Bargains and Betrayals (25 page)

“Now I hope he’s watching.…” I twisted on his lap so I straddled him, my legs sliding through on either side of the armrests, feet touching the Oriental rug beneath us. My fingers wound into his dark hair and I set my lips to his until his heavy-lidded eyes sparked red and he grabbed me with a growl, covering my mouth with his, lips grappling with mine. I pulled away, breathless.

Pietr was panting.

“I love you, Pietr Rusakova.”

“Then say it in Russian.”

“I don’t know how.”

His voice gravelly and full of promise he began, “
Yah
…”

His fingers traced my lips and when I opened my mouth to repeat “yah,” his eyes widened, glowing red.

“…
tebyah
…”

“…
tebyah
…”

“…
lyewblyew
,” he concluded, mesmerized by my lips as I struggled through the final word.

“
Yah tebyah lyewblyew
, Pietr Rusakova.”

He sighed, his eyes closing, shoulders slumping. “
Yah tebyah lyewblyew
, Jess Gillmansen.”

I pulled my legs back up to tuck them beneath me so I could curl up there, leaning against his chest, but he carefully moved me aside, off his lap.

I stood and stretched.

He watched.

Closely.

A smile twisted the edges of his lips up. “You’d better get some sleep—school tomorrow,” he added. “And I’m supposed to be playing guard-dog.”

“Okay,” I agreed reluctantly. I leaned over and kissed his forehead. “Good night.”

“
Da
,” he agreed, stretching the syllable as I walked away.

“You can quit watching me,” I teased as I disappeared from his sight.

He snorted, caught.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Jessie

We attended school again the next day, according to our “Just Act Normal” plan. Amy was waiting for our bus outside and immediately grabbed Max for a quick morning kiss. “I needed some help warming up,” she teased him, grabbing his hand and dragging him toward the door. Max didn’t mind at all.

And I doubted he noticed what I did. Looking over my best friend, I determined to find out why she looked so tired after one night back home. But as it did so often, school got in the way of important things.

I noticed Marvin ahead of us, leaning by the water fountain as Amy walked by. He didn’t straighten up, didn’t say a word, but his eyes followed her the whole time she walked down the hall.

Away from Marvin. With Max.

I read those same thoughts in Marvin’s eyes when our gazes briefly brushed.

Shivering, I held Pietr’s hand tighter.

Maybe this watching Amy thing had always been normal for Marvin and I’d just never noticed. I’d been gone a while—and even when I’d been here I hadn’t been tuned in. Otherwise I would have noticed the trouble between Marvin and Amy.

Wouldn’t I?

Jessie

In Miss Wyatt’s psychology class we got a new assignment. “So, because life is
ephemeral
—a fleeting and brief thing—we will be doing a eulogy project,” she said.

I swallowed hard. Dad, Annabelle Lee, and I had worked together to write Mom’s. This assignment hit a little close to home. Looking across the aisle at Pietr, I noticed he was drumming his fingers softly on the desk, eyes fixed on the clock. Yeah, this assignment was hitting a little too close to home for a few of us, I realized.

I pulled out my pencil and flipped open my notebook.

“A eulogy, as you all know, is a summary of a person’s life at the end of it all. What did they accomplish, how will they be remembered? What things made their life worth living? You will have the advantage of looking ahead and imagining the things you want to have said about you. How do you want to be remembered? What will your impact be on society, whether large or small? As Mary Oliver said:
What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

She turned, her long flowing skirt wrapping around her ankles for a moment. “It’s due the Monday following vacation. Seventy-five to two hundred words, typewritten on standard white paper. Find your partner.”

Desks squeaked and chairs scraped across the floor as people partnered up. Pietr moved his desk to face mine.

“Today you’ll write your partner’s eulogy without asking them anything,” Miss Wyatt continued. “Let them see how they are reflected in your eyes now. Write it as if they are already dead. What have they done up until now? Use this as a reality check of sorts.”

“Hey, partner,” I greeted Pietr, trying to keep my tone light. I failed. “How are you with this?”

“I’ll be fine. Better do it now, anyhow.” He tapped his pen on the desk. “It may be necessary, considering.”

