Vengeance (10 page)

She kept speaking even though I had practically stopped breathing, seeing her that way again. She said that my dad told her he was seeing a doctor already. That they were doing what they could.

We sat in silence for a long time. Long enough for me to put together the pieces that if my dad was already seeing a doctor, my mom knew, too. The only way she’d know about some heart condition in the hospital so quickly is if she had known about it before. We lay there long enough for me to think of all the signs I’d missed, or ignored, at home. All the moments I’d spent with Delaney between July and the time he died. All the times she’d smiled at me, laughed with me, kissed me.

She rolled onto her side, pushed herself up on her elbow, watching me. “Say something,” she said.

I thought of the Fourth of July and that fireworks show we
went to, and then skipped, sneaking back to my house. My room. I wondered if she knew back then. If she was already atoning for something that hadn’t happened yet.

I thought of the fact that she chose my dad over me.

I thought of how she had hidden a part of her from me, and I hadn’t even realized it.

I closed my eyes and shook my head at her, and I heard her sigh.

Everything was building up inside me until I felt like if I spoke, the room would implode from my anger.

She was wrong. I could get madder. I was. I just wasn’t sure who I was the maddest at.

My eyes were still closed but I felt Delaney pushing herself up. Away from me. And I heard something shattering, far away, like an old echo of my dad knocking the glass off the counter. It couldn’t be real.

Delaney scrambled to her feet and raced across the floor on the way out of the room. “What the …?”

Glass breaking, again.
Downstairs
. We were alone. I jumped up, my head cloudy, and checked her window quickly—no cars. “Wait,” I said. But she was halfway down the stairs. We were supposed to be alone.

I was five steps behind her, too far to reach her, too far to stop her. Too far to do anything when she reached the bottom step and immediately curled back toward me, covering her face, as another spray of glass sounded throughout the downstairs. I could hear the outside. Feel the outside. See the back motion-detector light on from movement.

I pulled her back up the stairwell, leaning against the wall, until a whole minute passed without any more breaking glass. I felt it in her hair as she cowered into my shoulder. I saw blood on the backs of her hands, from where she had blocked her face as she dove back into the stairwell.

She was staring at her hands. I pulled them away from her face and ran my fingers quickly along her cheeks, her neck, her skin. I peered around the corner and saw the glass covering the carpeting, the living room windows only partially remaining, the night air rushing in.

“Stay here,” I said, and I ran for Ron’s office. Found my phone. Called 911. Again.

When I came back out, Delaney had a broom. Her hands were shaking as she tried to sweep up the mess. “Don’t,” I said. “You need to leave it.”

So instead, she sat on the bottom step, running her fingers through her hair, shaking out the fragments of glass. I stood on the back porch, staring off into the distance, like time wasn’t real and if I stayed still enough, I’d be able to see what had just happened.

I called Joanne’s cell, and the noise from the barbecue came through the line before her worried voice. “Decker?” she said.

“Delaney’s okay,” I said. Figured I’d lead with that. “But something happened at the house. The police are on the way.” I heard wind rushing through the phone, and I realized she was already coming.

That same cop showed up—the one who told me I could’ve destroyed my own house. I felt unreasonably vindicated by this, by the broken windows, by having an alibi in the form of the girl sitting on the couch, staring at the backs of her hands.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” the cop asked Delaney. Other than her hands, which weren’t too bad, she looked physically okay. Except she had this vacant expression. Not okay. I wanted to sit next to her. Put my arm around her. I wanted to find the person who’d done this to her and put my fist in his face.

She focused her eyes on the cop. Nodded. Looked at me. “Ice,” she said.

The cop cleared his throat and said, “Uh, I’ll check the freezer.”

But that’s not what she meant. I leaned against the far wall, felt the cold drywall against my back. Dropped my head, saw the pieces of glass everywhere, littering the floor between us. Like shards of ice, floating on the surface of a lake.

Water. Ice.
Us
.

“Are
you
okay?” she asked. Damn her. I was walking. I was going to sit next to her. I was going to put my arm around her.

The front door flew open, and Delaney’s mom covered her mouth with her hand. “What the hell?” she said, which struck me, inappropriately, as hilarious.

My mom stepped around her, surveying the scene. Glass on the carpet. Glass on the table. Empty window frames. Me, standing in the center of the room, halfway to Delaney.

Joanne rushed to Delaney on the couch, lifted her arm, flipped it back and forth, assessing the damage. “What
happened?” she yelled, even though she was an inch from Delaney’s face. Delaney winced but not from the glass. Ron assessed the room, his eyes lingering on everything, piece by piece, like he could put the whole scene together in reverse.

The cop came back into the room carrying a bag of frozen peas that he handed to Delaney. She stared at the bag, totally confused. He flipped a page on his notepad and said, “Sorry to be meeting like this again.” Then he cleared his throat and said, “The kids were upstairs when they heard the sound of breaking glass. Delaney came down the stairs first, entered the living room”—he gestured to the glass everywhere—“just as another window was shattered. Decker was still in the stairwell.”

“I was almost down.” The way he explained it, I sounded like a freaking coward, sending Delaney out first.

“What were you doing in her room?” Ron asked, forgetting about the broken window and the cop and the room full of people. And then he turned red, like he realized he didn’t really want to know the answer to that.

“
Nothing
. I had to give her something.”

“Ron. Later,” Joanne said. He must’ve known we weren’t together.
Everyone
knew.

The cop cleared his throat. “The vandalism?” he said. And we all fell silent.

“Who would do this?” Joanne asked. “First your house, now ours,” she said to my mom.

“Whoever’s doing it isn’t trying to hurt anyone,” the cop said.

I stared at Delaney’s hands. At the dried blood.

“So far, the only target seems to be property.”

“Delaney isn’t
property
,” I said.

