Cloudburst (30 page)

There didn't seem any way to postpone bad news when it came to Ryder Garfield. He knew too well how to look for it.

“Yes,” I said. “He doesn't want me seeing you socially.”

“Figures. It's my own fault. I provided the excuse. I certainly didn't want to make any trouble for you. I have enough to do making trouble for myself. If your psychic friend from the beach were here, she'd predict a long life of unhappiness.”

“Don't think like that.”

“No? Why shouldn't I? You were the first good thing to happen to me, and I blew it.”

“No, you didn't. Listen, I was speaking to Kiera. She invited me to visit her this coming weekend, to take advantage of our Tuesday off. She suggested I ask you to meet us.”

“Really? Where?”

“Not her dorm or college. She's renting a two-bed room at a motel she goes to with her English boyfriend. He had to return to England because of a serious family illness, so she asked me to visit, and then when she found out what happened with you, she suggested you come along, too.”

“Will the Sheriff of Nottingham let you go?”

“Yes, but he thinks . . .”

“You're getting away from me?”

“Something like that.”

“Hmm . . . that guy doesn't strike me as the naive type, Sasha.”

“It's complicated. In an ironic way, he thinks I need advice from Kiera on how to conduct my romantic relationships.”

“So we're in a romantic relationship?”

“I'm doing a calligraphy of love to give you. You'll figure it out after a while, say ten years.”

He laughed. “When are you going?”

“I'm leaving early from school tomorrow.”

“Just the three of us, then?”

“Yes.” I paused. “I don't know what I'm saying or doing. You could get into more trouble. I could get into more trouble.”

“But you still would like me to do it?”

“I just think this is all so unfair.”

He was quiet. I was afraid I was pushing him into something he instinctively knew was bad, even dangerous.

“Don't do it, Ryder. Forget I even mentioned it. We'll only be sorrier.”

“Not possible to be any sorrier than I am. I'm supposed to be grounded for a month, but I've ignored that before,” he said. “You just tell me where and when. I'll be there.”

“Are you sure?”

“Never more sure,” he replied. “You don't want me just pouting at home like my sister, do you?”

“No, but what's going to happen when they realize you're gone?”

“They won't make a big scene. That would bring the
entertainment press to the doorstep. They'll tell the school I'm home sick or something and wait for me to return. As you know, I've run away before. Celebrities always lie about their real-life problems. It's practically expected. Don't worry about it.”

“Okay.”

“Then it's settled. I'll see you in school tomorrow after they cut off one of my fingers, and you can give me the details.”

“Stop it,” I said.

He didn't laugh. He just said good-bye and hung up.

The knock that followed on my door came so quickly after the call had ended that I suspected Donald had been standing out there listening. It gave me a burning chill when he entered. I was expecting the worst.

“Okay,” he said. “I've had a talk with Kiera. She understands what I expect and don't expect. I've written a note for you to give to the office tomorrow, granting you permission to leave early.” He put it on my desk. “I want you to call here to tell us when you have arrived. I assume you've gotten all the directions.”

“Yes. Kiera's e-mailed them, but I remember when we all drove up there last year, anyway.”

He nodded. “When you return, we'll talk again. I do want to spend more time with you, Sasha. I don't want you to see me as a prison guard or something.”

He stepped closer to me and took my hand. The gesture surprised me.

“You're too precious to us now to have things go wrong just when you're on the threshold of doing great things. I
won't let that happen. You'll have to learn to trust me more. Do you think you can do that?”

“Yes,” I said.

He smiled. “I don't enjoy there being any tension between us, not a bit. I'd never admit this to anyone else,” he added, “but I'm prouder of you than I am of my daughter.”

