Hurricane Kiss (12 page)

Chapter 22

RIVER

“What do you think that was?” Jillian screams, coming toward me.

“The roof,” I shout. I stop short, and she crashes into me, slamming my bad shoulder. I nearly double over from the pain.

“Ow!”

“River, omigod, I'm so sorry, are you OK?”

I squeeze my eyes shut and try to breathe. I grab the doorknob to brace myself, and we huddle against the stairwell door as the building tremors beneath us. It's like a crazy sick theme-park ride. I force myself to push the door open.

“Don't, River!”

I shake free and bolt up the staircase, and she runs behind me. As we get to the third floor, there's a thunderous groan, and the building seems to recoil from the blow. We both grab the handrail to steady ourselves. Finally, I pull open the stairwell door.

We both stop.

A crack several feet long runs along the corridor ceiling. I can see the light of the sky through it.

“A tree … it must have crashed on the roof. What else could have done that?” she says.

It's hard to imagine wind strong enough. Water is cascading through the gaping hole. Unless the rain stops the upper floor will be flooded in minutes—if the roof doesn't collapse altogether. I grab her arm, and we run back through the door and down the stairwell to the first floor.

“What do we do when the water starts rushing down here?”

“We're safe for now,” I say, but I'm not sure I believe it. “The rain will stop, it has to.”

We end up back in the principal's office where it's quieter, slamming the door behind us.

“Let's get some sleep now,” I say. Better than talking and going over everything. I give her the couch and get into a chair. “Who knows what the hell is ahead.”

“You had a dream,” she blurts out.

“What?”

“A nightmare, in your sleep.”

“What did I say?”

“You didn't talk much, but you sat up and then reached for your knife.”

How much did she find out? “A kid in the place … had throwing knives. I learned to use them.”

“How did he get them?”

“Somebody brought them in for him. I don't even think the metal detector worked. He hid them inside a broken wall. They never found out.”

“He let you use them?”

“Between the guards' shifts we used to sneak into the rec room.” I feel like heaving when I think of that place. “It had a Ping-Pong table but no paddles, and a target, but no darts. So we used to throw the knives. I got pretty good.”

“What happened, River? Why did they arrest you?”

I look at her and turn away. “A lot of stuff. Starting with the drugs.”

“What drugs?”

“You don't know?”

“I heard a rumor, that's all.”

Hard to make out if she's playing me or not. “Somebody planted coke in my locker. I thought everybody knew that.”

“I heard that but I didn't believe it, and I couldn't find out anything. And you were still in school.”

I look at her skeptically.

“I'm telling you the truth,” she says. “When did it happen?”

“A couple of weeks before everything blew up.”

JILLIAN

My mind flashes back to a gossip blog that lasted until the principal heard about it. It was called
ISpy
. I read it and then forgot about it. Half of it sounded made up anyway.

Under hot tips, someone wrote anonymously:
Vindictive b*t*h? How far would a jilted team player go for revenge?
I was with Aidan when I read it.

“Who do you think the vindictive bitch is?”

“Could only be one person.”

“Who?” I asked.

“Lexie.”

“How do you know?”

“She got dumped,” he said.

“By River?”

“Who else?” he said.

“What did she do for revenge?”

“I heard rumors, that's all.”

“About what?” I said.

He holds his thumb on one nostril and inhales. “Someone put coke in his locker.”

“Why?”

“To get back at him.”

“How did you know about the coke?”

“You think I got the drugs for her?” Aidan said. “I'm not crazy.”

Aidan wouldn't do anything that would jeopardize basketball. I was being crazy. But he worked in the gym office. Did he find River's combination or tell Lexie where to look? Or maybe he just looked away when he saw her looking in the file drawer she had no business looking in.

She had to know River would get expelled if the school found drugs on him. That went a lot further than getting back at someone who broke up with you. But that was the last I heard of it. And River was still in school.

I turn back to River. “Who planted the coke, do you know?”

“Maybe.”

“What happened?”

“It was there one day, I don't know how,” River said. “I didn't think anyone knew my combination.”

“Did you report it?”

“I didn't have a chance. Briggs told me. Someone sent him an anonymous note.”

“What did he do?”

“He said he knew it was bullshit and that I wasn't a cokehead. He said he'd hold the coke for evidence, in case the person tried something else.”

“So you don't know why they did it or how?”

