The Way Back to Happiness (23 page)

“I read
Great Expectations
,” Bev said, her chest rising and falling heavily. “Nowhere in that book was that crazy lady wearing
my wedding dress
.”

Alabama gulped. It was on the tip of her tongue to say “It was all Stuart’s idea,” but that would have really been cowardly. Her other instinct was simply to turn and run. Bev’s bulgy-eyed expression scared her. Unfortunately, at that moment, the auditorium door behind her opened and a wave of students came pouring out.

Bev closed in on her. “And besides that, I’ve been looking all over for you. Your name showed up on the absentee list this morning.”

“Yeah, I ended up missing homeroom,” Alabama said.

“I went all the way home to find you. I was worried. I didn’t know you were gallivanting around school in my dress, making fun of me.”

Alabama frowned. “Of
you?
”

Bev reached forward and grabbed a fake cobweb. “What have you done to it?”

“Nothing—we were really careful not to hurt it. Stuart even made a whole new veil so we wouldn’t mess up the old one. He made it in
your
class. You helped him.”

The wrong thing to say. Bev’s cheeks flushed a dark pink. If a crowd of students hadn’t circled them—their mid-corridor standoff created a bottleneck—who knows what Bev would have done. She looked as if she wanted to rip the dress off Alabama’s back right there in front of everybody.

“Take it off,” Bev told her.

A few kids laughed, and someone in the back of the crowd seconded it. “Take it off!” As if this were a striptease.

Alabama’s cheeks burned even more. “I was going to—”

Was she crazy?

“You had no right to wear it!” Bev said. “You knew I didn’t want you to, but you had to anyway. Well, you can consider yourself grounded. Forever.”

Whoas
and murmurs of sympathy rippled behind her.

It should have made her feel better to know that everyone thought Bev was being a jerk, but she just felt conspicuous, and embarrassed—the very thing she’d hoped to avoid when she dropped out of the talent show. She glanced around and caught the eye of Kevin Kerrigan. One of his brows quirked up in commiseration, but for some reason his sympathy only mortified her all the more.

She turned and fled. The crowd parted for her, and as she ran through them their faces were a blur until a hand darted out and hooked her arm, stopping her. It was Stuart.

“What’s going on?” he asked. “Where were you?”

She didn’t know why she felt like she was about to cry. All her aunt had done was tell her she was grounded. But in front of the whole school. And all over this stupid dress. She wished she’d never laid eyes on it. And if Stuart hadn’t pestered her about it . . .

“Thanks a whole lot.” She jerked her arm away. “I’m grounded for life, thanks to you.”

She hated herself for blaming him, but she couldn’t help it. She felt like an idiot. How did she let herself get into this ridiculous position? She didn’t belong in this school, in this town, or with her aunt. If only she were back with her mom. If only her mom—

A sob burst in her throat, and she turned and she started running toward her locker. But she didn’t stop there. Instead, she ran right out of the building, off the campus, and back to Bev’s house. She refused to call it home. It wasn’t her home. If she was going to be grounded for the rest of her life, she might as well think of it as what it was. Jail.

She would go live with Gladdie and Wink. Or maybe during the visit with Granny Jackson, she could convince her to take her in starting immediately. If only she could never see Bev again. Ever.

God only knows what people driving down the street thought of a girl running down the sidewalk in a spider-infested wedding veil. She probably looked crazy. But that’s how she felt—like another crazy Putterman female. Any minute now, she would probably start ranting about how this was
her
wedding dress.

Wait.

She slowed, then stopped. That’s what Bev had said—that this was her wedding dress. She looked down at herself, confused.
My wedding dress,
she’d said, plain as day. What did that mean? There had never been a wedding. Bev had never been married.

The rest of the way home, she couldn’t banish Stuart’s crazy Bette Davis movie theory from her mind. It was so preposterous . . . but what if it was actually true? Was this The Really Bad Thing that had made her mother not want to talk to Bev?

But that didn’t make sense, either. If Bev was her mother, why wouldn’t Bev had gone ahead and raised her?

But if Bev wasn’t her mother, why all the secrecy?

Why all the secrecy, period?

