“I thought I’d say hello,” said Ray. “I’ve thought about you a lot. I-I just wanted to see how you were.”
“I’m fine,” Julie repeated, and the green eyes that knew her so well, that had seen her through so many situations—through parties and picnics and cheerleading tryouts, and being caught cheating on a math test, and coming down with a rare case of the chicken pox right before Homecoming—those eyes kept looking in disbelief.
“You don’t look fine,” Ray said. “You look like hell. Has it been dragging on you like this ever since?”
“No,” Julie said. “I don’t think about it.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t,” Julie told him. “I don’t let myself.” She lowered her voice. “I made up my mind right after the funeral. I knew if I kept thinking…well, what good would that have done? People go crazy dwelling on things they can’t change.” She paused. “I sent him flowers.”
Ray looked surprised. “You did?”
“I went down to People’s Flower Shoppe and bought some yellow roses. I had them delivered without my name on them. I know it was silly. It couldn’t help. It was just…I felt I had to do something and I couldn’t think of anything else.”
“I know,” Ray said. “I felt the same way. I didn’t think about sending flowers. I kept waking up at night and seeing that curve in the road again, that bicycle coming up suddenly out of the dark like that, and I’d feel the thud and then the bump as the wheels went over it. I’d lie there and shake.”
“That’s why you went away.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Isn’t that why you’re going to Smith? To get away from here? You’ve never cared that much about college. You used to talk about maybe taking computer courses or something right here in town while I went to the University. Going east to school was the last thing you had on your mind.”
“Barry’s at the U now,” Julie said. “He’s on the football team.”
“I saw Helen yesterday at lunch. She looked pretty.”
“She’s a Future Star,” Julie said. “Did you know? Channel Five had this beauty contest thing based on photographs, and Helen won it. She’s got a full-time job representing the station for all kinds of things, giving spot announcements and small news reports. She even deejays her own webcast in the afternoons.”
“Great,” Ray said. “Are they still together?”
“I guess so. I saw them today.” Julie shook her head. “I don’t know how Helen can do it—keep going with him, I mean. She was there, she saw him that night, she heard the things he said. How can she still think he’s so wonderful? How can she even stand to have him touch her?”
“It was an accident,” Ray reminded her. “God knows, Barry didn’t plan it. It could have been me driving the car. It would have been if I hadn’t won the toss for the back seat.”
“But you would have stopped,” Julie said.
There was a long silence as the words hung there between them.
“Would I?” Ray asked at last.
“Of course,” Julie said sharply. And then, “Wouldn’t you?”
“Who knows?” Ray shrugged his shoulders. “I tell myself I would have. You think I would have. But how can we know? How can you know how anybody’s going to react in a situation like that? We’d all had a few beers and smoked a little pot. It happened so fast.”
“You called for the ambulance. You wanted to go back.”
“But I didn’t insist on it. You wanted to go back too, but we didn’t. We let Barry talk us into the pact. I could have held out, but I didn’t. I must have wanted to be talked into it. I’m no better than Barry, Jules, so don’t try to make him the black knight and me the prince on the white horse. It just isn’t thatway.”
“You’re as bad as Helen,” Julie said. “The both of you! You form the Great Society for Admiring Barry Cox. You’d stick up for him no matter what he did. You should have heard her tonight, begging him to call her this weekend, and here they are, supposedly a couple. It’s just so degrading.”
“I don’t see anything degrading about sticking by your guy if you care about him.” Ray’s brows drew together in that quizzical look she knew so well. “What were you doing at Helen’s anyway? I thought you’d burned all your bridges, that you were cutting ties with all of us.”
“I have,” Julie told him. “That is, I meant to. Today I got a letter in the mail. It upset me and I called Helen, and then she called Barry, and suddenly there we all were, hashing it over. I wish now I’d just chucked it and not made such a big deal about it.”
Ray looked interested. “What sort of letter?”
“Just a prank thing. Helen says she gets them sometimes, and phone calls and e-mail too, but I never got any before, so I overreacted.” She opened her purse and fished out the envelope. “Here it is, if you want to see it.”
Ray got up and came over and sat on the arm of her chair, taking the letter out of her hand. He opened it and read it.
“Barry thinks it was written by some kid,” Julie said. “That it doesn’t really mean anything, it just happened to have hit on something that struck a nerve.” She paused, watching his face as he studied the black line of printing. “Is that what you think?”
“It’s possible,” Ray said, “but it’s one hell of a coincidence. Why pick on you? Do you know anybody who could have sent it?”
“Barry thought maybe some boy from school.”
“You said you’re dating.” He raised his eyes from the paper. “This guy you’re going out with tonight, is he the practical joker type?”
“As far from it as you can get,” said Julie. “Bud’s a nice guy. Older. Serious about everything. He was in the army and fought in Iraq. The last thing he’d ever do is write silly notes.”
“Are you in love with him?” The question was so sudden, so far away from the previous discussion, that she was unprepared.
“No,” she said.
“But he is with you?”
