“Maybe I can try talking to her. Karen, I mean. Maybe if I could get her to see reason, she’d let you talk to her mother. That way her mom would know there were ground rules to govern your relationship, since Karen is so fragile.” I looked at him hopefully, finding that I actually wanted to save this relationship, even though my job had always been to destroy them. Maybe it was my connection with David that had sparked it, but I had a lot of hope for Karen and Nate.
“That might work,” he said as he lifted his head to look at me. His eyes held a small spark of hope that I couldn’t ignore.
“I’ll call her later and see if you can come meet her mom tomorrow after school when she picks Karen up.” At these words Nate looked a bit doubtful.
“If she’s in school tomorrow. When she gets sick, Karen usually stays out of school for at least a week.”
“Well, then, you’ll just have to meet her mom on your own terms away from school. Besides, it’ll look like you’re much more serious about this if you go out of your way to meet her mom.” I’d had some experience in the relationship world, and though my expertise didn’t involve much hands-on practice, I knew what impressed people and how to really show them that you meant business.
“All right, it’s a deal,” Nate said, the spark of life that I’d seen in him the day before lighting once more. “Thanks, Amelia,” he said as the bell rang and he made his way to class. I had to admit that I felt pretty good about myself as I walked to my English class. Of course, there was the question of exactly how I’d get Karen to accept my terms, but that was just a small detail.
I didn’t have any time to work out my plan of attack during English because our teacher had decided that we needed to write a timed essay. She gave us a topic and started the timer, and I quickly learned that no one should ever write for two hours straight. By the time I left English for lunch, my hand was cramping and covered in ink.
I walked quickly to my spot by the library after stopping off to tell Nate that I’d be calling Karen in a few short minutes. David was there in my usual spot with a laptop in front of him, typing away furiously. I cleared my throat to try to break the intense look of concentration on his features. His face instantly brightened when he saw me, and he quickly put the laptop away.
“Homework,” he said simply with a nod toward his backpack, where the computer now resided.
I sat down and told him everything that had happened during break and what my current plan was as I pulled out my cell phone, which was pale blue today.
“Wow,” he said simply, as I grabbed Nate’s fact sheet to retrieve Karen’s number. “Is your work always this crazy?” he asked me, though after watching me for a year I was sure he knew.
“Never,” I answered. “It’s weird for me to stumble across people who actually care for each other, let alone people who care for each other but can’t be together because of things that are, for the most part, out of their control. I just really want to help them.” David smiled at me warmly.
“And that’s why I like you so much. You’re a good person.” I smiled back at him but looked down at the phone, not used to receiving genuine compliments that didn’t revolve around my good looks. “Even if your typical day involves destroying innocent boys’ lives,” he added with a grin.
“I knew it was coming,” I said with a shake of my head and a smirk.
Punching in the number Karen had given me, I rehearsed what I would say to her one more time.
“Hello?” came a familiar but weak voice on the other end.
“Karen?” I asked, even though I knew it was her.
“Hi, Amelia,” she said quietly. I was surprised that she recognized my voice or possibly my number, but I continued on without any pause.
“How are you feeling? I heard you actually got sick.” I knew I sounded guilty even though her real illness had nothing to do with me.
“I’m all right. It’s just a small flu, but I should be fine in a few days.” I heard a cough on the other end, and then she resumed her thoughts. “Did you talk to Nate yet?” I knew this was coming. In fact, it was the only reason I had called her, but I still felt unprepared to answer that question.
“So here’s the thing, Karen. I talked to Nate but he wanted nothing to do with me because he’s so in love with you.” I paused for a moment but got only silence on the other end, so I took that as a sign to keep going. “So he ended up figuring out that you had sent me just to break up with him, and then he explained why you were doing it in the first place.” Still silence. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought that Nate and Karen had the most boring, silent relationship ever. “So anyway . . . I didn’t break you guys up. I’ll give you your money back and everything, but I have something I want to talk to you about.”
“What is it?” she asked with a yawn.
“I want you to let Nate talk to your mom about you two.”
“No,” she said instantly, and with such authority I couldn’t believe it had come from little, fragile Karen.
“What do you mean ‘no’?” I asked.
“If he talks to my mom she’ll know about us, and she’ll take me away from the school and away from him,” she whispered, and I suspected her mom was nearby.
“You don’t know that,” I responded, hoping I sounded more convincing than I felt.
“Yes, I do. She’s so afraid I’ll get sick just from being at school, she’d never let me near him.” I thought this over for a moment, trying to find some sort of compromise.
“Well, maybe Nate could talk to her and you guys could set some rules. He already told me how careful you are. Surely that will show your mom how serious you both are about staying safe.” I heard a choked sound on the other end of the line that sounded like a sob. “Or what if you went back to being homeschooled and Nate could still be your boyfriend? That way you’d be away from the threat of hundreds of kids and trade that in for just one boy.” I thought it sounded like a reasonable proposal. After all, Nate had told me that Karen’s friends were all homeschooled, and he was the only one she knew at the school anyway. If it meant getting to keep Nate in her life, I couldn’t see why she wouldn’t want to just stop going to a public school. It’s not like she would miss the cafeteria food.
