by Ann Tatlock
“How many?” Rebekah asked.
“Give me forty, will you?”
Rebekah noticed her fingers trembling as she counted out the tickets. She slid them under the glass, along with the man’s change.
“It’s a rip-off, you know,” the man said, “a dollar a ticket.”
“I didn’t set the price, sir.”
“I got three kids. . . .” He waved a hand at the three heads bobbing around him at waist level. “I can drop a hundred bucks in two hours easy around here. Come on, kids, let’s go.”
Lena reclaimed her spot at the window. “So take the brats swimming,” she said, glancing over her shoulder. “It doesn’t cost a nickel, and maybe you’ll get lucky and they’ll drown.”
“Good grief, Lena,” Rebekah said. “You’re full of good advice.”
“In fact I am, Beka. And I’m telling you, you better do something about little Miss I-get-whoever-I-want before she goes in for the kill.”
“You think she wants David?”
“I know she wants David.”
“What have you been doing—spying on them the past hour?”
“You bet I have.”
“What for?”
“What for? I thought we were friends. I’d expect you to do the same with Jim, if you thought he was cheating on me.”
“I never said David was cheating on me.”
“Not yet. But as your friend, I’m telling you to nip this thing in the bud.”
“And what exactly do you expect me to do?”
“I know the perfect hands-off spell.”
Rebekah sighed and bought some time by taking a long sip of Coke. “I did a beauty spell, Lena, but I’m not sure it did any good.”
“You must have done it wrong.”
“You said there was no right or wrong way to do it.”
“There isn’t really, but—listen, Beka, you have a lot to learn. You’re just lucky Aunt Jo and I are willing to teach you. Meanwhile, I’ll show you what we can do by getting rid of Jessica.”
“Getting rid of her? What do you mean by that? I don’t want to hurt anybody. And anyway, do no harm, remember?”
“We’re not going to hurt anybody. We’re just going to make her quietly go away.”
Rebekah shook her head. “I don’t know, Lena.”
“You want to keep David, don’t you?”
“Of course!”
“Then harness your power, girl.”
Rebekah sighed again. “It just seems like I should be able to keep him without any hocus-pocus.”
“Hocus-pocus? Beka! Listen, this isn’t hocus-pocus, it’s the real thing. It’s using the power you were born with, the power you have a right to use.”
“I’ll think about it. But, listen, don’t do anything without me.”
“I won’t.”
“Shouldn’t you be at work or something?”
“I’m off today.” She shrugged. “But I’ll tell you, it’s still only June and I’m already tired of selling popcorn and Raisinets to a bunch of fat slobs at the movie theater.”
“Yeah, well, it’s right up there with selling tickets here.”
“You know, Beka, it’s too bad we’re not like Jessica. She doesn’t have to work summers, you know. Her parents are divorced, but still, her dad is some bigwig real-estate developer or something. The guy’s like filthy rich. I’ve heard she has a trust fund and everything.”
“Yeah? Well, good for her.”
“I think she needs to be knocked down a notch or two.”
Rebekah wanted to get off the subject of Jessica. “Listen, Lena,” she said, “I’m meeting David in half an hour at the pavilion for break. I’ll ask him if he wants to meet out behind the church tonight. What do you think? You and Jim up for it?”
“Up for it? I’d say we’re long overdue. And as fate would have it, Mom restocked just yesterday. You should see the place. We could start our own drive-through bar selling gin and tonics out the kitchen window. She’ll never miss a couple of bottles.”
“Okay. What do you say—midnight, then?”
“I’d say you’re on.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
John awakened with a start. He stared up at the ceiling in the darkened room, trying to clear his head of fragmented dreams. He wondered what had pulled him up out of a heavy sleep. Rolling on his side, he glanced at the glowing face of the clock. Almost three-thirty.
He shut his eyes again, then opened them quickly as a heavy thud sounded downstairs. He shot from the bed and rushed down the narrow staircase, his mind and heart racing. At the bottom he paused a moment, listening, wondering which way to go, which of his children needed him.
In another moment Andrea was there beside him. “Beka,” she whispered.
They moved as one through the front room and into the kitchen, where John pushed open the bedroom door and switched on the light. The bed was empty, the covers thrown back to the footboard. Phoebe had already made her nightly trek, abandoning this room to her older sister, who was slumped against the frame of the open window, half in, half out.
“Beka!” Andrea cried. “What’s the matter with you?”
Rebekah managed to swing the second foot inside. She steadied herself, took one tentative step toward the bed, swayed, and crumpled to the floor. John rushed to her side and, gently gathering her up in his arms, cradled her head in his lap. His stomach recoiled at the sick, sodden smell of alcohol. For an awful moment he couldn’t breathe. In his daughter’s ashen face, he saw at once his own past and Rebekah’s future, a future he didn’t like and couldn’t bear to imagine. Somewhere in the pit of his stomach, he felt a deep loathing for himself, for the weakness of flesh that was his legacy.
Andrea knelt beside him and touched their daughter’s face, as though searching for fever. “She’s sick, John. We’ve got to get her to a doctor.”
