Snitch (21 page)

“You could have used that stuff the day we played paintball,” I said reaching up to pat his head.

“Don’t touch the hair!” Johnny ducked away from me and checked himself in the mirror. “Actually, it would have come in handy.
Especially if Seth would have grabbed me instead of Sizzle.
That boy was seriously covered in paint.” Johnny winked at me and went off to get his props.

Liz stopped smiling and making me up at the same time. She put her hands on her hips
.
“Seth was there?”

“Yeah.”

“And I suppose Charlie was, too.”

I nodded thinking that things had suddenly gone from good to bad.

“You hung around with Seth and Charlie?
After what they did to Kate?”
She threw down the pencil and glared at me. “Put on your own makeup.”

Watching from the other side of the room, Johnny mouthed, “What just happened?”

I could only shrug; it had all happened too fast.

Liz refused to talk to me the rest of rehearsal, so I had a bad night sleeping. I had no sleep, so I had a horrible day at school. Because the day was so bad, I was not looking forward to dragging it on any longer by
performing the play that night, but as Johnny reminded me several times in a very bad accent, “The play
mus
’ go on!”

Mom suggested I buy Liz some red roses
,
which I wasn’t even sure she would take.

Once the play got going, it was pretty fun. Johnny had told me the audience’s reactions made things really intense, and he wasn’t kidding. My hands and knees shook like crazy when the play began, but after a while I stopped shaking and just enjoyed listening to the laughter and applause. Of course, I
stayed
buried
behind everybody else at
the back of the s
tage.
I don’t
understand
how Johnny can be the star
and remember
all those lines.
I never could.

After the show
,
everyone gave us flowers and told us how brilliant we were. Mom and Dad and Sarah were there smiling and patting me on the back, talking to some of my teachers and other parents. Even my grandparents had driven in to see the show. Everybody in the cast was pretty pumped up because there were several parties to go to. It should have been a great night, but I missed most of it.

“I have to go out to eat with Gram and Gramps,” I told Johnny and Ben. “They drove about an hour to see me
,
and I feel like I should spend some time with them.
I’ll go out tomorrow night with you guys.
”

“Is Liz talking to you yet?” Johnny asked.

I shook my head
,
knowing the real reason I didn’t want to go
to any party
.

“Give her these
.
” I handed him the roses
.
“
I
f she’ll take them.”

“Should I be scared?” Johnny raised both eyebrows and lowered his voice. “I’ll talk to her. Hey, she’s still talking to me!” He smiled one of his great smiles and hit me on the shoulder. “
I’ll work my magic on her.
Women.
What a pain in the ass.”

I nodded in a
greement and turned to find
Gram and Gramps
waiting for me
. I left with them, grateful for an escape from Liz’s anger.

Saturday morning I woke up with a scratchy throat and a stomach that didn’t want much breakfast. By ten o’clock I had to admit I had probably shared some food or drin
k with someone I shouldn’t have,
but
I
took a long nap and
had Dad drop me off at school anyway. I was surprised to find Liz
waiting for me when I walked in for makeup.

“Thank you so much!” she squealed. “They’re beautiful. I’ve never had anything that beautiful before.”

It took me a moment.
The roses.
She liked Mom’s roses. I crumpled in the nearest chair eyeballing the room for Johnny. Whe
n I found him
five chairs over
getting his mustache glued on, he gave me a smile and
a thumbs
up.

“Johnny told me you didn’t know Seth and Charlie would be there,” Liz explained. “I’m sorry I reacted the way I did. I should have asked.” She leaned down and kissed the top of my head. “Are you okay? You seem
quiet…
and maybe a little hot.” Her green eyes narrowed a little in understanding. “You’re sick aren’t you?”

“Don’t tell M
s.
Miller. The show must go on and all that stuff.”

“Right.”
She dabbed my blush on. “You’re definitely hot. I bet you don’t make the party after the show. And if you have what I think you have, we won’t be going to the beach on Tuesday either.”

She was right. I didn’t make the party or the beach. I threw up right after the curtain call and called Dad to come get me. M
s.
Miller told me not to come back for the final performance
,
which made me feel the same way I did a few months ago when I had to sit a game out because of a twisted ankle. It wasn’t a good feeling, but it wasn’t as bad as later when I started throwing up for real.

I rode the big white bus for the next day-and-a-half.

On Tuesday when I was supposed to be basking in the sun watching Liz run around in a bikini, I spent the day rolling around my sweaty sheets trying to decide whether to throw up again or try to shower and get some of the stink off me. I dropped off to sleep before I could decide and woke to the clink of ice cubes. Mom stood next to my bed, a glass in one hand and my forehead in the other.

“Your fever’s not as bad. You need to drink this or you’ll get dehydrated. Just try.”

She set the glass down on my nightstand and brought the covers up over my chest
,
smiling sympathetically at me. “It’s time for more flu medicine. You’ll feel better soon.”

