Poison Ink (11 page)

But at sixteen, Sammi had already learned that life wasn’t fair. It was selfish to think only of herself when her mom was obviously hurting, too.

“Pizza’s fine. Are you hungry now? I could order it.”

“Thanks, sweetie. Mushroom and pepper sound good?”

“It’s pizza. Pretty much any pizza makes me happy. What about Dad, though? Should I get half pepperoni, do you think?”

Her mother winced. Then she smiled as though catching herself doing something foolish. “He won’t be home for dinner.” She sighed, shaking her head with a soft laugh of disbelief. “We’ll have to see if he makes it home for breakfast.”

Sammi’s stomach lurched. “What’s that mean? Did you guys have a fight?”

With great deliberateness, her mother focused on her, as though for the first time, her gaze kind but forlorn.

“He’s thinking about leaving, your father. He’s trying to decide if he wants to leave, and I’m trying to decide how long to wait before I take the choice away from him.”

Sammi’s mouth hung open in a little “o” of surprise. There had been many days when the tension in the house made her hide away in her room, but she had never let herself believe it could come to this. Her parents could be cold to each other, navigating around the house to avoid having to speak, but that wasn’t all the time. She’d heard them fight about money, but mostly the conflicts revolved around the amount of time her father spent at the office, the nights he came home late.

But this? Had he been cheating on her, or had they just gotten sick of each other? Sammi stared at her mother, eyes narrowed, trying to make sense of this new information, something that would not have seemed possible to her only minutes before.

“You guys…you fight all the time, but you make up. He’ll come home.”

Her mother grimaced, swallowing hard, and lifted a hand to cover her mouth. Her eyes glistened wetly, but she did not cry.

“Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know which would be worse.”

“I do,” Sammi said quickly. She wanted to stomp her foot and cry, to try to force her mother to realize that only one outcome made any sense at all. They had to stay together. They were her parents, and they belonged here in the house with her. The way it should be. Her father might not be the most attentive dad in the world, but she couldn’t imagine never having Sunday morning pancakes with him again.

“I’m sorry, Sammi. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“No. You should. I’m sixteen, Mom, not some kid. I just…it’s so hard for me to imagine.”

“Well, don’t try imagining it right now. Let’s think about happier things and not worry about what we can’t control. Your father and I aren’t going to do anything crazy, not without talking things over. I’m sure of that much. You go and order the pizza. Is your homework done?”

“Not yet.”

“Why don’t you take care of that, and after dinner we’ll watch a movie. Something funny.”

Sammi nodded, wondering if there existed a movie in the world funny enough to lighten her heart tonight. The shadows of the day’s events hung over her, made her feel a little queasy. It seemed surreal, not having her friends to call right now, not having them to talk her through what was going on with her parents. But they weren’t her friends anymore. And so much for talking to her mother about the tattoos and the way the girls had turned their backs on her. Linda Holland had enough troubles of her own.

Sammi gnawed her lower lip, holding back all the things she wanted to say. Her guitar waited upstairs. All her confusion could be put into the music, exorcised like a demon.

But first she would keep her mother company for a little while. Sammi went into the kitchen to get the phone. She called the Aegean, the local pizza place they liked the best, and then went back into the living room.

Homework could wait. She sat down next to her mother on the couch and they leaned into one another, huddling together the way they always had when Sammi had been very little. Mom handed her the remote control and she started surfing channels, not paying much attention, just looking for something to make them smile.

7

W
hen Sammi stepped off the bus Tuesday morning, it felt like the first day at a new school. The gloomy weather of the past few days had at last abated, and the blue sky stretched forever in all directions. September always seemed a tug-of-war between summer and fall. Autumn would win in time, but on that morning summer had the advantage. Sammi wore cotton pants that zipped at the hip and a loose, short-sleeved burgundy shirt over a white tank, and she felt much too warm.

She’d been lucky in her life. Her family had always lived in Covington. Maybe that would change if they split up—
God, how can I even be thinking like that?
—but other than kindergarten, she’d never had to start a school without at least having some kids around that she knew. Still, she understood what that experience must be like, everybody studying the new kid out of the corner of his eye, checking her out, watching to see if she had two heads or a weird accent, waiting for her to define herself for them.

Today felt like that.

She crossed the quad in front of the school through a sea of familiar faces, but most of them glanced away quickly. No one spoke to her. Several people whose groups she’d floated in and out of over the years smiled or nodded to her, but no one came over to talk. Had she done that to herself? Alienated them? Or were they just keeping clear so they wouldn’t be infected by the humiliation she’d suffered in the caf the day before?

Sammi threw her backpack over one shoulder and held her head high. The notes of her song “Summer Girl” were playing in her head, and she sang a few lines softly to herself and hummed a little as she made her way into the school. The corridors rang with voices and slamming lockers, and she found odd comfort in the familiarity. The rest of the world might be falling down around her—her parents’ marriage, her friendships—but at least she could rely on the routine of high school.

She didn’t look for the girls, but she watched out for them warily. It would take time for her to adjust to the way they’d defriended her, but the more she thought about it, the more confident Sammi felt that she’d been wronged. Should she have been honest with them right up front? Yeah. But trying not to hurt anyone’s feelings shouldn’t be grounds for just cutting someone off.

Whoever they were, they obviously weren’t the girls she’d thought they were. It hurt. God, it hurt. But she’d survive this. And she cruised the corridors that morning cautiously anticipating the moment of first contact. Sammi needed that, needed to know she had the strength to ignore them. She had no doubt that they wouldn’t be speaking to her—their bumping her from their IM friends lists had made that clear. But she had no interest in trying to talk to them, either.

