Southern Storm

  Never the recipient of those notes, she’d been the subject of a few. She knew that because, after registering their whispers and stolen looks across the room, Sadie had occasionally waited for the class to empty and dug them out of the trash.

  The first one that had her name had knocked the wind from her like a shovel swung across her stomach. Whack!

  It had criticized the shoes she wore, the way she wore her hair, whether it was really blonde or bleached that way. Another gossiped that she was seventeen, two years older than the other tenth graders.

  The final blow had come when she’d found one in which they had called her the “tramp daughter of a jailbird.”

  Whack! Whack!

  She had read others, where they’d called her stupid and suggested that she needed to be put back into seventh grade instead of tenth, because she had the education and the brains of a manatee.

  She knew they were right. She didn’t have a strong background in school. For most of her life, she had yawned through classes and had trouble focusing, since she’d gotten so little sleep at night. Most nights she spent avoiding the men her mother brought home and all the other “friends” who came and went through all hours of the night, vile foulmouthed people with selfish motives, coming to buy drugs and sell them and sometimes even to make them.

  School had been a sanctuary to her, but she couldn’t say that she’d been able to learn all that much. She had street smarts, her mother had always told her, and that was what really counted.

  Street smarts had saved her life on many occasions, but she yearned for the other kind of smarts—the kind that made you fit in and seem normal and get ahead in this world.

  The bell rang, and Sadie looked up at the teacher. The tall, skinny woman barked out their assignment as the students began filing out the door like evacuees during a bomb threat. Sadie closed her books, loaded them back into her backpack, and followed the students out.

  She went to her locker and got the books she would need for the last class of the day. Next to her, the three girls who’d been writing notes babbled about a party that Friday night.

  “On South Beach,” Crystal Lewis was saying. “My parents are letting me hire a DJ. Everybody’ll be there.”

  Sadie knew that “everybody” didn’t include her. The girl giving the party was the one who’d called her a tramp.

  Not for the first time, Sadie wished Morgan had allowed her to home-school or work fulltime instead of enrolling here. She could have gotten a job in one of the souvenir shops on the island and done just fine with the tourists and beach bums. Last summer, when she’d first come to Cape Refuge, she had worked at the Cape Refuge Journal and had been proud of the job she’d done. But the paper had closed, and Morgan had insisted on school.

  Even the principal knew the story of how she’d shown up here and slept on the beach until Cade had forbidden her, and how she’d then slept in the boathouse that belonged to Hanover House, until Morgan had discovered her and brought her home. And the principal knew—like everyone else—that her mother still served time on drug charges.

  She closed her locker and headed up the hall to her class, walking against the flow of rushing students, as if she alone had a class in the other direction. She always felt alone at school, even in a crowd. She sometimes went entire days without anyone in class acknowledging her.

  Sighing, she slapped her fine hair back over her shoulder and heard a voice behind her.

  “What class do you have next?”

  She glanced back and saw Trevor Beal, the star linebacker for the Cape Refuge football team, whom many of those intercepted notes had been about.

  “Biology,” she said with a nervous, surprised smile. “I hate biology.”

  “Could be worse.” He fell into step beside her. “Could be calculus. That’s where I’m going.”

  She thought of the remedial math class they had put her in and knew that she would never make it through calculus. Not in a million years.

  “Hey, listen, I’m going to a party Friday night on the beach. Crystal is giving it. You want to come?”

  Sadie stopped in the hall and looked up at him. It was no wonder Crystal Lewis followed him around like a starving puppy. With his black, wavy hair, those movie-star blue eyes, and that athletic build, every girl in the school had tried to get his attention.

  She didn’t really want to be one of them. “I can’t go to that party. I wasn’t invited.”

  He grinned. “If you go as my date, you’re invited, okay? Come on, it’ll be fun.”

  She just stared at him. Was he making fun of her? Asking her on a dare? She glanced around, expecting to see a vicious crowd of giggling girls waiting nearby.

