True Blue (8 page)

I didn’t get any sleep at all that night.

When two a.m. rolled around, I got up and went biking as usual. This time I went out to the industrial area on the edge of town where the roads are long and straight. I pedaled like mad down one length of the road, working up a sweat, then turned around and biked slowly back the other way, letting myself cool down until I was shivering all over. Then I turned around and pedaled hard until I was overheated again. It made no sense, but it passed the time. I imagined myself conducting a scientific experiment into body temperature. I had a whole fantasy worked out in my head about receiving international recognition for my work and getting write-ups in the paper about it, bigger write-ups than Casey’s. Pretty lame, I know, but that’s what went on in my head.

It distracted me from having to remember the donut shop conversation with Mela Cross. Her words had made me feel small and cheap. “Have you no soul?” she’d asked.

Of course I didn’t believe Casey had killed Stephanie. I could run through the so-called evidence better than her attorney could, striking down every bit of it. Why hadn’t I said that?

Because if I’d said it, the next step would be that I would have to agree to testify. There would be more meetings, more questions, more people looking at me, and more battles to fight. I just wanted it all to be over.

The more the conversation ran through my head, the angrier I got. Who was this lawyer to pass judgment on me? She didn’t know me! She didn’t know my life. I hated her. And I was mad at Casey for sending that woman after me.

The house lights were on when I got home around four in the morning. I panicked and rode around in the street in front of the house for a while, working up enough nerve to go in. It was only the thought that Mom might have called the police to report me missing that finally prompted me to go inside.

Mom was in the kitchen. I could smell something baking as soon as I walked in the door. She didn’t say anything to me about me being out. All she said was “Wash these muffin tins for me, will you, my ‘Hey Jude’?”

One batch of muffins was already on cooling trays. Mom was hunched over her recipe book, combining ingredients for another batch. I washed the tins then greased and floured them for her. Despite the warmth of the kitchen, I was beginning to shiver in my sweat-drenched clothes. I went up to my room, undressed, and buried myself under the blankets. I doubt she noticed that I’d left.

I slept a little—just dozed, really. Mom baking in the middle of the night was a bad sign. I kept jarring awake every few minutes, afraid she’d forgotten what she was doing and had set the house on fire. When my alarm clock went off at seven, I felt like I’d been at war all night. A hot shower cleaned me, but it didn’t revive me.

The kitchen was sparkling clean when I went down to breakfast. Mom was putting fresh muffins in an old cookie tin she’d lined with wax paper. “Have some orange juice,” she said. “Have a muffin.”

Dad was at the table, his nose in the paper, a muffin sliced and buttered in front of him. He’d taken a couple of bites. I caught his eye above the newspaper and he gave a slight nod. The muffins were okay to eat.

“The muffins are fine. There’s no need for your little signal,” Mom said. I guiltily took two from the platter, although I had no appetite for even one. They tasted fine, but I had to drink a lot of juice to get them down.

“I’d like you to take these muffins over to the Whites’ on your way to school,” Mom told me, fitting the lid onto the cookie tin.

I put down my juice glass. I didn’t want to go over there. I glanced at Dad for help but his whole face was buried in paper.

“I have to be at school early today,” I lied. “History project.”

“It will take you two minutes,” Mom said. “You don’t have to stay, you don’t even have to go in, just knock on the door and hand over the tin.”

“I don’t have time!” I said again, more forcefully.

In two steps she crossed the kitchen and stood almost on top of me. “Take the tin,” she ordered, holding it out to me.

I backed away from the table so fast I knocked over the chair. “I told you, I don’t have time!”

“Take it!” She pushed the tin into my stomach.

I flung up my hands to avoid touching it.

Mom’s glare bore holes right through me. She banged the tin down on the table, rattling the breakfast dishes.

I fled the kitchen. Dad, I’m sure, remained safely behind his paper.

I dragged myself through school that day, learning nothing, dozing off in my classes, and making mistakes in my cafeteria job. There was a quiz in Biology, but I might as well not have bothered.

“I know you are trying for an athletic scholarship, Jessica.” Old Miss Burke kept me behind after class. She was the oldest teacher in the school and a good friend of Casey’s. “Your academic grades have to be good, too. It’s still early in the year, of course, but don’t allow yourself to get into bad habits…”

She droned on and on, giving me advice that I was barely able to stay awake to hear.

“Had any more letters from Casey?” Amber and her followers cornered me after the last class when I was on my way to my locker.

