Haunted (14 page)

May I just say that my mother was a good deal less sympathetic than Jesse? She said I deserved every blister for being so asinine as to wear new shoes to school without breaking them in first. Then she fussed around my room, straightening it up (although since acquiring a roommate of the hot Latino male persuasion, I have become quite conscientious about keeping my room in a fairly neat condition. I mean, I don’t exactly want Jesse seeing any of my stray bras lying around. And really, if anything, he was the one who was always messing things up, leaving these enormous piles of books and open CD cases everywhere. And then of course there was Spike).

“Honestly, Susie,” my mom said, wrinkling her nose at the sight of the big orange tabby sprawled out on my window seat. “That cat…”

Jesse, who had politely dematerialized when my mom showed up, in order to afford me some modicum of privacy, would have been greatly disturbed to hear his pet disparaged so.

“How’s the patient?” Andy wanted to know, appearing in my doorway with a dinner tray containing grilled salmon with dill and crème fraîche, cold cucumber soup, and a freshly baked sourdough dinner roll. You know, unhappy as I’d been at the prospect of my mom remarrying and forcing me to move all the way across the country and acquire three stepbrothers, I had to admit, the food made it all worth it.

Well, the food and Jesse. At least up until recently.

“She’s definitely not going to be able to go to school tomorrow,” my mom said, shaking her head despairingly at the sight of my feet. “I mean, look at them, Andy. Do you think we need to take her to…I don’t know…PromptCare, or something?”

Andy bent down and looked at my feet. “I don’t know that they could do anything more,” he said, admiring Jesse’s excellent bandaging job. “Looks like she’s taken pretty good care of it herself.”

“You know what I probably do need,” I said. “Some magazines and a six-pack of Diet Coke and one of those really big Crunch bars.”

“Don’t push it, young lady,” my mom said severely. “You are not going to loll around in bed all day tomorrow like some kind of injured ballerina. I am going to call Mr. Walden tonight and make sure he gets you all of your homework. And I have to say, Susie, I am very disappointed in you. You are too old for this kind of nonsense. You could have called me at the station, you know. I would have come out to get you.”

Uh, yeah. And then she would have found out that I was walking home not from school, like I’d told everyone, but from the home of a guy who had a dead Hell’s Angel working for him and who had, oh yeah, tried to put the moves on me with his drooling grandpa right in the next room. Moves I had, at least up to a point, reciprocated.

No, thanks.

I overheard Andy, as the two of them left my room, say softly to my mom, “Don’t you think you were a little hard on her? I think she learned her lesson.”

My mom, however, didn’t answer Andy back softly at all. No, she wanted me to hear her reply: “No, I do not think I was too hard on her. She’ll be leaving for college in two years, Andy, and living on her own. If this is an example of the kinds of decisions she’ll be making then, I shudder to think what lies ahead. In fact, I’m thinking we should cancel our plans to go away Friday night.”

“Not on your life,” I heard Andy say very emphatically from the bottom of the stairs.

“But—”

“No buts,” Andy said. “We’re going.”

And then I couldn’t hear them anymore.

Jesse, who rematerialized at the end of all of this, had a little smile on his face, having clearly overheard.

“It isn’t funny,” I said to him sourly.

“It’s a little funny,” he said.

“No,” I said, “it isn’t.”

“I think,” Jesse said, cracking open the book Father Dom had loaned him, “it’s time for a little reading out loud.”

“No,” I groaned. “Not
Critical Theory Since
Plato
. Please, I am begging you. It’s not fair, I can’t even run away.”

“I know,” Jesse said with a gleam in his eyes. “At last I have you where I want you….”

I have to admit, my breath kind of caught in my throat when he said that.

But of course he didn’t mean what I
wanted
him to mean. He just meant that now he could read his stupid book out loud, and I couldn’t escape.

“Ha-ha,” I said wittily, to cover the fact that I thought he had meant something else.

Then Jesse held up a copy of
Cosmo
he’d hidden between the pages of
Critical Theory Since Plato
. While I stared at him in astonishment, he said, “I borrowed it from your mother’s room. She won’t miss it for a while.”

