Abandon (29 page)

“I don’t know,” I’d replied.

Grandma had smiled.

“You will,” she’d said.

And tucked a scarf around my neck. A scarf she’d knitted herself, just for me.

A red one. With tassels.

Wait. That wasn’t how it had happened. What was I thinking? Grandma was right: I really did have an overactive imagination.

“Is this just a case of rounding up the usual suspects?” Kayla asked. “I saw that in a movie once. Maybe just because your dad went to jail once, they’re questioning everyone who —”

“No,” Alex said bitterly, looking as if he wanted to punch something. But there was nothing nearby soft enough to hit without injuring himself, except possibly some A-Wingers who were scattering because it was about to pour and the warning bell had just rung for class. “I told you. Someone says they saw him. A witness. Some witness, if he managed to see my dad somewhere he wasn’t, driving a car he was never in.”

“Oh, Alex,” Kayla said, and put her hand on his shoulder. Her expression was softer than I’d ever seen it. “I’m so, so sorry.”

My mind flashed back to Uncle Chris from the day before, when he’d urged me never to let anyone tell me I couldn’t do something I’d set my mind to.

That wasn’t going to be a problem anymore, I didn’t think.

“Give me your phone, Alex,” I said, holding out my hand.

“Why?” he asked, instantly suspicious even in his despair.

“Because,” I said, “I’m going to call my dad.”

Alex shook his head at me. “Pierce. Your dad
hates
my dad. Remember?”

“No, he doesn’t,” I lied. “Just hand it over.”

“Pierce,” Alex said. “It’s nice of you to offer. Really, it is. But you do not want to get involved in this. It’s not something you can really handle.”

I had to laugh. Although the truth was, I didn’t feel like it.

“Oh, Alex,” I said to him. “Trust me. What I handle on a daily basis makes this look like cake.”

This statement was followed by a crack of thunder so loud, it sent the rest of the few students who were still standing beneath the breezeway with us scrambling for the safety of the various wings where they had classes.

“Look,” Alex said, raising his voice to be heard above the wind. “I appreciate it, Pierce. But I think your dad’s done enough damage around here. Don’t you?”

Kayla inhaled sharply. I felt my eyes sting, then realized it was because they were tearing…although it wasn’t anything I hadn’t heard before, and from my own mother.

“We’re late to class,” Alex said, and pushed past us both. “I’ll meet you at the car at two o’clock if you want a lift home.”

He hurried down the breezeway towards D-Wing, his head ducked, his shoulders hunched in on themselves. He looked smaller than I’d ever seen him. And Alex had grown two whole inches over the summer. Uncle Chris had proudly shown me the marks on the kitchen doorway.

“He didn’t mean it,” Kayla turned to me to say.

“Yeah,” I said, shaking my head. “He did.”

“Well,” Kayla said. “Maybe he did. But you know. He’s upset. Hey.” She was staring at something over my shoulder. “Isn’t your grandma the lady from Knuts for Knitting?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Why?”

“Because she’s here.”

I spun around. Kayla was right. My grandmother was coming
down the breezeway towards us, wearing one of her usual artsy outfits of beige gauchos, white peasant blouse, and laceless white Keds.

Around her neck was one of the many colorful scarves she always wore, all knitted by her own hand. At each end of the scarf dangled a set of tassels.

Grandma was semi-famous around the island for these. Some people used them as pulls for their ceiling fans.

“Pierce!” Grandma lifted a hand to wave. Even as far off as she was — two whole locker banks away — I could hear her loud breathing. Grandma wasn’t very athletic. She didn’t like to walk places, preferring to take her car. “Thank God I found you. Did you hear the news about Christopher? It’s just awful.”

“She must be here to sign you guys out of school,” Kayla whispered to me. “Except for lunch, they won’t let you go off-campus unless it’s a family emergency and someone over eighteen signs you out.”

“Oh,” I said. “Except didn’t Alex just say her car got impounded?”

Kayla shrugged. “She must have driven your mom’s car.”

“Then why didn’t my mom tell Alex she was on her way over?”

Kayla looked at me. “Chickie,” she said. “What are you saying? You think your grandma’s here to kidnap you or something?”

Did you like him?