  But no one watched.

  The hall was emptying. The bell would ring any second.

  “I don’t think so, Trevor.”

  He looked shattered. “Why not?”

  “Because . . .” She didn’t want to confess her distrust of anyone here who was nice to her. If she was wrong, she’d seem pitiful, a fate worse than being mocked.

  “Come on, Sadie. I really want to get to know you.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Why?”

  “Why?” he repeated. “Have you looked in the mirror lately?”

  Her defenses shattered, and she smiled. He meant it. He wasn’t mocking.

  She thought of Crystal, her nemesis who had coined the worst phrases about her. It was no secret that she’d had a crush on him all year. If she went out with him, Crystal would declare all-out war.

  Sadie pushed her hair behind her ears, then flipped it back out and raked it back with her fingers. She started to say yes, that she would go as his date.

  But then reality struck. She couldn’t go to that girl’s party and risk having her call her the “tramp daughter of a jailbird” out loud in front of everyone. She didn’t want people whispering about her, snubbing her, staring at her. What could she be thinking?

  “I’d like to, Trevor. I really would, but I don’t think I belong at Crystal’s party. Maybe some other time.” She started to walk away.

  Trevor stepped in front of her. “Okay, then we can do something else,” he said. “I don’t have to go to that party. We could go to Savannah and see a movie, maybe get a bite to eat.”

  Her eyebrows shot up and her eyes widened. It was too good to be true. “You’d miss the party?”

  “Sure. There are millions of parties every weekend. Nothing special about this one.” He pushed her hair back, sending a jolt through her. “Besides, it was just an excuse to get you to go out with me. I don’t care anything about Crystal’s party.”

  Her heart felt like a dove flapping at her rib cage, ready to soar. “I’d love to go,” she said. “It sounds fun.”

  “Okay, I’ll pick you up at six Friday night. Sound okay?”

  She bit her bottom lip. “Yeah, sounds great. You know where I live?”

  He grinned. “Everybody knows Hanover House.”

  She watched him lope off to his classroom. Quickly, she headed to her own, ducked inside, and sat at the back. Crystal and her cohorts clustered at the front, their sandaled, red-toenailed feet stretched out in front of them, their moussed hair perfect as it blew under the vent of the air conditioner.

  Somehow she didn’t feel quite so alone anymore. There was someone in this school who saw value in her. Someone substantial. Someone important.

  Maybe things were about to change.

  CHAPTER 18

  Sadie found Morgan sitting at the desk in the little office off the kitchen. A Bible lay open in front of her, and next to it a stack of checks that had come from the donors who supported the house. On the floor behind her, little Caleb slept soundly on his favorite blankie, his little mouth open. She knelt down beside him and gave him a gentle kiss.

  “What you doing?” she asked Morgan in a low voice.

  “Just posting these donor checks.”

  “Any news about Chief Cade?”

  Morgan sho
ok her head. “None. They’re still looking for him.” She put her pen down and reached for Sadie’s hand. “How was your day, sweetie?”

  Sadie grinned and bit her lip. “Good. Really, really good.”

  Morgan seemed to notice the excitement on Sadie’s face and pulled her into the kitchen so they wouldn’t wake Caleb. “Okay, spill it. Something happened.” She sat her down at the table and reached for a soda in the refrigerator.

  “Something really unbelievable,” Sadie said on the edge of a squeal.

  Morgan set a plate of cookies down and joined Sadie at the table. “Come on, start talking.”

  Sadie giggled. Her life at Hanover House seemed like a fantasy, something she had dreamed of at night when she had lain in her bed and heard the sounds of Ozzy Osbourne music coming from her mother’s living room, people cackling and doors slamming, and strangers intruding on her private space. She had dreamed of a home where she could go off to school rested and secure, then come home and have a snack waiting for her, someone to ask her how things had been and get excited when she had news. And now she had all that. She had no right to complain about a few smart-aleck girls at school treating her like trash.

  “A guy asked me out for Friday night!”

