I couldn’t leave without knowing. With a sigh, I pressed the button on the imposing gate. Doofus and I both jumped at the buzz. I backed up to give the gate room in case it opened out.
It stayed shut.
After a few moments, I pressed the button again. The gate didn’t move, and the lights of the house stared at me across the snowy plain.
“Fine. Come on, Doofus.” I led the way back down the hill to the narrow passage between the Kriegers’ fence and the fence next door. Mistake: The unshoveled snow was knee-deep. I kept right on wading through it. “This is because I’m a good person,” I assured Doofus. “I am going to heaven, though hopefully not by way of the convent.” Doofus pranced happily around me.
Finally I reached the back corner of Nick’s enormous yard, where even the passage between the Kriegers’ fence and their neighbors’ was shut off from the ski slopes by another, higher fence. “Okay, this isn’t good. I’m sorry, Doofus, but I have to leave you out here while I go save the day. I’ll only be a minute.” I looked around for a tree to tie Doofus’s leash to, one that he would not pull out by its roots.
Something moved swiftly in the corner of my eye. Mountain lion! I gasped and whirled around.
It was only Doofus, climbing Nick’s fence. He’d leapt to the top and hooked his front paws over the wood. Now his back legs scrabbled against the smooth planks, searching for a claw-hold to push him over.
“Bad dog,” I sighed. He’d disappeared.
Well, if I’d had any thoughts of chickening out on my mission, they were gone now. I jumped to the top of the fence, hauled myself over, and dropped to the snowy ground.
And froze with horror. The mountain lion was here in the fenced yard with us where we couldn’t escape. Growling at us. Except for the square rectangular glow of a glass door on the deck, I saw nothing but blackness. But I heard the growl, too close.
“Doofus!” I screamed, needlessly. He barreled toward me and hit me in the chest, yelping. I’m not sure whether I dragged him or he dragged me, but somehow we dashed up the wooden steps to the snow-covered deck and headed straight for the door. I didn’t even have time to pray it was unlocked. The sharp claws of the mountain lion nicked my calves above my boots, through my long underwear and jeans. I yanked open the door and picked Doofus up bodily. We collapsed inside in a mound of Polartec and fur and backed against the door until it clicked closed.
We both started away from the door as the mountain lion leaped against it, howling, all fangs and claws and wild eyes.
Very small wild eyes. Four of them.
It wasn’t a mountain lion at all. It was two tabbies.
There were a few seconds of stillness, just Doofus and me panting in the large, quiet room, and bemusement that I had exploded with my wet dog into a filthy-rich family’s grand home. We faced a huge rock fireplace that I recognized from the Krieger Meats and Meat Products TV commercial so many years ago, with Nick giving the camera his winning smile, his mother blinking pleasantly into the camera, and Mr. Krieger inviting the public to taste Krieger Meats, from their family to yours. Happier times for Nick and his parents.
Feeling a pang for all of them, I gave Doofus’s wet, cold fur a stroke. I wasn’t sure what to do now. I still needed to find out whether Nick was okay. And there were still attack cats on the prowl.
I was about to detangle myself from Doofus and survey the damage we’d done to Nick’s palace when I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye. Someone was lying on a leather couch facing away from me. A blond head eased ominously into view. Nick’s father! Oh, no! He would take me for a stalker. Now Nick would really think I was chasing him!
Or not. Mr. Krieger took out one earbud. He cackled in a high-pitched witch voice, “I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog Toto, too!”
“Uh, Doofus,” I corrected him.
He pursed his lips quizzically. “Come on. It wasn’t that bad a joke.”
I didn’t bother to explain. I wouldn’t need to get along with Mr. Krieger in the future. Something told me I would never find myself eating Thanksgiving dinner with these people—and wait until the owner of Krieger Meats and Meat Products found out I was a vegetarian! I just wanted to satisfy myself that Nick was okay, and then get out. “Hi, there!” I beamed. “Did you order a redhead and a dog?”
“Hayden O’Malley,” he purred.
