Picture Perfect

by D. Anne Love

  I had just switched off the TV when our front window shattered, sending glass flying everywhere. I screamed. Outside car tires squealed.

  Zane raced down the stairs. “What happened?”

  “Somebody just broke our window!” I yelled.

  Zane grabbed the phone. “I’m calling the courthouse.”

  A rock the size of a softball was lying on the floor. Wrapped around it was a piece of notebook paper held in place by a rubber band.

  “Don’t touch it!” Zane said. “It might have fingerprints. Damn! Dad’s office isn’t picking up.”

  “Maybe he’s already on the way home,” I said. “Call 911.”

  Zane punched in the emergency number. Five minutes later a police car pulled up to the house, at about the same time Dad arrived.

  “Zane! Phoebe!” Daddy yelled, charging into the house. “Are you all right?”

  The policeman followed Daddy inside and bent over the rock. “There’s writing on this paper.”

  He put on some rubber gloves and gingerly unwrapped the rock.

  “‘Bena-dick Arnold,’” Dad read. “Well,” he said grimly, “we know one thing about whoever did this: They can’t spell Benedict correctly.”

  The cop turned to me and Zane. “Did either of you see anything?”

  I told him I’d heard tires squealing but that everything had happened too fast.

  He dropped the rock into a brown evidence bag and wrote up a report. Dad swept up the glass, and he and Zane boarded up the broken window. The police chief himself came out to the house, and he and Daddy talked outside on the porch. I desperately wanted to call Mama and Shyla so they could tell me not to freak, that everything would be okay, but Mama was on an airplane headed for Los Angeles, and Shyla was still on her shift at Jazz-n-java. Daddy said there was no sense worrying them right then, when there was nothing either of them could do anyway. “We’ll call tomorrow,” he said, “when we’re calmer and we have more details.”

  The police chief sent a patrol car to watch our house. We finally got to bed around midnight, but I lay wide awake in the dark, too unnerved to sleep. Maybe I should have been most concerned about the people threatening us, but the number one thing I worried about was whether Ashley and Courtney would still be friends with me when they found out what had happened. People in Eden are funny. They’re quick to help you if you need a jump start for your car battery on a cold morning or an emergency babysitter for your kids, but they turn away at the first hint of real trouble, like they’re afraid it might be contagious. And I wondered what Nick would think about a girl who needed police protection.

  By the time Zane and I pulled into the student parking lot the next morning, the news had spread all over the place. The swim team surrounded our car and started peppering Zane with questions before we could even get the doors open.

  “What happened?”

  “Did you see who did it?”

  “Are you okay, man?” Will asked when we finally got out of the car.

  “I’m fine.” Zane ducked his head, clearly embarrassed by all the attention. He grabbed his stuff off the backseat and locked the car.

  We started for the front door with our entourage in tow. Ashley came running up to me, her china blue eyes big as saucers. “Omigod, Phoebe, I heard about what happened last night. Are you hurt or anything?”

  “I’m okay.”

  She fell into step beside us. “Gosh, I never met anyone who was actually the target of a death threat before.”

  “It wasn’t a death threat,” Zane said. “Just some bum trying to make a point about the trial.”

  He and Will headed for their first class. Ashley and I climbed the stairs to our lockers on the third floor. “Listen, Phoebe, no offense or anything, okay?” she said. “I mean, I think you’re great, but my dad says I should stay away from you until this trouble blows over.”

  I spun the combination and opened my locker, pretending to search for something inside, hiding my tears. Even though her reaction was pretty much what I’d expected, it still hurt. And if Ash wasn’t allowed to hang out with me, neither would Courtney. I’d be alone at lunch, a reject. I couldn’t go shopping with them for the Howdy Dance either.

  Even though it was totally irrational, I was furious with Daddy. If he’d never become a judge, none of this would have happened. Mama wouldn’t have felt the need to run away and prove herself, and I could have had a normal high school life. I dug my French text out of my locker and pasted a smile on my face. “Sure,” I said to Ashley. “No problem.”

