“Stop worrying. You’ll be fine. And we’re late, so hurry up.”
They hurried up the steps into the foyer of the gym and took their places in the receiving line. The first couple to approach them were Bob Carey and Kate Lewis, and Alex was pleased to see that Bob seemed as nervous about moving down the line as Alex was about standing in it. The two of them stood for a moment, wondering what to say to each other. Finally it was Kate who spoke.
“Isn’t this wonderful?” she asked. “All year I’ve been looking forward to tonight, and I’m never going to forget a minute of it.”
“None of us will,” Lisa assured her.
And none of them ever did. For none of their lives was ever quite the same again.
CHAPTER TWO
The last thundering rock chord was abruptly cut off, and Alex, gasping, glanced around the gym in search of Lisa. The last time he’d seen her — at least fifteen minutes ago — she’d been dancing with Bob Carey, and he’d been dancing with Kate Lewis. Since then, he’d danced with three other girls, and now Bob was standing near the wall shouting in Jennifer Lang’s ear. He started outside, certain that he’d find Lisa out on the lawn catching her breath. As he reached the door, a hand closed on his arm. He turned to see Carolyn Evans smiling at him.
“Hey,” Carolyn said, “if you’re looking for Lisa, she’s in the rest room with Kate and Jenny.”
“Then I guess I’ll have a glass of punch, if there’s any left.”
“There’s loads left,” Carolyn told him in the slightly mocking voice Alex knew she always used when she was trying to seem more sophisticated than the rest of the kids. “Hardly anybody’s drinking it except you and Lisa. Come on out to my car — I’ve got some beer.”
Alex shook his head.
“Oh, come on,” Carolyn urged. “What’s one beer gonna do to you? I’ve had four, and I’m not drunk.”
“I’m driving. If I’m driving, I don’t drink.”
Carolyn’s head tipped back, and a throaty laugh that Alex was sure she practiced for hours emerged from her glistening lips. “You’re just too good to be true, aren’t you? Not even one little tiny beer? Come on, Alex — get human.”
“It’s not that,” Alex replied, forcing a grin. “It’s just that my dad’ll take my car away from me if I come home with beer on my breath.”
“Too bad for you,” Carolyn purred. “Then I guess you can’t come to my party.” When she saw a slight flicker of interest in Alex’s eyes, she decided to press her advantage. “Everybody’s going to be there — sort of a housewarming.”
Alex stared at Carolyn in disbelief. Was she really talking about the hacienda? But his mother told him the Evanses weren’t letting anyone see it for another month, until it was completely refurbished.
And everyone in La Paloma, no matter what he thought of the Evanses, wanted to see what Cynthia Evans had done with Bill Evans’s money.
At first, when the rumors began circulating that the Evanses had bought the enormous old mansion on top of Hacienda Drive, the assumption had been that they would tear it down. It had stood vacant for too many years, was far too big for a family to keep up without servants, and was far too decayed for anyone to seriously consider restoring it.
But then the project had begun.
First to be repaired was the outer wall. Much of it had long since collapsed; only a few yards of its southern expanse were still standing. But it had been rebuilt, its old wooden gates replaced by new ones whose designs had been copied from faded sketches of the hacienda as it had looked a hundred and fifty years earlier. Except that the new gates were wired with alarms and swung smoothly open on electrically controlled rollers. And then, after the wall was complete, Cynthia had begun the restoration of the mansion and the outbuildings.
Almost everybody in La Paloma had gone up to the top of Hacienda Drive once or twice, but the gates were always closed, and no one had succeeded in getting inside the walls. Alex, along with some of his friends, had climbed the hills a few times to peer down into the courtyard, but all they’d been able to see was the exterior work — the new plaster and the whitewashing, and the replacement of the red tiles on the roof.
What everyone was truly waiting for was a glimpse of the interior, and now Carolyn was saying her friends could see it that very night.
Alex eyed her skeptically. “I thought your mother wasn’t letting anyone in until next month.”
“Mom and Dad are in San Francisco for the weekend,” Carolyn said.
“I don’t know—” Alex began, remembering his promise not to go to any parties after the dance.
“Don’t know about what?” Lisa asked, slipping her arm through his.
“He doesn’t want to come to my party,” Carolyn replied before Alex could say anything.
Lisa’s eyes widened. “There’s a party? At the hacienda?”
Carolyn nodded with elaborate casualness. “Bob and Kate are coming, and Jenny Lang, and everybody.”
Lisa turned to Alex. “Well, let’s go!” Alex flushed and looked uncomfortable, but said nothing. The band struck up the last dance and Lisa led Alex onto the floor. “What’s wrong?” she asked a moment later. “Why can’t we go to Carolyn’s party?”
“ ’Cause I don’t want to.”
“You just don’t like Carolyn,” Lisa argued. “But you won’t even have to talk to her. Everybody else will be there too.”
“It isn’t that.”
“Then what is it?”
“I promised my folks we wouldn’t go to any parties. Dad gave me some money to take some of the kids out for a hamburger, and I promised we’d come home right after that.”
Lisa fell silent for a few seconds; then: “We don’t have to tell them where we were.”
“They’d find out.”
“But don’t you even want to see the place?”
“Sure, but—”
“Then let’s go. Besides, it’s not where we go that your mom and dad are worried about — they’re afraid you’ll drink. So we’ll go to the party, but we won’t even have a beer. And we won’t stay very long.”
“Come on, Lisa. I promised them I wouldn’t—”
But Lisa suddenly broke away from him and started pulling him off the dance floor. “Let’s find Kate and Bob. Maybe we can convince them to go up to Carolyn’s with us for just a few minutes, then the four of us can go out for hamburgers. That way we can see the place, and you won’t have to lie to your folks.”
As Lisa led him out of the gym, Alex knew he’d give in, even though he shouldn’t. With Lisa, it was hard not to give in — she always managed to make everything sound perfectly logical, even when Alex was sure it wasn’t.
The headlights of Alex’s Mustang picked up the open gates of the hacienda, and he braked the car to a stop. “Are we supposed to park out here, or go inside?”
Lisa shrugged. “Search me. Carolyn didn’t say.” Suddenly a horn sounded, and Bob Carey’s Porsche pulled up beside them, its window rolled down.
“Over there,” Bob called. He was pointing off to the left, where a small group of cars already stood parked in the shadow of the wall. Following Bob, Alex maneuvered the Mustang into a spot next to a Camaro, shut off the engine, then turned to Lisa.
“Maybe we oughta just go on home,” he suggested, but Lisa grinned and shook her head.
“I want to see it. Come on — just for a little while.” She got out of the car, and after a second’s hesitation, Alex joined her. A moment later Kate and Bob appeared out of the darkness, and the four of them started toward