“Yes, sir.” He knew who I was? Doofus was licking my face.
Mr. Krieger pulled out his other earbud. “I know all about your challenge with Nick. My money’s on you, literally. Nick’s a quitter.”
I blinked at him, not sure what to say to that. I’d never heard a parent say something so mean about his child—and something so untrue. I reminded myself that his wife had left him the previous weekend, and he was probably not in the best of moods. If Nick had hidden his injury from his dad and hadn’t yet told him the challenge was over, I didn’t want to be the one to clue his dad in and mess things up worse for Nick. I said carefully, “Yeah, the girls at school are always pushing him down on the playground and telling him not to be such a baby.”
Mr. Krieger sat up straighter on the couch and glared at me. Great. I was definitely not getting invited for Thanksgiving now. At least I’d made my point, and I thought he’d heard me.
“Is he in?” I prompted Mr. Krieger.
He swept his hand dramatically toward a wide staircase, then reinserted his earbuds and sank back onto the couch, dismissing me. I supposed this meant I was invited in? Or at least not thrown out? Doofus and I righted ourselves and walked past the couch and up the stairs. Doofus’s claws clicked on the stone and echoed against the vaulted ceilings.
On the second story, windows overlooking the ski slopes lined one side of the vast hallway. The other side was an endless stretch of doors. I headed toward the open door with light flooding out onto the Navajo rug. But I stopped short when I heard Nick talking inside. There was a pause, and then he talked again. He must be on the phone, which is why my own call had gone straight to his voicemail.
“I love you, too,” I heard him say. “’Bye.”
My heart stopped. Had he been on the phone with Fiona? Or some new snowbunny I hadn’t yet heard about? Whoever his new girlfriend was … it wasn’t me.
shred
shred
(shred) v. 1. to tear up the slopes 2. or Hayden’s heart
Before I could react, he called, “Come in.”
I froze like a rabbit, just as I had outside the men’s locker room at the health club yesterday. This time Nick really had caught me.
I couldn’t very well run away. Mr. Krieger knew I was there. Finally, I sauntered forward and lounged in the doorway with my arms crossed on my chest. After all, I’d caught him telling someone he loved her. Someone other than me.
He lay with his legs on his king-sized bed and his body folded forward off the edge, toward the floor, in what looked suspiciously like a cockamamy approximation of a Downward-Facing Dog. The players in the huge football posters all around the room seemed to rush toward him, taunting him, while he lay helpless in the center of the circle and tried in vain to stretch his back.
I’d discovered so many new sides of Nick in the past few days, and now I was seeing another. His dark hair had been long the whole time I’d known him. I’d never glimpsed the nape of his neck, but here it was, bare to me as his hair touched the floor. Doofus sauntered over and licked Nick’s face. Squinting against the dog slobber, Nick grumbled, “You may be a lot of things, Hayden, but quiet isn’t one of them.”
I sniffed. “Oh, yeah? You weren’t very quiet on the phone just now, either.”
He eyed me. Even from his upside-down viewpoint, he must have been able to see I was jealous. “That was my mom,” he explained. My heart started beating again, painfully. I kept my face carefully neutral, hiding how freaking relieved I felt that he hadn’t given up on us and moved along to another girl. Not yet, anyway.
“She’s staying with my grandmother in
Phoenix.” Nick sat up on his bed with a groan, looking hurt and adorable in a tight T-shirt and track pants, his hair a disaster. “What are you doing here?”
“I just happened to be in the neighborhood, walking my dog …” This was sounding lame. “… several miles from my home, in the middle of the night, in the snow. And I found myself in your backyard.”
His eyes flew wide open. “With the cats?”
“If that’s what you call them.”
“You came over because you feel guilty for yelling at me at the half-pipe.”
I did. He didn’t have to sound so smug about it, though. “I do feel sort of guilty for yelling at you at the half-pipe,” I admitted, “but—”
“But,” he broke in sarcastically.
“But,” I continued over him, “I’ve had good reason in the past to think you’d called me a name like that to your friends.”
