Sanctuary (7 page)

“Oh, it’s not Earl,” Mrs. Wilkins said. “It’s my little brother Randy. He and his fiancee are tying the knot on Christmas Eve. Have you ever heard of anything so romantic?”

Christmas Eve? A Christmas Eve wedding at which Rob would be wearing a tuxedo, and he hadn’t said a word to me about it? I’d have gone with him, if he’d asked me. I’d have gone with him gladly. I’d have worn the green velvet sheath dress my mom had made me for last year’s Lion’s Club dinner in honor of Mike winning that scholarship. If my mom wasn’t around, wearing the one she’d made herself that matched mine, it actually looked good on me.

But no. No, Rob hadn’t even bothered to mention he’d been invited to this affair. Nothing. Not a word.

Suddenly I felt like blurting out what I had learned in my dreams last night about Rob’s dad, right in front of everyone, just to get back at him for having purposefully left me out of this very important family event that I was now dying to go to more than I had ever wanted to go to anything before in my life.

“How nice,” I said, with what I hoped was a frosty smile in Rob’s direction. He was studiously avoiding my gaze. Or maybe he was just trying to avoid making eye contact with Ruth, who was pointedly returning the favor. Either way, he was a dead man.

“Oh, but, Jess!” Mrs. Wilkins’s hand shot out, and she grasped my fingers, the smile wiped from her face. “Rob told me what happened to you two on your way back home last night. I’m so sorry! It must have been awful. I feel so terrible for the boy’s parents… .”

“Yes,” I said, my smile growing less frosty. “It was pretty bad.”

“If there’s anything I can do,” Mrs. Wilkins said. “I mean, I can’t imagine how I could help, but if you think those poor people could use some home cooking, or something, let me know. I do make a decent casserole… .”

“Sure thing, Mrs. Wilkins,” I said. “I’ll let you know. And thanks again for dinner last night.”

“Oh, honey, it was nothing,” Mrs. Wilkins said, squeezing my fingers one last time before letting them go. “I’m just so glad you could share it with us.”

All that would have been bad enough. But a second later, the whole thing got about ten times worse. Just when I thought I was about to escape virtually unscathed—except for the whole not-having-been-asked-to-Rob’s-uncle’s-wedding thing—I heard a sound that caused the blood in my veins to curdle.

Which was Great-aunt Rose, calling my name.

“See, I told you it was Jessica,” Great-aunt Rose said, hauling my mother up to us. Rose’s blue eyes, which appeared rheumy, but which actually took in everything around them with uncanny clarity, crackled as she looked from Rob to me and then back again. “Who is your little friend, Jessica? Aren’t you going to introduce us?”

The idea of Great-aunt Rose, a tiny shrimp of a woman, calling Rob “little” would have made me laugh at any other time. As it was, however, I merely longed for the floor of the mall to open up and swallow me as quickly and as painlessly as possible.

My mother, looking tired and distracted—and who wouldn’t, having spent the day with Great-aunt Rose—put down the many bags she was holding and said, “Oh, Mary. It’s you. How are you?” My mom knew Mrs. Wilkins from the restaurant, of course.

“Hi, Mrs. Mastriani,” Mrs. Wilkins said with her sunny smile. “How are you today?”

“Fair,” my mom said, “to middling.” She looked at me and Ruth. “Hello, girls. Any luck with the sales?”

“I got a cashmere sweater at Benneton,” Ruth said, holding up a bag like a triumphant hunter, “for only fifteen dollars.”

“It’s chartreuse,” I reminded her, before she could get too cocky.

“I’m sure it’s very flattering,” my mother said, just to be polite, because anyone who saw Ruth’s blonde hair and sallow complexion would know chartreuse would not be flattering on her at all.

“And
you
are?” Great-aunt Rose asked Rob, pointedly.

Rob, God love him, carefully wiped off his hand on his jeans before extending it toward my aunt and going, in his deep voice, “Rob Wilkins, ma’am. Very nice to meet you.”

Great-aunt Rose merely lifted her nose at the sight of Rob’s hand. “And what are your intentions toward my niece?” she demanded.

Mrs. Wilkins looked startled. My mother looked confused. Ruth looked delighted. I am sure I looked like I had just swallowed a cactus. Only Rob remained calm, as he replied, in the same polite tone, “I have no intentions toward her at all, ma’am.”

Which is exactly the problem.

I saw my mother’s eyes narrow as she looked at Rob. I knew what she was going to say a second before it was out of her mouth.

