Premeditated (33 page)

He still hadn’t moved, and I felt like I was being circled by the grim reaper.

I spilled my guts until that didn’t feel like a figure of speech. I physically hurt from the admission of everything I’d done or had Brucey and Tabs do for me. (Their names stayed out of it.)

Ten minutes in, Brooks’ dad made me stop and call my parents to let them know where I was; I think it took him that long to realize I was still barefoot and dripping wet. He had Brooks bring me some dry clothes so I wouldn’t, as he said, catch pneumonia.

After I changed, I was headed back to the office from the downstairs bathroom when the bell rang. I assumed it was either my dad, Uncle Paul, or Brooks’ lawyer, maybe even some combination of the three, but when Brooks opened the door, I discovered the night hadn’t yet hit its lowest point.

“You have to help me.” Dex tripped across the threshold in worse shape than I’d been before Brooks’ dad had me dry off. If I had to guess, he’d made most of the trip from his neighborhood to Brooks’ on foot. “You have to let me stay. There’s no one else—”

“You can’t be here,” Brooks interrupted him. Dex still hadn’t seen me.

“I know … but she’s going to kill me.”

“Who?”

“Too many girls to count, I’d bet,” I said. Dex looked past Brooks and the foyer to me. He backpedaled a step or two, stopping short of going outside into the storm, where the
mystery vigilante could be lurking. “Whoever she is, she’s going to have to take a number. The first shot’s mine.”

I lunged for him, but Brooks, once again, got between Dex and danger. His arms wrapped around mine at the shoulder so he could spin me sideways until Dex was out of reach.

“Let me go, Brooks! He did this! He deserves to pay for it!”

“Calm down,” he said in my ear.

“What’s she doing here? It’s her psycho friend who’s trying to kill me! She tried to run me down!”

Apparently, since my plans had been a bust, Tabs had reverted to her original.

“She came to talk,” Brooks said as I tried to kick loose. “About a lot of things.”

“She’s lying.”

“You don’t even know what she said.”

“Look at her—she’s as crazy as the other one.”

“Which means I’m not responsible if I rip your black heart out through your chest. Put me down!”

Brooks had lifted me off the ground the same way Uncle Paul had with Aunt Helen at the hospital. There was no way to get traction. My arms were stuck under Brooks’, so all I could do was flail my feet.

“Not a chance,” Brooks said.

“Why are you still protecting him?’

“I’m not.” He shoved me out to arm’s length by the shoulders. “I’m protecting
you
, idiot. Most of what you’ve done can be explained away—assault, not so much.”

“It’s only assault if there are bruises. I don’t have to leave a mark on him.”

“Stop arguing with her and call the cops,” Dex said.

“No need, when they are already on their way.” Brooks’ father, and his icy voice, had joined us in the hall.

I swear I still can’t figure out where that man finds the extra inches to increase his height when he’s mad, but Brooks’ father had an instant growth spurt. He crossed his arms behind his back, holding on to his elbows with his hands.

“I took the precaution when I realized it was neither Ryland nor Miss Powell’s guardians at the door. They should be here shortly. And we”—he glared at each of us in turn—“will wait for them in my office, as they will no doubt be requiring statements from you all.”

“Brooks … you know me,” Dex said desperately.

“I thought I did, but right now I’m trying to find a single reason not to let Dinah go and tell the cops it was self-defense.”

“You can’t believe anything she says.”

“On the contrary, I’ve found Miss Powell to be a rather accurate source of information, when she’s inclined to cooperate, of course,” Brooks’ father said. “You, however, I have never trusted. I suppose we’re about to discover whether I had reason for my reservations or not. Once the police arrive, each of you will tell your respective stories to them, and this insanity will cease. Understood?”

Brooks shuffled me toward his dad’s office, but Dex was eyeing the door, weighing his chances if he made a run for it.

“I have already alerted security, Mr. Dexter, and requested they detain you, if necessary, until the authorities arrive to sort this out. It’s dark and they are armed. I wouldn’t try my luck if I were you. It’s time to show a bit of intelligence and prove you deserve that scholarship you’ve no doubt managed to squander.”

