There was a lot in that look. Anger, impatience, disgust.
But most of all—and I do not think I was mistaken about this—there was hurt. Seriously. Paul was hurt by what I’d said to him.
It had never occurred to me that Paul could be hurt.
Maybe what I had said to Jesse—about Paul being lonely—had been right after all. Maybe the guy really did just need a friend.
But he certainly wasn’t making many at the Mission Academy, that was for sure.
A second later, he’d broken eye contact with me, turned around, and strode out of the school. Shortly after that, I heard the rev of the engine of his convertible and then the squeal of his tires on the asphalt of the parking lot.
And Paul was gone.
“Well,” CeeCee said with no small amount of relish as she came up to me. “Guess that takes care of the election, doesn’t it?”
Then she held up my wrist, prizefighter-style. “All hail Madam Vice President!”
chapter
fifteen
Paul didn’t come back to school that day.
Not that anybody expected him to. A sort of all-points bulletin went through the eleventh grade, stating that, if Paul did come back, he would be put on automatic suspension for a week. Debbie Mancuso heard it from a sixth grader who heard it from the secretary in Father Dom’s office while she was there handing in a late pass.
It seemed the best thing that Paul stayed away until things cooled down a little. The novice he’d cursed at was rumored to have gone into hysterics, and had had to go lie down in the nurse’s office with a cool compress across her forehead until she recovered. I had seen Father Dom looking grim faced, pacing around in front of the nurse’s office door. I’d thought about going up to him and being all, “Told you so.”
But it seemed too much like shooting fish in a barrel, so I stayed away.
Besides, I was still mad at him about the whole Jesse thing. The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. It was like the two of them had conspired against me. Like I was just a stupid sixteen-year-old girl with a crush they’d had to figure out some way to handle. Stupid Jesse was too scared even to tell me to my face he didn’t like me. What did he think I was going to do, anyway? Pop him one in the face? Well, I sure felt like it now.
In between feeling like I just wanted to curl up somewhere and die.
I guess I wasn’t alone in feeling that way. Kelly Prescott seemed to be feeling pretty bad, too. She handled her victimhood better than I did, though. She very dramatically tore the Slater part of the wrapper off all the candy bars she had left. Then she wrote Simon on the inside foil with a Sharpie instead. It appeared she and I were running mates once again.
I won the vice presidency of the Junipero Serra Mission Academy junior class unanimously, except for a single write-in vote for Brad Ackerman. Nobody wondered very much who could have voted for Brad. He hadn’t even tried to disguise his handwriting.
Everyone forgave him, though, on account of the party he was throwing later that night. Guests had been instructed not to arrive until after ten, at which point it was determined that Jake, getting off his shift at Peninsula Pizza, would arrive with the keg and several dozen ’zas. Andy and my mom had left a note on the refrigerator that morning listing where they could be reached and forbidding us from having guests over while they were gone. Brad had found it particularly hilarious.
For my part, I had more important things to worry about than a stupid hot tub party.
Except that CeeCee and Adam wanted to go out after school to celebrate my victory—which really had turned out to be a hollow one, since my adversary had basically been kicked out of school. But Adam produced a bottle of sparkling cider for the occasion, and I couldn’t say no to that, of course. He and CeeCee had both worked so hard on my campaign, to which I had contributed exactly nothing—well, except for a single slogan. I felt guilty enough that I rode with them to the beach after school, and stayed there long enough to toast the sunset, a custom dating back to the first time I’d won a student election, way back when I’d first moved to Carmel, nine months earlier.
When I got home, I discovered several things. One: Some of the guests had started arriving early, among them Debbie Mancuso, who had always had a bit of a crush on Brad, ever since the night I caught the two of them making out in the pool house at Kelly Prescott’s. And two: She knew all about Jesse.
Or at least she thought she did.
