The Train (15 page)

    "Let's go inside, Hannah," Mack said, leading her away from the viewing area. "You're soaked and you're shivering."

    "I don't want to go into the arcade. A11 those people…"

    They went to the restaurant instead. It was nearly empty and they sat at a table in the corner. While the others ordered, Mack went to call the police, and Ms. Quick.

    "Lolly didn't jump from the train, after all?" Kerry asked when they'd been served with cups of steaming hot coffee.

    Hannah shook her head. Mack had made her exchange her wet sweater for his dry one, but her damp hair chilled the back of her neck and her skin felt salty and sticky. "No. She was hiding again."

    "I don't get it," Lewis said, shaking his head. "Did Frog's death unhinge her or what? What was she trying to do?"

    Hannah leaned back against her chair and closed her eyes. "Get even," she said quietly.

    Mack returned and said the police were on their way, as was Ms. Quick.

    "Get even for what?" Kerry asked sharply. "JeanMarie never did anything meant to Lolly. She wouldn't have."

    "Not to Lolly. To Frog. All those things we talked about in the Cafe that day…"

    "But not you, Hannah. You didn't say anything. And you're the one she tried to kill tonight."

    Hannah took a sip of coffee, grateful for its warmth. "I didn't say anything," she said quietly, setting her cup back in its saucer, "because I was too ashamed. What I did to Frog was worse than any of the rest of you." Her cheeks deepened in color. "But I'm going to tell you now.

    "It was all because of my party," she began, slipping back in her memory…

    Her father wanted help with the yard work before her party, so he hired Frog. Every day for a week he was there, trimming bushes, mowing, weeding theflower beds, pruning the trees. He worked hard, Hannah had to admit.

    She felt sorry for him, so she brought him cold lemonade when he was stringing the colored lights across the lawn. Turned the sprinkler on to cool him off when he was sweating in the hot sun over a flower bed. Fixed a sandwich and some fruit to take to him when he was struggling with the heavy recycling bins her father wanted moved.

    It just seemed like the decent thing to do.

    "Some bash you're giving here, huh?" he said one hot afternoon when she was sitting at the patio table folding napkins. "The whole school coming or what?"Just about," she answered.

    "Figured," was all he said.

    Hannah couldn't help thinking how awful it must be to be disliked by so many people. Okay, it was his own fault, He could have tried harder to be nice. But she also couldn't help wondering how many people had really given him a chance. The new kid in town… hadn't they all judged him pretty quickly?

    And he was right about one thing: practically the whole school was coming to this party, the biggest she'd ever given. And he had worked so hard to make the grounds look pretty and nice… One day it just slipped out, before she hard time to consider what she was doing, what her friends would say.

    Frog had said, for the hundredth time, "1 guess just about everybody's coming to this thing, huh?" and that was when she did it. The words slid out of her mouth as easily as if they'd been buttered: "You can come, too, if you want."

    Immediately, instantly, they both knew she regretted releasing the awful words.

    Anal they both knew it was too late. She couldn't take it back, and there was no way he wasn't going to come.

    Hannah wrestled with it every second of the next few days before the party. Her friends would have a fit when he walked in. No one could stand him. Several of the boys he'd had fistfrghts with would be there. Kerry would be appalled.

    What was I thinking? she screamed at herself. He doesn't belong at this party. He doesn't knowanyone, he won't have any fun. Everyone will be mad at me. It'll ruin everything if he shows up.

    And she knew he would show up. There was no way he wouldn't. The look on his face when those dreadful words slipped out of her mouth had been the same look her brother Tad wore on his face when he finally got the Nintendo he'd prayed for.

    He'd come, all right.

    And the party she'd planned for so long would become a total disaster.

    Hannah was a nervous wreck that night. She paced back and forth in the front hall in her expensive new party dress of deep forest green and her high heels, wearing her mother's jade earnnga, with her hair curled up high on her head. She smiled at her guests as they began arriving and directed them toward the food, and when someone came to her and asked where a particular CD was, she told him, smiling, smiling all the while even though her stomach was churning and her teeth kept clenching and unclenching.

