Fear and Laundry (21 page)

“Well, I can’t go back,” he said, folding the tie and putting it in his pants pocket.

“Sure you can.” It seemed like the right thing to say, though the last thing I wanted was for him to go anywhere.

“I’ve lost my scholarship at this point,” he reminded me. He didn’t sound disappointed, just relieved. “I talked to Benji. He said I could have my old job at Cell Farm back and probably move into a management position pretty quick since I’ve already got so much experience.”

He stopped, leaning against a tree, and undid his shirt cuffs. I stood near him, wrapping his jacket tighter around my shoulders and hugging myself against the wind, which felt ten times colder blowing this direction across the lake. “You’re cold,” he said.

“You aren’t?” I watched him roll each of his sleeves back a few times.

“It’s burning up in there,” he said, nodding at the banquet hall. “You okay? We can go back in.”

“I’m fine.” I changed the subject back. “Is that really what you want to do? Stay here? Work at the video store in Carreen?” As pleased as I was by this news, I felt I had to ask. Most people I knew talked only of leaving Carreen as soon as they could. The focus was always on “getting out,” never on coming back.

“Thought you liked it here.”

Sure, I said. I kind of had to, given I’d probably end up stuck here for the rest of my life. “It’s not the same for you.” We both knew it was true. He could probably do anything he wanted with his life, go anywhere.

“Lia’s staying here,” he reminded me.

I nodded, not sure if I should admit I’d never quite understood her choice, either. As she’d pointed out, her grades were on par with Jake’s. She could go to school wherever she wanted. For a while I’d worried she was only hanging around to stay close to me but when I’d asked her about it, she’d told me to get over myself. She was staying because she liked Carreen. And why, she'd asked me, should big cities monopolize all the awesome, talented people? I believed her, but suspected Jake’s motives differed.

“Carreen’s alright,” he said. He’d plucked a half-dead leaf from a low-hanging branch and now played with it, threading it absently between his fingers. “I mean, it’s got its draws.” He looked at me.

I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. “I guess. It’s not Austin,” I said.

“Doesn’t have to be.”

I started to say something else but wavered, not wanting to offend him. He noticed and asked what I was thinking.

“Nothing. Never mind.”

“Nic,” he prompted.

I shrugged. “How can you be sure you weren’t just, you know...intimidated? By being in a different, bigger place?”

I hadn’t been sure my question would make any sense, but he seemed to catch my drift. He stopped, looking temporarily surprised. Then he let the leaf flutter to the ground, where the wind sent it skittering into the water. “Are you asking me if I’m more comfortable being a big fish in a small pond?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t have put it quite that way,” I said, embarrassed.

“It’s alright. It’s occurred to me. Believe me, I’ve thought about this from every angle you can imagine. Maybe you’re right. I don’t know.” He ran a hand over his face.

He looked weary, I thought. Lia’d always complained he over-analyzed everything, saying he “thought too much” for his own good. I’d come to realize she was right and figured it was probably why he never got enough sleep.

“I’m not saying I’ll stay in Carreen forever,” he said. “I just need some time. To figure things out, do things my own way. You know?”

“Yeah,” I said, staring at my feet. I traced a circle in the dirt with the toe of my – Paige’s – ridiculous shoe. “Well, I’m sure your parents’ll be happy to have you close by again. And Lia, too, even if she won’t admit it.”

“Doubt it. But thanks.” He seemed to expect me to say something else. I tried to think of a cool way to tell him I was glad he was staying, too, when a particularly strong gust of wind tore across the lake.  I had to take a step, crossing one foot over the other, to keep from losing my balance.

He reached out to steady me. “You’re freezing,” he said, his fingers warm on my shoulder even through the jacket.

“I’m fine,” I said again, but my teeth chattered.

“We should go inside.”

I didn’t want to. He was right:  I was very, very cold. And my feet were killing me. But there was nowhere else I wanted to be.

***

D
espite my protests, Jake insisted we rejoin the party. He thanked me for taking a walk with him despite the cold and apologized for freezing me. I told him I didn’t mind, was just glad of the break, and returned his jacket. I’d have talked to him longer but Lia came by with a plate of party food balanced in her hand and pulled me away.