“None of your business,” I said.

“Oh, now, don’t be like that. Casey is our friend, too, you know. You don’t have a monopoly on her.”

“Casey is not your friend,” I replied.

“What’s the matter?” someone asked. “Jealous?”

I pushed through the group and went on ahead down the hall. Nathan caught up with me.

“Hey, Jess, don’t be mad,” he said, taking my arm. “We were just having a bit of fun.”

“At
my
expense.”

“I’m sorry about that. It’s just that this is the biggest thing that’s ever happened in this town. It’s got us all kind of rattled, you know?”

I could count on one hand the number of times Nathan had talked to me since kindergarten. He had always been one of the cool kids, even when he was little. Other cool kids would flock around him, all in the same nice clothes with nice haircuts—hair cut by professional stylists in the salon, not cut by their mothers with pinking shears the night she thought she was Edward Scissorhands.

Nathan was looking at me as if I was one of them, not a freak. I decided to accept his apology. For now, anyway.

“Come out and have a Coke or something with us,” he invited, gesturing back at the others in the group who were all watching us. “We usually go to The Cactus after school and sort of unwind before going home. Why don’t you come with us?”

Nathan didn’t have to tell me they went to The Cactus. I’d often seen them there, always at the same table by the window, eating French fries and being easy with each other. They were an exclusive group, as exclusive as Galloway ever gets. I had certainly never been asked to join them before.

In the seconds after Nathan’s invitation, a conversation I’d had with Casey last year came into my head.

“Who needs them?” she said, after I expressed longing to join the group at The Cactus. “If we were part of that group, we’d have to spend money every day after school, money it takes too long to earn. Plus, they never talk about anything.”

“How would you know what they talk about?”

“I’ve heard them in class. They never express an original thought, never show any passion for anything, only know just enough of the material to get by. All they like to do is poke fun at people—and they’re not even funny about it. What could they talk about?”

“You don’t know everything,” I said. “Maybe they just don’t like showing off in front of the teachers.” As though I could seriously accuse Casey of showing off. You have to care what people think of you before you can be a show-off.

Casey, of course, didn’t take the bait. “Look, they’re just kids. They’re not gods. If you want to join them, march in there and plunk yourself down. Maybe I’m wrong about them and you’ll have a good time. And if you don’t have a good time, at least you’ll know. Successful experiment either way.”

I hadn’t joined The Cactus gang that day or any other. I’d stuck with Casey, not because her feelings would have been hurt if I’d made other friends, but because they would not have been. She would have been fine with me doing whatever I wanted to do because she always did what she wanted to do. But that was the key. She knew what she wanted.

Nathan was waiting for me to answer. I had cross-country, but missing one practice wouldn’t hurt, I thought, deciding I was too tired anyway for the workout to do me any good. A jolt of caffeine was what I needed, to give me the energy to tackle my homework. You can justify anything.

“Okay,” I said, hoping I sounded casual, and walked back to the group with Nathan.

Everything that followed was like an out-of-body experience, from walking down the main drag of Galloway to the time in the restaurant. They did it all so easily, so smoothly, this bantering and laughing. They all made a real effort to include me, too. Nathan even paid for my Coke.

“Enjoy it while it lasts,” Nicole laughed. “Nathan’s pretty tight-fisted.”

“A fool and his money are soon parted, and I’m no fool,” Nathan said.

From this, I understood two things. One, I might be asked back; and two, if I was, I’d be expected to pay my own way. That was fine with me. Everyone else in the group paid for themselves. I’d be on equal terms.

No one mentioned Casey. They asked me about my weekend job and I told them about changing smelly sheets in the nursing home. Someone made a joke about old people and that set off a whole series of dumb jokes, really stupid. But I laughed anyway.

The group made fun of the other customers and spilled sugar on the table deliberately, to “make the waitress work for her paycheck.” They re-hashed the school day, caught me up with who was dating who, and passed on gossip about the teachers. Really, they talked about nothing at all. And I enjoyed it. I couldn’t truly relax, because I was on probation with them, but I was laughing in all the right places and even holding my own in the conversation.

I said something insulting about the old man at the table across the room and everyone laughed, as though I’d said something really clever.

No one asked me what I was reading. No one brought up anything they’d seen on the news and asked me what I thought about it. No one asked me how my cross-country training was going. No one asked me what I cared about. It was all very, very easy.

