“You sure do,” Jessica says. She pats me on the knee. “You try to get some rest. As soon as you’re ready to travel, we can go home.”
“Home?”
“Redoubt City. Sister Mary Francis will let you off the hook on your exams. I mean after what happened it’s only fair, right?”
“I don’t want to go home. I mean, not yet.”
“Robin—”
“I want to take my exams. I can pass them. I know I can. I’ll do them in this bed if they’ll let me.”
“All right, calm down. I’ll talk with her about it. I’m sure we’ll have to wait until you’re off the painkillers. Don’t want you all doped up for it.”
“Yeah, sure. Thanks.”
Jessica gets up to give me another hug, albeit less violent this time. She tousles my hair before she pulls back. “I’ll check up on you later. You take it easy. I mean it. No getting up out of bed.”
“I know.” I put a hand on my midsection, which is heavily bandaged after the surgery. “I don’t think I could go anywhere even if I wanted to.”
“There’s going to be a deputy by the door to make sure no one gets in here, so you just relax and focus on getting better.”
“I will.”
Jessica gives me a little wave as she backs out of the door. I settle back down on the mattress; after all this talking I feel like going back to sleep.
I instantly perk up when Colin slips inside. He’s carrying a bouquet of flowers he probably got from the gift shop. “You aren’t allergic, are you?” he asks.
“Not that I know of.”
“Cool. Here you go.” He thrusts the flowers at me. I theatrically sniff at them.
“These are so nice. Thank you.” I look around for somewhere to put them, but there isn’t a vase or anything. Colin takes them back.
“Sorry. I’ll ask someone for a vase.” He looks as uncomfortable as Melanie did earlier, his face red and eyes on the floor. “I…I wanted to thank you. For, you know, saving my life?”
“I didn’t. Those Russians could have easily killed both of us. We’re both lucky they decided not to.”
“You made them pay for that, didn’t you?”
I smile at that; if the Russians had known what I could do, they probably would have killed me straight off. “I guess I did. You don’t have to be afraid, though. I’d never hurt you.”
“I’m not worried.” He bends down to kiss me on the lips. The flowers get crushed between us as we make out. We’re interrupted by a nurse clearing her throat.
“You shouldn’t be in here, young man.”
“Um, sorry. I was just giving her some flowers.”
“I’ll take those,” the nurse says. “You go on and scoot before I call security.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
He hurries to the door. Before he can leave, I blow him a kiss. He blows one back to me. The nurse shakes her head. “You kids and your crushes.”
I want to tell her Colin isn’t some crush like in second grade, but I don’t. I know she wouldn’t understand that what we have is real. The only problem now is finding a way to make it last. I sigh and then turn my head so she can take my temperature.
***
I look around the room to make sure I have everything. All of my clothes are out of the closet and drawers, my books are put away, and the rest of my stuff is in my purse or suitcases. “Looks like that’s it,” I say.
“The place looks so empty now,” Melanie says. All of her stuff is packed up too, including her comic book supplies. The beds and the rest of the furniture are all that remains.
“It really does.”
“It’s so nice of your sister to drive me back. Saves my parents some money.”
“It’ll be a lot more fun this way. I won’t have Jessica nagging me about that C in religion class for five hours.”
We pick up our suitcases to take them down to where Jessica is waiting with the car. “I’m really going to miss it, you know?”
“Me too. A lot of memories.”
“Maybe they can give us the same room next semester.”
“Maybe,” I say. I haven’t decided if I even want to come back next semester. There are a couple of reasons I’d like to come back, but there are also some important reasons to stay in Redoubt City. Jessica is at the top of that list. After what happened with Carol, she’s going to need some support. A shoulder to cry on and all that. She could probably use a few sessions with Dr. Tyrell.
We get down to the first floor to find Sister Matilda waiting. She takes the suitcases from me; they aren’t any trouble for her to carry. “You shouldn’t be carrying this.”
“The doctor says I’m fine. The stitches are out and everything. There will just be a little scar.”
“Something to remember it by,” Sister Matilda says.
“If you’re going to tell me how foolish I was, I’ve heard it.”
“I think it was very brave. And foolish. In my experience they’re often the same.” Sister Matilda stops and then turns to Melanie. “Could you give us a moment, Miss Holloway?”
“Yes, Sister.” Melanie gives me a worried look before she trudges off to put her suitcases in the car.
Sister Matilda waits until Melanie is gone to say, “I am certainly going to miss you. I don’t think I’ve ever had a student like you before.”
“I’ve never had a teacher like you either.” Since I don’t have my suitcases, I can give her a hug. “Thank you for all you taught me. Not just about aikido and stuff either.”
“You’re welcome, sweetheart. I hope you use it in good health.”
“I’ll try.” I look down at my feet and then shift uncomfortably. “I think I could use some more teaching. I mean, the fact is I got lucky with Melanie banging into Carol like that. If she hadn’t, I would have lost Carol and Tonya. I’m not much of a hero, am I?”
