Max had given Roth a slice of his family history too, stuff Roth had never known. “Your dad—my bro, Jake—started on drugs in middle school. He got hooked young. Our parents sent him to rehab twice. I was older and in the military, so I missed a lot of the drama. Mom would write me about him, but there was nothing I could do.”
Roth had listened closely. The father he remembered was mercurial, moody, sometimes happy, sometimes mean. Roth had steered clear of him, hiding in a closet when his dad became explosive. “And Mom?” he’d asked Max.
“Nancy was a sweet girl. No one could believe it when she married Jake. It was between rehab stints, I think. Loved him, she told me. But the drugs were too strong; he couldn’t kick them. The drugs broke him in every way.”
“But she helped him cook meth. She was a druggie too.”
“Not for a long time. Not while she was carrying you either. She loved you, Roth. Your dad’s and my parents passed within months of each other and your mom’s parents were dead too. I was stationed overseas. She had no support system. Jake couldn’t hold a job; they were head over heels in debt. She started using too.”
Roth remembered some of this tender, nice mother, the one who had held him whenever he got hurt, hid him when Jake was acting crazy.
“They started their own meth lab to make money,” Max explained. “But she always made sure you were out of the house when they cooked. That stuff … the chemicals … they wreck your brain one way or another. She would lock you in their car and park it away from the house so you wouldn’t breathe the fumes.”
And one night the house had exploded and all Roth could do was watch it burn to the ground. Still, hearing the story from Max had helped Roth feel he’d been loved once. So he had settled down—sort of. No drugs was the one thing they agreed upon. School attendance and good behavior, not so much. Everything had gotten easier for both of them once Carla came into Max’s life, married him and moved in.
Carla was a strong, kind, well-inked woman with a smoker’s voice and a soft spot for Roth. He needed that. He was haunted by the image of a fireball that lit up the yard and the house. He’d tried to get out of the car, tried to run and rescue his mother. He could do nothing. When the firefighters and police found him, he was a pale, shivering, wide-eyed kid who refused to cry.
So who was he now? A freak who pushed the edges of life’s envelope, a nowhere kid—not bad, not good—wondering where he fit. Roth turned on the truck’s radio, tried to find a local station that wasn’t reporting on the pep rally fireworks, but couldn’t. He sighed, turned off the radio and drove home.
“Mom, I don’t want to go to the ER,” Kelli Larson said. Her mother was weaving down side streets, avoiding main streets clogged with police vehicles and fire trucks and anxious parents trying to get their kids away from Edison High School.
“You fell from the top of the human pyramid, Kelli. There’s no way I’m not taking you into the ER for X-rays.” Jane Larson’s look of determination was fierce.
Kelli felt a wave of panic. No way did she want to hit the ER. They might want to do blood work with her X-rays. “I fall all the time, Mom. Jennie broke my fall. She’s the one who’s hurt. I’ll just have a few bruises.”
Jane glared at Kelli. “Your wrist is swollen. It needs an X-ray.”
Kelli fought to calm her breathing, racked her brain for a way to change her mother’s mind. Her wrist hurt like crazy, but she refused to complain. That would just make her mother even more determined to elbow her way into the ER. “Listen,” she said, with a sudden inspiration. “Take me to Dr. Trubey’s office instead.”
“Your pediatrician? Why go see him?”
Kelli only saw Trubey for extreme illnesses and annual checkups now that she was a senior. Teens like her were caught in a no-man’s-land between child and adult doctors—too old for the former, too uncomfortable with the latter. “He has an X-ray machine. He can X-ray my wrist. I mean, can you imagine how backed up the ER is? Everybody’s going there, even for a scratch. Why should we be stuck for hours waiting our turn?”
She saw her mother cut her eyes her way and realized she’d scored a point.
Kelli’s heart hammered harder in her chest. Dr. Trubey was a kindly man in his late sixties who’d been her doctor since she was a newborn. He’d check her over and X-ray her wrist but wouldn’t require blood work like the ER would.