“Don’t talk like that.” I grabbed his hand, stopped the tapping, and focused on playing the studious student. “So…” I thought a moment and scribbled some things down. “Want me to read yours?”

“You’re done?” he asked skeptically, walking his pencil up and down his hand, twirling it between each of his fingers. “I must not have accomplished much if you can do it that fast.”

“So you don’t want me to impress you with a flowery, emotional eulogy?”

He leaned in, studying my eyes. “What do you really know about me, Jess?”

“I—” I blinked at him, suddenly frustrated. “I know a helluva lot more than most people here do. And I know how I feel about you.”

His lips and jaw were tight. “Is that enough? Don’t you wonder why you feel the way you do? Shouldn’t I have somehow earned it?”

“You have earned it.…” I shook my head. “Stop. Now. Quit trying to quantify things and make everything logical. Sometimes our hearts should rule our heads.”

He blinked at me. “That sort of attitude gets people killed.”

I knew what he was referring to—his father had died as a result of acting out of passion. Pietr preferred cool logic and reason—the odd disconnect of philosophy and reason—to the blinding power of passion. Maybe that was why we kept having problems.

He wanted control of his heart.

And so did I.

Jessie

I joined Amy at our regular lunch table minutes before everyone else showed up.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Tired. Dad’s place is a wreck. But he’s off the sauce. Mostly.”

I reached out and patted her hand. “Hey, what’s this?” I touched the large pad of paper Amy had closed as I’d approached.

She shrugged, tapping her pencil on the cover protectively. “Just some stuff I’m doing.”

“Stuff, like art?”

“Some might call it that.” Her eyebrows lowered and I saw a look cross her face that I had missed for months now, the look of the self-critical artist. “It’s just some sketches I’ve been working on.” She tried to sweep the sketchpad down onto the seat beside her, but I rested my palm heavily on its cover.

“I haven’t seen you do any art, except in class, since…” I realized I hadn’t seen Amy do any art, any sketching, any photography, since she started dating Marvin. I swallowed hard. “Why did you stop drawing?”

“I didn’t stop drawing.”

“I mean outside of art class. You used to draw all the time. There were times we couldn’t separate you from a sketchpad.”

She glanced around, making sure no one else was listening before she leaned forward. “Recently I had a really tough time seeing beauty in anything. And if you can’t find something’s beauty, it just doesn’t feel like it’s worth trying to capture on paper.”

I nodded. I’d gone through a period after my mother’s death where words wouldn’t come. A writer without words was like … Like being an artist starved of inspiration, I realized.

I’d been so selfish—so blind. “Can I take a peek? That one day Max took you outside he kept popping into the house to grab art supplies, and claiming you were drawing him”—I rolled my eyes—“but he wouldn’t show me anything.”

“Smart boy.” Amy’s hand slid across the yellow cover of the sketchpad, her thumb ruffling the corners of the paper as she thought. Before Marvin she had been pretty bold with her art. She hadn’t cared who saw her stuff or when. “I don’t know … They’re rough, really unfinished.”

“I won’t judge,” I said, lifting my hand from the cover to rest over my heart with such gravity I thought she’d burst laughing.

“Oh, hell. Judge all you want,” she said with a snort. “I have to remember that art—like writing or music—is totally subjective. What I think is majestic, you may think is absolute crap.”

“Or
unique
. That’s the artist’s bane. Like wishing someone an interesting life. Give it here.” I motioned. “I guess everyone gets to have their own opinion about the quality of the artist or writer. Isn’t living in a free country grand?”

She slid the sketchpad across the table to me, keeping a wary eye on the lunch line, tracking the movements of the rest of our friends.

Staring at me from the first page was a charcoal sketch of a young man with wavy dark hair and careful eyes. He looked like he had been caught speculating and didn’t want to talk about what was really on his mind. I knew him immediately.

“Max,” I said, my voice soft with reverence. She had captured him with amazing accuracy, using only lines and smudges. “God, Amy. It’s amazing.”

I glanced up long enough to notice she was blushing before I turned the page. “Oh!” Max again, I noticed. Shirtless and dozing in sunlight slanting beneath the back porch’s roof, his saber-shaped birthmark carefully outlined on his shoulder blade. “Does he snore?”