Then he tossed the magazine onto my bed.

I nearly choked. I mean, it was the nicest—the
nicest
—thing anyone had done for me in ages. And the fact that Jesse—Jesse, whom I’d become convinced lately hated me—had done it, positively floored me. Was it possible that he didn’t hate me? Was it possible that, in fact, he
liked
me a little? I mean, I know Jesse
likes
me. Why else would he always be saving my life and all? But was it possible he liked me in that
special
way? Or was he only being nice to me on account of the fact that I was injured?

It didn’t matter. Not just then, anyway. The fact that Jesse wasn’t ignoring me for a change—whatever his motive—was all that mattered.

Happily, I began to read an article about seven ways to please a man, and didn’t even mind so much that I didn’t have one—a man, I mean, of my very own. Because at last it seemed that whatever weirdness had existed between Jesse and me since the day of that kiss—that all too brief, sense-shattering kiss—was going away. Maybe now things would get back to normal. Maybe now he’d start to realize how stupid he’d been. Maybe now he’d finally get it through his head that he needed me. More than needed me. Wanted me.

As much, I now knew in no uncertain terms, as Paul Slater did.

Hey, a girl can dream, right?

And that was exactly what I did. For eighteen blissful hours, I dreamed of a life where the guy I liked actually liked me back. I put all thoughts of mediation—shifting and soul transference, Paul Slater and Father Dominic, Craig and Neil Jankow—from my mind. The last part was easy—I asked Jesse to keep an eye on Craig for me, and he happily agreed to do so.

And I won’t lie to you: It was great. No nightmares about being chased down long, fogenshrouded hallways toward a bottomless drop-off. Yeah, it wasn’t quite like the old, prekiss days, but it came close. Sort of. Until the next day when the phone rang.

I picked it up, and CeeCee’s voice shrieked at me, loudly enough that I had to hold the receiver away from my head.

“I cannot believe you decided to take a sick day,” CeeCee ranted. “Today, of all days! How could you, Suze? We have so much campaigning to do!”

It took me a few seconds before I realized what she was talking about. Then I went, “Oh, you mean the election? CeeCee, look, I—”

“I mean, you should see what Kelly’s doing. She’s handing out candy bars—candy bars—that say
Vote Prescott/Slater
on the wrappers! Okay? And what are you doing? Oh, lolling around in bed because your feet hurt, if what your brother says is true.”

“Stepbrother,” I corrected her.

“Whatever. Suze, you can’t do this to me. I don’t care what you do—put on some fuzzy bunny slippers if you have to—just get here and be your usual charming self.”

“CeeCee,” I said. It was kind of hard to concentrate because Jesse was nearby. Not just nearby, but touching me. And okay, only putting more Band-Aids on my feet, but it was still way distracting. “Look. I’m pretty sure I don’t want to be vice president—”

But CeeCee didn’t want to hear it.

“Suze,” she yelled into Adam’s cell phone. I knew she was using Adam’s cell phone and that she was on her lunch break, because I could hear the sound of gulls screaming—gulls flock to the school assembly yard during lunch, hoping to score a dropped French fry or two—and I could also hear Adam in the background cheering her on. “It is bad enough that Kelly Mousse-for-Brains Prescott gets elected president of our class every year. But at least when you got elected vice president last year, some semblance of dignity was accorded to the office. But if that blue-eyed rich boy gets elected—I mean, he is just Kelly’s pawn. He doesn’t care. He’ll do whatever Kelly says.”

CeeCee had one thing right: Paul didn’t care. Not about the junior class at the Junipero Serra Mission Academy, anyway. I wasn’t sure just what, exactly, Paul did care about, since it certainly wasn’t his family or mediating. But one thing he definitely was not going to do was take his position as vice president very seriously.

“Listen, CeeCee,” I said. “I’m really sorry. But I truly did screw up my feet, and I really can’t walk. Maybe tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” CeeCee squawked. “The election’s Friday! That gives us only one full day to campaign!”

“Well,” I said, “maybe you should consider running in my place.”