“You’re a little wet behind the ears. That can only be solved with experience. But it’s not the kind of experience you should be getting. You’re a smart girl. You should use your brain to make the world better, not your muscles.”
“I understand.”
“I’m sure you do. Whether you’ll actually listen or not is another matter.” She sets a suitcase down to put a hand on my shoulder. “I know how stubborn you are, but this once try to heed good advice. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“Thank you, Sister.” I give her another hug. Then we trudge over to the car. I’m glad Sister Matilda is there to lift the suitcases; despite what I said, my midsection still hurts a little if I lift anything too much. It’ll be a month or two before I’m back in peak condition.
I’m about to get in the car when I see Tonya leaving her dorm. Next to her is a very familiar woman in a red dress and floppy red hat as if she’s going to the Kentucky Derby. It’s hard to think of a less appropriate outfit to wear to a Catholic school, but then Madame Crimson isn’t known for her sensitivity.
I lean in the window to tell Jessica I’ll be back in a minute. Running hurts my midsection too, so I try to speed walk over to them. “Hi, Tonya,” I say.
“Hey, Cinderella. What do you want?”
You’d think that after saving her life Tonya would be a little grateful, but she is her mother’s daughter for sure. She didn’t come to see me in the hospital and when I finally came back to school, she teased me as if nothing had happened. Then again according to what she has told everyone, she’s the one who saved me and Melanie, not the other way around.
“I just wanted to say goodbye. I’m really sorry we never got to be friends, but maybe next year, right?”
“Yeah, right. Like I’m going to this dump next year.”
“We’ll discuss that later,” Madame Crimson says. I’ve never heard her voice in person before; it’s disturbing how normal it sounds. Someone so evil should have an evil voice with a lot of bass and reverb or something. “Why don’t you go say goodbye to your friends? I’d like to talk to Rose for a minute.”
“I hear that I owe you my daughter’s life,” Madame Crimson says.
“I don’t know where you heard that from. Tonya—”
“Tonya lied. I don’t see my daughter as much as I should, but I know her well enough to know that if she had a knife pressed to her throat she would be too busy wetting herself to knock said knife away. You’re the one who saved her.”
“Not really. Someone opened the door and I took advantage of the opportunity.”
“Very modest. I would expect that from Captain Howe’s daughter.” When Madame Crimson smiles it’s like her daughter’s evil grin that I’ve seen often enough. “Oh yes, I know all about you, Robin Howe. Who do you think suggested to send you here?”
“You did?”
“Through Captain Finnegan.”
“Why would you do that?”
“You know what they say about keeping your enemies close, don’t you? I didn’t want you sent to some school in Oregon or California, not when I could have you here, practically right next door to my daughter.”
“Why didn’t you have me killed? Seems like you had plenty of chances.”
“No matter what you think of me, I’m not a monster. I wouldn’t murder a child if I didn’t have another choice.”
“That’s real generous of you.”
“What I really wanted to say is that since you saved Tonya’s life, we’re even. You don’t need to keep looking over your shoulder. Except perhaps for Plushkov’s men. They certainly won’t take it lying down if they find out who beat their men—twice no less.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“What you should also keep in mind is that we’re even for now, but should you try to interfere in my operations again, I will reconsider. Do you understand, young lady?”
“I understand.”
“Good. Then I hope we will have no more misguided heroics.”
“I’ll try.”
When she tousles my hair I want to grab her wrist and break it. I’m sure she’d consider that an act of war, so I let her go. She brushes past me to go find her daughter. I slowly unclench my fists and then stomp back to the car, where Jessica is waiting.
“What was that about?” she asks.
“She was just giving me a message.”
Jessica nods and then pulls away from the dorm. As weird as it seems after how I first felt coming here, I’ll miss the place. Not Sister Mary Francis, or Tonya, or the getting up at six-thirty, or the food. Mostly I’ll miss Sister Matilda.
And Colin. I’ll miss him most of all.
I turn to Jessica and ask, “Can we make one stop?”
***
Jessica stops at a gas station to fill up for the drive home. The station happens to be next to Mayfield’s Lawn Care. Melanie grins knowingly at me. “Give him a kiss for me,” she says. Before I can say anything—or punch her in the arm—she skips into the gas station.
I find Colin’s father behind the counter, scribbling in a ledger. He looks up at me, his eyes narrowing. “You here to see Colin?”
“Yes. Is he here?”
“He’s in the back.”
“OK. Thanks.”
“Try not to bother him too long. He has work to do.”
“I won’t. I’m just here to say goodbye. I’m going home for the summer.”
“Good. Maybe then he’ll finally have his mind on the job.”
Colin’s father glares at me as I walk past him, into the back room. I don’t see Colin among the rows of dirt, fertilizer, and hardware. Then I hear a groan from outside and gasp.
My first thought is that either the Russians or Madame Crimson’s goons have tracked down Colin for his part in what happened at the prom. I bolt from the back room, almost breaking through the door to the loading dock. I sigh with relief to see Colin there.