“Wait a minute,” she said. “I know you from somewhere, don’t I?”

The sad part was, she did. But I wasn’t about to let her stick around to figure out where. Because where she knew Rob from was the police station, the last time I’d been hauled in there for questioning … a connection I did not want my mother making just then.

“I’m sure you’ve just seen him around, Mom,” I said, taking her by the arm and propelling her toward Santa’s Workshop. “Hey, look, Santa’s back! Don’t you want to take my picture sitting on his lap?”

My mom looked down at me with mild amusement. “Not exactly,” she said. “Considering you’re no longer five years old.”

Ruth, for once in her life, did something helpful, and came up on my mom’s other side, saying, “Aw, come on, Mrs. M. It would be so funny. My parents would crack up if they saw a picture of me and Jess on Santa’s lap. And to get her back, I’ll make Jess come to temple and sit on Hanukkah Harry’s lap next week. Come on.”

My mom looked helplessly at Mrs. Wilkins, who fortunately didn’t seem aware that anything unusual—such as the fact that her son’s supposed girlfriend was doing everything in her power to keep her mother from actually meeting him—was going on.

“Oh, go on,” Mrs. Wilkins said, laughingly, to my mom. “It’ll be a hoot.”

My mom, shaking her head, let us steer her into the line to see Santa. It was only when I came back to say good-bye to Mrs. Wilkins—I was ignoring Rob—and to get the bags my mom had set down that I overheard Great-aunt Rose hiss at Rob, “Watch yourself, young man. I’ve seen your type before, and I’m warning you: Don’t you even think about laying a finger on my niece. Not if you know what’s good for you.”

I glared at Great-aunt Rose. Just what I needed, for her to give Rob yet another excuse why he couldn’t go out with me.

Rob seemed hardly to have heard her, however. Instead, he only looked at me, those smokey gray eyes unreadable… .

Almost. I was pretty sure I read something in the set of his square jaw. And that something said,
Thanks for nothing
.

It was only then that I realized I’d had a perfect chance finally to introduce him to my mother, and that, in my panic, I’d blown it.

But hey, who’d had the perfect chance to ask me to be his escort at his uncle Randy’s Christmas Eve wedding, and blown that?

When I returned to the line to see Santa, with my mom’s bags and Great-aunt Rose in tow, it was only to hear Ruth whisper in a low voice, “
You owe me
.” It took me a minute to realize what Ruth meant. I heard snickering. Looking past the cottony field of fake snow that surrounded us, I saw Karen Sue Hankey and some of her cronies pointing at us and laughing their heads off.

I really don’t think my mom should have gotten so mad over the gesture I made at them, despite the fact that there were small children around. They probably didn’t even know what it meant. Great-aunt Rose sure didn’t.

“No, Jessica,” she informed me acidly, a second later. “The peace sign is with two fingers, not one. Don’t they teach you children anything in school these days?”

C H A P T E R
7

T
here were more cars than ever outside the Hoadley—I mean Thompkins—house when we got home from the mall later that afternoon.

I was surprised the Thompkinses were acquainted with that many people. For being so new in town, they were pretty popular.

“Look,” Ruth said, as I got out of her car. “Coach Albright’s there.”

Sure enough, I recognized the coach’s Dodge Plymouth. It was hard not to, as he’d had the car custom painted in the Ernie Pyle High School colors of purple and white.

“God,” Ruth said, sympathetically, as I climbed out of her car. “Poor Tasha. Can you imagine having that blowhard in your living room the day after your brother got murdered? That has to be one of those circles of hell Dante was going on about.” We are doing Dante’s
Inferno
in English. Well, everyone else is. I am mainly playing Tetris on my Gameboy in the back row with the sound off.

“Come over later with that picture,” I said. “I mean, if the kid from your synagogue is still missing when you get home.”

“He will be,” Ruth said, bleakly. “This appears to be a day destined for human tragedy. I mean, look at my new sweater.”

I slammed the car door shut and started across my yard, into the house. The snow that the Weather Channel had been talking about still hadn’t appeared, but there was a thick layer of grayish-white clouds overhead. Not a hint of blue showed anywhere. And the wind was pretty nippy. My face, the only part of me exposed to the elements, practically froze during my twenty-foot walk from the driveway to our front door.

“Hey,” I yelled, as I came in. “I’m home.” It was safe to yell this, as Ruth and I had beaten my mom and Great-aunt Rose home from the mall. So the only people who might have heard me were people I didn’t actually mind speaking to.

