The Unwanted (22 page)

Eric sat silently at the breakfast table the next morning, his eyes carefully avoiding his father’s, for he had known the moment he came into the kitchen that his father’s anger was still seething just below the surface. Finally, though, Ed spoke to him.

“You not going to say good morning to your old man?” he asked, his voice rising and falling in the sarcastic singsong that was always a sure signal he was looking for a fight.

“Morning, Dad,” Eric mumbled, glancing up to see his father’s eyes—little more than narrow red-rimmed slits this morning—fixed balefully on him.

“I been thinking,” Ed went on. “And I decided something. I don’t want you hanging around with Cassie Winslow. You only got enough time for Lisa Chambers.”

“What’s wrong with Cassie?” Eric protested. “And I’m not hanging around with her. All I did was—”

“Don’t you argue with me!” Ed commanded, rising slightly out of his chair. “You were messin’ around with her again yesterday afternoon!”

Now Eric felt his own anger beginning to rise inside him. “We didn’t do anything,” he replied. “All we were doing was talking. What’s the big deal?”

“Don’t you sass me, boy,” Ed snarled. He was on his feet now, looming over Eric, his right hand reflexively clenching into a fist.

“No!” Laura Cavanaugh suddenly exclaimed. Though her
eyes were wide and frightened, the strength in her voice deflected Ed’s wrath from his son to his wife. He swung around to face her.

“What did you say?” he rasped, his voice dangerously low.

“Don’t hit him,” Laura pleaded. “Do you want him to have to go to school with a black eye? What will people say?”

“They wouldn’t say a damned thing,” Ed growled. “What’s the big deal if a kid takes a swat from his old man now and then? I got my share from my pa, and I didn’t turn out so bad, did I?” He glared at his wife and son, as if daring them to challenge him. Then he was gone, slamming out the back door. A moment later they heard a grinding sound as the engine of the old pickup reluctantly turned over, then caught and roared into life. The screeching of spinning tires followed, the truck shooting backward down the driveway and out into the street.

A strained silence hung over the kitchen. Laura gazed at Eric beseechingly but saw that his eyes had gone dark and his jaw had tightened in unconscious imitation of his father.

Laura, her voice little more than a sob, finally spoke. “Why?” she breathed. “Why does he hate us so much?”

“I wish he wouldn’t come back. I wish he’d just go away and disappear.”

“I know,” Laura said tiredly, getting to her feet to begin clearing the breakfast dishes away. “Sometimes I wish the same thing. But it won’t happen.” She smiled with wan encouragement. “But in another year you’ll be away at college.”

“Yeah,” Eric agreed, making no attempt to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “That’ll be really great, won’t it? I’ll be gone, and you’ll be stuck here with him all by yourself. How come you don’t just kick him out, Mom?”

“I can’t,” Laura said. “What would I do? How would you and I live?”

As she spoke Eric’s pity for his mother’s defenselessness turned to rage.

“How do we live now, Ma?” he demanded. “We’re scared witless all the time, and half the time he beats us up. And all we ever do is pretend nothing’s happening! You call that living? I sure as hell don’t!” Before Laura could reply, he grabbed his book bag and stormed out the back door.

Just like his father, Laura found herself thinking. He walked out the same way his father does. She started washing the dishes, but her mind kept drifting away from her work as she saw over and over again the image of her son—as filled with rage as his father—stamping out of the house. What if it was too late? she wondered. What if she’d stayed with Ed Cavanaugh too long, and the fury and hatred that had already consumed Ed was working now in Eric as well?

Cassie caught up with Eric just as he was leaving the Common to start down Wharf Street. “How come you didn’t stop this morning?” she asked shyly, falling into step beside him.

Eric said nothing for a moment, then managed to give her a weak smile. “It wasn’t you,” he explained. “It was my dad. He says he doesn’t want me to spend any time with you anymore.”

Cassie said nothing as she continued to walk silently beside him. By the time they’d turned the corner on Hartford Street, with Memorial High four more blocks away, she could contain herself no longer. “He thinks I’m crazy, doesn’t he?”

Eric hesitated, then nodded once. “I guess.”

“They’re all going to act like that, aren’t they?” Cassie went on. “It’s not just going to be your father. It’s going to be your friends too.”

