Twice Kissed (12 page)

She forced herself to her feet, began running again.

Not far away tires screamed on pavement.

Just pretend it didn’t happen,
she told herself,
like you didn’t see anything, just like you don’t see Mother pour vodka into her orange juice in the morning, or that you haven’t found bottles stashed in the laundry closet or behind the gardening tools. The hot-tub scene didn’t happen. You imagined it. Saw something else.

Headlights flashed on the asphalt as the sound of a car’s engine, Mitch’s Mustang, neared. Maggie started running again, faster and faster along the sidewalk that skimmed the edges of brick fences and wrought-iron gates and the secrets they guarded.

The thrum of a bass guitar reached her ears, the rhythmic cadence of drums. Mitch, driving his Mustang slowly, rolled down his window. “Get into the car, Maggie,” he ordered over the loud music.

“No!” She tried to run again.

“Listen—”

“Go away.” She reached the curb, stumbled, then dashed across a side street as another car caught her in its headlights.

“Damn.” Mitch gunned his engine, and at the far curb, Maggie turned sharply, up the side street. Her lungs burned, her thighs ached so bad they quivered, but she gritted her teeth and kept running. Adrenaline spurred her on. She heard the sound of Mitch’s tires screeching as he threw the gearshift into reverse and burned rubber. There was an ominous moment of silence when all Maggie could hear was her own ragged breathing and the thudding of her heart—then the squeal of rubber on asphalt, the sound of an engine being gunned angrily, and the smell of burned rubber hanging in the air.

In a second his car was beside her. Mitch leaned over and rolled down the passenger side window. “Get in.”

She didn’t answer, just kept running, uphill past the houses as her calves screamed in pain.

“Jesus Christ, Maggie, get in the car!”

She was gasping by this time, her lungs on fire.

“Fine.” He slammed on the brakes, threw open the car door, and, while the pounding beat of an old Creedence Clearwater Revival song rocked through the night, Mitch started running. In the best shape of his life, he caught up with her within seconds, grabbed hold of her arm, spun her roughly around, and stared down at her tear-stained face. “Let’s go home, Mag. Come on.”

“No!” She hit him then, her small fist pounding on his chest. “No!”

“Maggie, please. Oh, Christ.” He pulled her into the circle of his arms and rested his chin on her head.

She heard him breathing, felt his strong heart beating, was aware of the steel-like arms surrounding her. Mitch had always made her feel safe and now he was…was…she started sobbing again at the horrid thought.

“It’s not what you think.”

If she could only believe him.

“Mary Theresa and I were just messin’ around. We got into Mom’s Smirnoff and got a little carried away. That’s all.”

“I…I saw.”

“You don’t know what you saw. I was stupid, yeah. It was kind of a ‘You show me yours and I’ll show you mine’ thing. Dumb, huh?” Tipping her chin up with one finger he looked down at her and attempted a smile. But his face was pale, his eyes dead and she didn’t know what to believe. “Come on, Maggie. No harm, no foul. Let’s go home. Mary cleaned up the mess by the hedge and put Mom’s bottle back. No one has to know anything.”

“But—”

He dropped his arms and patted her on the head. “I’m an idiot, okay? A dickhead. I admit it. I shouldn’t drink. Ever. If the coach ever found out, I’d be dead meat, and this thing with Mary Theresa…well, it was my fault, I admit it, and we have to keep it quiet, okay? You know I love Sheila.”

Sheila Allman was Mitch’s girlfriend. They’d been going together since their sophomore year in high school. A cheerleader who had been homecoming princess and prom queen in the same year, she had been one of the most popular girls at White River High. Along with Mary Theresa.

“Come on, Mag. Get into the car.”

She couldn’t shake the bad taste in her mouth, the deep, piercing knowledge that she was being conned, but she had no choice. She had to return to the house. She had nowhere else to go, no one in whom to confide. On shaking legs she climbed into Mitch’s car, leaned against the passenger window as he cut a U-turn in the middle of the street. She stared sightlessly out the window as he drove with a little more restraint the short distance back to the house.

John Fogerty’s gravelly voice blasted from the speakers. “I heard it through the grapevine, not much longer would ya be mine…”

The music continued to pound as Mitch wheeled into the driveway and stood on the brakes. Maggie threw open the door and nearly fell from the low bucket seat to the pavement. Her legs were like rubber, her mind a kaleidoscope of horrid, ugly, sensual images. She didn’t wait for Mitch as she ran to the front door, into the house, and down the long tile hallway to her room. Mary Theresa’s door was closed, but a glow of blue light beneath the panels indicated that her lights were out, but she was watching television. Not that it mattered.

