The Body Finder (14 page)

BY FRIDAY, DAY FIVE OF JAY'S EVASION OF VIOLET,
she was starting to feel abandoned for good. It wasn't as if she didn't have other friends, but it just so happened that
he
was her favorite one. Besides, it was hard seeing him all day long, sitting so close to him in classes and passing him in the hallways, unable to talk to him. She supposed she could try, but the idea that he might give her the silent treatment in return was devastating to Violet, and she wasn't quite willing to set herself up for that kind of rejection.

Story of my life,
she thought miserably. She was never willing to put herself out there.

She bit into her apple just as Chelsea was sitting down
beside her at the lunch table.

“Where's new-Jay?” Chelsea asked, unable to let the joke die. She'd been singing that same ol' song for the past week, and every time she did, it bugged Violet a little bit more. That was probably why Chelsea hadn't given it up yet; she could probably
smell
Violet's irritation.

Instead of correcting Chelsea, yet again, Violet looked around the cafeteria and realized that Grady was nowhere to be seen. That was a first, at least in the space of the past five days, and Violet found it strange that she hadn't even noticed his absence.

Violet shrugged in answer to Chelsea's question.

She felt a mild pang of sadness for Grady, who had been running around in circles in an effort just to be near her. But more than any regret she had over Grady's misplaced affections, she was grateful for the moment of peace.

At least it
had
been peaceful…until Chelsea sat down.

It wasn't long before Jules and Claire were joining them.

“Where's new-Jay?” Jules asked, and then she and Chelsea exchanged a look and started cracking up at their own joke.

Even Claire, who was generally so serious about everything, giggled a little.

Violet rolled her eyes. “How long did it take you geniuses to plan that little gem?” she accused her friends, which only made them laugh harder. She shook her head. “You two are idiots,” she said, biting into her apple again and deciding to ignore them.

“Which is it, Violet?” Claire asked. “Are they geniuses or idiots?”

Chelsea leaned into Jules now, laughing so hard at their
stupid joke that no sound was even coming out of her mouth anymore.

Violet looked from Chelsea to Jules and then back to Claire. “Idiots,” she stated flatly.

There was another long moment as the Two Stooges struggled to regain their composure.

“Come on, Vi. If we can't joke about new-Jay, who
can
we joke about?” Chelsea asked, finally getting herself under control. She used a paper napkin to dab at her watering eyes.

“Joke about whatever you want,” Violet stated as blandly as possible. “It's not your fault you're not funny.”

“Oh, I'm funny all right. I'm freakin' hilarious. You're the one who's lost her sense of humor,” Chelsea lobbed back at her.

Violet was about to argue the point with Chelsea, but her comeback got lost in her throat when she saw Jay walking in.

“Oh, look, there's old-Jay,” Claire said nonchalantly. “And he's with Lissie Adams.”

Violet had seen that too.

They walked in like they were old friends. Jay was smiling down at Lissie while he carried his tray of food. Lissie was walking as close to him as she could get and still maintain her balance. Lissie's best friend, a girl who had spent her entire high school career being socially eclipsed by Lissie's über-popularity, seemed content to be trailing behind the two of them. As a couple, Jay and Lissie looked like they'd been clipped from the pages of a Hollywood gossip magazine, with their faultless good looks and their perfect smiles. Lissie even had her own entourage. The only thing missing was the red carpet.

But they weren't a couple,
Violet argued to herself,
were they?

Violet's chest suddenly felt heavy, crushed beneath the weight of her own unanswered questions. What if they
were
a couple now? What if her stupid stunt at the mall last weekend had pushed Jay far enough away that he'd replaced her with Lissie? Had that really been less than a week ago?

What if she'd lost her chance with him?

As if there'd ever really been a chance for her at all.

Violet looked wistfully their way once more, wondering if she'd just been fooling herself. They were sitting side by side, at the table where Lissie sat every day with those she deemed good enough to be her friends. She was snuggled up against Jay and saying something that was obviously meant only for his ears.

He truly was a great guy; especially in the ways that really counted beyond his new gorgeous exterior where he was still Jay…smart, funny, sweet. Why had she never seen him more clearly before he'd metamorphosed into the very image of hotness that every girl in school was catfighting one another just to get close to?

But he wasn't perfect, she reminded herself as she watched him sitting at Lissie's table. He was incredibly stubborn and pigheaded. Plus, she didn't miss the way he stole the remote when they watched TV or how he always ate all of her chips at lunch. At least she tried to tell herself she didn't.

