by Diane Farr
“My, my,” I remarked. “Look what the cat dragged in.”
If my arrival startled her, she hid it well. She glanced up at me through narrowed eyes. “What are you doing here?”
“I was invited. What are you doing here?”
I heard Lance’s soft laugh behind me. “She was invited too, cupcake.”
I hate it when he calls me cupcake, but apparently I don’t hate it as much as Amber does. She set her mug down on the coffee table with an audible whack. “You shouldn’t lead her on, lover,” she said. Anger vibrated all through her voice. “It isn’t nice.”
I almost told Amber to stop calling Lance lover, but fortunately I realized how childish I would sound before the words actually made it out of my mouth. “He’s not leading me on,” I said. “He’s driving me to school.”
I felt Lance’s emotions percolating in the air. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have known he was mad; he’s just too cool and collected. Amber, on the other hand, is easy to read. Her eyes were glittering like a cat’s. She leaned forward and I swear her fingers curled into claws. “He’s leading you on, sugar. Just by spending time with you, he’s leading you on. You think I don’t know?” She gave a contemptuous little laugh. “The boy can’t help himself.”
“That’s enough.” Lance’s voice was very even and quiet. But it had a certain note in it that I, at least, recognized as dangerous. “Zara’s not part of this. Come on, Zara, let’s go.”
“Not part of what?” I planted my feet, half expecting him to start dragging me out of the room. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Lance’s anger kicked up a notch—and now part of it was directed my way. “It doesn’t matter. Come on.” He dangled a set of car keys from one finger. “I’ve borrowed a Porsche. You’ll love it.”
I didn’t move. “You keep telling me that I should be part of it,” I said. “So tell me what this is about.”
He looked disgusted. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”
I pointed at Amber. “Start there,” I suggested. “What’s she doing here?”
“Visiting,” he said curtly. I told you spellspinners are converging on Cherry Glen.
I just looked at him. Didn’t say a word. You said they were interested in me. I think Amber’s interested in you.
Amber, of course, couldn’t hear our thoughts. She rose up off the couch, tossing her magazine on the table, and made a big display of stretching and yawning—flaunting her body while doing it. “You kids sort it out,” she said. “I need another cup of coffee.” She slinked off to the kitchen with her mug, hips swaying provocatively.
Lance sighed. “That’s Amber,” he said. “Always over the top.”
“I’d be over the top too,” I said, in a barely-audible voice, “if I believed I was having your baby someday, and you were spending time with some other girl.”
His green, green eyes glinted down at me in sly amusement. “I bet you would.” I can’t believe you’re defending Amber.
“She has a point.” I raised an eyebrow. “Come to think of it, she may have more than one point. Are you leading me on, like she said? Because it seems pretty clear that you’re messing with one of us. Is it me? Or Amber?”
Lance’s amusement vanished. “None of the above,” he said curtly. “You take a lot for granted, for a girl who won’t even let me touch her. Why should you care what’s between me and Amber? Come on, Zara. It’s bad enough to have Amber doing a jealous-girlfriend routine without you piling on. Let’s go. We’ll be late.”
He was heading for the door. Amazement rooted me to the spot. “Wait a minute.” But Lance kept moving, which forced me to follow him. I caught up with him on the sidewalk, as he was opening the passenger door of a sleek black car that looked like something out of a movie—nobody drives a car like this in real life. But I had other things on my mind. “I’m not getting in until you talk to me.”
He was tall enough—and the car was low-slung enough—that he was able to lean against the roof, graceful as a panther. His eyes narrowed as they bored into mine. His tension pulsed in the air, striking me in waves. “It is what it is, Zara,” he said softly. “You don’t understand yet—and I can’t explain it because you still think like a stick.”
I still didn’t know what he meant.
Or maybe I didn’t want to know what he meant.
I reached into his mind, trying to find thoughts or images that would clue me in, but what I saw there did not banish my confusion. I picked up the weight of the Council pressing on Lance…his need to do their bidding. But I did not understand it.