Amy glanced down, finding something impressive to study in the chipped Formica of the lunch room tabletop. “Yes,” she said, wistful. She gave her comparison some thought. “He does, but it’s more like a purr.” Her blush deepened.

Gingerly, I turned the page. This time a fawn peered back at me, frozen as it stood not far from the thicket that was probably its home. “Wow,” I said, stunned by the clarity of the sketch. “Did you do this one from a photo?”

“No,” Amy said with a sigh. “Max took me into the woods and told me we should just sit still and be quiet, that remarkable things would happen. I thought it was just a cheesy line! I laughed and told him nothing remarkable happens to me. He just told me to be quiet. Wait.” She grinned, remembering.

“Ten minutes later this little guy stepped out. It was the slowest I’ve ever sketched anything. I was so scared I was going to scare him away. But he just stood there staring at Max, their eyes locked.”

The poor fawn probably would have stood there forever, realizing he was watched by one of the fiercest predators his forest had ever known. Surely instinct told him that springing away would only encourage unwanted attention.

“Max has a real way with animals,” Amy said, awe tinting her voice.

“I guess he does.”

Amy glanced nervously over my shoulder.

I knew she was watching someone’s approach. I flipped to the next page. Max again. Shirtless and reclining on the love seat. My eyebrows must have shot up, because Amy slapped the cover back down on the sketchpad and yanked it across the table and into her lap.

Sophia sat, watching us in her quiet way. Looking at me, her face scrunched up and she passed her hand about an inch in front of her lips, signaling me.

I grabbed a napkin and took a swipe at my mouth.

Her lips puckered in frustration and she repeated the motion more dramatically.

I shrugged at her and returned to my conversation with Amy. “Again, I say: WOW.”

“Thanks,” Amy said hesitantly. “I kept trying to get him right, but it seemed like he’d blur and change.… The light must have been the problem. One moment he had a full six-pack, and the next they smoothed into a solid sheet of muscle.”

I wondered just how many abdominal muscles a wolf had.

Pietr clicked his tray down next to me, a sack of mainly meat—jerky from home—and a canned juice from the cafeteria set on his tray. Since we no longer trusted the school’s food under the new lunch plan, we’d all become packers. Pietr’s strange diet, I’d learned, was because he burned through things at a different rate with his strange metabolism. Consuming so much meat, he was a low-carb-diet dream.

Sophie glanced at my lips again, then looked at Pietr, focusing on his mouth. Her eyes darted back and forth between us for a moment.

Amy leaned nearly all the way across the table, wanting to finish our chat, but very aware of her growing audience. “The weirdest thing was,” she whispered, “the way I couldn’t quite get his eyes right. No matter what I did, they kept coming out more animal than human.”

Suddenly beside her, Max set his tray gingerly next to hers. “It’s because I’m such a sexy beast.”

For a moment she looked like the fawn in her picture—too stunned to move. Then she blushed cherry, and milk nearly shot out my nose.

Pietr threw his straw paper at his older brother in silent protest.

Feeling Sophie still staring, I stood and looked at her. “Come on. You know the drill. Girls’ bathroom.”

Hesitantly she followed me and stood in silence by the sink while I checked the stalls.

I glanced in the mirror. “So what was the big freak-out about my lips?”

She rolled her own lips over her teeth, struggling like I’d so often done in the past to find the words she wanted. “You know my vision’s funky.”

“You could say that, what with the seeing ghosts and traces of energy.”

“Oh. You know that last part, too?”

“It sorta makes sense. So…” My brows tugged together. “Are you seeing something else now, too?”

Her gaze skimmed over me, one corner of her mouth twisting. “Maybe auras? I don’t know enough about this stuff. If it’s auras, shouldn’t I see full fields of color surrounding people? Up until a couple minutes or so ago it looked like you had lipstick smeared all over your mouth. When I looked at Pietr he had the same weird thing.…” She squinted at me. “It’s fading.…”

My hands clamped over my mouth and my eyes widened, thinking back to my quick make-out session with Pietr right before lunch. There had definitely been a lot of lips-smearing-across-lips action. “Are you still eating the school lunch every day?” I asked, muffled by my hands.