Hannah looked at him askance and he went on. “Cal likes to keep his dad in the dark about his life as much as possible—you would too, if your dad was the sheriff. It’s hard enough to find any privacy in this town. Living with the sheriff, or the high school principal, makes it close to impossible.”
“Your father is the high school principal?” He gave her a droll look and nodded. She clamped down on her molars and tried not to laugh . . . or to reexamine his attire. “So Cal’s embarrassed to have his dad find out that he likes Anna?”
“Not embarrassed exactly, just . . .” His expression soured, but he still had no word for the feeling. “It’s easier when they don’t know.”
“If that was the nightmare part, what’s nice about it?”
“Finding out for sure that Anna’s hot for him.” He frowned. “I don’t think he’s all that surprised to hear it. I mean, a guy can sense these things, you know. But confirmation is always cool. But then the sheriff told him to back off, so then they had to fight about it.”
Ah. The fight. “Why are you telling me all this?” she asked, when it occurred to her that she’d gotten more information in the last ten minutes than she had in the previous seventy-two hours. “I thought Goths, in particular, were sort of reticent and tight-lipped.”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“On the point we’re trying to make.” He stretched his long legs out in front of him. “If it’s to be as weird as everyone seems to think we are, then why bother talking at all? If it’s to embarrass our families, then our attire is usually enough said, more than enough—and, of course, if your father is the principal of a high school, then it’s a particularly satisfying statement. But to the people who know us best, how we dress and how much or how little we talk doesn’t matter.”
“I see.”
“And to answer your question, I felt sorry for you last night. At dinner. I got the feeling you were walking into this blindfolded and that’s not fair, for anyone. The sheriff wants everything to go smooth for Anna, and for you, but . . . you can’t just say make the road smooth and expect it to be that way.”
“No. You can’t.” Smart young man, she thought, looking at him. He had fine dark brown eyes that were keen and perceptive. She wondered if he’d be in any trouble for talking to her. “Thank you. Biscuit.”
He smiled when she said his name. “You’ll get used to it.” Then he hesitated and grew sober again. “There’s something else I think you should know about. I mean, not that you have to do anything about it or anything, but you should at least know.”
“Please. What?” He looked very reluctant to tell her. “Please.”
“It probably doesn’t make any difference. I don’t know that it should make any difference. I mean, putting things off doesn’t make them any easier and quick breaks are better anyway and . . . the sooner it happens, the sooner everyone can start adjusting and all that stuff, but . . .”
“What?”
He took a deep breath. “April’s a huge month around here. Well, not always. I mean, it’s the normal stuff, but with Anna leaving and all . . . things seem bigger. Like for one thing, Anna’s birthday is in April. Sheriff already said if it’s okay, he’ll drive us all up to Baltimore the weekend after but . . . well, we also have two big meets and one’s with Ripley.” The way he spoke the name of the rival county told her the animosity between the two schools hadn’t lessened in twenty years. “Anna was a major part in wiping the floor with them last year, but then there’s the prom the first weekend in May and, well, I don’t know if that’s such a good idea, but . . .”
“Now I know.”
“Right.” His expression brightened. “Informed decisions, right?”
She nodded and looked down at Anna, deep in discussion with a man Hannah presumed was her coach. “Did she ask you to talk to me?”
“No,” he said quickly and, she suspected, honestly. “We talked about it, of course, but it’s, like . . . well, the sheriff said you were dead set on two weeks, so . . . I thought you should know, is all. So you’d know why Lucy’s so mad and why Anna might be sad and why Cal’s standing over there, instead of down here with us.”
“I appreciate it. I can’t say that it changes anything but maybe I won’t step on as many feelings as I did last night.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not like most of us aren’t dying to get out of this bass-ackward town as soon as possible anyway. It’s just that we want to do it our way, in our own time. And in the middle of high school, we sort of figure that’s after graduation. We make plans, you know? We want to finish school and graduate with our friends, not a bunch of strangers. We want to head out of here to . . . wherever, at the same time; come back every few years to see the parental units and the kids who didn’t make it out. It’s tough on everyone to have to leave something in the middle of it but, well, I moved here five years ago. I’m living proof that you can leave everyone you know and survive.”
So am I, she thought. Yet the look they exchanged told a more accurate story—survival came after the pain and the sorrow, when you couldn’t live with the misery and loneliness any longer.
“You seem very protective of Lucy. Are the two of you . . . you know?”
He leaned forward as a barrier and hid whatever he was feeling with humor. “What. I look stupid enough to want to date the sheriff’s little Lucy? Besides the drama queen stuff, and the bossy stuff, and the telegraph, telephone, tele-Lucy stuff, and the fact that she’s too young to do anything but group date? I look that masochistic to you?” His eyes dared her to give an honest answer.
She couldn’t stop her gaze from bouncing around to the multiple piercings on his face. A snort-laugh escaped her and he grinned.
“Certainly not.” And before the smile in her eyes faded, they met his. “I appreciate the information, Biscuit.
