As they passed me, Drew looked away. The collar of his flannel shirt hung torn on one side.
Damon picked up the front of his gym shirt and wiped his face. “And apologize to Julie.”
Drew mumbled a half-hearted, “Sorry,” and pushed past the kids who stared at him from the doorway.
“What did you do?” I asked Damon.
“He started it.”
“I asked you to let it go,” I whispered.
He stopped in front of me and looked down into my face.
If he touches me, Sweeney is going to kill us both.
“Get moving, Mr. Sheppard!” Sweeney shrieked.
Damon winked.
I looked away and tried hard not to smile. “This isn’t funny.”
He leaned down and whispered in my ear. “Had no choice.”
I shook my head and looked up into his eyes. “You always have a choice.”
Mr. Tollin tapped Damon on the shoulder. “You’d better get going.”
The bell rang just as Damon disappeared through the door, and everyone scattered. We went back to Mr. Tollin’s room for our stuff, then I headed to the locker room for gym.
* * * * *
Tori came in and sat next to me on the bench. She changed into her school clothes while I changed out of mine. She stopped, looked at me and sighed.
“What?”
She shook her head. “You are so lucky, Juliet.”
I pulled my gym shirt over my head. “Why?”
“Damon.” She leaned down to tie one of her pink Keds. “He totally loves you.”
Heat rushed up my neck. “Did you see what happened?”
She pulled a brush out of her bag and ran it through her hair. “Drew came to the gym to get some golf balls from Miss Sweeney for math. Then our soccer ball went out of bounds and Drew stopped it.”
I pulled my wet hair back in a ponytail and wrapped it with an elastic.
“Drew kicked the ball to Damon, and said, ‘Your girlfriend’s a really good kisser’ really loud.”
My stomach turned inside out and I closed my eyes. “I never kissed Drew.”
“Oh, everyone knows.” She smiled. “And you’re so lucky you didn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
Mia walked in through the double doors. She looked at me, then at Tori, and sat down on a bench to change.
“Damon was totally cool, completely calm,” Tori went on. “He walked over to Drew, got right in his face and said, ‘Don’t lie about Julie’.”
“What did Drew do?”
Tori put the brush away and slung her bag over her shoulder. “He backed up a couple of steps and told Damon to lighten up. Damon stayed right on Drew and said he had to tell the truth.”
“So how did they end up on the floor?”
“Drew pushed Damon. Bad move on his part. Damon just dropped Drew on the ground and pinned him.”
I stood up to follow Tori out.
She sighed. “I hope somebody cares that much about me someday.”
I smiled down at Mia as I wandered out of the locker room in a pleasant, dizzy haze.
Drew’s lie evaporated like dew under the morning sun. He had no power to humiliate me or destroy things with Damon anymore. Every atom of my body felt light as cotton clouds on a spring day.
The truth shall set you free.
We played soccer for the entire gym period, but it could’ve been Swan Lake on roller skates, for all I knew. When Sweeney blew the last whistle and dismissed us to the locker rooms, I wrapped my arms around myself and counted my footsteps to keep from twirling around like a ballerina.
Damon met me in the hall between classes.
“How much trouble are you in?” I asked.
“Not sure yet.” He handed me a folded piece of paper. “The principal wants to talk to Sweeney first.”
“He should talk to the kids. Tori told me what happened.” I opened the paper. “Bible verses?”
“Look through them before art class and see what you think.” He took my books while I swapped stuff out of my locker. “You know the whole words thing we talked about after the Olympics? There are almost 1,000 references to words in the Bible.”
“How do you know this?”
“Counted them in the concordance.”
I read through a couple of the verses he’d printed out in square, jerky letters. “What do you want me to do with these?”
“I thought they might inspire you in art class. For your next prophetic drawing.”
While we walked to the art hall I read the rest of the stuff he wrote. We turned the corner and came up to Miss Downey’s room. Damon leaned against the doorjamb.
I folded my arms. “What makes you think God has anything to do with this?”
He looked at me the same way he did at the track, when I said I didn’t care about his sweaty shirt.
“What?” I asked him.
“Where do you think this comes from?”
I shook my head and folded up the paper. “I have no idea.”
“Seriously?”
“I don’t know.” I looked down at my feet.
He put his fist under my chin and lifted my face to look at him.
How could a simple touch make me so weak and shivery?
“Julie. I saw what Drew did. I saw it when I touched you.” He leaned down to meet my eyes. “And you gave me back the picture my mom took.”
I nodded.
“You have a gift.”
“Maybe.”
He grimaced. “You can be extremely difficult.”
“Does it really matter where it comes from?”
He stood up straight. “It absolutely matters.”
I tossed my hair over my shoulder. “I don’t think I’ll have time to work on prophecies during art, anyway. I’ve got two projects to finish up.”
“Anything for me?”
“Not this time. Sorry. One for my parents and one for Ginger.”
“Ginger?”
“Mark’s ex. Who’s totally cool and fabulous and who Mark is a total jerk for cheating on.”
“Hey, Jimmy,” Damon waved as Jimmy walked into art.
Jimmy held up two fingers. “You’re going to be late.”
