The Favor (22 page)

Gabe’s not paying attention. He’s on his bed, eyes closed, hands behind his head, headphones plugged into his stereo. He’s wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt because it’s finally getting chilly.

Janelle has a handful of beads left over from some craft project Nan packed away in the closet up here. Blue, red, green, yellow. Shaped like stars, with holes in the center to string them. Nan won’t miss them, and since they’re made of plastic, they won’t break the glass. They will, however, catch Gabe’s attention when Janelle starts tossing them, one by one, at his window.

She has to toss out ten beads before he looks up. Another two before he gets out of bed to peer out the window. And finally, after she throws the rest of her handful and the beads
plink-plink-plink
rapidly against the glass, he opens his window.

“Janelle?”

“Hey.” She leans out, shivering a little in the chill, and with excitement. “What’s up?”

Gabe hesitates before answering. She wonders if he’s thinking about all the times he’s jacked off over there, if he knows she’s seen him. “Nothing. What’s up with you?”

They were friends when they were little kids, but it’s not as if they kept in touch when she was away from Nan’s house. She’s been living here since August, and though they walk to the same bus stop, ride the same bus, even share some of the same classes, she wouldn’t say they’re friends now. Girls at school giggle about Gabe Tierney, and they don’t even know what he looks like naked...but she does.

“Bored.” Janelle leans a little farther, looking down. “What are you listening to?”

“The radio.”

“Oh.” That tin can telephone from so long ago had never worked that great, but she remembers stringing it between their houses. The distance had seemed a lot greater then; now it’s next to nothing. “Can I come over?”

Gabe twitches back from the window and actually looks around, as though someone might’ve overheard. “Now?”

“Sure.” She grins; he doesn’t grin back.

“My dad’s home.”

“So? Doesn’t your door have a lock?”

Gabe’s mouth opens. Shuts. He looks at her suspiciously. “Yeah. It has a lock.”

“So then he won’t even know, right?”

Gabe looks around again. “How would you even—”

Janelle swings her leg over the windowsill. The night air that seemed cold a few minutes ago is now deliciously cool against her suddenly heated face. The wood presses between her legs. She’s wearing an oversize T-shirt nightgown and a pair of cotton panties, and that’s it. She wiggles her toes, swinging her foot.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“I’m coming over.” Carefully but quickly, so she doesn’t have time to think about it, Janelle grabs the windowsill and stands. With one hand gripping the ledge and one foot on it, toes curled around the edge, she stretches her other leg out, out. Her foot easily finds Gabe’s windowsill. “Grab me!”

He does, his big hands gripping her around the calf and just below her elbow. Janelle pushes off with her other foot. For a few heady, giddy seconds she’s hovering in the space over the alley, before her momentum launches her the rest of the way onto Gabe’s windowsill with both feet. In seconds he pulls her down and through his window, but he yanks too hard and she ends up falling.

“Shit,” Gabe whispers at the thump. “Shit, shit.”

She’ll have a bruise tomorrow, but Janelle doesn’t care. “That was awesome!”

Gabe looks as if he’s sweating. He pulls her to her feet before backing off. He goes to his door and double-checks the lock before looking at her. “You’re crazy.”

She laughs and bends to peek out at her window. “Hey, you have a good view here. As good as mine.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

She wants to tease him, not make him angry or shame him into keeping his curtains closed from now on. “Nothing. Just saying.”

Gabe still looks nervous. At school he never says much. He stalks through the halls a head taller than most of the other guys in their grade, his shoulders broader. His clothes are never trendy. He favors torn jeans and T-shirts, mostly black, with band names on the front. Despite this, he’s not a rebel. He gets good grades. He’s not stupid and doesn’t play at it, either. He’s been in class his whole life with the kids in that school. They should all know him better than Janelle does, even though she’s known him since childhood, too. But something tells her he’s less a stranger to her than anyone else...or at least he could be, if he let her.

If there’s anyone in this town who
does
know her, aside from Nan, anyway, it would be Gabe. She’s not the little girl blowing bubbles or making a phone out of soup cans. She’s changed, and out of everyone, he’s the one she wants to know it.

“What did you think of the history test?” She doesn’t care, but needs something to talk about.

“It was okay.”

