The Lingering Grace (4 page)

“I do?” Alice asked, buckling herself into the seat. He could read her better than she was comfortable with.

Tony pulled out of the driveway. “Yep. You walk differently when you’re happy. Bouncier.”

“Hmm,” Alice murmured, self-conscious now.

“So, what are you happy about? Did you get your essay done? What did you call it? ‘Everything No One Wanted to Know About Women’s Undergarments in Literature at the Turn of the Century’? ”

She snorted. “Exactly the title I was looking for.”

“So you finished it?”

The essay was done, but it was far from her finest work. She’d powered through all four pages in about an hour at one in the morning. The bibliography was three references short of the required seven, and the essay itself was a page under the minimum. And that was even after adjusting the margins as much as she dared. Her English teacher, Mr. Segal, had a sharp eye and didn’t take kindly to font and margin tweaking. Alice would be lucky if she scraped by with a C. But as much as she tried to care, the idea of failing English hardly made her squirm. Compared to the elation she had felt last night, this distress hardly registered.

“Yeah, it’s done,” she said.

“Bet that’s a relief. Did you have to spend all night on it?”

“I was up late.”

“But you’re happy with it?”

She hesitated; she was dying to blurt out everything. Instead, she simply said, “I’m happy.” The strain of containing the true source of her excitement was wearing on her. If she had thought that Tony would be even a little bit thrilled by the truth, she would have spilled it in a second.

Tony glanced at her, and though he looked a little confused, he nodded and said, “Great.” Tony wasn’t stupid. He knew there was something she wasn’t telling him.

They were stuck at a stoplight and Alice glanced at the clock. It would take them about ten minutes to get to school from here. Just ten more minutes with Tony.

“Thanks again for your help. You really saved me,” she said, reaching out to squeeze his hand. He always drove left-handed, leaving his right conveniently free. She was positive this was not by accident.

He relaxed and so did she. Seeing him smile at her was the only confirmation she needed that her plan was justified. She couldn’t risk losing him. She needed him—solid and kind and reassuring—holding her hand.

“Well, you know what they say,” he said.

“What do they say?”

“That’s what boyfriends are for.” He didn’t often refer to himself as her boyfriend, and every time he did, it gave her a little thrill.

“And what are girlfriends for?” she teased.

“Well, I don’t know …” he said. “I just keep you around because you’re pretty.”

She laughed and threw his hand into his lap.

“I will
not
be your arm candy, mister.”

“Now, now. You owe me one. The paper, remember? And why shouldn’t I get to show you off?” He grinned.

“Ok, fine. I’ll come over this afternoon and you can proudly display me to your mom.”

She said it expecting a laugh. She and Nora always got on well—Nora liked to joke that if Tony dumped Alice, she would disown him.

But for some reason, Tony looked away and said a little hesitantly, “Yeah, sure. Text me.”

Alice frowned but tried not to let on that she’d noticed anything. Tony could be sensitive sometimes, and if she tried to pressure him, he might get self-conscious and clam up completely. “Okay,” she said.

She wasn’t the only one in the car with something to hide this morning.

When they pulled up to the school, she pretended to be in a hurry to get to class. But as soon as Tony drove off, she stopped and watched until his car disappeared around the corner, wondering if she should be worried. Whatever had upset him probably had nothing to do with her … but that was hardly comforting.

Maybe at this very moment he was sitting in the car worrying about what she wasn’t telling him. The thought made her shake her head. Secrets and relationships never did mix well—Romeo and Juliet could testify to that. But sometimes the truth could be just as destructive.

English wasn’t her first class, which meant she could spend all of math and biology dreading it. Alice knew she was at least an average student, which meant she could slide by in most subjects without expending too much effort. But English was a different story. Mr. Segal was one of those teachers you half admired and half despised—a young, idealistic literature lover whom the public school system hadn’t yet beaten the spirit out of. He started every class by reading something “inspiring”—a famous poem, a few lines of a great novel. And he talked about words with a feverish enthusiasm that even the least interested students had a hard time tuning out.

The downside of all this was that he not only expected a lot from his students, he was genuinely disappointed when they didn’t perform up to his standards. One time nearly the whole class had blown off a reading assignment, and he’d lectured them almost tearfully about the need for passion in life—about how sad and loveless their existences would be if they refused to make an effort to find the beauty and art all around them.

It wasn’t that Alice particularly disliked Mr. Segal, but he did make her uncomfortable. In most of her classes, she could sit in the back of the room and hope to go unnoticed, but Mr. Segal intentionally called on the quieter students at random to “make sure everyone has a chance to participate.” Alice dreaded being called on; her stage fright always kicked in and there had been several long, painful moments during which she had stared at Mr. Segal blankly, feeling her cheeks go from pink to tomato red.

It wasn’t that Alice didn’t pay attention. She followed along with the discussions well enough. But when taken unawares, panic scared away all the half-decent thoughts she had.

As usual, she ran to the bathroom before English. It so happened that the English classroom was located near one of the less-used restrooms in the school—which meant that Alice had exactly two minutes to sit in privacy and steel herself for the coming ordeal. It was a plan that worked out most of the time.

Most of the time. But not today.

As she rushed into the bathroom, she nearly ran over Emily Walker—a tall, blond senior who reigned over varsity tennis. Alice tried to keep her eyes on the ground and pretend she hadn’t noticed the other girl, but Emily was already breaking into a wide smile.

“Alice!” she said, as though Alice was her favorite person in the world.

“Oh, hi, Emily,” Alice said, eyes darting longingly toward an empty stall. Emily was still grinning at her with that wide bleach-white smile. Resigning herself to the inevitable, Alice sighed and asked, “How are you doing?”