  Morgan’s eyes reflected her delight. “Sadie, that’s great!”

  Sadie did a little dance in her seat. “He originally asked me to some party that Crystal Lewis was giving, but I told him no way I was going to one of her parties, not that she’d let me come, anyway.”

  Morgan touched her hand. “Honey, she’d love you if she got to know you.”

  “Well, she’s not too interested in that. Anyway, I said no, so he’s like, ‘We don’t have to go to the party. We can go to a movie. It was just an excuse to take you out.’” She stopped and covered her mouth and let out another muffled squeal.

  Morgan laughed with her. “So who’s the boy? Do I know him?”

  “A senior named Trevor Beal. The star linebacker on the football team.”

  Morgan’s face changed, and Sadie thought that if smiles could really crash, there’d be lip fallout all over the floor. “Oh. Him.”

  Sadie didn’t like the sound of that. She set her cookie down. “What’s the matter?”

  Morgan got up and went to the counter. She got a wet sponge and began to wipe it. It was her way. Whenever something disturbed her, she wiped something. “Nothing. It’s just that . . . I know his family. They’re not very . . . reputable people.”

  Sadie sat back in her chair. “Well, I’m not very reputable, either, if you ask anybody at my school. What’s the matter with them?”

  Morgan stopped wiping and turned back to her. “Sadie, Trevor’s family has been involved in criminal activities for years. A few years ago his father and uncles were indicted for drug trafficking. During the trial, their major witness wound up dead. No one could ever prove they’d had anything to do with it, but without that witness they couldn’t get a conviction, so they got off scot-free. But not before a bunch of evidence came out about their family being one of the biggest suppliers of cocaine in the southeast.”

  “But Trevor’s not a druggie. He’s a nice person.”

  “No, none of them are druggies. They don’t take drugs—they just sell them. And that’s not just a rumor, Sadie—I’ve heard it from a number of the people we work with at the jail. The drug dealers get their supplies from this family. They’re also big loan sharks around this area. And I can’t prove it, but I think Trevor is one of the ones who goes around beating people up for not paying on time.”

  Sadie gaped at her. “No, he wouldn’t do that. I mean, he’s big and everything, but he wouldn’t just beat people up over money.”

  Morgan sat back down and took her hands. “Sadie, a guy at our church was having financial problems and borrowed from them. He wound up in the hospital with two broken legs. He told the police that Trevor and some other guys did it, but they got off because they had some tight alibis.”

  “Then he couldn’t have done it.”

  “But it was his own family that backed up his alibi, Sadie. They’ve been known to lie to protect their own before. They’re scary people.”

  Sadie wanted to cry. Maybe Trevor was too good to be true. “Morgan, I’m telling you, he wouldn’t do that. You’re just listening to gossip. And I thought we were supposed to love everyone. Not just the ones whose parents are perfect.”

  “Sadie, I have prayed for that family. When Trevor’s grandmother died, I took food over there. I’ve invited them to our church. I would love it if any one of them wanted to come. But dating one of them is another thing altogether.”

  “But he’s the only one who’s asked me out! And besides, Jesus hung out with the publicans and the prostitutes. Maybe Trevor’s family are just the kind of people Jesus would have spent time with.”

  Morgan breathed a bitter laugh. “Honey, you don’t know how many times I heard my sister say that to my parents, when she wanted to hang around with people who were getting her into trouble. The fact is, Jesus did come to seek and save the lost. But he didn’t leave them lost. He told them to go and sin no more, and lots of them listened and did just that.”

  “Well, maybe I could do that for Trevor. Maybe I could lead him to Christ.”

  Morgan tipped her head and touched Sadie’s chin. “Honey, that hardly ever happens in a dating relationship. What happens instead is that the unbeliever changes the believer.”

  “You don’t have much faith in me.” Blinking back tears, Sadie wadded her napkin and took it to the waste basket. “He’s a good person, Morgan.”

