Dropping his gaze to his boots, Sam shakes his head.
“All right, then.” The cop shuffles in the cold. “Lot of things could happen yet. The prosecutor doesn’t like to spend money on anything less than a sure bet. The most important thing here is Deanie’s safety. What do you think about a deal where we swap charges against Lord for Judy Gauthier voluntarily giving up Deanie to DHS custody?”
“Whatever,” he mutters.
If Lord isn’t charged, there are other ways to make sure the motherfucker never touches her again, and more certainly and permanently than the legal remedies.
Woods knuckles Sam’s shoulder. “What you’re not gonna do, my boy, is have anything to do with that pusbag. Don’t you get the idea you can do to him what your old man did to that bastard who beat up your sister. It’s not your job. You go after Lord, I’ll throw your ass in jail, I don’t care if it’s the night of the state title. You get yourself in any kind of trouble at all, I’m coming down on you like an avalanche. We clear on this?”
Cheekbones hot at the ease with which the cop has read his vengeful thoughts, Sam nods tightly.
“I talked to Deanie by herself,” Woods continues. “I haven’t told your folks anything about this. I thought maybe you’d want to explain it to them.”
Sam hears himself insisting to his father he never hit her, just yelled at her, and other people made it into something else. That would be the least of the explaining Woods was expecting him to do.
“I’m sorry about this,” the cop says. “Try not to let it get to you too much. Go on with your life.” Woods grins. “Don’t let it get to your game.”
He means it in the kindliest way, Sam tells himself, but inside, he wants to scream What about Deanie’s game? What about her life?
31
The way girls do, Sarah and Deanie sit on the couch, one foot under the other thigh, facing each other like they have to read each other’s lips when they chatter. The everyday casualness of two teenage girls makes the condition of Deanie’s face even more shocking.
Sprawled in an easy chair, wearing Reuben’s headphones, Rick’s jacked into Reuben’s component system. Sam reaches for his hand and Rick simultaneously shakes with him and yanks off the ‘phones.
Deanie tosses Sam a glittery knot like a metallic birdie. “Sarah made me a pair of earrings.”
In his palm, it is a puddle of chain. He rolls it to his fingertips and shakes out an earring made of broken lengths of very fine chain, some of them with the odd bead or rice pearl attached, some with hooks and catches on them.
“You know how you wind up with all these busted chains you can’t do anything with—” Sarah starts to elucidate and the expression on Sam’s face stops her. “Of course you don’t. Anyway, I did”—pointing at herself, she continues—“and I realized I could turn them into earrings. It was something to do.”
They all look at her and each other and laugh. Blushing, she smiles and wags a hand at them dismissively.
Sam returns the earring to Deanie and she slips it through the hole in her right ear and turns her face to show it to him. The knot of fine chain ripples against the smooth grained ivory of her jaw and neck.
He has to clear his throat.
“Beautiful,” he says.
She looks up at him with a shining eye. “I don’t know if I can wear an earring on the other side anymore but—” She shrugs.
“Then you’ll have a spare,” Sarah quickly says.
Sam glances at Sarah’s sneakered feet and then at Deanie’s sockclad ones. They look to be the same size. Sarah’s eyes meet his as if she is having the same thought.
Reuben appears in the doorway. He’s wearing the question on his face: Gonna eat tonight, boy? If Reuben doesn’t have to ask the question aloud, Sam doesn’t even have to think about the answer.
Gingerbread and cream, Sam discovers, is as fine an appetizer as it is his favorite dessert. He is licking his fingers when Rick wanders in and helps himself. Sam heaps a plate with fried chicken and mashed potatoes and gravy, fills a salad plate with cole slaw and hooks a half gallon of milk from the fridge.
“Thanks for coming over,” he says.
Rick shrugs. “No big deal. It was Sarah’s idea, really. She’s been messing around making jewelry since Christmas. Nobody’s had a birthday yet she could unload any of it on.”
Sam lowers his voice. “Ask her if she’s got any spare high-tops, will you? Her feet look about the same size as Deanie’s. Also Deanie needs clothes. Anything. You couldn’t blow your nose twice on what she’s got.”
“I’ll try to remember to bring my own snotrag, then. Sure, I’ll ask.” Throwing a glance over his shoulder toward the living room, Rick drops his head and voice as far as he can without outright whispering. “Somebody should take that shithead Lord’s face off in strips, with a rusty razor.”
“Later. Your old man just threatened to bust me first chance he gets. After the season’s over, I’ll take care of it.”
Grinning, Rick rocks back in his chair. “Jeez, I’d love to watch.”
Sam reaches for the milk carton. “In the meantime, somebody left me a hit of blotter in my locker.”
Rick sits up and drops the front of his chair to the floor. “You’re shitting me!”
“A stamp. After the game, it fell off my T-shirt, like somebody just tucked it in, passing by.”
“Shee-it.” Rick whistles softly. “Chapin was there.”
“Could have been anybody.”
“Somebody’s playing dirty. You don’t look out, you’re liable to wind up prancing around stark naked with a hard-on in the middle of the game, bawling If you’re going to San Francisco, be sure and tie a daisy on your dick.”
They both laugh softly.
“So I don’t dare eat or drink or breathe too deeply at school?”
“No shit, you ought to just fucking lay waste—fuck up