Only nobody answered my yell. The house appeared to be empty.

I walked over to the hall table to look at the mail. Christmas catalog, Christmas catalog, Christmas catalog. It was amazing how those Christmas catalogs piled up, starting before Halloween, even. Ours all went straight into the recycle bin.

A bill. Another bill. A letter from Harvard, addressed to my parents, no doubt begging them to reconsider letting Mikey drop out. Like they’d had any choice in the matter. Mike had purchased a one-way ticket home the minute he’d heard his lady fair had been hospitalized on account of almost being murdered, and then had refused to go back once Claire turned the full force of her baby blues on him. (It’s way cooler, Claire told me, to have a boyfriend in college than one who is still in high school. I guess even if that boyfriend is a Class A-certified geek.)

There was nothing in the mail for me. There is never anything in the mail for me. All of my mail—such as it is—gets sent to me secretly from my friend Rosemary at 1-800-WHERE-R-YOU via Ruth, who then smuggles it over. But Rosemary was in Rhode Island visiting her mother for Thanksgiving, so I wasn’t expecting anything from her this week. The missing kids were just going to have to wait until next week to get found.

Except for Seth Blumenthal, if he really was missing.

Sighing, I pulled off my hat and gloves, stuffed them in my coat pockets, and went to hang up my coat by the door to the garage. A perusal of the fridge revealed that no one had been by recently with any interesting offerings in the form of food solace. I nibbled on some leftover persimmon pie, but my heart wasn’t in it. You would think I’d have been standing there thinking about what was going on across the street. I mean about Nate, and all. A sixteen-year-old kid, killed before he’d ever even gotten his driver’s license, and for what? Wearing the wrong gang’s colors?

But of course I wasn’t thinking about Nate at all. I was thinking about Rob, and how hurt he’d looked when I hadn’t introduced him to my mom. Well, how hurt did he think I felt when I found out about that wedding he hadn’t invited me to? He couldn’t have it both ways. He couldn’t insist that we can’t go out because of our age difference, then be hurt when I didn’t introduce him to my mom.

The two of us definitely had some problems in our relationship that needed working out. Maybe we needed to go on
Oprah
, and talk to that bald doctor dude she’s always having on.

“Doctor, my girlfriend is ashamed of me,” I could almost hear Rob saying. “She won’t introduce me to her parents.”

“Well, my boyfriend doesn’t trust me,” I would retort. “He won’t tell me what he got arrested for. Or invite me to his uncle Randy’s wedding.”

Yeah. The two of us on
Oprah
. That was so going to happen.

It wasn’t until I got upstairs that I heard the voices. I have to admit that my brother Douglas, even when he isn’t having one of his episodes, has a tendency to talk to himself.

But this time, someone was talking back. I was sure of it. The door to his room was closed, as always, but I pressed my ear up to it, and there was no doubt about it: There were two voices coming from Douglas’s room.

And one of them belonged to a
girl
.

I assumed it was Claire. Maybe she was consulting with Douglas over what to get Mike for a Christmas present. Or had gone to him for advice because their relationship had run into trouble… .

But why would she go to Douglas with something like that? Why not me? I was clearly the logical choice. I mean, I may be a freak and all, with my psychic powers, but I am way less of a freak than Douglas, much as I love him.

I couldn’t help it. I knew I shouldn’t, but I did it anyway. I thumped, once on the door, then threw it open.

“Hey, good lookin’,” I started to say. “What’s cookin’?”

Only it wasn’t Claire in Douglas’s room. It wasn’t Claire at all.

It was Tasha Thompkins.

My jaw sagged so loose at the sight of her, sitting all primly on the end of Douglas’s bed, in her black turtleneck and gray wool jumper, I swear I felt my chin hit the floor.

“Oh,” she said, when she saw me, her tear-filled brown eyes soft as her voice. “Hi, Jess.”

“Wh …” I said. I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Never in a million years would I have expected to open Douglas’s bedroom door and find a girl in his room. Much less one to whom he wasn’t related by blood, or who was dating his younger brother. “Wh … wh … wh …”

“Close the barn door,” Douglas said mildly to me, from where he sat in front of his desktop computer. “You’re letting the flies in.”

I snapped my mouth shut. But I couldn’t think of anything to say. I just stared at Tasha, looking neat and pretty and strangely not out of place in Douglas’s book- and comic book-filled bedroom.