Brooke giggled as she scooped peanut butter onto an apple slice, then cast me a sympathetic gaze.
“How did you ever survive childhood with such neglect? Such indifference?”
She was doing her darnedest to get Grandma and me to converse. It was not going to work.
The back door opened, allowing the crisp breeze to sweep into the room and up the back of my sweater. I shivered in response, offering my grandfather a sideways glance as he peeled off his jacket and hung it up by the door.
“Hey, pixie stick,” he said, his voice only slightly strained. “Brooklyn.”
“Hey, Pastor Bill,” Brooke said. “Do you like your new phone?”
He strolled over and bent to give me a hesitant peck on the cheek. “Not even a little,” he said, then offered Brooke a peck too.
“Well, I love mine,” Grandma said, her eyes glued to the screen, sparkling with an alarming degree of lust. I never figured Grandma for a techno geek, but she was really getting into that thing.
She pushed a button, and a microsecond later Granddad’s phone beeped. With a heavy sigh, he took it out of the case at his belt and worked a few moments to get the message to come up. Then his face morphed into one of his signature glares. The one that reminded me of a guy at a carnival one time when I tried to convince him I was old enough to go on the Terrifying Twister without my parents’ consent. I was four.
“You couldn’t have just said good morning?” Granddad asked. “I’m standing right here.”
“No.” She waved an impatient hand at him. “You have to text that to me. Pretend we’re on our honeymoon.”
Brooklyn choked on her milk and spent the next two minutes coughing. Then she made this gagging sound that was very much like her reaction to my shampoo.
Taking Brooke’s sudden fit into consideration, Granddad explained. “We had a huge fight on our honeymoon. We didn’t talk for days.”
“But if we’d had these phones,” Grandma said, shaking it at him for effect, “we wouldn’t have needed to talk. These things are great.”
His phone beeped again. “Really, Vera? I’m right here.”
“What? I can’t hear you.” Then she giggled like a mental patient, and I almost smiled. Maybe the phones weren’t such a good idea after all.
The back door opened again when Cameron strolled in, his blond hair a disheveled mess.
“You look like a tumbleweed,” Brooke said, her voice hoarse from her most recent efforts.
Never one to be accused of social graces, he shrugged at her before nodding to my grandparents. “Hey, Pastor, Mrs. James.”
“Hi, Cameron,” Granddad said, but Grandma was still busy with her phone.
He didn’t seem to mind. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and leaned against the wall, waiting for us. But when Brooklyn wasn’t looking, his eyes wandered toward her, a glint of interest in them despite the fact that she was in the middle of stuffing the last remnants of apple into her mouth. Then his phone beeped. He fished it out of his front pocket, frowned, then looked up at Grandma, who now wore a satisfied grin on her face. After clearing his throat in obvious discomfort, he mumbled, “It’s nice to see you too, Mrs. James.”
Grandma nodded. This was getting ridiculous.
“How did you know it was Grandma?” I asked him. “She just got that phone.”
He leaned forward to confide in me. “She’s been texting me all night.”
“Grandma!” I scolded, breaking my vow of silence and giving her my best look of shocked dismay.
“You can’t go around texting high school kids in the middle of the night. You’ll get arrested.”
Cameron broke, chuckling before he headed toward the back door. “Are you kidding? I now have your grandma’s famous recipe for
“Sweet,” Brooke said, scooping up her jacket and backpack and following him out. “You can make some later.”
I took an apple to eat on the way to school and grabbed my jacket and backpack as well.
“Can we talk to you, pix?” Granddad asked.
I paused but didn’t look back at them. “I’ll be late for school.”
“We’ll talk later, then,” Grandma said, her voice soft and sad.
It made my throat constrict. I nodded and headed out of a perfectly warm house into a cold, frigid wind that whipped my hair about and took only seconds to convince me I’d underdressed for the occasion despite Cameron’s warning. Bummer that insulated work coveralls and ski masks weren’t in fashion.
We hurried into Cameron’s beat-up Chevy. He’d kept it running, and it rumbled and shimmied as we climbed in. Despite its haggard appearance on the outside, the inside boasted a toasty warmth that kept the chills at bay. That was all that mattered at the moment.
“I think you should look for Jared today while we’re in class,” I said to Cameron as we drove to school.
He shook his head, and disappointment rushed over me.
“But why? It’s not like you’ve never skipped.”
With a sigh, he leveled a hard stare on me. “He’s not my concern, Lorelei. You know that.”
Of course he wasn’t. I was. And because of that, Jared’s best hope was lost.
“But what if he’s hurt?”
“Not likely,” he said, pulling into the parking lot.
“But what if he is?”
He turned off his truck and said, “Then I’ll pay the guy who hurt him fifty bucks to tell me how he did it.”
I turned away from him. “That’s not nice.”
“The truth rarely is.”
The icy wind cut through our clothes and had my teeth chattering before we got to the door. Still, I loved the weather. Cold and promising as a thick wetness permeated the air. Maybe it would snow. Few things trumped snow days. Hot chocolate with marshmallows, maybe. And Jared’s eyes.
Glitch met us at the side door of the school with a box of his mother’s homemade cinnamon rolls, but not even the warm scent of cinnamon and melted butter could bring me out of my misery. Though they did their darnedest.
We dived in, and Brooke moaned when she took a bite. Glitch glared at Cameron when he took two.
“Who’s that?” I asked, licking my fingers, then pointing to the side.
“Oh, that must be the new kid,” Glitch said. “I heard we were getting someone new.”
We stopped to take a look. He dressed in retro attire with thespian undertones. Tweed gray coat, long and loose. Sandy brown hair under a black beret. And he was really, really tall.
At the exact same moment, Brooke and I turned to look at the other really, really tall guy in school. One of them, anyway. There was tall, then there was really, really tall—and the new guy, like Jared and
Cameron, was really, really tall.
“Not another one,” I said under my breath.
Brooke looked up at him. “Relative of yours?”
But Cameron was also staring at the new guy, his expression guarded. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was taken aback.
The new guy stood talking to Mr. Davis. As the principal pointed down the hall, apparently giving directions, the new guy turned and looked right at us. Right at me.
His face, while handsome, was somehow disproportioned. There was something strange about him.
Something out of place. His face was a little too long, perhaps, or the angles a little too sharp, the eyes a little too close set.
The polite thing to do would have been to look away, and yet there we stood. The lot of us. Staring as though we had never seen another human being in our lives. Surely we looked like something from one of those
Cameron’s expression wasn’t derisive, exactly. More like wary or just plain surprised.
The kid nodded, an almost imperceptible grin lifting one cheek, then headed out in the direction Mr.
Davis had pointed.