“What’s your good reason? That I didn’t call you a fire-crotch last week in the lunchroom?”
He had me there, but I wasn’t ready to admit defeat. Nick was just as guilty as I was. “You’re one to talk. You walked around mad at me for something I didn’t mean to do for a whole day, until I persuaded you otherwise.”
“And then I apologized,” he pointed out. One side of his mouth cocked up in a mischievous grin. “And then I slipped you the tongue.”
We both cracked up then, with spontaneous exclamations of “the tongue!” I was glad we’d broken the ice. At the same time, it seemed like we were laughing about a relationship we’d had long ago, rather than last night. Maybe we had nothing in common now that the bet was off.
I hoped not. To show him that a sequel to “the tongue” was not out of the question, I crossed his room, shedding layers of outerwear as I went, and sat beside him on the bed. “Seriously, I came over to make sure you’re okay. Did you go to the doctor?”
“I’m not hurt,” he said flatly.
I rolled my eyes in exasperation. “I was there this afternoon, Nick. I saw you fall. You were lying immobile in the snow.”
“Yeah. I didn’t get enough—”
“—rotation in the 540,” we said simultaneously.
We paused, watching each other. All our problems fell away. Just for a moment we were friends, fellow snowboarders, discussing a mistake we’d both made a million times. This was not my imagination. Nick felt it, too. He looked deep into my eyes. His own eyes were impossibly dark with the lights of his room reflecting as little halos.
And then he looked away, flicking his hair out of his face with his pinkie. “So anyway, after I busted ass, I’m lying there in the snow. My life flashed before my eyes.”
“Why?” I asked, horrified, scooting closer.
“Not my whole life, I guess. My personal life. I’ve been kind of down about my parents, and I was mad at you for yelling at me, and then I wondered why we’re doing this stupid comp anyway. Gavin’s been breathing down my neck about winning him Poseur tickets and putting Chloe in her place. All I ever wanted to do this winter break was have fun and board and relax.”
“Amen,” I sighed. Thank God the comp was over. “I was worried about you. I called your cell and rang the bell at the gate. You didn’t hear it?”
“It rings downstairs, and my dad …” Nick stared into space, and his voice trailed off.
I could have finished this sentence for him. My dad … is lying on the couch, listening to the middle-aged person’s equivalent of emo songs on his iPod, because my mother left him. Journey, or something. Duran Duran.
Finally Nick focused on me again. His long, dark lashes blinked slowly. He looked lost. A more accurate end to his sentence: My dad … is lost himself, and I don’t know whether my parents are coming back.
I wanted to reach out to him then, to touch his stubbled cheek with my fingertips. We were alone in his bedroom, after all. On his bed. His mom was gone. His dad probably didn’t care what we did. Doofus stretched into a different position on Nick’s carpet, sending a wave of wet dog odor toward us only occasionally. We could have made out.
But maybe Josh actually had a point, and it wasn’t good for Nick and me to keep making out and arguing. Perhaps making out was not the answer to all our problems, oddly enough. And I’d come over to check on him, not to seduce him. Shaking my head to clear it, I said, “I know what will make you feel better.”
“I’m not hurt,” he insisted.
“Obviously you are, or I wouldn’t have walked in on you doing half-assed yoga.” I stretched out on his bed and hung forward over the side, just as I’d found him. “Come on, I’ll do it with you.”
Grumbling, Nick bent over the side with me. We hung that way for about ten seconds of quiet before he said, “It’s not working.”
“That’s your problem, like I told you yesterday. You don’t hold the stretch long enough, and besides, you do it while listening to”—I felt behind me on the bed for his MP3 player and peered at the screen—“alt metal.” I tossed it across the room into a leather armchair. “Try this with me. Inhale through your nose, and let your legs melt into the bed. Exhale through your mouth, and let your body and your arms fall toward the floor.” I led him through a few more long breaths that way, until I could see from the corner of my eye that he’d relaxed, like when we’d made out last night.
