Trust Me (8 page)

an I have the number for Scott State I Prison?” Rae said into her cell phone after dialing information. She glanced
around the quad to make sure no one was close enough to overhear her because her reputation wasn’t ready for
speculation on who she was calling in prison. But the quad was still mostly empty. Most people at Sanderson ate in
the caf.

An actual person told Rae to hold for the number, then the automated voice recited it. Rae pressed one to have the
number dialed for her. She was too impatient to wait.

Rae got the prison’s automated answering system. She pressed three to get information on visiting hours. She’d
spent half the night trying to figure out if she should tell Anthony what she’d discovered about his dad. Finally she’d
decided that she had to see Anthony’s father first and find out what the deal was-what he was in prison for, what his
attitude was toward Anthony-before she made up her mind whether to tell Anthony the truth or try to forget
everything she’d learned.

“Good,” Rae muttered when the recording told her there were visiting hours that afternoon and evening. She went
back to the main menu and pressed five to get directions to Scott State by bus. It wasn’t too far outside Atlanta, so
she should be able to round-trip it and get home early enough to make her dad happy.

Rae hung up the cell, a little of the wax on her fingers crumbling away. She considered wiping all of it off. With
everything that had been going on, it was smart to be on guard.
I’ll leave it until after school, at least,
she decided.

She needed a break from the constant murmur of thoughts that weren’t her own.

She turned around, took two steps toward the main building, then pulled out her phone again, pretending she
needed to make another call. Mr. Jesperson, her English teacher, had the entrance staked out. One look at him and
Rae knew he wanted to have one of their little talks. The guy was obsessed with helping her through her “tough
time.” Maybe it was a new-teacher thing. Whatever it was, Rae wasn’t interested. Group sessions at Oakvale three
times a week was more than enough talking.

I’ll give him a few minutes, then if he’s still stand ing there, I’ll just rush by him and say I have to pee or something,

Rae thought. She tilted her wrist and waited while the second hand made a full circle and started another.

“Rae,” a voice called from the direction of Mr. Jesperson. Rae rolled her eyes, reluctantly turned toward the voice-and saw Marcus Salkow jogging toward her.
Much better than Jesperson,
Rae thought, getting a little zing of that
leftover boyfriend-girlfriend response.

“I’m heading over to Sliders,” Marcus said as he stopped in front of her. “I’ve been thinking about those little
burgers they have all morning. Do you want to come? I know you love those veggie ones with the pickles.”

“Um…” Was he going to try to talk about getting back together again? Because she really wasn’t ready for that.

She-

“Come on, Rae. You’ll have to be with me for less than an hour. And you’ll get veggie burgers,” Marcus coaxed.

Rae glanced at the school. Jesperson was still waiting. “Okay, sure, why not?”

Marcus grinned, and deep lines appeared in his cheeks, long dimples, that’s what Rae called them. “So, the Range
Rover’s in the parking lot.” He took a step in that direction, then hesitated and looked at Rae like she might have
already changed her mind.

“Hurry it up. I’m starving,” she told him.

“Me, too. I’m going to get a dozen of the little guys,” Marcus said as they headed to the parking lot. “That’s
probably what-a triple-decker Big Mac? Two Whoppers?”

“Mmmm. Maybe even more,” Rae answered.

They managed to talk about little versus big burgers until they’d reached Sliders, placed their orders, gotten their
orders, and found a table. And Rae was glad they had. It was a ridiculous conversation, yeah. But it wasn’t awkward
silence. And it wasn’t a heart-wrenching discussion about how Marcus wanted her back and how Rae was
uncertain-uncertain and
scared
-to ever trust him again.

“Gooood,” Marcus groaned as he ate half of his first miniburger in one bite.

Rae laughed. “You sound like Frankenstein,” she told him.

“Gooood,” Marcus repeated, going into an all-out Frankenstein impression. He tilted his head toward the side and
stared at Rae. “Preeeety,” he said, draw-ing out the word.

The busboy cleaning the table next to them gave Marcus a you’re-losing-it look, but Marcus didn’t seem to notice.

He kept going with his Frankenstein routine. “Rae frrr-iennnd.”

Rae laughed again-she couldn’t help herself-and it felt like half the tension and anxiety built up in her body
escaped with the sound.

“Frrr-iennnd?” Marcus repeated, his green eyes intense. Rae realized he was asking her a real question.

Should she trust him? Could she trust him? If she let him back into her life even a tiny bit, would she end up a
walking pile of pain?

Marcus stuffed the other half of his miniburger into his mouth. “Frrr-iennnd?” he asked again, more insistently,
letting pieces of burger fall back onto his tray.

It was disgusting. And Rae laughed until she snorted. This was how it used to be with Marcus-he’d always been
able to crack her up, especially when they were alone together.

Marcus isn’t Jeff,
she told herself.
You have no reason to think he just wants to get into your pants because he

thinks that you’re a pathetic somewhat psycho girl and hence easy.

Marcus pounded on the table with both fists. “Frrr-ieeennnnnnd?” he howled, getting the attention of everyone in
the place.

Rae didn’t want to go back into a boyfriend-girlfriend thing with Marcus. She wasn’t at all ready for that. But-she
looked at him, and for a second it was as if she’d stepped back in time, back into the skin of her old self. It felt good.

She picked up her veggie burger and crammed the whole thing in her mouth. “Frrr-ieeennnnnnd,” she groaned
back at Marcus. Bits of bread and a chunk of burger sprang out. People were staring, but for the first time in
months, Rae didn’t care.

Anthony absentmindedly rubbed the bruise on his thigh. It had gone from black to the yellow-green stage.
I bet

some of the Sabertooth guys are nursing a few bruises themselves,
he thought. He’d definitely given as good as he
got during the scrimmage. He tried not to let himself feel too psyched about that. It didn’t change the fact that he still
had to face the academic tests.

