Sanctuary (3 page)

So really, my parents have no business letting me use the car. I mean, if I got into a wreck, no way was their insurance going to cover the damages.

But the thing was, I wasn’t going to get into a wreck. Because except for the lead foot thing, I’m a good driver. A
really
good driver.

Too bad I suck at pretty much everything else.

My mother’s car is a Rabbit. It doesn’t have nearly the power of my dad’s Volvo, but it’s got punch. Plus, with me being so short, it’s a little easier to maneuver. I backed out of the driveway—piece of cake, even in the dark—and pulled out onto empty Lumbley Lane. Across the street, all the lights in the Hoadley place—I mean, the Thompkins place—were blazing. I looked up, at the windows directly across the street from my bedroom dormers. Those, I knew, from having seen her in them, were Tasha Thompkins’s bedroom windows. The Thompkinses, who had grandparents visiting—I knew because they’d turned down my mom and dad’s invitation to Thanksgiving dinner on account of their already having their own guests—had eaten earlier than we had, if Nate had been sent out two hours ago for whipped cream. Tasha, I could see, was upstairs in her room already. I wondered what she was doing. I hoped not homework. But Tasha sort of seemed like the homework-after-Thanksgiving-dinner kind of girl.

Unlike me. I was the sneak-out-to-meet-her-boyfriend-after-Thanksgiving-dinner kind of girl.

And at that moment, I was more glad than I’d been in a long, long time to be me. I didn’t wonder, not even for a second, what it might be like to be Tasha, much less her brother Nate.

Except of course if I had—if I had bothered to think, even for a minute, about Nate Thompkins—he’d probably still be alive today.

C H A P T E R
3

“G
osh, Mrs. Wilkins,” I said. “That was the best pumpkin pie I ever had.”

Rob’s mom brightened. “You really think so, Jess?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, meaning it. “Better than my dad’s, even.”

“Well, I doubt that,” Mrs. Wilkins said with a laugh. She looked pretty in the soft light over the kitchen sink, with all her red hair piled up on top of her head. She had on a nice dress, too, a silk one in jade green. She didn’t look like a mom. She looked like she was somebody’s girlfriend. Which she was, in fact. She was this guy Gary-No-Really-Just-Call-Me-Gary’s girlfriend.

But she was also my boyfriend Rob’s mom.

“Isn’t your dad a gourmet cook?” Just-Call-Me-Gary asked, as he helped bring in the dishes from the Wilkinses’ dining room table.

“Well,” I said. “I don’t know about gourmet. But he’s a good cook. Still, his pumpkin pie can’t hold a candle to yours, Mrs. Wilkins.”

“Go on,” Mrs. Wilkins said, flushing with pleasure. “Me? Better than a gourmet cook? I don’t think so.”

“Sure is good enough for me,” Gary said, and he put his arms around her waist, and sort of danced her around the kitchen.

I noticed Rob, watching from the kitchen door, kind of grimace, then turn around and walk away. Maybe Rob had a right to be disgusted. He worked with Just-Call-Me-Gary at his uncle’s auto repair shop. It was through Rob that Mrs. Wilkins had met Just-Call-Me-Gary in the first place.

After watching Gary and Rob’s mom dance for a few seconds more—they actually looked pretty good together, since he was all lean and tall and good looking in a cowboy sort of way, and she was all pretty and plump in a dance hall girl kind of way—I followed Rob out into the living room, where he’d switched on the TV, and was watching football.

And Rob is not a huge sports fan. Like me, he prefers bikes.

Motorbikes, that is.

“Hey,” I said, flopping down onto the couch next to him. “Why so glum, chum?”

Which was a toolish thing to say, I know, but when confronted with six feet of hot, freshly showered male in softly faded denim, it is hard for a girl like me to think straight.

“Nothing.” Rob, normally fairly uncommunicative, at least where his deepest emotions were concerned—like, for instance, the ones he felt for me—aimed the remote and changed the channel.

“Is it Gary?” I asked. “I thought you liked him.”

“He’s all right,” Rob said.
Click. Click. Click
. He was going through channels like Claire Lippman, a champion tanner, went through bottles of sunscreen.

“Then what’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” Rob said. “I told you.”

“Oh.”

I couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed. It wasn’t like I’d expected him to propose to me or anything, but I had sort of thought, when he’d invited me to have Thanksgiving dinner with him and his mom, that Rob and I were making some headway, you know, in the relationship department. I thought maybe he was finally going to put aside this ridiculous prejudice he has against me, on account of my being sixteen and him being eighteen and on probation for some crime the nature of which he has yet to reveal to me.

Instead, the whole thing seemed to have been cooked up by his mom. Not just the dinner, but the invitation, as well.

“We just don’t see enough of you,” Mrs. Wilkins had said, when I’d come through the door bearing flowers. (Stop and Shop, but what she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. Besides, they were pretty nice, and had cost me ten whole dollars.) “Do we, Rob?”

Rob had only glared at me. “You could have called,” he said. “I’d have come and picked you up.”

“Why should you have gone to all that trouble?” I’d asked, airily. “My mom was fine with me taking the car.”

“Mastriani, I think you’re forgetting something.”

“What?”

“You don’t have a license.”

For a guy I’d met in detention, you would think Rob would be a lot more open-minded. But he is surprisingly old-fashioned on a large number of topics.

Such as, I was finding out, his mom and her dating habits.

“It’s just,” he said, when sounds of playful splashing started coming from the kitchen, “she has to work tomorrow, that’s all. I mean, the whole reason we stayed here instead of going to Evansville with my uncle is that she has to work tomorrow.”

“Oh,” I said. What else could I say?

“I just hope he isn’t planning on staying late,” Rob said.
Click. Click. Click
. “Mom’s got the breakfast shift.”

I knew all about Mrs. Wilkins and her breakfast shift. Before it burned down, Rob’s mom had worked at Mastriani’s. Since it got toasted, she’s been working instead at Joe’s, my mom and dad’s other restaurant.

“I’m sure he’s going to leave soon,” I said encouragingly, even though it wasn’t even ten o’clock. Rob was way overreacting. “Hey, why don’t we volunteer to do the dishes, so they can, you know, visit?”

Rob made a face, but since he is basically a guy who would do anything for his mom, on account of his dad having left them both a long time ago, he stood up.

But when we got into the kitchen, it was clear from the amount of suds being flung about that Just-Call-Me-Gary and Mrs. Wilkins were having a pretty good time doing the dishes themselves.

“Mom,” Rob said, trying, I could tell, not to get mad. “Isn’t that your good dress?”

“Oh.” Mrs. Wilkins looked down at herself. “Yes, it is. Where is my apron? Oh, I left it in my bedroom… .”

“I’ll get it,” I volunteered, because I am nosey and I wanted to see what Mrs. Wilkins’s bedroom looked like.

“Oh, aren’t you sweet?” Mrs. Wilkins said. And then she aimed the dish nozzle at Just-Call-Me-Gary and got him right in the chest with a stream of hot water.

Rob looked nauseated.

Mrs. Wilkins’s bedroom was on the second floor of the tiny little farmhouse she and Rob lived in. Her room was a lot like her, pink and cream and pretty. She had some baby pictures of Rob on the wall that I admired for a few seconds, after I’d found her apron on the bed. That, I thought to myself, is how my kid with Rob would look. If we ever had kids. Which would have to wait until I had a career, first. Oh, and for Rob to propose. Or take me out on a real date.

In one of the photos, Rob, who was still young enough to be in diapers, was being held by a man whom I didn’t recognize. He didn’t look like any of Rob’s uncles, who, like Rob’s mom, were all redheaded. In fact, this man looked more like Rob, with the same dark hair and smokey gray eyes.

This, I decided, had to be Rob’s dad. Rob never wanted to talk about his dad, I guess because he was still mad at him for walking out on Rob and his mom. Still, I could see why Rob’s mom would have gone for the guy. He was something of a hottie.

Back downstairs, I handed Mrs. Wilkins her apron. She was still giggling over something Just-Call-Me-Gary had said. Just-Call-Me-Gary looked pretty happy, too. In fact the only person who didn’t look very happy was Rob.

Mrs. Wilkins must have noticed, since she went, “Rob, why don’t you show Jessica the progress you’ve made on your bike?”

I perked up at this. Rob kept the bike he was currently working on, a totally choice but ancient Harley, in the barn. This was practically an invitation from Rob’s mom to go and make out with her son. I could not believe my good fortune.

But once we got into the barn, Rob didn’t look very inclined to make out. Not that he ever does. He is unfortunately very good at resisting his carnal urges. In fact, I would almost say that he doesn’t have any carnal urges, except that every once in a while, and all too rarely for my tastes, I am able to wear him down with my charm and cherry Chap Stick.

