Great

by kindle@abovethetreeline. com

  Teddy was silent.

  “Just go tell everybody at Baxley’s,” Jeff said. “They’ll know what to do.”

  The cops nodded and began to walk toward their squad car.

  “What kind of car was it?” Teddy called, suddenly alert and in control again. His voice was steady. “The car that hit her. What kind of car was it?”

  “White car,” said the cop who’d comforted Teddy. “Witness was too far off to note make or model. Said it was like a flash of white, and then it was gone.”

  Teddy’s face hardened.

  “Thank you, Officer,” he said tightly.

  The other officer glanced back at him. “Hey, aren’t you the kid from, what was that show. . . ?”

  Teddy smiled his gleaming white smile.

  “Oh, Those Masons!” he said. “Yes, I am.”

  The cops looked impressed.

  “Great show,” said the one who’d recognized him. “Used to love that one.”

  “Thanks,” Teddy said.

  The officers waved goodbye and drove off. Teddy turned to us, his expression darkening.

  “A white car,” he snapped. “Now, who do we know who has a white car?”

  I couldn’t stand it anymore.

  “You think it was Jacinta?” I burst out, my voice louder than I’d intended. “So everything’s her fault now? Just because she stole one of your girlfriends doesn’t mean she killed someone.” For about a thousand reasons, I was livid. I wanted to smash his stupid handsome face in.

  Teddy glared at me, and for a moment I thought he might hit me. Instinctively, I backed up.

  Jeff stepped between us and put his hand on Teddy’s shoulder.

  “Hey, man,” he said softly. “Hey. Just breathe. She didn’t know what she was saying. Let’s all just breathe for a minute.” Wordlessly, Teddy turned around and walked back to his car.

  The drive to Delilah’s was completely silent. When we parked in the driveway, we all got out of the car. Teddy turned to face us. He was smiling.

  “Want to come in for a drink?” he asked, as if nothing had happened. “Jeff? Naomi?”

  Creeped out by yet another one of his rapid mood changes, I shook my head no. He looked at me curiously.

  “Aww, c’mon,” Teddy said, patting me on the back. I shrank from his touch.

  “No, thank you,” I said stiffly.

  Teddy shrugged, waved goodbye, and walked into the house. Jeff looked at me.

  “What are you going to do, just sit out here?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “I’m going home.”

  “How? I’m not good to drive yet.”

  “Well, neither was Teddy, and we got home all right.”

  “Just wait an hour,” Jeff said. “I’ll drink a club soda. I just don’t want to get a DUI.”

  “I’m calling a cab,” I said, and turned to walk away. Jeff grabbed my arm and spun me back around. I jerked my arm out of his grasp.

  “Don’t touch me,” I said coldly.

  “What the hell happened?” he demanded. “Everything was fine and now you’re pissed at me? Let’s just go have a drink!”

  I stared at him and realized he just didn’t get it. He didn’t understand why it was disgusting and awful to witness what we had witnessed—at the restaurant, and especially after—and just have a drink in some rich girl’s mansion as if everything were normal.

  Without another word, I walked off, leaving him standing in the driveway, looking frustrated.

  Delilah’s driveway was a long one, and gated—probably a quarter mile long. I’d gotten halfway down the driveway when I heard a rustling and a whisper from the bushes.

  “Naomi! Naomi, over here.”

  I nearly jumped out of my skin. Jacinta quickly stepped out of the bushes.

  “Jesus, Jacinta. You scared the hell out of me.” I put my hand over my heart and took a deep breath.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, shaking the leaves from her dress. “It’s just—I can’t leave Delilah alone. I have to make sure she’s okay.”

  “So you’re hiding in the bushes.”

  “I need to wait a little while before I drive home.”

  “So where’s your car parked?”

  “Not far from here,” she said uneasily, digging the toe of her pricey shoe into the ground. “Near the property. We ran into some trouble on the road on the way in, so we put the car someplace safe and walked the rest of the way.”

  My heart sank.

  “Ran into some trouble,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “You mean you hit somebody.”