Damon checked the clock. “Yeah, I better go.” He handed me my books. “See you at lunch, your highness.”
“‘Your highness’?” Jimmy asked as we walked to our desks.
“He’s my slave this week.”
“Hasn’t he always been?” Jimmy plopped down and opened his art notebook.
I sat down across from him. “What is up with you? It’s like you’re jealous.”
The way Jimmy looked at me, I realized I’d hit it straight on.
“Jimmy?”
He pulled a pencil out of his notebook’s spiral ring and started to sketch absolutely nothing.
“Jimmy?”
“We were best friends. J.B. and J.T.,” he said. “I miss that.”
“We can still be friends, can’t we?”
“Not like we were. You’re different, and you’re different with Damon.” His pencil scratched up and down, this way and that, all over the page. “And Mia’s different now. I know about that.”
“She told you?”
“I figured it out.” He swung his head toward the trash can. “The wadded up tarp full of her hair.”
I set my bag on the floor and leaned back in my chair. “People change, right? I mean, we’re going to change as we get older.”
His pencil stopped. “I don’t want things to change.”
“I don’t think we can stop it.”
The bell rang and I got both the flower and moss painting and Ginger’s portrait out of the cabinet. Miss Downey let me take one of the old frames she’d brought in and showed me how to matte it so everything fit together just right.
“Is this still a gift for your mom?” she asked, as she fitted the last screw into place on the back of the floral one.
“And dad. It’s my
birthday tomorrow. It’s kind of a reverse present.” I picked up the portrait of Ginger and looked through the frames. “I don’t see one that will fit this.”
Miss Downey took the portrait. “This is Ginger Jacobson. How do you know her?”
“My stupid brother dated her.”
“Past tense?”
“Yep.”
“I guess you liked her, then.”
“Better than I do my brother.”
She grinned. “You know what? Leave it bare. I’ve got some large sleeves in my office. Put it one of those, and she can frame it herself.”
When Miss Downey went into her office, I had an idea and checked the clock. Ten minutes left.
I grabbed my pencils and pulled out a medium gray. I sketched the outline of Ginger’s hand just below her chin, then shaded it softly with flesh tones and rubbed my thumb over it to give it a hazy, background quality. I whispered as I worked. “I want Ginger to start dating a fantastic guy, who’s cute and smart and who totally adores her.” With the same pencil I outlined a guy’s silver class ring around her finger, and filled in a sapphire surrounded with several letterman’s insignia.
“Here you go.” Miss Downey handed me a crisp paper sleeve. “Do you want me to drop it off with her? She’s right next door to me.”
I shook my head. “No, thanks. I want to give it to her myself. You know, to kind of say ‘thanks’.”
The bell rang and I packed up my stuff.
When Damon didn’t meet me outside class, I didn’t give it much thought. But then he didn’t show up at lunch either. I couldn’t concentrate at all during science, and from the start of social studies I checked the clock three or four times a minute, till it finally rang at five past three. I headed straight for the office.
Sweeney crossed the foyer and stopped right in front of me. The corners of her smug grin stabbed deep into her pinched cheeks. “Your boyfriends are suspended for the rest of the week.”
CHAPTER 30
“Scare me,” I whispered.
Damon grinned back at me, eyes as roguish as one of Mom’s smooch-and-hooch Romeos. He flipped down the visor on my helmet, then turned forward and revved the engine. The dirt bike roared beneath us, and I clamped myself onto his back.
The rear tire fishtailed to the right and I shrieked when it finally grabbed the ground and propelled us down the first run of the track.
As we built up speed every little bump in the ground knocked us up and down, and Damon swerved this way and that as he picked out the path he wanted.
Over his shoulder I watched the first turn approach, way too fast. I squeezed my eyes shut and clung to him when we dipped way to the side and all my weight bore down on my left foot where it tucked in awkwardly behind Damon’s. Then the bike screamed again and we jetted up a hill I didn’t expect because I still had my eyes closed. My stomach lodged between my lungs and throat.
The track switched back and forth and tossed me from one side to the other as my sense of balance struggled to keep up with the changes in direction. I yelled for him to stop, but he didn’t hear me through the helmets, the scream of the engine and the grinding of the tires against the earth.
A straight track stretched out ahead, and we sped up until the world on either side of us blurred into fuzzy ribbons of brown, green, and blue. The wind blasted past my helmet like the roar of a runaway train.
Damon’s leg shuddered several times and the force of sudden deceleration jammed me against his back. Then we tipped to the side again in a hairpin turn before the bike growled like a wild animal and flew us over a small incline. I looked down. Our shadow glided along the ground, connected to nothing but the promise that we might eventually return to meet it.
We flew over another straight run, then the bike clutched to the right. It came off the ground once more and landed on the other side of the track. My knees and thighs ached with the tension in the muscles that clamped them against the seat.
I chanced another look over Damon’s shoulder and saw the huge ramp ahead.
Oh, please God, please God, please.
My breath came ragged and I bit back a scream. My arms shook from shoulders to fingertips. I closed my eyes as we sped toward the ramp and everything inside me spun apart. I felt each pump of my heart and the release of blood that followed it. One hand gripped my other wrist in front of Damon’s stomach and my arms squeezed like two hungry boa constrictors.
