Hanging by a Thread (5 page)

“I know it!” I exclaimed. The square brick building used to be an anonymous lawyer’s office with no appeal at all. But when we came back to town, it had been dressed up with banks of flowers and hanging baskets, and a hand-carved sign with gold lettering.

“You’ve been there?”

“No. My mom’s allergic to animals.” I shrugged,
remembering how I used to beg her for a pet when we were in the city. Back then she blamed the rules of our apartment building; now it was allergies, which was suspicious since she’d never mentioned them before, but there were certain topics where my mom was completely inflexible and this was one of them. “I love dogs. I wish I could have one.”

“There are hypoallergenic breeds.”

I was tempted to pretend to be interested just so I’d have an excuse to talk to Jack again. But it was pointless. “Thanks, but I’d have an easier time talking my mom into letting me work as a stripper.”

The minute the words were out of my mouth, I felt myself blush furiously, especially when Jack looked me up and down, not bothering to hide the fact that he was checking me out. Which, of course, made me even more self-conscious. Why couldn’t I have even a tenth of Rachel’s confidence, the ease she had around people?

“So yeah, so I make these things,” I babbled, changing the subject. I yanked down the closest piece, a twill jacket to which I’d added purple faux-suede fringe along the outer seams of the sleeves and the bottom hem. The fringe had come from a hideous sofa I’d spotted on the curb in a shabby neighborhood of San Francisco; I’d made my mom pull over so I could take the cushions. The rest of the fabric had been turned into a lampshade as a Mother’s Day gift, and my mom had gamely put it in her bedroom, where it looked extremely out of place with all her minimalist modern furniture.

Jack took the jacket from me and ran his hands along the fringe. I was pleased. I loved fabrics that made you want to touch them—textured weaves and lace and silks and embroidery.

“This looks like something you’d wear,” he said.

“You just met me!”

“Yeah, but … I mean, your style’s kind of obvious.” Now he did look me up and down, but this time it was my clothes that had his attention.

“I like … different stuff, I guess.”

“Not many girls could get away with that.”

Was that a compliment? I decided to act like it was. “Thanks.” I took the jacket back from him and hung it up—anything to do with my hands so I wouldn’t have to look at him. “And to answer your question, I mean, you didn’t exactly ask a question, but the reason I didn’t keep that one is it’s too big for me. And purple’s more my mom’s color.”

That wasn’t exactly true:
I
knew that purple was her color, with her pale skin and blue eyes and reddish blond hair, but
she
didn’t. My mom wore navy and gray and tan, safe colors, colors she could disappear in. I was always trying to talk her into trying something new, but she refused.

“So, are you girls going to chat about fashion all day?” Rachel asked sarcastically. I shot her an exasperated look, wondering why she was brushing Jack off so fast.

“I don’t really think when I get dressed.” He tugged at his T-shirt, ignoring her. Now that he was closer I could see
that it was frayed around the collar. His cargo shorts were shredded along the hem—clearly they’d been washed many, many times.

“Let me guess,” I said. “You have your favorites you wear over and over rather than take the time to dig down in the drawer for the ones underneath.”

“This is good enough for me. I don’t really care how it looks.”

“Have you even been in the mall in the last three years?” Rachel asked him.

“Why, so I can drop eighty bucks on a T-shirt covered with graffiti? No thanks.”

“You probably don’t even know who Earl Dobby is,” Rachel retorted.

“Actually, Earl Dobby took his inspiration from the British designers in the sixties,” I said. I didn’t care for the graffiti look myself, and I didn’t hold it against Jack for not knowing—or caring—who Dobby was, even if his designs were selling like crazy in the city. “He’s not all that original.”

Jack raised an eyebrow, giving me a smile that might have been faintly mocking. “You’re serious about this stuff.”

“Yes.”

“Maybe we should get together so you can tell me more about
fashion
sometime.” The emphasis he put on the word made it sound like fashion wasn’t at all what he had in mind. Despite the warning bells going off in my brain, I felt myself melt.