Chapter Eight
There’s enough funeral food at the house to last us six months but Joe says runners need protein and carbs especially,” Hannah said in the car on the way home. “I should get a book if . . . Do they have cookbooks for runners? I don’t cook a lot at home. I have a nice lunch, usually, and a sandwich or something in the evening. It might be fun having someone to cook for—not that I’m a great cook or anything; I haven’t had a lot of practice but this’ll be good practice for me.” Take a breath! “Anyway, we should go through the food and keep what’s best for you—you’ll have to tell me—and donate the rest to . . . what? A nursing home? Is there a women’s shelter here?” Finally. Years and years too late. “Maybe Father Scott can help. Then we can make a list of what’s still missing, whatever you need and . . .” She glanced from the road to the silent girl beside her. “Well, I thought I’d go in to see the principal tomorrow, get him started on your paperwork. Just in case. I can hit the grocery store after that. In the morning you can ride in with me or ride the bus like always, whichever, but I have the antique dealers coming in the afternoon, so do you think, would you mind asking Cal and Lucy for that ride home they offered?”
Such a very bad idea. Not wise at all and fraught with future disappointment and heartache for the girl—and, okay, a clear pitch for aunt-of-the-year on her part. But the moment the words bubbled from her lips and she caught the elated little fidget that passed through Anna until her fingers twitched in her lap, she knew it was out of her hands anyway. No one knew better than Hannah about falling in love with the most impossible person at the most inopportune time—or how hopeless it was to prevent.
What had Grady been thinking, trying to keep them apart? Had he forgotten? Had it been so long that he couldn’t recall what it was to be a meteor caught in the pull of earth’s gravity; to feel sucked into the eye of a hurricane? Or was that solely her memory of it?
When the senior class graduated from Turchen County High School in late May of 1990 the underclassmen still had another two weeks of school left before summer break. She’d turned fourteen in January and would be heading for hig
h school in the fall—a thought that both thrilled and terrified her.
To think she had only four years left before she could legally liberate herself from her family with enough of an education—more than both her parents put together—to do something with her life . . . away from them . . . far away, was like the sunshine she got out of bed for every morning.
And yet, four years is a long time. The previous three she’d spent as the weirdest, creepiest, most socially dysfunctional outcast in all the histories of all the middle schools in America was proof of that. Not that she cared. Truly. Who cared what those stupid kids thought? They were stupid after all. Most of them wouldn’t know their own butt if they sat on it. And she was a straight-A student, even though it irritated her father sometimes—in fact, because it irritated him most of the time.
She’d be riding a whole different bus next year and Ruth would be alone on the one Hannah was riding that very early June afternoon. She wasn’t too worried about it, though. By now most everyone knew that if they messed with Ruth, they’d answer to Hannah, so she’d be safe enough. But the rides to and from the high school were long and boring and she dreaded sitting all by herself in a seat with no one to talk to . . . or worse yet, having to share the seat and having no one to talk to.
She startled when a long boy-body slipped into the seat beside her on the bus. She instinctively put her back to the window to assess her exposure and evaluate the danger she was in.
“Where’s your little sister today?”
Grady Steadman. A member of the Turchen County High School pantheon best known for his athleticism, rowdy weekends, and for the occasional clever and daring feat of illegal vandalism. Less famous, she was sure, for being one of few who would glance at her kindly, who would sneak her a faltering smile from time to time, and who never, that she could recall, said a mean thing to her.
“Sick.” She settled back in her seat but didn’t relax. She never relaxed.
“That’s too bad.” He waited a moment. “But then if she was here I couldn’t sit down and we couldn’t talk, so maybe it’s a good thing, if she isn’t too sick, I mean.”
“No.” Ruth was two years younger but started her monthly curse the same year Hannah had, the first thirty-six hours of which were a sharp cramping misery for her. “She’ll be better tomorrow.”
So don’t get too comfortable in her seat.
“Good. Then today we can talk.”
Talk? That was twice he’d said it, like they had one single thing in the whole entire universe in common.
“Talk about what?”
“Well, I don’t know. Anything.” He looked around the bus for a good topic. “Um. You’re coming up to the high school next fall, right?” She gave him one nod and looked out the bus window. “Are you excited?” She shrugged one shoulder. “Looking forward to it?” Another shrug. “Want me to get lost again and leave you alone?”
She turned her head to look at him. He grinned at her—but not in the malicious or mischievous way that most of the kids did—benevolently, his green eyes gentle and soft with humor. He had no intention of getting lost again or of leaving her alone. On the contrary, he liked where he was and who he was with—for the moment anyway. And he had those stupid dimples . . . ah, jeeze.
“You’re on the wrong bus.”
“Yes, I am.” Her astute observation and comment pleased him. “I had a dentist appointment this afternoon. My mom dropped me off earlier but now I’m taking this bus home so she doesn’t have to drive all the way back into town to pick me up, then take me back to school in time to ride the high school bus home.”
She’d never been to a dentist—couldn’t imagine why a smile like his would need one.
