Lock and Key (27 page)

For a moment, I just stood there, watching its shadow move down the street. It was only when I started walking again that it hit me.

It’s herons and waterbirds you really need to worry about,
Heather had said.
One swoop, and they can do some serious damage.

No way,
I thought, but at the same time I found myself picking up the pace as Cora’s house came into view, breaking into a jog, then a run. It was cold out—the air was stinging my lungs, and I knew I had to look crazy, but I kept going, my breath ragged in my chest as I cut across the neighbor’s lawn, then alongside Cora’s garage to the side yard.

The bird was impossible to miss, standing in the shallow end, its wings slightly raised as if it had only just landed there. Distantly, I realized that it was beautiful, caught with the sun setting in the distance, its elegant form reflected in the pond’s surface. But then it dipped its massive beak down into the water.

“Stop!” I yelled, my voice carrying and carrying far. “Stop it!”

The bird jerked, its wings spreading out a little farther, so it looked like it was hovering. But it stayed where it was.

For a long moment, nothing happened. The bird stood there, wings outstretched, with me only a short distance away, my heart thumping in my ears. I could hear cars passing on the street, a door slamming somewhere a few yards over. But all around us, it was nothing but still.

At any moment, I knew the bird could reach down and pluck up a fish, maybe even my fish. For all I knew I was already too late to save anything.

“Get out!” I screamed, louder this time, as I moved closer. “Now!
Get out now!
”

At first, it didn’t move. But then, almost imperceptibly at first, it began to lift up, then a little farther, and farther still. I was so close to it as it moved over me, its enormous wings spread out, pumping higher and higher into the night sky, so amazing and surreal, like something you could only imagine. And maybe I would have thought it was only a dream, if Jamie hadn’t seen it, too.

I didn’t even realize he was standing right behind me, his hands in his pockets, and his face upturned, until I turned to watch as the bird soared over us, still rising.

“It was a heron,” I told him, forgetting our silence. I was gasping, my breath uneven. “It was in the pond.”

He nodded. “I know.”

I swallowed, crossing my arms over my chest. My heart was still pounding, so hard I wondered if he could hear it. “I’m sorry for what I did,” I said. “I’m so, so sorry.”

For a moment, he was quiet. “Okay,” he said finally. Then he reached a hand up, resting it on my shoulder, and together, we watched the bird soar over the roofline into the sky.

Chapter Ten

“You want buttered, or not?”

“Either is fine,” I said.

Olivia eyed me over the counter, then walked over to the butter dispenser, sticking the bag of popcorn she was holding underneath it and giving it a couple of quick smacks with her hand. “Then you are officially my favorite kind of customer,” she said. “As well as unlike ninety-nine percent of the moviegoing population.”

“Really.”

“Most people,” she said, turning the bag and shaking it slightly, then adding a bit more, “have very strong views on their butter preference. Some want none—the popcorn must be dry, or they freak out. Others want it sopping to the point they can feel it through the bag.”

I made a face. “Yuck.”

She shrugged. “I don’t judge. Unless you’re one of those totally anal-retentive types that wants it in specific layers, which takes ages. Then I hate you.”

I smiled, taking the popcorn as she slid it across to me. “Thanks,” I said, reaching for my wallet. “What do I—?”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, waving me off.

“You sure?”

“If you’d asked for butter layers, I would have charged you. But that was easy. Come on.”

She came out from behind the counter, and I followed her across the lobby of the Vista 10—which was mostly empty except for some kids playing video games by the rest-rooms—to the box office door. She pulled it open, ducking inside, then flipped the sign in the window to OPEN before clearing a bunch of papers from a nearby stool for me to sit down. “You sure? ” I said, glancing around. “Your boss won’t mind? ”

“My dad’s the manager,” she said. “Plus I’m working Saturday morning, the kiddie shift, against my will. The girl who was supposed to be here flaked out on him. I can do what I want.”

