Outside (16 page)

Jacki and Holly whisper to each other in front of me.

Moving past them, I stand in front of Alaina. “Can we talk?”

She nods and I follow her into the living room.

Jacki and Holly don’t take the hint, hovering in the doorway while Alaina sets her books on the blue velvet couch and takes a seat beside them.

“Can you go away?” I say, waving Jacki and Holly off.

Jacki giggles and pulls Holly toward the stairs. I’m sure they’ll sit at the top of the steps and eavesdrop, but I don’t care.

I take a seat on the striped couch across from Alaina. “So…”

“I was going to text you,” she says, running her fingers over the spine of what looks like an American History book. “I just didn’t know what to say.”

“Hi is usually a good start.”

She winces. “Are you mad? You’re mad. I knew you’d be mad.”

I shake my head. “No, I’m not mad. I’m just…confused, I guess.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, her voice quiet. She stares at the book beside her and then glances up at me. “My mother saw us leaving the movie, and she saw us on the porch.”

My eyes narrow. “How?”

She shrugs, becoming interested in the book again.

Taking a deep breath, I stand and move to the blue couch, shifting the books to the far end and take their place beside her. “How?” I say, tilting my head to meet her eye.

“I think she followed me.”

I sit back. “That’s…disturbing.” Scary, actually. A bible-thumping psycho following us around all night? “So, she’s stalking you?”

Alaina’s eyebrows pull together. “I don’t know what that is.”

“Following you around, spying on you, showing up places she isn’t invited, all for the sake of intimidating you.”

She shrugs again. “I think it just happened the one time. The night we went to the movie only.” Her eyes drift away from mine, like she’s remembering something else.

I raise my eyebrows. “You sure?”

She sighs. “No. She might have been watching me this whole time. I don’t really know. I just… There was a car when we were in the parking lot after the movie. A white car. And then the same car was parked down the street here when you dropped me off.”

I’m on my feet and at the front window within seconds, pushing the blinds aside, scanning the street. There’s a white Altima a few houses down. “Is that the car?”

Alaina edges between me and the window, peering out at the street. “No,” she says. “The car I saw was kind of beat up. That one’s too new.”

Letting the blinds fall back over the window, I take a step back. “Take a picture next time you see it. Get its plates if you can.”

“Why?” she asks, turning to face me.

“Stalking is illegal, Alaina. If you can get a picture of the car and the plates, you can file a complaint.”

She lifts one shoulder. “It’s just my mother. She-”

I shake my head, cutting her off. “Don’t matter. It’s still illegal.” As an afterthought, I add, “You should talk to my dad. He knows all about this stuff.”

She lowers her eyes, staring at the patterned rug under our feet. After a moment, she nods and looks up. “So, you’re not mad?”

Smiling, I let out a short laugh. “Mad? No. Worried? Yeah.”

“Do you still want to go places together? Like we talked about before?” She twists her fingers in front of her and I realize she’s as nervous as I am about being rejected.

“Absolutely,” I say, reaching for her hand. “We can go somewhere right now, if you want.”

Her eyes light up and then her face falls. “I can’t. Ms. Jackson’s coming over in an hour to discuss Mother.”

I’m not sure who Ms. Jackson is but I nod anyway. “Okay. Later then. Tonight.”

She grins. “Okay.”

I get home just as Christine is pulling out of the driveway. Thank god. Dad’s in his office, on the phone as usual, bitching someone out about a misplaced file.

When I get up to my room, my bed is made and all the Dorito crumbs have been cleaned up. I make a mental note to leave Judy an extra twenty next time she comes. She’s technically only supposed to vacuum my room when she cleans. Making the bed and cleaning up the mess from my weeklong pity party is on me.

I have no idea where I want to take Alaina later. Especially knowing her mom followed us last time.

My phone goes off in my pocket and I pull it out, expecting it to be Drew or even Alaina. Instead, it’s a text from a number I don’t recognize.

Please talk to me.

Brittany. It’s has to be. She goes through these phases of annoying the shit out of me, thinking we’ll get back together. It usually lasts anywhere from a few days to a few weeks and then she drops off the face of the planet again for a few months.

I text back so there are no mixed signals:
Fuck. Off.

No matter how many times I block her number or change my own, she still finds a way to get to me.

Please, Adam. It’s important.

I half expect her to claim she’s pregnant and it’s mine, even though we haven’t been together in nearly two years, and even when we were, we never had sex. Brittany is
that
kind of crazy. Anything for attention, I guess.

My phone rings in my hand before I can reply or block her number. It’s her, of course.

Sighing, I answer. I shouldn’t, but I do. “What.”

“Oh my god, don’t hang up. Just hear me out, okay?”

I don’t say anything. She takes my silence as a green light.

“I love you,” she blurts. “I always have and I just never got a chance to be the girlfriend you deserve. I was screwed up, you know?”

Was
? She still
is
screwed up. But I keep my mouth shut and she continues.

“Seeing you the other night, I just… Can’t we just start over?”

I clench my jaw. “
This
is what’s so important? We’ve been over this. I’m not interested, Brittany.”

“But I’ve changed. I’m different than I was back then. I’m different than I was even last month.”

I smirk. “That’s a shame. I liked who you were last month.”

There’s confusion in her voice when she says, “But we didn’t talk last month.”

“I know.” And then I end the call, blocking her number immediately afterward. Hopefully she’ll be over this by the time school starts.

“Where are we going?” Alaina asks, buckling her seatbelt.

“It’s a surprise,” I say, backing out of the driveway. “How’d your visit with Ms. Jackson go?”

