Stork (18 page)

My escort service continued, as did the stares, as did the whispers. Fourth period was Design. Penny settled into the seat next to me with an I-told-you-so grin.

“You guys are the talk of the school,” she said.

“I noticed.”

“Nobody’s even talking about Wade and Monique’s break-up.”

Wade’s name was still a sore subject, but today the burn lasted no more than a second. Not even he could spoil my mood.

“So what really happened between you two on the trail?” Penny asked.

We were sitting in two-by-two desk groupings according to our project partners, so although we had a measure of privacy, I still looked around to make sure no one was listening. “I had a recovered memory.”

Penny gasped, and a couple of girls looked over. She covered fairly well, adding a dramatic, “That’s brilliant” and pointing to the blank page in my notebook. “Sorry,” she whispered. “Go on.”

“After the bear encounter, I stumbled on the trail. He helped me up and, his touch, it triggered a flashback of the . . . incident.”

Penny started to react, but the look I gave her could have muffled a jet engine.

“Anyway,” I continued, “he told me the basics. And when I got home, my mom told me the rest.”

“Wow.”

“Tell me. Is this something everyone knows?”

Penny’s eyes got wide, and she simply nodded her yes.

“I mean everyone: freshmen, teachers, the janitor?”

She nodded again.

“So when I was new here and it seemed like everyone was staring at me . . .”

“You were never new here,” Penny said.

“So it was like some conspiracy that everyone was in on?”

Penny rolled her shoulders forward. “I wouldn’t call it a conspiracy. It’s just that there were a lot of newspaper articles. They all explained how you had a specific type of traumatic amnesia and that you had returned to California unaware of what had happened. And then the whole town shops at your
afi
’s store. Especially when your
amma
was alive, we’d get updates. It was common knowledge that you’d never recovered your memory, or been told.”

I made a
hmmmph
sound. “Besides the aversion to water, how did Jack react?”

Penny breathed in deeply. “Jack is . . . resilient, tough. Not the type to talk about it.”

That much I knew. “So he never discussed it, ever?”

“He gave a few interviews at first. He was considered a hero, you know. He went in after you.”

“He told me.” I thought of how quick a decision he must have made. And at what, age twelve? What kind of person plunges through a hole in the ice after a stranger? And there were adults around. I remember other parents skating with their little ones, or watching from the benches. “Did he have any sort of injuries or impairments?”

Penny shook her head. “No. That was part of the whole mystery. You both should have died.”

I shuddered at her remark, and not just for myself.

Jack waited for me outside the doors to the cafeteria, and even though he had his usual sack lunch, he followed me and Penny through the line and then walked with us to Mr. Parks’s room. At the meeting, Jack had everyone provide updates on their stories. They were all well researched, with interesting angles and relevant sources. When it was my turn, I merely reported that the column would have a Homecoming theme. Jack nodded and said, “Good work.” It wasn’t. He was playing favorites, which was fine by me.

The day continued in this way. Classes were unbearably long and bewildering, and then my heart would soar with each dismissal, as I knew he’d find me, and just those few minutes of hall time produced some sort of g-force emotional glee.

The only low point of the day was Wade. He’d cruised past us earlier, taking a long lingering look at Jack’s hand intertwined with mine. Another time, immediately before fifth period, he’d brought an imaginary camera to his eye and clicked as I shuffled past him in the hall. I stopped, thinking I’d misunderstood, the gesture meant for someone else, when I could hear his laughter pealing from behind me.

After school, Jack and I had only a minute or two to say good-bye. Mr. Carter, the football coach, made anyone who was late to practice run the bleachers. We sat on the brick half-wall in the front schoolyard.

I pulled the John Deere cap off his head teasingly. “Why do you wear this thing all the time?”

He went to snatch it back, but I sat on it quickly. “Because I like it.”

He tried to wrangle it from under my left thigh, but I swatted his hand away. Wade approached from behind Jack. The set of his jaw was ominous. My limbs locked. I heard the dead bolt.

“What do we have here?” Wade asked. “The talk of the school.”

“Beat it,” Jack said through clenched teeth.

“You want me to go, Kat?” Wade asked.

“Yes,” I said quickly.

“What? We’re not friends anymore?” he said.

“We were never friends.”

“I don’t know. We got pretty friendly that night out at the quarry.”

Jack emitted a low growl.

Uh-oh
.

“I even have a little keepsake of our time together.” Wade reached into his pocket and pulled out a cell phone. “A photo for your album. You seem like the type to keep mementos like that.”

“Go to hell,” I said.

I looked at Jack. His mouth was clamped tight. His nostrils were flared, and he was taking deep, chest-expanding breaths.

Wade fiddled with his phone, smiling like a hyena. “This one’s my favorite,” he said, looking intently at the small screen. “You want to see?” To my horror, he held the phone up to Jack, but then pulled it back suddenly. Memories of that night pelted me. I drank too much, blacked out, and though I know I stopped things before they got really ugly, none of it was anyone’s idea of a Kodak moment.

I lunged for a look, but Wade quickly pocketed the phone.

“Maybe that’s not such a good idea,” he said. “You girls can be so funny about photos.”

The skies blackened. Thunder rumbled in the distance. A light rain started.

“What do you want, Wade?” Jack asked.

The rain fell harder.

“Just thought you might like to know that, once again, you get my leftovers.”

Lightning surged overhead, emitting a flare that split the sky in two. I briefly saw every hollow in Jack’s face glint like ice. Then a bolt touched down just across the parking lot from us, hitting a lamp pole and erupting in a fountain of hissing and bubbling sparks.

“Holy crap!” I said, lifting my feet as fiery tinsel danced over the brick courtyard.

Jack let out a sound so pained and raw I thought he’d been struck, though when I looked at him, he was still on his feet, clearly agitated, but physically able.

