The A-Word

  “I dreamt about you and Bo!” I shouted.

  This made her press the brake and look at me more closely, but her hands stayed on the wheel. “Dreams are just dreams, Jenna.”

  I wanted to think she was right.

  “What’s wrong with knowing what happened to you?” I asked her. “Wouldn’t it better?”

  “No,” Amber said.

  She breathed in, pressing a finger to the hollow of her throat like she was checking her pulse. I saw then that she was no longer wearing Terry’s necklace. This time when she told me to back up, I didn’t argue. I just stood in the middle of the street, shining unnaturally in the light from the Gilroys’ fake graveyard, and let her drive away.

  When I heard the sound of an engine, I figured it was Amber coming back.

  Instead, a dark-colored sedan careened around the corner, tires screeching. It didn’t slow down. I sidestepped back up the driveway, but the car angled onto our lawn, hitting the grass so hard that the earth shook. It was coming right toward me. I stumbled, tripping over my feet, my arms pin-wheeling as I tried to run, tried to right myself, tried to do something other than get squashed like a bug in front of my own house.

  The last clear thought I had was this: Ryan Sloboda had asked me to Homecoming and the Bonfire, and I had picked out a dress. But that was all I’d get. The universe had no plans for me to actually enjoy these things.

  Bo Shivers reached me even before Casey. It was Bo’s arms around me and Bo who lifted and tossed me like I weighed nothing. I landed somehow gentle as a feather on our lawn. My entire body felt warm and calm, blissful. The sedan careened away, trenching the grass and knocking over the SULLY ANDERSON fake tombstone, then sped off down the street.

  My breath froze, my insides no longer euphoric. My brother threw himself at me.

  “Jennajennajenna,” he said over and over, his hands checking me for injury, but I knew I was fine.

  “Get off me,” I grunted. “I can’t breathe.”

  “Get off her, Casey,” Bo commanded.

  He did.

  Mom appeared in the doorway.

  “Go on back inside, Mrs. Samuels,” Bo called.

  She did.

  When I heard the roar of an engine again, my heart went crazy. But it was Amber, screeching up and running toward me without even shutting off the car.

  “Jenna!” she shouted, her voice panicky-sounding, making me think of my dream.

  “Did you see the car?” my brother asked sharply.

  She hadn’t.

  Then why was she here again? Welcome back, Spidey sense.

  “She’s your responsibility,” Amber snapped at my brother.

  “I’m fine,” I said, trying not to panic.

  Had someone tried to run me down? Was it a prank? Dr. Renfroe? For the first time ever, my brain admitted that I worried about him like that.

  And then they were all arguing at once, their glows on a permanent simmer—about what was significant and if this was something to worry about and were they keeping secrets from each other? Bo was looking into the air like he was scouting for fighter drones or birds and eventually I left them to it because it had been about me, but it wasn’t now. I wasn’t squashed. I was alive, like Mom. Hell, I was even hungry.

  That sounds small and selfish and maybe it was. But once again, NOTHING was happening, not even after something HUGE. It was like when my teachers all gave me ridiculous amounts of homework, and I hauled it all home in my backpack and then let it sit and hauled it back to school mostly not done. Sometimes things are so big that it’s hard to break them down.

  But oh how they all liked to hear themselves talk. Maybe if you’re trapped being good because you’re an angel, it wears on you. It sure was wearing on me.

  Mom went back to bed before she even had a chance to eat dinner. Her cheeks bright red and a silly grin on her lips, she blamed it on the wine Bo had plied her with.

  Maybe it was the wine. It didn’t really matter. Bo Shivers did not want my Mom around for our little discussion about the mysterious hit-and-run attempt. And Bo Shivers tended to get his way.

  Here is what Casey and Amber pondered: Was it a random drunk? Was it someone we knew? Was I in danger?

  Maybe that was the real reason Bo was teaching at Spring Creek High. To keep an eye me. Given what had just almost happened to me, he was doing a shit job of it.

  The only thing I knew for sure? Bo was a good cook. He had not lied about that.

  Amber did leave again then—insisting she really did have to work her shift, which I decided to believe since why else walk around in public wearing that butt ugly EMT getup? We were no more in the know than we had been when she’d stormed out earlier.