Once inside the house, she went straight to the area of the living-dining room where Bev kept a little desk and file cabinet that she called her office. Once a month she sat herself down at the desk and paid bills, but during the intervening time, crap piled up on it. Right now there were Butterick patterns, an antique spice drawer that held a fraction of Bev’s button collection, and several rolls of crepe paper in autumn colors of gold, orange, and brown. Alabama pushed all that aside and rifled through the drawers in search of the key to the top drawer of the file cabinet, which was kept locked.

She found it in one of the cubbyholes in the back of the desk. This seemed almost too easy, but when she inserted the key in the drawer and turned it, it worked. She slid the file drawer open and fingered through the hanging folders. They were all neatly labeled in colored tabs, alphabetized in backward order—
School, Mama, House, FHA, Electric, Alabama . . .

At least she rated her own folder.

She plucked it out. This was the moment of truth. Why would Bev have started the file unless she had something important to put in it . . . and what could be more important than a birth certificate?

Something else caught her eye. An envelope at the bottom of the drawer, beneath all the other hanging files. She put the hanging folder aside and picked up the letter. Had it slipped out of a folder, or had Bev put it there on purpose to hide it? She frowned at the envelope—a basic white business kind, with writing scrawled over the front. In the center of many cross-outs and additions was her mom’s writing. The letter had been sent to Bev, although her mom had screwed up the address. She squinted at the postmark. June—of this year. And the date.

The date of the postmark was the day her mother died.

Her heart hammered. Why would her mother have written to Bev? Especially on that day.

Maybe she wanted to borrow money. They were always broke. But wouldn’t she have asked Gladdie?

She drew the sheet of paper out with cold fingers. Even though Alabama knew it was a letter written by her mother, seeing those loopy letters sloping down the page struck her forcefully, unexpectedly, almost like hearing her mom’s voice calling her name would have.

As she read on, her hands began to shake. The words scrolled past, but it took a minute to wrap her mind around them. Her mother was apologizing to Bev. She was telling her aunt to take care of her. She was saying good-bye.

This was obviously the last thing her mother had ever written. Maybe the last thing she’d ever thought about. She’d sat in their apartment writing it. To Bev.
Not to me.
No letter had ever reached her. There had been no note in the house. That’s how Alabama had known her mother’s being run over was an accident.

But this was a suicide note. Her mom didn’t say so in so many words . . . but she didn’t have to.

As she finished, tears flowed down her cheeks, and she needed to blow her nose. But she couldn’t get up to find a tissue, or even go to the kitchen for a paper towel. She couldn’t move. Her mother had known she was leaving her forever. Planned it. That last horrible morning, walking to the bus—had she known it then? Had she shoved Alabama on the bus, barely even bothering to say good-bye, knowing that it was good-bye forever?

She read the letter again, greedily, almost angry, her tearful vision blurring the page. And then other details began to sink in.
I started to write this so I could ask you to take care of Alabama. But maybe that’s not right. Maybe I should ask you to take her back. Take back what I stole from you. . . .

What did that mean?
How could Mom have stolen me from Bev, unless . . . ?

Unless Stuart was right. The letter slipped from her trembling fingertips.

Gulping in several breaths, she bent and picked it up again, folded the paper in the worn creases, and then inserted it back into the envelope. She dropped it back into the bottom of the cabinet, turned the key, and replaced the key in its cubby.

She ran to her room, tossed herself on the bed, and suddenly realized she was still wearing the stupid dress and veil. She yanked off the latter and then unfastened the dress and stepped out of it. Bev’s wedding dress. She shuddered, then started laughing and crying at once, like a loon. She had wanted to discover the truth, but she’d ended up with more truth than she’d dreamed of. More sad truth.

How could her mother have done it? The horrible mental images that she’d tried to keep out of her mind kept replaying now.
I didn’t even have time to brake,
the trucker had said. That’s how fast it had happened. Why hadn’t her mom been more careful? Alabama had wondered.

Turned out, she
had
been careful. She’d probably picked out the intersection weeks before, the moment, maybe even the truck....

She squeezed her eyes shut and rolled over, clutching a piece of her old sloppy quilt—an old peasant shirt of her mother’s. She balled her fist and struck the material, crying out. “Why? Why would you leave me? How could you?”

Nothing made sense. It was bad enough to have her worst fear about her mom confirmed . . . but what did the letter mean? All those things about giving Alabama back to Bev. The idea incensed her. As if she were a shirt her mom had borrowed and forgotten to return.

