The Sweet Dead Life (10 page)

W
hat Happened at BJ's BBQ and After (and I swear this is all true):

"Order whatever you want," my brother told me as he directed me to a tiny table for two. "You're hungry, right? You need to eat with that Cipro. I'll bring you a water. You can have a Coke later if you want. But no ice cream if you have cobbler. You can't take that stuff with dairy products."

I smirked. "You a doctor now?"

"Amber reviewed your meds with me." I noticed that the two zits that had sat in the middle of his chin for, well,
ever
, were gone. "Is there something on my face?" Casey asked when I stared for a couple beats too long.

"No."

"Then stop staring. I need to work."

"Who is she?" I demanded. "Seriously, Casey. Enough." I wanted a sandwich, but mostly I wanted the truth, especially if he was now taking medical advice from this stranger who'd inserted herself in our lives. "What's going on with

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you two? Aren't you pissed that she was nosing around about Mom and Dr.

Renfroe? That's not her business. She's like a stalker or something. Doesn't that bother you? Are you in some kind of trouble?"

His face got that weird look again.

Suddenly, I found myself spilling my suspicions. Maybe because for the first time in a month I actually felt decent enough to form coherent thoughts for longer than five minutes, until I had to puke or pee green again. "She's got to be a narc," I said. "Do you owe Dave money, maybe? Is that what she has on you?"

Casey snorted a laugh. "Amber's not a cop. Believe me."

How could he sound so sure?

"Then what? You know something, Casey. So why aren't you telling me?"

"You're just hungry," my brother said calmly. "You've been sick so long you probably forgot how cranky you get when you don't eat. Chopped beef sound okay to you? And fries, right? Jorge's cooking tonight. But remember--"

"Yeah, yeah. No dairy. Got it."

It was official. Casey's overall niceness was weirding me out even more than Amber's stalking. If he was feeling so damn nice, I could use that to my advantage. I would eat and do my homework and eventually wrangle the truth out of him if it killed me. Well, maybe not that.

I MANAGED HALF of the chopped beef without any reversals--impressive since my stomach was still grumbly--and was attempting Jorge's perfectly crisp French fries when I noticed Casey talking to Lanie Phelps over by the drink station. Yes,
that
Lanie Phelps. Blonde-haired, tall cheerleader Lanie Phelps who until yesterday wouldn't have 81 given my brother a cold, much less her undivided attention.

She looked--What exactly? Sad? Embarrassed? She was shaking her head, over and over. Casey was nodding. Then he laid that soothing hand on her shoulder. She stared up at him, eyes wide.

If I hadn't known Lanie better, I might have guessed she was apologizing.

But that would be impossible. This was the girl who seemed to prize, above all else, the ability to perform and look good while doing so on
America's
Next Sensation
or whatever celebrity-judged talent show was most popular.

She was incapable of apologizing. At least she had been back when she'd informed my brother that she did not date loser potheads. I almost wished Amber Velasco could lend me one of her little secret narc hidden microphones (seriously, what
was
in that utility belt?) so I could overhear the conversation.

Then came the truly flummoxing part: Casey leaned over and whispered in Lanie's ear. And she giggled.

I must have gasped, because Casey turned to me.

He pursed his lips. Then he whispered something else in Lanie's ear. She giggled again, this time covering her mouth. Her hand dropped and she flashed another apologetic smile. Casey jerked his head towards the bathrooms and proceeded in that general direction. Lanie followed.

My French fry dropped onto my half-completed algebra worksheet.

I counted.
One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi ...

At twenty, I decided they weren't coming back.

At forty Mississippi I was positive.

All doubt had been removed. The universe had turned against me. What I would give for a freaking cell phone. I

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needed Mags.
She
could explain these mysteries to me. This
had
to be a sign.

Bryce plodded by. His short-sleeved white shirt gapped a little where it was buttoned over the biggest part of his belly. There were sweat stains in his armpits. I was glad I'd put down the fries.

"Hey Jenna," he said. "How ya feeling?"

"With my fingers," I told him.

He laughed. Bryce found extraordinarily stupid comments highly amusing. It was one of the few things I liked about him. "Where's Casey?" he asked.