“It’s survival, Zara,” he said wearily. “That’s pretty basic. Survival. It’s the Council’s job to keep spellspinners alive. We’re all loners, you know that. Independent. But what enables us to stay that way is obedience to the Council.”
And I saw, in a flash, that he still intended to make a baby with Amber—as soon as the Council told him to.
And in his mind, that had nothing to do with me.
I actually reeled back a step, as if he’d struck me. “What?!”
Lance’s beautiful mouth twisted wryly. “I told you you wouldn’t understand.”
I was starting to shake. I hugged myself, trying to get a grip on all the thoughts flying through my brain. For a moment, I couldn’t speak. Then I found my voice. “You said you were choosing me. You told Amber you were choosing me.”
“I did choose you.” His anger licked out like a snake’s tongue. “If you knew how far out on a limb I already am, protecting you—“
“Well, go a little farther.” I was furious now. “If you have to buck the Council, do it. What’s the big deal? You don’t have to take orders from them. You already told me—“
“I told you too much. That stops now.” His voice lashed me like a whip. “I know what you think of me. I’m arrogant. I’m a rule-breaker. I can’t be trusted. Guess what, cupcake? You got it backwards. You’re so full of yourself you won’t listen to anybody. You’re the one who thinks the rules don’t apply to you. You. Not me. You’re the one who can’t be trusted.”
I stared at him in utter shock. Lance leaned in toward me, green eyes glittering. “Anything I tell you, you tell Megan O’Shaughnessy. Do you think I don’t know? You trust that stick way more than you trust me. And as long as that’s true, Zara, you’re dangerous. And none of us will tell you squat. Not even me.”
“That is such a load of—”
“You have to be all in, Zara. All in. You’re not even halfway there.”
His gorgeous face was tense with fury, and now it was going all blurry on me. Then I realized my eyes were full of angry tears. How humiliating. I dashed them away with one shaking hand, gritting my teeth to try to get a grip. “You know that’s not true. I don’t tell Meg everything. Not anymore. I actually wish I could, but I can’t. And as for being halfway in—” I choked on the words, so I sent it to him. Wholesoul. You skunk. I’m all in because I can’t be anything else. I wish I had wholesoul with anybody but you.
His spine straightened. His mouth turned down in a sneer. “Well, you don’t,” he said. “We’re stuck with each other. So do you want to be friends or enemies? We can make each other miserable if that’s what you want. We’d be really, really good at that.”
“You’re already good at it.”
“Zara—“ He lifted one hand as if to reach for me. My step backward was instinctive. And probably told him more than my words ever could.
“No,” I said. “You can’t have wholesoul with me and wholebody with somebody else. No freaking way.”
And I skatched, blindly, back to my field. Grabbed my bike. Dragged it through the weeds and onto Chapman Road. Hopped on, and rode straight through the shield. It didn’t hurt me because I was going out, not coming in—but I felt it, like a shimmer of invisible fire. Even a stick can ride a bicycle through fire, going fast enough—but you definitely feel it.
I was going to be late to school. I didn’t care. I needed the motio
n and the wind in my face and the feeling of flying. I needed to calm down, and I needed to think.
My thoughts weren’t pretty.
I felt my face burning from sheer agitation—and the horrid feeling that I’d been a fool. The problem was, I wasn’t sure if I’d been stupid to trust Lance…or if I was being stupid now, not to trust him. After all, I haven’t exactly been a model of consistency myself. Half the time I think I’m in love with him. Half the time I hate him. It probably wasn’t fair—okay, no ‘probably’ about it, it wasn’t fair—for me to keep him at a distance and, at the same time, demand unswerving loyalty.
How could I refuse to let him touch me, but at the same time, feel that Lance is mine and mine alone?
“I’ll tell you why,” I told my handlebars. But the rest I couldn’t say aloud. I just thought it. Because I don’t touch him—but I’m his. And I know it.
I frowned. “Disgusting,” I muttered. But it was true.
And it made me really, really mad.
I was so caught up in my thoughts that I didn’t even register the fact that Tres was driving toward me in his beat-up truck. If he hadn’t pulled up and honked, I wouldn’t have acknowledged him at all. But he did. I tried to wave and keep going, but he leaned out the window at me.
