Lurlene McDaniel (9 page)

“So what's so important?” I ask.

She's nervous, but she tells me, and the longer she talks, the sicker I get. “There was no deer, Quin. You hit that girl,” she says. “I know you did. And you know you did.”

“That's a lie!” I want to slap her, but I'm frozen. The memory sweeps over me. The road winding and dark, lit only by the bright white of the headlights. I'm seeing double, but still, I'm certain I can drive just fine. Everything's blurry, and when I glance over at Laurie, I can swear she's
asleep. Then I feel the awful bump, hear the shearing of metal. I stomp on the brake, almost veering off the side of the mountain. But I hold the car on the dirty, weed-choked shoulder of the road, back up, come to a stop and jump out. The fender's a mess, smeared with wetness and scraped clean of paint. A few yards ahead, I see a gaping hole in the guardrail. Laurie is getting out of the car, but I make her stay inside. Stone-cold sober now, I go to the break in the guardrail and peer over the side into absolute darkness. I see nothing.

Looking at Laurie now, I break out in a cold sweat. “It was a deer,” I tell her. “I swear to God, it was a deer.”

“It was Analise Bower,” Laurie says to me. “You just
assumed
it was a deer.”

Her eyes are like hard blue marbles, and suddenly, I'm not so sure of anything. If she's right … if it was Analise … I want to puke. “You can't
prove
anything.”

“I don't need to. All I have to do is tell the story and you're a suspect.”

Of course she's right.
Bye-bye college scholarships.
No coach wants a pariah, and that's what I'll be if word gets out that I was the driver in a hit-and-run. I stare at her long and hard. She's not so attractive to me anymore. “What do you want?” I
recognize that this is a negotiation. I know about negotiations because my father does deals all the time.

“Easy one for you. I want to be your new girlfriend.”

I'm speechless. How simple is that? “And?”

“And we're an item one hundred percent of the time.”

I think about this and have the sense to know it isn't that simple, but at the moment my brain's in a tailspin. I consider my options, and only one pops up—the one I don't want to have to take. I can tell my father. I discard it like a bad taste in my mouth. Having Laurie hang around might work for me.

Before I can speak, she adds,
“Exclusive
item.”

“For how long?”

“Until you graduate.”

Six months.
“Okay,” I say, thinking I'm getting off easy.

She exits the car. “Then pick me up tomorrow morning for school.”

“Hey, wait. I've got—”

She leans in the window. “You've got me first.”

“Did Quin Palmer bring you home?”

Mom's waiting for me, ready to pounce, when I walk into the house.

“Yes,” I say.

She smiles so big, all her teeth show. “Tell me more.”

“We've worked out some problems we've had, and he wants me to be his exclusive girlfriend.”

“I just
knew
you could work it out with him!”

My insides are churning like boiling soup. She follows me into the kitchen, where I drop my books and take a cola out of the fridge. “You were right,” I say. “We worked it out.”

For a second, I think she's going to jump up and down and clap.

“I've got homework,” I tell her.

She looks disappointed, like she was expecting me to tell her all the juicy details of my wonderful
reunion with Quin. I want to run upstairs and call Judie. She foresaw this ending days ago: Quin caved. I pulled it off! I kept my cool and made my deal, just like playing a hand of poker.

I take my cola and my books and go upstairs. In the quiet of my room, I begin to shake. I conjure up the expression on his face when I announced my terms. First relief, then the look of a cornered animal. I see myself as rich and famous one day and able to get away with anything. I picture a reporter shoving a mike under my nose.
“So, Ms. Stark, tell us about your first boyfriend. Wasn't he baseball great Quin Palmer?”

“He was.”

“Isn't it true that you bought him with a threat to ruin his life?”

“It worked like a charm. He was mine for six whole months.”

“How clever of you. How unprincipled.”

Who am I? What have I become?

I search for my cell because I know Judie is waiting for my call. My hands are shaking so badly, I can't punch in a text message. My stomach heaves. I run to the bathroom, I lean over the bowl and I throw up.

When school's out for the holidays, I visit Analise one Monday morning at the facility. This is Analise's home now. I know all the employees, the caregivers who make sure the brain-injured residents are fed, bathed, groomed and stimulated. The desk nurse waves to me and I nod to her.

