Premeditated

by Mcquein, Josin L.

  I glanced at the small script “Cuckoo” on my right wrist, where it intersected the first “o” on “Dodo,” and traced it lightly with my fingers. The ridge had faded, but it was still red.

  “For Claire,” I said. “Cuckoo was her nickname.”

  “It suits you.”

  Now it was my turn to pick the topic.

  “Navy blue,” I said, nodding to his blazer. “I assume you’re still at Lowry?”

  “Your mea culpa worked on Dad, and the letters to Kuykendall, and the school paper, and the board of regents, and all my friends …”

  “Brucey,” I said. “He still had your contact list from synching the phones, and he’s really good with computers.”

  “Tell him thanks for me. You saved my future.”

  “I almost ruined it.”

  Small-talk time was over.

  “Yeah, you did.”

  I flinched.

  He didn’t scream or curse or do any of those things that I would have understood as a reaction to what I’d done to him. Violence or venom would have made sense, but he chose to agree with me, and do it in the same tone of voice he’d have used if we were discussing answers in trig.

  “But I think I understand why you did it.” He cut his eyes toward my wrist, and I stashed my hands behind my back. I’d spent so much time trying to figure out the person I thought Brooks was, and forcing his actions to mean things based on my assumptions, that I’d completely missed the person he turned out to be. And that was a really great guy. “I’m not sure I would have gone to the same lengths you did, but it’s still rather awesome and terrifying.”

  Yep, that’s me in a nutshell. Minus the awesome, of course.

  “We could be a movie of the week,” he said.

  It was a weak joke, too close to the truth, so neither of us laughed.

  “Thanks for talking your dad out of pressing charges.”

  “Are you kidding? Even if you hadn’t gotten me off the blacklist, he hasn’t stopped babbling about your ‘spirit’ and ‘initiative’ at random intervals. Apparently you ‘exemplify the sort of tenacious determination required for success in business.’ ”

  I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. (Considering his dad’s personality, I was leaning toward “not.”)

  “Well, tell him thanks for the lawyer, at least.”

  Without the Waldens pressing charges, most of the things my friends and I had done got me a lot of stern warnings but not much else. The vodka and pills in the back of Brooks’ car were a different matter. They’d meant an actual police report, so they’d also meant actual charges against me. But when Brooks’ dad supplied the lawyer and asked the judge for “leniency due to extreme circumstances,” all I got was a year’s worth of weekends cleaning up trash on the highway.

  Dex had been right about one thing: Brooks’ old man was Teflon.

  “He doesn’t expect a thank-you,” Brooks said. “As far as he’s concerned, he never wants to hear about it again. That way people can forget. Plus, I think he may be considering an adoption offer, if you’re interested.”

  That one I was fairly sure he meant as a joke, but still, I said, “I’ll pass.”

  “Good. I really don’t want to put you into sibling territory.”

  That made two of us, though it might have been worth it to see Mom’s face when I told her adoption meant I suddenly qualified for a title of some kind, even if it was only honorary.

  Our conversation, or whatever it was, stuttered in bursts. We’d say a lot of nothing, then lapse back into a soundless void as awkward as the way we stood together on the asphalt while the rest of Ninth Street swerved around us. Brooks and I must have looked strange out there. Me in my jeans and silver, him in his jacket and tie, hovering near the muddy flagpole plot.

  “Did school let out early today?” I asked. He shouldn’t have been there if they’d had class. Our day was usually shorter, but Lowry had a few holidays that we didn’t—one of the perks of getting to make their own schedule.

  “Technically, I’m in the bathroom,” he said, “but I’m fairly certain Mr. Cavanaugh knew I wasn’t coming back by the time I got to the back doors. I didn’t want to come to your uncle’s house unannounced. I figured your friend’s purple car would be easy enough to spot anywhere.”

  “Yeah, Grimace is pretty hard to miss.”

  “It has a name?”

  I nodded again, hugging myself.

  “Do you … um … like it here?”

  “I fit here,” I said. “No quantum physics pretending to be plain old chemistry and all that.”

  No one whispering about what I’d done to Brooks as I walked down the halls, or reminding me that I’d been so friendly with Dex. No uniforms where every plaid stitch made me lose my appetite … Brucey and I had compromised on that one. I’d given him Claire’s skirt for his (shockingly not-porn) film, and he’d made sure it died a fiery death in the final scene. Her name made the dedication crawl at the end, after the credits.

  Brooks nodded again and glanced back at the emptying parking lot for about the seventh time. This was getting unbearable.

  “Would you please just yell at me or something?” I said. “The polite conversation thing is weirding me out.”

  I think it was having the same effect on him, but he didn’t know how to move past it.

  “Look. I’m not going to pretend everything’s okay. You nearly destroyed me, and no matter what you did to fix it, that’s hard to forget.”

  “You don’t have to forget anything. I’m staying here in cinder block land while you go back behind the ivy and gated walls. And I promise not to climb any more of your trees. Peaceful coexistence and mutual avoidance.”

  “If I wanted to avoid you, I wouldn’t have come all the way down here, but not climbing my tree is probably a good idea. Next time my room might be empty. Stick to the front door.”