He never looked up from his conversation with Lissie. He didn't even glance her way, although Violet was sure he knew she was there…sitting in the same old place, with the same
old friends. While he tested his weight on the delicate ice of new and upwardly mobile social circles, she was still just the same old Violet.

Chelsea seemed to sense that this was no time for joking, and she backed off the new-Jay, old-Jay thing…at least for the moment. She put her arm around Violet. “Hey, don't worry about them. Elisabeth Adams is no different from any other girl in school who's been dying to get her claws in him. She's shallow and boring,” Chelsea tried her best to reassure Violet. “She's just another brainless cheerleader.”

“Besides,” Claire piped in, “I hear she's a slut. I hear that she gives it up to all the guys. Half the football players call her ‘Kneepads,' if you know what I mean.”

Of course she knew what Claire meant; how could she
not
understand the barely subtle innuendo? And why on earth did Claire think that
that
little tidbit of information would make Violet feel better?

Claire might have been the only one at the table who didn't notice the icy glare and the scathing tone that Chelsea shot her way.
“No way,”
Chelsea disagreed. “Prissie Lissie is all that virginal, pure crap. She's one of those girls who wears a promise ring to her daddy that she won't give it up till she's married or some shit like that. There's no way that Jay could even get to third base with her tight, Christian ass.”

It was supposed to be a pep talk; Violet knew that and tried not to fault her for it. It was Chelsea's way of showing her unconditional support for her friend. But somehow, Violet ended up feeling even worse than before. Now she couldn't
stop picturing Lissie and Jay making out in his mom's car, with his hand beneath her shirt…rounding first base and heading for second. She felt sick.

That was definitely a mental image she could live without, and she wished at that moment that she could gouge out her own mind's eye to make it go away.

“So, that pretty much settles it, Violet. You are
definitely
going out with us tonight,” Chelsea insisted. “Olivia Hildebrand throws the best parties, and you could use a night out. It's BYOB, but I'm having my older sister buy for us, so if you just pitch in a coupla bucks I'll take care of the booze.”

Violet had already told Chelsea that she didn't want to go to the party. What she really wanted to do, all she could even imagine doing tonight, was putting on her most comfortable sweatpants and crawling into bed to watch old movies.

She started to object, but Chelsea interrupted her. “Trust me, Vi. Don't sit around by yourself tonight. Tell your parents you're staying at my house and we'll go out and get stupid. Forget about Jay. Forget about Lissie.” She put on her best pout and gave Violet a doe-eyed look that was more sarcastic than serious.
“Pretty, pretty plee-eease!”

“Come on, it'll be fun,” Jules cajoled in her usual brief manner. She was nearly as incapable of tagging multiple words together as Chelsea was at any form of true sincerity.

“Ooh, and if you don't have anything to wear, you can borrow something from me,” Claire added, as though that was Violet's only hang-up about going.

It was Violet's turn to laugh as she looked at her friends,
each trying in her own pitiful way to make Violet feel better about losing Jay. She wanted to say no, but suddenly she couldn't. Maybe they were right; maybe what she needed was a girls' night out, even if it would end up being at a crowded party with a bunch of her drunken classmates.

“Fine.”
Violet finally succumbed to the pressure. “But you'll have to pick me up. My parents won't let me out of the house by myself. They think we're safer traveling in packs.”

“That's my girl.” Chelsea crumpled her empty brown lunch sack into a ball and tossed it toward the garbage can at the end of the table. She missed by a mile, but ignored that fact completely, leaving her garbage where it landed on the ground. “I'll call you when I'm on my way.”

She and Claire took off to their next class, leaving Violet to walk with Jules, who was heading in the same direction she was.

They had to walk past Lissie's table on their way out, and Violet was surprised to see that Jay was no longer sitting there with the senior girls. She'd never even seen him leave. But somehow, Violet realized, she had attracted Lissie's attention, and as Violet and Jules walked past, the cheerleader stopped talking to her friends and watched Violet intently.

It was strange, the look in the other girl's eyes, kind of defensive…almost
challenging
. It was as if
Lissie
was jealous of
her
…and was really pissed off about it.

Violet wanted to tell her that she had nothing to worry about just to make her stop glaring like that. She wanted to tell her that she and Jay weren't even friends anymore, let
alone anything beyond that. But there was no point in it. From what Violet had seen in the cafeteria that day, Lissie was already getting her way, and she'd soon realize that Violet was no competition for her.