River smirks and lifts his hand as if there's no point in going on.

“What happened, after that?”

“A lot, Jillian.”

“I … I don't understand.”

“Lexie and I had a thing for a while.”

“I know. So?”

He shrugs. “I'm a guy, she came on to me heavy, so I fooled around with her. It was nothing serious, but she wouldn't stop. She thought we were this power couple.”

I look at him, not understanding.

“Have you seen the colored bracelets on her ankle?”

“Yeah.”

“Each one is for one of her …”

“What?”

“Conquests,” he says. “But I was the star player … she couldn't go any higher. ” He shrugs. “She was insecure—that meant a lot to her, and she wouldn't let go. But something happened,” River says. “I got into deep shit with the coach, and I finally used that as an excuse and broke up with her.”

“What happened?”

He coughs and looks away. “He caught us in the locker room—one night, after practice. She sneaked in after everybody had left. I didn't even know she was planning to, but she liked to take chances and get over on people. Danger turned her on. Anyway, it was dark, and we were in the back. I told her it was stupid to be there. That we should go out somewhere. But she wouldn't listen. Finally, I gave in. I thought we were alone, only we weren't.”

“What do you mean?”

“Briggs walked in on us. He's a goddamn bloodhound.”

“What did he do?”

“He grabbed her by the back of the neck and without a word he forced her out the door, slamming it behind her. Then he walked back to me and said, ‘Down on the floor.' He made me do fifty push-ups—with his boot on my back.”

“Why didn't you report him?”

“Report him? Who do you think they'd believe? I wasn't exactly the model student. Plus he had the coke too, so there were two strikes against me if he wanted to get me tossed.” He shakes his head. “It gets more complicated.”

Chapter 23

RIVER

I started to get strange vibes around Lexie. It was like being on a slow-moving train that without warning races out of control and can't be slowed down. She got hold of me and the closer she got, the more I realized I couldn't get free. Like that weird old movie
Fatal Attraction
. A one-night thing turns out to be the start of something that grows sicker and sicker until you realize the girl is a complete nutso, but by then she's got you by the balls.

The first inkling I got of what she was really like was after cheerleading practice one afternoon. She was bitching about one of the new girls who joined the team. She seemed obsessed with her. The girl wouldn't listen to Lexie; she had her own ideas and wouldn't cooperate. With Lexie, it was her way or the highway. They were doing this pyramid, she said, and “what ended up happening” was that the girl got thrown forward. She landed hard and broke her ankle, and that was it: she was off the squad. She was lucky she didn't break her neck. She was thrown from eleven feet in the air to the hard ground. Lexie didn't know why they didn't use mats or padding.

“Wasn't there a spotter?” I asked.

“She was in the bathroom; she took a break.”

The whole thing hit me wrong. Just the way she told me. It didn't faze her. She saw it as karmic justice or something.

“Who was holding her?” I asked.

“I had one leg,” she said. Before I could say anything she said, “She fell! It wasn't my fault. She shouldn't even have been part of the pyramid. She didn't know what she was doing.”

“How did she fall?”

“She leaned forward, she lost balance, she was an amateur—how should I know? I warned her. I told her she wasn't ready for the squad.”

We were in my room watching TV. I started to turn away.

“Let's not fight,” she said. In seconds she was on top of me and that kind of ended the conversation. When I thought about it later, it was clear.

Lexie set it up. She wanted her to fall.

A flash of light from outside hits the window again. Then it's gone. Jillian's eyes widen. I get up.

“River, don't!”

“Stay here.” I crack open the office door and take a step out into the hallway, the water pooling around me. I look around. Nothing. A smashing sound from outside makes me jerk back. Then I charge down the hall.

JILLIAN

River's run off somewhere again, crazed, frantic. I'm alone. The window frames whine incessantly in the wind. Rain pelts the building in an unrelenting torrent. I go out to the hall. The entire first floor is flooded now. I rush through the pooling water to the stairwell and see water rushing down the stairs.

Stop it, stop it
, I want to scream. Everything is out of control. Like a two-year-old, I want my mom. Only I have no idea where she and Ethan are now. Hours ago she was on the radio, but then she disappeared into a sea of static. Is she alive? Is she out in the storm reporting? Marooned somewhere? Did Ethan reach Austin? What about Kelly and Aidan, and River's dad? No TV, net, phone, or radio.

