Heroes 'Til Curfew (Talent Chronicles #2) (10 page)

I pushed back from the table and walked
away.

* * *

Joss

I held myself back from slamming through the
door of Gene’s Army/Navy.

“Hey, Dad!” He was rearranging the peg-board
wall, which was sometimes a bad sign. For someone who liked
everything to be in meticulous order all the time, I’d think taking
everything off the wall and starting over would be the last thing
he’d want to do when he was agitated. Mom said it had something to
do with exerting control.

From the looks of things, he’d started
exerting control practically as soon as he’d walked in the door
this morning. The wall display was completely different, a fresh,
new challenge I was just going to love on order day. Not. There
were two shopping baskets filled with product on hooks and a bunch
of empty baskets stacked on the floor next to him. He turned around
to give me one penetrating look before going back to his work.

Oh, I’m so happy to be here. It’s going to
be a great day!

I blew through the swinging door to the back
room and went to throw my bag in the office. My frustration over my
friends’ stupidity gave way to guilt over how I had upset my dad. I
had to be more careful. And then, every time I thought through what
happened last night, I wanted to do most of it the same way. I
mean, yeah, I wanted to be smarter and faster, not get myself
caught, put the total smackdown on those guys—somehow. But in none
of my re-imaginings did I convince myself it would have been okay
to just keep walking, look the other way, mind my own business.

It was like I couldn’t convince myself to be
that person anymore.

Things in the office were not as they should
have been. The ledger was out, and the daily cash report was
sitting there, half finished. That was really weird. The cash
report, ledger, and bank deposit were things Dad did after he
closed the store. And Dad was totally a creature of habit. I knew
how to do it, though. I knew how to do pretty much everything in
the shop. And all the better to avoid Dad’s mood and keep mine to
myself.

Fifteen minutes later, I was only feeling
more uneasy about Dad. I went back out to the shop floor where,
fortunately, there weren’t any customers.

“Dad, I finished up the ledger and
stuff.”

He turned around, gave me a hard look, and
went back to his task. “That’s not your job, Joss.”

You’re welcome.
“Yeah, I know. Um,
there’s some money missing from the deposit.”

“Yeah, I had some expenses I had to pay out
of petty cash.”

“Do you have the receipts? I can enter them
and balance out the books.”

“Not with me, no. I’ll get to it later.
That’s not for you to worry about. What I need you to work on today
is footwear inventory.”

“But I did that a week ago.” Normally I
liked jobs that kept me in the stockroom and I had no problem
counting boots. But today I really wanted to keep an eye on things
out here. Plus, he really had made me do it last week and it was a
monthly job at most.

“And I’m telling you to do it again. The
last inventory showed more accidental overstock than we can afford.
We’re going to have to keep a closer eye on that.”

I didn’t remember a whole lot of overstock,
but I tried to remind myself about the whole “exerting control”
thing. “Yeah, sure,” I told him and turned to go. I was going to
leave it at that, too, I really was. Just go on about my business.
But then I didn’t. “Um, Dad, I got the deposit ready for the bank,
even though it was short. I thought you might want to take it
later. The yellow copies weren’t where you usually keep them, but I
found them…”

“Jocelyn, I just gave you a job.”

“Yes, sir.” He knew what I was going to say,
that today’s deposit wasn’t the only one that was missing money. I
had no idea what could be going on, but I had to decide if I had to
talk to Mom about this. It didn’t seem right to go behind Dad’s
back or to put that on her, but…. I’d have to think about it.

I got out the ladder, put an inventory sheet
on a clipboard, and got to work. It was pretty mindless and gave me
even more time to think, which I didn’t really want. I couldn’t
seem to focus on this latest problem. My mind kept wandering
backward over all the things that had changed.

After the whole thing with Marco, when my
parents had found out that I had been making friends at school,
there was a big family meeting. Mom said I had done a great job
keeping my secret so far, I had done everything they asked of me,
and had proven myself not only trustworthy, but able to take care
of myself. With my face all bruised up and my ribcage wrapped, I
don’t know how she managed to pull that off, but she did.

