Touched (13 page)

The crowd parted for a split second, and I managed to see the coffin. It was a little one. Too little. I bowed my head and rocked back on my heels and wished for it to be over. In my peripheral vision, I could see two pale feet in black stringy sandals coming up behind me. The toenails were painted red. I knew those feet. Hell, I worshipped those feet.

I cleared my throat. I would not look at her.

She stepped beside me and paused a beat, as if to say, Look at me, I’m here, I came anyway, and then kept right on walking, as if being at a funeral didn’t scare her as much as she’d said. Another girl was with her, the girl with the pixie haircut from track tryouts. The crowd accepted them, made room for them, making me feel like I was the one who had been left behind. After a minute, the boy with Mrs. Reese turned and looked hard, right at Taryn. It was the same look Sphincter had given her. She stared straight ahead, at the casket, but it was clear that there was something between them.

Great. First Sphincter, now this guy. She’s going to drive me to an early grave, I thought, before I realized I probably shouldn’t tempt fate.

After the longest twenty minutes of my life, the funeral ended and the crowd spread out. I kept looking around for some hint as to who had messed with Pedro, wondering if they’d pick me next. I meant not to look at Taryn, but I found myself staring right at her when she spun around to leave. I thought she would give me eye daggers. Instead, she smiled. And not a wicked smile, either; a hey-how-are-you? smile. The kind that’s out of place at a funeral. She made a beeline over to me, her friend following at her heels.

“Did you forget about picking me up?” she asked, still not sounding angry.

“Um. Yeah. Oh.” I tried to play it off as if I had forgotten, but realized too late that I should be apologizing. I mumbled a “sorry,” but I didn’t think she heard it.

“That’s okay. You’ve got stuff on your mind, I understand.”

I nodded. Why the hell was she being so nice?

“Anyway,” she said, “I made it. How are you doing with all this?” She motioned toward the coffin.

“Fine. I was just … leaving …,” I said stiffly. Yeah, I had to leave. Pronto. The You Wills agreed with that.

“Oh.” Pixie grabbed Taryn’s wrist and started to pull her away, but Taryn shook her friend loose, looking annoyed. Then it was as if she regretted it, because she smiled, embarrassed, and made the introduction. “This is Devon.”

Devon and I mumbled hi to each other. She looked about as excited as I was. She stood close enough to Taryn to be her Siamese twin, like she wanted her all to herself.

The only one who seemed interested in conversation was Taryn. But she didn’t notice this. “I had to drag Devon along. Didn’t want to go myself. I hate these things.”

I looked away, feeling like crud. She was too damn cute. I couldn’t take it anymore. “So you got a ride with Devon?” I finally asked.

“No, believe it or not, I have my own car.”

“You drive?”

She nodded. “But I hate it. I know, most people can’t wait to get their licenses, but I have this big fear of driving. I always have this feeling like I am going to die in a horrific car crash.”

I thought about the glass shards spraying in my face. It scared me, too. Another thing we had in common.

“Anyway,” she continued, “my parents wanted me to drive because they’re too busy to cart me around everywhere I need to go. So I got my license a couple of weeks ago. I’m sixteen. Almost seventeen.”

“Really? For some reason I thought you were a freshman.”

Now it was her turn to shrink back. Her face turned red. “I am. Well, I was born on the cusp and so my parents kept me back. And then I had to stay back because of … well, forget it. Long story.”

“That’s cool,” I said, dropping it. I figured it had something to do with that wild past she’d spoken of. I knew she was trying to escape that, because really, it wasn’t her. She was a good girl. A good girl with a bad curse. Probably as bad a curse as mine.

“So you want to see my ride?” she asked, motioning Devon along. “My dad bought it for me as an early birthday present.”

“Sure,” I said after a while. I didn’t want to because I had to get going, and because I wondered if it would be a better ride than mine. Then I realized that any ride was better than mine. Some Schwinns were better than mine.

We walked toward the parking area, and she and Devon talked about how sad the funeral was. Well, Taryn talked about that; Devon obviously wanted to get away from me, like most every girl in the world, because she kept saying under her breath, “We really should go.” I kept looking at the headstones, wondering how the people in the ground had died. One stone said
MOMMY’S LITTLE ANGEL
and from the years engraved into it, I realized the kid was only five. Like Emma. Soon, she would be in the ground, and I would be

Headlights flashing car horn blaring No no Tar watch ou

“Isn’t that crazy?” a voice said. I turned my head. Taryn had said something and now she was waiting for a response.

