrument or singing.”

I smiled, too. Because I totally got what he was saying. Music had always been like that for me, had been there for me, with me, during the lowest time of my life.

I found myself telling him, “I was five when my mom died and even though I was really little, I can still remember how bad it felt to know she was never coming back. The only thing that made me feel better, apart from my grandmother, was music.”

“Music has been there for me during some rough times, too.”

By now we were standing in front of the hot dog vendor's cart. “How do you like them?”

he asked.

Normally, I didn't really like them very much. But with Dylan, nothing was normal.

“With everything.”

I was glad when he grinned, almost proud of my answer. And I belatedly realized I had wanted to impress him, just as I had in the record store when I'd made sure to steer clear of the pop section and only listen to heavy metal. After all, that's what he'd liked about me. I wasn't prepared to see what he thought about the boring pop-music junkie that I was the other ninety-nine percent of the time.

A couple of minutes later he turned to me, a fully loaded hot dog in each hand. “Let's walk across the street into the park.”

We sat down under a leafy tree and ate in silence for a minute. I couldn't eat much of it—honestly, hot dogs weren't really my thing.

He looked over at my half-eaten dog. “You going to finish that?”

“It's all yours.” As he scarfed it down, I asked, “So, what are your plans for after graduation?”

“I guess I'll see when I get there.”

It was a really odd way of looking at things for me. My whole life had been mapped out for me since birth. Go to school. Go to college. Get a great job. Get married and have kids.

Marriage and kids
stopped me in my tracks. I felt the blood rush out of my face, was glad I wasn't holding a hot dog because I would've dropped it in my lap.

“What's wrong?”

I knew I had to tell him something. The question was, how little could I get away with?

“When I got home last night, my grandmother and I had a really weird talk. About my mother.”

His eyes narrowed as he stared at me. I waited for him to put two and two together, to realize that his question about my mother being a courtesan must have prompted one of my own.

Instead, he said, “I get how family stuff can be weird.”

I got the feeling we were both telling each other as much as we could for right now.

Which was why I wasn't going to push him for more information about himself just yet. Now that I was keeping things to myself, too, I knew I had to respect his wishes to do the same.

“Thanks for the hot dog,” I said. “I guess I should be getting back now.”

He helped me to my feet, and as we carried our wrappers over to the garbage can, he said,

“You're right, skipping one period is long enough. I wouldn't want to corrupt you too much, too soon.”

My heart raced at the implications in his words. That there would be more corruption from him, that it would go further than just skipping a class.

As if to confirm my thoughts, he turned to me and said, “Any chance I could kiss you again?”

I answered him by going up on my toes, putting my hands on either side of his face and pulling his mouth down to mine.

Our second kiss was different than the first. I knew the feel of his lips, the way his tongue would slip against mine.

And it was even better than the first time.

The only thing that stopped me from pressing myself fully against him was the fact that we were only a block from school and it would be weird if someone we knew saw us.

Still, he held my hand all the way back, up the stairs and through the front doors. And when he leaned over to quickly kiss me again before we headed off to our classes, it felt like the most natural thing in the world.

Word spreads fast in a small school like mine. And Missy was all over me at lunch. “I heard you missed calculus. And that you came back an hour later kissing Dylan. Is that true?”

“It's true.”

I wanted to run and find him and kiss him again. Because he'd given me something wonderful and delicious to think about—something other than what I'd found out about my mother last night. If I focused hard enough on him, I could almost forget about that party my grandmother wanted me to go to.

“I have to say, your life has gotten really exciting all of a sudden.”

I shot Missy a dirty look, and she held up her hands. “I know, not helping again. Sorry.

Did you read any of those books I gave you? Or think more about taking me with you to that party?”

“No. And no.”

“Okay then, tell me more about what you found out about Dylan.”

But it didn't feel right for me to share anything from our private conversations. Besides, I still hardly knew anything.

“There's not much to tell.”

She just laughed. “You're such a bad liar. Anyway, anyone can tell by looking at Dylan that there's been some major damage.”

I leaped to his defense. “He's not damaged.”

“Really? You could have fooled me. Trust me, Gabi, I know guys like him. They have damage. Big time.”

“He's really nice. He's here from California with his mom.”

She was silent as she thought about it. “There's got to be more to the story than that. Like, what about his dad? Why isn't he out here with them both?”