“
Me?
” CeeCee sounded disgusted. “First of all, I was not duly nominated. And second of all, I will never swing the male vote. I mean, let’s face it, Suze. You’re the one with the looks
and
the brains. You’re like the Reese Witherspoon of our grade. I’m more like… Dick Cheney.”

“CeeCee,” I said, “you are way underestimating yourself. You—”

“You know what?” CeeCee sounded bitter. “Forget it. I don’t care. I don’t care what happens. Let Paul Look-at-My-New-BMW Slater be our class vice president. I give up.”

She would have slammed the receiver down then, I could tell, if she’d been holding a normal phone. As it was, she could only hang up on me. I had to say hello a few more times, just to be sure, but when no one answered, I knew.

“Well,” I said, hanging up. “She’s mad.”

“It sounded like it,” Jesse said. “Who is this new person, the one running against you, who she is so afraid will win?”

And there it was. The direct question. The direct question, the truthful answer to which was, “Paul Slater.” If I did not answer it that way—by saying “Paul Slater”—I would really and truly be lying to Jesse. Everything else I’d told him lately had been only half-truths, or maybe white lies.

But this one. This was the one that later, if he ever found out the truth, was going to get me in trouble.

I didn’t know then, of course, that later was going to be three hours later. I just assumed later would be, you know, next week, at the earliest. Maybe even next month. By which point, I’d have thought up an appropriate solution to the Paul Slater problem.

But since I thought I had plenty of time to sort the whole thing out before Jesse got wind of it, I said, in response to his question, “Oh, just this new guy.”

Which would have worked out fine if, a few hours later, David hadn’t knocked on my bedroom door and went, “Suze? Something just came for you.”

“Oh, come on in.”

David threw open my door, but I couldn’t see him. All I could see from where I lay on my bed was a giant bouquet of red roses. I mean, there had to have been two dozen at least.

“Whoa,” I said, sitting up fast. Because even then, I had no clue. I thought Andy had sent them.

“Yeah,” David said. I still couldn’t see his face, because it was blocked by all the flowers. “Where should I put ’em?”

“Oh,” I said with a glance at Jesse, who was staring at the flowers almost as astonishedly as I was. “Window seat is good.”

David lowered the flowers—which had come complete with a vase—carefully onto my window seat, shoving a few of the cushions aside first to make a place for them. Then, once he’d gotten them stable, he straightened and said, plucking a small white tag from the green leaves, “Here’s the card.”

“Thanks,” I said, tearing the tiny envelope open.

Get well soon! With love from Andy
, was what I had expected it to say.

Or
We miss you, from the junior class of Junipero Serra Mission Academy
.

Or even,
You are a very foolish girl, from Father Dominic.

What it said, instead, completely shocked me. The more so because of course Jesse was standing close enough to read over my shoulder. And even David, standing halfway across the room, could not have missed the bold, black script:

Forgive me, Suze. With love, Paul.

So, basically, I was a dead woman.

Especially when David, who did not, of course, know that Jesse was standing right there—or that he is the man I happen to love with an all-consuming passion…at least when Paul Slater was not kissing me—went, “Is that from that Paul guy? I thought so. He was asking me all these questions about why you weren’t in school today.”

I couldn’t even bring myself to look in Jesse’s direction, I was so mortified.

“Um,” I said. “Yeah.”

“What does he want you to forgive him for?” David wanted to know. “The whole vice president thing?”

“Um,” I said. “I don’t know.”

“Because you know, your campaign is really in trouble,” David said. “No offense, but Kelly’s handing out candy bars. You better come up with something gimmicky fast, or you might lose the election.”

“Thanks, David,” I said. “Bye, David.”

David looked at me strangely for a moment, as if not sure why I was dismissing him so abruptly. Then he glanced around the room, as if realizing for the first time that we might not be alone, turned beet red, and said, “Okay, bye,” and was out of my room like a shot.

Summoning all my courage, I turned my head toward Jesse and went, “Look, it’s not what you…”

But my voice trailed off, because beside me, Jesse was looking murderous. I mean, really, like he wanted to murder someone.

Only it was anybody’s guess who he wanted to murder, because I think at that point, I was as prime a candidate for assassination as Paul.