League of Strays (22 page)

“Of course, when Wanda found out who the home wrecker was, she told me my alkie mother had ruined her family. So that’s why she despises me and always will.”

Despite my fear of becoming an accident statistic, her words flipped a switch inside me, leaving only pity.

“Your mother’s the one who screwed up, not you,” Richie said.

“Wanda blames you for what her father did,” Kade said. “But we’ll set her straight.”

The light changed to green, and Zoe started up again, her foot heavy on the gas pedal. “The restaurant’s about a mile from here. ETA: three seconds.” She chuckled to herself, then jerked the wheel to the right, overcorrecting. The tires crunched onto the gravel shoulder before she steered back onto the road.

I imagined my mother answering the phone. “Your daughter’s been in a serious accident, Mrs. Brody. I’m afraid the news isn’t good.”

This whole car ride was a metaphor for my life. Someone else at the wheel. Me, stuck nearby, helpless. First, there was my parents, always telling me what to do and how to do it. And then there was Kade.

Kade. Always telling me what to do. And me, always doing it.

Zoe glanced into the rearview mirror. Our eyes connected. The arrow on the speedometer dropped to a positively sluggish seventy miles per hour.

“Charlotte, it’s OK,” Richie assured me. “We’re going the speed limit.”

Times two, I thought. But the entrance sign to Paul’s Pizza Kitchen, only a block away, made me feel a lot better.

Zoe turned into the parking lot and cut the motor. She met my eyes, hesitating a moment before depositing the car keys in my lap.

Thanks
, I mouthed. I pocketed them and crawled over Kade and Nora to get out of the Corolla.

As the hostess led us to our table, Kade’s eyes leaped about the room. He sent Zoe a scathing look and ducked down in his chair like a criminal hiding from the authorities.

“So there are a few kids from school,” Zoe mumbled, gripping Nora’s elbow for balance. “Sue me.”

While the others analyzed the menu, I went to the bathroom to splash cold water on my face. With the faucet on full blast, I reached into my jacket, removed the bottle of tequila I’d taken from the car, and poured the remaining amber liquid down the sink. A toilet in the last stall flushed. I dumped the bottle into the trash, rearranging the paper towels on top of it.

“Are you all right?” Tiffany Miller, of all people, walked up behind me.

“Yeah, fine,” I managed. “A bug flew in my eye.”

Her plump lips, lined in red, curled up. “Uh, right. So it’s a guy, huh?”

“Well, yes—I mean no. Yes and no.” I braced myself for the knife-in-the-gut insult to follow.

“Guys suck. I just broke up with one last night.” She narrowed her eyes in the mirror, inspecting her eyeliner. “He wanted one thing, you know? When it came to anything real, like emotional stuff, he couldn’t care less.”

Tiffany dug through an oversized purse and retrieved a sea-shell-pink cosmetics bag. I watched as she applied cherry-red lip gloss. Then she handed me her concealer. I fingered it like it was a stick of dynamite. Besides, covering my splotchy skin with the tiny wand would be like frosting a cake with a toothpick.

“I’m sorry about the parade,” I blurted out, well aware I was in dangerous territory.

I couldn’t admit to my role. That would be suicide. But I had to get an apology out there somehow. Yes, Tiffany had publicly humiliated me—many times—but it didn’t make me feel better to have returned the favor. And the worst part was that it had started with the All-State audition story. A lie, invented to impress Kade.

“I’m sorry it happened, too.” She ran a finger over her eyebrows, smoothing them. “But you know what they say: ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’”

“Right.”

Tiffany packed the assortment of beauty products back into her bag. “You know, you’re not so bad anymore, Charlotte.”

“I never was,” I said.

She looked at me for a moment, then smiled. “As for the guy who made you cry, life’s too short to deal with someone who doesn’t treat you well.”

Kade treats me well
, I wanted to say,
as long as I do what he wants.

For the hundredth time, I thought about what Zoe had told me at the library, even though I’d been working hard to avoid it. Jenny Carson hadn’t done what Kade had wanted.

Tiffany left. I turned back to the mirror, flashed my best prom princess smile, and returned to the table for dinner.

“
HELLO?
”
THE VOICE WAS YOUNG, MAYBE EIGHT OR NINE
years old.

“Hi. May I speak to Jenny?” I asked.

“There’s no one named Jenny here. This is Becca. You want to speak to my mommy?”

“No, that’s OK.” I hung up and dialed the ninth number on my list. It rang once, twice, three times.

A boy, no older than the kid I’d just spoken to, answered. “Martin Carson speaking.”

“Is Jenny there?”

“You have the wrong number.” He sounded as if he was reading from a cue card.

Of course, it couldn’t be that easy. This wasn’t the movies. It took more than a search of the Internet White Pages to find a person.

Maybe it
couldn’t
be that easy, but I wished it were. With each
phone number I dialed came a twinge of disloyalty. What if Kade was right about my inability to trust? No, wait. Had he said that, or had I dreamed it?

I sighed. “Thanks, anyway.” I was about to hang up when I heard, “Oh, I know, you’re …”

“What did you say?” I asked, bringing the phone back to my ear.

“Are you looking for Jennifer Carson? She’s my cousin, but she doesn’t live here.”

My voice cracked when I asked him for the number.

“She doesn’t like it when you call her Jenny.”

“Um, got it,” I stammered. “So do you have her phone number?”

“I can’t give it to you. Against house rules.”

“Martin,” I said, pausing for emphasis. “It’s important.”

Silence. “Her stepdaddy’s Jeff Kringler. Look it up yourself.” A toddler shrieked, followed by a click. Martin had hung up.