“Jesus, leave her alone, Jack,” Rachel snapped. “She just
moved here. The last thing she needs is to start hanging out with a freak like you.”

Jack just laughed. “Maybe you should let her decide.”

“Yes,” I said, shooting a glare at Rachel. “I’d love to.”

Jack stuck out his hand, and I shook it. It was warm and work-rough and strong, and he held on longer than strictly necessary. At the last minute he pulled me closer, and I brushed against the hem of his T-shirt before he released me.

And caught my breath.

I’d barely touched the soft cotton, but it had been enough to send the silvery static sparkles through my brain, a reaction that signaled a vision. I gasped as the sharp sensation sent shivers down my body, flickering and then disappearing like a TV being turned off. It hadn’t lasted long enough for me to see anything, but as I stepped involuntarily back from Jack, I could tell he’d noticed my reaction. His smile went opaque, and his eyes narrowed.

As I turned away from him, I wondered what sort of secrets he was keeping … and what bad things he’d done while wearing that shirt.

We were finished by three, having sold the jeans and quilted bag, the coral jacket—just as Rachel had predicted, a couple of nice ladies from Atherton fell in love with it and even argued over who got to buy it—a sundress I’d embroidered with a retro cross-stitch design, and a skirt with a shredded
tulle hem that had been inspired by a photo of Stevie Nicks from the eighties. I’d also taken a commission order, my first—a woman promised to come back the following Saturday with her son’s T-shirt collection, which she wanted made into a quilt he could take to college. Even after I turned down her offer of a deposit, we cleared $208.

“So how much are you up to?” Rachel asked, tucking her money into her Coach wristlet.

I did the math in my head. “Around five hundred dollars.” Not bad for two weekends.

“So, not a car yet.”

“No, Rachel—at least, not a car that would actually work. Even if I had ten times that, I’d be lucky to get a junker without any wheels.”

“Maybe you could get
Jack
to fix it for you,” she said, an edge to her voice. “Could you have been any more obvious? You were practically climbing into his lap.”

“I was not!” We were loading the stand and the unsold things back into Rachel’s car, and I took advantage of the task, ducking behind the hatch so Rachel couldn’t see my expression. “Is he … I mean, does he ever …”

“Is he one of us?” Rachel asked as I closed the trunk carefully on the big plastic box. I didn’t reply, even though that wasn’t exactly what I was trying to ask. I wanted to know if he was trouble, if the vision I’d nearly had was something major, something that should make me keep my distance. “No, definitely not, he’s a freak. He moved to Winston in middle school. He’s good at sports but he quits
every team he’s ever on. He’s been in a lot of trouble. Like
police
trouble.”

“What did he do?”

“I don’t know, but does it matter? Seriously, Cee-Cee, you can do so much better.”

I knew what Rachel meant by “do better.” In Rachel’s world, there was her crowd, and everyone else just took up space in the halls of Winston High. I hadn’t actually seen her in action at the school yet, but I knew her type—even at Blake we had our own version of a social hierarchy. Vinda Scopes might have had piercings in her lip and cheeks and a shaved head with pink-dyed bangs that hung in her eyes, but she could do mean-girl as well as any suburban queen bee. Most of Vinda’s clique were painters, skinny scowling girls who carried their portfolios through the halls without ever deigning to acknowledge any of the other kids, guarding their social prominence and crushing anyone naïve enough to wander into their limelight.

I’d never been one of Vinda’s victims, one of the girls you’d see crying in the nook under the stairs after being cut down viciously by her offhand remarks, or discovering her latest attack on Facebook. I had my own friends: Lincoln Cross, who could make me laugh no matter what was going on in my life; Maura Kidder, who once stayed up all night with me helping to fix a hair dye experiment gone horribly wrong; and Caleb Randsome, who I’d met the first day of school when I dropped my tray in the cafeteria line. But I’d also never had any desire to join her circle. I used to like
being in the background, more or less invisible, floating from group to group.