Maggie burst into her own room, shut the door, and flung herself onto the bed. She hadn’t seen what she thought she had. She had to believe Mitch. Crawling under the covers, she squeezed her eyes shut, but she didn’t sleep a wink and heard, hours later, her parents come into the house, the slam of the garage door over the shout of angry words, and the rattle of a bottle as her mother poured herself a nightcap, probably from the same fifth Mitch had tapped earlier.

It was sick. All of it. And Maggie couldn’t wait for the day when she’d be able to leave. Just the rest of the summer, then she could go move out and attend junior college. Forget living here. She wished she could just take off. As far away as possible. Away from this gloomy house with its awful, mind-numbing secrets. Away from her mother’s slurred speech and her father’s holier-than-thou attitude. Away from Mitch’s cocksure jock strut and Mary Theresa’s ever-present aura.

No more being a shadow.

Maggie rolled over on the bed, stared at the ceiling and, for the first time in her life, heard the voice, clear as a bell, as if Mary Theresa were in the room with her.

Don’t tell, Maggie, please. Whatever you do, don’t tell!

“What?”

Mom and Dad would kill me if they found out. Maggie, please, keep this our secret.

“How did you do that?” Maggie demanded the next morning. She and Mary Theresa were finally alone, in the kitchen, supposedly doing chores. Mary Theresa, makeup in place but her eyes a little red and puffy, was unloading the dishwasher at a snail’s pace before she went to get ready for her vocal lesson and Maggie, not interested in her job of wiping the table, hoisted herself onto the counter and eyed her twin. She hadn’t slept well, but decided to hit the problem on its head.

“Do what?”

“You know, talk to me last night.”

“I didn’t talk to you.” Mary rinsed off a breakfast plate still sticky with syrup and dropped it into the open rack.

“Yes, you did. I heard it clear as a bell. Like you were in the room. You said, ‘Don’t tell, Maggie! Whatever you do, don’t tell!’”

“That’s stupid. I wasn’t even in your room.”

“I know. So I figured you yelled it through the ducts or something.”

Mary Theresa leveled her with a glance that silently called her sister a million kinds of idiot. “Why would I do that? Who knows who could have heard me? The ducts don’t go just from my room to yours, you know.”

Maggie had thought of that, of course. But couldn’t come up with any other explanation.

“Well, you did
something
. ’Cause I heard you.”

“No way.”

“Didn’t you ask me to keep this our secret? That Mom and Dad would kill you if they found out?”

“I didn’t
say
it. I just thought it.”

“Well, I
heard
it. You said, ‘Don’t tell, Maggie, please, whatever you do, don’t tell. Mom and Dad would kill me if they found out, Maggie, please keep this our secret.’”

Mary Theresa’s mouth fell open. “How could you…” She dropped a plate. It landed on the tile floor. Crack! “You heard that?”

“That’s what I’m telling you.”

“But—” She leaned over and started picking up the bigger pieces of the broken plate. “I didn’t. Damn.” She sliced her finger on one of the shards.

“You didn’t what?”

“I didn’t
say
anything. Not out loud. You…you just imagined it.” Blood dripped from her index finger, and she stuck it into her mouth.

“No way.” With a shake of her head Maggie hopped down from the counter and started helping clean up the mess. She pulled a broom from the closet and ignored the half-full bottle of vodka she spied tucked behind a bag of rags.

“But I…I didn’t say that. Or anything like it.” Mary Theresa’s chin hardened in the same kind of determination Maggie had witnessed all her life.

“Well, I
heard
it.”

“You couldn’t have.” Still sucking on her finger, Mary Theresa dug in a cupboard with her free hand, found a small Band-Aid, ripped it open, and covered her tiny scratch as Maggie swept the broken pottery into the trash. Streaks of egg yolk and syrup stained the floor. “Oh, crap, Mag. Look what you did. You just made it worse.”

“I’ll get it, don’t worry.” Maggie had already rinsed out a rag and, on her knees, was polishing the floor to a shine.

Mary Theresa slammed the dishwasher door closed, then, folding her arms under her breasts, stared hard at Maggie.

“What?”

Mary didn’t reply, but her eyebrows slammed together in concentration and her lips compressed as if she were contemplating the most difficult problem in the universe.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“See.” Her expression changed. “You didn’t hear me.”

