Wicked Games (7 page)

Jules’s mom patted her hand, and then gave it a playful squeeze. “It’s just that they’re so hard to resist,” she said.

They smiled at each other, almost but not quite ashamed of this truth.

By the time
she got to Jeff’s house, Lilah had calmed down enough to think straight, at least. She shut the door to the Caravan softly, and took care with her footsteps as she made her way across the landscaped front lawn and past the grand stone-inlayed entrance to the house and around the side to the backyard, unlatching the gate to the pool area quietly.

She could hear rap music coming from somewhere deep inside the house. It was muffled, a private sound, not the full, surround-speaker blast she knew Jeff’s stereo was capable of, and she figured it to be coming from the rec room in the lower level of the place.

Before slipping inside and tiptoeing down there,
she did some recon, peeking in windows, listening for other signs of life. The place seemed abandoned. There weren’t even any crushed red cups or beer cans lying around.

She peered through the windows of the pool house, twisting and straining to catch a glimpse of what might be behind the closed venetian blinds.

And there he was, Carter, sleeping like a baby on the pullout bed.

He was alone. That’s the first thing Lilah noticed.

Taking great care not to make a sound, she turned the handle on the door and slowly opened it and stepped inside.

Watching him sleep, so peaceful and content, curled up in the fetal position, his hair standing up in all sorts of odd angles, Lilah had a sudden urge to cuddle up with him. He looked so innocent there, so adorable, with the cowlick at the ridge of his forehead sending a pinwheel of sandy hair down over his eyes.

She felt ashamed of herself. If she was going to be crazy and possessive and unrelentingly moody, she thought, if she was going to go out of her way to ruin every fun thing they did together, why
wouldn’t
he start questioning their relationship. If she wanted to stop him from outgrowing her, she knew, she should shower him with kindness and unconditional love.

But as quickly as this impulse had bloomed inside
her, her neediness and insecurity returned. Where had he been last night? Well, here, at Jeff’s house—she could see that now. But why hadn’t he answered her calls? She had to know.

She saw his iPhone on the windowsill, right there in front of her. And seeing it, everything inside her seized up. She had no choice. She had to have the cell phone in her hands, to see what was on it, what clues, what secrets. She had to. She’d never be able to breathe again unless she knew. That’s how she felt. That’s why she did what she did next.

She grabbed the phone. She pressed the button on top and it came to life. A text bubble on the welcome screen informed her that Carter had sixty-eight missed calls, seventeen missed texts. She flicked the switch to put the phone in silent mode. She slid the bar to unlock the phone. She didn’t need a password.

Her heart somersaulted again and again, leaping with another convulsion each time she took another step toward learning what the phone contained.

The calls were all from her. That was a relief.

The texts—well, the first sixteen were from her, but there was one more. Someone named Jules Turnbull. Did Lilah know her? It had come in at eight thirty this morning, just as Lilah had been on the phone with Carter’s mother.

Lilah’s whole body felt like it was going to erupt in
flames. She was sure that Carter would wake up any second. But she punched through to the message. She couldn’t stop herself.

ALL HAIL UPENN DORKS! That’s what it said.

And there was a photo attached. Lilah’s hands were shaking so much that she could barely control her finger enough to manipulate the screen.

She loaded the photo. She could barely see it through her rage. One of those handheld, off-kilter selfies. Carter, crossing his eyes, sticking his tongue out, his arm draped over the shoulder of some stupid girl. That must be Jules Turnbull.
Good name,
Lilah thought.
She looks like a cow.
Then she realized who this Jules Turnbull was: the girl who acted in all the school musicals.

Where were they? Lilah peered closely, trying to figure it out, but the flash on the photo lit up their faces so much that whatever was behind them had gone totally black.

There was a possibly innocuous explanation for the photos. Lilah realized this. “ALL HAIL UPENN DORKS.” The two of them mugging for the camera. It was totally possible that they’d been talking and they’d discovered that they were both going to the same college and they’d simply taken a photo to commemorate this fact. But really? There must be more to it than that.

