13 to Life (6 page)

“I like you, boy,” Mrs. Feldman said. “You’re not like those other ones she traipses around with. Simpering, lily-livered fools. What’s your name?”

“Pietr Rusakova.”

“A Russian?” She peered at Pietr more closely, her milky blue eyes glittering. “Are you a Commie?”

Pietr looked wary but answered nonetheless. “I’m not sure of my particular political affiliation yet.”

Mrs. Feldman snorted again. “Good for you. This one’s got balls, Jessie. Those others would have wheezed out whatever they thought I wanted to hear.”

A nurse entered, smiling as she held out a tiny cup of pills. “It’s time for your medicine, Hazel,” she said gently.

Mrs. Feldman grasped the plastic cup and squinted at the pills. “Hormones!” she proclaimed conspiratorially. She grabbed the flowery cane resting by her bed and pointed it toward the
nurses’ station. “It’s because that young doctor”—she shook her cane at a man in a long white coat—“likes older women.”

With a wicked smile she slugged back the pills and chased them with water, insinuating that it was fine with a quick move of her eyebrows. She winked, saying, “But that’s all right, because I like younger men!” She laughed as the nurse scooted us off to another room.

“Well,” I said. “That was—” I wanted just the right word . . .

“Educational?” Pietr tried.

I smiled despite everything. “Yes,” I agreed.

We walked the rest of the third floor, letting people who often had too few human visitors enjoy a little companionship of the animal kind.

In the elevator I was silent as Pietr shifted from foot to foot, glancing at the cell phone in his hand.

“Cell not getting a signal?” I asked as the elevator doors slid open.

“What?”

“Or are you just watching the time again?”

“Prosteetcheh,”
he said.

“Pro-what?”

“
Sorry
.
Da
. I don’t like feeling caged. Makes me nervous,” he said, pocketing the phone again.

“Taking the stairs is healthier, I guess. We’ll take them on our way out.” Greeting patients on the fourth floor was easy until we got to the last two rooms. “Oh.”

I stopped at room 427. The door was open a bit, and I could see two empty beds. A nurse came up behind me to explain. “Mrs. Maier died on Saturday, and Mr. Maier followed on Sunday.” She patted my shoulder. “It happens—dying of a broken heart.”

“I didn’t expect . . .” But my sentence died, too.

Pietr nudged me. “Come on,” he said, “before Victoria forgets our little talk.”

I tried to smile, but it was halfhearted.

“No one lives forever,” he said.

He had no idea how well I understood that most simple and cruel fact. His hand on my shoulder, he steered me away.

I saw how comfortable Victoria looked, resting in the crook of his arm. If
she
could trust him, he wasn’t too bad.

“You two look chummy,” I commented.

His brows furrowed. “
Da,
surprising,” he murmured.

“Not an animal lover?”

“
Nyet
. . . I love animals,” he said, but his tone made me think of the way I’d say
I love pizza
.

I glanced at the next room number on our list. “This is our last one today. Everyone else either has allergies or objections to animals.” I knocked on the door. “Hello?”

“Come in, child.”

“Oh! Ms. Fritz! I didn’t expect
you
here.” I shivered. “Aren’t you cold?” A breeze pushed through a window at the far side of her room, tugging her curtains and tossing around the “Get Well” cards on her bureau.

“A little.” She smiled, wrapped in a blanket she was knitting. “I got moved up here a couple days ago,” she explained. “They won’t let me out to enjoy the autumn air. Not since I did this. . . .” She pulled up her pant leg, revealing an ankle cast.

“Ms. Fritz!”

“I was out power walking late,” she explained, glancing down before continuing. “I got startled and fell.”

“Oh, Ms. Fritz.” I moved Tag into proper petting position. “What—” I tried for a synonym and failed. “What
startled
you?” She seemed embarrassed by her fall, but I hoped by talking about
it she’d get over it. I nearly ground my teeth at the thought—it was the same theory Guidance tried on me. As if just talking about something lessened the pain.

“Oh, Jessie, are you trying to scoop a story?” she teased. “Jessie is quite the writer,” she addressed Pietr.

He raised his eyebrows.

“Now, Ms. Fritz, nobody cares about that. Besides, how good can I be as often as I fumble for the right words?”

“That’s when you
talk
. When you write, you are eloquent.”