I don’t know.

You will.

I put my book bag down on the ground, still staring at Grandma, who had almost made it to the end of the last bank of lockers. The tassels at the end of her scarf swayed.

Just like the ones at the end of the scarf I’d worn the day I died had swayed in the water above my head.

It had been there all along, right in front of me, and it had taken this long for me to figure it out.

I’d been such a fool.

“Just how dysfunctional
is
your family, anyway?” Kayla was going on.

“Kayla,” I said, rolling up my sleeves. “Do me a favor, okay? Go to class.”

“Uh,” Kayla said with a little laugh, “okay. So I guess I won’t be seeing you at Alex’s car at two?”

“If I’m not there,” I said, “call the cops.”

Kayla laughed some more. She obviously thought this whole thing was a hilarious joke.

“Don’t worry, chickie,” she said, and headed off to D-Wing. “I will. The cops and I go way back.”

What Kayla didn’t know — and I did — was that the diamond tucked inside my shirt, which had been the cheerful purple it usually turned whenever Kayla was around, had gone onyx the minute my grandmother showed up.

It always turned this color when my grandmother was around. I’d figured this was because her disapproval of me made me nervous.

Now I knew the real reason why.

“Why,” Grandma panted, when she finally got up to me, “didn’t you come over when you saw me? I’m dying here.”

“It might help,” I muttered, “if you ditched the scarf.”

“What was that?” Grandma had blue eyes. She was the only one in our family who did. Because she wasn’t an Oliviera. Or a Cabrero. What she was instead, I was only just beginning to figure out.

“Why are you here, Grandma?” I asked.

“Oh,” she said, fanning herself with the ends of her scarf. “I’m here to get you. Your mom wants you home. Something terrible has happened. Your uncle Chris —”

“I already know,” I said flatly. “They took him in for questioning.”

“Oh,” she said again, looking surprised. “Well, if you already know, why are you just standing there? Let’s go.” She took my arm, and then, when I didn’t move, tugged on it.

“Pierce,” she said, annoyed. “What’s wrong with you? We don’t have time for games. It’s about to pour, can’t you tell? There’s a storm coming. I don’t want to get wet. Let’s go.”

“What about Alex?” I asked.

“He left already,” Grandma said without skipping a beat.

“Really?” I said. “He did? Did you call him?”

“Yes,” she said. “I did. He said he couldn’t find you. Now come on, I don’t have all day. I have to get back to the shop. Let’s go.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Not with you.”

“What are you talking about?” Grandma was a little bit shorter than me, but she was wider and therefore had a lower center of gravity. When she pulled, she pulled hard.

But I could be stubborn, too.

“Pierce! What is the matter with you?” she demanded. Her grip was so strong, it felt as if it was cutting off my circulation. “I’ve told your mother again and again to keep you away from all that caffeine —”

“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” The courtyard. The breezeway. Her tassels. Everything was starting to turn red. But I didn’t care. “Anything you can do so I won’t remember. But guess what? I
do
remember, even more than you’ve guessed. You sent me into the cemetery the day of Grandpa’s funeral on purpose. You did it so I’d meet John.”

Grandma blinked at me uncomprehendingly. “What?” she said. “I don’t know what you’re —”

“Grandpa didn’t know anything about your little plan, did he?” I went on, ignoring her. “Richard Smith told me you told Grandpa you didn’t believe in death deities. But you
do
believe in them, don’t you? You not only believe in death deities, you like torturing them, don’t you? Because that’s what Furies do.”

Now Grandma had gone the color of her gauchos. Outside the breezeway, the wind had picked up. It was stirring her short gray curls. But she kept holding on to my arm.

“I don’t know where you’re getting this stuff,” she said. “But if you’ve been talking to Richard Smith, I can only imagine what you’ve heard. That man’s a lunatic, obsessed with the idea that death is a natural part of life, or some such nonsense, when you should know better than anyone, Pierce, what really happens when we die. So you just take everything he says with a grain of salt. I only came here to pick you up and take you to your mother —”

“Using whose car?” I demanded. “Not Mom’s, because she just called Alex from wherever they’re questioning Uncle Chris, and yours got impounded. So big mistake, Grandma. You know what the other mistake you made was? Killing me.”

