The A-Word (12 page)

“It’s Sunday night,” Mom said. Her chopsticks—crisscrossed over a fat shrimp—were pointed at her mouth, frozen right where they’d been when Casey’s cell had gone off. “Family night.”

We hadn’t been a real family in a very long time. But the look on her face made me sad. Not sad enough to stop walking.

“We’ll hang out later,” I said. “Maybe watch a cable movie. You can leave the food. I’ll clean it up when I get home.”

I heard her chair scrape and knew she was following me so I hustled faster. Out the door. Down the driveway like the house was on fire. Casey was already backing up the Merc. “Wait!” I hollered. “Casey. Wait!” I raced forward, catching up with him, pounding my hand on the Merc’s hood.
Bam. Bam
.

My brother slammed on the brakes.

“What the hell, Jenna?” he bellowed. I could hear him even though the windows were shut. “Go back inside.”

But he hadn’t pressed the gas again so I yanked open the passenger door and flung myself in. Casey rammed the gear shift into park.

“No.”

“Go,” he said.

“What part of no didn’t you understand?”

Casey pushed at me. “Get out.”

I was puffing up to holler at him some more when out of the corner of my eye, I spied Mrs. Gilroy standing in the middle of her fake graveyard, crying.

I did not have time for this. I seriously did not.

But out of the car I went. Why? I wasn’t exactly sure. But
if I had to say, it would be this: Mrs. Gilroy was nice. She made us Christmas fudge. And my family had been hurt by Dr. Renfroe—a man who had hurt old folks like her in the name of science. The way I looked at it, what else could I do?

“If you leave without me,” I hollered back to Casey, “I will post all your naked baby pictures on the Spring Creek High website and Photoshop Lanie Phelps into them.” I raced over to her yard.

“How did this happen?” Mrs. Gilroy had dropped to her knees in front of the
SULLY ANDERSON
tombstone.

“It’s okay,” I said, bending to pat her back. “I finished it for you. Last night.”

“What?” she said.

“I painted your tombstones.” I did not add that Amber had helped, had in fact painted the
SULLY ANDERSON
stone. She looked confused enough. Maybe she figured it was a Halloween miracle or something.

“I’m sorry,” I added when she kept looking miserable. “I can fix them, if you want. Did you have other names picked out?”

Maybe the Fido one offended her. Maybe she had an Aunt Matilda who actually
had
been conked on the cranium by an oak tree. Things happened. My family was certainly proof of that.

“You don’t have to cry,” I said. I stood then and held out a hand to haul her up.

“She needs to go home,” I heard my brother say from across the driveway.

I swiveled my head. Mom had joined him. Wonderful. They were standing together next to the Merc. I hated when people talked about me like I was invisible.

I turned back to Mrs. Gilroy. Her mouth kept moving, but
nothing else came out. Her glasses had slipped down on their beaded chain and were now guarding her chin. Her eyes—a faded blue—were spilling over. One tear got stuck in a wrinkle on her cheek. It was not a pretty picture, but what is when you’re bawling?

All of a sudden, Casey was standing there with us.

I whipped around. Mom was walking back toward the house.

“Let her go,” Casey said. I did. I didn’t even argue about it.

He sat down on the grass next to Mrs. Gilroy. He took both her hands in his, calm and slow like he had all the time in the world. Like he hadn’t just raced out with some secret agenda. The air around them lit bright, then brighter. Stronger even than those Halloween lights strung on the Gilroy’s trees.

“What’s wrong?” he asked her, his voice strong but gentle as a breeze. “It’s MJ, isn’t it?” The hairs on the back of my neck rose one by one. My brain kicked into overdrive, processing. Thinking. Realizing. MJ was Mr. Gilroy, who had liver-colored age spots on his jowly cheeks and favored one-piece Dickey overalls and who was getting too elderly to climb the ladder stringing lights at Christmas.

Mrs. Gilroy nodded.

“Betsy,” my brother said, using her first name that I didn’t even remember she had. “MJ’s been short of breath lately. He’s telling you it’s allergies. But maybe he’s not right about that. You know us guys, Betsy. We’re pigheaded sometimes. Here’s what I think: his heart isn’t pumping like it should be. You probably need to take him to the doctor. That St. Anthony’s Emergency Center’s open on Sundays if you’re worried about waiting at Houston Northside. But the hospital’s a good place, too. They fixed me and Jenna right up after our
accident, remember? You think you could get him in the car and take him? Or Jenna and I could cart you. If MJ’ll let us.”