“So what?” Eric asked carefully.

“So I was just wondering what’s going to happen, that’s all,” Cassie replied. “I mean, what are you going to do if everyone starts treating you the way they’ve been treating me? Are you still going to be my friend?”

Eric nodded, his jaw setting stubbornly. “It doesn’t matter what my friends think, and I don’t give a damn what my dad says either,” he insisted.

A hopeful smile touched Cassie’s lips, but her eyes seemed to plead with him. “Then meet me after school this afternoon,” she said. “I—I really want to show you my house. I mean Miranda’s house,” she corrected herself quickly.

Eric hesitated, then shook his head. “I—I don’t think I better,” he said, and the pleading in Cassie’s eyes dissolved into unconcealed pain. “I mean, I have baseball practice
today. I skipped it yesterday, and if I do it again, Simms’ll kill me.”

“I’ll wait for you,” Cassie decided. “In fact I’ll come out and watch you practice. I’ve never done anything like that before.”

Eric cocked his head quizzically, relieved that the subject of the conversation had shifted. “How come? Lots of the guys’ girlfriends come out and watch them practice. Didn’t they do that in California?”

He hadn’t told her not to come, Cassie thought. Maybe he really was still going to be her friend. “That’s what I’m talking about,” she said. “It was always the airheads that went out to watch the boys. And none of my friends had boyfriends. I mean, we all had friends that were boys, but they weren’t boyfriends.” Suddenly her eyes turned wary again. “If I come out and watch you, is everyone going to think I’m your girlfriend? What’s Lisa going to think?”

Eric grinned. “Do you care?”

Cassie hesitated. “I just … well, I just don’t want her to think I’m after you, that’s all.”

Eric’s grin widened. “Don’t worry about Lisa,” he said, with more confidence than he felt.

They started up the steps of the school, and for the first time since Miranda had died, Cassie was genuinely smiling. But suddenly Lisa Chambers detached herself from a group of her friends, her eyes flashing with anger when she saw Cassie with Eric.

“What’s so funny?” she demanded of Cassie, slipping her arm possessively through Eric’s. Cassie’s smile faded away, and she hurried up the steps and disappeared into the building.

“We were just talking, that’s all,” Eric explained. He faltered, seeing the jealousy in Lisa’s eyes. “It didn’t mean anything. I mean—”

“I know what you meant, Eric,” Lisa said, dropping his arm as her voice turned chillingly cold. Silence fell over the group on the steps as they all listened. “And if you want to spend your time with someone like her, I’m sure I don’t care.” She turned back to the group she’d left seconds before, leaving Eric standing helplessly alone as all the rest of the kids stared at him.

This is how Cassie felt last week
, Eric thought.
Just like some kind of freak
.

When the last bell of the day finally rang, Cassie still hadn’t made up her mind what she was going to do. Today had been even worse than last week. She’d made it through the morning only by telling herself repeatedly that she’d see Eric at noon and at least she wouldn’t have to eat at a table by herself, with everyone staring at her. But when she got to the cafeteria, Eric was nowhere to be seen. She’d waited at the door for ten minutes, hoping he’d show up, but when they finally began closing down the steam table, she took a tray, chose some food without really looking at it, and started toward the same table she’d occupied the week before.

As she moved through the cafeteria she felt the rest of the students staring at her, and heard them whispering to each other after she passed their tables. Though she couldn’t hear all that they said, she heard enough.

“Everybody
knows
she did something,” Lisa Chambers said as Cassie passed the table where Lisa sat with Allayne Garvey and Teri Bennett. Lisa hadn’t even bothered to lower her voice. “I mean, my mother actually
saw
Mr. Templeton’s car in front of their house yesterday!”

“But what’s going to happen?” Teri demanded. “If she killed Miranda, why don’t they arrest her?”

“Maybe she didn’t do anything at all,” Allayne Garvey suggested, but by the time she spoke, Cassie was out of earshot. “Maybe you’re just mad, Lisa, because Eric came to school with her again.”

“I don’t care about Eric,” Lisa insisted. She raised her voice to make sure it would carry across the room to the table where Cassie sat by herself. “If he wants to spend all his time with someone who’s crazy, why should I care? But he better watch out—she might do the same thing to him that she did to Miranda Sikes!”