I go directly to Analise's room and see her sitting up in a chair. My heart leaps, but then I notice that she's propped in the chair, secured with a belt and surrounded by pillows. Sonya is reading to Analise from a stack of cards and letters in her lap. When Sonya sees me, she smiles and says to Analise, “Oh, look, honey! Look who's come to visit. It's Jeremy.” I hate the way Sonya talks to Analise, like a mother with a not-too-bright child.
“She's not an imbecile,”
I want to say. “
Her mind's just in lockdown.”
I crouch in front of the
chair, take her hand and kiss it. “Hi, baby,” I say in my softest, most adult voice.

Her eyes are open and her gaze is darting, but we know she's seeing nothing.

I ask Sonya, “Why is she in the chair?”

Her face gets red. “The nurses are humoring me. I—I just wanted to see if … if it might make a difference.”

I can tell by her expression that there's been no change. I ask, “What are you reading?”

“Christmas cards, get-well cards.” Sonya points to a cardboard box in a corner. “She gets so many. I had no idea she had so many friends. I—I thought if she can hear me, she'll be happy knowing so many people are thinking about her, praying for her.” She looks at me. “I'm thinking of letting a few of her closest friends come in and visit.” Up until now, Sonya and Jack have shielded Analise, watched over her as fiercely as guard dogs. “Especially Amy. She calls every day. What do you think, Jeremy? Do you think it's a good idea?”

I don't want anyone staring at Analise, carrying stories of her condition back to school. Stories of how her face has changed; how her jaw sticks out because of the clenching of her teeth, which
the doctors can't control; how her gaze darts without purpose. We've had time to adjust to the changes in her body, but others haven't. Seeing her as she is now will be a jolt. “Maybe Amy,” I say. “She can be trusted.”

Sonya nods. “Amy's asked me for a few baby pictures of Analise for the yearbook. She and the staff are setting aside several pages to pay tribute to our girl.” She shifts the mail to a nearby table. “Any special plans for Christmas?” She changes the subject.

“Both my brothers will be home for the holidays. Mom's cooking up a storm.”

“That'll be so nice.”

Tears brim in Sonya's eyes, and I quickly look away. She says, “Who'd ever have thought we'd be spending Christmas in a place like this? I—I'm grateful for it,” she adds quickly. “The staff is wonderful. It's just that I thought we'd all be at the house, the three of us. Now it doesn't look as if she'll be home … ever.”

“Don't say that.”

She looks at Analise, strokes her arm. “I get so discouraged sometimes. And you know what really makes me angry, Jeremy?” She doesn't wait for me to answer. “It's knowing that somewhere out there, someone is walking around, planning Christmas,
maybe with their family, just going along fancy-free,
knowing
they have struck our little girl on her bike and driven off without so much as a backward glance.”

I feel my own anger boil up as I too see the picture Sonya has painted. Analise's eyes continue to dart, but they look blank and purposeless. I remember how her eyes once twinkled, brimmed with intelligence and fire. And love. I shudder.

Sonya says, “Someone has ruined her life. Ruined our lives. Yours too. And even Amy's been permanently affected. It isn't right, Jeremy. It isn't right.”

She's crying now and I'm helpless to do anything to make her feel better. There's nothing I can say. I mutter a curse on the person or persons who did this to Analise … did this to all of us. I hope they burn in hell.

I
feel Jeremy's kiss on my hand. I want to tell him I love him. I want to let him know how happy I am whenever he comes into the room. If my thoughts could reach out and touch him, they would cover him in kisses. If I could control my body … if I could move … Stop it! I can't move. The only thing that makes this bearable is that time is fluid. I sleep. I wake. Great chunks of time pass in between. I never know when my consciousness will rise to the surface. I only know that it does. And when it does, I hear them talking. Mom's pain hits my soul and makes me angry. I struggle to speak.

I hear Mom say, “She's agitated, Jeremy. Help me get her into bed.”

“This is just a
reflex
?”

“That's what the doctors say, but they're wrong, Jeremy. I know they are.”

They lift me, my mother and my love. They lay me down on clean linen, cover me, kiss my cheeks, stroke my arms, trying to calm me. They whisper my name. I want to cry. I want to tell them how much I love them. Someone did this to me. Someone who's still out there. And now I want something else.

I want revenge.

I help Mark carry the massive desk into Spencer Palmer's den. We've driven it over in Mark's pickup, brushed the falling snow off the tarp covering it in the circular driveway. The front doors of the Palmer mansion—because it looks like a mansion to me—are double wide, but even so, we had to remove the desk's top to get the piece safely inside. We could have used Rudy's help, but he hasn't come to work for two weeks, so Mark figures we won't see him again for quite a while.