“There you are. So, what’d you think?” she asked, scratching at her stomach through her gown’s fitted bodice. “Did I look like the world’s biggest goofball up there or what?” She shoveled a glob of dip into her mouth with a tortilla chip.

You did great,” I said truthfully. “And it was a sweet ceremony.”

“Please,” she said, chewing. “They should’ve served crackers with all that cheese.”

“You’re such a romantic,” I told her, stealing a bite-sized brownie from her plate.

“Oh, I am,” she assured me. But not where her parents were concerned. Because that was just “icky.”

She told me both sets of her grandparents wanted to say hello to me, and there were a few cousins in from Maryland she wanted to introduce me to. By the time we’d made the rounds of the room, the party had died down and the crowd was a lot thinner. It was late.

The DJ was still playing, though, and I saw Jake dancing with Paige. I didn’t know what to make of it. Earlier in the day, I’d have said I’d changed my mind about her; she’d been friendly to me in her own way. But when she’d figured out I liked Jake, she hadn’t backed off him a bit. If anything, she’d stepped up her campaign to get his attention. Right then, for instance, she was hanging all over him. I looked away, revolted.

John and Elyse found Lia and me and hugged us, telling us they’d see us when they returned from Cancun. They were spending tonight in the honeymoon suite at a nearby bed and breakfast and leaving for the airport first thing in the morning.

“Veronica-honey?” Strands of Elyse’s blonde hair stuck to her forehead and her makeup had an oily sheen where she’d sweated through it. But she looked elated. “You and Lia keep each other out of trouble while we’re gone, would you?” she joked.

I said we would, not knowing the promise would turn out to be harder to keep than usual.

***

A
fter the party, Jake found me and replaced his jacket around my shoulders. By then I was practically hobbled, stumbling in my painful shoes, and he offered me his arm for the arduous hike back down to the parking lot. When we reached it, he and I, Lia and Paige piled into the Volvo. I’d told Lia I’d spend the night at her place. Elyse had invited Paige to stay over, too, but she’d declined, telling me in private she wasn’t really “the slumber party type.” And she was exhausted, she said. If it was all the same to everyone, she’d leave her car parked at the Mlinarichs’ tonight and find someone to bring her by for it tomorrow. So we dropped Paige off at her parents’ house (she lived on my side of town, I noticed, not far from my neighborhood). I couldn’t say I was sorry to see her disappear up her front porch steps.

The rest of us were wiped out, too. When we reached the Mlinarichs’ place, Jake said goodnight and vanished into his room. Lia kicked off her shoes and slung them one by one into a corner of the hall. By the time we’d reached her bedroom, she was reaching under her dress to peel off her pantyhose.

Who’d invented these torture devices, anyway? she snarled, moaning in relief as I helped her unzip the gown.

“Some dude,” I guessed.

Kicking the discarded dress away, she rattled off creative abuses said dude deserved to have heaped upon him and then flopped face down onto the bed in her underwear. I rooted through her dresser drawer for her cut off sweatpants and one of the t-shirts she liked to sleep in, tossing them at her. Grudgingly, she rolled over and pulled them on.

“Where’d you disappear to after the ceremony?” she asked, seeming only halfway interested. She looked depleted, her eyelids dipping.

“Nowhere.” I hoisted her legs onto the bed and settled a blanket over her. She fell asleep almost instantly, not even noticing when the cat jingled into the room and leapt onto her pillow, briskly kneading a pallet for himself out of her fancy hairdo.

***

A
fter the phone rang a few times the next morning, I rolled over and plucked the receiver from its cradle.

“Hello?”

“Veronica?” asked a voice I felt I should recognize but didn’t. I sat up and rubbed at my forehead, only then remembering where I was and that this wasn’t my telephone. I glanced around for Lia but she was gone.

“Yeah?” Peering at the alarm clock glowing on the nightstand, I saw it was just after nine A.M. On a Saturday. Who’d be calling now?

“Is Lia around?” asked the telephone voice. It was male and young. I knew it from someplace...

“Lemme see,” I said, stifling a yawn. “Hang on.” I pushed the covers away and got up just as Lia appeared in the doorway. She was showered and fully dressed and looked exceedingly guilty about something. I frowned at her. And then it hit me.

“Jonathan?” I asked into the receiver.

“Listen, Veronica, I’m on a break here and don’t have much time,” said the bellhop, sounding harried. “If Lia’s not around, would you have her call me...” Lia lunged, snatching the phone out of my hand.