“Oh, my writing’s horrible, too. It’s in editing where I excel.” I grinned. I got the sense Pietr was amused by the way we bantered. “So what was it?”

“Some animal in the woods. It growled—” She shivered.

“Pietr, get the window,” I requested.

“It sounded big, like a large dog. And I remembered what I’d heard about what happened in Farthington. . . .”

I heard Pietr stop.

“The window,” I urged. “What happened then?”

“Well, I tripped. I must have made an awful racket falling, because this young man—a jogger, I guess—came running to help me. He picked me up and carried me to his car”—she paused, relishing the memory—“Full-leather interior,” she detailed, “and drove me straight here. Amazing vehicle—the engine snarled and purred more smoothly than Victoria’s very finest.”

“I didn’t know you were a car fanatic, Ms. Fritz.”

She smiled. “The driver was a handsome devil, too,” she added. “Dark hair and absolutely brilliant eyes.” She sighed. “I was lucky he was so close.”

I turned to see what progress Pietr was making. He set Victoria down to unstick what was obviously a stubborn window. A pigeon landed on the ledge outside, twitching its feathers
before it began to strut. It cooed, evidently looking to coax a little love from a bird yet unseen.

“Uh—” Victoria uncurled and, as Pietr pressed once more against the window’s edge, preoccupied, she leaped after the self-involved bird. “Oh, my God! Pietr!”

He ducked out the window just behind her.

I dropped Tag into Ms. Fritz’s lap and raced to the window. Sticking my head out, I saw Pietr crouched on the narrow, crackled brick ledge, Victoria just a little over an arm’s length beyond. The pigeon had flown away, leaving Victoria and Pietr without a similar option. “Holy crap, Pietr,” I admonished, but quietly, so I didn’t startle either of them. “Leave the cat out there. Come back inside.”

“I can get her,” he insisted, the purr of his accent returning as he concentrated.

“We’ll lure her back with food.” I made the mistake of looking out the window and down. Straight below was the main awning and sidewalk. Four stories straight down. The breeze picked up again. “Come back in.”

But instead of obeying, he leaned forward, stretched out his arm, and wiggled his fingers, inches from the nape of Victoria’s neck.

“Pietr,” I whispered to his back.

And as he stretched forward I heard a crunch and a crack and watched in horror as the ledge gave way and Pietr—

—fell.

I couldn’t watch. I must have screamed, and I tore back through Ms. Fritz’s room babbling incoherently at the nurse’s station. They called for a doctor even as I bounded down the four flights of stairs. I wouldn’t have made it in the elevator—talk about feeling caged! I was out the doors and on the sidewalk—as were gawkers, nurses, and doctors.

Stunned and still in the full grip of horror, I couldn’t stop walking forward. I had to see what was left of the new guy at Junction High. Peering over the shoulders of the crouched doctors and nurses, my fist wedged between my teeth, I saw him.

Laughing. And holding Victoria.

“What the—”

A doctor turned, shaking his head. “Dislocated shoulder, possibly a broken arm. Caught himself on the awning and somehow used its metal frame. He’s a lucky S.O.”—he caught himself—“a lucky, lucky boy. Cat’s probably got two less lives, though. Had to spend them saving the boy and herself.”

Evidently I wasn’t the only one stunned.

“Jess,” Pietr called. “Take—” he winced. “Take the cat, please. I think we’ve been through enough together.”

He was being helped to his feet.

I blinked and accepted the kitten.

He gritted his teeth and reached one hand into his jeans pocket and pulled out his cell phone. He flipped it open. “Alexi. Pick me up at Golden Oaks Adult Day Care.
Da
. Now’s best.
Da
. I’m definitely done for the day.” He clicked it shut and slipped it back into his pocket, wincing again.

A nurse suggested, “You should really have an X-ray and get the bone set if it’s broken.”

He just smiled at her. “My brother will take care of it.”

“Aspirin?” she asked.

He blinked. “
Da
. Two, please.”

I stood there on the sidewalk as the crowd cleared. I just petted Victoria. And stared at Pietr.

“What?”

“I thought—”

“What? That I’d died?” He looked back up the way he’d fallen. “I didn’t.”

“There you go, stating the obvious again.”

“Well, you’re the one who said we don’t live our lives just for ourselves.”

“It wasn’t like I was giving you an order. Seriously.” I rolled my eyes and focused them back on him. “Really? So you walk out onto a ledge after a kitten with anger-control issues?”

