Authors: Joyce; Sweeney
Guardian (15 page)
I give my best imitation of Rolan Thunder and leap like a frog to the lower level of concrete. Wrestling has taught me to land on my feet with my knees bent to absorb the shock. Lightning flashes so bright it blinds me, followed by a cannon blast of thunder. My hair is wet and hanging in my eyes.
Dad and Security are at the rail, not willing to imitate my frog splash. “Circle around on him!” Dad commands. “You go that way, I'll go this way.”
Doesn't it occur to that guard to wonder why a kid would be running from his dad? I can't worry about that. I take off. My sneakers slide on the wet pavement. I cannot fall. I cannot fall.
I turn a corner and smack right into the security guard. “Kid, listen ⦔ he begins.
He tries to wrap his arms around me. I throw my arms up to break the hold and actually give him a very sloppy version of the Spinning Heel Kick. Mine probably didn't look good enough for cable TV, but it knocks him off his feet and I keep going in the same direction, since I know Dad lurks in the other direction.
Rain whips my face and runs into my eyes. It's hard to see which way I want to go. I remember that the last time someone defied my father, he murdered them. That gives me lots of energy. Okay, I think, I need to get away from this arena and find a police station or someone who'll help me. That means I either have to stop and wait for a light or dodge L.A. traffic. Death either way. I hear Dad's feet striking the pavement behind me. “Hunter!” His voice is a roar, like a wild animal.
With no time to make a choice, I just swerve and keep on running, which means circling the arena again. The lightning flashes and my animal response is to freeze. Dammit. That cost me seconds. When the thunder comes I force myself to keep running. His footsteps sound closer. I have to have a dad who's in shape. I realize he has as much at stake as me. If I get to the authorities, he might go back to prison. Both of us have life-or-death adrenaline.
Water is running down my collar and my chest feels like a truck ran over it. I want to quit. Rain makes you want to quit. I feel like I can't win. The only advantages I have are rubber soles and youth. I decide maybe I can wear him out, so I turn sharply and run up the arena steps. It's grueling, but it has to be worse for him. At this point it's all I've got. Like a zebra running from a lion. He's got the ferocity. All I have is running stamina.
Lightning flashes again. I hardly flinch. Now my legs and my chest are complaining and so is my dad.
“You little bastard!” he puffs. “I trusted you! You fucker!”
I have a new mantra.
He'll kill me if he catches me. He'll kill me if he catches me
. I think now I'll go back into the arena and throw myself on the mercy of the crowd. I'm safer in there than alone out here.
That's when my ankle turns and I go down. I slide, I bump, I lose six or seven steps before I can catch myself. On the steps above me I see the freaking candy wrapper that is going to mean my death.
His hands close on my ankles like a hot vise. Now his voice is low. “You're going to be so sorryâ”
“Help me! Help me!” I scream. Where are the security guys now? His knee somehow drives into my mid-section, flipping me on my back so he can clamp his hand over my mouth. The stone steps bruise my back. Now I see his eyes and know I am dead. This is the last thing my mom saw. I am going to die here in the rain. I arch my back and look upside down at the arena, at the steeple thing, where now I see there is a carving of an angel I didn't notice before, pointing its finger down tome.
His hands close on my throat. “You had to ruin everything,” he hisses. I start seeing sparkly things above his head.
The lightning and thunder are simultaneous now, the storm is right over us. A fork of light tears the black sky in half. I look up and see it strike the angel on the roof, illuminating it in a way that makes it look alive. The angel's pointing finger seems to aim at my father and then fire, silver fire, pours from the finger. I know we're going to be struck by lightning and I buck wildly.
Something like the wind blows me or throws me away from him as the silver fire pours down and explodes like a bomb, hitting the metal trash can beside us. My father freezes, and in that moment, I finally see a police car pulling up to the stadium and I run toward it. “Help me!” I scream. “I've been kidnapped! He's a murderer!”
Chapter 15
“The weirdest part”âJessie drags hard on her straw, sucking up mint green sludgeâ“is that there would be a carving of an angel on the top of a public arena. What with all the church-and-state stuff.”
“There is no angel on top of the Staples Center.” I suck at my own sludge, the color of the harvest moon. We agreed to meet at this place we used to like, called Do Me A Flavor. It has a hundred flavors of milkshakes. I don't know if this is a date or not.
“Huh?” She looks up at me. She got new glasses or something. She looks cute.
“After the trial was over, I made the police drive me over there. I wanted to see for myself. No angel.”
“What do you make of that?”
This is the part I'd prefer to keep private, but Jessie has the kind of eyes that pull secrets out of you. “I'm talking to a priest about it now. Father Ruiz helped me a lot whenâ”
“When your father was stalking you and pretending to be an angel. Have you forgotten all that stuff was a scam, Hunter?”
“Yeah, that stuff was, but some of the other stuff that happened to me ⦠once I started praying ⦠it felt good. I think there are some kind of angels or spirits or something ⦠out there.”