Jane turned at the corner and Kelli breathed a sigh of relief. Dr. Trubey’s office was divided into two waiting rooms—the sick-kid room and the well-kid room. Both were full, but Kelli took a seat in the well room. She recognized students from her school who’d had the same idea about avoiding the ER, and speculated that they all recognized her. As a cheerleader, she was seen every year in front of the football stadium bleachers, plus she was still in her uniform. Her mom went to the sign-in window and Kelli whipped out her cell from her purse. She had nine text messages, four from Morgan.
R U OK?
Whr R U?
Call ME!
NOW!
Two were from Mark, her boyfriend.
U OK?
At hom. Txt me.
The remaining texts, from other cheerleaders checking on her, didn’t matter. She’d get to them later. She put off texting Morgan and went straight to Mark’s number. She wanted to talk to him, needed to hear his voice, but texting him back was all she could do for the moment. She thumbed her way through a quick return message to his cell.
Doc. Wrst x-ray. Wil cal latr.
It hurt her feelings that he hadn’t added “I LV U” or any number of sweet things that he could have to his message. Hurt her a lot. She closed her cell just as her mother returned from the check-in window, and forced a smile.
Jane settled in the chair beside Kelli with a grumble. “We’ll have to wait.”
“Not as long as at the hospital,” Kelli said brightly. Her wrist throbbed, but she didn’t let on. She felt threatened from all sides—her position on the team, her relationship with Mark, her grades. No need to bring that up with her mother, but she already knew she was going to have a bad year. A very bad year.
• • •
“Well, it isn’t broken,” Dr. Trubey told Kelli and her mother, waving the X-ray as he came into the examination room. “A bad sprain, though. I’ll wrap it and give you a sling.”
Jane said, “She has a game tomorrow night.”
“No games for you, little girl,” Dr. Trubey said to Kelli. “Not for at least six weeks.”
“Six weeks!” Jane blurted.
“She can cheer in two weeks, but no tumbling routines. She could do some real ligament damage if she injures her wrist further.”
“But she’s the head tumbler,” Jane said. “The team looks to her.”
Dr. Trubey skewered Jane with a look over the top of his glasses. “No tumbling.”
Kelli wasn’t as bummed about the layoff as her mother. At the moment, she hurt all over and just wanted to go home.
“She’s a fast healer,” Jane said.
Dr. Trubey concentrated on the wrap. “Sprains take time to heal. Don’t push it.”
Kelli was grateful for his intervention. He understood Jane Larson well.
Her mother watched, hawklike, while Dr. Trubey wrapped Kelli’s wrist in gauze and Ace bandages. He sent them off with care instructions, a prescription for pain medication and a wave of his hand. It was after seven when Kelli eased back into the car. They hit the drive-through at the pharmacy, waited for the pills. Kelli swallowed two as soon as she could. “Why don’t we grab a pizza and take it home,” Jane said.
Her offer surprised Kelli. Her mother watched both of their weights vigilantly, so she almost never suggested pizza. “You must really feel sorry for me,” Kelli said.
“Of course I feel sorry for you. You’re hurt.”
And as a result, Kelli thought, she might lose her position on the squad. And Kelli knew how important the cheerleading squad was to her mother. Jane had been a cheerleader herself at
Edison years before, and Kelli often thought she would still have liked to be one. High school—Jane’s glory days. “Pizza sounds good,” she said.
There was no one waiting for them at home. Her parents had divorced when Kelli was a freshman, and her dad had moved to New York. She missed him. Her mother was a real estate agent, but the market was dead everywhere, so she was home more than usual and very discontented with life.
“You’ll be back on top in no time,” Jane said, reaching across the console and squeezing Kelli’s good hand. Jane laughed. “Get it? On top?”
“I get it, Mom,” Kelli said wearily. Kelli was the smallest person on the squad and always topped the human pyramid. It was one of the reasons Jane fussed at Kelli about weight control. Fat girls didn’t climb to the top.