Yes, Bryce ran a tight ship here at BJ's. I figured maybe he knew something I didn't. Maybe Lanie was applying for a job. Maybe my brother was showing her how to scrub the toilets. It was possible. Anything was possible. Perhaps this is what the universe was trying to tell me.

Bryce scanned the dining room. "Hmmm," he said. He shambled toward the kitchen. A few seconds later, he headed toward the bathrooms, disappearing down the narrow hallway. I retrieved my French fry, popped it into my mouth, chewed and waited. Another possibility: this was a new and extraordinarily clever method for my brother to ignore my questions about Amber.

All of a sudden Bryce's shouting rang out through BJs:
"Do you still want to
work here?"

An instant later, Casey and Lanie reappeared. Her face was bright red and she was fiddling with her shirt like it needed readjusting, but Casey's hair was un-mussed. So if he wasn't showing her how to scrub toilets, they must not have done too much. But his 'Hi My Name is Dick' nametag sat askew on his chest. Lanie made a beeline for the door and vanished into the night.

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"Bye," Casey called after her.

My eyes narrowed. My fists clenched at my sides. There was sparkly peach lip gloss smeared on his left cheek. His grin was wide and happy. Not stoned happy. More like the real thing. So, unless I'd completely lost my mind (wasn't ruling that out) the Ex that "broke my heart forever" (Casey's uninspired phrasing during a cheesy stoned rant) had planted a sloppy smooch on his face. In the BJ's bathroom.

Okay. Deep breaths. Calm down.
Think
. This could explain things: the way he suddenly seemed to care about his appearance, his sudden good mood.

Maybe Lanie had called him after he'd nearly died in our car wreck. Maybe she had finally realized what a jerk she'd been. Casey could have kept all this from me, after all. Why not? Maybe he was embarrassed because he knew how much I hated her.

In a way, though, this could be perfect. If he and Lanie were getting back together, it would focus Casey on something besides Amber.

On the other hand--
Really
? Lanie and Casey, reconciled? Last I heard, she'd dumped the star running back at Spring Creek because he was "too short, in the ambition department." Casey had shared this little rumor with me, also when stoned. (Then again, "stoned" could account for most of the last year.) I glanced at the remains of my chopped beef and fries. By now, almost every table was filled with people and platters of sliced beef and ribs and potato salad. There was a line at the door. The tables around me were all Casey's. I saw my chance and leaped from my seat.
Finally
.

While Casey was taking orders, I could corner him. I'd gnaw on his ankles if I had to, but I was not letting him back to the kitchen without telling me something true about Amber and whatever he knew that I didn't. If he ran, I'd chase him.

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Besides, no way would Bryce let him leave in the middle of another shift.

Now here is the weird part, which in itself sounds weird. But this was even weirder than poisoned boots and missing fathers, stalker EMTs and gambling grandmas who suddenly loan you their cars, and heinous ex-girlfriends who reappear to possibly hook up with my brother in the bathroom. This was, well--I didn't know
what
it was--which I guess was the point.

I advanced on Casey. We made eye contact. He got that (by now) familiar but strange calm look on his face. Flipped open his order pad. Whipped a pencil from behind his ear. Turned his attention to the family of six crowded around a four top. Launched into his spiel about how BJ's uses mesquite chips in their pit ...

And that's when it happened.

I was passing by three guys sharing two pitchers of beer and eating ribs.

They'd been through a prodigious number of slabs already; bones were piled high on the platter; some littered the table like a barbeque graveyard.

One pitcher was empty. The other was full. The chubbiest guy--with a receding hairline that did not bode well for his follicle future--reached for the full pitcher of beer. And I swear on all that is holy that his hand never got to it.

I swear that it tipped all on its own. Slid to the end of the table and poured to the floor in a mighty splash as I was speed-walking by.

I slipped. Maybe in the time before persons unknown had tried to do away with me by putting snake venom in my footwear, I might have been agile enough to hop around it. I'd been on the track team after all. I used to be a limber girl. Even Lanie knew that because way back when, she'd been 85

harping on me to try out for cheer. I was thin and wiry, she'd said. Just right for the top of the pyramid.