“The end of days,” Wade said, laughing and holding his arms out to the elements. I wondered at his delight in this change in the weather. “But darn. An inside practice.” He turned and jogged back toward the school.

I still sat like a stone on the brick ledge. Jack paced in front of me.

“Were you really with him?” he asked, his voice a snarl.

“Once. The night before school started.” Mine was barely a whisper.

“At the Asking Fire you said you didn’t know him.”

The skies darkened, and the rain fell harder.

“I lied. I’m sorry. It’s just . . . he was the first to act like it never happened. And after I figured out what kind of jerk he was, I was more than happy to play along.”

I didn’t like the look on Jack’s face, mostly because I couldn’t pinpoint the emotion.

“What happened?” he asked, his voice tense.

I looked at my shoes. “He took me out to the quarry. We drank beer.” I paused, not wanting to own up to my behavior, not to Jack, anyway. “And some hard alcohol. There’s a portion of the evening I don’t remember.”

Jack jumped up as if hit. For the tiniest moment, he frightened me. The rain was pelting us now. I could hear it drumming over the cars and rooftops. I saw every taut muscle in his jaw, neck, and shoulders ripple through his T-shirt, now drenched with rain. This had to be anger. What else would set him off like that?

“He’s been accused by girls before. Why would you put yourself in such a dangerous position? You barely knew him.”

“It was stupid. I know,” I said. There really was no good way to defend my behavior. I’d gone willingly with a creep like Wade. And being duped by a bullish charm was no excuse for recklessness. I worried Jack would think I was that kind of girl. And if that wasn’t enough to stress over, we’d also managed to unleash the wrath of Wade. “There’s more. He asked me to the dance on Saturday. I turned him down, and wasn’t too gracious about it. And I told him about us. I think it made him angrier. He called it a curse.”

The rain started coming so hard, I felt like I was drowning: an ocean falling around us.

Jack started pacing back and forth in front of me; he seemed barely able to contain himself. His fists were closed tightly against his chest, and his shoulders balled into an angry forward knot. “Can’t control,” I heard him mutter. “Too close” was another fragment I picked up. The worst part of it was he couldn’t look at me. His pacing continued, but at least he spared me any more comments. Jack then took a swipe at some invisible foe, like he was swinging at the cold rain that blasted us head-on. He turned to me, walking the few short feet that separated us with heavy steps.

Another clap of thunder, louder and closer this time, crashed against the gunmetal gray sky. Jack looked around wildly, as if searching for something in the roiling clouds.

“It’s just that . . .” he started. “Too much . . . can’t trust . . . I can’t . . .” He went to touch my arm, but pulled away.

“Jack . . .”

He started jogging toward the parking lot.

“Wait,” I yelled.

He turned briefly. Lightning split the sky behind him, and then he was gone.

For many minutes I sat there in a fierce downpour, replaying it all. He was definitely mad — at me. He let himself get too close — to me. Chided himself for having trusted — me. Rain struck me like stones. I stood, and the John Deere cap tumbled to the ground. It was soaked through and now muddy. I lifted it, fingering its dirty band, and then tucked it under my arm.

I drove home in a fog. The storm got worse. The kind of maelstrom that pierced your soul. The skies grew darker still, the clouds themselves shading to an onyx black, as if pulling the sorrow right out of my chest. I went straight to my room. When things get bad, the bad go to bed. And I felt very bad.

I must have burrowed under my covers for only an hour, though it seemed a hundred years. Outside I heard the raging storm. Rain fell hard, a continuous wall of water. From time to time lightning flared and was followed by a jolting clap of thunder. I rolled onto my side. The clock on my nightstand read five p.m. I had two hours until my appointment with Hulda. Let’s hope two days had been sufficient for her to do her “thinking.” If so much about my dreams had already been unusual, what would Hulda say when I reported that my mom was now involved?

I sat up, but sadness tugged at my shoulders. How had Jack, in two days’ time, become so important to me? Two days. It seemed hard to believe. He’d transitioned from an improbable request of the Asking Fire to hiking partner to fellow drowning survivor and twenty-four-hour boyfriend. And in that same compacted forty-eight hours, I’d survived a bear encounter, recovered buried memories, identified my mother as a vessel, and driven Jack away. Was this some sort of Stork sorority hazing? Cruel pecking order? All Hulda had to do was figure out what symbol the wind represented. Talk about executive privilege.

I was sliding my feet into a pair of Alegria clogs — backless the only option due to blisters from yesterday — and wondering why my feet hadn’t bothered me at school, when I heard a familiar voice, deep and resonant, call my name.

Dad? At first it was a question to myself. “Dad?” This time called out loud.

I ran out of my room, down the stairs, and there he was, removing a black leather coat dripping with rain and dropping it on the sofa. I collapsed into his arms. He wasn’t expecting it and had to take a bracing step to support me. I cried. It was pitiful, but I couldn’t help it.

“Oh, Kitty Kat,” he said. “What’s the matter?”

“Everything.”

He lifted me off the ground, just a little, and cradled me under his chin. It felt like I was five years old. I wished I was five years old. “Your mom called me last night. I got here as soon as I could.”

The events of yesterday shuffled to the forefront of my to-deal-with list. I froze to death five years ago. He and my mom had lost me, found me, hid it from me, and finally lost each other. Ugh.

“I’m still processing it all.” This was the truth.

He set me down. “We didn’t know what to do. I always wanted to tell you, but the doctor thought . . .”

“I know. Mom told me.” I took a step back. “But I’d have been able to handle it this year, or last year, even the year before that. How could you let me come back here without knowing?”

“I didn’t want to, hon. And it was a hard secret to keep.”

“That’s the thing,” I said, emotion building with every word. “It wasn’t yours to keep. It was mine.”