“Neither you nor I have fathers. I guess I didn't think it was really a big deal that he'd be here with only his mom.”

“Have you told him that your mom died? And your dad, too?”

“Yes, he knows.”

“Well if he didn't say,
Mine too,
then his dad is still around.”

“They're probably divorced. What's such a big deal about that?”

“Nothing. Still, I've got odds on there definitely being something going on. Speaking of, have you told him the news about your mom yet?”

“No.”

“Are you planning to tell him?”

I shot her another dirty look, this time for making me remember the exact thing I wanted to forget. “I don't know.”

“Fair enough,” she said, shrugging. “Maybe when he tells you his damage, you can tell him yours.”

That night, I smelled my grandmother's perfume before I saw her standing in the open doorway of my bedroom.

“
Ma petite
, I came to see how you are doing.”

I was lying on my bed staring at the ceiling. I closed my eyes. “What do you want me to say?”

“I know how upset you were by everything that I told you.”

Upset? I guess that was a pretty good word for it. Also confused. And angry.

Oh yes, that was a good word. Angry.

“Last night,” she said softly, but firmly, “I did not tell you everything.”

Oh goodie. Looked like I was just about to get slammed with part two. “Whatever.”

I heard her footsteps as she came into the room, felt my mattress dip slightly as she sat.

How many times over the past seventeen years had she sat like this with me? More than I could count.

And how many times had I tried to pretend she wasn't there? How many times had I all but refused to acknowledge her presence?

Once.

Now.

“
Ma petite
, I have spent every moment since last night thinking about how to tell you this.” She paused. “But I still do not know how to do it.”

The sadness, the defeat I heard in her voice, had me opening my eyes. Even as angry and betrayed as I felt, I couldn't stand to hear her sound like that. Instinctively, I wanted to tell her none of this was her fault.

The words were on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn't speak them.

Not when she'd encouraged my mother to become a courtesan.

Not when she was obviously trying to get me to take that road, too.

She straightened her shoulders, lifted her chin, morphing back into the proud, strong Frenchwoman I knew and loved so well.

“When I was a little girl, my mother told me a story that had been told to her by her mother and her mother before that. It was a story about a man and a woman who had found true love. And in doing so, they made a woman with great powers extremely angry, because she had coveted the man for herself. It is said that she put a curse on the woman.”

I wanted to hold up my hands, to tell her to stop, that I'd already heard enough, that I knew it was all going to end badly. But I had a feeling my grandmother wouldn't give up. For some reason, she felt strongly that I needed to hear this story.

“If ever the woman—or any girl she should bear—married, love would be lost.” She reached for my hands. “That woman's blood runs through our veins,
ma petite
.”

So that was why she wanted me to go that
soirée
. Because of some mythical curse.

“
Grandmaman
,” I said, shifting on the bed so that I was sitting up, “you don't honestly believe in a curse, do you?”

“I wish I did not,
ma petite
. But I have seen the proof with my very own eyes.”

“Proof?”

“Your father was going to leave his wife for your mother.”

“Because she was pregnant,” I said in a flat voice.

“No,” she replied without hesitation. “Because he loved her. I warned her, warned them both, but then—”

“He died.”

“Yes. The night he told his wife the news was the night of his fatal crash. Your mother was never the same afterward. She loved you deeply, but she could not cope with her loss.”

I had vague memories of seeing my mother crying, but I had been such a small child I thought it could all be resolved with a hug and a chocolate chip cookie.

I hated to talk about the way my mother had died, hated to even acknowledge it. But I had to make sure I wasn't twisting my grandmother's words up in my head.

“Are you saying that she killed herself because of this curse?”

“She loved you, Gabrielle. If she had told me how deep her depression had gone, then maybe I could have—”

But I couldn't stand to talk about my mother anymore. “So now you're trying to save me from the same fate? From making the mistake of falling in love and thinking I can get married like everyone else?”

“I've already lost my daughter. I could not stand to lose you, too.”

No question, her story shocked me, but what was even more shocking was that she believed it. And even though I told myself I didn't—there were no such things as curses, we all had free will, and we could all make our own choices—I knew the only choice ahead of me was the small sacrifice I would make for my grandmother.

Because I loved her.

And because gaining data about the realities of
the life
was the best way to prove her wrong.