7 Clues to Winning You (29 page)

I reached down, wrestled one of the paver stones from the edge of the walk, and hurled it as hard as I could. It smashed through the front window, sending shards of glass everywhere. It felt good to watch something shatter besides me. To hear it smash. A slab of the cracked pane dangled from the frame and then sliced through the air as it fell. “How does it feel?” I jeered at the house. The gaping hole in the window marred the house’s facade like a toothless mouth. I opened mine to mimic it.

The window beside the picture window was still unbroken. I bent down and wrenched another paver stone loose. It was cool and dense in my hand. “This might hurt,” I sneered. I cocked back my arm, took aim at the remaining pane of glass …

… and paused.

I was talking to a house. I was trying to hurt a house.
A house can’t feel,
I said to myself. What was I doing, then? Who did I think I was hurting here? My friends? My father?

I heard a loud
BLEEP
behind me. I turned and was blinded by the flashing red and blue lights of an Ash Grove police cruiser pulling in behind my car. The answer to my question instantly fell upon me like a sheet of ice water.

The person I was trying to hurt was myself.

And I had done the job.

“DROP THE ROCK AND STEP AWAY FROM THE HOUSE,” boomed a voice over a loudspeaker. A moment later, two uniformed officers exited the car simultaneously. One started talking into the radio on his shoulder. The other one spun me around and locked me in handcuffs before I could say a word.

As the officer dragged me to the cruiser, he said, “I’m placing you under arrest for trespassing, vandalism, criminal mischief, and attempted robbery. You have the right to remain silent …” He prattled off the rest of the Miranda rights as he stood me against the cruiser and patted me down. He opened the back door, put one hand on my head, and shoved me inside.

Two minutes later, the cop’s partner and some old woman in an ugly floral apron that had to be from the seventies peered at me through the window. “That’s her!” I heard the woman say. “I saw her from my kitchen window two weeks ago snooping around the house. I knew she’d be back. Probably wants to rob the place for drug money!”

So nice of you to welcome me to the neighborhood,
I thought.
What a treat it will be to see your smiling face every single day.

I went into zombie mode from there. I mean, really, who needs to remember the specifics about getting fingerprinted, photographed, and tossed into the local jail at sixteen?

I sat in that rank, filthy cell and knew one thing for sure. I was alone. Physically, socially, emotionally alone. And probably would be for a while. My dad had already been disappointed in me at school; I couldn’t imagine how ashamed he’d be now. This would be a huge public embarrassment for him. What school board would appoint a superintendent with an expelled, criminal daughter? The irony was, none of this would’ve happened if he hadn’t tried to get that position in the first place. I had to face the fact that his decision was just the starting point, though. I took over from there. I was the one who dug my heels in about going to Ash Grove. I was the one who made everyone there hate me by ruining the Senior Scramble, the yearbook, and
Buried Ashes
. I was the one who went against my dad’s rules and re-launched the Senior Scramble underground. I took the picture of Luke. I smashed the window.

And I did use Tara. I had to acknowledge that truth. Maybe I hadn’t seen it—or didn’t want to see it—just as Tara claimed not to have seen how the viral picture of Luke would hurt me. We were so alike. It was obvious now that when I persuaded Tara to throw herself at James, I was putting my own needs before hers. Wow. That was the same charge I had leveled at Dad for the past month.

I curled up on the cold cement bench and laid my head on my arms. My mind drifted and my body shut down. I wanted to sleep, but it was impossible with the noise of the
jail and the rank stink of urine and body odor permeating the walls of my cell.

About an hour later, the sound of heavy clinking and the scraping of metal brought me back to reality. I watched the cell door creep open to reveal a stern, heavyset officer. On either side of him were my parents.

I wanted to bolt upright and sprint into my mom’s embrace, but I held back to gauge my parents’ temperament first. Mom headed straight for me and wrapped me in her arms. “What happened, Blythe?” she said into my hair. “Why did you do that? Why would you smash a window at the house?”