In the middle of this, a thought came into my head, clear and bold as a newspaper headline:
You’re the one who’s been keeping me from the group all these years
, I thought.
Damn you, Casey
.

We parted all friendly at the end of an hour. Nathan walked partway home with me before veering down Spruce Street to his own home.

“See you tomorrow,” he yelled after me. I wasn’t sure about that—good things never last—but I felt much lighter than I had in weeks, and my feet bounced a little as I walked the rest of the way home.

My feet stopped bouncing when I got to my house. Another letter from Casey was waiting for me on the hall table.

Dear Dragonfly,

How are you holding up out there? For some reason, your letters aren’t getting through. Mela is trying to find out what the problem is. I’d find all this so much easier if they’d let me hear from you.

I’ll bet Galloway is an interesting place right now. Mela tells me the town is like a circus, with me in the center ring. Since you’re my best friend, you must be getting a lot of nasty attention. Try to remember that Galloway is still just Galloway, even if it looks like a circus right now.

The guards have been letting me outside lately, but only for one hour a day, and then only to a concrete yard. But there are bugs everywhere, even on concrete!

Two days ago a black swallowtail, Papilio polyxenes, flew over the wall and landed on my shoulder. It sat there looking lovely until a guard scared it away. Yesterday I found a cricket, Gryllus veletis, and brought him to my cell. He sang to me all night. I put him in a bit of water in my sink and watched the horsehair worms crawl out of him. Gross…fantastic! Fabulous! I set him free during today’s outdoor period. One of us locked up is more than enough.

I’ve developed a bit of a friendship with a colony of pavement ants, Tretramrium caespitum, that’s made its home in the cracks of the pavement. I think we have a connection. The colony is mostly made up of female ants that will never have babies. I used to think it would be fun to have a kid—remember how we would talk about it? I’d strap her to my back and head out into the field, and as she got older she would help me collect specimens. I’d teach her all about bugs. I don’t think I could do that now. What if something happened to her? How do people carry their grief when they lose a child? How does Mrs. Glass get out of bed every day—first she loses her husband to a drunk driver, and now Stephanie.

Stephanie was a little monster, but she probably would have grown out of that. I wish I’d tried harder to like her. Maybe she wouldn’t be dead now if I had.

They’re still keeping me away from the other prisoners, but I talk to the ones who bring me meals and they seem like nice people. Mela comes a lot, and that helps. She usually does environmental law, so we have a lot to talk about, when she has time. I’m sure more than ever now that I want to specialize in aquatic insects. They give us clues to the health of a pond’s ecosystem, and, as we all know, ground water is everything! Mela says that when I get out of here, she’ll arrange for me to meet some folks from the environmental science department at her old university. She says they lead field trips all the time and I might be able to go on one. It will make up a bit for missing Australia.

They’ve set a trial date for late in January. I’m going to be in here for a while. Mom and Dad try to be cheerful when they come to see me, so I try to be cheerful, too. But it gets harder and harder each time. This is a nightmare.

Your mom has been so great to my folks! Please thank her for me, although I know she doesn’t want any thanks. She’s done so much for me over the years. She helped me track down books I needed, she put me in touch with people at the university scholarship department, she helped me get a microscope—well, you know.

How is your running going this fall? Don’t worry so much about me that your grades start falling or you let cross-country slip. I’ll get out of this mess, make up the lost time at school, and still go to university with you next fall. I’m counting on you not to let down your end of our plans!

I’m running out of room again. Hey, did you notice that I’m allowed two sheets of paper instead of just one? If the taxpayers only knew!

Keep your wings up, Dragonfly. Write soon!

With love,

Casey

I knew I wasn’t going to answer this letter either.

I went up to my room and flopped down on my bed, still unmade from that morning when I’d been in such a fog. Casey thought I was worrying so much about her that I wasn’t paying attention to my schoolwork, that I wasn’t doing my best in cross-country! She just assumed I’d put my life on hold in order to worry about her. The arrogance of that! I had plenty of other things in my life besides my friendship with Casey! Plenty!

Into my resentment, another thought came. All those things she wrote about my mother doing things for her—I hadn’t known about a single one of them. Mom didn’t know how to track down books. She didn’t know anyone at the university. What did she know about microscopes? Mom didn’t know about operating in the important world. She was just a nursing home housekeeper—lots of times she was even too crazy to do that. Casey had to be joking.

But Casey never made jokes about my mother. She knew a side to Mom that I had never guessed at. It reminded me that I had another reason to be mad at her.

