Perfect Glass (A Young Adult Novel (sequel to Glass Girl)) (6 page)

I climbed in the driver’s seat and unlocked the passenger door, gathering together papers and bags to throw onto the backseat. When I started the car, an Irish band’s ballad picked up where I’d left it. I reached for the volume, mortified he’d caught me listening to a band he so obviously resembled.

He stopped my hand. “No, I like them. Leave it on.”

I felt the need to say we don’t have that much in common. I wanted to point out I’m in love with Henry. I don’t know why something twisted inside me when Quinn pulled his cap off and his funky hair stuck up in all the right places.

“I have an idea about where to hide,” he said.

I sighed, resigned. This was happening. “Okay…where am I going?”

“Take Broadway to Mission. We’ll stay on Mission for a while.”

“You’ve learned our fine city streets quickly.”

“I see the whole town mapped out in my head,” he said. “Have you noticed how concentric it is? Like a bull’s-eye. That big hotel with the red roof is the center. It’s weird.”

“True,” I said. The Jeep was dark. I could only see Quinn’s profile when we passed under a glowing streetlamp. His hands fidgeted in his lap, rolling his car keys around his knuckles.

“Slow down a little. It’s up here on your right.” He grabbed the overhead handle, anticipating my turn.

I eased into the parking lot of a shopping center under construction. A still empty big box store anchored the place in the middle. Quinn pointed at the service road behind the building, so I followed it until I came to an unfinished construction bay.

“Okay, you trust me, Kavanagh?” I felt his gaze on me. The dim light from my dash touched us.

“I barely know you.”

A smile curved his lips. “But you trust me. I can tell. Pull into this loading bay and drive right into the middle of the store.”

“Into the store.” I shifted so I could see his face better. Surely he was kidding.

“Yep. I’ve done it. It’s okay.”

“That can’t be legal,” I said. “Tennyson said nothing illegal, right?”

“We’ll be in there twenty minutes, tops. Once Tennyson’s time is up, we win. There’s no way she’d think of this place. She’s smart, but I’m smarter.”

“But the law.” My voice got a little screechy.

“Calm down,” he said. “Parking in a construction site isn’t against the law if there aren’t any
No Trespassing
signs. Anyway, this is kind of my dad’s store.”

I raised one eyebrow. “‘Kind of’ probably doesn’t count in a deposition.”

Against my better judgment, I did trust him. I powered over a concrete slab that was more than a curb, but less than a government building’s security barrier, and drove into the middle of the empty shell of a building. It was dark and weirdly peaceful.

We stayed quiet, the way kids do when they’re hiding in a closet during a game of hide-and-seek. Every nerve buzzed, electrified. Our breathing shallowed out.

Quinn’s phone vibrated against his leg, making us both jump. He glanced at it and whispered, “She’s calling our bluff.”

“What do you mean?” I whispered.

“She says she sees us. She says she’s looking for a sign so she’ll know the address. But she just wants us to try to make it to home base.”

“What do I do?” My shoulders were stiff and my legs fidgeted.

“Sit tight.” Quinn watched me for a long, quiet moment. “You okay?”

“I’m fine.” I bit down on my cheek to stop the nerves. I’d have an ulcer there by morning.

But he was right. She was bluffing. Twenty minutes later, we still hadn’t heard anything from Tennyson. We’d won, officially, because she’d failed to find us in thirty minutes.

Quinn stepped out of the Jeep. He walked through the empty building to look out the front door for Tennyson’s red beater car. He came back whistling.

“Let’s go to Sears,” he said. “I’m sure she’s there planning her revenge.”

I circled around the metal columns in the building and rolled out of the bay door. The light of the moon seemed bright now after being in the dark. I’d nearly made it to the exit when a spotlight hit the Jeep. In a police car sitting in the empty parking lot, an officer flashed her lights and rolled slowly toward us.

She parked behind me, talking on her radio. I glared at Quinn, reaching for my license and registration. “Not illegal?”

“It’s not illegal,” he said. “I think she’s just checking us out for mischief because we’re kids.”

The officer walked slowly to my window, shining a light into my backseat and on my inspection sticker. “What’s going on tonight, guys?” she said.