I glanced at Dad since he knew part of the reason, having threatened me with expulsion earlier. Had he told Mom, though? He stared off into the corner of the jail cell, looking haggard.

“I had a rough day,” I said. I didn’t want to give too much information, especially about ditching school. I didn’t have the strength to go over the details again anyway. I’d gone over them a hundred times in my head.

“Your father mentioned what happened in school,” she said.

So she did know.

“Everyone has rough days, but they don’t go around committing crimes and destroying private property!” Dad bellowed. “What on earth came over you?”

“I flipped out,” I said. “I’m so sorry. I’ll pay for the window.”

“You’re damn right you will,” Dad said. “Along with
some additional repercussions. You’re grounded until further notice. You may go to school and to Shady—”

“Scott,”
Mom said firmly. His eyes snapped to her. “Can we discuss this later?” she asked, although it was hardly a suggestion. “Let’s get Blythe home. She’s been through enough.”

Dad shoved his hands in his jacket pockets and turned his back to us, but he stayed quiet.

“Does that mean I can go?” I asked.

“They dropped the charges,” Mom said. “Dad showed them the agreement of sale on the new house, explaining that we were days from closing and essentially, we were the owners. You’re a minor and have no previous record, so they decided to show you leniency.”

“Thanks, Dad,” I mumbled to his back. He nodded briskly without turning around.

Mom drew me to her and squeezed me again. “I was so worried for you,” she whispered, almost more to herself than to me. “I wish you’d tell us if something is bothering you this badly. We may not be able to fix it, but at least we can be there for you so you’re not going through it alone.”

I glanced back and forth between them.
You’re too busy
, I wanted to say.
You’re too wrapped up in your own problems
. Instead, I said, “You have enough on your plate already.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mom said, petting my hair. “You’re our first priority.” Dad coughed. Mom kissed my head. “All right now, let’s get you home.”

“I’ll drop you off,” Dad said to her. “I’m going back to the school. I have paperwork.”

Mom blinked. “Can’t it wait? I think Blythe needs us right now.” Dad’s expression clearly said that he’d had enough of me for one day.

“It’s no big deal,” I said. “I’m okay. I’ll be fine.”

That might have been my biggest lie yet.

As soon as Dad dropped Mom and me off at home, I went straight upstairs. I had a hot, extra-sudsy shower and got in my pajamas. It wasn’t even dinnertime, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t going anywhere.

The next thing I did was call Luke. He didn’t pick up. Over the next hour, I left three voice mail messages, but I didn’t bother leaving four. It was useless. Obviously he wasn’t going to call back. I needed to do something to show him that I was sincere and that I was sorry.

I pulled out my enormous anthology of Shakespearean plays and sonnets. There was a particular sonnet I was looking for. I flipped through the pages in a robotic rhythm until I found it. I read through it several times to make sure it said what I remembered. It was an apology between two people who had hurt each other in similar ways. It was an admission of thoughtlessness and guilt and a plea for mutual forgiveness.

I typed it into an e-mail for Luke.

I hit Send.

I knew I probably wouldn’t get a response. It wouldn’t surprise me if Luke never spoke to me again. At least I’d said the things I wanted to say to him at lunch. All I could do was hope he’d believe me. And possibly forgive me.

Next, I logged on to the Revolting Phoenix to see if there was any notice about the breach in secrecy. There was. It said that the administration had no concrete evidence of the Senior Scramble, so everyone should sit tight because more would be known tomorrow. I guess word had gone around that I had until morning to spill the names. Good old Gladys.

I clicked over to check the status of my entry. It was still pending approval. I doubted approval would ever come now. I was pretty sure that no matter what happened tomorrow, I’d be exiled from the scavenger hunt. I couldn’t win it anyway. Cy and Jenna were already on the tenth and final clue. Good for them. If anyone deserved to win a delinquent contest, they did. I hoped the rumor about the prize was true.