  “Great! I knew you’d understand. And when all this is over …” Her voice trailed away. The bell rang. Ashley grabbed her books. “See ya!”

  I headed to French class, where Madame Rochard obviously thought the best way to deal with my situation was to keep me busy. She called on me three times—twice during the vocabulary drill and once in the conversation practice, which was a totally stupid exchange between two people who took turns astutely observing that the sky was blue.

  For the rest of the morning, rumors flew around my head like a swarm of locusts as people shared what they’d heard and added their own embellishments: The rock throwing was an attempt to get back at Zane for damaging the mailboxes; it was a death threat against my whole family from the Mafia; I had been hit in the head and taken to the hospital in a coma.

  The teachers patted my shoulder and smiled at me till their faces must have hurt. A few people whispered as I walked past. Others stared in a kind of morbid fascination, the way people gawk at a train wreck. It made me feel weird, but at the same time I could understand it. When a rock came flying through the judge’s front window in the middle of a trial, it was big news.

  At lunch I took my tray outside. The table where Ash and Courtney sat was completely full; they smiled sheepishly when I went past. At the far end of the courtyard I found an empty table. I wiped it off with an extra napkin, sat down, and unwrapped my sandwich.

  “Hey, is this seat taken?”

  “Nick!”

  He slid into the chair across from me and brushed a lock of hair out of his eyes. “Weird morning?”

  “It’s pretty strange.” Also pretty strange: My lab partner had decided to acknowledge my presence on the planet outside the science classroom. Not that I was complaining.

  He stuck a straw into his soda can. “Were you scared?”

  “Not at first. It happened too fast. Then my dad came home. The cops came. A patrol car spent the night outside our house.”

  “I heard.”

  “I got scared thinking about what could have happened.” I munched on a potato chip and told Nick about the hang-up calls, which had stopped as abruptly as they’d started.

  Nick chewed thoughtfully. “Whoever is doing this would have to be incredibly stupid to try anything else now that the police are watching. It’ll be okay. You just have to hang tough until the trial is over.”

  “That’s weeks away,” I said. “A long time to worry about it.”

  “You’re fourteen. Let the grown-ups worry.” Nick picked up his tray. “Gotta go. See you in class.”

  After school that day Zane dropped me at home because he had a dentist appointment. Daddy planned to adjourn court early so he could be at home with me, even though a police car was still parked across the street. The cop was reading a paperback book and sipping coffee from a Styrofoam cup. He looked up and nodded as I unlocked the front door.

  The window repair people had already worked their magic. The house looked normal, as if nothing at all had happened. I dropped my books on the coffee table and went to the fridge for a soda. Five minutes later Beverly came over and gave me a bear hug, nearly spilling my cola. “Phoebe, darlin’, I am so sorry about this trouble. Are you all right?”

  To my horror, tears welled in my eyes. I blinked them away. “I’m okay.”

  “Your daddy’s been delayed at the courthouse. He asked if I’d come over and stay with you until he gets here. He doesn’t want you
to be alone.”

  “There’s a cop with a gun out front. I’m pretty safe.”

  “I know, but he still worries. All parents do.”

  I sipped my soda. The clock in Daddy’s den ticked loudly into the silence. Beverly said, “You can be so careful, warning your children every minute of some danger, and still they can be taken from you in a split second.”

  Then I remembered the photo of the little boy I’d seen in her office.

  “I had a son,” Beverly said, as if she’d read my mind. “He drowned while we were on vacation at a beach resort south of Rome. He’d just turned nine.”

  “That’s horrible!”

  “Yes. It is. Marshall never got over it. And then I lost him, too.”

  Tears rolled down her face. I was shocked, and unsure of what you were supposed to do when a grown-up broke down right in front of you. I got her a tissue from the bathroom.

  Beverly dabbed her eyes. “I’m sorry. You’d think I’d be over it by now.”