It all came down to Mom saying, “Clearly,
our current strategy of encouraging Joss to keep to herself is
gaining her attention in a different way. Now that her peers are
showing an interest in her, insisting that she put them off is
going to make her a target at school that will put her under a
microscope. Jocelyn is practically an adult now, and I think we’re
going to have to allow her to choose how she interacts with
others.”

Which then translated into me getting an
hour or so to myself between school and work, and receiving the
occasional phone call from Kat on the land-line. I was pretty sure
that this newly won freedom did not extend to me keeping a cell
phone, so I was keeping the one Eric gave me a secret. Kind of like
how I didn’t know for sure—but very much suspected—that having a
boyfriend wasn’t one of my new privileges. So if anything came of
the thing with Dylan, I’d be keeping that…

Yeah, that was where I lost most of my
ability for articulate thought and just drifted off into replay
mode. I was still moving boxes, writing things down—I have no idea
how I was able to do that, because it seemed like my whole brain
had checked out and gone back to lunch. There must have been some
part left in the store, though, because I also heard the phone ring
right before the buzzer on the door signaled that a customer had
just walked in.

I thought that I had better go out on the
floor to see if Dad needed any help. He didn’t need the stress of
trying to answer two people at once today. Besides, maybe by the
time I got back, I could get my head back on my job before the
light-headed girly thing made me fall off the ladder.

I was brought up short by the scene I walked
in on. My father was standing at the checkout with a customer on
the other side of the counter. They both snapped looks at me when I
walked passed the motion sensor on the stockroom door and it blared
its annoying beep. In an instant I processed Dad’s agitation and
alarm, the open envelope with the cash inside, and the smirk on the
face of a guy I didn’t recognize.

He was pretty young, like maybe college age.
Really tall, taller than my dad or Dylan, messy brown curls, a nose
that was too wide for his face. He turned back to my dad. “Looks
like it’s all here. I’ll be back next week.”

Dad didn’t say anything. The guy rapped the
envelope on the edge of the counter before slipping it into his
jacket as he turned to leave.

“See you around, Joss.”

I tried not to look startled. How did he
know my name? What the hell was going on? “Dad, what was that
about? Who was that guy?”

“Not your business, Joss,” he told me. He
had the knife display open and was fussing, realigning each blade
precisely, and not looking at me. “Get back to work.”

“Is he doing some kind of work for you? Is
that what the money was for?”

“Jocelyn Marshall, what part of my order did
you fail to understand?”

The part where there’s money missing from
the bank deposit, and then some strange guy leaves here with a wad
of cash and plans to come back for more. Some guy who knows my
name, even though I’ve got no idea who he is. ’Cause it’s not like
you’re the kind of guy who whips baby pictures of his wallet. What
kind of work could he be doing for the store? And why pay him in
cash?

No good reason I could think of.

And then I knew. That guy was blackmailing
Dad because he knew about my Talent. Was Marco in on this? He had
to be, didn’t he? Because how else could anyone find out? I felt
gut-punched. I was thinking back to the things Dad had said to me
in the car last night. How long had this been going on?

“Joss?”

“Yeah. I mean, no. Nothing. I’ll get back to
it.”

I started for the back room, my head crowded
with thoughts. When I came up with the plan about making a video of
Marco using his Talent, I was pretty desperate. Marco knew my
little sister was a Talent and was demanding more money from me
than I could ever get for him. He was threatening Kat, Dylan was
involved… And when I thought of it, it was like
Eureka!
This
will fix everything. Marco won’t be able to do anything to any of
us, or else.

But I was so wrong. So stupidly wrong. And
this is what Dad was trying to get me to understand last night:
Mutually Assured Destruction relies on the idea that you’re willing
to let yourself be destroyed, as long as you take the other guy
along with you. But even if I was, it wasn’t just me, it was Jill
and Kat, and now I knew that Dylan was a Talent too. Even if I were
willing to risk myself, I couldn’t endanger the people I cared
about. Marco
knew
that. He knew he had the upper hand
because I wouldn’t risk the others, while he only cared about
himself.