Mom called me for dinner, even though I had told her I wasn’t hungry. I logged off the website, deleted my browsing history, and trudged downstairs for meatloaf I didn’t want.

Dad didn’t come home for dinner. In a way, I was relieved. In a way, I felt guilty. Family dinners had always been important to Dad, yet I’d driven him away from one. At least Zach was enjoying it. He kept sneaking winks and sly grins at me. He figured that my arrest would get him major coolness points with his new Ash Grove buddies. I’d hoped to keep my jail experience out of the general public rumor mill, but apparently, the cops had come to school and told Dad about my arrest in front of Gladys and the secretaries and everyone else who happened to be in the front office. He was sure everyone from the custodian to the school board knew about my arrest. Mom had relayed all of this information to me over the meatloaf.

After I had dissected my food for about thirty minutes, Mom excused me and I retreated to my room.

Sometime after midnight, my appetite showed up. I crawled out of bed and crept down to the kitchen. I made myself a
peanut butter sandwich and went to carry it upstairs when something in the family room caught my eye. It was the silhouette of someone sitting in the dark. There was only one person it could be. “Dad?” I said. “Is that you?”

“Honey,” he said. “Why are you up so late?” He’d never sounded so dejected. I never thought I’d be the one to make him that way.

“I was hungry,” I said.

“Oh.”

Silence.

I stepped into the darkened room. “Dad? I’m sorry. About everything. The house, school … and especially about pretty much ruining your shot at superintendent. I’ve messed up so many things, but I never meant to screw that up. I swear.”

Dad let out a deep long sigh that seemed to echo out of some hidden place inside him. “I don’t care about that, Blythe. All I care about is you and your future. I’m worried that I’ve messed that up for you. I just … I never dreamed that things could get this out of hand.”

“Me either,” I said. “One thing just kept leading to another. I didn’t know how far was too far. Until I got there.”

“I just don’t understand why you did any of it, though. Breaking rules, lying, vandalizing the new house … It’s like you were somebody else. Why did you do those things?”

The first lines from the sonnet directly after the one I sent Luke popped into my head.
“’Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed,”
I quoted,
“
when not to be receives reproach of being.”

Dad nodded slowly in the dim room. He said softly,
“And they that level at my abuses reckon up their own.”
Here he was,
still that high school English teacher my mother brought home to her parents. The words seemed to mean something more to him. “How true,” he mumbled to himself. “How true.”

He was silent again. I was afraid to speak.

“Everything’s my fault, Blythe. Not yours,” he said. “I’ve been so focused on getting that job that I didn’t see how it was negatively affecting you. Or if I did see it, I excused it away. I never should have pulled you out of Meriton. You were on a good track there. You were so rock solid that I convinced myself you’d transition to Ash Grove without a hiccup.” He shook his head. He held one hand above the other and pressed them together, lacing his spread fingers. “I’ve been trying to force your future success to mesh into the fabric of mine.” He dropped his hands. “So selfish. It should be the other way around.”

“But Dad, you’re doing it for the family. You want a better life for us. That’s what you said.”

“That’s what I told myself too. Very convincingly. I guess it’s true, but not in the way you think. It doesn’t have to do with social status or being able to buy expensive clothes and cars, or even paying for Bryn Mawr. It has to do with how you and Zach will live your lives. I don’t want you and your brother to have to make concessions when you get older. I don’t want you to have to settle for less in life and then feel like you have to defend or explain or excuse the choices you’ve made. Or had to make.”

He shook his head and looked at the shadowed floor between his feet. “I’ve watched your mom do that for twenty
years. I hear her defending me to your grandparents—and I know she’s doing it because she loves me—but, God, it kills me. It kills me. Because she shouldn’t have to do it at all. That’s not what I want for her. I want her to be proud of her life and her choice in a husband. I want to be good enough so that there’s no need for explanation or defense. I want to give her back the lifestyle she sacrificed when she married me. The one she’s lived without, all these years. I owe it to her. And she deserves it.”