  Jacinta looked ashamed. She was quiet for a moment.

  “She was scared,” she finally said. “She’d been drinking and crying, and it was hard for her to see.”

  “Who? Misti?” I asked.

  She looked at me in confusion.

  “No,” Jacinta said. “Delilah.”

  “Delilah hit Misti?”

  “No, Delilah was driving and—”

  “But you drove away from Baxley’s.”

  “Delilah said driving would help her calm down. We pulled over and switched seats, and then she went really fast, and then. . .” Jacinta stopped and twisted her hands together.

  “It wasn’t her fault,” she said. “The bike came out of nowhere.”

  “Misti’s bike,” I said. “Delilah hit Misti.”

  Jacinta’s jaw dropped, and her enormous green eyes grew even bigger. She covered her mouth with her milky white hand.

  “We saw them loading her into an ambulance,” I said. “Half her face was gone.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Jacinta whispered. “We never saw who it was. . . oh, this is bad for Delilah. Oh God, this is bad for Delilah.”

  “Bad for Delilah?” I wanted to smack her, almost the way I’d wanted to hit Teddy earlier. “Misti might die, Jacinta. Adriana. Whatever your name is. Somebody might die.”

  Jacinta’s eyes lit up with strange hope. “But she’s not dead yet?” she asked feverishly. “She isn’t dead?”

  I could’ve strangled her.

  “No,” I said. “The cop said she’s alive. But if you could’ve seen her face—”

  Jacinta exhaled slowly and said, “As long as she’s alive. Then it’s not as bad.”

  “It looked pretty bad,” I said. “And you need to tell the police.”

  “The police?” She looked horrified. “Me?”

  “Jacinta,” I said, speaking slowly, as if to a small child. “It was your car. Everybody saw you drive away—me, Teddy, Jeff, the valets. Not Delilah. You.”

  “You don’t believe me?” she asked, sounding crushed.

  “Of course I believe you! But who do you think they’re going to come looking for first?”

  Jacinta shook her head vigorously. “Delilah will give herself up,” she said. “She’ll tell the truth. Her father will get a good lawyer, and she’ll tell the truth and no one will get in trouble. It was an accident.”

  “Jacinta, Delilah was drunk.”

  “She wasn’t that drunk,” Jacinta said defensively. “No one can prove she was drunk.”

  “Giovanni knows how much she had to drink,” I said. “You really think he’s going to lie for the girl who almost killed his girlfriend?”

  “I’ll say she wasn’t drunk,” Jacinta said. “I’ll say he’s lying and she wasn’t drunk and the bike came out of nowhere and she was scared and it was an accident and that’s all there was to it. That’s the truth.”

  “That’s not the truth,” I said.

  “Yes it is!” she nearly shouted. “That’s what I’ll tell them and they won’t know any different and that makes it the truth!”

  I rubbed my temples. I was beginning to develop the kind of headache that usually only happened when I read a book while riding in a car.

  “We should both go home,” I said. “I’m calling a cab.”

  “I’m staying here,” she said resolutely. “I need to be nearby in case Delilah needs me. I
told her to call me if she needs me and I’ll be over right away.”

  “How are you going to get home?”

  “I’ll wait and see if she calls me. If she doesn’t, I’ll get a cab.”

  I was quiet for a long moment, looking at her while she looked at Delilah’s hulking, enormous house in the distance.

  “Okay,” I finally said. “I’m leaving. Just—text me when you get home, okay?” I wasn’t sure exactly why I still cared about this girl who had lied to me all summer, but there was still something in me that believed in her, that wanted to see her win—whatever that meant.

  “Sure,” Jacinta said without taking her eyes off the house.

  I left her there, in the darkness, my way off the property lit by the late-summer full moon.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I managed to sleep, thanks to this stuff my mom has called valerian root. It smells awful, but it works. She wasn’t home, so I went into her bathroom and got one of her two medicine kits. She’s got an herbal one with hippie-dippie stuff and then a regular one with pills. The valerian root was in the first one. I fell asleep in the living room with a cable news network on. I just needed something to keep me company.

