How We Fall (25 page)

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How we Fall

“And no more early mornings.” His grin was back in place.

“You got that right.”

He stood up and offered me his hand. “Come on. I’ll take you home, and sometime in the next week, you can count on me taking you out again.”

For the first time in a long while, I was looking forward to something.

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It was nearly eleven by the time I got home. “Mom?” I walked into the living room. She and Dad were on the couch. Dad had his arm around her shoulders, and she was leaning on him. No making out, thank God.

“Do you care if I start lunch?” I asked. It would be a good way to make up for missing chores this morning.

“That would be great,” she said. “Thank you.”

“Sure.” They were kind of cute, actually. I liked seeing my parents like that. Dad had been tense in California and they’d argued too much. They were happier out here.

If our families split up, my dad would have to go back to full-time practice with a firm again, my mom would have to get a job that paid more than the library, and they wouldn’t be able to help Claire out with her college finances anymore.

That couldn’t happen. We’d decided to quit to keep our friendship and our families together, but I couldn’t stand Marcus thinking I didn’t love him.

Will had to have misheard him somehow. And no matter what Marcus had said to me recently, a few weeks of hurting each other couldn’t make me forget all of high school.

I pulled potatoes out of the crate in the pantry along with an onion and a few carrots.

“Hey, I thought I heard you.” Claire came in. “How was the date?”

“Really good.” Just not in the way it sounded.

She shook her head at me, short layers flicking over her 189

How we Fall

shoulders. “How did you get a guy like that to ask you out?”

I shrugged. I probably should have been annoyed by the way she’d said it, but I didn’t have the energy. “He’s friends with Chris and Marcus. From Harris.”

“So he told me. Want help?”

I handed her the potatoes to scrub. I poured olive oil in a pan on the stove to heat and then started dicing an onion.

I wet my fingers under the faucet and spritzed the pan to see if it was hot enough. The water snapped in the oil, so I scraped the diced onion off the cutting board into the pan.

Claire had the potatoes cubed shortly after I was done with the carrots, and she put ground sausage in another pan to brown while I seasoned the potatoes.

Marcus came in while we were still working; I’d thought he’d been out with Sylvia, but he must have been working on one of the cars, because his hands were blackened with grease and his jeans were dirty.

“Hot out there?” Claire asked.

“Yeah.” He gave me a look. “Last night. What did you want Sylvia’s number for?”

I stood by the stove turning the hash in the skillet. I hadn’t planned on doing much with her number, but now maybe I would. “I figured since you two seem to be doing so well, maybe she and I should become best friends.”

Something flickered through his eyes before the look turned into a glare. He walked straight through the kitchen to the shower.

I let the hash fry while I wiped the counter. Claire shut the dishwasher. “Way to piss him off, Jacks.”

“He’s been an ass lately.”

She leaned against the counter. “A broken heart will do that to a person.”

“I really doubt his heart is broken.” And even if it was hard on him, it was just as hard on me.

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“Have you seen him lately? He’s miserable.”

“That makes two of us.”

She shook her head. “I thought you guys would be doing better by now.” She gave me a soft smile, but I didn’t say anything. “So do you think you’ll go out with Will again?”

Finally. A topic change. “Yeah, I think so. He’s fun.” And charming. And funny.

And not the one being a jerk.

“Just fun?” She opened the cabinet and lifted out a stack of plates.

“Well, he’s smart. He works hard. He got kicked out of his dad’s house, so he has it pretty rough.”

Claire grabbed silverware from the drawer. “Are you serious?

That’s crazy.”

“Yeah. He was upbeat about it, but he seems that way about everything. I’m pretty sure that’s why he dropped out.” The potatoes were browning, so I turned the hash.

Claire shook her head. “That’s stupid.”

The television went quiet in the living room and Mom came in. “Oh, thank you, girls. This looks great. Your dad went to call the kids. We can just do a buffet line—I have to get to working on some things for the library carnival, and Ward is still out cleaning the hen house.”