My heart fluttered and I whimpered when the bike climbed a bit. Then we leveled out and skidded to a stop.
I opened my eyes.
We’d come back to the same place we started. I twisted around and saw the ramp behind us.
Damon pulled off his helmet, looked back, and grinned.
“We didn’t go over the jump?”
He laughed. “I’m not taking you on that.”
I slumped against his shoulder.
“Here.” He undid my chin strap and pulled the helmet off my head. “What did you think?”
“Terrifying. Painful.”
“Fun?”
I took a deep breath, then nodded.
“Want to go again?”
“No.” I closed my eyes and put my hands over my face. “I thought we were going up that ramp. I was so scared.”
“Do you know how many times I crashed learning to take jumps like that?”
I shook my head.
“A few. I’ve got scars.”
“That’s crazy.”
“You ready to go then?”
I nodded and put my helmet back on. “No roads, right?”
“No roads.”
I couldn’t decide which ride I liked better, on his handlebars with his arms alongside me and his chest to lean against, or with my arms wrapped around him from behind. As we cut through fields and private driveways to get back to his house, I wished he didn’t insist on the helmets, so I could lay my cheek against him.
We got back to his house just as Adam rode up on his mountain bike.
“Hey, Spooky,” Adam said. “What are you doing here?”
“Please quit calling me that.” I wondered how much Damon had told his brother about my drawings.
“You’re early,” Damon told him.
“So are you.”
They parked the bikes inside the garage and put the overhead door down. “The Olympics are over for now,” Damon said. “And I’m suspended anyway.”
“What for?” Adam pulled a key out of his pocket and unlocked the door.
“Nothing,” I said. “It wasn’t his fault.”
Adam snorted. “It never is. And I actually do mean that.”
“Just drop it,” Damon said.
We went inside to a hallway that led in one direction toward the kitchen and dining room, and in the other to the living room, a staircase, and another hallway. Damon and Adam both hung their keys on a rack beside the door and I followed them into the living room.
The neatness of the place kind of shocked me. No stacks of dirty dishes or piles of laundry. They didn’t have much for decorations or color, but the house looked clean and organized. When Damon hung his jacket in the closet I saw a vacuum cleaner with the cord wound in tight circles around its handle.
Adam pointed at us and winked at Damon. “I’ll leave you two kids alone, then,” he said, and took the stairs a couple at a time before he stopped on the landing and looked back at me. “Unless you’re still afraid of Damon. You need me to stay? Keep an eye on him?”
“Afraid of me?” Damon asked.
I gave Adam a dirty look and shook my head. “I think I’m okay. Thanks.”
“Anything for you.” He blew me a kiss and disappeared upstairs.
“What was that?” Damon asked.
“Just your brother.”
Damon frowned. “You two have inside jokes now?”
“So you want me to draw?”
He stared at me for a few seconds. “Yeah.” He plopped down on the couch.
“I should probably call hom
e first. Just in case.”
He jumped back up. “Right.” He led me down the hall into the kitchen and pointed to the phone on the wall. “You hungry?”
“Maybe some.”
I sat down at the peninsula counter between the table and the kitchen, picked up the phone and dialed home. Damon dug around in the fridge while I talked to Mark.
“If you see Mom or Dad, tell them I’ll be home by eight.”
“Want me to tell them where you are?”
Did I? “It doesn’t matter.”
“So where are you?”
When I didn’t say anything, Mark kind of laughed, with a snort. “You’re at the Sheppards’, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, I am.”
“What are you doing?”
“Homework.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
I switched ears with the phone when Damon put a glass of milk in front of me. I smiled at him and took a drink. “What do you mean?”
“What is going on with you? This isn’t you.”
“What isn’t?”
Mark sighed and I heard him open the fridge. “Think you could go to the grocery, Mom?” he muttered. “Come on, J. You know what I mean.”
He’s the one who told me things would change when I met the right guy, and maybe they had. “Who are you to talk, anyway?”
“That’s different,” he argued. Then he cursed. “Forget it. If those are the kind of people you want to be with, go for it.” He hung up.
I put the phone back in the cradle but held onto it for a few seconds. It stung, both what Mark said, and that it bothered me that he said it.
Damon slid a plate onto the counter beside me and pulled up a chair on the other side. “Everything okay?”
I nodded and let go of the phone. “You made sandwiches?”
“BLTs. Leftovers. Sorry, they’re cold.”
Only lettuce and bacon stuck out between my bread. “Where’s my T?”
He frowned. “You can’t have tomatoes.”
“I can’t?”
Then it came back, that day in the cafeteria. I put my hand over my mouth and looked away. That felt like years ago.
“You’re allergic.”
“I’m not allergic.” My memory replayed the whole embarrassing scene, but now it felt like it happened to someone else, some person I didn’t know anymore.
“You’re not?”
I shook my head.
“Anything else I should know?”
“Ask me anything.”
He looked at me, straight at my face, eyes into eyes, and I wished I hadn’t just said that. I took a bite of my sandwich and my throat went as dry and tight as it had that day at lunch.
“Anything?”