He glanced at the clock positioned over the diving board of the Y pool. He’d been a few minutes early. But now
Rae was a few minutes late. If she wimped out-Anthony shook his head. Rae just wasn’t the kind of girl who
wimped. No matter how scared she was last time, he knew she’d get back in the pool, pretending it was no biggie.

When she gets here, keep your eyes on her face,
he reminded himself.
Don’t let them go wandering all over the

bathing suit. And avoid the hair.
For some reason Rae’s hair made his imagination X-rated, and he was always
fighting off the urge to touch it, to see if it was as soft as it looked.
Okay, so face. Face.

Out of the corner of his eye he caught the motion of the girls’-locker-room door swinging open. He turned toward
the door. Yeah, it was Rae coming out. But she was still in her regular clothes. “What’s going on?” Anthony asked
as she rushed over to him.

“Sorry, sorry,” Rae said breathlessly. “My dad is having this cocktail-party thing at our house tonight. I told him I’d
help out, so I-I can’t do the swimming today.”

“A cocktail party,” Anthony repeated. That didn’t sound like a last minute kind of deal.

“Yeah, for the people in his department,” Rae answered. Her eyes skittered around his face, never quite meeting
his gaze.
She’s lying,
Anthony thought. But he still didn’t think she’d wimp on the swimming, so something else had
to be going on.

“What time will it be over?” Anthony asked.

Rae bunched her hair into a ponytail with her hand, then immediately let go, her hair spilling back over her
shoulders. “Pretty late, probably,” she answered. “I’ve really got to go. I need to, uh, help with apps.”

She didn’t wait for him to answer. She just gave a little wave and bolted. Anthony stared after her until she
disappeared into the locker room. His gut was telling him that something was wrong, and his gut was usually dead-on.

Rae’s stomach started doing origami when the bus pulled up at the Scott State stop. Was she insane for doing
this?

It’s too late to be thinking about that now,
she told herself as she stepped into the aisle. A lot of other people were
getting off at the stop, too. Probably most of them were visiting people in the prison. There wasn’t much else
around.

See? It’s just a normal thing. A thing people do. You don’t have to get yourself all knotted,
she thought. But her
stomach upped the speed of the origami production as she stepped off the bus. She followed the little clusters of
people moving toward the prison. A straggling line formed in front of a security station.

As she waited her turn to check in, Rae pulled a tissue out of her purse and wiped the Mush off her fingers, noting
that the numb spot on her right index finger was only the size of a pinprick now.

“Um, I don’t have to say why I’m visiting or anything, do I?” Rae asked the woman behind her as the line moved
forward a few feet.

“None of their business,” the woman answered. She shifted the toddler she carried to her right hip. “All they want
to know is who you’re here to see. Then they check your bag, and that’s it-you’re cleared to go into the waiting
room.”

“Thanks,” Rae murmured. The line moved forward again-and Rae was one person away from the guard taking
names. How did that happen? This was going too fast. She wasn’t ready, hadn’t even figured out what to say to
Anthony’s dad. She’d had the whole bus ride to figure it out, but nothing sounded right to her.

“Name?” the guard asked. Rae stepped up in front of him. “Rae Voight. I’m here to see Tony Fascinelli.” The guard
gestured for her purse, and Rae handed it over. She wished she’d realized that it would be checked. She would
have cleaned it out, gotten rid of the tampons, at least.
I’m sure the guy’s seen tampons before,
she told herself, but
her face got hot when she saw the guy push one of them aside so he could look deeper into her purse.

“You’re good. Go on in,” the guard said. He handed the purse back to Rae, and she followed the couple who’d
been ahead of her into a low building. It smelled like industrial cleaner, just like the hospital, just like the institute.

Rae pulled a little bottle of Calyx moisturizer out of her purse and worked some into her neck. She hoped its fresh
scent would block out the cleaner, but instead it mixed with it, making the cleaner a little sweeter and even more
disgusting.

Rae sat down in one of the molded plastic chairs and started mouth breathing. A moment later the woman with the
toddler sat down beside her. “You want a magazine?” she asked. “It’s going to be a while before they start calling
people in.”

“No, thanks,” Rae answered. She really needed to figure out what to say to Mr. Fascinelli. What she wanted to ask-to yell-was, “Why haven’t you seen your son in so many years?” But she knew that wasn’t the way to go.

So what
is
the right way?
she asked herself. But her brain kept going dead when she tried to come up with the
answer.

A different guard stepped into the waiting room and started calling out names. Rae’s muscles tensed when she
heard hers.
This is what you came here for,
she reminded herself.
You’ll just have to figure out what to say when it’s

time to say it.

Rae got in yet another line-this one to go through a metal detector. “Table four,” the guard manning the detector
told her as she stepped through. Rae nodded and stepped through the door to the visitation room. The first thing
she saw was a man and a woman practically doing it, their bodies pressed together in the tiny sliver of space
between the water cooler and the wall. Whoa. That couldn’t be allowed, could it? She glanced over at the two
guards strolling between the rows of tables. They didn’t appear to have noticed the couple.

Whatever,
she thought. She scanned the room, looking for table four. She saw Tony Fascinelli before she saw the
number. Just like Anthony’s stepbrother in Selma, Tony Fascinelli looked way too much like Anthony not to be
related. His hair was shorter-a crew cut-and he was more beefy than muscley. But he was definitely Anthony’s dad.

Rae slowly approached him, her throat getting drier with every step. “Mr. Fascinelli?” she managed to squeak out
when she reached the table.

“Yeah, that’s me,” he answered. His voice even sounded sort of like Anthony’s. “You got money for the vending
machines?”