Secrets and Shadows (9 page)

But her grin flipped when she caught sight of Sarah, her arms wrapped around Pietr. “We need to fix this.”

“Amy—don’t.” I grasped her arm. “If he doesn’t want me…”

“He
does
.”

“I hate to point this out, baby…,” Marvin joined in, addressing Amy, “but maybe Jessica’s right. Sarah’s got a reputation. Everybody knows she’s eas—”

“-ily led astray,” I finished for him. I didn’t want to consider it. Yeah, I knew guys thought about a lot more than passing Trig or Calculus.
Making
passes was more their style. I would even bet Pietr thought about it faster than most guys at Junction High because of his freaky biology.

And I knew enough about Pietr’s brother Max to know he wasn’t one to encourage living a chaste lifestyle (especial y considering the rumors going around the school). Unless he spel ed it C-H-A-S-E-D.

Which was what Max liked to be, by lots of girls. Stil , the words slipped out of my mouth. “Would Pietr stay with her for—”

Amy sighed. “Is there a guy who wouldn’t?” Seeing my expression, she quickly added, “Unless he could upgrade.”

Hoping Amy’s pessimism wasn’t an accurate view of guys, I muttered, “I’m not interested in playing Sarah 2.0. Either he wants me or he doesn’t.”

I looked down the hal and watched a moment. Sarah stretched up on her tiptoes to kiss him. And Pietr saw no one but Sarah. Kiss four of the day.

My stomach bal ed up, sour as Amy’s expression.

I’d wondered what Pietr wanted.

It seemed I had my answer.

* * *

I smiled at the secretary and stood up, looking past the poster that discouraged students from suicide. I didn’t know why so many teens in our area were kil ing themselves (and I certainly wasn’t al owed to address it in the school paper), but I doubted posters were going to put an end to it.

I headed into Perlson’s office, by this point far too familiar ground. I’d been here after I smeared my fist across Jenny’s and Macie’s faces. And I’d been here after the drug-sniffing dog tried to kil me because I’d made an unwise fashion choice. It hadn’t been an ugly sweater, just way too big. Just because it smel ed like werewolf …

Now, though, I was here on my terms. Interviewing the VP about the upcoming lunch plan. A plan that seemed too good to be true—except the school would make a profit off the kids.

seemed too good to be true—except the school would make a profit off the kids.

Perlson motioned me to sit. “Good afternoon, Miss Gil mansen. It’s a pleasure to have you in my office in a different capacity,” he said with a flash of his broad smile. “Keeping out of trouble is the best way to go through school, don’t you think?” His lilting voice went perfectly with the palm trees I associated with his native land.

Part of a special exchange program for midlevel administrators, he’d come to our district in late summer to prepare. He was entrancing, his complexion like dark brown sugar and molasses. There were few people of African descent in Junction, and although businesses claimed they were equal opportunity employers, I had my doubts about a few. So I was thril ed when the school had announced his arrival.

But my intrigue at having someone so fabulously foreign—so distinct—faded when he began to distrust me. Besides, nothing could be more foreign, or more fascinating, than Russian werewolves.

He folded his dark hands together, linking his fingers and putting them behind his head. “You have questions about the school lunch plan,” he stated, relaxing in his chair.

“Yes, sir. The plan is paid for by angel funding?”

“Yes. So we never need to pay it back.”

“Wonderful.” I scribbled in my notebook.

“It also gives us superior food quality, considering federal standards. Better food, better processing, better distribution.”

“I won’t complain about that,” I assured him. Federal standards were continual y on the rise, but I’d read Upton Sinclair’s
The Jungle
and didn’t want to think too much about food between farm and table as a result. What had become unacceptable was stil accepted in some places.

He smiled again, beaming at me.

“It’l remove us from the federal program, won’t it?”

“Yes.”

“What if the organization folds? Can we get back in?”

“We won’t need to.” The radiance of his smile diminished like the brightness of a bulb on a dimmer switch.

“Lots of our students get free lunch. What about them?”

“They wil be al owed free lunch on the new program,” he assured me. “Just a little additional paperwork.

