The Kindness of Strangers (46 page)

“What?” Her voice was tight and furious, which threw him. “Why? What’s wrong with me?”

“Oh, no, Kenzie, that’s not—”

She stood up and yanked on her T-shirt, which covered that red fluff.

Nate stood, too, feeling stupid, naked and in the state he was in. A sliding-down-the-drain sensation pulled at him. He would never, in a million years, have guessed she’d be
mad.
He was the one who had been pushing. He hadn’t even been sure she wanted to until he saw the nest and candles. “Nothing’s wrong with you,” he said, now scrambling to recover the disaster this was becoming, “I just—”

“We planned this for
weeks
. I was getting ready all day. Do you know how much these candles cost me? I . . . I . . .” she started to cry.

“Mackenzie.” Nate felt like a shit.

“You . . . you said—” she started, but her voice pinched itself off.

Nate stepped toward her, but she turned away from him and snatched up her panties from the floor. He watched her wriggle into them, her back to him. They’d been naked. And now she was getting dressed. This was surreal, this was . . .

She picked up her shorts and put them on.

“I want to,” he said. That was true. Every single second of his existence felt like it led to this very moment. “It’s all I think about, but . . . I . . .” He should just tell her the truth. “I keep thinking about Jordan.” His face rushed with heat.
Loser. Total loser.

She blinked, hands frozen on the snap of her shorts. “What?”

“I’m sorry, I just keep thinking about . . . those disks . . . and I don’t want to do this, to . . . be with you, with those thoughts in my head.”

She frowned at him.

The phone rang. They waited, but whoever it was hung up. They stared at each other a moment, but before they could speak, it rang again. Mackenzie glared in the direction of the phone. No message again, but a heavy slam when the machine kicked on. “What? Did you tell the guys you were coming over here? They figured you oughta be done by now or something? Gee, how generous of them to give you . . . what? Five minutes?”

“Mackenzie—”

“Fine. Go back to the party. If you’d rather get drunk than be with me, feel free. Just don’t bother to—”

“Shut up. I didn’t tell anyone I was coming over here. I just . . . I’m serious—I keep thinking about Jordan.”

She sighed, that you-are-
so
-immature look on her face, like that day at school when Nate had pushed Tony and ended up giving that girl a bloody nose.

“I know,” Nate said. “I know that’s weird. But you never saw those sick pictures. It was twisted. I just don’t . . . I . . .”

Her face softened a little.

“I’m sorry. I don’t want to hurt your feelings. I didn’t mean to. But I don’t think I can. . . . I don’t want the first time to be . . . I dunno. Don’t you want it to be . . . right?”

She didn’t look as mad, but she still didn’t speak.

Nate picked up his underwear and jeans and put them back on. Putting on pants had to be one of the most awkward, humiliating movements in the world. Mackenzie didn’t watch him dress. She knelt and began blowing out candles.

Nate had apologized a hundred times. Damn. It had gone past the point of her feelings’ being hurt. She was just being a bitch. He wasn’t going to keep saying he was sorry for
not
sleeping with her, for fuck’s sake. Mom had warned him things would change if they did it; she hadn’t said how they’d change if they didn’t.

But then Mackenzie’d really got him when he told her he’d still spend the night. He’d told Mom he was staying at Mowaza’s, for the end-of-the-school-year party. “I want to wake up with you,” he’d said. Nate reached for her hand. She let him hold it, but it was still and lifeless in his own. He realized she didn’t
want
him to stay, that she was going to say no. He felt like he was falling.

“Unless . . .” he said, wanting to put it out there himself. “Unless you don’t want me to.”

She nodded, not looking at him.

“Oh. Okay.” He hated how hurt he sounded. He didn’t want her to know. He cleared his throat. “I’ll go.” He kissed her, to show her he was fine, he was cool. At least she kissed him back.

“You’re different now,” she said, in a voice he couldn’t read. “Since Jordan came to live with you.”

A whir rushed through him—blades on ice, speeding in to defend. He pictured himself blocking the kid as he had on those hospital stairs back when they’d been discovered.

“Maybe I am.” His voice came out too challenging. He liked to think the change was for the better but didn’t say this aloud.

He stood and put on his shirt. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” he said, as casually as he could.

She nodded.

Her phone rang again as Nate picked up his shoes, slipped out her door, and started walking. A block away he sat on a curb and put on the shoes.
Damn. Shit. Fuck.
He’d blown it. Totally blown it.

Should he go home? Or go back to the party? Mom thought he was at Mowaza’s. Nate couldn’t believe that Mom had agreed to let him go. It was the first party she’d let him go to since juvenile court. She trusted him again.

Nate snorted. He didn’t know
why
she trusted him again. Look at him.

He stood up and started walking the blocks home in the quiet, deserted neighborhood.

He wondered how things could change so fast. How everything could be just fine and then tilt, as if some giant hand had shaken the game board, sending him sliding. Like barely getting used to the idea that his dad was sick before Ali woke him up in the ER waiting area to tell him Dad was dead. Like realizing there were people in the world who got off on doing the things they’d done to Jordan.

Talk about Jordan changing things. In a way Nate had just screwed things up with Mackenzie because of Jordan. Fine. Fuck Mackenzie, he thought, no pun intended. She didn’t know. She hadn’t seen Jordan’s dead eyes, the blood that ran down his skinny leg.

Nate turned the corner onto his street and froze, his heart in the back of his throat. All the lights in his house were still on. It was after midnight. That giant game board tilted again. What was wrong now? He sprinted down the street and burst in the back door. “What’s going on?” he asked.

Danny sat at a kitchen island. His eyes widened, and he glanced at Mom, who rinsed lettuce in the sink. She was rinsing lettuce at midnight? Warning bells went off in Nate’s brain.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Where’s Jordan?”