My mouth was hanging open now. Full-on fly-catching jaw drop.

Helping Donny Sneed win the football game was one thing. A funny thing—sort of. This was … My pulse slammed, my skin was prickled, and I thought:
I am stupid. I am stupid
. How did I not know? Casey was helping Mrs. Gilroy stand now and then patting her back, a
there, there
kind of pat.

“I’ll take him,” she said, her voice thin but determined. “You’re right. You’re right. He’s been taking those Claritin. You can buy them over the counter now, did you know? But he’s so tired. And I thought it was his hip. But you’re right.”

“Take him tonight, Betsy. You promise you’ll take him tonight? Now?”

Mrs. Gilroy nodded again. “Let me walk you inside,” Casey said. “I’ll be in the Merc,” I said, more to myself than anybody else. I climbed into the passenger seat, cut the engine because the car was still running, and sat and thought. Ryan’s fabulous lips didn’t even enter the picture. Which was a shame.

Less than a minute later, my brother reappeared.

“You painted her fake tombstones?” He stared at me hard, like this was a crime.

I shrugged. “Me and Amber.” I stared right back. “You’re an angel,” I said. Which sounded stupid, but that’s how it came out.

“Amber? When the hell was Amber here?”

“Last night. And don’t change the topic.”

“Jenna,” Casey said and then sighed. “You know what I am.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t. Not like this.”

My brother said nothing.

“It’s that Spidey sense thing, isn’t it?” I asked when the silence got boring, and Casey had begun fiddling with the car keys and peeking at his cell phone which was blinking like crazy because he was running late to wherever he was going.

“But you can’t read people’s minds, right?” I said, having the conversation with myself. “Y’all keep telling me it doesn’t work like that.”

Another sigh. His cell rang, loudly, even though I could see he had it on silent. After like ten rings it stopped.

I tried to collect my thoughts. “You toke up still. You bitch and moan over Lanie. You—”

“I don’t … I don’t need the full replay.” Casey sounded peeved. Somehow this made me perkier. He brushed a hand over my shoulder and I scooted away.

“Explain,” I said.

He pursed his lips. Turned the key and revved up the Merc but did not shove it in gear. “It’s you,” he said. “At least mostly.”

Something hard lodged in my throat. “What?” I tried to swallow around the boulder or whatever it was, but my mouth was too dry. MSG in the fried rice, probably.

“I’m your guardian, Jenna. You care about Mrs. Gilroy. And don’t deny it. You painted her damn fake tombstones. I think … no, I don’t think. I know. Amber says it comes from that. Bo agrees with her, I think, although right now … I don’t understand the physics exactly, but that’s the short of it. I can read her, sort of, because of you.”

He looked at me even harder, serious as I’d ever seen him. Plus he’d referenced physics, which was freaking me out. Even after he’d pulled himself together last year, he had still failed Teen Leadership—which he was now retaking. And
more troubling, he was talking to Amber about me. He was talking to Bo about me.

“Me?” I squeaked.

Casey backed the Merc down the driveway, eyes on the rearview now. “Yeah. Crazy, right?”

“Well,” I said as he shoved the car in drive and floored it. We lurched, then sped down the block. Maybe tomorrow, after he finally, finally took me for my permit, I would practice. I would drive slower than this, that was for sure.

“Well, what?”

“Prove it.”

He glared at the road. “It’s true. You don’t have to do a test for it.”

I almost laughed. He was trying to turn the tables on me, referring to my Angel Test, the one I’d come up with when I was having trouble believing that my brother was not the same as he’d been before our car accident. I’d even dyed his hair Champagne Blonde with Mom’s Clairol products just to see if I could change his looks—which of course I couldn’t. Also, I had no idea where we were going.

“If it’s true, then you can prove it.”

We hung a right out of our neighborhood, heading west, then over the railroad tracks. He screeched to a halt as the light turned red.

“Is Mr. Gilroy really sick?” I pressed.

“I think so, yes.”

“Is he going to die?”

Casey tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. Checked the mirrors even though we were stopped. “You need to look in that rearview regularly,” he informed me. “You never know what kind of lunatic might be speeding up to rear-end you ’cause he’s yakking on his phone.”