Jessie pushes our milkshake glasses out of the way and takes both my hands. It feels weird. “But, Hunter, be careful. You were so open to that stuff and look what happened. You were conned.”
I don't want to take my hands away and I don't want to leave them there. I take one hand back as a compromise. “Jessie, there's only two ways to be. Open or closed. If you're open, lots of bad stuff can get to you. If you're closed ⦠nothing gets in at all. I've made my choice.”
She squeezes my hand and then pulls back, signaling a new topic. “What's it like, living with the Salvatores?”
I take a final slurp and signal the server. I'm wondering if Jessie will go to the movies with me. “They're about a thousand years old and about this high.” I indicate a level two feet off the floor. “They look like a set of salt and pepper shakers. How they gave birth to a big guy like my father I'll never know.”
“But what's it like living with them? Are they good to you?”
I understood her question the first time but I didn't know how to answer it. “They bicker a lot and he gives me a hard time about every little dime I want to spend and she cries if I don't take second helpings of everything she cooks. And they say crazy things to me.”
“Like what?”
“Like when I said I was coming to see you today, she said, âBe careful. Don't leave her with a big belly.'”
It even takes Jessie a minute to know what that means and then she turns red and laughs her head off. I guess I had mocked Nonna's voice a little too. “But ⦔ she says when she's finally done giggling.
“You heard a but?”
“I did.”
“But, they're my grandparents. They love me. Nonno told me he made terrible mistakes raising my dad and he feels like I'm a second chance to get it right.”
“You're with family,” she sums up, understanding as only a foster kid can understand.
“Yes. And you? Do you and Andrea like your new family?”
She shrugs.
“Oh,” I say. I really want to give her a hug, but, well, not today. Not yet. “You want to see a movie?”
She looks hopeful but wary. “Really?”
“Yes, really! I asked you out, didn't I?”
“Yes, but did you ask me out like a brother? Or like a guy?”
“Like a guy who used to be your brother.” I try a charming smile but she's just giving that stare again. “Like a friend for today, okay? And then ⦠you know, we'll see.”
Some kind of little smile tugs at her mouth. She's way smart. Someday I'll tell her how and why my feelings for her have changed. It's because now I know how precious every person who loves me is. But she's gotten all she's going to get this day in the way of touchy-feely. “Let's go see
Firepower,”
I say. “I heard that it's good.”
But she's already felt the power shift and is running with the ball. “Let's go see
Girlfriend, Girlfriend
.”
“Oh, man! Not a chick flick!”
Her little smile is back. “It's got Halle Berry.”
I shake my head in defeat. “You're really smart, Jess.”
“I hope so.”
After the movie I walk her home, and then I walk over to the cemetery to visit Mike's grave. I visit here a lot. It means two things to me. This is where I said good-bye to Mike and also where I first saw my father. When I come here I always hear that song Dad played, “Figlio Perduto.” He's probably playing it in his cell right now. I remember how he drove up here in a cloud of dust, looking like an angel. Father Ruiz says that if I want to I can write to him, or even visit him someday. I might, but not yet. I can't sort him out in my mind. I don't know which parts of him were real and which were just my wishes and prayers.
I decide I'm tired and wait for a bus to take me home. The wind blows hard. The song is still in my head. All my life I wondered what it would be like to have real parents. What it would feel like. I thought it would be like having guardian angels, magical people who took perfect care of you and never made mistakes. Now I know it's nothing like that. My mom was flawed, but I love her. My dad is flawed, but I love him too. Having real parents is like having a song. A song that repeats in your mind, forever.
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, thanks to Alex Flinn for refusing to let me give up on this project through its many permutations. Thanks to Alex Flinn, Heidi Boehringer, and Laurie Friedman for essential feedback on the manuscript. Thanks to Heidi Boehringer for information on motorcycles and to Kate Farrell and Marjetta Geerling for information on California. Thanks to George Nicholson for always embracing my crazy ideas. And as always, thanks to my husband, Jay, for being my guardian angel.
About the Author
Joyce Sweeney is the author of fourteen books for young adults. Her novel
Center Line
won the first-annual Delacorte Press Prize for a First Young Adult Novel. Many of Sweeney's works have appeared on the American Library Association's Best Books for Young Adults list. Her novel
Shadow
won the Nevada Young Readers' Award in 1997, and
Players
was chosen by
Booklist
as a Top 10 Sports Book for Youth and by
Working Mother
magazine as a Top Ten for Tweens.
Headlock
won a silver medal in the 2006 Florida Book Awards and was chosen by the American Library Association as a Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers. Sweeney also writes short stories and poetry and conducts ongoing workshops in creative writing, which have so far produced forty published authors. She lives in Coral Springs, Florida, with her husband, Jay, and cat, Nitro.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2009 by Joyce Sweeney
Cover design by Heidi North
ISBN: 978-1-5040-0432-9
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