His smile slid into a full-sized grin. “Not my brightest moment.”

“Yeah. That’s an understatement.”

“Guess it’s catching,” he muttered.

“What?”

“Stating the obvious.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but there simply were no words. So I shut it again.

Behind me I heard the hoots and hollers of Hascal, Smith, and Jaikin as they raced outside and put the whole scene together with what they must have heard. “Holy Hell,” Hascal shouted, “That was totally bad-ass!”

I heard a car squeal into the parking lot, sliding to a perfectly positioned stop as if it had been carefully parallel parked at the edge of the sidewalk beside Pietr. It was a beautiful cherry red convertible. Not something many folks near a town like Junction would have.
Could
have. The engine settled into a purr as the passenger’s door swung open, revealing a full-leather interior and a handsome young man with dark hair and brilliant eyes.

My mouth gaped open again and in the back of my head a small voice proclaimed thanks for few flies to catch in autumn.

“Get in, idiot,” the driver said to Pietr.

I looked back up toward the open window. Ms. Fritz leaned out, waving frantically at the spotless red convertible. “Oh! Hello, Alex!” she yelled. I could just see and hear a nurse saying,
“Come away from the window now, Ms. Fritz. You shouldn’t be on your feet.”

Ms. Fritz responded, “That’s my Alex. He’s everybody’s hero, I guess.”

Pietr looked at the car’s driver and then up to Ms. Fritz. “Small town,” he commented.

“
Da,
small town,” the driver agreed.

“My ride,” Pietr said, looking over his shoulder at me. “Tomorrow?”

I nodded, and continued standing there, slack-jawed, Victoria in hand.

Pietr smiled at me, and then, carefully, got into the car. “So I hear you’ve started jogging,” he said to Alexi.

Alexi snapped, “Let’s go,” in reply before the car peeled away with a snarl.

I stood there, watching it zip out of the lot. The nurse returned with a cup of water and two aspirins. “Oh,” she said. “I guess he didn’t need these after all.”

I stuck out my hand. “I’ll take them,” I said softly. “I feel a headache coming on.”

Back home, I saddled Rio and went riding. Always up for an adventure, Maggie and Hunter accompanied us until their tongues neared purple and their sides heaved. As Rio wound her way along the farm’s outskirts at a trot, I considered the odd new guy at Junction High.

I had to admit it: He definitely had me flustered. He was utterly disinterested in everything and ticking me off. And maybe I needed to be more like my mother and just forgive people’s faults. I was certainly doing my damnedest to forgive when it came to Sarah. . . .

I pushed away from where that line of thought led and nudged Rio into a gallop, thoughts of Pietr returning. When he was focused, for even a minute, his intensity startled me. There was a quality about him I couldn’t quite define, something beyond the new-boy mystique and even the foreign feel of everything he did. It went deeper than him being of Russian heritage. He was out of place in Junction, but I had no idea why it seemed he was even more out of place than I normally felt.

Rio’s head snapped up, her neck stiffening as the reins went slack in my hand.

“What?”

She stopped in the middle of our regular trail and pawed at the path. I looked around. All along the trail’s edge the briars, brush, and brambles sported leaves in autumn’s colors. A breeze stirred their branches and canes. And then I noticed what made her body tense beneath me.

A hole was torn in the trail’s edge, as if something large had ripped right through the thorns. Something strong. Not as big as a horse or—“Steady, girl,” I whispered as I slid off the saddle. I wrapped her reins around my fist. Rio followed.

“Wow.” Whatever had rocketed through here had uprooted whole plants. And . . . I reached out to grab the thick tuft of fur still wrapped around one particularly sturdy berry bush. It had left a little of itself here, too.

Rio rolled her eyes.

“Rio, it’s just fur.” Thick fur. Auburn and long like the darkest color on a collie. But collies didn’t bust holes in thorny underbrush. I rubbed it between my thumb and fingers. It didn’t have the slightly greasy feel of most dogs’ hair, either. I sniffed at it, remembering how Pietr had sniffed my hair. Seriously? I sniffed again. It smelled nearly sweet, like its owner had been recently deodorized or spritzed with perfume. Way too fancy
for a simple farm dog. “There’s definitely something strange going on around here,” I confirmed to my nervous equine companion. I tucked the wad of fur into my jeans pocket and climbed back onto Rio.