  I woke with a start the next morning and saw my mother’s face on the morning news. Flanked by her business partners, she was ringing the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange.

  “And just moments ago, cooking and lifestyle guru Anne Rye celebrated the initial public offering of stock in Bake Like Anne Rye!, Inc.,” the news anchor said over footage of my mother ringing the bell. “But the Food Network star and frequent morning talk show guest wasn’t the only one to benefit from her company’s IPO. Everyone on the floor at the NYSE this morning was treated to a cupcake buffet—a first in the Stock Exchange’s more than two centuries of existence.” And there was a shot of my mother serving cupcakes to an endless line of smiling men in dark suits.

  I felt a tiny bit of pride well up within me, and for a moment I was kind of psyched for her. I could say a lot of things about my mother, but I couldn’t say she was lazy. The woman worked harder than almost anyone I knew, even my dad—and he was utterly devoted to his students and players.

  When the segment on my mom was over, I flipped the channel to the local news, turning it up loud so that I could hear it when I padded into the kitchen. It droned on in the background while I made coffee. It was just background noise until I heard the anchor say, “And in Long Island news, a Babylon girl critically injured last night in a hit-and-run in East Hampton died early this morning.” I rushed back into the living room and saw a high school yearbook photo of Misti flash across the screen. “Nineteen-year-old Misti Carretino was riding her bicycle along Route 27 when an unknown driver. . .” I sank into the couch and watched the rest of the report.

  “Shit,” I whispered. I grabbed my phone and texted Jacinta, Misti died. I knew I should feel something for Misti, and I did, but the stronger emotion churning inside me was a growing sense of alarm about Jacinta. What was she going to do?

  I know, came the immediate reply. Am watching news. Come over.

  I threw on an outfit that would’ve given my mother nightmares (ratty T-shirt and drawstring shorts that said “HOT” on the butt—Skags got them for me as a seventeenth-birthday present as a joke). When Jacinta let me into her house, I was surprised to see that she was basically wearing the same thing—a frayed Seminoles T-shirt and what looked like a pair of old gym shorts. They hung so loosely on her lean frame that I wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d fallen off in front of me. Jacinta’s hair was messy, and she wore no makeup. She looked like the world’s tallest, palest eleven-year-old.

  “Hi,” she said, sounding tired. “I made breakfast.”

  “Oh, thanks,” I said. “I didn’t eat yet.” We walked through various rooms, their glamorous luster dimmed somewhat in the daytime, and reached her magnificent kitchen. On the table, she’d laid out two bowls, two spoons, two glasses of orange juice, a carton of milk, and three boxes of cereal.

  “Oh,” I said. “How nice.” I realized that I sounded the way my mother sounds when she wants to make the best of a less-than-ideal situation.

  “I love cereal,” Jacinta said, dropping into a chair and motioning for me to do the same. “It’s basically all I ate growing up. I mean, not in New York but—after. And TV dinners. But mostly cereal.” She poured herself a bowl of Froot Loops, and I poured myself a bowl of Kix. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had plain old cereal for breakfast (or orange juice that wasn’t fresh). Even back home in Chicago, I liked to at least have a home-baked muffin in the morning. I’d make a batch each week and put in all kinds of nuts and grains and good healthy things. My dad called them “fiber bombs,” which I guess they were, but they were still delicious. And I always cooked at sleepovers—huevos rancheros, French toast, real easy stuff.

  Kix tasted better than I remembered, though I kept thinking we should add a protein and a fruit to round out the meal. I guess that’s just my weird programming.

  “So what happened last night?” I finally asked. “I mean, after I left you.” I didn’t really know what else to say to her, so I figured I’d start with that.

  Jacinta stirred her Froot Loops with her spoon. “I stayed in the bushes and texted Delilah, but she didn’t text back. So I sneaked up to the house and looked in one of the windows, and she and Teddy were sitting down and talking.”

  “How did they look?”