He kissed me on the cheek and then brushed my hair before turning to leave. I stood there frozen. If he found out about the weekend and Ryder Garfield, he would surely feel deeply betrayed. I had no doubt he would want to get me out of his house and his life. It would seem so ridiculous to anyone who knew me now, but I feared finding myself back on the streets. It wasn't the first time such a fear had entered my mind, but it was usually in nightmares. In them, I saw myself, ragged and dirty, selling meaningless things or begging and suddenly seeing the girls of Pacifica come walking by, laughing at me, tossing pennies at me.

“To think she was once in our school and that we thought she was someone special,” Jessica said in my dream.

I must be crazy to take such a risk,
I thought. If my mother were here right now, she would surely be angry about it. She would tell me it was foolish to gamble anything on a boy who was so unstable.

Or would she see the kindness and love in my heart and tell me I was doing just what she would do if she were in my shoes? Was that wishful thinking?
Oh, I don't know
what I should do,
I thought. It was agonizing.

The other girls in my school who were my age had
no idea what it was like to live without someone close enough to trust with your fears and concerns. They had real mothers, older sisters, and fathers. When I had troubled thoughts, I couldn't walk out of my room and knock softly on my parents' door to tell them and get their support and comfort. I had to speak to my mother's spirit and hope that somehow, some way, she would get the answers to me.

This was a loneliness they did not know and could not understand. Perhaps that was what drew me to Ryder Garfield more than anything. I saw the same sort of loneliness in him. We were two peas in a pod, all right, both orphans of sorts. Wasn't it harder for someone with a family to fall in love and want to be with someone who was an orphan? People are fond of saying you can choose your friends, but you can't choose your relatives. And yet marriages, good marriages, extend the family. Both the man and the woman feel more support, or they should. I knew there were conflicts, even out-and-out feuds between family members that broke up relationships, but who would prefer no family at the start?

Once I overheard a conversation between Jordan and two of her friends in the gold room, as they referred to one of the living rooms in this house. I wasn't eavesdropping, but as I was passing by, I heard my name mentioned, and then Mrs. Wayne said, “The disadvantage for any man marrying a girl like Sasha is he doesn't know enough about her background. From what you've told us, there's almost nothing known about her real father, and what is known isn't very complimentary.”

“Yes, what will her children inherit?” Mrs. Becker
added. “What characteristics would be passed down? It's like getting a pig in a poke.”

“I haven't heard that expression for ages,” Jordan said, and they were off on another topic. I tiptoed past the door, but I couldn't help but think about what they had said. Was I a pig in a poke, more of a gamble for anyone to love because there was so little known about my background?

Although I had never met her, I knew my maternal grandmother was the one who taught Mama calligraphy. I also remembered that my grandparents had lived in Portland, Oregon, and that they had had my mother late in life, and my grandfather, who was a fisherman, had died in a fishing accident during a bad storm. Both of my paternal grandparents had died before I was born, so I had never met them, either. I remember my mother had old photographs of her parents, and I remember her parents had looked as if they could easily be her grandparents.

Now I couldn't tell anyone their first names or exactly where they had lived or anything about any of my mother's relatives. I was truly as anonymous as any orphan who was just dropped off at some orphanage as an infant. I hated thinking about these things. I knew it was bad to sit around feeling sorry for yourself.

I got busy and packed a travel bag since I would be leaving right from school tomorrow. When I checked my computer, I found Kiera's e-mail with the driving directions and the address of the motel. I printed out two copies, one for me and one for Ryder. After that, I dove into my schoolwork and did extra reading, hoping to make myself so tired I wouldn't be able to think so I would have no
trouble falling right to sleep. It didn't work. I tossed and turned for hours, worrying that I had made the wrong decision. Finally, I passed out.

Even though I was still exhausted, I woke up just before the alarm went off. Mrs. Duval and Mrs. Caro knew about my long-weekend excursion. I didn't think either knew any reason to be worrying about it, but both looked worried when I saw them at breakfast. Jordan was there just after me. She told me that Donald had left for an early meeting in Las Vegas, but he had left money for me. She gave me five hundred dollars in twenty-dollar bills.