“Hey!” she yelled into it. “It’s me. I’m here. What’ve you got?” She turned her back and hunched over the receiver as though to shield it and whatever she was up to from me. “Okay, great. Awesome...Thanks, Jonathan...I owe you one...Yeah, yeah. See you later.” She hung up and whirled to face me.

“What’re you gawking at?”

“Why is Jonathan Krantz calling you at nine o clock in the morning on a Saturday?” I asked. “Or, at all for that matter?”

“It’s no big deal,” she said flippantly. “I ran into him the other day and we got to talking. He mentioned he’d heard rumors Clyde might be staying at the Crawford when he came to town for the museum dedication and I told him to call me when he knew anything for sure."

I stared at her.

It’s no big deal,” she repeated.

“Ran into him? Where?” Jonathan went to CHS with us, but Lia always avoided him. She never talked to him at Lynch’s, either. If she had, I’d have known. I was always there with her.

She clenched her jaw and didn’t answer.

“Lia?”

“Alright! I stopped by the Crawford to talk to him,” she admitted.

When, I wondered?

Last Saturday, she said, while she was out running errands for her mother.

Saturday. The day after she’d brought the subject of Clyde’s interview up with me at band practice. Apparently, when that last ditch effort to get me to comply had failed, she’d gone behind my back to carry out her plan without me. No wonder she’d stopped talking about it after that.

“I thought I told you to forget about sneaking into the Crawford?” I said, feeling my temperature rise. “My mom could lose her job.”

“Can we talk about this later? I have to go.” She moved to her closet, sweeping her Doc Martens off the floor and sitting at her vanity to put them on.

“Where’re you going?”

“Where do you think? Jonathan said he heard from a desk clerk that Clyde arrived late last night and, as far as he knows, hasn’t left again. He should be in his suite right now.”

“So?” I said.

“So, I’m going to go talk to him,” she said lightly.

“And just how do you plan to do that?” Was she, I wondered, just going to go up to Clyde’s room and knock on the door? Ask to see him?

“Why not?” Thanks to Jonathan, she knew the alias Clyde was checked in under and his room number.

“He’ll have security,” I said. “In the lobby and outside his suite door. They probably won’t even let you on the elevator without a room key.”

She paused. “Well then I guess Jonathan and I will just have to figure something out,” she said. “You know, since
you
won’t help me.”

I watched her for a second, anger and hurt welling inside me while she nonchalantly finished lacing her boots. When I managed to speak, my voice shook. “This is pretty awful of you,” I said. “You know that?”

She looked up at me. “Oh, stop it, you worrywart. No one’s going to connect you or your mom to this.” No one was ever even going to find out, she said. She grabbed her handheld tape recorder and keys from the vanity and headed for the door. I stepped in front of her.

“I’m not just talking about me and Mom,” I said. She didn’t even like Jonathan, I pointed out. But she knew he liked
her
so much he’d do anything for her, even put his job on the line. “You’re just using him,” I said. “Don’t you feel at all bad about it?”

“Get outta my way, Vee,” she said evenly.

“No. I won’t let you go.”

“I don’t need your permission.” I could tell she was getting really heated now, but so was I.

“I can’t believe you,” I said. “I can’t believe how selfish you are.”

“And I can’t believe what a wuss
you
are!” She fumed. “You know, Vee, I’m about sick of your weenie bullshit. Grow a spine, would you?”

Angry tears pricked at my eyes as her words hung in the air between us. “I’ve got a spine,” I finally said, voice hushed.

She eyed me, and in a softer voice said, “Sorry, Vee. But I’m not like you. I can’t just sit around waiting for stuff to fall into my lap all the time. You know?” She skirted around me and stomped out the door, nearly colliding with a sleepy Jake as he came up the hallway to see what was going on.

“What was all that about?” he yawned, glancing after his sister. I was almost too angry to appreciate the fact he was only wearing jeans and looked pretty amazing.

“Nothing,” I said, and walked toward him, shutting the door in his face.

I felt bad about it, but was too pissed to deal with anything but the impending disaster at hand. I stripped my pajamas off and yanked on a change of clothes from my drawer in Lia’s dresser, then laced up my Cons and pulled my now-limp curls into a pony tail.