“You didn’t say anything.” Maggie stared at her sister as if she’d just grown a third eye.

“And I didn’t last night, either.”

“But I heard you.”

“You’re saying that you heard what I thought,” Mary Theresa said, wiping her hands on a terry-cloth towel. “I didn’t
say
anything last night, but I did
think
some of those things.”

“What?” Maggie stared at her sister in disbelief. “You just
thought
them. Come on.” Sometimes Mary Theresa was a little far out, but this time she’d really gone around the bend.

“I know, I know it sounds crazy, but last night, after I heard you go into your room, I was so miserable, so embarrassed, and so…afraid that you were gonna say something to Mom and Dad that I kind of…well, prayed…or mentally pleaded with you not to say anything.”

This was too much. After a night of not sleeping a wink, of lying in her bed with visions of Mitch and Mary Theresa, Maggie couldn’t deal with this kind of weird talk. She held both her hands up, palms out, and backed up a step. “I don’t know what you’re trying to do, Mary Theresa, but—”

“I’m telling you, it’s the truth.” She grabbed Maggie’s arms in a grip that wouldn’t quit. “So I don’t know how or why you heard it. But you’ve got to understand one thing that…that what you saw last night…it, it was nothing.” Sharp fingernails bit into Maggie’s skin. Mary Theresa’s green gaze was intense, angry. “You’ve got to believe me.”

Maggie tossed off Mary Theresa’s hands and backed toward the sliding door leading to the pool. “Look, I’m outta here. You don’t have to say anything else. You and Mitch’s little secret. It’s…it’s safe with me.”

“It’s not a secret,” Mary Theresa insisted, and tears filled her eyes. “Really, Maggie, you’ve got to believe me. Nothing happened.”

“Right. That’s what Mitch said.”

“I know, but it didn’t, not last night…”

“And…and I believe you,” Maggie lied. She didn’t want to think about it. Each time she remembered the scene in the misty hot tub with Mitch’s hands on the slick skin of Mary Theresa’s bare back, Maggie’s stomach turned over and threatened to spew all over again. She slid the door open to the patio and stepped outside, where the sun was blazing and insects buzzed in the bushes. She’d walk the two miles to the horse barns if she had to, but somehow she’d get away from here and all the sickness that seemed to be seeping through the thick stucco walls of the house she called home.

Slipping a rubber band from her pocket to her teeth, she scraped her hair back with her fingers until it felt right, then snapped the band around her clump of hair. Everything in her life seemed a little surreal these days.

Hang in there,
she told herself as she headed down the street, toward the main part of town. At the base of the hill, she jaywalked across traffic, then ducked down a shady alley to the main highway.
This craziness will subside. It has to.
At the far end of the alley she made her way around a nest of garbage cans that were beginning to foul the air and startled a black cat sunning himself on the top rail of a fence. Tail aloft, he leaped to the ground and slunk to the protective shade beneath an old Chevy Nova parked near a garage with a sagging roofline.

The alley dumped itself into the heart of downtown, and Maggie appeared at the back parking lot of a McDonald’s restaurant. She found enough change in the front pocket of her cutoffs for a Coke, then, sipping from a plastic straw as the late-morning sun beat against the back of her neck, she started walking. Her mother would be ticked off when Maggie called her at the tennis club for a ride home, but too bad. Worse yet, Bernice Reilly probably wouldn’t disrupt her massage or bridge hand, so she’d find a way to locate her stepson and send Mitch to pick Maggie up. Great.

Squinting because she’d forgotten her sunglasses, she felt the heat of the sidewalk through her tennis shoes and considered, for one fleeting, wild-hare moment, sticking out her thumb to hitchhike. Lots of kids in school did it all the time, but her parents were death on the idea, so she thought better of it and continued walking though she was starting to sweat.

Heat shimmered in waves rising from the street, distorting her vision of the four lanes of cars that inched through the stoplights in this part of town. The terrain was flatter down here where the markets, fast-food restaurants, taverns, and strip malls lined the road before giving way to cheaper houses than those up on the hill. Telephone and electric wires were strung from huge poles where handwritten signs and printed flyers were posted.

“Lost dog—three-year-old cocker spaniel answers to the name of Roscoe…”

“The end is near; listen to the Reverend Bill Ballantine at the New Hope Church Sunday, February twenty-eight, nineteen seventy-eight at eight o’clock p.m….”