“Casey.”

“Don’t know. I can’t know. But he’s sick and she was scared and he was stubborn. I think she’ll take him now. If she does, it could be okay.”

“But I don’t even think about them,” I said. “They don’t matter to me like … well, they don’t.”

The light turned green and Casey floored it again, hanging a left under the bridge, onto the feeder and then onto I-45 headed south. Toward Houston. Joining the stream of headlights as the sun dropped out of sight.

“Bo?” I asked, nodding toward his phone.

“Bo,” he said. He drove with his left, called on his cell with his right. “You still there?” he said into the phone after a couple seconds. “I’m coming. There was a—I’ll be there quick as I can.” He tossed the phone into the cup holder. Signaled a lane change and passed a pickup with its blinkers on. He didn’t explain further. I didn’t ask.

“You care about everybody, Jenna,” Casey blurted out. “You do. It’s around you. It’s
in
you. It’s … you. I never knew it before. Never cared to know it. I know it now. I see it and feel it even if I want to ignore it, which I can’t. It’s like—energy. Yours. Theirs. And it feeds into me. So I can tell what you need, Amber says. It’s not like at first, when I … It’s different now. It’s constant.”

I stared at him, trying to understand. “But you don’t know what your purpose is?”

“Nope. But I know this. I know it all the damn time. It’s—it’s loud.”

“Like me,” I said, not even meaning to.

Casey almost smiled. “Yeah. But not always accurate. I guess I’m not that good at it yet or something. Or maybe everyone you know has loud problems.”

That was entirely possible.

“Truth?” I asked.

“Truth,” he said. “For real.”

I gave him the stink eye. “You still haven’t proved it.”

“You don’t want to believe me, that’s your problem.”

“You don’t have to be such a dick about it.”

He laughed then. “Of course I do.”

Did
I believe him? Mostly. I believed there was more to his A-wordishness than I had thought. I believed that he knew when I was upset about something, but he was my brother. If he paid attention, he didn’t have to be an angel to know that. Same with the Gilroys. They were older than Moses. No big surprise if they were feeling poorly.

“What about Amber and Bo?” I asked. “Can you read them?”

That would make the whole thing easier. I cared about Amber, sort of. Bo … I wasn’t sure. But maybe Casey could use that energy or whatever to find out what Amber’s damage was all about. Maybe they’d reward him by giving him his flight back. Something. The downtown skyline loomed closer—all those tall buildings. In my head, I imagined Bo Shivers leaping off each of them in slow motion. I still had no idea exactly where we were going. With anything, not just this particular car ride.

“Nope,” Casey said. “With other angels it’s different.”

I pondered this. What if someone
could
read Bo? What would that someone see in his head? “Casey,” I said, drawing out his name while I formulated my question. “What do you think it feels like for Bo to fall like that? You haven’t … I mean …”

Casey’s eyes stayed on the road. “Don’t know,” he said. But the way he said it, I wondered if he did.

I jumped when my phone vibrated in my pocket. I peeked at it.
Sweet dreams. See you tomorrow in the Commons area during break. R
.

See you
, I texted back, spelling out
you
like he had.

I liked that he had taken the time to use the whole word. I guess that was the writer in him. It made me feel special. I rubbed my thumb over my mustang head necklace. If I had not been in A-word land, my heart would have flailed its jazz hands again. Instead, I thought:
This stuff Casey is trying to explain … is it like hearing Bo chuckle in my head—only more? What if he knew when things were wrong with my friends? Would I want to know?

“What about Ryan? Is he okay?” I felt momentarily bad that I hadn’t looped Maggie in there, too. But she was my best friend. If she was fixing to have a coronary, she’d at least text me that she was feeling out of sorts. Probably blabber about how the universe had some grand plan. I loved that about Maggie, who knew I would be there for her no matter what. And that she would be there for me. But Ryan was another story. One I wanted to continue.

“Wait,” I said, as Casey opened his mouth. “Don’t tell me. If you’re in his head, get out of there!”

Turn signal again. We were getting off the freeway. Midtown.

“Ryan’s fine,” Casey said. “The pissant.”

“La la la,” I told him, holding my ears. “I am not listening.” Even if I was, it was hard to focus. So much happening all at once. “I have a plan,” I blurted because telling him this was something I could control.