I moved the skillet to a hot pad on the counter. The library carnival was next weekend, which meant we’d hardly see Mom for the days leading up to it.

Marcus came in, texting again. His hair was still damp and he frowned.

Trying to act on what I knew instead of what I felt, I tried to keep that tone out of my voice. “What’s wrong?”

He looked a little surprised that I asked, but he frowned again. “Sylvia thanked me for sending her flowers. But I didn’t send her flowers.”

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How we Fall

Claire raised her eyebrows. “Sounds like you have competi-tion.”

“Who are they from?” I asked.

He shook his head. “She says there’s no card or anything.

Last week a movie showed up in her mailbox she told me she’d been wanting to see. She thought I’d done that, too.”

“Sounds like you’d better step up your game,” Claire said.

“Or, you could say they’re from you. If the guy’s going to crowd your girlfriend but not sign his name, you might as well take credit.”

Marcus looked skeptical. “That would never work.” He shoved his phone in his pocket, scooped hash onto his plate, and walked into the living room.

The morning had been draining. I’d gotten up too early, gone on a date, made out, and cried, all before lunch time. I carried my plate out of the kitchen intending to shut myself in my room and watch
Roman Holiday
, but stopped at the foot of the stairs. I could hear the sounds of Chris’s computer game.

Hanging out with him for the last week had been fun.

I started up the stairs but stopped when Marcus’s voice drifted down, telling Chris about the flowers Sylvia had gotten.

So much for escaping Marcus.

“Well, send her flowers yourself. Nicer ones.” The stutter of videogame artillery fire followed Chris’s words.

“Good idea. I don’t know what kind she likes. Roses are cliché, right?”

“Have Jackie help you. I think she’s mad at you for hanging out with Sylvia so much.”

Marcus snorted. “Jackie’s mad because she’s crazy.”

I leaned against the wall and slowly let the breath out of my body.

“Are you guys having a big fight or something?” Chris asked.

“I guess. Sometimes I think she does stupid things just to 192

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make me angry. I don’t even care anymore. She can do whatever she wants.”

I almost dropped my plate. My hash was getting cold, but I just stood there.

“Well, she can be crabby. But normally she’s fine.”

That was Chris’s attempt at defending me. Awesome.

Marcus didn’t reply.

“Maybe she won’t be so mad now that she’s dating Will,”

Chris said.

Something clinked, like silverware on a plate. “I thought he just took her to breakfast. Are they dating for real now?”

“I dunno. But Will really likes her, I guess. He’s been texting me asking what kind of stuff she likes.”

“Well, good luck to him.”

I walked down the three stairs I’d climbed and took my cold lunch to my bedroom.

Will was looking better and better. And that was a good thing, because I could bring him home and tell Claire about him and ask him to take me to senior prom.

I lay there in bed and stared at the photo pinned to the mirror of me and Ellie at the pool. A year ago I never would have believed what was going to happen to us.

Her killer was still out there. And the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to know why Sylvia had lied.

• • •

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How we Fall

Chris had his graphic novels spread all over the living room floor, and I was pretending to read
Where the Red Fern Grows
in the armchair. I’d finished the book already, but re-reading the first half, when things were good, took some of the sting out of the ending.

“So, Jackie, Marcus says you want to study film,” Sylvia said.

She was a nice enough girl, and she had no idea she’d caused a problem between me and my cousin. But if she was lying about something, I needed to know the reason. “Yeah, I think so. What about you? Are you going to college?”

She shrugged. “Maybe. I’m not sure yet.” This time she wore platform heels splashed blue and white. The blue matched her halter-neck top exactly, which showed off her neck and the subtle hollows around her collarbone. Marcus put his arm around her shoulders and I tried to look like I didn’t notice, or even better, like I didn’t care.

“Would you go back to St. Joseph?” I asked.

“No,” she said casually. “I don’t think so.”