Nobody said anything. Mom kept rinsing the lettuce.

“Is Jordan okay?” Nate asked. Why was everyone being so freaky?

“Jordan’s fine,” Danny said. “Klezmer’s gone.”

“Klezmer?” Confusion drowned out the warning bells.

Danny nodded, glancing at Mom, who still hadn’t turned around. “He wasn’t in his hutch when I went to feed him tonight. We looked everywhere.” Then Danny shook his head and mouthed to Nate, “You are in big trouble.”

Without turning from the sink, Mom said, “Danny, you need to get to bed. We’ll look for Klezmer in the morning.”

“Okay,” Danny said. He shot Nate a look of sympathy before he left the room. Shit. What was going on?

“Did Danny not latch his hutch?” Nate asked, picturing lost Klezmer running into one of the neighborhood dogs. He wondered if the latch had been damaged in some way when Danny took apart the lid to retrieve the hidden disk. Nate could get a flashlight and go look.

“I don’t want to talk to you about the damn rabbit.” Mom’s voice was weary, even if her movements in the sink were furious and precise.

Nate was becoming way too familiar with this down-the-drain sensation. It pulled all his energy into a pool around his feet. Shit. She knew. He slumped on a stool at the island, suddenly too exhausted to stand.

Mom turned from the sink and dried her hands on a dish towel. “You lied to me.”

He sighed, then nodded.

She looked surprised. She leaned against the sink, hands on her hips. “Why?”

He wanted to tell the truth. “I don’t know.”

She laughed bitterly. “Well, that’s a good reason. How do you think it made me feel?”

He didn’t know how she felt, but he felt like shit. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah? Well, I’m sorry, too. Nate, I need to be able to trust you. You’re not making it easy.”

He sat in silence. She was right. What could he say? He was an asshole and an idiot. She stared at him, her eyes bloodshot and tired. She looked so old. He knew it was infuriating her that he didn’t say anything. “What were you thinking?” she asked him. “No, you don’t need to answer that. I
know
what you were thinking. I know where you were, even if no one answered the phone. I thought about coming over, I was so mad at you.” She shook her head, and Nate hated the disappointment in her eyes, behind the anger. “I wanted to storm over there and bust down the damn door, but then I thought, I don’t need this. I don’t want to further humiliate myself by walking into some sordid little encounter, this trashy little rendezvous you apparently set up—”

“Mom.” The words “sordid” and “trashy” hit him like slaps. “It wasn’t like that. We didn’t—”

“Nate, don’t. Why should I believe anything you tell me?”

He paused, then shook his head.

“Can’t think of a reason? Neither can I.”

She leaned against the sink, arms crossed, staring at him.

Jordan appeared in the doorway but took one look at their faces and backed out of the room.

“I did that for you,” Mom whispered, gesturing toward where Jordan had stood. “I was so proud of you, Nate.” Her voice began to waver. “God, if only I could make you feel what I did when Tony came to our door.”

The carpet was yanked from under Nate’s feet. “
What?
Why did Tony come here?”

“To find you. Apparently you told everyone you were coming home to baby-sit?”

Nate buried his head in his heads. “I . . . I didn’t want to make anyone lie for me.”

“How noble of you,” Mom sneered. “He said he left something here. And
that
makes me mad: You know I don’t want him here. When did you have him over without me—”

“Whoa. Wait. He hasn’t been here since before . . . you know, the police thing.”

God, that sounded lame. But it was true. What the hell was Tony talking about?

“He wanted to go down to the basement to get something. I wouldn’t let him. Do you know what he’s talking about?”

“No.”

She stood there, looking beat up and defeated.

“Mom, everything you say is right.” His voice came hoarse and whispery through his tightening throat. “I made a big mistake. I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say.”

She wiped her eyes on the back of one hand. “I don’t know either. I don’t know yet what I’m going to do with you. It makes me tired.” She turned to face the sink and stood with both hands gripping the edge, looking down at the lettuce. “So . . . go upstairs or something. Give me some time to sort through this and decide. I’m too upset to talk to you.”

Nate stood up, only too happy to get out of this kitchen, but he ran into Jordan, who sat at the top of the stairs, his face pale. He’d obviously been listening to their conversation. “What’s she gonna do?” he whispered.

Nate shrugged. “Don’t worry about it, Jordan. It’s my problem.”

“What’ll she do?” he asked again. He looked almost scared.

Nate paused on the top step. “Hey, it’s okay. Whatever she decides, I’ll deserve it. I’m gonna lay low, for a while, okay?” He went into the room he shared with Danny and closed the door, glad Danny was downstairs and he could have some privacy for a few minutes.

He stood in the dark.
Way to go,
Tony,
he thought.
Thanks a fucking lot.
But Nate knew it was his own fault. He lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling, barely visible in the streetlight through his window. What did Tony want? It seemed like a hundred years ago since Tony had been in this house. Nate had been baby-sitting while Mom worked some party. He and Tony shared a joint behind the garage, then went to the basement to sneak some of Mom’s vodka. They’d sat right on top of the bale of straw for Klezmer’s hutch. Tony had wanted to leave the weed there, at Nate’s, instead of having it on him when he went to the basketball game, but Nate knew for a fact that he hadn’t. No way in hell would he let Tony do that. He remembered Tony dumping his whole backpack out, shuffling papers and magazines and Pop-Tarts wrappers.

Some baby-sitter Nate was.

The look in Mom’s eyes almost killed him. “I was so proud of you,” she’d said.
Was.
Past tense. He put a pillow over his head.

And Klezmer. His eyes burned, picturing the rabbit, so small, lost and loose in the dark. Somehow that felt like his fault, too.

A tap on the door startled him. Oh, man. He didn’t have the energy to take any more shit from Mom right now. “Yeah?”