There was no point in arguing with Brooks’ father; there
wasn’t even much of a chance anyone would try. He opened the door to his office and held it while Brooks hung on to me long enough to make sure I didn’t take another shot at Dex when he crossed in front of us.

Dex had become another person, yet again. No arrogance or swagger in the trembling steps. No cocky tilt to the head that hung down toward the floor. No uncomfortable laughter in the silence he didn’t have the voice to fill.

I felt it the instant a flashing red and blue light bounced through the windows and ignited the terror of impending justice in his face. Whatever came next didn’t matter. I could handle the cleanup and consequences, because I’d finally stepped across the finish line.

This was it; things finally felt like they were over. Claire had her ending, and so did I.

I left Lowry after the disaster with Dex and Brooks, and everyone else whose lives I nearly ruined. It wasn’t like I wanted to see any of them again anyway. Not Abigail-not-Abby with her limitless energy, who was so much like Claire I couldn’t help liking her, or Chandi, who turned out to be the strongest marshmallow I’d ever met. Not Brooks. I definitely didn’t want to see him ever again.

Yeah, Tabs didn’t believe me, either.

But it didn’t matter what I wanted; there was no reason to stay at Lowry. I’d only been there for Claire, and without her, everything was a reminder of how I’d failed to do anything I set out to accomplish, and how I had almost made things worse than Dex could have dreamed.

Ironic, isn’t it? That first day, I’d sat in the cafeteria thinking about the final destination on that road of good intentions. And I’d certainly meant well—as well as one can mean when the goal is to make someone’s life so miserable they’d rather not live it, anyway—so it shouldn’t have been such a shock when my life took a detour through the hot zone.

My first impulse was to go back to Oregon in shame. Join a convent, or a commune, or a circus—one of those things people join that always seem to start with a “c.” My mother practically insisted on it, saying that the humiliation was unbearable (mainly hers, of course), but Dad was getting better at standing
his ground on things he thought were important, and he told me to stay put.

Technically, what he said was if I showed up in Oregon, he’d have me on the next flight back to Aunt Helen’s if he had to drive me the whole way himself. Sure, it didn’t make much sense, but he was trying not to pass out at the time, while avoiding the sort of “face your mistake” character-building clichés dads are so famous for.

His only concessions were sending me my cat and letting me transfer back to Ninth Street. That one was a no-brainer. Even if I hadn’t turned myself into the local pariah, I was on track to fail out of Lowry by the end of term, and I couldn’t see too many tutoring sessions in my near future to pull my grades out of the gutter. I decided to go back to being regular smart and leave the advanced stuff to the people suited for it.

I also discovered that my natural hair color was not, in fact, dirty blond. It turned out that the “dirty” quality had been the result of my repeated dye jobs hanging on to my hair, because it began to grow out strawberry blond at the roots.

I ditched all of my piercings except two: the one in my nose and the dragonfly belly button ring. When I actually considered each piercing on its own, it was a shock to realize those were the
only
two I liked. I didn’t even miss the barbell through my tongue—or the lisp, which eventually stopped. I was done playing parts that didn’t involve a stage and makeup. I needed to figure out who I was, and there was less “back-off black” involved than I expected. (Though I still wasn’t in a rush to fill my closet with pastel pink. I seriously hate that color.)

My “avoid all Lowry references” plan worked brilliantly for about a month; it failed at 3:17 in the afternoon on a Tuesday,
the exact time I walked out of Ninth Street with Tabs and saw a familiar face standing next to her car.

“I expect details,” Tabs said. She headed for her assigned spot in the junior year parking lot and left me to decide whether I should walk over to Brooks or let him make the next move.

We started walking at the same time and met in the middle. Tabs gunned her engine and took off, clearing the immediate area of nosy pedestrians.

“New ink?” he asked. No introduction, no time to be awkward or to let me blurt out another apology. He just picked a subject and started talking. Not quite as smooth as Dex, but I envied him for being able to start a conversation like that.

I glanced at the small script “Cuckoo” on my right wrist, where it intersected the first “o” on “Dodo,” and traced it lightly with my fingers. The ridge had faded, but it was still red.

“For Claire,” I said. “Cuckoo was her nickname.”

“It suits you.”

Now it was my turn to pick the topic.