”

“If the program al ows free lunch transfers and is ful y funded by a corporation that won’t fold, why charge anything?”

His smile became close-lipped. “This may be difficult for a student to understand, Miss Gil mansen—”

“Try me.”

Straightening in his chair, he licked his lips, hands sliding down to rest on his desk.

“Where wil the additional money go?” I pried.

“Into a specialized fund.”

“For what?”

“Discretionary purposes.” His dark eyes glimmered.

“Like…”

“Whatever Administration decides the school needs.”

“New computers?”

“Maybe.”

“Water fountains that don’t leak?”

“Perhaps.”

“Bonuses for low-level employees and teachers?”

“No.”

“I would have supported
that
one.”

He blinked. Slowly. “Miss Gil mansen. Please remember that although we encourage students to try their hands at media coverage through the school newspaper and daily broadcasts, they aren’t resources for inflaming the school population.

“This program is good. We want everyone on it. It wil make the students in Junction better than before.

The quality of the fuel they put into their bodies wil be greatly improved.” He rapped on his desk with his knuckles. “Make sure that’s clear.”

Picking up his phone he punched in a number, saying to me, “I look forward to seeing your rough draft.”

“What?”

He smiled, speaking into the phone. “Yes, please tel him now’s good.” He glanced at me again.

“Monday morning.”

“Is this censorship?”

“No. Prudent behavior.”

I headed for the door, not sure what to say.

In the hal way, I passed Derek.

“You okay?” he asked, touching my arm.

My anger and frustration flowed away like water running through my fingers. “Yeah,” I said through what was surely a dopey smile. “Better already.”

“Good,” he whispered. “That’s why I’m here.”

During our regular service learning assignment Pietr avoided me. Jaikin, Hascal, and Smith welcomed me back into our social y awkward clique, flirting with me as Pietr sat at the van’s front, his back straight and stiff.

They marveled at what the addition of makeup did to a girl’s face, whereas I couldn’t wait for the day I wouldn’t need it and could unclog the junk I’d jammed into my pores.

Pietr ignored us. Especial y me. Determined to make him react, I flirted more boldly.

But if my playing bothered him at al , it never showed.

Twice I escorted a lizard around Golden Oaks Adult Day Care and Retirement Home with Hascal and Smith. Due to al ergies Hascal carried a goldfish in a baggie on our missions to enliven Golden Oaks.

Smith carried a huge torch for me.

The situation was difficult. At best.

The highlight of those trips was visiting Mrs. Feldman on the fourth floor. She taunted Smith with the uncanny way she pul ed cards from her strange and colorful deck, tel ing him things no one could have known.

Hascal also took a turn at having her pul cards, stupefied each time she said something that was dead on. He spent a lot of time speculating as a result of Mrs. Feldman’s cards, and I loved seeing two bril iant minds blown at the same time.

I was tempted to have her pul cards for me, but I didn’t want to know what my future held if it continued without Pietr. And I couldn’t afford for her to blurt out the odd truth of my recent past. So I smiled and shrugged, passing up the opportunity whenever she offered.

Missing out on even trivial things like that made my days drag. At least Smith seemed interested in me

—okay, maybe a little obsessed. With Pietr, every conversation (when I could weasel words out of him) was weather and homework.

I didn’t know what to do.

I stopped Cat in the hal one morning to ask about things and she threw her hands into the air in frustration. “I do not know anything about it, Jessie. He is ignoring me nearly as much as he ignores you.”

She gave me a quick hug and loped off to class, leaving me just as confused.

Pietr made sure he avoided being anywhere alone with me—anywhere I could ask him what had gone wrong between us. I dreaded how awkward my birthday would be if this kept up.

* * *

By Saturday afternoon I’d lost my mind. Pietr fil ed my thoughts so often I’d poured grain for the dogs and nearly fed Rio kibble. Returning to the house I found everyone outside. The orange safety flag of our shooting range snapped in the breeze, and the sound of gunfire proved Dad and Wanda had gone for target practice.

