The Other Side of Dark
Page 15
“Don’t shoot me,” Jarrod whimpers, and I realize I am pointing the gun at him.
If I shot Jarrod, wouldn’t it be self-defense? And wouldn’t it end the trials and the questions and the badgering and the harassment and the nightmares and the worries and the years and years of fear?
Carefully I aim the gun.
Chapter Fifteen
“You can’t shoot me!” Jarrod is crying and slobbering. Spittle drools from his mouth and down his chin. Or is it blood? “I didn’t mean to kill your mother. I didn’t know she was in the house, but she came into the den from the kitchen, and saw me, and said something to me, and I was scared. I didn’t mean it, Stacy!”
I try to picture my mother facing Jarrod with his gun. “What did she say to you?”
“She didn’t say anything at first. She was smiling. Then she saw the gun, and her eyes got frightened, but she still had a kind of smile on her face. She held her hands toward me and said, ‘It’s all right. It’s all right.’ ”
“And you shot her!”
He can’t talk. He’s crying too hard. I aim the gun at his head, just as carefully as he once aimed it at me. My hands have stopped shaking.
But now I can picture my mother. I can see her smile too. I can hear her telling Jarrod, “It’s all right.” Tears rush to my eyes with such force I’m blinded. I try to rub them away with the back of my left hand.
Choices were so easy when I was a child. Good guy versus bad guy, and the good guys always won. But I’m no longer a child.
Although I keep the gun pointed at Jarrod, at the top of my lungs I yell, “Help! Mrs. Cooper! Help!”
I hear her scream, “They’re coming! I already called the police!”
“I’m all right,” I shout to her. “Don’t be afraid. I’ll keep the gun on him until the police get here.”
Someone leaps the hedge and lands beside me, but it isn’t Mrs. Cooper.
“Give me the gun, Stacy,” Jeff says.
“No!” I don’t take my eyes off Jarrod. “Stay away from me. Mrs. Cooper called the police. They’re coming.”
“I am the police. Narcotics squad,” he says. “You can give me the gun.”
He reaches across and takes it out of my hand.
“My leg’s broken!” Jarrod begins to yell again. “She did it. She tried to kill me!”
I look up at Jeff. “How can you be a policeman? You’re just a senior in high school.”
But, as always, he avoids my questions. He even sounds a little angry. He keeps his eyes on Jarrod. “You could have been killed, Stacy. Apparently you were home and weren’t answering the phone. Why not?”
Jarrod groans. “My back. It hurts. I think something’s busted. Get an ambulance!”
“It’s on its way,” Jeff tells him.
“Jeff, I had Jarrod’s gun. I could have shot him.”
He doesn’t look at me. “Could you?”
I shake my head. “No. Not really. I wanted to. I hated him so much that I really wanted to kill him. I almost did. But then I couldn’t do it. Mom wouldn’t—”
It’s hard to explain. I hope that Jeff understands what I mean. I add, “I really didn’t have a choice. Jarrod’s life doesn’t belong to me.” I think of all the problems to come for all of us because of Jarrod, and I give a long sigh.
The yard seems to be filled with people. Mrs. Cooper is talking at a great rate. To me? I hear the high, excited chirps she’s making, but the words don’t come through. There’s a bass note in my ear as an officer with a notebook peers at me, asking me questions. But the only words I want to hear are Jeff’s.
He has my arm, propelling me around the rubble and the police officers, through our back door and into the house. The familiar, dusty smells of the room are laced with the pungency of drying apple core and somehow comfort me. I give a huge sigh of relief and lean against the closed door.
“Are you all right? Do you want to sit down? Can I get you some water?” Jeff asks.
I look at him carefully and remember something else. “I know where I saw you before. It was downtown, at the police station. You looked right at me.”
He doesn’t answer, so I add, “You can tell me the truth. You lied to me.”
“I didn’t lie,” he says. “I’ve been with the Houston Police Department for two years. I’m twenty-three, but because I look a lot younger than I am, I was put on a special high school assignment with the narcotics squad, and they sent me to the school in your area. Markowitz got worried about you, and I was in a logical position to keep an eye on you, so you became part of my assignment.”
“I was just an assignment?”
“Don’t look at me like that, Stacy,” he says. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Hurt seems to be another part of growing up,” I tell him. “One more thing to get used to.”
He shakes his head, resting his hands on my shoulders. I like the feel of them. I wish I could tell him so. I wish I knew how.
“There are so many good things about growing up, you can keep your mind on those and climb over the hurts.”
“Like falling in love? I think I was beginning to fall in love with you.”
“I don’t want to be your first love, Stacy.”
“You’ve made that clear. I won’t forget. I’m an ‘assignment.’ ”
“Listen to me,” he says, and moves nearer. His hands slip from around my shoulders and hold me tightly, pressing my cheek against the base of his throat. “I asked to get taken off the narcotics assignment just so that I could tell you the truth, and I asked because I care about you.”
“But you told me—”
“I said I don’t want to be your first love. I’d like to be the real thing, and I can wait.”
My cheek glows from the warmth of his skin through his shirt, and I can hear the steady beat of his heart. I put my arms around him. I’m Stacy McAdams. I’m seventeen. And I’m definitely in the right body!
JOAN LOWERY NIXON has been called the grande dame of young adult mysteries. She is the author of more than 130 books for young readers and is the only four-time winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Young Adult Novel. She received the award for The Kidnapping of Christina Lattimore, The Séance, The Name of the Game Is Murder, and The Other Side of Dark, which also won the California Young Reader Medal.