Wicked Games (20 page)

“Lilah, this is Mrs. Turnbull,” her mother said, with a hint of an edge in her voice.

“Cara is fine,” said Jules’s mother. “Do you know who I am, Lilah?”

Lilah immediately put the pieces together. Mrs. Turnbull, who wanted to be called Cara. With a loosey-goosey beach-bum attitude about her. She slouched in her chair. Her long arms and legs flopped out every which way. There was someone else Lilah knew who was comfortable with herself like this. Someone who’d stolen her boyfriend. She wondered what this Cara thought of her daughter now that she knew the girl made porn videos of herself.

“Don’t you have something to say to Mrs.—to Cara?” said her mom, tapping her finger nervously on the table.

The words, as they came out of Lilah’s mouth, had a rehearsed quality. “I’m sorry for all the things I did to Jules. I won’t do it again.”

Jules’s mom glanced skeptically at Lilah’s mom. The woman’s expression had a pleading, fretful quality to it.
She felt bad for her for a second. She could imagine how terrified she’d be herself if she thought Jules was about to go to jail forever. But from the few minutes she’d spent in this house, Jules’s mother couldn’t help but assume that this woman had neglected her child, or at least turned a blind eye when Lilah began spiraling out of control.

“Are you sorry, Lilah?” Jules’s mom asked. “Do you have any idea what you’ve put my daughter through?”

Lilah braced herself for the lecture she knew was about to come, squeezed her lips tight, waiting for it to be over.

Jules’s mom listed all the things Lilah had done and explained all the ways she’d broken the law. Vandalism. Threats. Stalking. Harassment. Not to mention theft and illegal distribution of child pornography.

Lilah let the words wash past her. She had to sit here. She didn’t have to pay attention.

As the woman went on and on about this stuff, Lilah refused to even glance in her direction. She focused on the grandfather clock against the wall, on the carnival glass her mother had mounted above the table, on the stupid dolphins she collected, lined up on the window ledge, and pretended to listen. Her leg bounced uncontrollably.

“Do you understand what I’m saying to you?” asked Jules’s mom.

Lilah rolled her eyes. This was such bullshit.

“He was
my
boyfriend. You know that, right? Mine. Not hers.
Mine
,” she barked, suddenly looking directly at the woman, letting her hatred flash out toward her before turning back to the wallpaper.

Lilah’s mother called her name, once, in warning. Then, turning to Jules’s mom, she pleaded, “Like I said. Too. Much.”

“I’m sure Jules has some regrets, Lilah,” said Jules’s mom, ignoring the girl’s mother entirely. “But if you don’t show some remorse for the terrible things you’ve done to punish her—show
me
that you realize you went way over the line—then I promise you, from now on this situation will be handled by a group of lawyers.”

Jules’s mother didn’t like to use threats. It wasn’t something she believed in. But she had to drive the point home that she wasn’t someone to be messed with, or afraid of what Lilah might do. She held all the cards this time.

“Tell her you’re sorry now,,” Lilah’s mother said tersely. “Tell her you’ll leave her daughter alone.”

“I already did that,” said Lilah.

“Well, do it again.”

Lilah did as she was told. “I’m
really
sorry. What I did was wrong. I won’t bother Jules anymore,” she said ironically, sarcastically, not even trying to give the impression that she was doing anything but going through the motions.

Jules’s mother looked at Lilah’s mother again, and then back to Lilah. She wasn’t sure she could trust either of them, but she took a cleansing breath and tried to open her heart to the possibility that the universe would undoubtedly make sure justice was served.

She would help it along a little, though.

“I think the best course of action is to get a restraining order on you. Do you understand what that means?” Jules’s mom said to Lilah.

Lilah refused to let the relief she felt leak out. “I’m not stupid,” she said. “I watch TV.”

“Good, so you know that if you come within one hundred yards of Jules, they’ll arrest you. And then there won’t be anything anyone can do to help you.”

“That won’t happen, right, Lilah?” said Lilah’s mother.

As Lilah screwed a fake smile onto her face and nodded at Jules’s mother, she felt reinvigorated. She might be beaten for now, but that didn’t mean that the war was over. It just meant she had to bide her time and prepare herself for the battle to come. And make sure she didn’t get caught next time.