“Navy blue,” I said, nodding to his blazer. “I assume you’re still at Lowry?”

“Your mea culpa worked on Dad, and the letters to Kuykendall, and the school paper, and the board of regents, and all my friends …”

“Brucey,” I said. “He still had your contact list from synching the phones, and he’s really good with computers.”

“Tell him thanks for me. You saved my future.”

“I almost ruined it.”

Small-talk time was over.

“Yeah, you did.”

I flinched.

He didn’t scream or curse or do any of those things that I would have understood as a reaction to what I’d done to him. Violence or venom would have made sense, but he chose to agree with me, and do it in the same tone of voice he’d have used if we were discussing answers in trig.

“But I think I understand why you did it.” He cut his eyes toward my wrist, and I stashed my hands behind my back. I’d spent so much time trying to figure out the person I thought Brooks was, and forcing his actions to mean things based on my assumptions, that I’d completely missed the person he turned out to be. And that was a really great guy. “I’m not sure I would have gone to the same lengths you did, but it’s still rather awesome and terrifying.”

Yep, that’s me in a nutshell. Minus the awesome, of course.

“We could be a movie of the week,” he said.

It was a weak joke, too close to the truth, so neither of us laughed.

“Thanks for talking your dad out of pressing charges.”

“Are you kidding? Even if you hadn’t gotten me off the blacklist, he hasn’t stopped babbling about your ‘spirit’ and ‘initiative’ at random intervals. Apparently you ‘exemplify the sort of tenacious determination required for success in business.’ ”

I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. (Considering his dad’s personality, I was leaning toward “not.”)

“Well, tell him thanks for the lawyer, at least.”

Without the Waldens pressing charges, most of the things my friends and I had done got me a lot of stern warnings but not much else. The vodka and pills in the back of Brooks’ car
were a different matter. They’d meant an actual police report, so they’d also meant actual charges against me. But when Brooks’ dad supplied the lawyer and asked the judge for “leniency due to extreme circumstances,” all I got was a year’s worth of weekends cleaning up trash on the highway.

Dex had been right about one thing: Brooks’ old man was Teflon.

“He doesn’t expect a thank-you,” Brooks said. “As far as he’s concerned, he never wants to hear about it again. That way people can forget. Plus, I think he may be considering an adoption offer, if you’re interested.”

That one I was fairly sure he meant as a joke, but still, I said, “I’ll pass.”

“Good. I really don’t want to put you into sibling territory.”

That made two of us, though it might have been worth it to see Mom’s face when I told her adoption meant I suddenly qualified for a title of some kind, even if it was only honorary.

Our conversation, or whatever it was, stuttered in bursts. We’d say a lot of nothing, then lapse back into a soundless void as awkward as the way we stood together on the asphalt while the rest of Ninth Street swerved around us. Brooks and I must have looked strange out there. Me in my jeans and silver, him in his jacket and tie, hovering near the muddy flagpole plot.

“Did school let out early today?” I asked. He shouldn’t have been there if they’d had class. Our day was usually shorter, but Lowry had a few holidays that we didn’t—one of the perks of getting to make their own schedule.

“Technically, I’m in the bathroom,” he said, “but I’m fairly certain Mr. Cavanaugh knew I wasn’t coming back by the time
I got to the back doors. I didn’t want to come to your uncle’s house unannounced. I figured your friend’s purple car would be easy enough to spot anywhere.”

“Yeah, Grimace is pretty hard to miss.”

“It has a name?”

I nodded again, hugging myself.

“Do you … um … like it here?”

“I
fit
here,” I said. “No quantum physics pretending to be plain old chemistry and all that.”

No one whispering about what I’d done to Brooks as I walked down the halls, or reminding me that I’d been so friendly with Dex. No uniforms where every plaid stitch made me lose my appetite … Brucey and I had compromised on that one. I’d given him Claire’s skirt for his (shockingly not-porn) film, and he’d made sure it died a fiery death in the final scene. Her name made the dedication crawl at the end, after the credits.

Brooks nodded again and glanced back at the emptying parking lot for about the seventh time. This was getting unbearable.

“Would you please just yell at me or something?” I said. “The polite conversation thing is weirding me out.”