But I hadn't been that Jenna in a while. My arms windmilled. My feet scrabbled in the puddle of beer. I was going down--

And then my brother was at my side.

He caught me by the waist the second before I crashed to the floor. I had been positive that he wasn't even looking my way. Just as positive as I'd been that the pitcher of beer had tipped on its own. Maybe the antivenin wasn't working as fast as I'd assumed, after all.

"You need to be careful," Casey said.

In a daze, I sloshed through the beer back to my table. Casey held my chair, waiting until I flopped into it. "Done with that?" he asked. He removed my dinner basket and scooted off to finish taking the order he'd begun.

AT THE END of Casey's shift, we hauled ourselves into the Merc and drove to Mario's Grille. By then I had recovered my wits enough to work up a new head of steam.

"I know you're holding back on me," I insisted. "You always tell me stuff, Casey. Does Amber have a secret or something? Did she make you take a blood oath or threaten you?" Narcs went corrupt all the time. Especially narcs who were actually dealers. Or worked two jobs, like as an EMT. Or just weird chicks. Yes, I was making it up as I went along, but it sounded way more reasonable than what I'd actually experienced at BJ's.

He laughed, but his jaw flickered. "You're being ridiculous, Jenna."

"I'm being ridiculous? This from the guy who lets a stranger take blood from our mother. Amber pops up

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everywhere! That's not normal." I was still half-convinced that she'd been in his room last night.

"She's just--she's not a stranger, Jenna." His cheeks flushed.

"Not a stranger. That's the best you can do?" I grunted and stared ahead at the dark road. Hell, maybe he
did
like her. Maybe that was all this was about.

My brother had the hots for Amber Velasco, EMT/narc/stalker. He was just too shy and backward to tell her, so he settled for making out (or close enough) with Queen Bitch Lanie Phelps instead. Of course, that didn't explain why Lanie Phelps wanted to make out with
him
, but maybe when your ex almost dies it kicks up weird hormones. "Who is she?" I asked for what felt like the millionth time. "Who?"

"You sound like an owl," my brother said. "Let it alone."

I pouted for the rest of the ride. Casey pretended to focus on driving: sensible, seeing as we'd nearly been killed in a car not that long ago. But I caught him glancing at me now and then out of the corner of his eye. At a stoplight, he rested his hand on my shoulder. That peaceful feeling seeped through me again.

Before it could take hold, I shrugged him away. "We promised each other," I snapped. "Remember?"

He didn't answer. I knew
he
knew that I was moving into territory that we never talked about, because talking about it made our family issues real, something that we tried to avoid at all costs.

"Remember, Casey?" I pressed in spite of myself, in spite of wanting that hand on my shoulder. "When you told me that Dad wasn't coming back. You said that Mom could never bring herself to tell us what we deserved to know.

You said no secrets after that. Not between you and me. You said 87

we had to count on each other, remember? So what? That was just a lie?"

My brother's hands tightened noticeably on the steering wheel. "Not a lie,"

he said quietly. "Jenna, I--I can't ..."

But by then we were at Mario's. He never did finish the sentence.

AMBER STOOD BEHIND the bar, drying off some beer glasses.

"What's been going on?" She eyeballed my brother like she knew he'd been up to something he shouldn't have been.

"Worked my shift," Casey answered tersely. "Now we're here. You heard anything about the blood work?"

"Did something else happen?" she asked.

He shook his head, but he shifted guiltily on his feet. He hadn't gotten stoned again; I would have
smelled
that. A new possibility occurred to me. Maybe Amber was a spy for the CIA or some foreign country. A Russian spy ring had mistaken me for some child agent and had been poisoning me, and she had recruited my brother to help her get to the bottom of things. The chopped beef churned in my belly. Believing that a Russian spy ring found my brother a possible asset was, again, only
slightly
more implausible than the whole Lanie Phelps incident.

My brother excused himself to pee.

I leaned at the bar, glaring at the back of Amber's head as she scooped strawberries into the blender on the counter behind her.

"You need to keep your energy up," she said, still facing the other way. She peeled a banana and added that, too, along with some kind of fruity looking liquid and ice cubes and let the blender rip. Amber turned and gave a smile.