  “Will anybody answer?”

  “Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe I’ll just watch you squirm and set the dogs on you.”

  “You don’t have any dogs.”

  “I’ll ask Dad to buy some. Rottweilers. With really big teeth. Of course, you’d probably have your friends make poison hamburgers, so it wouldn’t do me much good.”

  He bumped my shoulder with his, giving me a weak grin and a weaker laugh, but it was a start. By that point, the only cars left were his and mine, but they were close enough to each other that we could walk the same direction and keep talking. Brooks put his hands in his pockets and shuffled off with me beside him.

  “Did you hear about Dex?” he asked.

  “The police called Uncle Paul about adding Claire to the list of charges against him and getting copies of her letters, but that’s all. He says Dex could get some serious time, so I figure there was more to it than I know.”

  “A lot more. Enough that I was sick for two days thinking of how many times I ignored things he did or said because I didn’t want to believe anything could be as wrong as it was. Jordan talked Abigail into giving a statement, and after that three others came forward.”

  He sounded like he was apologizing.

  “I don’t suppose your dad’s going to be offering him any lawyers?”

  “Not likely.”

  “We’re at my car,” I said. I wasn’t stating the obvious so much as giving him an easy out if he wanted an excuse to leave. “Walk me to mine?” he asked.

  I dumped my books in my seat and put my hands in my pockets the same way he had his.

  “Chandi made me come over here, you know,” he said.

  “Oh …” My stomach dropped, a feeling I was far too acquainted with. “She shouldn’t have done that.”

  “She claimed I was moping and that you were the reason, and then told me that if I couldn’t get off my butt on my own, I had to bring you something for her. I have a feeling it was an excuse, but I promised her I’d give it to you.”

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a very familiar straight pin topped
with an enamel butterfly. I held out my hand so he could drop it.

  “She gave this up?” I asked, now smiling for real. Whether this was Chandi’s reaction to the removal of Dex from her life or her way of removing temptation, I had to believe things had improved.

  “She said she didn’t need it anymore. Why? Does it mean something?”

  “More than you can imagine. Just don’t ask me to explain.”

  No more diving into other people’s business for me. From what I’d seen at the fairgrounds, it seemed that Brooks knew Chandi was a cutter but didn’t know the details to go along with it. If she wanted to explain, she would. If she didn’t, she had her reasons.

  “She gave a statement, too. A very long, very detailed statement … How could she not tell me what was going on? How could I not see it?”

  Why is a raven like a writing desk? Some questions don’t have answers that make sense.

  “Dex is a sociopath—they’re chameleons.” Or so said Dr. Useless. “They’re also very convincing.”

  “I still can’t believe Chandi thought I’d take Dex’s side over hers. She must have been terrified.… I’m surprised Jordan didn’t rip him to shreds.”

  She probably would have if she’d known things had gone farther than name-calling and mutual loathing.

  We’d reached the Beemer, but he didn’t get in. He stood by the door while I leaned against the side, soaking up the warmth from the engine where it bled through the panel.

  “If Chandi came forward, does that mean she and Jordan are officially out?” I asked.

  “Jordan’s never really hidden anything, but yeah—Chandi’s folks know. Only her mom was surprised. Honestly, Dex is lucky he’s locked up. Max has raised Chandi since she was a year old; he’d kill him.”

  I stopped myself from saying “I know the feeling.”

  Brooks opened the door and climbed behind the wheel, but he didn’t start the engine. He sat there and waited.

  “I have no idea what happens next,” he said. “I don’t know what I should do, or say, or anything. I don’t know if I should keep my mouth shut and go home like today never happened.”

  I knew exactly what he meant. Brooks’ appearance had dredged up too many things I’d hoped to keep buried, but at the same time, I was afraid he’d drive off and I’d never see him again. And if that happened, I’d never know if the version of him I’d settled on was the real one. He was still that puzzle I hadn’t figured out how to solve.

  “What do we do?” he asked. “How do we fix this?”

  There was no way to fix it, but maybe there was a way around it; whether it worked or not would depend on his reaction. I stuck my hand out the same way I had in the Lowry theater to give myself a do-over. We needed a new start, or at least a real first one.

  “Hi, I’m Dinah Powell,” I said. “I have a habit of jumping to conclusions and disengaging my brain when it doesn’t agree with my temper. My mom’s nuts, but the rest of my family is relatively sane. We’ve spoken, but I don’t think we’ve ever actually met.”

  My hand hung in midair until the chill made my fingers tingle. I started to pull them back when Brooks raised his own hand and wrapped it around mine.

  “Brooks Walden,” he said. “I’m a terrible judge of character and a lousy actor. I have a dad who’s finally coming to grips with the fact that he’s a widower and that my mother’s memory isn’t going to strike him down if I don’t turn out perfect. It’s nice to finally meet you.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Josin L. McQuein was born and raised in Texas, where she used novel writing as a way to escape when she needed a break from caring for ailing relatives. Now she and her three crazy dogs live in a town so small that the buffalo outnumber the people and things like subways and consistent Internet access are fictional creations of the faraway fantasy land known as civilization.