Suddenly the party seemed like a great idea.

 

By the time Violet had dressed and re-dressed several times, she was starting to think that maybe Claire had been right, that maybe she should have borrowed something from the self-proclaimed “fashionista.”

She finally landed on a pair of her better jeans, coupled with a cute black top and some black flats. She added a beaded necklace and matching earrings and checked herself out in the mirror. She rarely wore makeup but had decided that this was a special occasion—her night out with the girls to forget Jay—so she'd sparingly accented her green eyes with a touch of eyeliner and gingerly applied a coat of black mascara.

The effect was somewhat dramatic, making her eyes look exotic rather than ordinary.

She glossed her lips.
Not bad,
she thought, tucking a wild wisp of hair behind her ear.

Her cell phone rang with the standard, preprogrammed ringtone that had come with the phone. Violet hadn't even bothered to change it, feeling a little like she would be dancing on the graves of the girls who had gone missing—figuratively, of course—if she were to enjoy her new phone for anything other than the utilitarian purpose for which it had been purchased.

She flipped it open, and before she could say hello, Jules
was yelling into her ear, “Get your fine little ass in gear, girl! We're out in your driveway!”

Violet could hear screams and shrieks of laughter in the background. She decided she'd better get out there fast before they alerted her parents, and they changed their minds about letting her go out tonight.

“Keep it down, or I'm not going anywhere,” she insisted into the phone, and then snapped it shut without so much as a good-bye.

She grabbed her purse and hurried down the stairs two at a time.

“Chelsea's here. I'll see you in the morning!”

“Be careful!” her mom yelled back.

“Keep your phone on,” her dad called out without raising his voice. “Just in case,” he added.

THEY COULD HEAR THE PARTY LONG BEFORE
they ever reached Olivia Hildebrand's house. Music similar to what had been playing inside Chelsea's car was booming…only much,
much
louder. The four of them climbed out of the tiny Mazda and trudged up the long driveway that was overflowing with cars. Violet scanned the vehicles, silently hoping against hope that she would see Jay's mom's car parked among the rest. But it wasn't there, and she decided to set that impossible wish aside.

Still, Violet found herself smiling when they reached the front door, her arms filled with cheap alcohol that she probably wouldn't even drink. The music was loud and her friends were louder. She could hear kids from inside the party calling
out to them as they walked up to the front doors. Their enthusiasm was contagious.

Violet loved going to parties, mostly just so she could see what everyone was like outside of school. They became different people when they were away from campus. These were the same kids she'd gone to school with ever since she was a little girl. But here, at night and away from that familiar institution they attended five days a week, away from the cliques that governed where they sat and who they hung out with on a daily basis, they were free to be whoever they wanted to be. Of course, the booze helped to loosen those sharply defined social lines a little.

“Violet!
Vi-o-let!
” she heard a boy's voice screaming to her from the other side of the kitchen as she set her load down on the counter. Swarming teens began to reach in and take what they wanted even before she'd taken her hands off the alcohol she'd carried in.

“Oh, good,” Chelsea yelled above the noise without even looking to see who was screaming Violet's name. She set her bags on the counter with the rest. “Your fan club's here.”

Violet looked in that general direction to see who it was, and when she saw him her stomach dropped.

Grady was there, weaving his way through the crowd of noisy teens and heading right toward her.

“Oh God,” Violet breathed, leaning in close to Chelsea so that only she could hear what she was about to say. “It's
new
-Jay.”

Chelsea couldn't contain her laughter, as Violet finally came over to the dark side, and it came out in kind of a half
snort, which made her laugh even harder. “Here,” she said, grabbing Violet by the arm and practically dragging her in the opposite direction…
away from Grady
. “We'll pretend we didn't see him.”

They ducked quickly through a hallway that wrapped past the bedrooms and back around to the family room behind the kitchen. They were near the spot where Grady had been when he'd started yelling for her, and now he was nowhere in sight. The two girls were giggling as if they'd pulled off some great stunt by dodging him.

“Think we lost him?” Violet asked as they tried to blend into the crowd.

Chelsea grabbed two clear bottles of the tastes-more-like-juice, fruit-flavored drinks from the counter and handed one to Violet. She twisted off the little metal cap and then clinked the top of hers against Violet's. “Here's hoping,” she said and guzzled her drink.

Violet took a swallow of the Kool-Aid-like wine cooler. She couldn't imagine why she'd thought she wanted to stay home by herself tonight. Chelsea had been right; the party had been
exactly
what she'd needed.