She closed her eyes, but tears spilled out of them anyway. Not just tears of self-pity, but tears of remorse.
How could I have left her all alone like that?
And for what? Swimming at Camp Quapaw. Riding horses. Making lanyards.

And all the while, her mother had been at home, worrying, depressed. Alone.

She didn’t care about the truth, or who Bev was. All finding this letter did was make her hate Bev more. She’d known—known all along—and she’d said
nothing.
Who had more of a right to this letter than Alabama did? No one. They’d been living a lie. Bev was always telling her she needed to talk to someone, to open up and share. What a hypocrite! She hadn’t even shared this letter—this last communication from her mother.

She vowed then and there never to talk to Bev about this. Never. She didn’t want to open up to her aunt, and she especially didn’t want confirmation that Bev was anything other than her annoying aunt. She didn’t even give a care about the birth certificate anymore.

Diana Putterman was her mother, and always would be. If only she could see her one more time, and tell her that. If only . . .

She cried until she felt wrung out and headachy, and then she dozed off into a jittery, restless sleep.

And by a sleep, to say we end the heartache,
she thought, nodding off.

T
he clock read
3:20
. Something had jarred Alabama awake—had it been the phone? The doorbell? She got up and peeked out the window to see if there was a car there.

No car was visible in the driveway. She pulled on jeans and a T-shirt and went to the door in her bare feet. Standing amid Bev’s army of expertly carved jack-o’-lanterns was Stuart, his expression anxious. The anxiety didn’t let up when he saw her face.

“What happened to you today?” he asked. “You disappeared. I looked all over for you.”

“I skipped out.”

His eyes widened. “The whole day?”

She leaned against the door frame. For once, she didn’t want to invite him in. Things were already tense between them, but if he came in, he might wheedle her into talking more than she wanted to. She could imagine what a field day he’d have over her mother’s letter—final proof that his crackpot theory wasn’t so nutty after all.

“Bev got mad about the dress.”

“Yeah, I heard that,” he said. “I couldn’t believe it. You looked great!”

She shoved her hands in her pockets. “I’m sorry I couldn’t go through with it. I never really wanted to do the talent show—that was your thing, not mine. I was too embarrassed to admit it.”

“Maybe I was a little pushy,” Stuart said.

A little. “So . . . people were talking about me?”

“Just in the cafeteria.” He shrugged. “And between classes . . .”

So, all the time, basically.
Thanks, Bev.

She still felt some lingering resentment toward Stuart, for being so obsessed with the stupid talent show to begin with. That’s what had started all the problems.

No, what had started all the problems was her moving here. Or maybe Gladdie’s gallbladder. Or her mom’s accident . . .

Only she couldn’t call it an accident anymore. But she couldn’t bring herself to accept it as the other thing, either.

She wanted to crawl into a hole.

Stuart shifted his feet. That he wasn’t going to be asked in was beginning to sink in.

“It’s weird that she would be so mad,” he said. “Since you didn’t even perform.”

“I told you she would be.”

“Yeah, you did.” He looked down at his feet, then glanced up at her again. “Is something else wrong? I know having your aunt pissed off is no fun, but . . . you look real upset.”

“I’m okay.”

The silence between them was broken by a dog barking somewhere down the empty street. Stuart backed down a step. “Do you want to come over tonight?” he asked. “We aren’t going trick-or-treating, but my mom usually makes caramel apples.”

She would,
Alabama wanted to sneer. Stuart knew nothing of her life, of what she was going through. He lived in his own perfect Looney bubble.

“I can’t,” she said. “I’m grounded till I’m eighty.”

“Oh, right.” He descended another step. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

She nodded, and he turned to leave. Watching him go, she hated herself for being mad at him. Everything was so mixed up, and it wasn’t really his fault. When he was halfway down the walkway, she called out, “Your monologue was fantastic.”

He whirled, surprised. “Did you think so?”

She nodded. “Really good. Mr. Hill thought so, too—you were the only one he clapped for. Maybe you’ll get a part in the spring play.”

He lifted his arms and shoulders in a full-body shrug. “I came in third. They announced it at lunch. The cheerleaders won. I got a ribbon, though.”

Something to go on the Looney shelf of honor. “It’ll look good next to your Oscar.”

He seemed pleased, but then he waved good-bye and kept going. And she felt a lot lonelier than she had before.

Restless, she went back inside. She itched to pull out the letter and read it again, to go over and over the puzzling things her mother had written. When had her mom written it? And what about Gladdie—had she read it? Had she and Bev conferred and decided to keep its contents from Alabama because they worried she would fall apart?