Or maybe he just gets so sick of me talking all the time that he kisses me in order to shut me up. Who knows?

In any case, he didn’t seem particularly inclined to take advantage of my vulnerable femininity there in the barn. Maybe I should have worn a skirt, or something.

“Is this just because I drove out here?” I asked, as I watched him tinker around with the bike.

Rob, looking up at the bike, which rested on a worktable in the middle of the barn, tightened something with a wrench. “What are you talking about?”

“This,” I said. “I mean, if I’d known you were going to be so crabby about it, I’d have called you to come pick me up, I swear.”

“No, you wouldn’t have,” Rob said, doing something with the wrench that made the muscles in his upper arms bunch up beneath the gray sweater he wore. Which was way more entertaining than watching sports on TV, let me tell you.

“What are you talking about? I just said—”

“You didn’t even tell your parents you were coming here, Mastriani,” Rob said. “So cut the crap.”

“What do you mean?” I tried to sound offended, even though of course he was telling the truth. “They know where I am.”

Rob put down the wrench, folded his arms across his chest, leaned his butt against the work-table, and said, “Then why, when you called to tell them you got here, did you say you were at somebody Joanne’s?”

Damn! I hadn’t realized he’d been in the room when I’d made that call.

“Look, Mastriani,” he said. “You know I’ve had my doubts from the start about this—you and me, I mean. And not just because I’ve graduated and you’re still in the eleventh grade—not to mention the whole jailbait factor. But let’s be real. You and I come from different worlds.”

“That,” I said, “is so not—”

“Well, different sides of the tracks, then.”

“Just because I’m a Townie,” I said, “and you’re a—”

He held up a single hand. “Look, Mastriani. Let’s face it. This isn’t going to work.”

I’ve been working really hard on my anger management issues lately. Except for that whole thing with the football players—and Karen Sue Hankey—I hadn’t beat up a single person or served a day of detention the whole semester. Mr. Goodhart, my guidance counselor, said he was really proud of my progress, and was thinking about canceling my mandatory weekly meetings with him.

But when Rob held up his hand like that, and said that this, meaning us, wasn’t going to work, it was about all I could do to keep from grabbing that hand and twisting Rob’s arm behind his back until he said uncle. All that kept me from doing it, really, was that I have found that boys don’t really like it when you do things like this to them, and I wanted Rob to like me. To more than like me.

So instead of twisting his arm behind his back, I put my hands on my hips, cocked my head, and went, “Does this have something to do with that Gary dude?”

Rob unfolded his arms and turned back to his bike. “No,” he said. “This is between you and me, Mastriani.”

“Because I noticed you don’t seem to like him very much.”

“You’re sixteen years old,” Rob said, to the bike. “
Sixteen
!”

“I mean, I guess I could understand why you don’t like him. It must be weird to see your mom with some guy other than your dad. But that doesn’t mean it’s okay to take it out on me.”

“Jess.” It always meant trouble when Rob called me by my first name. “You’ve got to see that this can’t go anywhere. I’m on probation, okay? I can’t get caught hanging out with some
kid
—”

The kid part stung, but I graciously chose to ignore it, observing that Rob, in the words of Great-aunt Rose’s hero, Oprah, was in some psychic pain.

“What I hear you saying,” I said, talking the way Mr. Goodhart had advised me to talk when I was in a situation that might turn adversarial, “is that you don’t want to see me anymore because you feel that our age and socioeconomic differences are too great—”

“Don’t even tell me that you don’t agree,” Rob interrupted, in a warning tone. “Otherwise, why haven’t you told your parents about me? Huh? Why am I this dark secret in your life? If you were so sure that we have something that could work, you’d have introduced me to them by now.”

“What I am saying to you in response,” I went on, as if he hadn’t spoken, “is that I believe you are pushing me away because your father pushed you away, and you can’t stand to be hurt that way again.”

Rob looked at me over his shoulder. His smokey gray eyes, in the light from the single bulb hanging from the wooden beam overhead, were shadowed.

“You’re nuts,” was all he said. But he really seemed to mean it sincerely.

“Rob,” I said, taking a step toward him. “I just want you to know, I am not like your dad. I will never leave you.”

“Because you’re a freaking psycho,” Rob said.