She’d also run out of plain-as-the-nose-on-your-face things to say to him. The silence grew awkward and oppressive, a familiar full-body cringe started deep inside.
“Wa-why don’t you just ride home with your mother?”
“Sometimes I do. Depends on if she’s staying late to tutor or check papers and I’m staying late to practice or if I’m between sports and going home early, and she decides she wants to go home right after school to cook something special for my dad or something like that. Depends.”
Cringe. Cringe. Her stomach started to hurt.
“What do you do for fun? What do you like to do?” he asked, like he genuinely wanted to know.
A tough question. She had to think about it; no one had ever asked before.
“I like to read.” She waited for him to laugh but he simply nodded and hung on for more, like there was more. “I . . . I like to work in Mama’s garden.” Because she had recently and it was the only thing she could think of that sounded halfway interesting. “Also I have a book of state birds. When I see one I mark it off in the book. I like to do that, sometimes.”
A rush of hot blood shot up her neck and into her cheeks as she lowered her gaze to her lap. He may not have thought she was anything special or bright before, but now that he’d actually spoken to her and knew for sure she wasn’t, she wanted to curl up and die—not that she didn’t wish to curl up and die on a regular basis but this was different. This time she felt it but didn’t truly want to . . .
“Your parents are pretty strict, aren’t they?”
She nodded. Strict. Is that what people called it? She reckoned it was one word they could use for it, but it wasn’t the most descriptive.
“Do you think next year, in high school, they’ll let you go out some? To the football games maybe? Or to some of the parties?”
“Not your high school football parties.” His personal pronoun and the four words her mind singled out from his last three sentences spilled from her lips with a snippy resentment that surprised her, and him.
It didn’t matter that she was, at present, too young to be invited to the high school parties; nor was it especially important that once old enough she likely wouldn’t be included by her peers. What she resented was knowing that if all conditions were equal with her classmates—physical beauty, nice clothes, good grades, social finesse . . . all of it—her father still wouldn’t allow her to go. She resented the hopelessness of it, the emptiness of her future, at least for the next four years.
Though that’s not how Grady Steadman interpreted it.
“First off, they aren’t my parties. Other people throw them, I just show up when I can get a ride after the games. And second, there are other kinds of parties. Not so rowdy. Sometimes the parents are home even.”
She kept her gaze fixed on the back of the seat in front of her, wondering where he planned to go with all this useless information.
“Me and my dad are rebuilding the engine of his old truck for me to drive, now that I have my license. It’s going to be so great. I hate having to depend on other people to get around, don’t you?”
She nodded, but she never would have guessed Grady Steadman could be so strange. Why was he talking to her?
“You know, once it’s finished, in a few more weeks or so, if you needed to go to town for something and if I’m going that way anyway, I could give you a lift— What?”
She wasn’t sure what the expression on her face was like but at least half of it was skeptical because he responded to it.
“What?” he said again sounding annoyed. “I could. I would. You don’t believe me, do you?”
“No.”
“No what? No, you do believe me; or, no, I’m right, you don’t believe me?”
She looked straight into his fine green-hazel eyes. “No, I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you’d give me lift, I don’t believe you’re interested in what I do for fun or how I feel about going to high school, and I don’t believe you’re sitting there talking to me like we’re friends when I know for sure that you wouldn’t be if all your friends were here.”
He sat there and stared into her eyes with the oddest expression on his face. Staring as if hypnotized, staring like he couldn’t stop. No longer upset, giving no indication he’d he
ard a single word she’d said, he looked sort of . . . sappy, if you asked her.
She might have tried to stare him down but this time . . . well, she looked away first.
“You’re wrong,” he said in a sure, low tone. “The only thing that could have kept me out of this seat today is your sister. And the rest I’ll prove to you.”
Then he left, went back to the back of the bus and the fresh flock of cool kids he’d be reigning over the next two years, before she could think of a snappy retort to send him off with. She didn’t want him to prove anything to her . . . didn’t want to want him to, that’s for sure. The only way she’d make it safely through the next four years is if she remained invisible—invisible at school but more importantly invisible at home, and Grady was nothing if not . . . VISIBLE in a big, big way.
Her lips curl in a lopsided smile now, remembering, looking back in speculation as to how one passed through a major pivotal moment in their life with barely a blink of their eye and without noticing the sudden ninety-degree angle in the direction their life was heading. How did that happen? How could it?
“I’ll ask.” Anna’s soft voice was a gentle reminder that the past was the past for a reason—it didn’t exist anymore. “And what I eat is pretty basic, all the food groups, more protein and carbs like your friend said. Gran kept a list of stuff . . . and I can teach you.”
“Good.” She smiled and did a double take at her niece while she watched the road ahead. “What?”
“I do eat a lot, though. At least twenty-five hundred calories a day, at least that . . . and way more in the fall when I run longer distances. I eat a lot. I always feel hungry.”
She looked so worried Hannah couldn’t help herself. “Oh my, that is problematic. Do you think we’ll make enough off selling the farm to cover your grocery bill?”
What Happened to Hannah Page 9