  “They looked calm. No fighting. I don’t think he did anything to her. So I figured I should leave before they saw me, and I did.”

  “How’d you get home?”

  “I walked.”

  “You walked?” I asked in disbelief. “From the other side of the Pond? That’d take, like, an hour.”

  “It did,” she said. “But I didn’t mind. It was nice to walk. Helped clear my head.”

  We ate in silence for a couple more minutes, our spoons clinking against the bowls. It occurred to me then, for the first time, that I might get in all kinds of trouble if the police ever found out that I knew what I knew. Awkward silences sometimes give rise to uncomfortable realizations, I guess—especially when you’re maybe in danger of being an accessory to a hit-and-run. My heart started beating faster, and I felt my palms begin to sweat. I felt a little surge of fear rise within me.

  “Jacinta,” I said, putting my spoon down and looking right at her. “When are you going to tell the police about the accident?”

  She looked startled.

  “It’s been over twelve hours,” I said, my voice rising a little bit. “She’s dead. They’re going to start asking questions.”

  “You know I can’t go to the police,” Jacinta said. “They’d put Delilah in jail. I can’t let them do that. She’ll do the right thing when she’s ready. She’s been through a lot.”

  “Been through a lot,” I said. “Like drunk driving over some girl on a bicycle and just going home?”

  “It wasn’t like that,” she said. “It was more confusing than that. And then after she broke up with Teddy. . . it must’ve been a difficult night.”

  “Wait, what? When did she break up with Teddy?”

  “Well, last night. Remember I said she was going to?”

  “Yeah, but—I mean, did she call you or something?” I was confused.

  “No,” Jacinta said. “But I assume that’s what they were discussing when I saw them through the window.”

  I just looked down and resumed eating my Kix. She was living in a dream world.

  Then again, what did I know? I’d never taken Delilah Fairweather for the type of person who could run a girl over and just keep going. Maybe she was also the type of person who could break up with her longtime boyfriend immediately after committing vehicular manslaughter. I just couldn’t imagine any brea
kup conversation with Teddy ever being a calm one.

  I poured another bowl of Kix, at a loss for words. Jacinta had lied to me, but for some reason I couldn’t identify, I still cared about her. I was still rooting for her, somehow, to make it out of this thing unscathed.

  The doorbell rang then, and Jacinta looked at me, her eyes wide with fear. My heart jumped.

  “Do you think it’s the police?” she whispered.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But if it is, you have to tell them the truth.”

  She got up without a word and walked through the maze of rooms. I followed her.

  When she opened the door, it was a maintenance guy dressed in work clothes, carrying some equipment.

  “Pool man,” he said by way of greeting. “I’m here to close it down for the season. You the renter?”

  “No one told me you were coming,” Jacinta said.

  He shrugged. “Owners sent me. I do it every year. Okay if I head on back?” Without waiting for a reply, he started around the side of the house. Jacinta turned around and rushed through the house, going out on the back deck. I got to the deck in time to hear her plead, “Won’t you please wait another day? Everyone’s gotten to use it, but I’ve never had it all to myself.”

  “I heard about the everyone part,” the guy called up to her. “Heard you had a couple of real ragers out here.”

  “You heard that from the owners?” Jacinta asked, sounding alarmed.

  “Naw,” he said, chuckling. “Word around town. Owners barely check in except with the broker and with me, twice a year. You ever met ’em?”

  “No,” Jacinta said.

  “Me neither,” the guy said.

  “Anyway, could you wait a day?” she asked again. “Please? I want to go swimming.”

  He paused for a moment and looked her over.

  “Why the hell not,” he said, relenting. “I got another job to get to this morning, anyway.”

  “Oh, thank you!” Jacinta exclaimed, jumping up and down and clapping with girlish glee.

  My cell rang then, and I stepped away to answer it. It was my mother.

  “Hello, Madame IPO,” I said. “Is that what I should call you now?”

  “I need you to bring me my bag,” she said. She sounded frantic and out of breath, as if she’d been running.