“So who’s this guy Brad says you’re seeing, Suze?” she wanted to know, as she stood at the kitchen counter, artfully stacking plastic cups in preparation for the keg’s arrival. Brad was outside with a couple of his cronies, giving the hot tub a heavy dose of chlorine, no doubt in anticipation of all the bacteria it was going to become filled with, once some of his more unsavory friends slid into it.
Debbie was in full-on party wear, which included a midriff-baring halter top and these balloony harem pants that I guess she thought hid the size of her butt, which was not small, but that really only made it look bigger. I don’t like to be disparaging of members of my own sex, but Debbie Mancuso really was a bit of a parasite. She had been sucking Kelly dry for years. I just hoped she wouldn’t turn her suckers on me next.
“Just a guy,” I said coolly, moving past her to get a diet soda from the fridge. I was going to need a heavy-duty caffeine buzz, I knew, to fortify myself for the evening—first confronting Jesse, then the party.
“Does he go to RLS?” Debbie wanted to know.
“No,” I said, cracking open the soda. Brad had, I saw, removed the note from Andy and my mom. Well, it was a little embarrassing, I guess. “He isn’t in high school.”
Debbie’s eyes widened. She was impressed. “Really? He’s in college, then? Does Jake know him?”
“No,” I said.
When I did not elaborate, Debbie went, “That was really weird today, huh? About that Paul guy, I mean.”
“Yeah,” I said. I wondered whether or not Jesse was upstairs, waiting for me, or if he was just going to leave without saying good-bye. The way things had been going lately, I was betting on the latter.
“I kind of…I mean, some of the girls were saying…” Debbie, never the most articulate of people, seemed to be having more trouble than usual spitting out what she wanted to say. “That that Paul guy seems to…like you.”
“Yeah?” I smiled without warmth. “Well, at least someone does.”
Then I drifted up the stairs to my room.
On my way up, I met David, coming down. He was carrying a sleeping bag, backpack, and the laptop he had won at computer camp for designing the most progressive video game. Max trailed on a leash behind him.
“Where are you going?” I asked him.
“Todd’s house,” he said. Todd was David’s best friend. “He said Max and I could stay the night. I mean, it’s not like anybody’s going to be able to get any sleep around here tonight.”
“A wise decision,” I said approvingly.
“You should do the same thing,” David suggested. “Stay over at CeeCee’s.”
“I would,” I said, saluting him with my soda. “But I have a little business to attend to here.”
David shrugged. “Okay. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Then he and Max continued down the stairs.
I was not surprised to find that Jesse was not in my room when I got there. Coward. I kicked off my slides, went into the bathroom, and locked the door. Not that locked doors make any difference to ghosts. And not that Jesse was going to show up anyway. I just felt more secure that way.
Then I ran a bath, undressed, and sank into it, letting the warm water caress my battered feet and soothe my tired body. Too bad there was nothing I could do to comfort my aching heart. Chocolate might have helped, maybe, but I didn’t happen to have any in my bathroom.
The worst part of it all was that, deep down, I knew Father Dom was right about Jesse’s moving out. It was better this way. I mean, what was t
he alternative? That he stayed here, and I just kept pining away for him? Unrequited love is all right in books and things, but in real life, it completely sucks.
It was just that—and this was the part that hurt the most—I could have sworn, all those weeks ago when he’d kissed me, that he’d felt something for me. Really. And I’m not talking about what I’d felt for Paul, which was, let’s face it, lust. I’m warm for the guy’s form, I’ll admit it. But I don’t love him.
I’d been so sure—so, so sure—that Jesse loved me.
But, obviously, I’d been wrong. Well, I was wrong most of the time. So what else was new?
After I’d soaked for a while, I got out of the tub. I rebandaged my feet, then slid into my most comfortable, hole-filled jeans, the ones my mom told me I was never allowed to wear in public and was always threatening to throw away, coupled with a faded black silk T.
Then I walked back into my room, and found Jesse sitting in his usual place on the window seat, Spike on his lap.
He knew. I saw with a single glance that he knew Father Dom had talked to me and that he was just waiting—warily—to see what my reaction was going to be.