Now I wasn’t so sure I wanted to remain invisible. I wanted more … I wanted what Rachel had. Her confidence, for starters. The ease with which she made friends and became the center of conversation, the way everyone watched her as she walked down the street. But the trouble with my automatic pass into the in crowd at Winston—courtesy of my friendship with her—was that the higher you fly, the farther you fall, and I didn’t look forward to crashing to earth when I inevitably screwed up.

It wasn’t that I thought Rachel would turn on me or dump me. But even Rachel wouldn’t be able to help if the Winston kids decided they didn’t think much of a former art-school girl who made her own clothes. If I wasn’t careful, I could easily be a freak too.

If I was smart, I’d listen when Rachel tried to steer me in the right social direction. But Jack … Well, I wasn’t quite ready to let the subject drop. At least not until I knew what the vision had been about.

“Maybe he’s just busy,” I said. “Turning his life around.”

“Cee-Cee.” Rachel put a hand on my arm and looked me in the eye. “Like I said, you can do better. I hate to be blunt here, but Jack’s only going to drag you down. And trust me, you get just one chance to make a first impression at school. I told you Kane’s going to be at the beach tonight, right? He asked me twice if you were planning to be there.”

I sighed. I’d seen Kane De Ponceau at the beach the last
two weekends. Six feet three and all of it muscle, he played golf and water polo and lacrosse for Winston. I knew all about it, because he and his friends never got tired of talking about the Wildcats. Apparently their big rivals were Cambria and Monterey High, and at some point in both evenings I’d spent around them, they would do a drunken rendition of the Winston fight song before wandering off to make out with whatever lucky girls they were currently into.

“Oh, be still, my pounding heart,” I muttered.

“Okay. I get it. Kane’s not your type. How about Luke? He got like a two thousand—something on his SAT. That makes him geeky enough, even for you.”

I smiled despite myself. Rachel was a good friend, in her own twisted way. “He’s been kicked out of school twice for drugs, according to you.”

“They never proved anything.” Rachel yawned, stretching her arms luxuriously over her head. “I mean, don’t marry him or whatever. It’s summer. Come on. You’re supposed to be having fun. You can get serious when school starts.”

“Yeah,” I said, thinking maybe then I could talk to Jack without her giving me a hard time about it.

Rachel shrugged. “Hey, it’s your life. I’m just trying to help you be all you can be.”

As I got on my bike and started toward home, already sweaty from the hot afternoon sun, I wondered if I could live with the version of me that Rachel was trying so hard to create.

M
OM KEPT OFFICE HOURS ON
S
ATURDAYS
, so she wasn’t home yet when I got back to the house. I took a shower and straightened my hair, even though the salty air at the beach would ruin it in ten minutes. At least I’d make a good impression before everyone got too wasted to care.

Taking one of Mom’s foil-wrapped pans from the freezer to defrost, I thought about how she had loved to cook when I was little, and was constantly making cakes and muffins and trying new recipes for dinner. But ever since she and my dad split up and she opened her own business, she didn’t have time for anything more than the giant batches of stew and casseroles she made every few weeks and froze in two-serving containers. They weren’t terrible, but I was sick of having the same meals over and over again. Still, I knew from experience that my criticism would result in her suggesting that I take over the cooking myself. I liked our deal the way it was, with me being responsible for setting the
table, defrosting, and cleanup, and her doing the rest, so I kept my mouth shut.

Earlier in the week, Rachel had given me a dress she wanted altered for tonight, and it was waiting in my sewing room. When Mom broke the news that we were moving back to Winston, she promised me I could use the spare bedroom to work on my designs. I’d scavenged used bookshelves and tables to store all my things. My prized possession was Nana’s 1982 Bernina Model 930. They don’t make sewing machines like it anymore—metal construction, a kick-ass motor, and twenty-six stitches, including the best stretch stitch ever. It didn’t do digital embroidery and it didn’t have a touch screen, but it never skipped a stitch and could sew through four layers of denim or leather just as easily as featherweight silk. I had taught myself to clean and oil it, and I wouldn’t have traded it for the top-of-the-line Husqvarna Viking Sapphire featured in the current edition of
Vogue Sewing
.