“Hey, Zara. How you doing? What’s up?”
I skidded to a reluctant halt. “School,” I said. “I’m running late.”
He was already out of the truck and heading toward me. “Toss it in the back. I’ll take you.”
“You sure?”
“Sure I’m sure.”
“Well, thanks.” I wasn’t going to argue. Nonny wouldn’t care if he showed up late to work, if he was late because he took me to school. So he lifted the Schwinn into the truck while I climbed into the cab. He made a U-turn and we started bumping and rattling toward town.
As soon as he shifted into second he asked me, “What’s wrong?”
Ouch. “Am I that obvious?”
A slight smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “Yeah. You look pissed.”
I sighed and slid down farther in the seat. “Not at you. Let it go.”
“Okay.”
This is what I like about Tres. No drama.
He’s also quite the artist. There was a rosary—I think—hanging from his rear-view mirror and I could tell it was his work. Wooden beads, intricately carved. A cross that matched, dangling at one end. I touched it and noticed that all the little beads had animals carved into them; rabbits and mice and chimps. And the Jesus on the crucifix looked like a Rhesus monkey. “Pretty,” I told him. “But isn’t that sacrilegious?”
The little smile flashed again. “Made it for a friend who’s into PETA. They’re all laboratory animals.”
“Are you into causes and stuff? I never knew.”
“My friend is giving me a hundred bucks for it.”
My eyebrows lifted. “Impressive.”
He shrugged, looking embarrassed. Pleased, you know, but shy. “I did another one with farm animals. Made a hit, I guess.”
“Wow.” I thought about it. “What did you put on the cross?”
“I wanted to put a pig. They have a hard life, you know. Pigs. And they’re really smart. But it didn’t feel right.”
A pig as Jesus. No, I could see where a Catholic might have a problem with that. “What’d you end up with?”
“A lamb. That went over better. They call Jesus the Lamb of God.”
I nodded, thinking about the monkey. Decided not to ask.
We were almost to the school. There was a big banner pulled across the street: HOMECOMING THIS SATURDAY. Tres glanced up at it. “You going to homecoming?”
I immediately thought of Lance and felt my jaw tighten. I looked away. “No,” I said shortly.
We slowed to a crawl as he pulled into the parking lot in front of the school, but the truck still threw us from side to side as we entered the driveway, bump, bump. He wasn’t looking at me, he was looking at the pavement. But he said, “Do you want to?”
I wasn’t sure I heard him right. I looked at him in surprise. The tips of Tres’s ears were turning red.
“Do I want to what? Go to homecoming?”
“Yeah. The dance.” He shot a quick glance at me, then looked away again. Pulled the truck to a stop. Put it in park. Yanked on the parking brake. Looked at me again. “You could go with me. If you want.”
Lance expected me to go to homecoming with him—but I hadn’t really given him an answer. And now, I realized bleakly, that idea was history.
I thought about Amber, and how she expected to claim Lance the instant one of the Council kicked the bucket. I thought about Cheryl Sivic, and how she expected to be homecoming queen. I thought about Meg and Alvin. And then I thought about sitting home on Saturday night while everybody else went to the homecoming dance.
“I’d like that,” I told Tres.
And just like that, boom. I had a date.
Chapter 12
Nonny was French braiding the hair along the sides of my head. We were both nervous, but for slightly different reasons. Neither of us had pictured Zara’s First Date as being with Tres Palacios. But life is full of surprises.
“I wish you were double-dating with Meg and Alvin,” Nonny said, for maybe the twentieth time.
“Meg doesn’t feel like sharing Alvin,” I said. “I’ll be fine with Tres, Nonny. Really.”
Her eyes met mine in the mirror. “Don’t break his heart,” she warned. She was only half kidding. “I need him at the nursery.”
“I know you do.”
And I need Tres’s friendship. I don’t exactly have a lot of friends. But I didn’t say that, because Nonny seems to feel guilty about it—as if my friendless state is her fault. True, she kept me pretty much hidden during my childhood, but under the circumstances that was probably a good thing. It’s easy to imagine little Zara wreaking spellspinner havoc at some kid’s birthday party—which is doubtless why she never took me to birthday parties.