She’d miss what they had all shared, but she had always been a floater. She would adjust.

“Morning, Sammi,” a voice said.

She turned around to find Kyrie McIntosh falling into step beside her. “What’s happening?”

Sammi smiled. “Nada. Getting back into the rhythm, y’know?”

The dark-haired sophomore had a retro-goth look that suited her. Short and petite, Kyrie seemed much younger than her age until you looked into her eyes and saw the intelligence and wisdom there. She was part of the theater crowd.

“I know. Nice not being a freshman anymore. Feels like I can exhale.”

“What show are you guys doing this fall?” Sammi asked.

Kyrie rolled her eyes. “It’s a big debate. I’m fighting for
Sweeney Todd,
but the dweebs want to do
High School Musical.
”

Sammi shuddered in sympathy. “Good luck.”

“Thanks. And if I win the debate, you better audition.”

Kyrie was always telling her to audition. Sammi’s response never wavered. She always just said, “We’ll see.”

But not today. “I might just do that.”

They reached a T-junction and split up. Kyrie waved and said goodbye and Sammi made a beeline for her locker. She half-expected to find rude graffiti scratched on the door or painted in lipstick. The way the girls had been behaving, it wouldn’t have surprised her. But it didn’t appear that anyone had disturbed her locker. In some ways that was worse. They’d forgotten about her, just like that.

Maybe that’s best.

She slid her backpack to the floor between her feet and spun through her combination, then popped open her locker. As she dug out her books, Sammi glanced up and saw Ken Nguyen coming down the corridor with a couple of the other guys on the basketball team.

“Hey, Ken.”

He glanced her way and smiled, then broke off from the other players to join her at her locker.

“Sammi, what’s goin’ on? I haven’t seen you once since school started.”

The towering senior’s laid-back manner set her at ease. She slid her backpack into her locker. “Since June, really. I don’t think we’ve seen each other since school got out in the spring.”

Ken nodded. “Yeah. True. You look great, by the way. Being a junior agrees with you.”

Sammi arched an eyebrow. “Was that some kind of line?”

He laughed. “Maybe a little. Doesn’t make it untrue.”

“Dude, you are so going to have to work harder than that. I don’t just mean with me, but in general. You could do with lessons.”

“Are you suggesting I’m not smooth?”

“Chunky peanut butter. Extra chunky. Especially from a guy I’ve known since, what, fourth grade?”

Ken hung his head in mock shame. “I’m deeply wounded.”

Sammi laughed and shut her locker, holding her books in the crook of one arm. “Somehow I think you’ll survive. When’s your first game?”

“This Friday. You gonna come cheer us on?”

“I was never much of a cheerleader. The uniforms are creepy fetish objects for drooling, unshaven pervs desperately in need of a bath.”

Ken shrugged. “All guys love girls in cheerleader uniforms.”

She shook her head. “Still, creepy.”

“I just figured you’d come, with Simone on the girls’ team and all.”

Sammi blinked. “She made the team?”

“Didn’t you know?”

Innocent enough, the question still erased the smile from her face. Sammi glanced away a moment and then gave him an apologetic look.

“We’re sort of not talking at the moment.”

Scratching the back of his head, searching for something to say, Ken settled for the obvious. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It happens. I’m glad she made it, though.”

Relieved to be back on comfortable terrain—basketball—he nodded. “Yeah. She surprised everyone. Sure, she’s tall. A lot of people think that automatically means you can play hoops. But that’s just stupid. Tall people are just as clumsy as anyone else. But Simone’s way more athletic than I ever would’ve thought. I mean, she edits the school paper.”

Sammi arched an eyebrow. “So nerds can’t play sports.”

“Not usually, no.” Ken smiled as if to say that might sound prejudiced, but it was also true. “Plus, she’s…”

“You can say it. She’s gorgeous.”

“Hey, you said it. But it’s no lie. She’s, like, the last person I’d expect to be able to play that well.”

“And now she’s your perfect woman.”

He paled a little. “I didn’t say that.”

Sammi gave an apologetic shrug. “Sorry, Kenny. I can’t talk you up to her. Like I said, we’re kinda not talking at the moment. But go for it. Maybe you guys can play some one on one.”

“Now you’re talking.”

She held up a hand. “Enough. And, I’m just saying, gross.”

The morning bell rang and they walked together until Sammi had to split off from him and go into her homeroom. Ken called out to someone and ran to catch up, and then Sammi stepped into the room, steeling herself to see T.Q. Her smile vanished and she put on a mask of stillness and calm.

But T.Q. wasn’t in the room, and by the time the bell rang for the students to make their way to their first classes of the day, she still had not shown up.

Only when Sammi walked into her fourth-period English class and saw that Letty and Katsuko were not in their usual seats at the back of the room—were, in fact, not there at all—did she realize that none of them had shown up for school. All day she had been on edge, anticipating that first encounter, but it wasn’t coming.

When the bell rang signaling the end of fourth period, she flooded out into the corridor with the rest of the class. Her locker was on the other side of the school, and the growling of her stomach helped her decide not to bother switching her books around for trig until after lunch.

On the west wing stairs, she looked out the window and saw them. All four of them were there, talking and laughing. They’d come to school after all, just hadn’t bothered to come inside. Sammi froze on the stairs, the flow of students moving around her, some of them muttering in annoyance. She ignored them.

Caryn leaned against a tree, smoking a cigarette. Letty leaned her head back and pursed her lips sexily, then blew out a cloud of smoke before tossing her cigarette to the dirt and grinding it under her heel. She tossed her head toward the school. The bell had rung, and it looked as if they were finally coming inside. Maybe they were hungry.