She stared at me. I looked away.

“I didn’t mean … Look. She got hurt, but that wasn’t the intent. You understand?” And now he was talking to me like I was a moron. A cowardly moron.

He turned to my mom. “We have to acknowledge,” the cop was saying, “that the target may not have been your late husband.”

He kept calling my dad her late husband, and I hated the way that sounded, like he might still be on his way.

“Can you think of anyone who might want to target
you
?” he asked. My mom had her thumbs pressed to her eyes. She worked in social services. Both my parents, lifelong do-gooders. And look what it got us. It could’ve been anyone. Joanne had Delaney lie back on the couch and started combing her fingers through her hair. She dropped the fragments of glass into the ceramic bowl on the coffee table. Delaney’s eyes were closed, and her hair was splayed out, like she was floating on the water. Under the water.

I heard the sound of another piece of glass landing in the bowl.

“Or maybe it’s me,” I said, and my mom frowned at me, the line appearing between her eyes.

“Who would be after
you
?” she asked. Delaney’s eyes were open now. She knew. I knew. But neither of us could say: we let a curse loose. We lived. I saved her. It all sounded so ridiculous.

“I need to leave,” my mom said.

“Don’t be silly,” Joanne said.

“I’m bringing you and your family into danger. I’m … I’ll check into a hotel.”

Thank God
, I thought.

“Will you keep Decker?” she asked.

“What? You’re the one who said you didn’t want us separated. That’s the only reason I’m even here!”

My mom blushed, I guess on my behalf. I was embarrassing myself. Us. I was being rude. I didn’t give a shit.

“This isn’t a request,” she said, not involving me in this at all, like I was a child, incapable of making decisions. I had pulled Delaney from the lake. Gone to the funeral of one of my best friends. Watched someone try to kill Delaney. Held my father as his heart gave out. And still, she treated me like this.

Delaney’s eyes were closed. Squeezed shut. Her chest wasn’t moving. She was almost lifelessly still.

My hands, pushing down on her chest. My mouth, breathing air into her lungs. Wake up
.

I had spent months living in terror of Delaney disappearing. But everyone was disappearing except her.
Everyone but her
.

Joanne said, “Of course, Decker will stay here. And so will you.”

Ron looked at his wife. Then at the cop. “It’s a window. Kids, probably. Nothing to do with anything.”

The cop nodded, but he seemed to sense there was something more—water and ice, maybe a story he’d heard that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. A girl who lived. A curse.

“Mom?” I asked, after the cop put his card on the table and left the house. My mom was walking toward the empty window with a box of garbage bags and a roll of tape. “Was Dad sick?” She stopped walking, in that same way Delaney had, as I put the pieces together in my room. “I mean, did you know
before
that Dad was sick?”

She made her hands keep moving, lining up the plastic against the window. Joanne cleared her throat and left the room. I wanted Delaney to leave, too, but she was watching. Leaning toward us. Waiting. My mom didn’t look at me as she said, “This isn’t the time …”

Which was all the answer I needed. I slammed the door to the office. Paced the room, waiting for the adrenaline to wear off. I put on my sneakers and went for a run, pounding the pavement until I had nothing left. When I got back, I stopped in front of my empty house. I wanted to tear the place apart. Find my dad and push him into a wall. I wanted to set this house on fire.

Kevin had his arm slung across Maya in the hall, and she smiled at me like she hadn’t been a total bitch to me half a day earlier. “Did your brother find you guys?”

Her face fell. “Oh, that was
you
.” She laughed. “Well, at least now I know how he found out.”

“What?” Kevin asked.

“I don’t think her brother is thrilled with the idea of you,” I said.

“No,” she said. “I’d say that’s about right.”

“That’s only because he hasn’t met me yet,” Kevin said, a huge cheesy smile on his face.

She put a hand on his cheek. “Not gonna happen, babe.”

“Hey,” he said, bending down to kiss her. “I’ll see you later, okay?” Really, he might as well have just said “Dismissed.”

She blinked three times, rapidly, and said, “I need to go and make up a quiz. After school?” And she left before he had the chance to respond.

“So … problem,” Kevin said as I pulled my books from my locker. “The field house.”

Problem: someone had flooded my house; someone had broken three windows in the house I was living at.

Problem: nobody told me my dad was sick. Not Delaney. Not my mom. Not even him.

“Huh?” I responded. Kind of a mumble, kind of an I-don’t-care.

“I’m going to assume you didn’t sign your name?”

“Sign my name? What the hell are you talking about?” Please tell me there wasn’t a camera. Please tell me security doesn’t have me on tape somewhere.

Kevin leaned against my locker and rubbed his chin with his free hand as he scanned the hallway. “Okay, yeah, we’ll find out who did it.”

“Did what?” I asked. Kevin raised his hand to Justin, who was walking toward us.

“I got nothing,” Justin said. “Where’s Janna?”

Kevin laughed. “Abandoning ship.” The warning bell rang and everyone in the hallway scattered.

“What the hell?” I said. I was going to be late. Screw it. I ran down the science wing, found an open classroom where people were still milling around, not yet in their seats. The teacher was talking to someone in the hall. I pushed past a bunch of freshmen, pressed my face to the glass window, and cupped my hands around my eyes.

I could see the words glaring back: CARSON WAS HERE.

And right below it, in letters so thick it must’ve taken an hour: SO WAS DECKER.

Kevin and Justin were pissed—they kept talking about this code of pranks or what ever, but Kevin said, “It’s clever, I’ll give him that. A prank within a prank.” And Justin nodded. “We’ll find out who did it,” Kevin assured me. Someone had seen me and called me out, that was their assumption. No big deal. They’d find out who did it. They’d get revenge. Justin narrowed his eyes as he scanned the tables in the cafeteria.