“I hope they catch the little perverts who did this,” Jane said. “You have any idea who it might have been?”
“No idea.” Kelli leaned her aching head against the car’s headrest as the pills began to work and made her mellow. Still, she wanted to get home and talk to Mark. Her world—their world—was upside down and she needed him more than anything.
Morgan moved the food around on her plate, anxious to get dinner over with and go up to her room. She was too wired on adrenaline to be hungry. Her parents sat at the table with her, none of them interested in food, it seemed. Her father had turned off all cell phones and put the home phone on the answering machine. Because the Friersons were two of only five attorneys in Grandville, their phones had rung continuously all evening. Morgan had listened to Paige and Hal tell callers, “It’s too soon to think about litigation, Mrs. So-and-so,” and, “We can’t blame the school just yet, Mr. Whatever-the-name.”
Morgan speared a lima bean and asked, “So what happens now?”
“The police will question people.”
“The police!”
“In this era of homeland security, explosions are taken seriously.”
“It was fireworks,” Morgan insisted.
“They didn’t combust without help.” Paige inserted her opinion. “Someone set them up and set them off. It was planned.”
Morgan was still angry at the person or persons who had done it, but she wasn’t crazy about the police sniffing around. She wanted to find the culprits and throttle them. She had developed a plan for the school year, ideas and directions for her student council term—good ideas for projects and fund-raising. Now some idiot had interjected himself into the mix, and not in a good way. Her brain hurt from thinking about it. She’d dig around on Monday. Someone knew something.
“Could this have been the work of a rival school?” her father asked.
Their closest rival was Bonnerville, thirty miles away. “Pranks are usually reserved for the last week of classes,” Morgan said, “so it’s unlikely.”
“The football team?” Paige offered.
“They didn’t do it. They wouldn’t have,” Morgan snapped.
“I’m just asking. So will the cops.”
Hal, seated at the head of the table with his wife and daughter on either side of him, put his hands on both their shoulders as if separating warring factions. “I only hope it doesn’t scrap the season.” The game endorsed by the pep rally had been postponed “until further notice.”
Morgan hadn’t considered that. Trent needed this season as a kicker; all the senior players did, because college scouts hung around the games in the fall looking for talent. “They won’t dare scrap it.”
Hal shrugged.
“Did you hear from Kelli?” Paige changed the subject quickly—a lawyer’s trick.
“She sent me a text. Sprained wrist. She’ll be all right.” Morgan would have driven right over, but since the next day was Saturday and Kelli had said she just wanted to crash, Morgan would go over in the morning.
“Stupid prank,” Paige muttered.
They finished the meal in silence.
One o’clock in the morning and Morgan was wide awake. She sat cross-legged on her bed surfing the Web on her laptop. She had her parents’ trust when it came to using the Web, and she was a girl who, as Kelli said, “colored inside the lines.” Morgan worked hard not to lose that trust. Plus, Morgan was pretty sure her mother checked the laptop’s cache memory from time to time, so Morgan stuck to a couple of parent-approved social websites and sites that could support a claim of “homework research.” She did, however, have her email password protected along with a software program that deterred hacking just in case Mom decided to dig, which Paige swore she’d never do. The safety locks were for the sake of her and Trent’s privacy. They sent some pretty racy emails to each other and no way did she want her parents reading them.
The house lay quiet, so when Morgan heard the sound of sand splattering against her bedroom window, she looked up instantly. The sound repeated. She quickly unfolded herself and hurried to her window. Sure enough, she saw Trent staring up at her from below. He waved. She held up her hand, motioned that she’d be down, slid on her fleece-lined slipper boots and stole from her room, down the hallway, past her sleeping parents’ room and down the stairs.
In the foyer, she grabbed a lightweight coat from the closet to cover her pj’s and eased out the door into the chilly night air. Trent met her on the porch, put his arms around her and kissed her forehead. “What’s up?” she asked.
“Wanted to see my girl.”