I reminded myself yet again that this was not the time for making out. I was making up with Nick for exploding at him in public about the fire-crotch comment. As he stretched with his eyes closed, he looked so young and vulnerable, so normal, that I ached to reach out and feel around on his back for the bruise where he’d fallen, or to change my voice from soothing to sexy. But I’d come here on a mission to make Nick feel better. And I was pretty sure making out with me was not what Nick needed right now. I took him through a whole series of easy poses, moving from the bed to the floor.
Finally we sat up. Nick slouched glassy-eyed against his leather armchair. I relaxed in the Lotus Pose, invigorated from the stretches.
“I feel better,” he said languidly.
“I’m glad.”
“No, really better,” he said like he couldn’t believe it now that he was waking up a little.
“Keep stretching every day and take it seriously, and you won’t be as likely to get hurt boarding. Now I’d better go.” I nodded at the clock on his bedside table. “I told my mom I was taking Doofus for a walk. We could have walked to Leadville by now.”
He stood up unsteadily, leaning on the chair. “I’ll drive you home.”
I wasn’t sure this was a good idea. I had a lot of anxiety about him being polite to me. It would probably be best to give him more time to cool off after I’d yelled at him at the half-pipe.
On the other hand, I really did not want to walk back home through the freezing night or make Doofus do it, either. He’d been through enough. “Is your SUV parked outside, or is it in the garage?” I asked hopefully. “Doofus and I would rather not face your attack cats again.”
“There’s a cat door in the back of the house. They can come inside any time they want. Don’t worry. I’ll protect you.” He slid a machine gun from his dresser—a red-and-blue plastic water gun.
“My hero,” I breathed as he pointed his gun into the hall and looked both ways before stealthily motioning for me and Doofus to follow, like he was the star of an action-adventure flick. With me giggling at him and him shushing me as if I really were his airheaded heroine, we made it downstairs and stepped from an enormous, gleaming kitchen into a three-car garage.
His SUV, so familiar to me from seeing it parked every day at school since he’d gotten his license last year, looked out of place in the vast space next to a Porsche. The SUV seemed so … normal. Like Nick: normal but not. He didn’t mind an Irish setter dripping melted snow on his bedroom carpet or hopping into the back of his SUV. Yet his SUV was parked in the garage of a mansion.
You know what else was perfectly normal? The missing third car. His parents had separated, just like Liz’s
parents had divorced three years before. The Krieger Meats and Meat Products fortune did not solve everything. I tried not to stare back at the empty space on the other side of the Porsche as the garage door tipped out of the way and the SUV pulled into the light snow.
Snowflakes zoomed around in the headlight beams, defining them far out in front of us, almost all the way down the hill to the gate. Nick turned on the windshield wipers, but he hardly needed them. The snowflakes weren’t substantial. The breeze of the wipers shooed them away like fireflies during a Tennessee summer.
He pushed another button, and the gate majestically opened for us before we even reached it. He didn’t mean anything by this motion, I reminded myself. He drove through the gate a few times a day. He didn’t give it a second thought. He had no idea that, to me, he seemed to be rubbing in how rich he was and how powerful his parents were. This was what had separated us in the seventh grade, when he’d half-believed Gavin that a girl wouldn’t date him without his family status behind him. This was what separated us still.
And yet, in a strange way, I’d never felt closer to him. The SUV crunched through gravel onto the main road, where it swished through slushy snow. But inside it was warm, and a rock ballad from the Poseur CD whispered about true love lost. This should have been a date. Instead of him taking me home after I came to check on him and got run inside by killer cats, he should have been taking me back to my house after we’d watched a movie together at his. He would come inside. My parents would go to bed, and Josh would take a hint and abandon video-bowling to go upstairs and read a book. (I could dream, couldn’t I?) Nick and I would be alone with the smoldering embers of a fire. And then we would—
“—get out?” he was asking me.
I blinked at him across the dark SUV. “I beg your pardon?” I hoped to God I hadn’t been discussing any of this out loud.
The Ex Games Page 13