The Pact (20 page)

In the moonlight, the horses began to run.

Delighted, Emily got off her swing and came closer. “When did they give you the key?” she asked. Chris shrugged. “Last weekend.”

“Oh, it's wonderful. Can I get on?”

He grabbed her around the waist and swung her up by the white horse she loved best. “Be my guest,” he said.

Emily climbed onto the wooden horse and, after the carousel made one full revolution, held out her hand to Chris. “You come too,” she urged.

He chose the horse beside hers, and as soon as he was seated he realized his mistake: When Emily was up, he was down, and vice versa. He leaned into her as their horses came level and kissed her cheek. Emily laughed, then leaned back to kiss him.

He slid off his horse and held out his arms for Emily. And then they were lying on the thick painted planks beneath the horses, the churning wooden hooves just clearing their arms and legs. Emily leaned back, her eyes closed, her mind full of the music. Chris slipped his hands up her shirt. Her bra unhooked in the front. And oh, God, she felt good. Soft and full all at the same time, and she smelled of peaches. Chris leaned his head toward the curve of her neck and licked her, certain she would taste of them too. He heard Emily make a noise at the back of her throat, and he took it to mean that she liked this as much as he did.

He slid his hand down the front of her jeans, slipping beneath the waistband of her panties as well, so that his fingers brushed against silky hair. Holding his breath, he inched his fingers downward.

“Stop,” she whimpered. “Chris, stop.”

And when he didn't, she took her fist and clubbed him in the ear.

He reared back, his head ringing like a sonofabitch. But before he could yell at Em he saw the white oval of her face shake in denial, then she was standing. She leaped off the moving carousel, falling once before she gained her footing, leaving Chris spinning in circles.

In THE MOVIES, when things like that happened, the heroine somehow found her way home. But all Emily could think was that in real life the ultimate indignity was having to shove your boyfriend away, then still need him to drive you home.

She felt Chris slide into the seat beside her, and kept her face averted until the overhead light in the Jeep went off. But she did not have to look to know that his jaw would be tight, his lips pressed into a line.

For a moment she wanted to mold herself against him, in hopes that that would make him soften. She remembered being a toddler, screaming to her mother than she wanted to be put down, but clinging all the harder. “Maybe,” she whispered, “we shouldn't see each other for a while.” Chris put the car into drive. And nodded.

Everything about Donna DeFelice was legendary-from her spun-sugar hair to her grapefruit-size breasts to her cheerleader split, the fastest anyone could ever remember seeing at the high school. For two years she had made it clear to Chris that if he was willing, she was available. And finally, pushed over the edge by Emily, he'd decided to reciprocate.

He could not see in the Jeep, and moisture that had fogged the insides of the windows seeped through the shoulder of his shirt when he brushed up against it. Beneath him, Donna writhed on the backseat.

Chris hadn't even taken her out to dinner. She'd put her hand on his leg during the drive to the restaurant and asked what he was really hungry for.

And now she was, remarkably, totally naked, and her hand was wrapped around him, and Chris didn't think she even realized he'd never done this before.

In the thin light from the dashboard, Donna's chest was tinted a luminous green, but magnificent for all that. Her eyes were slitted and her mouth rounded on his own name. The only thing wrong with her was that she wasn't Em.

“Oh, God,” Donna moaned. “Give it to me now.” She pulled him onto her. One thrust, he thought, and I'm gonna lose it. But to his surprise, he wasn't nearly as carried away as he'd expected to be. He felt almost as if he was watching himself from a corner of the car; seeing Donna buck beneath him like an animal he couldn't put a name to.

When it was over she pushed him off her and wriggled into her underwear. Then she curled up under his arm, feeling all wrong there. “That was something,” she breathed, “wasn't it?”

“Something,” Chris agreed. He stared out the windshield, wondering how he could have been stupid enough to think that it was sex he had wanted all along, when in fact he had only wanted Emily. ALL DAY LONG EMILY had hidden in school corridors and ducked into bathrooms so that no one would see her cry. Everywhere she went, though, she heard people talking about the way Chris Harte had been walking with his arm around Donna DeFelice. At sixth period, when Emily had walked toward the trig class she had with Chris and found him leaning over Donna on a bank of lockers just outside the door, she finally broke down. She asked Mrs. McCarthy for a pass to the nurse and had no problem getting the woman to believe she was ill. It wasn't her throat, and it wasn't a fever, but it hurt all the same to be heartbroken.

