The Other Side of Dark (18 page)

If I had the chance, I would kill Jarrod Tucker.

At first the thought startles me, and I push it away. But it comes back, and I examine it, turning it over in my mind, testing the sharpness of its edges, feeling the hatred that makes it strong.

The phone has stopped ringing, and the silence of the house settles around my shoulders. Late shadows fade the colors of the room like a coating of dust. I should have been at Jan’s house an hour ago. I’d better hurry and get ready.

I’m suddenly uncomfortable with the silence because through it pop and creak the settling sounds that houses make. I turn on the television, not listening to words, just wanting noise to blot out the quiet.

The doorbell chimes again, but this time I don’t answer it. I peek through the curtains at the front window to see who is on the porch. Mrs. Cooper. She’s the last person I want to talk to right now.

She gives up and leaves the porch. She cuts across the lawn to her house. A marked police car cruises around the corner and slows down as it passes our house. Did Detective Markowitz arrange for this? I step back from the window, but not before I see the police car pull to a stop while Mrs. Cooper runs down her walk to talk to the officers. Does she have to know about everything that is going on? The car moves on, and Mrs. Cooper heads back to her house.

Jan is going to wonder why I’m so late. I’m in the
den, on my way from the living room to the bedroom to get my handbag, when I hear a slight rattling noise close at hand. It seems to be coming from the side door that leads to the garage. I stand and listen, waiting for the sound again, but it’s the words on the television that I hear.

The announcer is saying, “In an escape while being examined in Ben Taub Hospital a short while ago. A bailiff was shot in the leg when his gun was taken by Tucker. An HPD spokesman told us that an all-points bulletin has been put out for Tucker, who is believed to have stolen a dark blue Pontiac and is thought to be heading out of state, possibly toward Louisiana.”

The noise from the hall door that leads to the garage rattles over the announcer’s words, and I see the doorknob turn.

I know who’s at that door. It has to be Jarrod. He’s inside the garage, and soon he’ll be inside our house! No one would suspect that he’d come here. He’d have to be crazy. But didn’t he warn me he always gets his own way?

For an instant I freeze, unable to move, desperately wondering what I can do. I have to pass the door leading to the garage to get to the front door. Jarrod will have that door open in a minute. I’ll run right into him. I can’t hide in the house. He’ll find me. If I can make the backyard—

As quickly and quietly as possible I move to the back door and open it carefully, wincing at the slight sounds it makes. I shut it and run into the yard. Now what?

I hear one of the Cooper children complaining
about having to come in; then the Cooper back door slams. I take two steps in that direction when I realize I can’t endanger their lives. This is between Jarrod and me.

In front of me is the oak tree and the nailed board steps that lead up to the tree house. Jarrod won’t look for me there.

I scramble upward, clinging to the trunk and branches. My foot slips as one of the boards tears loose from the tree, and I skin my elbow. I’m so scared it’s hard to breathe, and my fingers feel like numb stumps as I pull myself up and drop to the floor of the tree house. Frantically I tuck my legs inside and shove myself against the back wall.

But the tree house rocks unsteadily. I hear a board from it drop to the grass. I inch to the center and sit perfectly still. Miraculously the house steadies itself. My back is against a window, but the window is on the Cooper side and shielded by a large branch. If Jarrod comes outside—and I don’t think he will—he won’t be able to see me through this window. I wait. There is nothing I can do but wait.

Forever is measured not in minutes but in heartbeats. I can hear the steady thumping pulse in my ears. Shadows are deeper, but time has dissolved into terror.

Then I hear what I’ve been dreading. The back door to my house opens and shuts. Jarrod is in the yard.

“Stacy?” He mumbles something after that, but again, as on the phone—for now I’m sure it was him—it’s as though he were talking to himself.

The voice comes from below me, as soft and shivery
as the warm night breeze from the Gulf. I try not to move. Can he hear my trembling?

He chuckles, and the sound is even more fearful than his voice. “You’ve got to be up there,” he says.

Instinctively I shrink back even farther. The boards in the tree house groan loudly, and it rocks.

“I could shoot you from down here,” I hear him say. “But I don’t want to shoot you. I want you to have an accident.” He laughs to himself again.

I hear the sound of his shoes scraping the trunk of the tree as he climbs toward me. “Stacy,” he says, “I told you—I always get my own way.”

Suddenly a calm sweeps through my mind, and I stop shaking. I am not going to sit here and wait for Jarrod to have his own way. I’m a woman who’s able to think rationally, to want
my
own way. And I have a plan.

Slowly, careful to keep the tree house balanced, I slide upward, grasping first the rough edges of the window behind me, then reaching for the branch outside it. I have managed to pull myself out the window, with my feet resting against the lower window frame, by the time Jarrod’s arms and grinning face shove into the door to the tree house.

I stare into his yellow eyes. I see the gun.

“If I’m killed, they’ll know you did it!” I whisper.

“Not if it’s an ‘accident.’ ”

“You’re insane!”

He giggles. “Smart girl, Stacy,” he says. “I’ve set it up. That’s going to be my defense. Now, let’s talk about your ‘accident.’ My friend and I will take care of it.”

“Your friend?”

“This is my friend.” For just an instant he takes his eyes from me as he gives a little wave of the gun in his hand.

As hard as I can I kick against the side of the house, swinging into it, throwing all my weight against it.

The house, with a great groan and crash, collapses and falls, taking Jarrod with it.

I scramble down and drop from the tree, into his screams and curses. Jarrod is lying on his back. Some of the boards are under him, and the large part of the tree house covers his hips and legs.

The gun lies near my feet.

I pick it up, hold it carefully in my right hand, and slip my index finger against the trigger.