“I don’t think so. Maybe a little. Please, Ray, this is just a nice guy I met one day in the library. He asked me out and Mom had been bugging me about never going anywhere anymore, so I went. And then it was easy just to keep on. Besides, what difference does it make to you? You and I—we’re not a thing anymore.”
“Aren’t we?” He reached out a hand and placed it gently under her chin, tilting her face up so that it was raised to his. The face that looked down at her was familiar, darker and stronger than she remembered it, framed with shaggy hair and a beard. But the eyes were the same. No stranger could ever look at her through Ray’s green eyes.
“It’s still there,” he said. “You know it is. You could feel it, just the way I could, the moment you walked into the room. We had too good a thing for too long. We can’t just let it go.”
“That’s how it has to be,” Julie said. “I mean it, Ray. I really do. It’s the only way we’ll ever forget. I’m going to leave here, leave all the people and places connected with that horrible night, and never look back. It’s over and done with. There’s no repairing it. So I’m going to erase it.”
“And you think that’s possible?” His voice was sad. “Sweetie, something like that doesn’t get erased. I thought maybe it could be too, there in the beginning. That’s why I packed up and took off. New places, new people…I thought that would do it. But it didn’t. You can’t run away. You at Smith, me out in California, it’s still there with us. I realized that finally. It’s why I came home.”
“If you can’t run away,” Julie said chokingly, “what can you do?”
“Face up to it.”
“You mean, break the pact?”
“No,” Ray said. “We can’t do that. But we can talk to the others. We can dissolve the pact, if we’re all in agreement.”
“Never. Barry will never agree to it, and if he won’t, Helen won’t.”
The doorbell rang.
Ray’s hand dropped to his side. He got up from the arm of her c
hair. “That must be your friend.”
“I guess so. He was picking me up at eight.” Julie’s eyes went nervously from Ray’s face to the door.
“Don’t worry, I’ll behave myself. I’ll probably even like him. He’s got good taste in girls, anyway.”
They went to the door together, and Julie introduced them.
Bud said, “Raymond Bronson? You any relation to Booter Bronson who runs the sporting goods store?”
“His son,” Ray told him. “I hear you just got back from Iraq. I sure don’t envy you that gig.”
They shook hands civilly and stood and talked a few moments in a pleasant fashion, as though they might have been friends if given the chance. Then Ray left, and Julie excused herself and went upstairs to comb her hair.
When she came down, Bud was still standing there by the door as he had been when she left him. He looked up at her and smiled as she came down the stairs, and for an instant she felt like crying because his smile was such a nice one and because his eyes weren’t green.
CHAPTER 4
One of the pleasant things about being the Channel Five Future Star, Helen Rivers often reminded herself, was the hours. Eleven o’clock in the morning usually found her stretched in a deck chair, soaking up sunshine beside the swimming pool. Because this particular day happened to be Saturday, it was not exactly her private pool; an assortment of schoolteachers used it also. But on the usual weekday she could sleep half the morning and come down to find that she had the whole lovely area to herself.
“I can’t imagine why they pay you all that money,” her sister Elsa sometimes commented on those weekends when Helen went dutifully home for Sunday dinner. “You don’t do anything that anyone else couldn’t do—just smile and play songs and make silly comments.”
Elsa worked an eight-hour day at Wards Department Store and was a great believer that the only kind of work that counted was the kind that made your back ache and sent you home exhausted.
“Oh, there’s more to it than that,” Helen tried to tell her. “You’re at their beck and call whenever they need somebody to represent the station for publicity reasons. And it can really kill your evenings, having to give reports on the ten o’clock news.”
Even to her own ears the statement sounded ludicrous. In all honesty she knew that being selected as the Channel Five Future Star was the culmination of almost every dream she had ever had.
Helen’s looks were the best thing she had going for her, and she was born realistic enough to have recognized the fact early. At the age of twelve she had sat down one day and examined herself in the mirror.
What she had seen there had been pleasing, but not pleasing enough. Cold-bloodedly she had analyzed her attributes: good bones, even teeth, fine features. She had a nice chest for her age but too much weight in the hips. Her coloring was too pale, her hair rather ordinary, but thick and healthy. Her hands were not particularly small, but they were long-fingered and artistic-looking, despite bitten fingernails.
She broke the fingernail habit immediately through sheer willpower. The rest took more time, especially the weight loss. Helen liked to eat, and the food that was served in her family’s home was usually of the inexpensive and starchy variety. A strenuous diet had brought her figure under control, and experimentation with rinses and makeup had brought out the honey highlights in her hair and fringed her deep violet eyes, her most unusual feature, with long, blue-black lashes.
“What do you think you are, a fairy princess?” Elsa had taunted her.
Helen had ignored her. It would have been nice, she had admitted to herself, if such had been the case. As the second daughter in a large family, she had no illusions about magic and fairy godmothers. She had only to look at her own mother, haggard from years of housework and budget-stretching and childbearing, and her father, sweating out his days at construction work, to know that her chances for a luxurious future were slim.