And why had this Jules bitch already received her acceptance letter when Lilah was still on the waiting
list? Keeping this secret was tearing Lilah up inside, and here this girl was, latching on to Carter and flaunting her precious accomplishment in Lilah’s face.

Lilah wanted to throw the phone at Carter’s head. Then once he was awake and she had his attention, she’d throw more things at him. Curses. Accusations. She’d demand to know exactly what was going on. But just then, heard the screen door to the main house slide open.

Closing out of the text screen and turning Carter’s phone off as fast as she could—not an easy task, given her overwhelming panic at maybe getting caught—she put the phone back on the windowsill and stepped out onto the deck.

Jeff. That’s who had come out of the house. She made sure to screw her face up into a smile, to wave at him in the most innocent way she could muster.

He’d unhooked the skimming net from its hiding place along the baseboards of the pool house, and seeing Lilah there with her outsized, frightened smile, he threw her a loose-limbed wave.

“Feeling better?” he asked.

Lilah pushed her smile even wider. “Hi, Jeff,” she said. And then, since she couldn’t think of what to say next that wouldn’t sound aggressive and resentful, she just stood there and focused all her attention on her smile. His eyes were hidden behind his Ray-Bans, and
she couldn’t tell what he was possibly thinking.

For the next fifteen minutes or so, Jeff went about his business of checking the chlorine levels in the pool, putting new cartridges into the drains, and skimming the leaves and palm fronds from the surface of the water.

Lilah lingered around the deck chairs, watching him. She managed to smirk as he balanced the long-poled skimming net on his finger until it toppled into the water. But always, there was a slight tremor of nervousness to her, twitching, barely visible below the surface.

“You guys have fun last night?” she finally asked.

“Foosball.
Futurama
,” Jeff told Lilah. “We didn’t end up crashing until, like, five a.m.”

“Yeah?” she asked. “Who all was there?”

“You know, the usual. Me, Andy, Reed.”

Lilah changed tactics. “When did the party wind down?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Jeff said. He was getting annoyed; Lilah could tell by the jerky way he was jabbing the skimmer at the water. “Right around when you left, I guess. It’s not like I spent the whole night staring at the clock.”

“And then it was just the four of you, huh?”

“Just the four of us. What’s with the interrogation, Lilah?”

She climbed out of the deck chair in which she’d been sitting.

“Nothing. Forget it. Listen,” she said, “if he ever
wakes up, tell him I stopped by. Let him know that I’m feeling
much
better, okay?”

“Sure,” Jeff said. “He’ll be happy to hear that. If you only knew how torn up with worry he was last night.”

The shit-eating grin on his face as he waved good-bye made her want to kill him.

On Monday after
school, as she made her way up the grassy hill toward the gleaming, modern theater building, Jules saw Carter sitting on one of the brushed-steel benches out in front of the massive glass entrance, his headphones on, his head bobbing to the music only he could hear. She knew he must be waiting for her. And despite her mother’s warning that she should be careful, she couldn’t stop her heart from beating just a little bit faster.

He was all alone up there, bent forward, resting his arms on his knees, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses, his messenger bag slumped on the bench beside him.

Continuing up the path, she tried to play it cool and
pretend she hadn’t noticed him. When she was halfway there, he threw her a wave, and she waved back, casual, like he was just some guy she knew.

Not the guy she’d been secretly fantasizing about since that day sophomore year.

“Jules?” he said, when she was almost on top of him. He pulled his headphones down so they dangled around his neck. “You have a sec?”

She paused in front of him and adjusted the duffel bag full of dance clothes off her shoulder, but she resisted the urge to sit down next to him.

“A sec, sure,” she said. “But I’ve got to meet Lauren for jazz practice in, like, five minutes, so . . .”

“No, that’s cool. I just—” Carter said. He took his sunglasses off and hung them from his shirt pocket by one arm. He caught her eye and held it. She was transfixed by the facets of color in his hazel iris, the way they seemed to expose a tender sensitivity hidden inside him. She could have gotten lost in them for hours. “How are you?” he said.