“The kiddie—?” I began, then stopped when I saw a woman approaching with about five elementary school- aged children, some running ahead in front, others dragging along behind. One kid had a handheld video game and wasn’t even looking where he was going, yet still managed to navigate the curb without tripping, which was kind of impressive. The woman, who appeared to be in her mid-forties and was wearing a long green sweater and carrying a huge purse, stopped in front of the window, squinting up.

“Mom,” one of the kids, a girl with ponytails, said, tugging on her arm. “I want Smarties.”

“No candy,” the woman murmured, still staring up at the movie listings.

“But you promised!” the girl said, her voice verging on a whine. One of the other kids, a younger boy, was now on her other side, tugging as well. I watched the woman reach out to him absently, brushing her hand over the top of his head as he latched himself around her leg.

“Yes!” the kid with the handheld yelled, jumping up and down. “I made level five with the cherries!”

Olivia shot me a look, then pushed down the button by her microphone, leaning into it. “Can I help you?” she asked.

“Yes,” the woman said, still staring up, “I need . . . five children and one adult for
Pretzel Dog Two
.”

Olivia punched this into her register. “That’ll be thirty-six dollars.”

"Thirty-six? ” the woman said, finally looking at us. The girl was tugging her arm again. “With the child’s price? Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s crazy. It’s just a movie!”

“Don’t I know it,” Olivia told her, hitting the ticket button a few times. She put her hand on the tickets as the woman reached into her huge purse, digging around for a few minutes before finally coming up with two twenties. Then Olivia slid them across, along with her change. “Enjoy the show.”

The woman grumbled, hoisting her bag up her shoulder, then moved into the theater, the kids trailing along behind her. Olivia sighed, sitting back and stretching her arms over her head as two minivans pulled into the lot in front of us in quick succession.

“Don’t I know it,” I said, remembering my mom with her clipboard, on so many front stoops. “My mom used to say that.”

“Empathy works,” Olivia replied. “And it’s not like she’s wrong. I mean, it
is
expensive. But we make the bulk of our money on concessions, and she’s sneaking in food for all those rug rats. So it all comes out even, really.”

I looked over my shoulder back into the lobby, where the woman was now leading her brood to a theater. “You think? ”

“Did you see that purse? Please.” She reached over, taking a piece of popcorn from my bag, which I hadn’t even touched. Apparently she’d noticed, next saying, “What? Too much butter?”

I shook my head, looking down at it. “No, it’s fine.”

“I was about to say. Don’t get picky on me now.”

The minivans were deboarding now, people emptying car seats and sliding open back doors. Olivia sighed, checking her watch. “I didn’t really come here for the popcorn,” I said. “I wanted . . . I just wanted to thank you.”

“You already did,” she said.

“No,” I corrected her, “I
tried
—twice—but you wouldn’t let me. Which, frankly, I just don’t understand.”

She reached for the popcorn again, taking out a handful. “Honestly,” she said as another pack of parents and kids approached, “it’s not that complicated. You did something for me, I did something for you. We’re even. Let it go already.”

This was easier said than done, though, something I considered as she sold a bunch of tickets, endured more kvetching about the prices, and directed one woman with a very unhappy toddler in the direction of the bathroom. By the time things had calmed down, fifteen minutes had passed, and I’d worked my way halfway through the popcorn bag.

“Look,” I said, “all I’m saying is that I just . . . I want you to know I’m not like that.”

“Like what? ” she said, arranging some bills in the register.

“Like someone who ditches school to get drunk. I was just having a really bad day, and—”

“Ruby.” Her voice was sharp, getting my attention. “You don’t have to explain, okay? I get it.”

“You do?”

“Switching schools totally sucked for me,” she said, sitting back in her chair. “I missed everything about my life at Jackson. I still do—so much so that even now, after a year, I haven’t really bothered to get settled at Perkins. I don’t even have any friends there.”

“Me neither,” I said.

“Yes, you do,” she said. “You have Nate Cross.”

“We’re not really friends,” I told her.

She raised her eyebrows. “The boy drove fifteen miles to pick you up out of the woods.”

“Only because you told him to,” I said.