When her mother came to pick her up, Emily slouched down in the passenger seat and turned her head away. Then she went up to her room and crawled under the covers. She stayed there until it was dark.

Chris's Jeep left at six-fifteen. Emily watched the headlights disappear down Wood Hollow Road until she could not see them anymore. She imagined where Chris would be taking Donna DeFelice on a Friday night. She did not have to imagine what they would be doing.

Disgusted with herself, she sat down at her desk and tried to concentrate on the English paper she had to write by Monday. But she only got as far as sliding the paper clip from the pages she'd drafted. She stared down at the words, reading none of them, and bent the clip back and forth, letting friction work up a heat until it broke apart.

At eleven, when Chris was still not home, Emily's mother knocked on the door and let herself in.

“How are you feeling, honey?” she asked, sitting down beside Emily on the bed. Emily turned toward the wall. “Not good,” she said thickly.

“We can go to the doctor in the morning,” Melanie offered.

“No . . . it's not that. I'm all right. 1 just... I just want to stay up here for a while.”

“And does this have to do with Chris?”

Amazed, Emily whipped around to face her mother. “Who told you?”

Melanie laughed. “It doesn't take a graduate degree to figure out that you two haven't called each other all week.”

Emily ran a hand through her hair. “We had a fight,” she admitted.

“And?”

And what? She certainly wasn't going to tell her mother what they'd been fighting about. “And I think I made him mad enough for him to stay away.” She took a deep breath. “Mom,” she said,

“what do I do to bring him back?”

Melanie looked stunned. “You don't have to do anything. He'll come around.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because you're two halves of a whole,” Melanie said, then kissed her daughter's forehead and left the room.

Emily glanced down at a sharp pain in her forearm to find that she was still holding the jagged edge of the paper clip. Curiously she drew it over her skin, scratching the surface. The red line grew brighter when she traced a second time, and a third. She dug deeper and deeper until she was bleeding, until Chris's initials were carved hard enough into her arm to leave a scar. Chris's Jeep got home shortly after one in the morning. Emily watched him from her bedroom window; he turned on light after light as he worked his way through the kitchen and up the stairs. By the time he entered his own room and started to get ready for bed, Emily had thrown a sweatshirt over her nightgown and stuffed her bare feet into sneakers.

The ground, considerably softened by the recent weather, was damp and soft, and pine needles that had been sleeping beneath snow squelched under her feet. Chris's window was directly over the kitchen. It had been years since she'd done it, but Emily picked up a thin twig and tossed it at the panes of glass. It landed with a light snap, and bounced back toward her. She picked it up from between her feet and threw it again.

This time, a table lamp flared on and Chris's face appeared at the window. Seeing Emily, he opened the sash and stuck his head out. “What are you doing?” he hissed. “Stay there.” Seconds later, he eased open the kitchen door. “What?” he demanded. There was much she had imagined in this reunion, but anger had never been part of it. Remorse, maybe. Joy, acceptance. Certainly not the look that was on Chris's face right now. “I came to ask,” she said, her voice trembling, “if you had a nice time on your date.” Chris swore and rubbed a hand down his face. “I don't need this. I can't do this right now.” He turned on his heel and started back into the house.

“Wait!” Emily cried. Her words were thick with tears, but she lifted her chin and crossed her arms tight over her chest to keep from shaking. “I, um, I have this problem. I broke up with my boyfriend, you see. And I'm pretty upset about it, so I wanted to talk to my best friend.” She swallowed and looked at the black ground. “The thing is, they're both you.”

“Emily,” Chris whispered, and pulled her close.

She tried not to think of the unfamiliar scent of him, something perfumed mixed with something else lush and ripe. Instead Emily concentrated on the way it felt to be next to Chris again. Two halves of a whole.

He kissed her forehead, her eyelids. She buried her face against his shirt. “I can't stand it,” she said, and she was not certain what she was talking about.

Suddenly Chris grasped her wrist. “Jesus,” he said. “You're bleeding.”

“I know. I cut myself.”

“On what?”