She could hear a slow-groove hip-hop beat pumping faintly from his headphones.

“I’m . . . I’m great.” She reminded herself not to forget he had a girlfriend, no matter how sweet he might sound.

“That’s good to hear. I—sorry, let me turn this off.”
He fumbled with the controls on his iPod and the music went silent.

“I figured we should talk. You want to sit down?” he said.

When she did, he grew bashful. He fumbled with the strap of his bag, and if anything, he seemed embarrassed—ashamed. She could sense what a risk it had been for him to come find her. Sitting next to him on the bench, she waited.

Finally, he looked directly at her again. “I just . . . I want to be . . . honorable, I guess,” he said.

“I’m listening,” she said.

“So, look. Things with Lilah are—I don’t even know what they are. We’re going to talk later this afternoon. So, we’ll see. I need to figure things out in my head . . . and . . .” He blushed. “I mean, I should get my shit together before I start messing with yours. It’s not fair. It’s not fair to you and it’s not fair to Lilah. You know what I mean? I shouldn’t be starting new things with new people when I’m in the middle of a great big confusing thing already.”

He pulled his floppy side-parted hair out of his face, and he looked at her again. There was something so earnest, almost tortured about his expression.

“What I’m saying is—”

“I get it. Hey, I don’t want to get involved in some
crazy cheating thing, either.”

“So,” he said. “Friends?”

She wanted to take his hand in hers and tell him to let her know if he changed his mind. But she knew better than to do that.

Instead, she smirked. “Friends,” she said.

Jules held out her hand mock-formally and waited for him to shake it.

He did, one stiff pump, and then he let it go.

“Really,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “Friends means not having to say you’re sorry. Haven’t you heard?”

“That sounds sort of familiar. I think I did hear that somewhere.” He strained to smile. “But, still. I am.”

“I hope you figure everything out,” she said.

He stood up and nodded. “Anyway,” he said, “duty calls. I gotta go find some starfish for my senior project.” Seeing the confused but quizzical expression on Jules’s face, he explained. “Their limbs. I’m trying to figure out how they regenerate.”

“Ew, gross,” she said, shuddering.

When he laughed, she felt amazing, perhaps even better than she did when he first put his hands on her in the ocean.

“See ya, Jules.”

Throwing his bag over his shoulder and across his
chest, he paused for a second, taking her in. Then he galloped away down the hill.

“Hey,” she called after him, “another thing
friends
means. Doing stuff together. Like hanging out. So give me a call sometime, okay?”

He turned around and ran backward for a stretch.

“You got it,” he replied.

The first thing
Lilah said when she saw Carter padding through the hot sand toward her lifeguard station later that afternoon was, “Where were you?”

“I was working on my project,” he said. “Look.” He held up a plastic bag containing three small spiny starfish that he’d collected from the shallow water down by the old piers on the south side of town.

“Well, you’re late. You said in your text that you’d be here at four. I’ve been sitting here bored out of my skull.”

“Lilah,” Carter said, squinting up at her, high in her chair, “come on. Give me a break. I said
around
four. It’s four thirty.”

She nodded at this, guarded, skeptical.

“I’m here now,” he said.

“I see that.”

He dug at the sand with his toe, staring at the middle schoolers out in the waves on their boogie boards, wondering how to approach the conversation he knew he had to have with her. He still hadn’t decided whether it was better to stay with Lilah and try to work it out, or to break up. She was the only serious girlfriend he’d ever had, and he’d never considered how to deal with what happened when their relationship began to fall apart. What he knew was that he didn’t want to hurt her.

“You think maybe we should talk about what happened at Jeff’s party?” he asked.

“Sure,” she said. “Talk.”

She pulled her phone out of the oversized white bag she kept next to her on the lifeguard platform and started fiddling with it.

Carter waited. He told himself to control his annoyance, to have patience. Finally, he said, “Lilah? What are you doing now?”

“Playing Angry Birds,” she said without looking up.