Where is my world? Everything inside me seizes up, my heart skipping, beating soft and then hard, like it's lost its normal rhythm.

Then random thoughts of things that could happen. The bizarre stories you hear about after a hurricane: people disappearing after torrents of water shoved them off embankments, others who had heart attacks and died from stress.

Or the eerie, inexplicable stories like the one in the news about a man who had left a stack of folded laundry on his bed. When he returned home after the storm, the whole house was flooded, everything he owned waterlogged and destroyed. His queen-size bed was floating like a boat in the water. But on top of it was his laundry, exactly as he had left it. Neatly folded. Perfectly dry.

I stand in the corridor trying to hear something, but how can I with the storm insulating us from any other sounds. I see a dark shadow and jump.

“Nothing,” River says, appearing out of nowhere. He hesitates. “But …”

“But what?”

He bites at his lip.

“Tell me.”

“I have this feeling.”

“What kind of … feeling?”

He runs his hand through his hair. “I don't know.” He looks around. “We're getting flooded out here. We have to move.”

“Back to the storage closet? At least it has no windows. And upstairs, we're too close to the roof if it collapses.”

“Whatever,” he says. He's holding back. He looks nervous, uneasy, but trying not to let it show.

“What?” I say.

“Nothing.”

We make our way from the office along the corridor. The water's up to our knees now. River opens the closet door with the key.

“How did you get a key?”

“Al.”

“Who?”

“The custodian.”

“Is he a football fan?”

“An alcoholic,” River says. “All it took was a six-pack.”

No wonder the flag was still flying. And the water was left on. Then it hits me why he didn't want to come back here. Lexie. I could have sworn that I smelled her perfume in here. I knew the scent. It was strong, musky, and cloying. It was made by Dior. It was called Poison.

Chapter 24

RIVER

We pile up the mats and manage to stay dry, almost a foot above the water pooling on the floor. It's better than upstairs with the rain pouring through the roof. I kick aside a roll of paper towels floating in the water. It's claustrophobic in here, like being inside a stuck elevator.

Sure, I think of Lexie. That's why I didn't want to come in here. Once or twice a week we met here during school. It was a goof at first. But then it wasn't. If I didn't want to meet her, she got mad.

“I thought you loved me,” she'd say, her eyes darkening. After that, I never knew what she would pull.

Once when we were on my bike, she grabbed my arm so hard that I nearly crashed into the car in the next lane. I freaked. I dropped her at home and rode off without a word. She came over the next day with an expensive speaker system she bought for me. I didn't want to take it.

“I'll never do anything like that again, I swear,” she said. “I had PMS and I was down because of the Spanish test I nearly failed. I love you,” she said. “I'd never hurt you, you know that, right, River?” She had a way of turning wide-eyed and earnest when it was convenient.

I didn't love her, not even close. I never told her I did, so I don't know why she thought it. I knew it was only a matter of time until she did something worse.
Break up with her
, I kept telling myself,
get it over with
. Only I was afraid to.

“There's something about Briggs that I don't understand,” Jillian says, interrupting my thoughts.

“What?”

“He seems so straight and law abiding, but he makes his own rules, like the keys and the hours of practice.”

“Rules? He doesn't care about rules. He has one goal in life, to coach the winning team and reward the guys who get him there and crush the ones who go against him.”

“Didn't he ever get in trouble?”

“With who?”

“Teachers, the principal, parents? I mean my way or the highway doesn't endear you to people.”

“Would your parents complain if you had your pick of scholarships and you became a star? And the principal? We were heading to the finals and the school was eligible for all kinds of grants. Briggs is a goddamned hero to everybody. No one cares how he does it. Everybody takes his shit, no matter what.”

“But that's not everything.”

“What planet are you on? The game is about winning. No one's going to touch him.”

She lies back and doesn't say anything. I press my cheek to the mat and listen to her soft, steady breathing. Strangely, it calms me. I shift, bumping her arm, and then ease away.

“I wonder where your dad is,” she says.

“Probably sitting in his car to prove he was right.”

“What was he like—when you were little?”

Where do I start?

“I remember him trying to get me out of diapers,” I say, finally. “And taking me to the john over and over to train me. ‘Grow up,' he kept saying. His way to get someone to do something was to grind them down.”

“How did he get along with your mom?”