Jarrod has stopped yelling. He stares at me. I can see the back door of our house fly open. I can see the terror on Jarrod’s face, the gleam in his eyes. I can see his gun pointing at me.

“Don’t shoot me,” Jarrod whimpers, and I realize I am pointing the gun at him.

If I shot Jarrod, wouldn’t it be self-defense? And wouldn’t it end the trials and the questions and the badgering and the harassment and the nightmares and the worries and the years and years of fear?

Carefully I aim the gun.

“You can’t shoot me!” Jarrod is crying and slobbering. Spittle drools from his mouth and down his chin. Or is it blood? “I didn’t mean to kill your mother. I didn’t know she was in the house, but she came into the den from the kitchen, and saw me, and said something to me, and I was scared. I didn’t mean it, Stacy!”

I try to picture my mother facing Jarrod with his gun. “What did she say to you?”

“She didn’t say anything at first. She was smiling. Then she saw the gun, and her eyes got frightened, but she still had a kind of smile on her face. She held her hands toward me and said, ‘It’s all right. It’s all right.’ ”

“And you shot her!”

He can’t talk. He’s crying too hard. I aim the gun at his head, just as carefully as he once aimed it at me. My hands have stopped shaking.

But now I can picture my mother. I can see her smile too. I can hear her telling Jarrod, “It’s all right.” Tears rush to my eyes with such force I’m blinded. I try to rub them away with the back of my left hand.

Choices were so easy when I was a child. Good guy
versus bad guy, and the good guys always won. But I’m no longer a child.

Although I keep the gun pointed at Jarrod, at the top of my lungs I yell, “Help! Mrs. Cooper! Help!”

I hear her scream, “They’re coming! I already called the police!”

“I’m all right,” I shout to her. “Don’t be afraid. I’ll keep the gun on him until the police get here.”

Someone leaps the hedge and lands beside me, but it isn’t Mrs. Cooper.

“Give me the gun, Stacy,” Jeff says.

“No!” I don’t take my eyes off Jarrod. “Stay away from me. Mrs. Cooper called the police. They’re coming.”

“I
am
the police. Narcotics squad,” he says. “You can give me the gun.”

He reaches across and takes it out of my hand.

“My leg’s broken!” Jarrod begins to yell again. “She did it. She tried to kill me!”

I look up at Jeff. “How can you be a policeman? You’re just a senior in high school.”

But, as always, he avoids my questions. He even sounds a little angry. He keeps his eyes on Jarrod. “You could have been killed, Stacy. Apparently you were home and weren’t answering the phone. Why not?”

Jarrod groans. “My back. It hurts. I think something’s busted. Get an ambulance!”

“It’s on its way,” Jeff tells him.

“Jeff, I had Jarrod’s gun. I could have shot him.”

He doesn’t look at me. “Could you?”

I shake my head. “No. Not really. I wanted to. I
hated him so much that I really wanted to kill him. I almost did. But then I couldn’t do it. Mom wouldn’t—”

It’s hard to explain. I hope that Jeff understands what I mean. I add, “I really didn’t have a choice. Jarrod’s life doesn’t belong to me.” I think of all the problems to come for all of us because of Jarrod, and I give a long sigh.

The yard seems to be filled with people. Mrs. Cooper is talking at a great rate. To me? I hear the high, excited chirps she’s making, but the words don’t come through. There’s a bass note in my ear as an officer with a notebook peers at me, asking me questions. But the only words I want to hear are Jeff’s.

He has my arm, propelling me around the rubble and the police officers, through our back door and into the house. The familiar, dusty smells of the room are laced with the pungency of drying apple core and somehow comfort me. I give a huge sigh of relief and lean against the closed door.

“Are you all right? Do you want to sit down? Can I get you some water?” Jeff asks.

I look at him carefully and remember something else. “I know where I saw you before. It was downtown, at the police station. You looked right at me.”

He doesn’t answer, so I add, “You can tell me the truth. You lied to me.”

“I didn’t lie,” he says. “I’ve been with the Houston Police Department for two years. I’m twenty-three, but because I look a lot younger than I am, I was put on a special high school assignment with the narcotics squad, and they sent me to the school in your area. Markowitz got worried about you, and I was in a logical
position to keep an eye on you, so you became part of my assignment.”

“I was just an assignment?”

“Don’t look at me like that, Stacy,” he says. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Hurt seems to be another part of growing up,” I tell him. “One more thing to get used to.”

He shakes his head, resting his hands on my shoulders. I like the feel of them. I wish I could tell him so. I wish I knew how.

“There are so many good things about growing up, you can keep your mind on those and climb over the hurts.”

“Like falling in love? I think I was beginning to fall in love with you.”

“I don’t want to be your first love, Stacy.”

“You’ve made that clear. I won’t forget. I’m an ‘assignment.’ ”

“Listen to me,” he says, and moves nearer. His hands slip from around my shoulders and hold me tightly, pressing my cheek against the base of his throat. “I asked to get taken off the narcotics assignment just so that I could tell you the truth, and I asked because I care about you.”

“But you told me—”

“I said I don’t want to be your
first
love. I’d like to be the real thing, and I can wait.”

My cheek glows from the warmth of his skin through his shirt, and I can hear the steady beat of his heart. I put my arms around him. I’m Stacy McAdams. I’m seventeen. And I’m definitely in the right body!

JOAN LOWERY NIXON has been called the grande dame of young adult mysteries. She is the author of more than 130 books for young readers and is the only four-time winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Young Adult Novel. She received the award for
The Kidnapping of Christina Lattimore, The Séance, The Name of the Game Is Murder
, and
The Other Side of Dark
, which also won the California Young Reader Medal.