“Six-family yard sale, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday!”

Ignoring the gum and crud that stuck to the sidewalk, Maggie trudged through the commercial area past shops and storefronts, watching the traffic through eyes that were turned in to her soul. She crossed the streets by rote, waiting until the lights changed, then stepping off the curb. Sweat ran between her shoulder blades, and her mind was filled with images of Mitch and Mary Theresa in various stages of undress. Touching. Kissing. Doing all sorts of disgusting and vile things.

“Hey! Watch out!” A horn blasted, and she jumped back, stumbling on the curb, her drink cup slipping and falling to the pavement, as a canvas-topped Jeep ran a red light and turned the corner, missing her by inches. Coke splashed up her bare legs. She nearly twisted her ankle as she fell backward.

“For Christ’s sake, watch where you’re going!” The paper cup was squashed by a thickly ridged tire laying down rubber as the driver gunned the engine.

“Bastard,” Maggie grumbled under her breath. She felt sticky, hot and ugly as a toad. What was she doing thinking about Mary Theresa and Mitch? She had to turn her mind to other things. Any other things.

Paying more attention to traffic, she walked through the business district that blended into a residential area where the houses were small and the grass dry and patchy. Chain-link fences kept dogs and kids in the yards while deterring strangers from entering the domain of small stucco cottages with wide porches and planters overflowing with bright blossoms.

Within a few blocks the city gave way to a more rural area where apple and pear orchards competed with chicken ranches. Maggie angled off the main highway to a road that led upward again, through the hills where neatly tended rows of grapes grew in the surrounding vineyards. The traffic lightened, the air seemed cleaner, and the bottom of Maggie’s feet burned in her worn shoes.

Trucks, vans, and cars whizzed past as she stuck to the gravel-strewn shoulder of the road and ignored the constant pestering of flies and gnats that swarmed in these last waning days of summer.

She heard the rumble of an engine, a truck from the sound of it, driving on the opposite side of the road, heading in the same direction she was going. She didn’t bother to look but couldn’t mistake the sound of the tires slowing as it approached, and she braced herself for some kind of catcall.

“Need a lift?” the driver, a man in his early twenties, asked. Positioned behind the wheel of an ancient truck that had obviously seen better days, he flashed her a smile that was a little off center, on the wicked side, and sent a warning to her brain. Whether the grin was sincere or just well-practiced she couldn’t determine because of the mirrored sunglasses that served as a shield for his eyes.

“Nah, I can walk.” Her first, natural, do-the-safe-thing response. But she lifted one hand to shade her eyes and squinted to get a better look at him.

“Sure?” He had thick, straight hair, dark brown, streaked with gold and a day’s worth of stubble that couldn’t quite disguise the square angle of his jaw. He wasn’t all that handsome, well, not really, but there was a rugged edge to him that she recognized, an innate sexual energy he possessed and probably used to his advantage. Without knowing anything more about him, she realized he was trouble, the kind of trouble good girls avoided.

“I’m fine. Really.”

“If you’re sure.” He didn’t bother to hide his disbelief.

“I am. Really.”

His smile was mockingly amused. “Your funeral.”

“I doubt it.” Was he flirting with her? This older guy in a faded T-shirt with a few holes around the collar? She felt warm inside, a kind of push-me-pull-you kind of fascination with his devil-may-care attitude.

“Just tryin’ to be chivalrous.”

“Yeah, right.” He was about as far from a knight in shining armor as he could get. What kind of con was he running? “And I’m Joan of Arc.”

“Thought I recognized you.”

Sending him a “drop-dead” look, she started walking again.

“If that’s the way you want it. See ya, kid.” With a glance in his rearview mirror, he stepped on the gas, and the truck shot forward.

Kid? Kid?
Her ego deflated. The Coke was suddenly sticky on her legs again, her hair pulled back into an ungainly ponytail, her cutoffs frayed. The guy thought she was a kid? A schoolgirl? Well, she was, she supposed, but seventeen wasn’t exactly junior high—and she’d be eighteen in a matter of weeks. And how old was he? Twenty-one? Twenty-two maybe? Well, it didn’t matter; she’d never see him again, but still she was bothered, and, for the rest of the trek, she replayed the conversation in her mind over and over again. It wasn’t all that great, but it beat the heck out of thinking about her sister and Mitch.

Half an hour later she was walking up the long drive to the stables when she spied his truck, an old beater with primer patches covering the dents of a vehicle that had once been army green.