The Heavenstone Secrets

  I was about to say, But Cassie has never had a boyfriend. The first words were forming. I would tell her everything now—but before I could speak, she closed her eyes.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll just take a little rest before dinner. Go on and do what you have to. I know you want to prepare for the game and the party. I’m fine,” she said. She looked as if she fell asleep instantly. I stood there a moment, and then I left, closing the door softly behind me.

  I ended up choosing one of the outfits Uncle Perry had designed last year. It was a silver metallic minidress with a pair of ankle-length black leggings and black platform shoes. Cassie hated the outfit, but even Daddy said I looked terrific in it, and he usually didn’t go overboard when it came to giving Uncle Perry’s designs compliments. I had had little opportunity to wear it before this.

  Because of the time factor, I had to wear it down to dinner. There was no time to prepare and change afterward. Fortunately, Daddy saw me before Cassie did. He lavished compliments on me immediately. When I looked at Cassie, I could see she was full of disapproval, but Daddy’s comments blocked any criticism she could express. When Mother came down, she, too, expressed delight with my appearance.

  “You look so grown-up, honey,” she said.

  Cassie was as quiet at dinner as I had ever seen her. As soon as we were finished eating, she practically leaped up to declare that we had to leave immediately to get me to the game before it began and get herself back to clean up. Daddy once again suggested that Cassie go, too. He even said he would handle the dinner cleanup, but Cassie again refused and expressed her disinterest.

  “I have more important things to do, Daddy,” she said. No one dared ask what was more important.

  As soon as we got into the car, Cassie let me know her opinion of my outfit. “You might as well wear a sign around your neck,” she said, “a sign that says ‘I’m looking for trouble.’”

  “Why? Mother thought it was nice, and Daddy loved it.”

  “Of course, Daddy loved it. He’s a man, too.”

  “What do you mean, Cassie? He’s my father, our father.”

  She looked at me and shook her head. “A man is always a man first, whether he is a father, a brother, or an uncle. Don’t think I’m oblivious to the way Daddy looks at me, too,” she added.

  I felt a cold, electric sizzle around my heart. What was she saying? The way he looks at her too? She glanced at me and saw the look on my face and certainly, as always, read my thoughts and feelings.

  “Don’t look so worried. It’s all only natural. Remember what I told you about willpower? Well, it certainly applies to men as well as to women, Semantha. A father, brother, or uncle has to depend on it as well, and most of them are usually successful. Of course, most of them don’t have attractive and competent, mature daughters, sisters, and nieces to tempt them.”

  We pulled into the school parking lot. It was jammed with cars. She stopped near the entrance. I opened the door slowly, still confused by all that she had just said.

  “Now, go have a good time,” she told me, “but remember, you’re a Heavenstone.”

  “Thanks, Cassie.”

  She leaned over to hold the door open so she could call out to me as I walked toward the gym. “We’re sisters, Semantha. What happens to you happens to me!” she cried.

  I didn’t turn around. I kept walking, even though I didn’t feel my feet hitting the ground.

  A cheer bursting from the overflowing crowd washed it all away as I opened the door and began what I hoped was to be an exciting night.

  The Game

  THE MOMENT I entered the gym, I saw Kent waving madly from the stands. Although the crowd was beyond capacity, with throngs of adults and students rushing in to grab whatever seats remained, he had obviously been watching and waiting eagerly for me. The roars of the crowd were already loud enough to drown out your thoughts. It was impossible not to be immediately lifted into the excitement.

  I saw that Meg Stein had somehow wangled a seat just behind him and was leaning over to whisper in his ear. She pulled back as soon as he spotted me. The cheerleaders came out, and the fans on our side began to chant along with them as I made my way up to the row and squeezed in between Noel and Kent. I glanced at Meg, who looked pretty unhappy that I had shown up. I deliberately smiled at her to force her to smile back.

  “Wow, you look great,” Kent said.

  “Thank you.”