“Oh. Yeah,” I fudged.

“I thought that it was, but then, like, why was I waking up in the middle of the night?” she said with a sigh, which made me really want to know what the hell she was talking about. Instead I started thinking of kissing her. I could taste her lips. I knew I was turning red, so I muttered an “I don’t know,” which didn’t fit into the conversation at all.

She looked at me curiously for a second, and then said, “Anyway. Here it is. I call her Beauty.”

It was an old, and I mean old, dusty blue Jeep Cherokee. Nothing about this ride could be considered beautiful, since it was coated in dirt. It was also on a lift and looked too tough to be a Tarynmobile. As I moved around it, I saw a sticker on the back:
BAD GIRLS LIKE BAD TOYS
.

“Bad girls like bad toys, huh?”

She shrugged. “It was there when my dad bought it. Haven’t had time to remove it yet.”

I laughed. “Sure. You like your toys bad.” I studied the other bumper stickers.
FAT PEOPLE ARE HARDER TO KIDNAP
. And
NICE TRUCK. SORRY ABOUT YOUR PENIS
. Wow. If you put me in a room with a thousand cars and asked me to pick which one belonged to Taryn, this would be my last pick. I was just about to point that out when I peeked into the driver’s seat and my blood ran cold.

Dark seats. A center console brown with spilled Coke or coffee. A dream catcher dangling from the rearview mirror. In that instant I was transported to a rainy night, to headlights swirling around me, to the low, grating blare of a truck horn. To small, pale feet with pretty painted toenails pressing against the dashboard, and blond ringlets thrown forward over her face as she screamed and screamed. Suddenly her words played in my head like a recording at too slow a speed: I always have this feeling I am going to die in a horrific car crash.

This was it.

This was the car I would die in.

And worse yet, Taryn would be there, too.

“No.”

I hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but it must have broken through my lips. My numb lips, useless as the rest of me. Because Taryn, who’d been talking about how her father had picked up the car from some lady in Island Heights, stopped midsentence, baffled. “No what?”

I took a small, feeble step backward.

She turned to Devon, shrugged, then alarm flooded her eyes. She tried to move closer. I backed away again. “Do you … did you see something?” she whispered.

I held out my hands in protest, and as I did I stumbled on a rock or a curb behind me. I nearly threw up my breakfast when I looked over and realized it was the gravestone of Mommy’s Little Angel. Devon was looking at me as if she was rubbernecking a horrible, ghastly car accident on the side of the road. “I think we should just go,” she muttered for the thousandth time to Taryn, but Taryn didn’t even sway.

I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t care what normal was; I knew this wasn’t it, and yet I didn’t care. “No. I can’t do this. I really can’t be near you,” I sputtered.

I half-expected the ground to open up and swallow me. After all, Mom and Nan would bury me here when I died. When we died. So I turned and broke into a run, back into the cemetery. A blind run, not really sure where I was headed. The cemetery was surrounded by a small line of trees. I didn’t know what was behind them. Maybe I could go and live the rest of my life there. Away from Taryn. Away from everyone.

Like my mother.

When that thought hit me, I slowed down, breathing hard once I reached the chain-link fence by the trees. By the time I turned back, the girls were gone. A minute later I saw the Jeep heading toward the exit. So Devon had finally convinced her to leave. They were probably still watching me, wondering what was up. Well, maybe not Taryn. She knew. She knew what was bothering me. Most of it, anyway. Devon obviously thought I was two cashews shy of a nuthouse.

I realized I could have just taken Taryn aside and told her. She would have understood. We could have vowed to stay away from each other, and that would have been the end of it.

Or would it have been? Maybe it would have been like when we decided not to let Nan bring my mother breakfast anymore. She was still on course to die, but the pieces of Mom’s breakfast were no longer around her head in the memory. Maybe Emma’s death put the wheels in motion for something terrible to happen. Maybe evil would always follow us now, no matter what we did to prevent it. Maybe we were destined for bad things, and nothing could stop it.