A wave of rage washed over Cassie and she wanted to scream at Lisa. But she didn’t. Instead she made herself remember the words Miranda had spoken to her the day she’d died.

‘It doesn’t matter what they say about me, and it doesn’t matter what they say about you. Some people are set apart
from everyone else, Cassie. But whatever they say about you, they can never truly hurt you.’ She’d smiled then, a small, cryptic smile that Cassie hadn’t understood. ‘I made certain of that. So don’t worry about what they say. Just don’t let them hurt you. Be true to yourself, and always remember that you must never let them hurt you.’

So instead of saying anything, Cassie simply sat alone at her table, concentrating on forcing the tasteless food into her mouth and trying not to gag as she swallowed it. The lunch hour seemed endless, and when the bell finally rang, she began the afternoon ordeal, moving somnolently from class to class, the stares and whispers of her classmates stinging her soul.

At last it was three o’clock, and she had to make up her mind.

Should she go out to the baseball diamond to wait for Eric, or should she just leave and spend the afternoon by herself? She thought about the beach and the little house in the marsh, and the prospect of being alone with nothing but the seabirds and the crashing of the surf for company. At least out there no one could stare at her, and if people were whispering, she couldn’t hear them.

Then she remembered Eric, and his absence from the cafeteria at lunchtime. Making up her mind, she shoved her books into her bag and left the building by the back door. A small set of bleachers stood behind the backstop. Already a group of girls was clustered at the far end of the lowest three tiers. They turned away from Cassie as she approached, and began giggling among themselves. Every few seconds, one of them would surreptitiously glance at Cassie. Head held high, Cassie pretended she didn’t notice.

There was no one on the baseball diamond yet, so Cassie fished her math book out of the bag and began working on the homework assignments from the last two days, which Mr. Simms had insisted be completed even though Cassie had missed the classes. “After all,” he’d pointed out in front of the whole class, his voice edged with sarcasm, “it isn’t as if you were sick, is it? No one else went to Miranda Sikes’s funeral, did they? It’s beginning to look as if you don’t think school is worth bothering with.”

Cassie’s face had burned as a ripple of snickering had passed over the class. “But she was my friend,” she’d breathed.

Simms’s thin lips had only curled into a scornful sneer. “Even if that were true, Cassie, you hardly knew her. And if you had, you’d know she was nothing more than a mental case who should never have been let out of the hospital. In my opinion you simply used Miranda Sikes’s unfortunate demise as another opportunity to cut classes. Your parents may approve, but I don’t. Please have the assignments completed by tomorrow.”

Cassie had forced herself to stifle an urge to run from the room. It didn’t matter, she told herself once again. He can’t hurt you. None of them can. So instead of running away, she’d controlled her tears, and her anger, and her pain. And now, as she looked at the assignment, she was glad she had. The problems in algebra were so simple she could work most of them in her head. Shutting everything else out of her mind, she quickly began writing down the equations and their solutions.

Twenty minutes later, just as she finished the last problem, the baseball team trotted onto the field to warm up. Eric hesitated for a split second, and Cassie felt a quick pang of fear that he was going to ignore her, but then he waved before he and Jeff Maynard began tossing a ball back and forth along the first-base line. At last the coach came out of the gym, but it wasn’t until he’d actually arrived at the diamond that Cassie recognized him.

It was Mr. Simms.

His mouth was twisted into the same ugly smile he’d worn while humiliating Cassie earlier that day, and she knew instantly that something else was about to happen. But this time she couldn’t be the target—he hadn’t even seen her.

He blew his whistle, and the team immediately gathered around him. He said nothing for a few seconds, and the boys fell silent, squirming uncomfortably as they cast sidelong glances toward Eric. In the bleachers Cassie suddenly understood who Simms’s new victim was.

“Decide to join us today, Cavanaugh?” Simms finally asked, his small, close-set eyes fixing on Eric.

Eric nodded. “I—I’m sorry about yesterday,” he said. “I shouldn’t have skipped practice, and I won’t do it again.”

“What you do or don’t do isn’t really of interest to me, Cavanaugh.” Simms’s eyes glittered with pleasure at Eric’s
discomfort. “If you can do without us, we can certainly do without you. As of now you’re off the team. Smythe, you’ll be taking over as pitcher.”