I looked out through the window of the
stockroom door. The one bright spot was that my dad was handling
it. Ever since he came home from the hospital, my mom and I had
walked on eggshells. I’d done everything I could to be like he
wanted me to be, if that would make having a freak daughter less
stressful. All this time I had thought of him as right on the edge
of another break, afraid that he might not come back this time.

But he wasn’t. Things kept happening, and he
kept just handling them. Sure, as I watched, he continued to
realign the same blades over and over again, all the while
muttering something to himself that I couldn’t hear, but he was
coping.

Maybe I had misjudged my dad just like I was
misjudging everything else in my stupid life.

Chapter 6

Joss

I was sitting up in bed, trying to
concentrate on some reading when my phone vibrated under my pillow
with an incoming text.

Dylan.

R u mad @ me?

Mad? No. Confused, frustrated, and…that
other stuff.
But I wasn’t about to send
that
text.

Another text came in.
I didnt no what it
was about

How could you not—? Oh, he’s talking
about that ambush at the Pit.
I guess I’d kind of included
Dylan in my hissy fit.

That’s ok,
I sent back. I wanted to
say something else, but I wasn’t sure how to say it without making
it really obviously lame.
It’s okay, I’m mad at all my other
friends, but I’m not mad at you. Special treatment for crushes and
boys whose kisses make my knees give out.

Don’t think about that right now.

He sent:
Sorry bout earlier 2 never
shldve done that

And there it is. The brush off. I never
should have asked him if he liked me. Idiot.
I rushed to type a
message back.
It’s ok. It was stupid. Let’s forget it.

As soon as I hit send, I had another
incoming:
cuz i cant stop thinking bout kissing u now

The bottom dropped out of my stomach, and my
head was mostly full of something like:
OMG!OMG!OMG!
which
made it really hard to think of an appropriate response.

The phone buzzed in my hand again, making me
jump. The text read:
Alright ill go home n try 2 4get it if
thats what u want

I choked on a sudden lack of air in the
room.
Where r u?

There was a tap at the window, and Dylan
sort of faded into view, squatting on the porch roof.

I swear, this boy was going to drive me
crazy. I hurried over to the window and carefully reset the
contacts for the security so the alarm wouldn’t go off. I kinda had
this crazy thought about just throwing myself at him, but chickened
out and backed away as he climbed through the window.

We stood there for a moment, in awkward
silence. Then he said, “So, about that thing at the Pit…”

“I don’t want to talk about those guys right
now.”

“I really didn’t—Oh. Okay.”

“I want to talk about earlier. At lunch.”
This was
it.
I just couldn’t take it anymore. Maybe this was
all just a joke to him, but it wasn’t to me. I was tired of being
teased, and tired of being too girly and shy and insecure to just
deal with…whatever this was.

“Okay, yeah.” He shifted on his feet and ran
a hand through his hair. “I didn’t handle that well. You surprised
me, and… I was an idiot.”

Avoid, avoid, avoid.
“Which part was
idiotic, the grabbing me and kissing me part, or the running off
after part, or the avoiding me for the rest of the day part?” I had
to purposely turn my voice to a stage whisper rant to avoid having
the whole house know what was going on.

“All of it. Especially the part where I
lied. That was a stupid joke. I don’t know why I said that.”

“What was a lie?” Yeah, okay, so maybe I had
an idea, but what if I was wrong? And look, he owed me some words
here.

“Jo-ossss…come on.” I could see color coming
into his cheeks.

What was I
doing?
I still wasn’t used
to the whole talking thing, and when I did talk to people, I was
usually really direct so I could be done with it. I didn’t know how
to do this boy/girl dance around the subject thing we were doing.
And just like at lunch, I’d let my low tolerance for chaos and
uncertainty get the better of me and was asking questions I should
be keeping to myself. What if I pushed too hard and pushed him
away? What if he didn’t want to give me words, definite answers,
because we were friends and he didn’t want to hurt me?