Of course, she
had
fallen apart, sort of. But it was such a shock. It wouldn’t have been such a shock if they had told her the truth from the beginning.

Bev would be coming home any minute now. What would she say to her? Would Bev want to sit down and have a talk about what had happened at school, or would she breeze in and pretend nothing happened? Both possibilities turned her stomach.

She went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. Speaking of Halloween. A seriously depressed ghoul stared back at her. Her face was a horror show of tear-smudged mascara in thick white pancake makeup. She slathered Noxzema over her face, trying to undo the damage. She couldn’t believe that Stuart hadn’t told her that she looked like a train wreck. It showed that he must have really been worried about her.

And she’d sent him away. That wasn’t very nice.

Maybe she should apologize. Going over to Stuart’s house would give her a good excuse to avoid Bev for a little while. Of course, she was supposed to be grounded, and she would be in a lot more trouble when Bev figured out that she’d skipped almost an entire day of classes. But if she was grounded for the rest of her life, what else could Bev do to her?

She patted her face dry, shoved her keys into her pocket, and headed out the door. Paranoid about running into Bev, she darted down a side street that she knew Bev didn’t use much. It ran close to Sparta Creek, which right now was almost a dry gulch with a trickle of water running down the center. She could hop over and it and be at Stuart’s faster that way.

She scooted quickly down the street, but not quickly enough. Behind her, a car honked. She turned, expecting to face the wrath of Bev. Instead, Kevin Kerrigan was hanging out the open window of his old red Mustang. “Want a lift?”

The question surprised her so much, she was tongue-tied. He waved her over, and she backtracked, sidling uncertainly toward the car. Since the day he’d picked up her books, he’d smiled at her in the hallway a few times, but he’d never gone out of his way to talk to her.

“Where are you headed?”

“Nowhere.” She gestured aimlessly toward the creek.

“Sparta Creek? That really is nowhere. Unless you’re a cottonmouth, and then it’s home.”

She bit her lip. “I was going to see Stuart. You know Stuart Looney? He’s a freshman, too.”

Kevin snorted. “Stu-loo? Everybody knows him now. Tights Boy.”

Poor Stuart. He’d feel awful to hear his idol dismiss him that way. But of course, it was hard to think too much about Stuart’s feelings when Kevin was looking at her with a sparkle in his blue eyes.

“Wouldn’t you rather get a Frosty?” he asked.

“Seriously?” The nearest Wendy’s was twenty miles away.

“Sure.” He leaned over and opened the passenger door. “Hop in.”

She hesitated. Kevin Kerrigan was a junior—sixteen or seventeen. She didn’t have permission to go riding—especially not to another town. Bev would have a fit . . . if Bev ever found out.

If she was going to be grounded for the rest of her life, this might be her last chance to go for a ride.

She got in the car.

Kevin drove to the end of the block and hooked a right, then headed straight for the highway. “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” blared on the radio. “Do you like this song?” he asked.

She wrinkled her nose. “Honestly? It feels like we’ve been stuck in a whole year of Wham!”

“Whammed!” He laughed and turned the dial, stopping when he heard Huey Lewis and the News singing “The Power of Love.” For a foolish moment, she wondered if it could be an omen. He cranked it, and then accelerated.

They talked about stupid stuff all the way to Athens. Bands. People at school she only knew from hearing their names. Trivial things. It wasn’t until they were in the drive-through line that she stopped to wonder why Kevin had picked her up. Maybe he liked her. Or maybe he was just bored.

Disappointment needled her as he headed straight back to the highway right after they got their drinks. It would have been fun to go in and sit someplace for a while . . . and not to have to go home. Then, a few miles out of town, he pulled off onto a side road.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“Detour,” he said. “I know a great place.”

The place was a boat dock to a lake. The weather was cool enough now that boaters weren’t tempted to come out during the week, and the parking lot was deserted. They got out of the car and strolled to the water’s edge.

“That sure was weird with your aunt today,” he said.

“I felt like an idiot.”

“Why? She was the one who came off as a kook.”

Satisfaction rippled through her. He understood. As they stood by the water, he took her hand. “You know who you remind me of?”

She shook her head.