“I wanted to see you too.” She hugged him hard and they kissed. Her knees went weak. The leather and wool of his letter jacket scraped her chin when she drew a breath.
His hands slipped inside her coat and beneath her flannel top. She shivered. His hands were cold, her skin warm, and her every cell was suddenly awake at his touch. “Let’s go to our tree,” she whispered.
They crossed the front lawn to the giant maple in the middle of the acre-sized yard—Trent called it their “meet-and-greet tree,” a place where they had privacy, thanks to the low-hanging branches. “I’m going to miss these leaves when they drop,” he said into her hair.
“I learned how to cut leaves out of construction paper in kindergarten. Maybe I can make some and glue them on.”
She felt him smile. “You’re so smart.”
“Not smart enough to figure out who played that stupid prank today.”
“Yeah … the team’s hopping mad. Coach ain’t too happy either.”
“We’ll get another shot at them,” she said, deciding not to mention the possibility her father had raised about a canceled season.
Trent kissed her again. He pushed his back into the trunk of the tree, pulled her against the length of him. She clung to him, her insides going gooey. He must have felt her eagerness through her clothes, because he whispered, “Wow. I didn’t know you came alive after midnight.”
“No way you could. It’s after my curfew,” she mumbled, letting his hands rub beneath her pajama top.
“Remind me to sneak up to your room next time.”
She pulled back, suddenly realizing she didn’t want to lose her virginity under the maple tree in her front yard. He relaxed his hold on her, saying, “Sorry. You just turn me on. I love you so much.”
“Same for me,” she said, breathing in a gulp of fresh cold air. They had so far kept their pact to stay within certain physical boundaries with each other. It was difficult, but neither wanted to change the directions of their plans for themselves—college with scholarships.
They rested their foreheads together, breathed slowly in unison, regaining control. “I better go,” Trent said.
“Good idea.”
He walked Morgan to her front door. She eased inside, but before pulling the door shut she said, “We need to figure out who ruined our pep rally.”
“I’ll poke around. You know how rumors fly. Anyone who pulled this off probably can’t help bragging about it.”
“I’ve been looking on the Web,” she said. “So far nothing.”
“I have the gift of persuasion on my side.” He balled his hands into fi
sts.
“No pounding,” Morgan said. “Promise me.”
“No pounding,” Trent said.
But it was too dark for her to see if his fingers were crossed when he said it.
The Watchers stood against the wall of the atrium on Monday morning … watching. The area was thick with bodies, swarms of students standing, sitting, talking, eating, clustering in groups of belonging. The edges of each group didn’t touch. Unwritten rules of high school. No mixing. No touching. No mingling. If you were in the atrium before first bell, you were in a group. You were a part of something. No standing room for loners, for those who were different, who didn’t fit in.
The Watchers had found each other in seventh grade because they never belonged to any group. Their very separateness made them a group of two automatically.
“What did you think of Friday’s pep rally?” the taller, thiner one asked.
“Hysterical,” the shorter, heavier one said, taking a bite of a toaster pastry. “Wish we’d thought of it.”
“The whole school’s talking about it.”
“Might be cool to have the whole school talking about something we did.” The pastry eater wiped away fallen crumbs. “In a neat way, of course. You know, admiration.”
“You think?” the thin one said.
“Sure. Wouldn’t you like to be the ones they’re talking about? Sort of our secret. ‘I know something you don’t know.’ ”
The thin one rocked back against the wall. “The fireworks were clever, but not genius. Can’t imagine any of them smart enough to think of it.” The thin one gestured toward the mass of students. “Look at them. A bunch of stupid cows.”
In unison their gazes shot to the low wall where the most popular of the popular were gathered, the seniors, the beautiful ones who everyone knew and wanted to be like, even the social rejects. The outcasts never verbalized their yearnings, but the Watchers knew it to be true. It was written on the faces of the others, in looks of either downright envy or disdain. Everyone knew who the best of Edison were. No secrets about that.
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