Emily shook her head. “It's nothing,” she said. But she let Chris lead her into the kitchen and sit her down while he retrieved a Band-Aid. If he noticed that his own initials were on her arm, he was wise enough to keep silent. She closed her eyes while he touched her with all the care in the world, and she started to heal.

December 1997

Chris had thirty-five square feet to himself.

His cell was painted a strange shade of gray that sucked up all the light. The bottom bunk had a pillow and plastic mattress, and the blanket he'd been given. Beside it was a toilet and sink. His cell was sandwiched between two others, like a tight row of teeth. When the barred doors of the cell were open-most of the day, except for mealtimes-Chris could stand on the narrow walk that ran the length of the pod. At one end was a shower and a phone, where he could make collect calls. At the other end was a television, strategically placed on the free side of the bars. Chris learned a great deal his first day, without ever asking for information. He discovered that from the moment you entered jail, your slate was wiped clean. Where you wound up-from the security level to the position of your bunk-was not determined by your charged offense or behavior prior to incarceration, but by the way you acted once you got there. The good news was that the classification board met every Tuesday, and you could petition for a change of locale. The bad news was that today was Thursday.

Chris decided that he would simply go for a week without speaking to anyone. Then, next Tuesday, he'd surely be moved out of the maximum security section, into medium security. He'd heard that upstairs, the walls were yellow.

He'd just finished a meal, served in his locked cell on an insulated plastic tray, when two inmates came to the door. “Hey,” one said, the man he'd spoken to yesterday. “What's your name?”

“Chris,” he said. “You?”

“Hector. And that's Damon.” The unfamiliar man with long greasy hair nodded at Chris. “You never did tell me what you're in here for,” Hector said.

“They think I murdered my girlfriend,” Chris muttered.

Hector and Damon exchanged a look. “No shit?” Damon said. “I had you pegged for a narc.” Hector scratched his back against the bars. He was wearing boxer shorts and a T-shirt, with rubber thongs. “What'd you use?” Chris stared at him blankly. “Knife, gun, you know.” Chris tried to push past them. “I don't want to talk about it,” he said. He broad-shouldered Damon, only to feel the larger man's hand on his shoulder. He glanced down to find a makeshift knife in Hector's hand, a razor blade pressed against Chris's ribs. “Maybe I do,” Hector said. Chris swallowed and backed off. Hector slipped the knife inside his shirt. “Look,” Chris said carefully. “Why don't we try acting rationally?”

“Rationally,” Damon said. “There's a five-dollar word.” Hector snorted. “You sound like a fancy-ass college boy,” he said. “You from the college?”

“I'm in high school,” Chris said.

At that, Hector crowed. “Actually, college boy, you're in jail.” He rapped his hand against the bars.

“Hey,” he yelled out. “We got us a genius down here.” He cocked one foot up against the lower bunk. “Tell me this, college boy. If you're so smart, how come you got caught?” Chris was saved from answering by an officer walking down the length of the barred catwalk.

“Anyone want to go to the exercise room?”

He stood up. Hector and Damon also started toward the door at the end of the pod. Damon turned around and whispered, “We're not done, man.”

They filed through a corridor dotted with cameras. A few men called out to each other; this was the only time each day they had contact. As they went around the corner, Chris noticed Damon slipping behind, person by person, until he could jab a well-aimed elbow into the back of another inmate at a certain turn of the hall. It was, Chris realized, the blind spot between two cameras. Just before the exercise room were two isolation cells. You could wind up in isolation two ways-by force, because you were acting out; or by request, because you were scared of the other inmates. Only one was occupied now. The prisoners started to holler, pounding on the door, one even leaning down to spit in the slotted opening.

The exercise room was small and sparsely furnished, with only a handful of equipment. But it filled like everything else in jail, by prearrangement. There was no waiting and no fight as two large black men claimed the stationary bicycles; as Hector and Damon picked up the table tennis paddies; as a tall guy with a swastika tattoo on his cheek began to bench press. There was a pecking order, Chris realized, that he was not privy to. But then again, why should he be? He did not fit in. Frowning, he walked out to the exercise courtyard, a muddy square heavily ringed with barbed wire. Men were talking in small groups, gesturing with their hands. Others moved aimlessly, counterclockwise. Chris found someone leaning against the chain-link fence, staring at the mountains in the distance. “That guy in the isolation room,” he said without preamble. “What did he do?”