Janelle sits on Gabe’s bed. He stares at her. He pulls up a chair from his desk and turns it backward to sit on it.

From the hallway comes a muffled thumping. Footsteps. Gabe puts a finger to his lips.

“Your dad?” Janelle whispers.

Gabe nods.

“Will he come in?”

Gabe shakes his head.

This time, when Janelle smiles, he smiles back.

TWENTY-SEVEN

THIS TIME, JANELLE knew enough to go around to the back door. The front was for visitors and salesmen, not neighbors who’d known each other for something like thirty years. The front door wasn’t for friends, and if she was going to make this work she had to act as if that’s what they were.

Even so, she knocked hesitantly, softly, thinking that even though she saw lights on, saw Gabe’s truck parked out front, maybe nobody would be home to answer. Andy did, though, after a minute or so, just as she was starting to leave. Janelle turned back.

“Andy, hi!”

“Hi, Janelle.” He peered around her. “Where’s Bennett? Was I supposed to come help him study tonight? I didn’t think so.”

“He’s at home. And no, you weren’t. I came over to talk to Gabe.”

One brow lifted. “Huh?”

“I’m here.” Gabe looked around his brother to stare at her. He didn’t seem surprised. “Don’t be a turd, Andy, let her in.”

Andy muttered and stepped aside to let her pass. “Right. Sure. I’m not a turd,” he added under his breath.

Janelle tried to think if she’d ever been in the Tierneys’ kitchen before, and couldn’t. It was bigger than Nan’s, with room for a table. “Sorry, was I interrupting dinner?”

“No. We already ate,” Andy said. “I was just having a snack.”

Janelle eyed the litter of dishes on the table, the crumpled wrappers. “Some snack.”

Andy shrugged. “I got hungry.”

“Andy, man. Beat it,” Gabe said.

“He doesn’t have to go,” Janelle told him. “What I came to ask isn’t...private, or anything.”

Gabe smiled, just a little. “I didn’t think it was.”

Same old Gabe...though, not exactly. Time seemed to have given him a better sense of humor than she remembered. Or maybe she was imagining it.

“I really, really need you to come over and do some work for me.”

Gabe’s brows lifted and he pointed at himself. “Me? What?”

“Yes. You.” She pointed, too.

Gabe’s smile had faded. He gave her a narrow-eyed look. “I already told you about the dishwasher....”

“I’ve got some carpentry, some plumbing, some electrical. I know you can do all those things.” She ticked them off on her fingertips.

Gabe glanced at his brother, who was busy digging into what looked like a plate of nachos. “Yeah. I can. But why should I?”

“You know, your job? Your business, what you do for a living? You fix things, right? I can pay you.” Her chin lifted. She didn’t mention anything about favors this time. That had been a cheap shot.

“You could pay someone else,” Gabe said.

She’d thought of that, and it was true. Yet here she was, like a beggar with her hand out. And why? “My uncle Joey’s the executor of the estate or something like that, and he won’t approve any major repairs without a lot of legwork on my part. Any legitimate service or person wants a deposit, wants to charge an arm and a leg, and they can’t give me any reasonable estimate of when they’ll be finished.”

Gabe frowned. “What do you mean, he won’t approve them?”

“I have a budget,” she told him. “It’s embarrassing. It’s ridiculous. They want me to get the house in order, so they say, for when Nan...when it comes time to sell the house, it’ll be ready to go on the market. That’s what they told me, anyway, when they asked me to come and stay with her, until...”

“She dies,” Andy interjected.

“Jesus, Andrew. Way to be sensitive.” Gabe reached over casually to knock the back of his brother’s head.

From the living room came a shout. “Watch your language!”

Janelle burst into giggles. It was so much like it had been back then, when they were young. Gabe didn’t laugh, but he did lean against the kitchen counter with his arms crossed.

“So you think I’ll just fix a bunch of stuff for you on the down-low? For cheap?”

“I think,” Janelle said honestly, “that you’d do a good job and let me pay you how I can, and if you say you’ll do it, I can count on you to finish.”

Gabe’s expression didn’t change. His gaze didn’t flicker. His lips didn’t twitch. “What do you need done?”