  But even I knew that some things were never over, no matter how bad you wanted them to be. I could see now that Beverly was trying so hard to be a part of our family in order to make up for the parts of hers that were lost forever.

  “Listen,” I said. “You want to sit down? You want a soda or something?”

  “A soda would be nice.” She sat down on the sofa while I went to the fridge. “Tell me about school.”

  I told her about Madame Rochard’s impossible standards in French One and about the boy who had slipped into a boredom-induced coma in Mr. Clifton’s class and ended up in the hospital with seven stitches in his head where it had hit the floor when he fell.

  “Everybody has had at least one teacher like your Mr. Clifton,” Beverly said. “I once had a math professor who spoke with his back to the class for the entire semester and mumbled so badly we had to guess at what he was saying.”

  “Teachers like that ought to come with a warning label.”

  She laughed. “Your daddy mentioned there’s a dance coming up?”

  “It’s no big deal. I probably won’t even go.”

  “You don’t want to skip your first high school dance. If you do, you’ll look back in ten years and regret it.”

  She set her soda can on the leather coaster Daddy used when he was watching football on TV. “Did you get anything to wear to the dance when your sister took you shopping?”

  I’m not a judge’s daughter for nothing. I could see from a mile away where she was headed with this line of questioning. “I’m sure I’ve got something that will do.”

  Beverly shook her head. “Not good enough. We need something to make those freshman boys forget all about football and video games.”

  She jumped up, all smiles again now that she had a new project. “Tomorrow’s Saturday, and I haven’t been shopping for ages. Let’s drive up to Dallas. We’ll make a day of it. What do you say?”

  Maybe I felt sorry for her. Maybe I was just tired of everything going on in Eden and needed a change of scenery. Maybe in the back of my mind I was remembering Shyla’s advice to keep my enemy close.

  “Sure,” I said. “Why not?”

  During our foray into the Dallas shopping scene I found out that not only was Beverly an accomplished writer, she was also a photographer whose work had been published in a bunch of famous magazines. Oh, and her paintings had been exhibited in galleries in California, New York, and several places in between. There was nothing she couldn’t do. Mama was pretty and smart too, but compared to Beverly she was just a saleslady. I could see how the judge would be dazzled by such a potent combination of beauty and brains.

  On the drive up we listened to CDs and talked about work and school and the haunted house the Rotary Club sponsored in Eden every year. I had loved it when I was a kid, but lately my life had become scary enough without seeking out a chance to be frightened. Besides, Eden High was sponsoring a carnival with food and a live band.

  “I might check it out,” I told Beverly as the scenery slid by and a blues song poured from the CD player. “Zane is going with some friends to a costume party.”

  We were nearing Dallas, and Beverly sped up to merge onto the freeway. I sorted through her CD collection stashed in the car’s console. There was a bit of everything—hard rock, blues, jazz, country, even an ancient bluegrass album by Jimmy Bowers and the Bluegrass Boys with vocals by Melanie McClain.

  Beverly saw me looking at it and said, “That one’s a real oldie from way back in the sixties. Marshall bought it when it first came out on CD. I’d forgotten it was in there.”

  We pulled into the parking garage at the Galleria, took the elevator to the third floor, and crossed the gray-carpeted hallway into the mall. The stores were decorated with gold and orange leaves, pumpkins, and spice-scented candles. We checked out a couple of department stores, but I didn’t see anything I liked. In a small shop down from Saks, I found a suede skirt and jacket that were stylish but within the Eden High dress code.

  “It’s perfect with your coloring,” Beverly said. “Try it on.”

  While I was in the dressing room, Beverly found a pair of silver earrings and some patterned hose to finish off my outfit. I paid for everything with Daddy’s credit card and tagged along while Beverly bought a couple of skirts, a sweater, some French perfume, and two pairs of designer jeans. We took the escalator to the lower level and ate a late lunch at a table by the skating rink before starting for home.