“That girl in
The Breakfast Club
—the one with the dark hair. The one who says ‘When you grow up, your heart dies.’ ”

She smiled, amazed that he had given her enough thought to compare her to anyone, much less Ally Sheedy, her favorite character in the whole movie.

“You ought to smile more,” he said.

Strangely, his saying that melted her smile right away. How could she possibly be smiling, after what she’d found out? Mere hours ago. It seemed wrong. “There hasn’t been much to be happy about this year.”

“What—nothing to smile about in the year of Wham!?” When she didn’t respond, he squeezed her hand. “I’m sorry. I heard about your mom. I need to learn to keep my mouth shut.”

“No you don’t,” she blurted out. “I mean . . .”

He grinned. “Anyway, when you’re with a pretty girl, there are better things to do than yack.”

She was tempted to swivel around to see who he was talking about. She didn’t think of herself as pretty. Most days she barely thought of herself as a girl. Since summer, her body had felt like a cumbersome shell she was hauling around, as if she were a turtle or a snail.

Kevin pulled her into his arms, wrapping them around her, enfolding her, and pressed his mouth to his, pushing against hers until she could taste the sweet, milky aftertaste of the Frosty on his cold lips. She sucked in a breath, shocked.
He’s kissing me.
This was a real kiss, not a peck like at junior high school parties. This was a boy with muscles hard from years of swinging a tennis racket. This was tongue.

Her stomached fluttered, but she didn’t pull away. Not at first.

When she did step back—right after his hands started to roam up her shirt—Kevin grinned at her a little sheepishly. “I figured a girl with red-striped hair would have a wild streak in her. Was I wrong?”

She might have laughed if she hadn’t been so flustered. “Yeah, maybe. I didn’t expect you to do that.”

He shook his head. “Then you’ve been hanging around Tights Boy too long.”

She kept her face trained on the ground as they headed back to the car. He was making fun of Stuart, and she should call him on it, but the words wouldn’t form. Oddly enough, Stuart was the person she wanted most to talk to right now. She could hardly wait to get home and call him.

On the other hand, she’d told him that she couldn’t go to his house and then went out joyriding. Never mind that she’d been picked up by Kevin on the way to see him—that probably wouldn’t make Stuart feel much better. Especially when she told him that she had actually made out with Kevin Kerrigan.

She kept rolling the thought over in her mind. She had made out with Kevin. That she had made out with anyone was a miracle. But being picked by the out-of-her-reach older boy of her dreams? Unbelievable. Stuart would probably accuse her of making the whole thing up.

She hardly knew what they talked about on the drive home. Tennis . . . school . . . Halloween . . .

Boring stuff. Phil Collins bellowed from the Mustang’s speakers. She’d parachuted into someone else’s life—that had to be the answer. This moment didn’t resemble her life at all. Especially not her life of two hours ago. How had this happened?

Bev’s Toyota was parked in front of the house when they got back. The sight of it smothered all the joy and wonder out of her drive with Kevin. Eating dirt seemed more enticing to her than walking through her front door and having to deal with . . . with everything.

“You want to go somewhere again sometime?” Kevin asked her.

He was asking her on a date? Her? “I don’t know. . . .” She sighed. “I’m grounded.”

“Your aunt would let you go out with me, though.”

He said it as though it was a sure thing. How could anyone not make an exception for him?

“She’s so crazy.”

“Okay, maybe I’ll talk to you at school sometime,” he said, as if it might be difficult to manage. As if they didn’t attend a school with fewer than four hundred people in it. This puzzled her. He knew she ate in the cafeteria every day—he could always find her there.

She climbed out of the car and hurried inside. Kevin didn’t wait for her to go in—the Mustang was already disappearing around the corner before she got to the door. Good thing, too. As Alabama reached for the knob, Bev yanked the door open.

“Who was that? Where have you been?”

“That was Kevin,” Alabama said.

Bev craned her neck out the door, as if looking at the air where his car had been would give her a clue. “Kevin . . . Kerrigan? The mayor’s son?”

“Yup.”

“You weren’t here—you didn’t leave a note.” Almost without stopping, Bev added, “Kevin Kerrigan’s a junior.”

“So?”

“You can’t just jump into cars with older boys like that.”

“I didn’t. I jumped into a car with
one
boy like that.”

Her aunt crossed her arms. “Where did you go?”

Alabama shrugged. It was hard to keep disguising how much she loved watching her aunt get wound up. “For a drive.”