Not wanting to disappoint him, I said very politely, “Oh, you’re still here? I thought you would have moved to the rectory by now.”
“Susannah,” he said. His voice was as low as Spike’s got when he growled at Max through my bedroom door.
“Don’t let me stop you,” I said. “I hear there’s going to be a lot of action over at the mission tonight. You know, getting ready for the big feast tomorrow. Lots of piñatas left to stuff, I hear. You should have a blast.”
I heard the words coming out of my mouth, but I swear I don’t know where they were coming from. I had told myself, back in the tub, that I was going to be mature and sensible about the whole thing. And here I was being peevish and childish, and it wasn’t even a minute into the conversation.
“Susannah,” Jesse said, standing up. “You must know it’s better this way.”
“Oh,” I said with a shrug to show him how very, very unconcerned I was with the whole thing. “Sure. Give my regards to Sister Ernestine.”
He just stood there, looking at me. I couldn’t read his expression. If I’d ever been able to, I’d have known better than to have let myself fall in love with him. You know, on account of the whole his-not-loving-me-back thing. His eyes were dark—as dark as Paul’s were light—and inscrutable.
“So that’s all,” he said, sounding, for reasons I couldn’t begin to fathom, angry. “That’s all you have to say to me?”
I couldn’t believe it. He had some gall! Imagine, him being mad at me!
“Yes,” I said. Then I remembered something. “Oh, no, wait.”
The dark eyes flashed. “Yes?”
“Craig,” I said. “I forgot about Craig. How is he doing?”
The dark eyes were hooded once again. Jesse seemed almost disappointed. As if he had anything to feel disappointed about! I was the one whose heart was being ripped out of her chest.
“He’s the same,” Jesse said. “Unhappy about being dead. If you want, I can have Father Dominic—”
“Oh,” I said. “I think you and Father Dominic have done quite enough. I’ll handle Craig, I think, on my own.”
“Fine,” Jesse said shortly.
“Fine,” I said.
“Well….” The dark-eyed gaze bore into mine.“Good-bye, Susannah.”
“Yeah,” I said. “See you around.”
But Jesse didn’t move. Instead, he did something I completely was not expecting. He reached one hand out and touched my face.
“Susannah,” he said. His dark eyes—each one containing a tiny star of white where my bedroom light reflected off them—bore into mine. “Susannah, I—”
Only I never did find out what Jesse was going to say next, because the door to my bedroom suddenly swung open.
“Pardon me for interrupting,” Paul Slater said.
chapter
sixteen
Paul. I had forgotten all about him. Forgotten about him and just what, exactly, he and I had been up to these past few days.
Which was a lot of stuff I did not particularly want Jesse to know about.
“Knock much?” I asked Paul, hoping he would not notice the panic in my voice as Jesse and I pulled apart.
“Well,” Paul said, looking pretty smug for a guy who’d been suspended from school that day. “I heard all the hilarity and figured you had guests. I didn’t realize, of course, that you were entertaining Mr. De Silva.”
Jesse, I saw, was meeting Paul’s sardonic gaze with a pretty hostile stare of his own. “Slater,” Jesse said in a not particularly friendly voice.
“Jesse,” Paul said pleasantly. “How are you this evening?”
“I was doing better,” Jesse said, “before you got here.”
Paul’s dark eyebrows rose, as if he were surprised to hear this. “Really? Suze didn’t tell you the news, then?”
“What n—” Jesse started to ask, but I interrupted quickly.
“About the shifting?” I actually stepped in front of Jesse, as if by doing so I could shield him from what I had a very bad feeling Paul was about to do. “And the soul transference thing? No, I haven’t had a chance to tell Jesse about all that yet. But I will. Thanks for stopping by.”
Paul just grinned at me. And something about that grin made my heart rate speed up all over again….
And not because anyone was trying to kiss me, either.
“That’s not why I’m here,” Paul said, showing all of his very white teeth.