“Okay, I guess. I told Ms. Jackson about Mother following us.” She chews her lip.

Shifting into first, I start up the street.

“She told me I didn’t have to see Mother any more if I didn’t feel safe.”

I glance over at her. “What’d you tell her?”

Her fingers knot in her lap and she looks at me. “After the things she said at our last visit, and after talking with Beth, I told her I wouldn’t mind taking a break from visits.” She sighs and I focus on the road as she continues. “I feel awful about it, though. I can’t imagine how hurt Mother will be when Ms. Jackson tells her.”

“I’m sure she’ll be fine.” I check my speed as we drive past a city cop camped out on the side of the road.
Please don’t let that be Patterson.
I can’t deal with him twice in one month.

“It’s all so confusing,” she says after a while. “One second I’m living in Shiloh, obeying what I thought was a prophet of the Lord, or trying to, anyway. The next, I’m here and everything’s a lie and Mother… Well, Mother has always been concerned for my salvation, but out here it’s different.
She’s
different.” She sighs. “It’s hard.”

Maybe I shouldn’t have brought it up. “I didn’t mean to depress you.”

“You didn’t. I’m fine.” She relaxes in her seat. “So, where are we going?”

I smile. “I already told you. It’s a surprise.”

It takes nearly thirty minutes to get there, but when we arrive at Stone Mountain Park, Alaina’s eyes nearly fall out of her head.

“What is this place?” she asks, staring up at the mountain as I pull into a parking space.

“Stone Mountain. It’s like, the Mount Rushmore of the South.” I turn off the car.

“What’s Mount Rushmore?” she asks, unbuckling her seatbelt, her eyes still glued to the bare top of the mountain that’s visible beyond the entrance.

Duh, Adam.
Why would she know that? “I’ll show you later. Come on.”

We walk across the parking lot hand in hand. “You’re not scared of heights, are you?” I ask, eyeing the line for Skyride tickets. We could walk up, but it’s hot as hell and neither of us is really dressed for hiking mountain trails. Besides, by the time we got up there, the laser show would be starting and we’d probably miss most of it trying to get back down in the dark.

“Can we go to the top?” She squeezes my hand excitedly.

I smile. “That’s the idea.”

During the ride up, I try to remember all the stuff we learned in school about Stone Mountain so I can fill her in. I don’t know how much she knows about the Civil War, if anything, so I try to keep it simple. “The guys on the mountain were important back in the eighteen-hundreds when the country split up for a while.”

She nods. “I read about that in my history book. Who is that on the mountain? Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis?”

I raise my eyebrows in surprise. “Right. And the other guy is Stonewall Jackson,” I say. The only reason I remember his name is because I wished my name was Stonewall when I was a kid.

After riding to the top and back down in the cable car, we find a spot on the crowded lawn for the laser show.

“I hope you don’t mind sitting on the grass. I didn’t think to bring a towel or nothing,” I say, taking a seat between an Asian family and a couple of serious stoners.

“I don’t mind,” Alaina says, settling beside me. “So what’s a laser show?”

I smile. “You’ll see.”

When the music starts, she jumps, just like at the movie theater. Apparently they didn’t have a lot of music or loud noises in Shiloh. We watch the colored lights and lasers bring the side of the mountain to life to music. And when I think her eyes can’t get any wider, they start with the fireworks. She shrieks when the first one explodes above us and for a moment, I think she’s scared. But she’s grinning, her face turned up to the sky.

“This is amazing!” she shouts over the noise.

After the show, we stay on the grass while everyone else hurries toward the exit. I know from experience that it’s best to hang out for a while and let traffic thin out. Otherwise you’ll be bumper to bumper for a good hour.

“I think this is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen,” she says, falling back on the grass, staring up at the sky. There are too many lights around the edge of the lawn to be able to see any stars. “Who knew you could carve things into a mountain, or make pictures with lights, or blow up the sky!”

I ease back on my elbows, not wanting to freak her out by lying next to her. “I’m glad you liked it. I saw you toting that history book around earlier and thought you’d be interested in
seeing
some history.”

She turns her head to look at me. “I’ve been doing home study. Beth says I’m doing better and Ms. Jackson thinks I’ll be caught up enough to go to school with everyone else in a couple weeks.”

“What’ll you be? A junior like Holly?”

She shakes her head slightly. “No. Ms. Jackson said I’ll be in tenth grade. What grade will you be in?”

“Twelfth. Finally,” I breathe. “I can’t wait to graduate and get the hell out of here.”

Pulling a blade of grass, she twirls it between her fingers. “Where will you go?”

“College. It’s where a lot of people go after graduating.” My arms are getting tired of holding me up and I lay back.

Instead of freaking out at the closeness, Alaina turns her head and smiles at me. “But we’ll be at school together until then, right?”

“Yup. Every day,” I reach over and grab her hand, kissing the back of it.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

ALAINA

Shopping with Jacki, Serena, and Holly is easier than it was the first time, but it’s still overwhelming. Beth made me a list of things I’ll need for school, but half of it might as well be written in Hebrew.

“Holly?” I tap her shoulder while she flips through a rack of tops. “What is a flash drive?” I hold my list out to her when she turns around.

“Oh, it’s like a storage thing for computers so you can save your work. They don’t sell those here. Just find some clothes; we’ll get the other stuff later.”

Computers? For school? No one mentioned that.

I fold up my list and tuck it into the waistband of my skirt.

“So,” Jacki says, holding up a small pink shirt to my chest. “Tell us about your date with Adam.”