    Because, how could she possibly allow Frog at her party? How could she let him ruin it?

    The invitation had slipped out on an impulse. And it was retrieved in the same way.

    When Hannah looked through the front window and saw him get out of his car and start across the street, it was as if her body took over and moved her outside, quickly, quickly, closing the door behind her, standing with her back against it, the sentry at the gate forbidding entry to the new unwanted - oh, so unwanted! - guest.

    She hardly saw Lolly tagging along behind him, calling his name.

    He was wearing what she was positive was a brand-new sport coat, and his longish hair was slicked down. He walked up the steps with an excited bounce. Lolly, hurrying along behind him, was wearing a ghastly purple dress with huge puffed sleeves.

    "Hi," he said with a huge smile. 1 can't do this, she thought with certainty, I can't.

    But she did.

    When they got to the door, Hannah said in a low, pained voice, "I'm really sorry, but the party's been cancelled. I'm not feeding well… the flu, 1 think, I've got this terrible headache and my stomach… well, I hate to do it, but 1 have to send everyone home. 1 was just about to when you came."

    Music and laughter rang out behind them, coming, it seemed to Hannah, from each tiny crevice between the red bricks, through every window, beneath every door.

    "Sick?" Frog said, disbelieving. "You don't look sick. You look," he flushed and lowered his head, "you look beautiful."

    Hannah did feel sick, then. "Thanks, but 1 really feel awful. And if it's the flu, 1 don't want to give it to anyone else, right? I'm really sorry, after all that hard work you did. Maybe 1 can have the party next week."

    The look on Frog's face then would haunt Hannah for a long time.

    Without another word, he turned and ran down the steps, leaving Lolly behind. He jumped into his car and roared off, tires screeching, not even waiting to see if Hannah's guests really were leaving.

    From somewhere far, far away, Hannah was vaguely aware of Lolly's voice shrieking after the speeding car, "See? Didn't I tell you? Didn't 1?"

    "He didn't have to wait to see if everyone else left," Hannah finished her story, "because he knew no one would be leaving. He knew I was lying."

    Her friends knew the rest of the story. Five minutes later, after Lolly had left, her head held as high as she could manage, Frog had crashed his car into a brick wall at high speed.

    "We heard the sirens," Hannah reminded them, "but we never gave it a thought. We were all having too much fun."

    They sat in silence for several minutes. Then Hannah said softly, "I didn't know Lolly and Frog had fought about it. She didn't want him to come to the party because she knew that… we… really didn't want them there and that something bad would happen. She was right, wasn't she? And that made him even madder, finding out that she'd been right all along. He was furious with her when he drove off. It must have just about killed her, not straightening things out with him before he died.

    "But it wasn't her fault. It was mine." Hannah's breath caught in a sob. "And I've been sorry ever since, but what good does that do either of them?"Hannah," Mack said finally, "it's over. It's all over now. We were all crummy to the guy, and to Lolly, too, and we're all sorry."

    "And now we should forget it," Kerry said firmly. "We'll never forget Jean Marie. But, like Mack said, it's over. Finally."

    "No," Hannah said softly, lifting her head, her eyes full of regret. "I don't want to forget it. I don't want any of us to forget it. If we do, what's the point?"

    "So you're still going home?" Lewis asked.

    Hannah thought about it. She was here, in a wonderful, exciting city, with friends she cared about and trusted. Lolly was gone now. So was Frog. Would going back home change anything that had happened? Would it be wrong to stay?

    "No," she said. "I'm not going home. I'm staying.

    They all smiled.

    "But," she added, taking Mack's hand in hers, "I'm not going to forget, either. And tomorrow, while Kerry's shopping, I'm coming back here, to R,ockview, to see the ocean in the sunshine. I'm coming back to say a decent good-bye to Lolly and Frog. Then it will really be over."

    And Mack said, "I'll come with you."

    Kerry and Lewis nodded. "We will, too."

    And Kerry added with a grin, "and then we'll go shopping."