  “Stick by Bo and your brother,” she told me before she went.

  “ ’Cause that’s helping.”

  “Things are what they are,” she said. Which I guess was her way of reminding me to stay out of her business.

  I watched from the window as she walked to the Camaro, stopping first to pick up and reposition the SULLY ANDERSON tombstone on the Gilroys’ lawn. Then I stormed up to my own bedroom. When I turned the corner, Bo was waiting for me at the top of the stairs.

  “Jesus!” I said, heart clattering.

  “Hardly.”

  I narrowed my eyes.

  “Your mom’s TV’s on loud,” he said, as though that explained his stalker ways.

  He rubbed a thumb over his chin. “Guarded a French chef once upon a time,” he said, eyebrows waggling.

  It took me a few seconds. “Like guardian angel guard?” I made a cheesy halo over my head with my fingers.

  “Just like.”

  “You telling me the truth?”

  “Would I lie to you, Jenna?” To his credit, he smiled. I didn’t respond—obviously—and then he added, “Guarded a poet once. He drank more than I did, and the women …” he drifted off there, probably because my eyes got wide. “Then there was that famous inventor’s wife. Really, she was the brains. But history doesn’t always get it right now, does it?”

  I frowned. “What inventor?”

  Bo’s lips pursed. “Guy named Gutenberg. Arrogant bastard. History’s filled with arrogant bastards, actually.” He grinned again, teeth white and sparkly.

  Was he kidding me? The printing press guy? I let it hang there because how could I tell if any of it had happened?

  I started to walk around him then, because I could make up my own stories.

  Out of the blue, he said, “You’re a good daughter,” which was possibly true but didn’t make me any less pissed off at him. “It’s a good thing to be. Most people do things only because they expect something in return. Another favor. Riches. The reward of Heaven.” He raised his eyes to the low ceiling, pressing his hands together like he was praying.

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Even for people they love,” he went on. “But that’s not you, Jenna Samuels. I think you’d do whatever it takes. No matter what.”

  I could have told him he was full of shit.

  Instead I asked for the second time, “You lost someone, didn’t you?” I felt it rolling off him somehow, this unbearable sadness. I thought of that lady in the painting I glimpsed on the wall near his bed. Was this the reason he liked to leap off balconies? Not that he wanted to move on so much as nothing mattered, because there was no one who cared if he was reckless.

  My question hovered between us.

  “Be careful what you wish for, little girl,” Bo said. “Secrets are secrets for a reason.”

  Maybe it was his tone. “Screw you,” I told him, turning back down the stairs. “You’re not my friend and you sure as hell aren’t my history teacher. I’m gonna check on my mom.”

  “I thought you might,” Bo called after me.

  When I burst into Mom’s room, fists clenched at my sides, she was watching the local news. A reporter lady was standing outside the Med Center talking about how the Prime Minister of Jordan and some other heads of st
ate—from places like Luxembourg and Bulgaria—were all coming here now for their annual physicals. And some sheik from Dubai was at MD Anderson getting cancer treatments he couldn’t get back home. Doing wonders for the Houston economy.

  Just like Bo had talked about in the history class I’d missed.

  Mom struggled to sit up. She blinked at me with glassy, bloodshot eyes. “Is everything all right, Jenna? You look pale.”

  “Want some chicken, Mom?” I heard myself ask.

  “Sure, sweetie,” she said. She slumped back down. “I should probably eat something, shouldn’t I?”

  When I went back upstairs, Bo was long gone and my brother was who knows where again. I called Maggie. I wanted to talk more about Bo’s history class lecture, but she wanted to know if she should bite the bullet and ask Billy Compton to Homecoming. He played alto sax in the Spring Creek marching band. Like Ryan, he was somewhat socially awkward. That last part didn’t surprise me: anyone who willingly wore a furry hat in one hundred degree Texas weather so he could march sideways while playing the theme from Star Wars had to have issues.

  “He makes my pulse do this thing,” Maggie said, sounding breathy. “So f-ing cute.” She’d kept an eye on him at the football game—mostly his lips on that sax.