“She stuck with him. He worked long hours, and my mom brought me up. We would read scripts together, acting out parts, even goofing around sometimes so I was the female lead and she was the male, so I'd be sensitive to characters of the opposite sex—although I didn't get any of that then … You know what?”

“What?”

“I always thought I had such a great mom, I didn't need a dad. I even resented it when he was around. How sad is that?” I reach for my knife. Click, open. Click, closed, again and again in a familiar rhythm.

JILLIAN

“Let's talk about you for a change,” River says.

I look at him warily. “What about me?”

“Did you know your dad?”

He's dead
, I'm about to say, out of habit. He sort of is. I get a perverse thrill by lying about him. I'm even good at it. Maybe it's in the genes. Anyway, it's partly true. The only thing still alive about life with him are the memories. A soft, “he's dead,” short-circuits the conversation when someone asks. They mutter something about being sorry and then drop the subject because it makes them uncomfortable.

Only I can't lie to River, not after he's opened up to me. I want him to know. Especially now.

“One day we were a family and then we weren't.” That about sums it up. It was pretty black-and-white, if you took the time to look. Only none of us did. I guess we didn't want to know. It was easier to pretend things would go on the way they were and that when my dad didn't come home until the middle of the night, it wasn't out of the ordinary.

“What do you mean?”

“I guess it had been going on for a while, but Ethan and I were the last ones to know.” I start biting at my nail. It's my imagination, I know, but the wind sounds like women screaming outside.

“My dad worked long hours and traveled a lot. He was a journalist too. That's how he met my mom.”

“So?”

“So? So my mom was faithful.”

“What happened?”

“There was this girl, a new reporter at the paper. He was helping her with her story. Only it didn't end there. He started staying out late … I remember hearing my parents fighting one night, so I went to the door of my room and opened it to listen.

“‘I was out with a guy from the copy desk,' my dad said. ‘I lost track of time.'

“‘Do you think I'm an idiot, Steven?' my mom said. ‘I pay the American Express bills, remember? I know where you go when you say you're working late, or around the corner from work having a drink.'

“‘What do you do, spy on me, Ellen?' I heard a door slam and then my mom started crying.

“They started fighting more and more,” I tell River, who narrows his eyes, caught up in the story. “And then one day it stopped. No arguing, no talking, nothing. They were rarely in the same room together from then on. They were past excuses. Finally he stopped coming home. Nothing was the same after that.”

River blows out a breath. “That's hard.”

“I saw his girlfriend's picture online. She was blond like a Barbie with this stupid grin on her face. She was young enough to be his daughter, I swear.”

“How old were you?”

“Eight when he left. I never saw him again. Eventually he moved halfway across the country and got a job with another paper, we heard. Just left us. Can you imagine?”

“No,” he whispers.

“How can a man abandon his family and turn his back on his kids when they need him? No matter how I felt about someone else, I could never do that. Never. Never, never, never, never.”

I squeeze my eyes shut, but it doesn't stop the memories. If only there were a delete key in your head to kill out whatever you wanted to erase from your life.

I stare at the level of the water around us, slowly getting higher. How long would it take until we were submerged?

“I remember seeing the suitcases downstairs. ‘Where are you going?' I asked him. ‘On a trip,' he said. ‘When will you be back?' He didn't answer.”

My eyes water even now. It never stops.

“He said nothing,” I whisper. “Not even a lie. I think it was worse than having a parent die, because then it's final and there's nothing you can do and you eventually move on. But this way, it left an opening, even though that was ridiculous because he was never coming back. But I was just a kid, and kids don't believe in never.”

Neither of us says anything for a while. I sit there thinking back on it, and I remember something I never focused on before. The weather. There was a nor'easter the night my dad left. I remember thinking it was a crazy night to go out if you didn't have to. I always hated thunder, and when I went upstairs I hid under the covers to block out the sound.

My heart starts to hammer. Is that what your brain does—weave your worst memories together into stories? Or nightmares?

“What happened after that?” River asks.

“Ethan ran away … the next day. My mom called him for dinner and he didn't answer, so we went into his room but he wasn't there. We freaked, both of us.”

“Why did he run away?”

“To look for him, to bring him back.” I rip at my nail, pulling it off so close to the skin it throbs inside. “Two days later the police found him. He was standing on the side of a street downtown hitchhiking. A stupid little kid. He could have been killed or kidnapped. After that, all I knew of my dad were the stories I saw in the newspaper with his byline. I made a point of never reading any of them.” I make a face. “You know what I used to do?”