Some people went to the movies. Or dinner. Dad and Wanda? They preferred punching paper with bul ets. “Annabel e Lee?” I yel ed, poking my head in each door. Nope. Probably in the barn’s loft reading.

Now was my chance.

Stealing the phone, I tapped in Pietr’s number. Dad didn’t al ow it in speed dial, but I knew the digits by heart.

Cat picked up.

“Cat, it’s me.”

“You’re grounded.”

“Yeah, I need to be fast. Is Pietr there?”

There was a moment of hesitation and I heard: “Pietr.” In a demanding voice: “It’s Jessie.
Da
. On the phone now.
Da
. She’s stil grounded. She needs to talk to you.” Then, more softly, as if she’d covered the receiver with her hand, I heard her plead: “
Puzhalsta
, Pietr. She doesn’t understand.
I
do not understand.”

Another pause.

Downstairs our front door opened and closed. My heart raced, but I couldn’t bring myself to hang up.

Not yet.

Through the phone I heard the distinct sound of pounding on a door. “Take. The. Phone. Pietrrr,” Cat growled.

Silence.

“Jessie,” she whispered. “
Eezvehneetyeh
. I’m sorry. He says … he says he doesn’t want to talk to you.

I’m
so
sorry.…”

I hung up.

What had happened to us?

* * *

I paused in the kitchen doorway.

Dad was seated at the breakfast nook (what he cal ed the “cheap seats” whenever he would tease Mom), listening to the radio. Not his normal station, but a special weekly show. I recognized it immediately.

In Junction smal businesses often crossed into different venues. Karate studios had Chinese buffets.

Whole foods stores had bookstores. And one restaurant had a radio show.

It just happened to be hosted by the owner of the Italian restaurant where Mom and Dad went on their first date. Every Sunday the owner broadcast Italian music sung in Italian, sprinkling Italian phrases and news throughout the broadcast and proclaiming, “You don’t have to be Italian to love my music—you just have to love good music.”

To Dad, it was more than a way to contact a culture other than our own. It was a way to contact the memory of Mom.

He sat, shoulders stooped, cradling something in his hand. A photograph.

Mom.

I swayed, and the linoleum floor crackled beneath me.

“Oh.” He looked my way, startled, and swept his big hand across his eyes. “Hey, Jessie.”

He tucked the photo into the pocket of his flannel shirt, twisting the dial on his old boom box. “No one plays the eighties on Sunday.”

I crossed the floor and stretched my arm around his shoulders.

He sighed. “I miss her, Jessie.”

“I know.” But I hadn’t known. Not real y. I’d presumed he was forgetting her, pushing her memory away to make room for Wanda. Words strangled in my throat, but I managed “I miss her, too” as Dad’s arms wrapped around me in turn.

We stayed that way a few minutes, sniffling and muttering and being general y pitiful. Something Mom wouldn’t have stood for.

Dad was the one to point it out. “She wouldn’t have al owed this,” he said with a smile. “She would have told us to get up and move on.”

“She would have told me to put on my big-girl panties and grow up.”

“She told me the same thing once.”

We stared at each other a long moment before we both burst into laughter and he clarified. “My big-
boy
pants, she said. Of course,” he crowed. The tears rol ing down his weathered face grew joyful.

“I’m tryin’ to move forward,” he admitted, “to help you girls move forward. But it’s a hel —a heck—of a thing to try and move past one of the best things in your life. Your mother was the best damned—darned,”

he corrected, “best darned woman ever, Jessie. And you’re gonna’ grow up to be just like her. God. You even look more and more like her every day.” He snorted. “Damn—err—darn.”

I laughed. “Dad, you can’t protect me from
everything
. Words like damn and hel —I’ve heard lots worse.”

“Hmph. Wel , so long as you don’t use ’em yourself. Dangerous women,” he continued. “That’s al I’m surrounded by. Smart, beautiful, and dangerous.”

Wel , I’d give him two out of three. Beautiful? Parents were bound to think their offspring looked good.

Otherwise what did it say about the part of themselves they’d thrown into the mix? “You wouldn’t have it any other way.”