John shook his head. “She’s not sick, Andrea. She’s drunk.”
“Drunk?” Andrea repeated the word dully, as though it were foreign to her.
John nodded. He scooped Rebekah up in his arms and lifted her onto the bed. Tenderly, as though she were a newborn, he straightened her legs, took off her shoes, and pulled the sheet up over her. “She’ll have to sleep it off,” he said.
Andrea’s eyes were wide, her face pale. “Will she be all right?”
Do you mean, John wondered, in the morning or in the years to come? “She probably won’t feel very good when she wakes up.”
He watched his wife’s gaze travel from their daughter’s face to his. If she accused him, said this was his fault, he would readily agree. But when she spoke, her voice was quiet, almost sorrowful.
“She’s never done anything like this before.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. Don’t you think I’d know if she came home drunk?”
Would she? John’s own parents hadn’t known when he and Jared stumbled into the cottage, a couple of teens sneaking home after a night of boozing. Hadn’t they climbed in through this very window?
John turned to the window, pulled down the screen that Rebekah had opened to climb through. “She’s been sneaking out at night for a while now.”
When he turned back, he wondered for a moment at the tears in his wife’s eyes, how they pooled there without spilling over. Her eyes, magnified, glimmering, were wandering stars in a dark sky. Andrea Sheldon looked hopelessly lost.
“John,” she whispered, “what are we going to do?”
He tried to sound calm. “For now, we’re going to go back to bed. We’ll deal with this in the morning. Don’t worry, Andrea. Everything’s going to be all right.”
They climbed back up to the garret room and stretched out on the parallel beds. “Try to get some sleep, Andrea,” he said softly.
“But, John . . .”
“What?”
“She’s only sixteen years old.”
“I know.”
“You think she’s been drinking for a
while?”
John took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “I don’t know. Maybe. It’s what kids do.”
“How could I not have known?”
“You didn’t have a clue?”
“None.”
“You trusted her.”
“Yes. I just never thought . . .”
The room fell quiet. Then John said, “Just because you were never a drinker, Andrea, doesn’t mean your daughter won’t drink.” She is, after all, my daughter too, he thought.
“All of a sudden I feel like I don’t know who she is, like she’s somebody else’s child,” Andrea went on.
“Kids like to push their limits. That’s the way it is.”
“Billy never did.”
“Billy’s different. I mean, he never faced the kind of peer pressure Beka must be facing.”
“Well, we’ve got to put a stop to it.”
“Of course.”
“I don’t want to lose her, John.”
“We’re not going to lose her, Andrea. Now get some sleep. We’ll deal with it in the morning.”
In a little while he heard her breathing take on the slow and gentle rhythm of sleep. He tucked his hands under his head and, listening for some kind of assurance that never came, finally let go just enough to sink into troubled dreams.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Rebekah told herself everything was all right now that she was out of the cottage and seated on a park bench beside the mini-donut concession stand. Yes, she was in deep trouble with her parents, but she’d had a good reason for what she’d done, and he was seated there beside her, his arm draped casually around her shoulder. David. This, right here, was the center of her universe. As long as she was with David, everything was all right.
She laid her still throbbing head on his shoulder and smiled wanly as she felt his hold on her tighten. The pain was more of a dull ache now, instead of the pounding sledgehammer that had awakened her this morning.
The minute she’d opened her eyes, she knew she’d been caught. She was lying on her side, facing the window. The screen was lowered. She’d never been able to lower the screen. When she was sober, yes, but not when she stumbled in drunk. She’d always awaken the next morning and find the window wide open with nothing between her and the flies buzzing over the trash cans outside. But now the screen was closed, and there was only one explanation: someone else had closed it.
She was almost afraid to move, wondering what was waiting for her beyond the bedroom door. She heard movement out in the kitchen, the voices of her mother and father. She thought briefly of escape, of climbing back out the window and leaving for good. She might have done it if the hammering in her brain wasn’t keeping her nailed to the bed.
She didn’t remember anything about getting home. She didn’t remember much about the night at all. Her mind carried pieces and fragments but nothing that fit together to make a whole. She remembered a bottle in her hand, the first warmth of alcohol flowing through her veins. She recalled the flickering of flashlights, whispered voices, music coming from somewhere. She had an image of Jim falling over a gravestone, falling flat on his face, and Lena laughing. And too, there was David beside her, the hard ground beneath her, a whole slew of stars overhead.
A few other kids were there too, she remembered, kids Lena knew from the movie theater where she worked. Rebekah thought she might have seen them rolling joints, but she wasn’t sure now. The rest was a blank screen with no reception, not even snow, and as she gazed at it she sensed a certain fear gnawing at her stomach. She didn’t know what she had done in the lost hours.
By the time her mother had come into the room and stood by the bed, Rebekah had already resolved to stop drinking so much. The last thing she needed was the look on her mother’s face, her eyes so grieved Rebekah might have been lying in her coffin, stiff with embalming fluid instead of simply sick with 80 proof. Then her dad had appeared and stood beside her mother. As he looked down at her, she sensed she was seeing his face through the end of Phoebe’s kaleidoscope, at an ever-changing scene of grief, anger, hurt, puzzlement. Couldn’t he settle on just one negative emotion and leave it at that? She couldn’t deal with so much at once.