“What?”

“Take a ballpoint pen and poke holes in his stories. I'd stab them again and again with the pen so when I finished you couldn't read a word. I hated him so much. He started over and pretended that Ethan and I didn't exist. No child support, no anything at first. At least until my mom hired a lawyer and went after him.”

“Jesus. Deadbeat dad.”

“Yeah. So I know what living with one parent is like. It's a job one person can't ace. At least not if you need to feed your kids on one salary and pay rent and you're paying a lawyer to get child support.” I shake my head back and forth, lost in the past. “Don't tell.”

“I wouldn't—”

“—
I
don't tell,” I say, finishing my thought. “I don't tell … anyone. I never have.”

He looks at me questioningly.

“But you know the weirdest thing?”

“What?”

“For some crazy reason I still feel like I did something wrong. Like it was my fault in some way that things weren't right in the family.”

“Kids always blame themselves,” he says.

“But I still do. I think that maybe if I had been different … Am I crazy?”

River shakes his head. “You can't be.”

“Why?”

He looks at me with his haunted eyes and his face softens. “Because I've got the monopoly on crazy.”

I'm glad he knows about my family. The pain has changed. It's not as deep anymore. I wonder if that's the way it is for my mom too. I never asked her. Now who knew if I'd ever have the chance.

“What about
your
mom?” Definitely need to change the subject. “Did she work after you were born?”

He shifts on the mat and blows out a breath. He sees what I'm doing, but he goes along. “She gave up acting, but she wrote screenplays. I think he was jealous. He didn't fit into her world of movie people. But mostly it was because it took time away from him. When he got promoted he convinced her to give it up. ‘I can buy you whatever you want,' he told her.” He grunts. “What she wanted was a life of her own. Being Mrs. Harlan Daughtry didn't cut it for her. And then when he started in the oil business, there were dinners she had to go to with him and lunches …”

My mom would hate that kind of life
, I think.

“He thought that should have been enough for her,” River says, going on like he can't stop. “It was like he was living a hundred years ago. Then one day,” he says, lying on his back, eyes closed, “she got sick.”

RIVER

Even through the closet walls we hear the explosive sounds. It's like the end of the goddamn world outside. It's so sick and morbid, I know, but I think of her dead, underground. What would happen if she had been buried here? Maybe her coffin would have floated up out of the ground, like she had no real place in the world anymore. No place to rest, ever.

“What happened?” Jillian asks.

I go back to when it started.

“She was in bed when I got home one day. ‘I just have to rest, I'll be fine,' she said. Pretty much from that afternoon on, she was in bed more than out of it.

“She went to doctor after doctor. Then she started going to the hospital for treatments. Weeks later, whenever she got out of bed, there would be clumps of hair on her pillow. I didn't understand what that meant. She looked at me with this pitying expression. She knew what was ahead for me and she was powerless to stop it.”

How do you deal knowing that you're leaving your kid to grow up without you, with just one parent—the one who doesn't know how to do the job? The one who can't replace you?

I look at Jillian and think of her story. Some parents choose to abandon you. Others are helpless to stop it.

“Everything in my world changed after that,” I say. “What did I care about football when my mom was dying? But my dad needed the Friday night lights more than ever.”

JILLIAN

The water continues to seep under the door, rising higher on the mats. River has gone quiet. He's not thinking about the storm. At least not the one outside.

“But after you moved, you didn't have to keep playing football. Why didn't you stop when you moved here?”

He exhales hard. “As soon as I told my coach in LA that I was moving, he contacted Briggs. He thought he was doing me a favor. Day one Briggs wanted to see me. It was like it was already decided.” River pauses. “I'm so sick of going over this,” he says. He rolls over.

Minutes go by. I turn toward him. Is he just breathing softly, or is he asleep?

“You still up?”

“Yeah.”

“What are you thinking?”

“About the first time I saw you,” he says.

“When was that?”

“The day we were moving in.”

“I saw you, but I didn't think you saw me,” I say.

“I saw you,” he insists.

“When?”

“I was helping my dad carry boxes into the house. You were getting something out of your car and glanced over at me, but I was busy trying not to drop a shitload of dishes.”

“Not cool.”

“Right.” He stops.

“What?” I say.

“What what?”

I swallow. “What did you think?”