  I told her I agreed, although in truth he was skinny as a beanpole, but you never knew with guys. One growth spurt and he could fill out nicely.

  We hung up and I finished my homework. But all I could think was that I still didn’t have my learner’s permit and that if something was going to break with all these mysteries that were piling up in A-word land, then I was going to have to take matters into my own hands. Which was when I realized that there was only one person who might know the truth. One living person, that is. Terry McClain. Amber’s Terry.

  I could even call him. Would I call him?

  Yes. No. Maybe.

  He’d be traumatized by the night of the break-in, though. Maybe it wouldn’t be fair to dredge up all those painful memories. On the other hand, he was smart and analytical. A lab guy. Head of stuff at Texicon now. So it stood to reason he’d want to find the attacker as much as I did, right? Geeks like him didn’t like unanswered questions. Maybe that’s even why he’d let Amber go, because she’d had no interest in pursuing the case. (Had he known she was dead, he might think differently, of course.) But I had to be subtle.

  I picked up my phone, trying to remember his number from when he’d called Amber.

  I pressed what I thought it should be. Some guy answered. Not Terry.

  Tried another combination. A lady this time.

  Why was I even doing this? Third attempt. No answer, not even a voice mail.

  I’d give it one more chance. I pressed in the numbers. The call connected.

  “Terry McClain.”

  My pulse did a wild hurdle.

  “Terry!” Only then did I realize that I had no earthly idea what I was going to say. “Hi! This is Amber’s friend Jenna Samuels. You know—the girl who was with her when we stopped at your house and drank coffee from your new K-cup machine?”

  “Um, yeah?”

  It didn’t go much better from there.

  “Well, you know how Casey’s training to be an EMT, right?” I began, my armpits sweating up a storm because that particular cover story began and ended with that sentence.

  “Yeah? Is Amber with you?” He sounded hopeful and also something I couldn’t quite identify—nervous, maybe? It was hard to tell and that made me sweat some more.

  Panicked, I launched into the same story we’d used in Austin with that guy Carl Whatley—the building manager—I was writing a story for the school paper for history on the growing crime problem and home safety.

  “Amber says you might remember more than she does,” I fibbed. I waited for him to start rattling on. Instead, he was silent. Probably wondering what the hell this had to do with Casey becoming an EMT. Me, too.

  “You were out that night, right?” I asked, hoping to encourage him so I could stop yammering.

  “What of it?” he said, and the sharp tone of his voice stopped me in my tracks. “I was studying in the library. Where I always study. I came home. We’d been robbed. But you know that already or you wouldn’t have called.”

  Which was true.

  Click.

  “Hello?”

  He’d hung up. I sat there with my phone in my hand. As has been well established, I was not an expert on guys. But I knew guilty when I heard it. A thought dawned on me. Maybe he hadn’t been at the library. Maybe he’d been cheating on her. And maybe, five years later, he’d realized the error of his ways and wanted Amber back. He’d gone so far as to get her that necklace. And here I was, a stupid teenager from out of nowhere, about to blow everything. Either way, this was another dead end.

  When my phone buzzed and vibrated again, I hoped I could apologize. Maybe Terry wasn’t a brilliant douchebag with bad phone manners. Maybe he’d remembered something. But when I glanced at the caller ID, I forgot all about Terry.

  “Hey, Ryan,” I said, trying to sound casual and cheery. I thought ‘hey’ accomplished this more than ‘hi.’

  “Hey Jenna,” he said back. “How was Austin?”

  “Not bad.”

  “How’s your dad?”

  Where was this going? “Fine. Well, yeah, fine. How was practice?”

  This seemed to please him, and he talked about the D-line and the coaches and how he knew Spring Creek would beat the pants off of North Ridge and that if he was lucky and kept at it, maybe Coach Collins would put him in again.

  He talked and talked—about how Morris had eaten his sister’s shoe this morning and boy was she steamed and how he was so excited that the Football Booster Club folks had bought a bunch of these Hulk Smash Hands that made a loud smacking sound and everyone was going to smack their Hulk Hands after touchdowns at the next game. Which of course Ryan LOVED since he was the big Avengers fan, and he liked Bruce Banner even if Iron Man, aka Tony Stark was his favorite. Good talking. The kind I wanted from a boyfriend, just shooting the shit and telling me about his day and being casual and comfortable about it.