Her father said, “You probably don’t feel very good right now.”
“Yeah, you would know, wouldn’t you?” she said. At least she thought she spoke. She wasn’t sure the words actually came out. She was so dry she could hardly peel her tongue off the roof of her mouth.
An hour later she was sitting across from her parents at the kitchen table, sipping hot tea. When Billy happened in looking for something to eat, he was told he’d have to wait for lunch and that for now he should go outside and take Phoebe with him.
Billy, wide-eyed, asked, “Is Beka in trouble?” Without waiting for an answer, he looked at her in alarm. “Beka, what’d you do?”
Nothing you’ll ever do, she thought. Perfect child. Mama’s golden boy.
After Billy left, Rebekah sat quietly nursing her tea while her mother threw out anguished questions and her father lectured her on the evils of alcohol. He made sure he was holding her attention when he warned, “Beka, keep it up and you’re going to ruin your life.”
And Rebekah had stared him right back in the eye and said, “Not much chance of that. You’ve already ruined it for me.”
This time she got the words out, and if she and her dad had been dueling with swords, that would have been a slice right to the heart. She could see it in his eyes, on his whole frozen face.
She had felt triumphant then, but only a short time later the memory of that moment made her feel pained, as though somehow the sword had been turned back on her.
And now she was going to have to tell David. She drew in a deep breath to steel herself. “Hey, David?”
“Yeah?”
She lifted her head and looked at him. “Listen, my parents found out. They heard me come in last night.”
He swore quietly, narrowed his eyes. “So what’s the fallout?”
“I’m grounded. Two weeks.”
“Yeah? And what’s that mean?”
“No phone calls—”
“What? You were just on your cell phone with Lena.”
“Yeah, I can have the phone when I’m at work—in case of emergencies, they say. But once I’m home I have to hand it over.”
“Oh yeah? So what else?”
“No e-mail, no seeing friends, no seeing you.”
He laughed. “Yeah, right.” He kissed her, laughed again.
“A little hard to keep us apart when we work at the same place. Idiots.”
Rebekah stiffened, suddenly defensive. But she decided to brush off David’s remark. Let him say what he wanted, as long as he didn’t break up with her.
“Listen, I’ll be more careful next time,” she promised. “I won’t get caught again.”
He shrugged, looked disinterested. “Like it matters,” he said.
She wanted to ask him what he meant, but she was afraid of the answer. When she was with him, she wanted everything to matter.
He asked, “Do they know you were with me last night?”
“No.” She shook her head. “I wouldn’t tell them who I was with, though they could guess about Lena. I didn’t tell them they were right, though. I just said I was with a group of kids I’d met at the park.”
“Okay, so they don’t know I was there, but they still don’t want me to see you.”
“It’s just part of the punishment. They don’t have anything against you.”
David seemed to think about that for a minute. Then he said, “So when do you think we can have a repeat of last night?”
Rebekah chewed the inside of her lip. “Soon.”
“Man, it was great.”
“Yeah.” She wished she could remember.
“Listen,” David said, “we’d better move it. The boss’ll have my head if I’m late again.”
“All right.” She sighed.
“Meet me at the p
avilion for lunch, okay?”
“Yeah.”
He kissed her, smiled, wandered off. Everything at home was a mess, but at least she had David.
Rebekah took a deep breath. She couldn’t afford to be weak, not unless she wanted someone like Jessica Faulkner to come between them. Rebekah’s hold on David was threadlike, and she knew it. There were plenty of other pretty girls around to tempt him, plenty of reasons he might wander off for good without a backward glance. She needed to tighten her grip, and she would—even if it meant doing everything in her power to keep him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Andrea snapped open a fresh sheet and watched it settle gently over her bed. She smoothed the wrinkles and tucked in the corners. She had always loved the feel of cool clean linen beneath her hands, had always loved to crawl between crisp sheets at night, even if she was alone.
Which, she realized at once, was exactly what she was, in spite of the wedding band she wore.
She stood up straighter, shut her eyes. Never mind, she thought. She hated self-pity. She wouldn’t indulge in it.
Still, it would be nice if someone knew who she was, what she wanted, what she needed.
“Listen, honey,” Selene had told her, “you don’t want to go through your whole life without loving someone.”
But that wasn’t the problem. Andrea did love someone. What she wanted was to be loved by someone.
Wearily she tried to put the thought aside, to set her mind on the task at hand. It was good to stay busy, doing what needed to be done. Satisfied that the sheets were smooth and tight, she tucked her pillow into a clean case, plumped it, and laid it at the head of the bed, then draped the white summer spread over the sheets.
She turned to John’s bed and paused when she heard Phoebe’s timid voice downstairs. “I’m going to play on the porch.”
The girl was talking to her father, who was no doubt lounging in the overstuffed chair and reading the newspaper from Rochester, the Democrat and Chronicle. “Okay, Phoeb,” John said. “What have you got there? Chinese checkers? Want me to play with you?”