I should say hello, but I can’t help staring at him. He’s hefting a bag of fertilizer from a truck to stack onto a pallet. He has his shirt off so I can see his tanned, rippling chest that’s dripping with sweat. He could totally pose for an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog if he wanted. I finally work up the nerve to squeak, “Hi.”
Colin almost drops the bag of fertilizer on his foot out of surprise. He picks it up to sling onto the stack on the pallet and then takes off his gloves. He uses one of those to wipe his forehead before tossing them onto the pallet.
“Hi, babe,” he says.
He hurries over to scoop me up into a hug. He lifts me off of the ground so we can kiss the way we did in the limo. As we kiss, I run my hands over his tanned, rippling chest. I have missed this so much in the last month. The nurses would always shoo us apart at the hospital and then I had to go back to school and there was no way I was going to climb over any walls in my condition.
Colin finally sets me down and then brushes hair back from my face. “What’s the matter, babe? It’s not those Russian guys again, is it?”
“No. It’s just…I came to say goodbye. My sister is next door to take me back to Redoubt City for the summer.”
“That sucks.”
“Totally.” I wish I could stay here all summer with Colin like he suggested, but I can’t. After what happened with Carol, Jessica needs me; I can’t leave her alone in the city all summer. And I doubt Colin’s dad would let me stay here anyway, not with the evil eye he was giving me.
Maybe Colin and I could say the heck with both of our families and take off. We could go find some hillbilly town in the South where they’d let a couple of sixteen-year-olds get married. Colin could get a job and I could stay home to pump out his babies. It’d be just like in the frontier times.
Except this isn’t the frontier times. We still have two years of high school and then college. Then we have to find jobs before we can even think about raising a family of our own.
I lean my head against Colin’s sweaty chest. “I don’t want to go. Really, I don’t.”
“I know, babe. I don’t want you to go either.”
“But I can’t stay here. My sister needs me.”
“Hey, it’s all right,” he says. “I get it. Maybe now that you’re not under house arrest we could talk on Facebook and stuff. We can make it work.”
“It won’t be the same.”
“Yeah, I know. But we have to try, right?”
“I guess.” I squeeze Colin’s hand and then say, “My sister is still trying to sell our house. If she does, then maybe we can move here. I bet houses are pretty cheap, right?”
“Probably.”
“I could go to the high school and we could be a real couple, you know? No more having to sneak around.”
“That would be awesome.”
We both know that probably won’t happen, but we need to tell ourselves it could. Colin bends down so we can kiss again. We make it last as long as possible, until we’re both out of breath. “I love you,” I whisper.
“I love you too.”
“I’ll call you later. I promise.”
“I’ll pick up. I promise.”
We smile at each other and then I turn to trudge back through the store. Colin’s father gives me the eye again until I’m out the front door. He’s probably still giving me the eye as I go next door to the gas station. Without a word Melanie wraps me in a hug. “It’ll be all right,” she says. “You guys will find a way to make it work. Like me and Taylor.”
“Yeah, I hope so.”
I get in the car and sigh. Jessica leans over to pat my knee. Then she starts the car and we pull away from the gas station. I look back in the window until Mayfield’s Lawn Care is out of sight. Then I look forward to the uncertain future.
***
It’s still pretty weird to see myself on the cover of a comic book. There’s a whole stack of The Outcast first issue
s on the table in Melanie’s brother’s store. I sit off to the side while Melanie autographs copies for the fans in line. The line is actually snaking out the door, down the block.
No one recognizes me as the inspiration for the comic book. I’ve been back in Redoubt City for two weeks now, but I haven’t gotten my hair cut or dyed. It’s still the same long, boring brown it was in New Hampshire. I will eventually have to get it cut, but for now it’s good to help me stay in disguise as another plain young girl.
Melanie signs another issue and then turns to me. “I think I’m going to get a cramp.”
“You want me to massage your wrist?”
“No, it’s fine. Maybe I should get a stamp or something.”
I snicker at that thought. I’m not sure how long Melanie’s popularity will last, but she’s already getting offers from real publishers to come work for them. By the time she finishes high school, she might already be a millionaire.
It isn’t until ten o’clock that the last person in line gets their autograph. Melanie sighs and then rotates her right wrist. “Whoo. That was a lot harder than I thought. I don’t know how those Star Trek people do this all the time.”
“They probably have interns to do it for them.”
“Good idea. Next time you can do it.”
We pack up the table and other paraphernalia and then Melanie says goodbye to her brother. She’s going to spend the night at my house, something that has been happening with regularity. I don’t really mind as Melanie helps to keep a buffer between Jessica and me.
As we start to walk towards the train station, Melanie says, “The sidekick needs a really awesome name. Something totally badass.”
“Robin?”
“No.”
“Clumsy Gal?”
“Shut up,” she says, playfully hitting me on the shoulder.
“Are they going to have a car or anything like that?”
“Maybe a motorcycle. With a side car.”
“Only if you’re riding in it.”
“You should ride in it. You’re a lot shorter.”
“The hero can’t ride in the side car.”
Justice for All (The Outcast Book #1) Page 25