Still, she was pretty, and that could serve for something. It would have to, she told herself, because she certainly had no academic talents. Dropping out of school to accept the offer of the Future Star job had been more of a relief than a sacrifice. She had stuck through school that far for one reason only—she had fallen in love.
She had loved Barry Cox from the first moment she had seen him. Big and broad-shouldered, handsome and popular, he was as close to perfect as any guy she could ever have imagined. As captain of the city’s winning high school football team, he could have had his pick of any girl he wanted. His choosing her was the surprising thing, the actual miracle.
It had happened so suddenly that she had never been able to figure out the exact circumstances. She had been walking home from school when a bright red sports car had pulled up beside her, and Barry had been in it.
“Hi, there,” he had said. “Climb in and I’ll drive you home.”
When he dropped her off, he had asked her for a date. It had happened that simply, and her world had never been the same again.
Now, stretched in the deck chair, letting the warmth of the morning sun sink into her body, she thought, I shouldn’t have called him.
Barry didn’t like to be pressured. She had learned that from his mother. One time soon after they had started dating, before she knew his cell number, she had called him at home to check on what time he was coming to pick her up.
Mrs. Cox had answered the phone.
“Let me give you some advice, dear,” she had said in her cool, sharp voice. “Barry is a boy who doesn’t react well to being chased. If he wants to talk with you, he will do the calling. Your little affair will last longer that way, believe me.”
Since then, she had called him only when absolutely necessary. Yesterday’s call had seemed at the time to fall into that category, but in retrospect she realized that it had not. Barry had been irritated; he did have exams to study for. Dragging him away from his books to confront him with that silly note had been ridiculous. His explanation had been so reasonable that it now seemed incredible that she and Julie could not have thought of it themselves.
“Excuse me. Would it be all right if I sat down here?” The voice came from directly beside her, startling her so that she jumped. Her eyes flew open and for a moment she was blinded by the sun.
“I’m sorry,” the young man said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“You didn’t. I must have been half asleep. I didn’t hear you come up.”
Helen shaded her eyes with one hand to look up at him. Her glance took in the brown eyes, brown hair, a strong, square-cut face, a medium sort of build. He was wearing olive green swimming trunks, cut like shorts.
Helen was used to the faces around the apartment complex, and this one was unfamiliar.
“You’re new here?” she asked.
“Just moved in yesterday. Apartment 211. Will it bother you if I sit down?”
“No, of course not.” Helen leaned back in the chair and watched idly as he settled himself into an identical chair beside her. There were plenty of other seats around the pool and a number of other people beside whom he could have sat.
“This is the heavy day for sunbathers,” she told him. “Saturdays most people are off from work and trying to build up their tans. My name’s Helen Rivers.”
“Collingsworth Wilson, if you’ll excuse the mouthful. Just out of the service. I’ve been staying out at my folks’ place in the mountains and finally decided to cut loose and get my own apartment. I think I’ll be going to summer school at the University.”
“The guy I go with goes to the U,” Helen said. She made a point of working such a statement into the conversation as soon as possible upon meeting new people. She had found that it allowed the pleasure of harmless flirtation without presenting the problem of having to reject overtures. “Collingsworth is a different sort of name. Do they call you Collie?”
“I’ve got a family nickname that my kid brother stuck me with,” the boy told her. “But Collie’s okay too. A lot of people do call me
that. I’m like a well-trained puppy; I answer to anything.”
“A well-trained Collie?” Helen said, smiling. She was not usually much on puns, but this one had been too easy. “I’m glad to meet you. We’re practically next-door neighbors. I’m on the second level too, down the way from you in 215.”
“And who’s the boyfriend?” Collie asked. “I want to be sure to avoid him.”
“His name’s Barry Cox. He lives on campus, but he comes over a lot. You’ll be meeting him. Everybody meets everybody here in the summer.” She closed her eyes again and rolled over onto her stomach so that the sun could reach her shoulders. “The pool area makes a wonderful meeting place. We all sit around and talk and party. Four Seasons is a great place to live. I know you’ll like it.”
“I like it already,” Collie said simply. “But I’d like it even better if the prettiest girl here wasn’t all tied up to some jerk before I can even get my bid in. Have you been hooked up with this guy long?”
“Almost two years. We were steadies back in high school, and he’s definitely not a jerk. Do you think I’m burning?”
“I don’t know,” Collie said. “I can’t tell what’s happening under all that suntan lotion.”
“Well, I’d better get inside. I’ve been out here a couple of hours already.” Helen rolled over and sat up. “I can’t afford to start peeling. If I look a mess I might lose my job.”
“What sort of work do you do where you can’t get a sunburn?” Collie asked. “Are you a model or something?”
“I’m the Channel Five Future Star.” Despite herself, Helen could not keep the pride from showing in her voice. It was still such a new sensation to be able to make such a statement. “Maybe you’ve seen me on TV.”
“If I had, I’m sure I’d remember it,” the boy said seriously. “I don’t usually watch TV much, but I can see where I’m going to have to start.”
“There’s a big screen down in the common area,” Helen told him. She picked up the bottle of suntan lotion and got to her feet.