Meanwhile, I was sixteen, not six, and about to go to Homecoming with a real, live boy. A boy who was three years older than me and not in high school anymore—but as I had reminded Nonny repeatedly during the past few days, that was the whole point of Homecoming. The grads returned. Like zombies from the grave, according to Meg. Ha, ha.
Needless to say, I didn’t share that joke with Nonny. She was already spooked by the idea of me going out, even with Tres. Maybe especially with Tres. It was hard to tell.
“The braiding looks nice,” I told her. “Elegant.”
“So grown up.” Nonny sighed. “You look beautiful, honey. I wish I had a string of pearls or something to loan you.”
I rolled my eyes. “It’s not the prom, you know. It’s just Homecoming.”
I kept telling myself it was no big deal. And I kept trying not to think of Lance, who had not spoken to me since our falling-out over Amber. He hadn’t come to school and I didn’t care one bit. Not one bit. Good riddance, I thought. Who needs him? I thought. I hope I never see him again, I thought.
Yeah, right.
I was so busy not thinking about Lance that I almost missed Tres’s arrival. It was Nonny who called my attention to it—by uttering one of her trademark retro exclamations: “Jiminy crickets!”
I joined her at the window to see what was so amazing. And I have to admit, I was pretty amazed myself. Tres had parked a big black Lincoln in our driveway and was walking toward the house wearing a suit. Neither of us had ever seen Tres in a suit. He was surprisingly impressive. And he was carrying a corsage in a clear plastic box.
Okay, so much for Homecoming not being a big deal. It was obviously a big deal to Tres.
And deep inside, I was mourning the fact that the footsteps climbing the porch stairs…the finger pressing the doorbell…the boy waiting outside for me…was anyone other than Lance Donovan.
I swallowed hard and put that thought sternly aside. Wholesoul isn’t everything, I reminded myself. I might
feel connected to Lance for the rest of my life and still choose to spend my life without him.
Tonight I would try that concept on for size—and try very hard to make it fit.
Nonny shooed me back upstairs. She wanted to open the door and call me, so I could make an entrance. I was wearing a slinky, silky, dressy wraparound thing like nothing I’d ever worn before. And in a daring color, for me: violet. The color drew attention to my eyes, but when I chose it I thought that wouldn’t matter because it also drew attention to portions of my anatomy that a boy might find more interesting. But now I was half afraid I looked ridiculous in it.
The expression on Tres’s face when he saw me made me laugh, but it made me feel good too, in an embarrassed sort of way. Because he clearly didn’t think I looked ridiculous.
Nonny waved a camera at us. “You kids look great,” she said. I groaned. “Humor me,” she said. So we did. Tres slipped the corsage onto my wrist and we stood in the arch between the parlor and the dining room and smiled while Nonny snapped. I felt funny about holding Tres’s arm, but I did it. He looked good and he smelled good and his arm muscles felt strong beneath my fingers. It was unsettling to see him in this new light, but kinda fun too.
I briefly wondered whether I’d ever see Lance dressed to the nines . But I pushed that thought firmly out of my head, scolding myself for thinking about Lance yet again. I swear, it’s like being haunted.
I smiled at Tres and walked with him to the car. He opened the door for me and I sank into the upholstery, sniffing appreciatively. “New car,” I commented as he slid behind the wheel.
He gave me a sideways smile that was almost shy. “It’s my uncle’s,” he said.
“Nice.”
As Tres backed his uncle’s car carefully down our crunchy gravel driveway, I gave one last wave to Nonny. She was standing in the front door, watching us, and waved back. Maybe it was a premonition, and maybe it was what they used to call a Kodak moment…but it was an image that, even as I saw it, I knew would stay with me always. I could feel it tattooing itself on my brain. It brought a lump of nostalgia (for want of a better word) into my throat. Nonny, standing in the open door with the porch light showing me her smile and the warm lamplight of home behind her…as I slipped away, backwards, pulled into the night.