I hated her.

And yet I ached for her.

That night I was determined to sleep through. When I woke up at two a.m., I stayed in bed. My legs wanted to be cycling but I wouldn’t let them. I did everything I could think of to get back to sleep, but it was at least four o’clock before I drifted off. Then I kept dreaming that I was falling, waking up just before I hit the ground, then dozing off to sleep again. For all the rest I got, I might as well have gone biking.

The next day after school, I went out to the restaurant with the group again. We still didn’t talk about Casey. We didn’t really talk about anything, but I enjoyed myself. I barely felt guilty about ducking out of cross-country. There would be time later to think up an excuse for the coach.

Mom was quiet at dinner. She just picked at her food. I could have asked her what was wrong but I didn’t really want to know. I don’t think Dad noticed.

I went biking that night.
Why fight it
, I thought, when two a.m. rolled around again. At least I’d get some of the exercise I missed by skipping practice.

After cycling aimlessly around town for a while, I biked up Casey’s street. As I got closer to the house, I noticed something was going on. I dropped my bike noiselessly behind a neighbor’s forsythia and crept over for a closer look.

Some kids were vandalizing Casey’s house. They had poured paint all over her father’s wheelchair van and were throwing paint at the windows and walls of the house. I could smell the oil in the paint. The kids had brought gallons and gallons of it.

Two of the kids were painting something on the road in front of the house. “Hurry up!” somebody whispered. Someone else muffled a laugh.

They left the paint cans littering the yard and street, got in their car, and drove past me. The light from the street lamp caught their faces as they drove by. It was the group from The Cactus. Amber spotted me in the bushes. She did the double finger-gun gesture at me as they sped off into the night.

I walked over and took a look at the destruction they’d left. Toxic paint was soaking into the lawn, flowerbeds, and into the bricks of the house. The van was covered in florescent yellow. On the street, in big letters, with an arrow pointing at the house, they had written, “KILLER CASEY LIVED HERE.”

I was too stunned to move. The sheer magnitude of the mess was overwhelming. It held me spellbound until I heard a noise. It was probably just a cat looking for some garbage, but it startled me. I ran back to my bike and got out of there.

It wasn’t until the next morning that I realized there was paint on one of my sneakers. I must have stepped in some by accident. I only had one pair of sneakers. I couldn’t afford to throw them out. Frantically, I checked the rest of the house for paint footprints. But I didn’t find any.

I heard the front door slam. Mom had just come back in. I knew without asking where she’d been.

“I hate this town!” she wailed. “I hate this town! I hate these people!”

I joined her in the kitchen to see if I could calm her down. “It’s all right, Mom.”

She spun on me. “It is not all right. How dare you say it is? First, their own church shuns the Whites. That wheelchair ramp hasn’t been put back up. I keep trying to get hold of Reverend Fleet but he won’t come to the phone when I call. His secretary and his wife say he’s out whenever I drop by his office or the manse. Out, my foot. He’s there, hiding under the pulpit! Christianity stands for courage—I pity him when he gets to the pearly gates.

“Then the Whites start getting threatening letters. Michael White, a hero in this town, and Linda White, who’s been a support to everyone who ever needed one…and now this!”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

In answer, she took me by the arm and force-marched me all the way over to the Whites’ house.

By the light of day it looked even worse.

The Cactus gang had chosen the brightest, most garish colors in the spectrum. Lime green all over the red bricks of the house. Bright orange over the windows and the wheelchair ramp. Pink all over the lawns and gardens. And that hideous yellow on the van and the street.

A police car was parked at the curb across the street from the Whites’ house. I spotted the officer a short ways down the block, talking to a woman on her front porch who was shaking her head and probably saying, “No, I didn’t see anything.” A few other neighbors were out on their lawns, staring and frowning. No one was offering to help clean it up.

A large puddle of paint was congealing on the pavement. Struck with an idea of sudden brilliance, I walked over to it, pretending to want a closer look at the damage, and stuck my shoe in the wet paint.

“Watch where you’re walking!” Mom shrieked. I pulled my foot away quickly. Now I had an explanation for the paint on my shoes. Now I was safe.

I’d known without even thinking about it that I wouldn’t report Amber and the others. They could have easily said I was part of it, and then it would be the six of them against me. That wasn’t the main reason I’d keep my mouth shut, though. The main reason was this: if I squealed, they wouldn’t invite me back to The Cactus with them.

And then I’d be alone again.