A minute later, Jeffrey Kringler’s number was on the back of my hand.

“Hello?” This time a girl answered. About my age. I wished I’d rehearsed an introduction.

“Hello?” she repeated. “Is anyone there?”

My palms were so sweaty that the phone almost slid from my death grip. “Uh, yes. Is this Jen … Jennifer Carson?”

“That’s me. Who’s this?”

“My name’s Charlotte Brody. I need to talk to you about—”

“We don’t need anything,” she said.

“This isn’t a sales call. It’s about Kade Harlin. You went to school—”

“Who the hell is this?” After a long pause, she added, “How’d you get this number?”

“I’m Kade’s … friend.” I held my breath and waited. When she didn’t say anything, I added, “I heard what happened to you. The thing is, I need to know the truth.”

“It was a long time ago. I don’t want to talk about it, especially not with Kade’s latest girlfriend. If you’re with him, then you’re as twisted as he is.”

Latest
. I didn’t like the sound of that. Questions I wanted to ask came at me from all directions. Dodging them was making me dizzy. But I didn’t have enough time to pick one, because she hung up on me.

It took me an hour to resuscitate my courage. She won’t answer, I told myself as the phone rang for the fifth time. I’ll never know what really happened. In the end, maybe that was for the best. Three years was a long time ago.

I was just about to disconnect the call when she answered. “Kade’s crazy. And he’s a liar. You can’t trust anything he says or does.”

“What?” I asked. But I’d heard her.

“I did something that made him angry. It wasn’t nice, but I wanted him to leave me alone. I thought he’d move on to someone else. But he didn’t. He kept following me.”

I pictured the crumpled form behind Kade’s refrigerator.
Alleged assault … stalking … recommendation …

“Whenever I walked home, he’d step out from behind some tree,” she said. “He’d just wink and walk away. If my friends were with me, he wouldn’t show.”

I listened for a catch in her voice, a stammer, a throat-clearing. Something to indicate that she was buying time to invent more lies. All I heard was fear.

“It was stupid to take the shortcut that day. I knew he was around. I just knew it.”

My armpits prickled with sweat. “Why didn’t you press charges?”

The article had mentioned that the perpetrator wore a mask. Jenny might have thought it was Kade, but unless she saw his face, she couldn’t know for sure. Then I thought about the prom parade, and the ski mask bunched in Kade’s fist.

“It’s complicated,” she said.

I was losing her. “Please,” I begged. “Tell me.”

It was so quiet that I thought she’d hung up again, but then I heard a ragged exhalation. “At first I was attracted to him. All that attention was cool, I guess. When I saw him in the woods that day, he said he’d forgiven me for something I’d done. He said he’d leave me alone if I kissed him. Just once, he said.”

It sounded like something he would say. I closed my eyes.

“Go on,” I urged. “Please.”

“You won’t understand.”

I thought about how an ordinary look from Kade made my pulse quicken. “I think I will.”

“I was scared, but I didn’t want him to know it, so I did it. I kissed him.” She gave a resigned sigh. “Then he knocked me to
the ground. Hit me a few times and left me lying there. I had to work my way back to get help, which wasn’t easy with a broken collarbone and a twisted ankle.”

“Why didn’t you tell the police it was him?”
If
it was him, I told myself.

“Because after it was over, he said if I told anyone, Hannah would be next.” She hesitated a moment, then added, “That’s my little sister. He said he wouldn’t go so easy on her.”

My stomach ached. “I thought he was wearing a mask.”

“Yeah, a black ski mask. But once he knew we were alone, he took it off.”

“If you didn’t tell the police, then how’d they guess who it was?” I asked.

“It didn’t take a brain surgeon to link him to the crime. All they had to do was ask my friends. But there was no case without my testimony. The charges were dropped, and our family moved to New York a month later.”

My mind flashed to Tiffany Miller, covering her chest with the remains of her dress.

“I’m so sorry,” I said.

“Don’t tell him I told you,” she pleaded.

“I won’t. I won’t tell him I called you.”

“And Charlotte?”

“Yes?”

“Get away from Kade Harlin.”

“
YOU MUST BE PSYCHIC, CHARLOTTE,” ZOE SAID. “I WAS
just about to call you.”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t be mad at me.”

“About what?”

“The dumb thing I did in the car yesterday. Thanks for driving us home. I guess I’m more of a lightweight than I thought.”

I’d forgotten all about it in light of my conversation with Jenny Carson a few hours earlier. “I’m not mad. Not anymore, anyway.”

“I’m lousy at the whole apology thing.”

“It’s OK, Zoe.”

“Charlotte?”

“What?”

“It was a stupid thing for me to do. I was pissed—not with
you—and I just wanted to feel, I don’t know, free, or something. I wanted to fly away from my life for a moment.”

I’d thought about Kade and how he kept saying that next time it would be Wanda’s turn. But it hadn’t been. After Madame came Dave, then Tiffany. Zoe had waited a long time. “I didn’t ask Kade to do Tiffany’s plan first,” I said. “I’m sure he’s got something in mind for Wanda.”

Kade always had something in mind. My stomach shifted at the prospect. I tried not to think about the next revenge looming over us. Over me.

“Oh, I told him it was OK to do Tiffany next,” Zoe said.

“You did?”

“Yeah, I wasn’t ready. Still not.”

“Not ready? What do you—?”

“Just not ready. Listen, I don’t want to talk about Wanda.” She paused, then cleared her throat. “I want you to know that I’m off the stuff for good. I don’t want to end up like my mom, great role model that she is. And I definitely don’t want to wear one of those tags on my big toe.”