There was a long moment of silence in which I wondered if Karen had hung up or fallen asleep. After a minute or so of the silent hum of ambient noise, Karen’s voice sounded on the other line. “It’s worth a shot,” she said finally, instantly bringing a smile to my face.
“Perfect,” I said, a bit more enthusiastically than was necessary. David gave me an odd look, but I ignored it and continued. “I’ll see if Nate can drop by your house tomorrow to talk to her. Don’t worry, Karen. This is going to work. I just know it.” We ended our conversation after a few more reassurances. I knew I shouldn’t make promises to her if I couldn’t definitely keep them, but I was just so sure that this whole plan would succeed that I couldn’t see any other outcome.
“So everything’s all right, I take it?” David asked beside me.
“I think it is. Nate’s going to talk to Karen’s mom tomorrow. He’s going to ask if she can go back to being homeschooled in exchange for the freedom to date him. Personally I don’t see how her mother can refuse. Trading in 3,000 kids for just one potential threat has to be a pretty appealing offer,” I said confidently.
“Unless she feels that Nate poses a greater threat than those 3,000 kids,” David replied with a sigh. “From what I’ve seen of her, Karen wouldn’t be the type to go around kissing 3,000 students, just passing them in the hallways, not even making physical contact.” As much as I hated how grim his outlook on my plan was, I couldn’t deny that it was a legitimate argument, and one I’d have to be prepared for. “And there’s always the possibility that she’ll agree to the terms and then go back on the offer once she has her daughter out of school,” he continued, quite unnecessarily.
“You certainly have a glum outlook on human nature,” I said in anno
yance.
“I was trying to catch a con artist for a year, so I had to start thinking of every possibility,” he replied with a cheeky grin.
“I’m not a con artist,” I corrected with indignation. “I’m a breakup artist.”
Chapter Sixteen
After school that day David was waiting for me by my car. I walked, a bit faster than normal, to meet him and instantly dropped my backpack on the ground once I was close enough to throw my arms around him. He laughed at my enthusiasm but I buried my face in the small space where his shoulder and neck came together. His wonderful smell was strongest there, and I considered never moving again. I kissed his neck softly, which made him shiver beneath me.
“Well, if I really am just a job, then you’re pulling out all the stops,” he said with a laugh. I leaned back slightly with my arms still around his neck so that I could get a better look at him. I had been thinking about David all through biology and had come to the conclusion that I didn’t get to spend enough time with him today. Ever since we’d started officially dating, we hadn’t really had time to ourselves to just be alone and talk. I didn’t know nearly enough about him and everything he knew about me he had found out from a distance. That was no way to start a relationship.
“So I was thinking today,” I began tentatively. His face became expectant, as if he thought I was going to break things off right then and there. I let that thought stew with him for a moment, just because I seemed to get some sort of sick pleasure out of the fact that he cared enough about me to worry. “I was thinking that you should come over today . . . Right now, actually.” This obviously hadn’t been what he was expecting, and his face brightened.
“To your house?” he asked, as a confirmation of what I had just said.
“Well, yeah. My mom is never home so you don’t have to do the whole ‘meeting the parents’ thing just yet.” I realized the second that I said my mom wouldn’t be there that he could have easily taken a different motive from my asking him over to an empty house. “It’d just be nice to talk somewhere that isn’t school,” I added hastily.
“I’d like that,” he said, after I spent what felt like an eternity of watching his face shift between some unheard thoughts. “Should I just follow you there?” he asked.
“Yeah, it’s not too far from here,” I answered happily. He dropped his hands from my waist and said, “I’ll see you there.”
It felt odd to have someone following me to my house. In my whole life I’d never had anyone over to my house to see me. Every birthday party had simply consisted of my mom and I going out to eat somewhere, and even those events had stopped with my thirteenth birthday. Now my birthdays consisted of my mother leaving me a twenty-dollar bill on the counter with a quickly scribbled note that read “Happy Birthday! Hope you have a great day! Love, Mom.”
Even though it had only been a day since David and I had resolved our differences and decided to be an official couple, everything seemed so different. Life just held more possibilities now that I had allowed myself to experience it. Before David I hadn’t really thought that I needed any changes in my life. Everything was just fine the way it was, with the occasional plague of loneliness that lasted a few days. Now that I had changed my views so completely, it felt as if I could breathe for the first time. It was like David had enabled me to fill a hole inside of me that I hadn’t even known was there to begin with. It was a wonderful feeling, and I couldn’t get enough of it.
We arrived at my house ten minutes later, me pulling into the driveway and David parking along the sidewalk. There was a nice looking black car near the sidewalk across the street, and I wondered for a moment if the neighbors were having the president over for dinner or something. These thoughts were quickly erased, however, when David emerged from his old blue car in all of his glory. I smiled at him and held out my hand, implying that he should take it. Luckily he was quick on the uptake and immediately obliged.