I wanted to tell her that I didn’t need covers because I had a fever and was pretty adept at making my own heat, and that feeling better and the taste of that flu medicine should never be used in the same sentence, but she was trying so hard
,
and I was so grateful that someone remembered I was wasting away in the back bedroom that probably stunk like my sweat and vomit, I couldn’t. Besides I fell asleep again and didn’t
wake up until the house was dark and quiet. There was a reason for that: it was three AM.

The good news was that I was hungry. The bad news was that even though I figured I could get out of bed and maneuver myself down the stairs, there was no way I had the energy to cook
anything
. I downed the
soda Mom had left on my bedside table
which was
now warm and diluted with melted ice cubes, amazed at how good it tasted.
The next time I opened my eyes
,
it was light out and I was definitely ready for a shower which turned out to be one of the best things I had done in days.

Mom took the opportunity to change my sheets and open my window. Right before she breezed out holding the wadded up mound of my nasty sheets, she sighed and pushed her hair back.

“Your sister’s got it,” she said turning on her heel.

I couldn’t help smiling. Sarah could never say I was selfish again; I had shared this with her.

Even though my throat was still raw, I called Liz that afternoon.

“Listen to you,” she said. “You sound like I felt a week ago. You know, I probably gave it to you.”

“It was worth it,” I croaked. My throat felt like I was dragging knives over it.

“When can you come out to play?”

I would have done it right then, but in trying to tell her that my vocal chords almost ripped in two. A squeak erupted from my throat and I swallowed hard. “Ouch.”

“Okay, don’t talk. Give yourself a day or two. I remember how it felt. I’ll do the talking.”

Then Liz launched into a monologue about the beach trip I had missed, how she had spent time with Kate and her new boyfriend who was a bit of a video game nerd but nice, how spring was sprouting, and things girls find fascinating. I lay back on the bed and listened to the music her voice made.

“Andy! Andy? Are you there?”

I had been drifting off, listening to her but not hearing. In my almost dream, we were on the beach and she was in a yellow bikini.

“I’m here. My throat is on fire, so I’m just listening.”

“You were pretty quiet. I just thought...anyway, I should let you go. Call me when you can talk. I mean, really talk,
not
just croak.”

Liz laughed the laugh that made my heart go crazy and all soft at the same time. “I guess I’m going to have to kiss you to turn you back into my prince.”

I swallowed, nestled on the bed, and closed my eyes.

“I love you,” I said before hitting the end call. Suddenly I was wide, wide awake and sitting up. Yep. I had said it.

Out loud.

Liz called me the next morning
,
which was good because I was able to actually speak. I ended the call with the same words I had used the night before. It was weird but good. Afterwards, I called Johnny, who never answered his phone, so I made the move from my bedroom to the couch where I watched old movies, a few minutes of nostalgic cartoons, and some very depressing local news.

“What’s going on in the world?” Dad asked
,
settling into his recliner with a soda and
his news
paper.

“Same
ol
’ same
ol
’.
Lots of people hate each other and are killing everyone, the economy isn’t good,
there’s
been a robbery at that gas station over by
the
mall
.
Hey,
some girl found a body in the middle of the road just outside of town, which is kind of interesting in a demented sort of way.”

“I read about that,” Dad said. “The police don’t know what happened except that the poor guy had been there half the night. Did he die?”

“They said he’s
alive but still critical
.”

Mom breezed through the room with another load of sheets fresh out of the dryer.
“Poor man.
They said he has organ damage as well as head injury. And he has three little girls and a wife
. H
e was
young—only
thirty-three.”

“He’s not dead yet, Mary. Andy says he’s in critical condition over at Mercy.”

I rolled my eyes. Sometimes my parents are so weird. I wouldn’t consider thirty-three
young
,
but by then Mom had
hurried off
to change Sarah’s bedding, and Dad had buried himself
deep
in the
news
paper so I kept it to myself. I turned off the news and spent the rest of the evening channel surfing until my body demanded more sleep.

The next morning, Liz
’s ring tone woke me.

“Andy, can I see you? I need to talk to you.”
H
er voice
was
filled with urgency.

“I’m here. I’m listening. What’s wrong?”

“In person.
I need to talk to you in person. Something’s going on and I need to talk it out. Can we meet in the park? About 11:00? Can we? I really need to talk.”

“I’ll be there.”

I showered and ate breakfast
,
which convinced Mom who was up to her ears in Sarah-puke, that I was well enough to take a bike ride. Even though I dreaded hearing Liz’s news, it felt good to get out of the house. I had spent most of my spring break in quarantine: six days. Except for the time I had spent watching cartoons on the couch, I had spent most of it in bed. What a huge waste of spring break.

“Andy,” Liz called from the park bench. “Over here.”

I jumped off my bike and almost threw it. Folding her up in my arms, I breathed in her strawberry smell, buried my face in her hair and brushed her lips with mine. She tasted like mints and…salt?

“You’re crying,” I said as a protective instinct I didn’t even know I possessed kicked in like a wild animal, angry and dangerous at the same time.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to see me cry. I just don’t know what to do. Well, I do what know what I
have
to do; I just don’t want to go there again. It’s not over.
The whole
Chrissy
-
Seth
-
Kate thing.
They proved it. They proved
Chrissy
set up the F
acebook
page. They traced it to her home computer.”