All Carter could
think about was Jules. In the days after the catastrophic graduation ceremony, while he sat around the house with his broken foot propped up, he’d gone over and over the details in his head, chastising himself for not having seen what was happening sooner, lambasting himself for not having protected her from the danger he’d unleashed in her life. And yet he couldn’t stop searching the usual spots—Google Chat, Facebook, Twitter, the rest of them—for some sign that she was okay now.

What he found was nothing. Not a trace of Jules. She’d disabled her chat. She’d gone off Twitter. She’d deleted her Facebook account, and he knew it wasn’t an
issue of her unfriending him, because when he had Jeff, who’d never been her Facebook friend, search for her, he came up with the same nothing result.

He ached to text her, but no text could contain the depths of his remorse.

Finally, he conscripted Jeff to drag him and his broken foot around town in search of her. They’d gone to her house, but there’d been no one home. They’d gone to Waxidasical, where they’d discovered that she’d quit unexpectedly after one too many snarky comments from the customers. They’d trolled the sun-bleached streets of Dream Point hoping she’d materialize on Flamingo or Pelican Drive like she’d been waiting there for them to roll by.

There was one place they hadn’t tried, where Jules might be. Harmonic Convergence, her mother’s crystal shop. Carter wasn’t even sure if she ever helped out there, and he could just imagine the hard time her mother would give him if he showed up to bother her daughter again.

They had to stop every hundred yards or so for Carter to rest and adjust his crutches, but eventually they made their way past the carnival crowds around Harpoon Haven, past the sleek hotels and the tiki bars and takeout joints, all the way to the far end of the promenade, where the freakier, less brightly scrubbed shops were located.

They walked right past the bench where he and Lilah
had carved their names. Seeing it, seeing the names still etched in the wood, Carter shook his head in regret.

Then, finally, they were standing out front of Harmonic Convergence, staring up at its flaking, hand-painted sign, listening to the tinkle of the wind chimes mounted above the door. The airy curtains in the window and the wall of beads hanging across the open door made it difficult to see who was inside the space, but it somehow felt like destiny that Jules would be there. It would only be fitting for Carter to have to face her mother and show he wasn’t afraid, before being allowed to hold her in his arms.

“Wait here,” he told Jeff, and then he pushed the beads aside with a crutch and stepped inside.

And there she was.

She sat on a high stool, nestled in among the cases of glimmering rocks in a back corner of the small room. She was wearing one of the flowing, low-slung Mexican skirts she liked, aqua blue, and she was reading a book of monologues for women.

She was so absorbed in this book that she didn’t notice when he entered the store. She looked so peaceful there. He almost didn’t want to disturb her. Just to look at her—that would almost have been enough. Just to take her in and savor the fact that she was alive.

When Jules guardedly looked up, they gazed at each other silently for a moment. With his crutches, he looked
vulnerable and sad. She wanted to forget the past few months. Forget that Carter had told her that he wouldn’t let anything bad happen to her, ever again. When he’d said it, she knew it was something he could never promise. He just wanted so much to make things right. And him showing up here, all battered and broken from the altercation she’d heard he had with Lilah after graduation, proved he was still trying to look out for her.

But so much had happened, perhaps too much to get past, although deep down she hoped that wasn’t true.

“Hi, friend,” Carter said, hoping the inside joke would make her smile.

He ran his hand through his hair, flopping it in that cute way of his.

“You’re hard to find nowadays,” he said.

“That’s by design.”

“I sort of had to stalk you to track you down.”

Okay. She acknowledged that was a pretty good joke, but only with a smile. She wasn’t ready to let her guard down yet.

“Think I could persuade you to take a little walk?”

“I’m the only one here.”

“I’ll make Jeff watch the shop.”

“Oh, Jeff’s here, too?” she said, her voice laced with sarcasm or disappointment—Carter couldn’t tell which.

Carter gestured toward his foot. “He’s my driver.”

Jules considered her options. “Okay,” she said. “Briefly.”