Janelle pulled her list from her pocket. It had gone soft from being folded and refolded over and over again. “I listed everything I think needs to be fixed or changed, but I prioritized. Major repairs at the top.”

“What’s his problem? Your uncle?”

“I don’t know.” She wished she had a better answer than that. “He doesn’t want to face his mother dying? He wants to pretend it’s not inevitable? I wish I could tell you. All I know is, I’m tired of running out of hot water and washing dishes by hand.”

On impulse, she crossed the kitchen toward him. She reached, but didn’t quite touch him. “Gabe. Please? I know I could hire someone else, but...I want you.”

From his place at the table, Andy let out a snort. Gabe and Janelle both looked at him. He held up the empty plate of nachos.

“Maybe you can get him to buy a dishwasher for this place, while you’re at it,” Andy said. “I’m tired of washing dishes by hand, too.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

“I DON’T UNDERSTAND.” It was all Janelle could think of to say. The school had called, told her to come get Bennett because once again he’d been in a fight. The same boys, Bennett the victim, yet Mrs. Adams’s frown of disapproval had said he was also somehow to blame. “What is going on with you?”

“Nothing.” Bennett looked out the truck’s window.

Janelle had pulled into the parking lot of a fast-food place, not wanting to wait until they got home to talk about this. At the house he could escape into his room. Lock her out. She supposed he could get out of the truck now and run down the road away from her, if he wanted, but so far he seemed willing to stay put.

“Bennett, I had to have Andy come over and sit with Nan so I could pick you up today. I can’t be doing that all the time. We’re just lucky he wasn’t at work. So I need you to look at me, and I need you to tell me what’s going on with those boys.”

He shook his head, arms crossed tight over his chest. His lower lip trembled. He still wouldn’t look at her.

“Mrs. Adams seems to think you’re friends with those boys.”

“They’re not my friends. I don’t have any friends here,” he muttered.

Bennett had always made friends so easily, Janelle couldn’t believe that he’d had trouble here. “If they’re not your friends, are they bullying you?”

He hesitated, then shook his head. Janelle tried to keep herself calm, but it wasn’t working. She wanted to shake him. What had happened to her get-along kid, her smiley-faced boy? When had he become this grim-mouthed gremlin? This changeling?

“So why were they pushing you down in the hall?”

His shoulders rose and fell as he heaved a sigh. Bennett leaned closer to the truck door, pressing his forehead to the glass. “They were mad at me.”

One piece at a time, that was how she’d solve this puzzle. “Why?”

“Because they said I owed them...something.”

“What? What do you owe them?” Janelle cried, frustrated and afraid. “Why would they push you down in the hall or give you a swirly?”

Bennett reached to his feet to pull up his backpack. He dug inside it, still without looking at her, and drew out a plastic Baggie. He handed it to her without a word.

“Oh, my God.” Janelle stared at the Baggie, the plastic slick and cool in her fingers. She thought she might drop it, but her hand closed convulsively around it.

Harsh smoke filters into her lungs and she coughs. Gabe laughs and take the joint from her, holding it over her head so she has to jump to get it. They’re both high, and she loves being high with him because sometimes—not all the time, but sometimes—it makes him giddy and silly, and he laughs like he never does when he’s sober.

Basically, Janelle just loves being high.

She hadn’t smoked a joint or had more than a couple drinks in years. She’d talked often with Bennett about the dangers of drugs. She never told him about her past habits.

“Why do you have this? Where did it come from?”

“I brought it from California,” Bennett said in a low, shaking voice. “I got it a long time ago, from Ryan’s house. I had it with my stuff.”

Ryan. It figured. Dull and aching fury filled her, drying her mouth so speech was nearly impossible until she forced herself to swallow hard, several times. “Did you smoke any of this?”

He looked at her then, eyes wide, mouth turned down. “No, Mom.”

“Bennett, don’t you lie to me. Did you smoke any of this pot?” She tucked the plastic Baggie with its load of four or five joints against her thigh, out of sight in case anyone happened to look into the truck.

“No! I didn’t. But those boys at school, they wanted it. They offered to pay me a lot of money for it, so I said I would.”

“How did they even know you had it?” Visions of child protective services being called rose up. Of being arrested. Worse, of Bennett being arrested, tossed out of school.