“Donald told me to tell you to buy something nice for yourself,” she said.

“I have some money, and I have my credit card,” I said.

“Yes, we know. Donald wanted you to have this,” she emphasized. “And Kiera has her own money, so she shouldn't be asking you for any,” she added.

Afterward, she followed me out to the car and watched me put my travel bag in the trunk.

“Keep your mind on your driving,” she warned.

“I will. Thank you, Jordan.”

She gave me a hug. “Tell my daughter . . .”

“Yes?”

“It would be nice if she spent some time with us, too,” she said, and went back into the house.

Why couldn't she just say,
Tell her I love her
? I got into the car and headed to school.

Ryder's mother was the one who had had to move her schedule to take the meeting with Dr. Steiner. I saw that Ryder's car was already there when I pulled into the parking
lot. Those students who had arrived were already chatting about his mother's appearance. I went directly to the office to give Mrs. Knox the permission letter for my early departure. While she read it, I looked at the closed door of Dr. Steiner's office. Mrs. Knox saw where my gaze went and cleared her throat.

“I'll give this to Dr. Steiner as soon as she's finished with this difficult meeting,” she told me.

“Thank you,” I said. I could see she that was dying to know what the reason was for my leaving school at lunchtime. I just smiled and left her.

Ryder didn't appear in any class until the period before lunch. Shayne and Kory were already in class. When Ryder entered, all conversations stopped, and, it seemed, so did all breathing. He ignored everyone, even me, and took his seat. He kept his eyes down. When the bell rang, I looked first at Shayne and Kory to see if they were going to start something again, but all they did was glare in his direction. I stood there, waiting for him to gather up his things.

“I'm on very strict probation,” he said. “Can't look sideways at anyone, or it's the guillotine. Here's a good one,” he continued as we started out. “My parents took a page from your foster father's book. They want me to avoid you. I had to promise to do so, or they threatened to go forward and put both Summer and me in a military-style school no matter what happens here at Pacifica.”

“They blame me?” I asked.

“No. It's more like an ‘I don't know how to handle a mature relationship yet' sort of thing.”

“They believed the things your sister said?”

Since it was lunchtime, we didn't have to rush out. I, of course, was planning on leaving anyway.

“I'll walk you out to the parking lot,” he replied instead of answering. “I'm not hungry, and I'm planning on slipping away shortly after you do.”

“Oh, Ryder. This sounds so dangerous now.”

“Danger is my middle name.”

“No, really.”

“What do you want me to do? Become a puppet here and not speak to you or see you again? Because that's the alternative to all of this, Sasha.”

“Why did they believe those things about me?”

“It wasn't about you. It was about me. They're assuming I'll do something to ruin you, that I might already have done it. I'm poison, don't you see?”

“No, I don't,” I said.

He paused and took a deep breath. “Summer's not the only mess in the family. I've been in trouble before, and I don't mean running away when I was little or stuff like that.”

“You told me about your mother and the miscarriage.”

“No. There was a girl at the last school. She was much younger than you.”

“How much younger?”

“She looked much older than she was.”

“How much younger?”

“She was thirteen.”

“Oh, Ryder.”

“She looked eighteen. Honest. One of those precocious puberty girls or something. I was stupid.”

“What happened?”

“My father had to pay her parents off. Nothing terrible really happened, but . . .”

“But enough did?” I thought a moment. “Why did your parents want you to be your sister's watchdog, then? Why did they trust you?”

“A therapist told them that was the best way to deal with me, make me more responsible. This all happened the year before Summer's problem. I haven't been in any serious trouble since, so . . . it's all stupid and complicated, and I'm sick of it.

“I'm sick of living in a theater, walking and talking on a stage, playing a role every time we go anywhere or do anything, answering inane questions about my parents, fading into the background so as not to disturb their precious careers. I have to tiptoe through adolescence so as not to bring any untoward attention their way.