I felt Jesse tense beside me. Both he and Spike were behaving with extraordinary antagonism toward Paul. Spike had leaped onto the windowsill and, all his fur standing up, was growling at Paul pretty loudly. Jesse wasn’t being quite that obvious about his contempt for the guy, but I figured it was only a matter of time.
“Well, if you’re here for Brad’s party,” I said quickly, “you seem to be a little lost. It’s downstairs, not up here.”
“I’m not here for the party, either,” Paul said. “I came by to return this to you.” He dug into the pocket of his jeans and extracted something small and dark from it. “You left it in my bedroom the other day.”
I looked down at what he held in his outstretched palm. It was my tortoiseshell hair clip, the one I’d been missing. But not since I’d been in his room. I’d been missing it since Monday morning, the first day of school. I must have dropped it then, and he’d picked it up.
Picked it up and held it all week, just so he could fling it in Jesse’s face, as he was doing now.
And ruin my life. Because that’s what Paul was. Not a mediator. Not a shifter. A ruiner.
A quick glance at Jesse showed me that those casually uttered words—You left it in my bedroom the other day—had hit home, all right. Jesse looked as if he’d been punched in the stomach.
I knew how he felt. Paul had that effect on people.
“Thanks,” I said, snatching the hair clip from his hand. “But I dropped it at school, not your place.”
“Are you sure?” Paul smiled at me. It was amazing how guileless he could look when he wanted to. “I could have sworn you left it in my bed.”
The fist came out of nowhere. I swear I didn’t see it coming. One minute I was standing there, wondering how in the world I was going to explain this one to Jesse, and the next thing I knew, Jesse’s fist was plowing into Paul’s face.
Paul hadn’t seen it coming, either. Otherwise he would have ducked. Taken completely off guard, he went spinning right into my dressing table. Perfume and nail polish bottles rained down as Paul’s body collided heavily with the ruffle-skirted desk.
“All right,” I said, stepping quickly between them again. “Okay. Enough. Jesse, he’s just trying to get a rise out of you. It was nothing, all right? I went over to his house because he said he knew some stuff about something called soul transference. I thought maybe it was something that
might help you. But I swear, that’s all it was. Nothing happened.”
“Nothing happened,” Paul said, his voice filled with amusement as he climbed to his feet. Blood was dripping from his nose all over the front of his shirt, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Tell me something, Jesse. Does she sigh when you kiss her, too?”
I wanted to kill him myself. How could he? How could he?
The real question, of course, was how could I? How could I have been so stupid as to have let him kiss me like that? Because I had let him—I had even kissed him back. None of this would be happening if I had exercised a little more self-restraint.
I had been hurt, and I had been angry, and I had been, let’s face it, lonely.
Just like Paul.
But I had never purposefully meant to hurt anyone.
This time Jesse’s fist sent him spinning into the window seat, where Spike, not too happy about anything that was going on, let out a hiss and bounded out through the open window onto the porch roof. Paul landed facedown in the cushions. When he lifted his head, I saw blood all over the velvet throw pillows.
“That’s enough,” I said again, grabbing Jesse’s arm as he pulled it back to land another blow. “God, Jesse, can’t you see what he’s doing? He’s just trying to make you mad. Don’t give him the satisfaction.”
“That is not what I am trying to do,” Paul said from the floor. He had rolled his head back against the blood-smeared cushion and was pinching the bridge of his nose to stem the tide of blood that was flowing more or less freely from it. “I am trying to point out to Jesse here that you need a real boyfriend. I mean, come on. How long do you think it’s going to last? Suze, I didn’t tell you before, but I’ll tell you now because I know what you’ve been thinking. Soul transference only works if you toss out the soul that’s currently occupying a body, then throw someone else’s into it. In other words, it’s murder. And I’m sorry, but you don’t strike me as much of a murderer. Your boy Jesse’s going to have to step into the light one of these days. You’re just holding him back—”