Outside, Carter instructed Jeff to go man the cash register. He and Jules leaned against the railing of the promenade. They watched the waves lapping against the beach. Neither of them knew quite where to start.

“Are you gonna get in trouble? For the video, I mean,” Carter asked.

She shook her head. “I’m eighteen now, and luckily, the time stamp on the video is dated to the day Lilah uploaded it to the school computer system. There’s no way to prove I was underage.”

They gazed out at the beach some more. A seagull bounced around below them, pecking at something half buried in the sand.

“That’s good,” Carter finally said.

They watched the seagull again. There weren’t many sun worshippers this far out—most people clung to northern end of town, the ritzy areas near the hotels. There were so few people around that they could almost imagine they were totally alone.

When Carter spoke again, he risked slightly more. “I’m so,
so
sorry, Jules. I tried to stop her,” he said.

Jules cautiously turned to face him. “I know. I can’t . . . I can’t believe you broke your leg. Are you okay?”

“I don’t care about me, I care about you,” Carter said. “I don’t expect you to forgive me or anything. I fucked up. I get that. But I want you to know I tried, at least. I threw her phone into the ocean. I didn’t realize she’d made other copies of the video and . . .” He went dreamy for a second, trying to find the words that would honestly, nakedly explain himself. “I keep wondering why I didn’t see what Lilah was up to sooner. It’s like I was afraid to see it. I think the mistake I made was in not admitting from the start that I loved you, not her. And I won’t—”

His confession came out so casually, more an explanation than an admission, that Jules almost missed it.

“What—wait—what?” she said.

He came out of his dream and was as confused as she was. “What, what?” he said.

“Did I just hear what I think I heard?”

“I don’t know. What did you hear?”

“That you, um, love me.”

Carter blushed. “Oh,” he said. “Yeah. I guess I did say that.”

Jules’s heart did a backflip. She remembered, in flashes, the hero who’d raced in to help her and Lauren sophomore year, that sensitive charmer she’d seen at Jeff’s house and gone on that spectacular “nondate” with—he must still be in there somewhere, right? Seeing him now, leaning on his crutches, that blue boot thrust
out in front of him, she couldn’t help but feel like she was seeing the Carter that she’d fallen in love with reemerge.

He was looking at her, nervously waiting to see how she’d respond.

“This is—wow,” she said. Then after a beat, she looked at him slyly out of the side of her eye and added, “It’s good to see you . . . friend.”

“It’s good to see you, too.” Carter took a risk. He picked her hand up and held it between both of his, studying her elegant long fingers, running his thumbs along her skin.

She let him do it. She didn’t resist.

“So, here’s the thing I don’t understand,” he said. “Why didn’t you just get your CIA friends to come in and take her out?”

The laugh came easily to Jules’s lips and her heart told her she was going to have to kiss him. It just had to happen. It wasn’t a choice.

She narrowed her eyes at him and cocked her head. “I’m going to do something now. And I before I do it, I want you to understand that it in no way—”

He looked at her then, saw the soft beauty of her face, the smooth skin of her cheeks, and the high arch of her eyebrows. It captivated him. And some force outside himself pulled him toward her and suddenly he knew what was about to happen. He was kissing her. And she was kissing him back. They poured all the pent-up
energy of their months of resisting and avoiding each other into this kiss. Each time it seemed like it was about to come to an end, a new surge of emotion pulled them back toward each other and the kiss began again and again and again.

When finally they came up for breath, they just gazed at each other for a long, long time.

“You know,” Carter said, “I’m going to make sure she stays out of our lives.”

“Too late,” she said. “My mom’s taken out a restraining order on her.”

“Even so,” he said.

“And if that doesn’t work, you’re right. I’ve got my friends in the CIA.”

There she was with that mischievous twinkle in her eye. She was back. The girl he so adored.

They kissed again, and then they stopped to glare at Jeff, who was clapping for them from the doorway of Harmonic Convergence.

Carter and Jules
barreled along the coast road in Carter’s BMW, following the blindingly white beaches north toward I-95, away from Dream Point. They were free. It had been two months since either of them had heard a word from Lilah. It was like she’d abandoned her destructive mission on the day she’d learned about the restraining order.