  “Sadie, as long as I’m your guardian, it’s my job to protect you.” Morgan sighed. “I know you’re excited about this boy asking you out, but I don’t feel comfortable letting you go. Please understand. You’re a great person, and there will be other guys.”

  Sadie felt as if the world had been pulled out from under her, just when she was getting her footing. “I was so excited . . . I’ve tried to make friends, but it hasn’t happened. And then he came along.” She started to cry and hated herself for it. “I’ve been there for months already, Morgan. Almost a whole school year. I’m older than everyone in my class. I’m a freak. Nobody’s noticed what a great person I am. Nobody cares what a great person I am. Nobody even thinks I’m a great person. They think I’m the tramp daughter of a jailbird.”

  Morgan looked as if she’d been slapped. “Did someone say that to you?”

  “Yes! It’s like some kind of nickname. I hate it there. I didn’t want to go in the first place. But now something’s happened that makes it bearable, and you’re telling me you won’t allow it?”

  “Honey, like I said, you can be his friend. But you cannot go out with him.”

  “But you’ve told me that we’re supposed to influence the world around us. Salt and light and all that. How can we be that if we avoid people who need it?”

  Morgan was undaunted. “Sadie, we’ve been over this. You can be salt and light to someone without dating them!”

  It was the closest she and Morgan had ever come to fighting, and Sadie hated it. But she wasn’t ready to back down yet.

  She heard Caleb chattering in the office off the kitchen, then he appeared, sleepy-eyed and with the imprint of his blankie on one cheek. “Say-Say,” he said and reached up for her. She picked him up and kissed his warm cheek. He saw her tears and touched her wet cheek.

  “Here, let me have him.” Morgan took the chubby baby. Sadie watched, crying silently, as Morgan poured some apple juice into his sippy cup and took him to his high chair.

  When he was settled, Morgan reached for her hand and pulled her back to her chair.

  Sadie sat down and looked dully at her.

  “Sadie, I’m not trying to ruin your fun. I know how much this means to you.”

  “Morgan, please don’t make me tell him no. I’ll look like such a dork. It’ll be one more rumor that’ll go around about me.”

  Morgan incline
d her head as if Sadie had made her point. “If he’s the kind of guy who would start a rumor about you, then why do you say he’s so decent? Sadie, you’ve got to quit worrying what people think of you. You’ve gotten this far in life without it.”

  “I’ve always cared what they think,” she said. “I just didn’t have any control over it before. When I was living in Atlanta with my mom and her boyfriends, I pretty much just rolled with the punches. People thought I was trash at school. And I knew I couldn’t ever be anything better, so it didn’t really matter.” She watched as Caleb bit into a cookie. “But now I’m different, Morgan. I’m with you, and things are better . . . and I feel like I could really be somebody if I just had a chance.”

  Morgan gazed into her eyes. “You are somebody, Sadie. You’re somebody very special. That’s why I feel so protective. That’s why I don’t want you dating Trevor Beal. There’ll be other guys, Christian ones.”

  “And where will I meet them?” she asked. “Our church doesn’t exactly have a youth group, since Caleb and I are practically the only ones under twenty-five.”

  “Well, then we need to work on getting you some fellowship with other Christians your age. Maybe you could join a Christian club at school or start going to Bible study at one of the local churches that does have a youth group.”

  Sadie sighed. She wasn’t getting through to her. Even the Christian kids at school shunned her. She had little hope of friendship with any of them. She pictured the Christian guys having conversations just like this with their parents, only about her. I don’t want you dating that girl. Haven’t you heard about her mother?

  The doorbell rang, and welcoming the chance to end this dead-end conversation, she got up. “I’ll get it.”

  As she went to the front door, she heard Morgan talking baby-talk to Caleb, and his laughter filling the room. She opened the door.

  A black woman who looked at least ten months pregnant stood there with a suitcase in her hand. “Hi,” the woman said. “I’m looking for the Clearys—Morgan or Jonathan. Is this the right place?”