“Don’t worry about me—how are
you
doing?” Emily asked enthusiastically, grabbing Alice’s hand and giving it a friendly squeeze.

Emily was one of those rare people who nearly deserved her extreme popularity. She was pretty—not gorgeous—but it was her almost manic energy that made her attractive. You couldn’t miss her. And you couldn’t hate her. She was just too nice. Emily had a habit of adopting people she felt needed a little extra care and making them her personal pet projects. After nearly dying over the summer, Alice had become one of her favorite “pets.”

“Fine, fine … just going to the bathroom. And then to English.” Alice never felt more lackluster than when she was around Emily. It was as if just being around that kind of energy sucked out all of her own enthusiasm. She couldn’t match it, so she simply gave up.

“You seem down. You sure you’re ok? Are you feeling well?” Another hand squeeze.

“Yeah, I’m just—great.” She mustered a smile. Clearly fake to a discerning eye, but Emily wasn’t hard to fool.

“Good, good because I want you to come over sometime. We need to have a girls’ night—do nails, watch movies. I want to catch up with you!”

Emily had been hoping to have Alice over for several weeks now, and Alice knew she wouldn’t be able to make excuses forever. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to spend time with Emily; in fact, being one of Emily’s projects had some definite perks. People viewed her with more interest now—though part of that had to do with being in a coma for a week, she was sure. Unfortunately, it also meant that everyone treated her like she might break because if Emily was working on you, you were clearly damaged goods.

“Yeah, that would be fun,” Alice said halfheartedly. “Maybe next week?”

“Perfect! And I think I’ll invite Eva over too—have you met her yet? Today’s her first day. You’d probably have a lot in common.”

“Why do you say that?” Alice asked, wondering who this new girl was and what was so wrong with her for Emily to take an interest.

“Oh, well … ” Emily hesitated, studying Alice as though trying to decide whether Alice could handle this or not. “Her sister—you must have heard—her sister drowned.”

Immediately, Alice remembered the news article. It hadn’t occurred to her that the surviving girl might be high-school age. The reporter had made her sound like a middle schooler.

“You’re kidding! She’s here?” Alice said, immediately interested.

Emily looked relieved that the mention of drowning had not sent Alice spiraling into a nervous breakdown.

“She was in my last class.
Such
a sweetheart. You know, I never realized how important an issue pool safety was until the past few months. But with your … accident … and now Eva here, I’m thinking about starting an advocacy club. You know, to raise awareness.”

With anyone else, Alice would have nodded and laughed at this suggestion, sure nothing would come of it. Emily was a different story. President of about nine different clubs (Alice was sure she had founded at least four of them), Emily would probably find a faculty member to sponsor the group and email the principal her proposal by tomorrow morning. The last thing Alice wanted was to be dragged onto the morning announcements and forced to recount her “tragic drowning experience” to garner interest in some club.

Afraid to let Emily gather any steam (Emily was nearly impossible to stop once she had momentum), Alice was trying to think of the gentlest way to shut her down when the sweep music came on.

“Oh, no,” gasped Emily, who was never late to class. “I’m so sorry, but I’ve got to run. We’ll talk about girls’ night later. You’re in Segal’s class, right? It’s not far?”

“It’s close. It’s fine—you go!”

Emily didn’t need more convincing. She rushed out the door with a wave and a smile, then took off running down the hall—a frantic, long-haired blur. Alice left the bathroom too; she had needed to go, but she had no desire to get sent to sweep. She’d already been once this year when she had had to run back to her locker to grab an assignment and hadn’t made it back to class before they closed the door.

She slid into English class with thirty seconds to spare. Mr. Segal gave her a warm smile when she walked in. It struck her that he and Emily were not so different. They both had the best of intentions. They both treated her like a broken thing.

Alice tried to avoid his eyes as she walked to her usual seat (on the edge of the third row—not in the back with the kids who didn’t care, but not in the front with the straight-A students either). She knew that the paper she planned to turn in was subpar, even for her. Mr. Segal would probably write some heartfelt note on the back. Something like, “You’re a great student, Alice. I know you can do better than this. Please let me know if you need any help with assignments. I’m happy to help you if you’ll make time to talk to me. I’m sure with a little extra effort you’ll go very far.”

Alice did plan to go far. But the only thing she could think about putting effort into was a little book she had hidden in her desk drawer this morning.

She was just pulling the doomed paper out of her bag when
she
walked in—barely before the bell rang. Thanks to Emily, Alice didn’t need to be told who the girl was.

Eva was not particularly noteworthy. Her hair was an uninteresting shade of brown and her eyes were hazel and round. She was a quiet kind of pretty—the kind that grows on you over time, not the type that knocks you flat when she walks into a room. Her clothes were plain—a T-shirt and shorts—but neither old nor ugly. The only thing that really stuck out about her was the number of buttons she had on her backpack. They covered almost every inch of fabric. Some were tiny, others enormous. One had a picture of a squirrel with its eyes bugging out and
FAIL
written in huge red caps above it. Another said
OMG-nius
. Whenever Eva moved, the buttons rippled in a gleaming rainbow; Alice wanted to run her hand across them.

Remembering the details of her sister’s drowning made Alice uneasy. Alice herself had hit her head on a pool floor and spent a week in a coma; the doctors thought she was brain dead until the moment she woke up. That Eva’s sister had also spent a week unconscious before dying was at best an uncanny coincidence and at worst … Alice shuddered to think of the worst. What if there was another curse like the one she had encountered? At the very least, Alice wanted to make sure that the sister’s death was as un-supernatural as death could be. And to do that she needed to speak with Eva.