As the night went on, Violet immersed herself in the music and the laughter, letting the noise become a riotous screen that made it impossible for her to think of anything beyond the present. She couldn't find the time to feel sorry for herself in this raucous, self-indulgent environment of kids with too much alcohol and no parental supervision.

She watched beer games in the kitchen, a fight in the front yard—which wasn't really a fight at all, more like an
overblown shoving match—and she saw two people puking before the night was over. One was Todd Stinnett, a boy from her second-period class, who had chugged one too many beers at the Quarters table. The other was a freshman girl, Mackenzie Sherwin, who wandered outside to throw up in the bushes. Unfortunately for Mackenzie, she didn't get her hair out of the way in time and ended up walking around for the rest of the night with the matted strands dangling around her face.

A group of stoners thought the poor girl was hilarious and made puking noises at her every time she stumbled past them.

By the time Grady finally caught up with Violet, it was nearly midnight, and when he got close to her she wasn't even sure
how
he was still standing upright. He was completely wasted.

“Where've ya been? I've been lookin' everywhere for you.” His words were a slurred mess, and he wrapped an arm heavily around her shoulders. Violet wondered if it wasn't so much a gesture of affection as it was a means of maintaining his precarious balance.

But she was worried about him, even though she played innocent, pretending that she
hadn't
been avoiding him all night. “I've been around,” she answered with a straight face. “Besides, it looks like you had plenty of fun without me.” She tried to move out from beneath the weight of his arm. He was leaning on her so hard that it felt like he was trying to push her down to the ground.

Her sudden shift made him lose his shaky balance, and he ended up hanging on even tighter, putting most of his unstable weight on her. “Don't go,” he pleaded, his hot breath
thick with the pungent smell of stale beer and tequila.

The combination was foul.

On the other side of the room she saw Chelsea talking with a group of girls. She flashed Violet a questioning look with her eyes. Violet just rolled her own in response and then looked back at Grady. She wanted to get away from him and go back to her friends, but she didn't want to leave him alone in his condition. He was a mess. And he
was
her friend.

“I think we should get you home,” she finally offered. She hadn't had anything to drink since that sip of wine cooler earlier in the night, so she knew she was fine to drive him. “Give me your keys.”

He closed one eye as if it were easier to focus that way as he reached into his pocket and pulled out his keys. He stared at her as he jiggled them in front of her face. “I can drive….” His mouth made his words sound like mush.

Violet reached out and snatched them from his hand. His reflexes were way too slow to stop her, and when he finally tried, he was about five seconds too late. The sudden movement nearly made him fall over, almost taking Violet with him.

Violet struggled to keep them both upright. “Come on, Grady. I owe you one anyway.”

He gave her his one-eyed squint again. “What d'ya mean?”

She didn't bother explaining that he'd bailed her out the other day by taking her to the cemetery when she'd needed to go to Brooke Johnson's grave. In fact, she didn't say anything to Grady, and he didn't ask again or argue about driving himself. He seemed to give up as he leaned on Violet and she led him out of the house. She lifted the keys up as
they passed Chelsea, silently letting her know where she was going.

The air had cooled as the night had gone on and the brisk snap to it seemed to have a
mildly
sobering effect on Grady…which at this point was a vast improvement. His car was farther down the road than Chelsea's was, thanks to Chelsea's small car and her creative definition of “parked,” which to her consisted of lodging it, cockeyed and nose first, into a gap between two other parked cars.

The tall cedar and fir trees towering overhead all but blocked most of the light cast by the nearly full moon, creating ghostly shadows that fell across them as they walked, or in Grady's case, stumbled, toward his car. But by the time they reached it, he was walking mostly on his own accord again…he was no longer swaggering from side to side.

Violet helped him around to the passenger-side door and held it open for him.

But Grady wasn't ready to go just yet.

“Thanks a lot, Violet. I really appreciate this.” Even his words sounded a little less sloppy now.

“It's no problem. I was getting a little bored anyway.” And then when he gave her a look that said he didn't believe her, she added, “Seriously. I'm kind of tired too.” She made an effort to sound convincing.

He straightened up from where he'd been leaning against the doorjamb and took a step closer to her. He was standing over her now, and she suddenly felt somewhat trapped between him and the open car door…stuck between a rock and a hard place.

“We could hang out here for a while.” He slid his arm around her waist.

She wasn't sure how she should react; even though she knew what he was trying to do, she had no doubt that she did not want him doing it. But she was frozen to the spot where she stood.