  “My father will be waiting for us outside after the game. Eddie has about thirty coming to his party. His parents paid for all the pizzas, and Dustin Dylan has already set up his DJ equipment in the house.”

  I nodded. It was exciting to me. It would be the first real party I had been to without adults looking over our shoulders, but I couldn’t shake off the feeling that Cassie was looking over mine. Even here, even in the gym, the feeling was so strong, in fact, that I actually looked for her somewhere in the crowd. What if she had lied to me and remained for a while to watch me? However, the moment our team took the court, all those feelings flew away. The anticipation was too great, and I was determined to have a good time.

  I hadn’t attended many basketball games, but this was the most nerve-wracking I had seen. The lead kept bouncing from our opponent to us right up until the middle of the fourth quarter, when our team seemed to get a surge of new energy and pulled ahead by nearly eight points. When the final buzzer rang, we had won by three, and the cheers threatened to lift the ceiling off the gymnasium. Everyone was hugging and kissing. Kent embraced me and kissed me full on the mouth, and then he and Noel hugged. I stood there dazed for a moment. When I turned to Megan to hug her, too, she looked as if she would burst into tears. I just smiled at her.

  “Wasn’t that great?”

  “Yes. Have a good time,” she muttered, and rushed down the stands to leave. The kiss had apparently convinced her that she had no chance to steal Kent away.

  But I thought the kiss had been so quick and so short that it almost didn’t seem to have happened.

  Kent was certainly not fazed by it. Exhilarated, he grabbed my hand. “C’mon. This is going to be a real celebration,” he said, and we made our way into the wave of students rushing out to celebrate the school’s victory. He was frustrated by how long it took us to exit.

  “Take it easy. We’ll get there,” I wanted to say, but I didn’t want to appear any less enthusiastic.

  Out in the parking lot, it felt like New Year’s Eve, Christmas, and all my birthdays wrapped up into one night. People were honking their horns and shouting. They were still hugging and congratulating each other, as if they had somehow been responsible for the victory. Afraid to miss something, everyone was rushing about in all directions. Some actually looked dazed.

  “There’s my father!” Kent cried. He led me to a black sedan. He opened the rear door for me, and I got in quickly.

  “Well, I guess I don’t have to ask what happened,” Kent’s father said. “Look at this place. You’d think we had won the NBA championship or something.”

  “It was a terrific game, Dad.”

  “I imagine so. Hello there,” he said, turning to me. In the vague light, I could see that he was a tall, thin man with dark brown hair. Kent was also tall, but he had a fuller, rounder face and lighter hair.

  “Hello, Mr. Pearson. Thank you for taking us to the party.”

  “You’re quite welcome. I don’t know whether Kent’s been talking more about the game and the party or more about you,” he teased.

  “Dad!”

  “Okay. I’ll shut up and be a chauffeur.” He turned around.

  “You know how to get to Eddie’s house, Dad?”

  “Your mother and I have been there a number of times, Kent. Don’t worry.”

  Kent shrugged and smiled at me, and then he reached for my hand. “Wasn’t that great?”

  “It was the best game I ever saw,” I said.

  “We weren’t favored to win, you know.” He took a deep breath and sat b
ack. “You haven’t been to Eddie’s house before, have you?”

  “No. My parents might have.”

  “They have,” Mr. Pearson said. “At a fundraiser. Oops, I forgot. Chauffeurs aren’t supposed to listen to their passengers’ conversations.”

  “Very funny, Dad.”

  I laughed. I was glad Mr. Pearson had a sense of humor. I had been afraid I would be very nervous being driven to a party by Kent’s father. I had never met him, and I couldn’t help but imagine he was wondering what sort of girl his son had chosen. If Cassie had overheard my thoughts, she would surely have bawled me out for not thinking he should be honored to have a Heavenstone in his car. But despite our family’s success and our obvious great wealth, I couldn’t sit high on that pedestal Cassie imagined. If anything really made me nervous, it was people thinking that I thought I was too good for them.