Quinn leaned around me to speak. “We were just taking a look at the new building. My dad’s the manager of the store going in here.”

“
Um-hm
. License and registration, please.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. She took my license and stared at it for a minute, comparing it to the Jeep’s registration.

“Here’s the thing, Miss Kavanagh,” she said, looking straight at me. “I was just going to warn you off the property until I called your tag in and got a hit.”

“Pardon me?” I croaked.

“Someone called the station this evening to report you for harassment. I’m just trying to figure out how a girl that looks like you could scare an old lady. Were you hiding your vehicle in an empty construction site?”

“What?” My jaw felt unhinged. The officer looked at me like she’d already stamped my juvie case file with a big red DELINQUENT. “I’m sorry. Who did you say called you?”

She raised an eyebrow and checked her clipboard. “I didn’t say, but it was Jo Russell. She said you’ve trespassed and driven by her home erratically.” She leaned against my Jeep, propping an elbow on my open window. All the plastic and leather attached to her uniform creaked and groaned when she moved. “Now, between you and me, we field Jo’s complaints a lot, but I have to follow-up. Especially now that you’ve given me cause to stop you.”

She stretched backward to look again in my backseat and shined the light in Quinn’s face, making him squint. He brought his hand up to shield his eyes and then dropped it quickly, probably afraid it would be considered suspicious body language. “What’s your name, son?”

“Quinn O’Neill, ma’am.”

“I’ll need your license, Mr. O’Neill. You two step out of the vehicle, please.”

meg

T
he Chapin Police Department shared a building with the Chapin Roadhouse, a seedy bar. I guess it helped on Friday and Saturday nights. Cops could walk over around 2:00 am to bring the drunk and rowdies into the station through the backdoor. I got to walk in through the front, with my parents. But I still felt like a criminal.

My dad found a corner where we’d have some privacy. “Tell me, quickly, what you were doing parked in an empty building,” he said. Not
who is this guy, Quinn?
Not
is it true you’ve been harassing Ms. Russell
? Just
a car in a building
…
five seconds
…
go.

“Tennyson had a lamebrained idea about a game called car tag,” I said. “We were hiding in Quinn’s dad’s building until our time was up. He said it wasn’t illegal.” My voice cracked and wavered as the full weight of the night settled in.

“Okay.” Dad was panting a little. I had blown his mind by participating in some stupid teenage game involving two-thousand-pound moving vehicles. I don’t remember Wyatt ever being such a predictably disappointing teenager.

Officer Bain, the one who’d told me to come to the station, appeared in the back hallway and motioned for all of us to follow her to a conference room…interrogation room…whatever. She started talking even before we sat down.

“First, I stopped Meg when I saw her and the O’Neill kid drive out of a construction site. Mainly, I wanted to make sure they weren’t up to something.”

My dad sat forward, waiting for his chance to defend me. Officer Bain noticed his posture and talked faster, holding her hand up to keep him quiet.

“I verified O’Neill’s claim that the building is his father’s store and his dad said they were there with permission.” She shuffled some papers around until she found the one she wanted. “The reason we’re all sitting here, though, is this harassment complaint filed against Meg by Jo Russell.”

She grinned at me. “Not often we have high school girls in here with two incident files.” She handed my dad the form. “Look this over, then I’ll need Meg’s statement and your signatures.”

Scanning the paper, my dad pointed out a few things, like Jo’s claims that I’d called her multiple times and that I’d knocked on her door late at night. That I’d tried to “get my hands on” one of her paintings. His eyebrows arched at me in question. I shook my head.

“Tell Officer Bain where this report is false,” he said.

“Okay.” And I will not cry.

“Anytime, Miss Kavanagh.” The officer clicked her pen and waited with her hand over a blank sheet of paper.

My hand slipped into my jacket pocket, looking for my phone, my connection to Henry. But my phone wasn’t there. It was in the console of the Jeep.

“I’m doing some volunteer work for Jo,” I said. “Or I was. I didn’t realize she saw that as harassment. I’ve never called her. I’ve never
actually
knocked on her door, either—at night or during the day. I’ve spoken with her in her yard twice and I drove down her street earlier today without stopping. I just wanted to make sure she was okay. I’ve been concerned.”

“About what?” Officer Bain said.