I started walking back to the Buick, still breathing hard. As I walked, I loosened the tie, which felt like a noose, and undid the top button of my dress shirt. The collar was damp with sweat. I knew I should stay away from Taryn, but not a minute had passed before my mind kicked into overdrive, and between the You Wills, I began imagining all the different ways I could apologize to Taryn. I was probably paying more attention to my apology than to the You Wills.

That’s probably why I didn’t anticipate the punch. Out of nowhere, a force slammed against my cheek, throwing me to the ground.

Wondering what the hell had hit me, I tried to turn over and prop myself on my elbows, but the weight pressed on me, holding me down. A hand smashed against the back of my head, grinding my face into the hard earth so that all I could taste was dirt.

“You’re the other one,” a voice hissed. “Why did you come? Do you think Emma wants you here?”

The other one. Pedro. Fear curled in my stomach. I’d come out of this looking as messed up as he had. Maybe worse. I tried to open my mouth to speak but got a mouthful of grass instead, so only a muffled sound came out. The hand loosened its grip and I could turn my head a little. I tried to look up, but my eye was swelling and the lid felt heavy and useless. Birds twittered happily in the trees, as if what was happening to me was a good thing, as if this was how it was supposed to be.

“Who are you looking for?” I muttered, trying to be tough. But I’ll admit it. I was scared crapless. I hoped it was just a simple case of mistaken identity.

“Nick. Nick Cross? That you?”

Crap. One thing became clear to me: I was going to die if I said yes. “No.” I tried to think of a fake name, but my mind whirred with You Wills, proving utterly useless once again. Suddenly something spat through. A name. Bryce. Bryce Reese. “Bryce Reese,” I breathed.

There was a pause, and I thought maybe he was going to go for it, pick me up, dust me off, apologize for the misunderstanding. Suddenly a screaming pain whizzed through the back of my head. “That’s my name, you idiot,” he said.

Oh, hell. Thanks, brain. Reese. Bryce Reese. As in, Emma Reese. Emma’s brother. Her mother had said they did “everything together.” She’d said he’d been devastated. Of course. The visions I’d had of someone blaming me for Emma’s death weren’t of her parents. Mrs. Reese didn’t blame me.

Bryce was the one who hated me.

He leaned over, his breath in my face. It smelled like stale coffee and cigarettes, making my stomach lurch. “I know who you are and what you did. Because of you, she’s dead. You killed Emma.”

I tried to take a breath but my lungs were being crushed by his weight. “I … tried—”

“You left that drunk SOB alone to watch the beach, didn’t you?”

I swallowed. So they did know. “I’m sorry,” I muttered, tasting grass. “I feel—”

He pushed me down, harder, into the dirt, then let go. “I hope you feel like dirt. You’re a murderer. You’ll get yours soon.”

Then, quiet. I lie there after the sound of him faded away, too scared even to turn around and watch him leave. It was a good thing Taryn had left when she did. Once I got up, the cemetery was empty, except for Emma’s casket, sitting there alone beside the burial site. The front of my suit was covered in dirt; I tried to wipe it off but smeared it in instead.

I walked back to the Buick, my cheek and all the teeth underneath aching from where Bryce’s fist had met them. I tried again to think ahead. I focused hard on graduation. I usually could remember that.

But there was nothing. Hell, I couldn’t even think of graduation. I don’t think I’d ever not been able to remember something about graduation. Sure, things would be different every time I called up the memory. Once, I’d tripped going up to the podium; another time I got a sloppy kiss from Norah Cracowiczki, who sat next to me and was so drunk she thought I was her boyfriend. But graduation was always there. Nan was always there, smiling at me from the bleachers.

My mom was right. I had plenty of time to change it, and I would. Somehow.

You’ll get yours. Soon. I thought about those words and how fitting they were. He was right. I would get mine. If everything continues the way it was going, I’ll get the same thing Emma got, I thought, turning back to her gravesite.

I swallowed and let out an uneasy breath. Bryce was standing there, head down, near the pile of freshly dug earth, holding some pink stuffed animal with floppy ears and weeping. Weeping so hard, his body shook with his every breath. I couldn’t look at him for more than a second. He didn’t have to punch me to make every part of me sting.

And maybe that was what I deserved.