  The ride wasn’t long, and when we turned down the street on which the Morrises lived and Mr. Pearson pointed out the house, I could see that Eddie Morris’s home wasn’t as grand as ours. Cassie would say it had no history. Not that it wasn’t an impressive home—it was a large, recently built three-story set on the crest of a little knoll and surrounded by at least four or five acres of gently rolling hills.

  “Here’s a druggist who owns property any horse owner would covet,” Kent’s father said.

  “They have horses, Dad.”

  “Not racehorses,” his father said, winding up the long, tree-lined driveway to stop in front of the house. It had a beautiful entry, approached through elaborate landscaping. “I pick you up at midnight?”

  “As long as the car doesn’t turn into a pumpkin,” Kent said, and his father laughed.

  “Never mind, Cinderfella. You behave yourself. We’ve had our talk about—”

  “Dad, please.”

  “Okay. You’re on your own. If you want me here earlier because you are bored …”

  “I doubt that, Dad.”

  “Have a good time,” his father said. “Make sure he behaves, Semantha.”

  Kent shook his head and got out to hurry around and open the door for me.

  “Oh, sorry. I forgot to be a chauffeur again,” his father called.

  Other cars were arriving, some approaching too fast. His father looked at them, and for a moment, both Kent and I wondered if he was going to get out to bawl out the drivers, but he just started away. Kent released the breath he had been holding. He didn’t want his father embarrassing him.

  “C’mon,” Kent said, taking my hand. I had to run to keep up with him.

  Eddie Morris greeted us. He was the star of the junior varsity basketball team and would surely be on the varsity next year. He was a six-foot-four ninth-grader with a shock of coal-black hair that he liked to keep long. It was the source of lots of humor, because he was always brushing it off his face. During basketball games, he kept it tied behind his head in a thick ponytail. I didn’t know him all that well, but he was always polite and friendly whenever we did speak in school. He had a younger sister, Amy, in elementary school, who had apparently been shipped to her cousin’s house for the night.

  “Hi, Semantha. Welcome. How did this goofball get you to be his date?” Eddie asked. He and Kent playfully punched each other’s shoulders. “The pizza’s already been delivered. You guys should get some before it’s all gone.”

  Others were coming in behind us, and he went to greet them as well. The music blaring from the living room was so loud everyone had to shout to be heard, even if he or she was only a few feet from the other person. I was surprised to see a number of students from tenth and eleventh grade, as well as a dozen or so from our class.

  “I’m starving,” Kent said. He led me right to the kitchen, where the open boxes were spread on the long white-tile counters and the tiled butcher’s table in the center. There were paper plates and plastic forks, but everyone was mostly just holding a piece and gobbling it down as if he had been on some deserted island for months. I saw plenty of soda, but it wasn’t until we went into the living room, where Dustin Dylan had set up his disco equipment, that I saw anyone drinking liquor. It was the older boys, who slipped it into their sodas and then offered it to the girls they had brought. I didn’t see anyone turn it down.

  “Remember, no smoking,” Eddie warned his guests. “Of anything!” Everyone who heard him laughed, but he made his next warning very seriously. “And don’t forget. My father’s a pharmacist, so there’s no drugs.”

  Noel and Bobbi had somehow beaten us to the house and were already dancing. Kent and I had a piece of pizza and drank some soda, and then we joined them. I wasn’t very confident of my dancing. I had done so little in front of other people. Of course, I practiced in my room at home whenever I could. Cassie always teased me about it. I never saw her dance, even at weddings we all attended, unless Daddy asked her. Those were only slow dances, however.

  Kent was a good dancer, and he kept complimenting me on my dancing. As my confidence built, I felt myself relaxing more. I had left Cassie’s warnings back at the gymnasium, and for the first time, I felt I could enjoy myself. Here I didn’t have to keep remembering that I was a Heavenstone. No one seemed to care who anyone was, least of all Kent. His friends kept kidding him about having to have his father drive him on a date.