“I’m afraid for her. I don’t think she’s taking care of herself.” I looked toward my mom for backup.

“Yes,” Mom said. “I told Meg to try to help Jo. Jo suffers from dementia. Were you already aware of that?”

“Oh, yeah,” Officer Bain said, chuckling. “We’re aware. We keep tabs on her. She gets annoyed easily and it’s always worthy of a 911 call.”

“My daughter stopped by to help Ms. Russell out around her house.” My dad leaned forward even more, with his elbows on the table. He did this when he wanted to be taken seriously. He was acting like this might affect my future. “She would never act inappropriately.”

“But I did show up uninvited,” I said. “Where do I sign to say I’m sorry, or whatever it is she expects?”

“You sign the report here,” Officer Bain said, pointing to the signature lines. “But it’s not to say you’re sorry and it’s not acknowledging you’ve done anything wrong. It just says you’ve been made aware of the complaint.”

Dad and I signed and pushed the forms back across the desk.

“My advice to you, Meg,” Officer Bain said, “is to steer clear of Jo Russell.”

There was nothing to say to that, so I just nodded and stood up. I was ready to find my Jeep, call Henry, and sleep. I opened the door while my parents cleared up details with the officer.

The front desk area of the station was quiet. I leaned against the wall and looked around. That’s when I noticed Quinn sitting in a chair pushed into the corner of the room. He watched me and did the chin lift thing. What does that even mean?
Hey, how you doin’?
Or,
If you’re done here, can we play a game of basketball?
I tucked my hair behind my ear, feeling self-conscious.

“You holding up?” he said.

“I’m okay. It’s just…I feel creepy now.”

Quinn stood and walked over to me. He reached out his hand and dragged the backs of his fingers over my wrist in a way that felt too intimate. I wrapped my other hand around that wrist like it hurt.

“Sorry,” he said. He pushed his hands into his pockets and looked down at his feet.

“I guess I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said.

“Yep.” He didn’t act like I’d dismissed him. “Holy crap, Meg, I wish tonight had gone differently. I had fun, though.”

I nodded, trying to simultaneously understand the meaning behind his words and to let their meaning float somewhere over my head. I couldn’t tell a guy, who wasn’t Henry, that I’d had fun with him. “It was a purely high school moment.” I smiled up at him. “We played car tag and won. No big deal.”

“No big deal,” he repeated. His gaze slowly took in my whole face. When he finally turned to go, I noticed he turned his toes in a tiny bit when he walked.

henry

M
y body jerked awake, over and over, like it was still juiced for a fight. I catalogued all the ways the day could have been even worse. Raf could’ve been killed. I could’ve been killed, too. I watched the minutes roll over on my clock and finally, when my body couldn’t take it anymore, fell asleep around two o’clock.

Five minutes later, John came in and woke me. At least it felt like five minutes. But daylight already burned through my window, so it had to be at least seven in the morning.

“Mornin’, Henry. Sorry to wake you, but we’ve got some things to discuss and they’re not ones to let simmer.”

I sat up and punched my pillow behind my back, groaning with the new pains that had appeared in my shoulders and neck overnight. I glanced at my phone in my hand. I must have fallen asleep trying to get hold of Meg. We hadn’t gone a day without talking since I’d been here.

“Let me go first, John.” I tried to shake off my lack of sleep and line up all the points I wanted to make. My voice sounded like I’d eaten gravel in the night. “I’m sorry I took him. I’ve put you in a bad situation now. In all fairness, though, you should have been up front from the start about Raf’s juvie sentencing.”

“You have a point.”

“I felt like that was my one shot to place the order and we were so close. Like, within minutes of having it done. I never dreamed, being that far from his old neighborhood, we’d see anyone who knew Raf. I thought I could pull rank on him and teach him a lesson, I guess.”

John nodded and rubbed his hand over his dark, military-short hair. “That’s not your job here, Henry. I have to be the one to teach Raf any lessons. You’re a temporary volunteer and, as far as these kids are concerned, that’s it.”

Temporary volunteer. The words stung, but hearing them from my brother-in-law’s mouth gave them an extra measure of hurt. I sucked air into my lungs, like I was a kid again and someone had just insulted my mother.