He leaned in, moving toward her, his other arm snaking around to pull her up against him. His grip was tight…
too tight…
and Violet didn't like the feeling creeping over her, the sensation that he wasn't
asking
her if he could do this. The feeling that this was all out of her control.

The goose bumps that broke out on her arms had little to do with the nighttime chill.

He dipped his head down, and all at once Violet found her voice again. “No, Grady!” she insisted, turning her head away before his lips were on top of hers.
“Don't!”

She tried to duck beneath his arms but his grip tightened, squeezing her even harder against his chest. Her heart felt like it was tripping over itself now, and she was suddenly afraid of where this was going.

He put his mouth against her ear and whispered hoarsely while his lips clumsily caressed her earlobe. “It's okay, Violet. I won't tell anyone if you don't want me to.” He made it sound like an invitation, but the forcefulness of his actions was making it feel more and more like a command. His tongue flicked out and stroked the side of her neck in what Violet feared was his version of seduction.

Violet was vaguely aware of the sound of tires approaching, and she could see headlights getting closer. She thought
about calling out for help, but she was also afraid that she might be overreacting.

She was sure she could handle this herself.

Grady tried once again to kiss her, searching out her mouth, and this time she pushed him with both hands pressed against his chest, shoving him back as she tried to crane her head out of his way. “
Stop it
, Grady. I mean it!” She was surprised that she sounded so strong. At least her voice wasn't as shaky as she felt.

But he was bigger and stronger than she was, and his hands reached up behind her to the back of her head, ignoring her denials and pinning her in place. When his mouth finally landed on hers, the combination of his alcohol-soaked breath and his brutish unrestrained actions made her quiver sickly beneath him. His lips were moist and soft, but not in the way that Violet would have hoped for in a kiss, and as his tongue tried to find its way into her mouth it reminded her of a warm, slippery slug.

She felt like she was going to puke.

She struggled against it…
against him…
and her fists pounded uselessly against his chest. She was no longer so sure that she
could
handle this. She writhed her head away long enough to dislodge his mouth from hers, and she took the opportunity to shove her hands upward, covering her face in an effort to block him.

“
Please! Stop!
” she cried, hoping that something would get through to him and he would stop trying to force himself on her. She hoped that he would snap to his senses and realize, once and for all, what an ass he was being.

What she really wished was that he would just let her go.

And then he did. But not in the way she'd imagined.

He jerked away from her, and she heard a strangled sound escape from him as his body slammed against the side of his own car. She was pushing so hard against him, trying to keep
away
from him, that when his arms actually released her, she banged her head on the doorjamb. She heard a loud, dull thud, and then a whimper that could have been any wounded animal.

Violet tried to keep up with what was going on, but her brain still felt fuzzy—muddled—from Grady's unexpected groping. At first she thought that he must have slipped and fallen, or that maybe she'd shoved him harder than she thought, even though she doubted she could have knocked him down on her own.

When she realized what was really happening, she almost couldn't believe her own eyes.

Jay was there, and he was standing over Grady, who was now lying in a crumpled heap at his feet. The look on Jay's face was as murderous as Violet had ever seen on anyone before, and he was clenching and unclenching his fist as he glared violently at Grady.

She looked down and saw that Grady was holding one hand over his mouth, and there was blood seeping from between his fingers. He held his other hand up in surrender. “Stop!
Stop!
”

Jay seemed to have a difficult time deciding. And then he leaned over, his fist balling up again, ready to strike, as he reached in and jerked Grady forward by the collar of his shirt. “Isn't that what Violet said to you, you jerk? Didn't she tell you to stop?”

Grady recoiled, curling up as tightly as he could and
pulling his arm around his face. “Please! Don't—” But he didn't finish his sentence as his voice cracked vulnerably.

Violet was stunned. Silent and dazed, she could only stand there and watch, a million unanswered questions spinning in her head.

Where had Jay come from? How long had he been there?

And the one question she was afraid to ask:
where was Lissie tonight?

She hated the conflicting feelings that plagued her at that moment. She was grateful that someone had saved her from Grady's unwanted advances, and even more grateful that that someone turned out to be Jay. At the same time she was appalled that he'd punched Grady, and she felt sort of sorry for Grady despite his overzealous hands and mouth. She was also shocked by the undisguised fury she saw on Jay's face, but she had to admit that she kind of liked that she could stir such a reaction in him. It meant that he cared.