That’s when I saw a flicker of something in those blue eyes. Not fear. It was too reptilian to be fear.

It was more like…

Hatred.

“Oh, I know you thought I’d never figure it out,” I said, still trying to rip my arm from her grip. But she hung on, her expression changing. Now
she
looked like the wild thing I’d once been so convinced John was.

Except his eyes, even at their most hopeless, had never looked at me with such hatred. Never once. His eyes might once have looked dead, but I had never doubted that there was life in there somewhere. With Grandma, I suddenly wasn’t so sure.

“You sent me into that cemetery when I was seven so I’d be certain to meet John, didn’t you? Then that way when I died, I’d be sure to go to the Underworld here in Isla Huesos, and I wouldn’t be afraid of him, and then maybe he’d notice me and choose me to be his consort, the way Hades chose Persephone. Right?”

It had started to rain, fat, hard drops that made rattling noises against the metal roof of the breezeway.

I ignored them. All my attention was focused on the woman in front of me. If that’s what she even was. I got the sense she hadn’t been my actual grandmother for a long time.

“That’s
why you asked if I liked him that day, and why when I told you I didn’t know, you said I would. Admit it.” I shook my
head. I had put it all together at last. But I was still having trouble believing it. Because it was just so awful. ”
You’re
the one who knitted me that scarf, the one with the red tassels. You sent it to me for Christmas.
I remember it all now.
What did you do to it to make sure it tangled up around my legs and tripped me? How did you know for sure I’d wear it outside by the pool, and fall in and drown? Did you hurt the birds, too? The one on the pool cover in Westport, and the one on the path, here in Isla Huesos?
What kind of person are you? Who would murder her own granddaughter?
”

That’s when she finally let me go. And stood in front of me, panting.

But not because she was old and weak. She was far from that.

Because she was a Fury. And she was finally showing her true face.

And it was more hideous and frightening than anything I could ever have imagined.

“You’re
the one,” she said, her eyes blazing. “You’re the one who ruined it. You were supposed to
stay
dead. But you’re so stupid, you couldn’t even do
that
right, could you?”

I blinked at her, horrified. It had taken me forever to put it all together. Now I couldn’t believe I’d been right.

“I tried to tell them,” Grandma went on, breathing hard. Her tongue darted out like a snake’s as she licked her dry pink lips. “I tried to warn them about you. When Deborah was born, and she was so beautiful, and smart, and perfect, it seemed like fate. I was sure our family would be the ones to finally destroy him. I was positive he’d fall in love with her the minute he saw her.
But he didn’t. I tried everything. I must have spent a thousand hours in that cemetery with her, roaming up and down between those crypts, trying to get his attention. But did he ever give her so much as a glance?” Grandma gave a snort, her gaze flicking back towards me.

“But you?” She sneered. “I leave you alone in the cemetery for five minutes, and what happens? I could hardly believe it.” Her face crinkled into something that, had she any bit of humanity left in her, might have been a smile. “If I’d known he liked them stupid and ugly, I wouldn’t have wasted so much time making sure your mother did all her homework and got those weekly manicures.”

Tears stung my eyes. I knew intellectually of course that she wasn’t really my grandmother anymore.

But being called stupid and ugly by her hurt more than it should have.

“Killing you was the easy part,” she went on. “The problem is that you won’t
stay
dead. You have far more of your father in you than any of us ever anticipated.”

“You know what?” I said, raising my chin. “I’m going to take that as a compliment.” Although I knew she didn’t mean it as one.

“I told them because of that, it was never going to work,” she hissed, as if I hadn’t even spoken. “But would they listen? Of course not. And now look what’s happened. If you’re not dead and at John Hayden’s side, he’ll never know true happiness. And if John Hayden isn’t happy, then we can’t take that happiness away from him, can we? But that’s a situation I can easily rectify—”

That’s when she lunged…directly into the fist I’d thrust in front of me, exactly the way Dad’s driver had taught me to, in case I were ever in a situation where I had to defend myself.

She staggered and fell back, letting out a scream like nothing I’d ever heard before in my life. It was so shrill, it shattered the red haze that had fallen over my eyes.

That’s when John showed up.