  We laughed and he told me how the varsity guys were all going to gorge on big-as-a-dinner-plate chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes and gravy this week to get carbed up, and how they might have an eating contest.

  “I can eat at least three full-size platters,” he bragged, making a fake Hulk Hand smashing sound—Crack crack!—as a joke, which was honestly cute, and made my heart so happy I thought it would burst.

  But here was the problem: A lot of guys, they wouldn’t even notice if their girlfriend wasn’t telling them about her stuff, too. They wouldn’t catch on that she was encouraging them to be all chatty so she didn’t have to say anything much.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “You must be bored listening to all that. You shoulda told me to shut up. Tell me about Austin.”

  Shit. “It was fine,” I said again, heart wincing.

  It was the wrong thing to say.

  “Oh,” Ryan said. The silence was loud. I knew he was waiting for me to go on. When I didn’t, he said, “Okay. Whatever. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

  He was off the line before I could collect myself.

  On the plus side, I guess Terry McClain was off the hook. Seriously. How could I blame him for being weird on the phone if I was being just as bad—to my own brand new boyfriend?

  But I had to blame someone.

  I tore out of my room and into Casey’s. Didn’t even knock. He was wearing sweats and a T-shirt and his hair was damp but still annoyingly perfect, and he was sitting on his bed, clicking away on his laptop. His room looked more orderly these days. Sparer, maybe, like he’d thrown stuff away—only I didn’t know what. I was used to tripping over dirty plates and bongs and other crap. But not lately.

  “You’re making Mom not worry, aren’t you?” I said, without any preliminaries.

  He looked up, brows knitting toget
her, eyes curious.

  “Just tell me,” I said.

  I took his silence as a yes.

  “You suck,” I told him. “You really do.”

  “Jenna—”

  “No. It’s wrong, Casey. It’s just damn wrong. That’s her right. To feel what she feels.”

  “It’s safer,” he began.

  “No. It’s easier.”

  “Jenna.”

  “Casey.”

  Except I knew he was right. I hated him for it, but he was.

  When I got to school, Ryan Sloboda was waiting by my locker.

  I was wearing regular jeans and a nondescript T-shirt and my old grey Converse. But I’d tried the khaki green eye shadow this morning and some sparkly bronzer on my cheeks and a peachy gold lip gloss that looked good with my complexion even if it did remind me a little too much of Casey’s skin when he was in full angel glow.

  Basically, I hadn’t given up on looking good. I was feeling low, and this was the best I could do. The mustang #76 necklace was tucked into my T-shirt, but I knew if he looked, he could see the chain.

  “Hey,” Ryan said.

  “Hey,” I told him, heart tapping an SOS in my chest.

  He leaned in, awkward about it, and we hugged. His chest felt warm against me. He was warm-feeling in general—not sweaty warm, but alive warm. Or maybe I noticed because I spent so much time with not-exactly-alive people. I thought of something to say, something not awkward. The seconds ticked past.

  He looked at me. “I thought about it last night. I wouldn’t push a guy friend to tell me stuff he didn’t want to tell me. So I shouldn’t push you, either. You’ve been through heavy shit, Jenna, you know? Your dad and your car accident and your mom being sick … I know it’s not the same, but when my Grandpa Dale passed real sudden when I was eleven, I was pissed at the world. But I didn’t want to talk about it. If someone asked how I was, I walked away. Or worse. ’Cause I couldn’t handle thinking that someone might be feeling sorry for me or whatever.”

  He made his fake Hulk Smash Hands like we’d joked about last night.

  My heart seemed to unfreeze. I grinned back at him, big and wide. On some level, he knew about my life—at least the parts that were public, which were more than I liked to think about. But I was so focused on the angel secret that sometimes I forgot the sum total of everything. A happy voice shouted at me: Jenna Samuels, Ryan Sloboda is a good guy. He is the guy who hung onto that sheep during Mutton Busting and didn’t let go. Stuff like that, it tells you about a guy. You like the right person. You made the right choice.