  On the drive back, Beverly hardly spoke. Maybe she was bored after spending all day with a high school student, or maybe she was thinking about her family. I couldn’t help feeling sorry for her. I mean, how could a person go on living after her whole family had been wiped out? Even though I couldn’t totally forgive her for the way she’d taken over our lives, I was mature enough to understand that when she looked at Daddy and Zane, she saw the ones who were lost to her forever.

  As we left the interstate and headed down the Eden highway, Beverly turned on the radio and listened to a talk show on NPR. While the commentators were talking about events in Iraq, I gazed out the window and thought about the dance. I was nervous about going, especially with the trial still dragging on, but I was also excited, hoping I’d see Nick. Maybe we’d talk and he’d ask me to dance, and—

  “Phoebe?” Beverly’s voice interrupted my little fantasy. “Isn’t that your brother’s car?”

  Zane was parked on the side of the road, near the spot where we’d rescued Lucky. As we got closer, he waved his arms to flag us down. Beverly pulled off the highway and lowered the car window. “Car trouble, Zane? Do you need a ride?”

  Zane stuck his head into the car. “The trial’s over.”

  “But it’s Saturday!” I said.

  “The lawyers called Dad this morning right after you left and said both sides were ready to make a deal. He went down to the courthouse, and they worked it all out. The protesters pled guilty to everything in exchange for a reduced sentence. Dad gave them three years in prison for arson, plus a fine and five years’ probation.” Zane ran his fingers through his hair. “It’s a zoo downtown, Phoebe. People are swarming all over the courthouse. You didn’t answer your cell phone, so Dad sent me out here to find you. He wants us to wait for him at Will’s house until things calm down.”

  I got out of the car.

  Beverly pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head. “I’ll hang on to your new stuff, Phoebe, and keep an eye on your house until you all get home.”

  “Thanks. And thanks for taking me shopping.”

  “You’re welcome. I enjoyed it.”

  We got into Zane’s car. Beverly pulled around us and went on toward town. Zane made a U-turn and headed back out to the Hartes’ house.

  “Man,” Zane said, “I am so glad this whole thing is over.”

  “I hope it’s over,” I said. “But it sounds like people are still really mad.”

  “A few rednecks are bent out of shape because the protesters won’t serve any time
for burning the flag.”

  “But Daddy didn’t have a choice! The law—”

  “I know. But a couple of people stuck their faces into the TV camera and criticized him anyway, accusing him of being soft on crime.” Zane slowed for a battered pickup pulling a bass boat. “You should have heard the speech the judge made to the press just now. He said the law is supposed to preserve and enlarge freedom, and that people’s feelings about the flag don’t outweigh the right to free speech, even when other people find such speech distasteful. Honest, Phoebe, the old judge sounded almost poetic.”

  We pulled into the Hartes’ driveway, and Will and his dad came out. “Are you kids all right?” Mr. Harte asked.

  “We’re fine,” Zane said, unfastening his seat belt.

  “Come on in and make yourselves at home. My wife is at her garden club meeting, but she left some tea and sandwiches.”

  We went in. Mr. Harte made a beeline for the den, where the TV was blaring. Will’s sister, Caroline, in denim cutoffs and a pink tank top, was in the kitchen putting ice into some glasses. “Hi, Phoebe,” she said. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. I missed all the excitement. I was shopping in Dallas.”

  “Lucky you! The stores around here haven’t gotten in any new stuff in ages.”

  Will rolled his eyes at Zane. “Girl talk. Let’s grab some food and split. The Rangers are on TV.”

  They loaded their plates and disappeared into the den. Caroline and I sat at the counter in the kitchen. She tore the crust off her sandwich and popped it into her mouth. “So, where’d you go shopping?”

  “Galleria.”

  “Wow, I love that place! Did Shyla take you?”

  “No. Our neighbor Beverly Grace.”

  “That writer lady? I saw her downtown the other day. She’s so elegant, even in jeans.” Caroline sipped her tea. “What all did you buy?”