“No,” she said pointedly. “All I did was let him know where you were.”

“Same thing.”

“Actually, it isn’t,” she said, reaching over and taking another piece of popcorn. “There’s a big difference between information and action. I gave him the facts, mostly because I felt responsible about leaving you there with that loser in the first place. But going there? That was all him. So I hope you were sufficiently grateful.”

“I wasn’t,” I said quietly.

“No?” She seemed genuinely surprised. “Well . . .” she said, drawing the word out. “Why not?”

I looked down at my popcorn, already feeling that butter-and-salt hangover beginning to hit. “I’m not very good at accepting help,” I said. “It’s an issue.”

“I can understand that,” she said.

“Yeah? ”

She shrugged. “It’s not the easiest thing for me, either, especially when I think I don’t need it.”

“Exactly.”

“But,” she continued, not letting me off the hook, “you
were
passed out in the woods. I mean, you clearly needed help, so you’re lucky he realized it, even if you didn’t.”

There was a big crowd approaching now, lots of kids and parents. We could see them coming at us from across the parking lot like a wide, very disorganized wave.

“I want to try to make it up to him,” I said to Olivia. “To change, you know? But it’s not so easy to do.”

“Yeah,” she said, taking another handful of popcorn and tossing it into her mouth as the crowd closed in. “Don’t I know it.”

Everyone has their weak spot. The one thing that, despite your best efforts, will always bring you to your knees, regardless of how strong you are otherwise. For some people, it’s love. Others, money or alcohol. Mine was even worse: calculus.

I was convinced it was the reason I would not go to college. Not my checkered background, or that I was getting my applications together months after everyone else, or even the fact that up until recently, I hadn’t even been sure I wanted to go at all. Instead, in my mind, it would all come down to one class and its respective rules and theorems, dragging down my GPA and me with it.

I always started studying with the best of intentions, telling myself that today just might be the day it all fell into place, and everything would be different. More often than not, though, after a couple of pages of practice problems, I’d find myself spiraling into an all-out depression. When it was really bad, I’d put my head down on my book and contemplate alternate options for my future.

“Whoa,” I heard a voice say. It was muffled slightly by my hair, and my arm, which I locked around my head in an effort to keep my brain from seeping out. “You okay?”

I lifted myself up, expecting to see Jamie. Instead, it was Nate, standing in the kitchen doorway, a stack of dry-cleaning over one shoulder. Roscoe was at his feet, sniffing excitedly.

“No,” I told him as he turned and walked out to the foyer, opening the closet there. With Jamie hard at work on the new ad campaign, and Cora backlogged in cases, they’d been outsourcing more and more of their errands to Rest Assured, although this Saturday morning was the first time Nate had shown up when I was home. Now I heard some banging around as he hung up the cleaning. “I was just thinking about my future.”

“That bad, huh?” he said, crouching down to pet Roscoe, who leaped up, licking his face.

“Only if I fail calculus,” I said. “Which seems increasingly likely.”

“Nonsense.” He stood up, wiping his hands on his jeans, and came over, leaning against the counter. “How could that happen, when you personally know the best calc tutor in town?”

“You?” I raised my eyebrows. “Really?”

“Oh God, no,” he said, shuddering. “I’m good at a lot of things, but not that. I barely passed myself.”

“You did pass, though.”

“Yeah. But only because of Gervais.”

Immediately, he popped into my head, small and foul smelling. “No thanks,” I said. “I’m not that desperate.”

“Didn’t look that way when I came in.” He walked over, pulling out a chair and sitting down opposite me, then drew my book over to him, flipping a page and wincing at it. “God, just looking at this stuff freaks me out. I mean, how basic is the power rule? And yet why can I still not understand it?”

I just looked at him. “The what?”

He shot me a look. “You need Gervais,” he said, pushing the book at me. “And quickly.”

“That is just what I
don’t
need,” I said, sitting back and pulling my leg to my chest. “Can you imagine actually asking Gervais for a favor? Not to mention owing him anything. He’d make my life a living hell.”