“You know, as we were coming here, I realized I’ve already been to your house. I didn’t really need to follow you,” he said matter-of-factly. I simply shrugged at this statement and turned the key in the lock on our front door. As we walked through the house to get to the living room, I decided to kick off the conversation. I vaguely registered that the house smelled a bit like smoke, but I didn’t see a fire so I figured a window must have been opened to the smells outside.
“Since we’re getting to know each other better, there’s something I’ve been wondering,” I said with a glance in his direction. “Are your parents married or divorced?” As the words were coming out of my mouth we turned into the living room where my mother stood with a man in a business suit. David and I stopped dead in our tracks, and I automatically dropped his hand, though I wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t like holding hands was a crime. My mother looked equally as shocked and I noted with profound embarrassment that her hair was disheveled with a button undone on the middle of her white blouse. It looked as if she had been pretty hastily put together. The man was in better shape, though his graying hair was sticking up a bit in the back.
I could feel my face turning red at the sight before me and I tried not to think of what the whole scene would look like to an outsider. Like mother, like daughter—I’m assuming is what that outsider would think. I kept my emotions under control, reminding myself that David and I were just going to talk and get to know each other, so I had absolutely nothing to feel guilty about. My mother, on the other hand . . .
“Amelia, what are you doing home?” she said, in what I’m sure she was hoping was an offhand, disinterested way.
“School always gets out at this time,” I said simply, looking anywhere but at the man standing beside my mother.
“Of course it does, dear,” she said, trying to salvage the “unfit mother” image she had just pinned on herself with her question. “Amelia,” she said, pulling herself back together. “This is Lawrence Everett.” She motioned to the man next to her, who gave me a winning smile and held out his hand. I reluctantly shook it and got a nose full of the cigarette smell I’d noticed earlier.
Lawrence Everett wore an expensive suit. His graying hair was slicked back in a businesslike manner that made him look like a snake. I also noted that he had a gold band on his left hand ring finger.
The situation was bad, but it wasn’t one of those bad situations that has a sort of bad thing that can be overlooked. It was full of bad. There was the fact that, no matter how much David had figured out about me after watching for a year, he didn’t know that my mother’s relationship with me was nonexistent. And there was always the little concern of the ring on Mr. Snake’s finger. I looked at the ground now, though I knew it was my turn to introduce my company. I didn’t know if I should spring the title of “boyfriend” on my mom as a small, shocking payback, or just say “friend” so that we could avoid any further conversation. The room was silently expectant, waiting for me to fill the void.
“I’m David,” my wonderfully observant boyfriend said by my side. I was so relieved that he sensed my lack of ability to speak that I could have kissed him for it, though I would obviously refrain just at the moment. “Amelia and I are in the same English class and I haven’t been doing so well on my tests, so the teacher suggested I get some help from her best student.” His story was so convincingly told that I even believed it for a second.
“I’m not the best student,” I said, in what I hoped sounded like embarrassed modesty. The statement at least gave me a reason to keep my eyes on the ground so that no one would be able to tell how red my face was getting or how watery my eyes were becoming.
“Well, that’s nice of you, young lady,” Mr. Snake said. I simply nodded.
“I was just showing Lawren—Mr. Everett some houses and I forgot a key here, so we came to retrieve it. We have a lot of places to look at before the day is through, though, so I’ll see you later tonight Amelia. Nice to meet you David,” my mother said in one breath. She swept Lawrence out of the room quickly,
and I didn’t move until I heard the door shut and his expensive car roar to life across the street. Oh yeah, that outsider would definitely think, “like mother, like daughter.”
As the silence in the room slowly grew deafening, I tried to blink back the tears that were threatening to pour down my cheeks. It was one thing to not be involved in your own mother’s life, but it was a completely different thing to find that what little involvement you have is discovering her heinous secrets. My bottom lip shook with the effort of holding back any emotion, and I couldn’t bear to look at David. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what he must think of me: “No wonder she does what she does—look at how messed up her home life is.” To my surprise, however, he didn’t say anything. He didn’t try to skew the truth so that it looked better than it was. He didn’t try to say it was no big deal. He didn’t lie to me. He just wrapped his arms around me and held me to his chest while I began to sob, and that alone told me more about him than any POIs could have.
☼☼☼
My mother didn’t come home that night, which didn’t really surprise me, but David didn’t seem to be scared off by the fact that it was a possibility that she could just wander in with some man. Instead of fleeing the scene when it was polite to do so, he told me I should go upstairs and get my homework done, and he would make dinner for me. I protested this idea many times, telling him that I was fine and didn’t need to be taken care of, but he won in the end.
We did compromise a bit, however, and I ended up doing my homework at the kitchen table while he looked through cupboards until he found what he needed for whatever dish he was planning on making. I tried to make pleasant small talk at first, offering smiles that were far from genuine when I really just felt like crying some more, but eventually David stopped that by simply saying, “You don’t have to pretend to be happy just because I’m here. You don’t even need to fill in the empty space with words if you don’t want to. If you feel like breaking a dish, by all means, go right ahead . . . I’ll even join you.”