I set my book on the end table. “Do you know where you want to go?”

“Um, no. I don’t know.” She fidgeted with the throw pillow, then leaned over and whispered something to Marcus, and he nodded.

They stood up, and Marcus said they were going out for a walk. I went back to my book.

Sylvia had left an empty Coke bottle and a gum wrapper on the end table. The twins could choke on the wrapper, and leaving trash lying around was just rude. I grabbed them and tossed them in the trash can in my room.

Too annoyed to drown my sorrows in television, I opened my laptop. Travis was right. I hadn’t blogged enough lately.

I clicked “new post” and stared into the white void for a few minutes before giving up. Nothing I wrote would sound coher-194

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ent, so I went to my email instead.

One new message.

Ok, so no more talk about books. I get preachy about things I
like, I guess, and I’m sure it’s boring. I’m assuming you’re blowing
me off, since it’s been a while and you haven’t replied. It’s my fault,
of course- sorry for all that weird stuff about Heathcliff. I guess
talking about creeps makes me sound like a creep myself.
J

Hope you’re having a good weekend.

~T

I hadn’t been blowing him off at all. Had he missed one of my emails? It had only been a day since he emailed me.

Sorry, I’ve been super busy. Mom’s got this big library carnival
coming up soon and my cousins and I are all helping.

Yeah, my cousin and I did have a falling out, I guess. He’s dating some girl who just moved to town now, and therefore he has no
time for anyone else. But hey, that’s how it works, I suppose. Hope
you’re having a good weekend too.

Sick of sitting around the house, I slid on flip-flops and went outside. Sylvia’s little blue Buick sat in the driveway. After glancing around, I peered through the windows. Fast food trash littered the floor; water bottles, a jacket, and two pairs of heels were thrown on the backseat; headphones and sunglasses with a lens popped out lay on the back dash. Scattered bits of trash were in the front, and the cord to something that looked like a phone charger lay in the console. Nothing suspicious. I huffed.

I couldn’t go back inside like this. I walked around back of the house to make sure the animals had water. The chickens were scattered over the back half of the yard, pecking at the bugs hovering over the grass.

I leaned against the giant oak tree and watched the hens for a minute. The whirring song of the cicadas rose and fell around me in a numbing cadence.

The evening hadn’t cooled down much. The late summer heat 195

How we Fall

was back in full force, the air muggy again, hot and breathless. I pushed off the tree.

I filled the chickens’ waterer and lifted the lid off the tub of feed. The clatter of their feed on metal always brought them running, so I took out a scoop and poured the grain slowly into their feeder. When they were all inside, I counted the hens twice and latched the door. Coyotes were always looking for stray chickens.

I turned to head back to the house, but stopped. Around back, sitting against the hill our house was built into, were Marcus and Sylvia. He had his arm around her waist, and she was giggling. Her heels were tossed aside in the grass. That I shouldn’t be watching had barely occurred to me when he kissed her. He took his time, and it clearly wasn’t their first kiss.

Sylvia climbed onto his lap, one knee on either side of his legs.

His hand worked up her back, making those lazy circles. Even from this far away, I could feel them on my own skin. Something hot burned in my stomach.

Knowing she was a relatively nice girl—except for what she was doing to my ex—couldn’t keep me from wishing she’d burst into flames.

The calves saw me and mooed for their dinner. Marcus looked up just as I turned away. I heard scrambling, but I kept walking. Instead of going inside, I kept going down the road.

My eyes stung. My hands shook, so I stuffed them in the pockets of my jean shorts.

Marcus certainly didn’t miss me very much. I’d barely been able to go out with Will, and when I’d kissed him, I’d broken down crying.

I wasn’t going to beg him. If he wanted Sylvia to giggle and climb all over him like he was playground equipment, then she could do just that. Sure as hell I wasn’t going to dissolve into tears and plead for him to love me.

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Feet pounded up behind me. “Hey,” he said, his face red.