  “At least he made a great choice,” Noel said, coming to his defense. He winked at me.

  “Yeah, well, what’s he going to do, ask his father to take them behind the football field later?” Sammy Duncan asked.

  “As long as he doesn’t turn around to look, it’s all right,” Kent fired back.

  It made me blush. Bobbi grabbed my arm, and we went off to the bathroom together to talk.

  “Don’t listen to those idiots,” she told me. Then she smiled and said, “Noel says Kent is head over heels in love with you. He’s going to ask you to go steady with him. Nothing as corny as giving you a school ring or something, but, you know, promise to be only with each other. What will you do?”

  “I don’t know.” I really didn’t, but she mistook my hesitation for something more.

  “That’s good. Play hard to get. Boys say they hate it, but they really don’t. It makes you more … more of a catch when you do give in.”

  “My sister says it’s not good to move too quickly with any boy.”

  “She’s right. Though who am I to agree? I lost my brake pads a while ago.”

  I suspected what she meant, and I suppose the look on my face caused her to laugh. After she repaired her lipstick, we returned to the living room and the dancing.

  “I hope none of that joking bothered you,” Kent said.

  “No, of course not,” I said as strongly as I could. I didn’t want him or anyone to think I was so dainty. I had enough of that with Cassie constantly reminding me how fragile I was. I knew almost everyone thought I was overprotected because we were so wealthy. I suppose we were. I wouldn’t doubt that I was the most innocent and unsophisticated of all the girls in my class.

  An hour or so into the party, one of the varsity basketball players, Martin McDermott, arrived, and that created a new wave of excitement. He started to describe the game from the team’s perspective, and the music was turned down. Everyone listened, and then Martin, who was treated like a returning war hero by everyone, especially Eddie, started to dance with one of the girls from the eleventh grade who had already consumed a lot of alcohol.

  We could see how all those who had started slipping liquor into their sodas were acting a bit wilder. The dance floor became more and more crowded, and the music got even louder.

  “There are definitely more than thirty people here now!” Kent shouted.

  “I know!” I shouted back. My throat started to ache from shouting to be heard.

  “This is a wild party!” Kent said.

  “Yes.”

  We tried to keep dancing, but everyone was beginning to bump into everyone else, especially the girls who had drunk too much liquor.

  ??
?Let’s take a little walk,” Kent said to me when someone had offered him liquor to mix into his soda and he refused. “It might get ugly here soon. I’ve been drunk only once in my life.” He led me away quickly. “And it wasn’t pretty. I think I threw up my insides and had to grow new organs.”

  “I’ve only had a little wine,” I admitted. I didn’t want to sound so protected, but he was being truthful, so I thought I should be.

  He looked at his watch. “My father will be here in less than an hour,” he said. “C’mon.” He tugged me along faster.

  “Where are we going? How do you know where to go?”

  “I’ve been to Eddie’s house many times. We’ve been friends since fourth grade. Let’s go look at his horses. We ride them sometimes.”

  He led me through the kitchen to a back entrance. We went down a small stairway and turned right to the barn. Even this far away from the living room, we could hear the music and the laughter. We heard what sounded like something falling, too.

  “Eddie’s parents will kill him if anyone breaks anything,” Kent said.

  He opened the barn door and flipped a light switch to give us more illumination. The two horses in their stalls turned with interest.

  “He calls this one Chesterfield, and the other is Comet. Chesterfield was his grandfather’s name,” Kent explained.

  “They’re both beautiful.”

  “American quarter horses. Well trained, too. I’m not much of a rider, but on Chesterfield, I look like a real cowboy.”

  He walked down to a little area toward the rear of the barn, where there was equipment, saddles, and a small, well-worn leather sofa. He sat and looked up at me.

  “I’m really glad you came with me,” he said. “I’ve had a crush on you for a long time, but I was always too afraid to talk to you. Until just recently, that is.”

  “Why?” I asked, prepared to hear about the grand Heavenstone name or something.