A Twist of Hate (7 page)

              She ran her fingers through her hair. “This is how my hair grows. It’s got as much curl as a stalk of celery. I’ve got my dad’s dimples and my mom’s hair. My complexion is all mine. Evan is always giving me books of African poetry and telling me stories of triumphs over ‘the Man’ but he never encourages me to take up Irish or Native American tribal dance. Those things are just as much a part of my ancestry as kente cloth and cornrows.”

              “My mother’s side of the family is French, mostly,” Camden volunteered. “My dad’s side is Irish with some renegade English thrown in.”

              “There are so many nationalities in my background, my family tree grows fruit salad,” she continued. “The only reason I agreed to go out with Evan is because I get so tired of being alone.”

              Camden brought the car to a stop in front of her house. Siobhan spotted her grandmother’s Buick parked in front of her father’s Jaguar in the driveway. The windows in the house were dark, except for the ones in the first-floor guest bedroom. That meant two things: her grandmother was staying the night, and she was waiting up.

              “Will you go out with me, Camden?” Siobhan asked.

              “Yes,” he replied before she’d finished speaking. “When?”

              “Right now.”

              He started the car. “Where do you want to go?”

              “Anywhere where we can be alone.”

***

              She hung his bomber jacket on the coat tree and slipped off her shoes so her heels wouldn’t clack against the foyer’s marble tile. She followed him from room to room as he gave her a tour of his house. Starkly furnished in classic Early American and Chippendale oaks and stained pines, the house showed no feminine influences, such as vases of flowers or lace curtains, yet the masculinity of the decor wasn’t oppressive.

              They finished in the kitchen. With its honey and almond granite countertops, hardwood cabinets, and soft lighting, the kitchen was the room Siobhan found most inviting—until she opened the spotless stainless steel doors of the refrigerator.

              “Do you Doughertys ever cook?” she asked. The huge fridge contained the barest essentials: milk, eggs, wedges of imported cheese, bottled water, and craft beer. Take-out containers from some of the city’s best—and worst—restaurants lined the shelves.

              “Are you hungry?” Camden piled paper and Styrofoam boxes and plastic deli containers on the wide central prep counter. “This is lobster Cantonese from The Jade Garden. This is beef—or maybe chicken—satay, from the King and I, that Thai restaurant on Grand Avenue. Here’s some fettuccine alfredo from The Pasta House. I think we’ve got Gourmet-to-Go lasagna and White Castles in the freezer.”

              Siobhan opted for a handful of red grapes from a brown bag behind a Tupperware container housing a lump of green fuzz. “My grandmother is an awesome cook. She comes over every weekend to fix Sunday dinner for me and Dad. She never eats, though. She just watches us, pointing out what’s wrong with each dish, knowing that each one tastes fantastic.”

              “Do you think we could borrow your grandmother?” he joked. “She loves to cook, I love to eat. We’re a perfect match.” He opened a plastic storage container and sniffed at its contents. The stench stung his eyes. He pitched it, container and all, into the trash compactor.

              “My grandmother spent thirty years cooking and cleaning in a house as big as this one, to raise my dad and put him through school. I don’t think she wants to go back on active duty.”

              “I wasn’t disrespecting your grandmother,” he said sincerely.

              “I know.” She spit a grape at him. He caught it in his mouth. “You’re very talented,” she giggled.

              “Would you like something to drink? Soda? Lemonade? Iced tea?”

              “Tea, please. With lemon, if you have it. Lemons look like tiny footballs with bumpy yellow skin.”

              “I know what lemons look like,” he smiled. “I’ve seen pictures.”

              “I still can’t figure out why you don’t have a girlfriend.”

              “Didn’t we have this discussion in the car?” He poured her tea and sliced a thin wedge of lemon.

              “The girls at school are as crazy about you as they are about our resident television star, Logan Maddox. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.”

              “They don’t know me. If they did, they’d see how boring I am. If I have a rep, which I don’t, then that’s it. I’m boring, moody ol’ Camden.”

              “I think that’s called brooding and mysterious. I haven’t been bored with you, Cam. This is a pretty good date.”

              He peered into the distance and cocked an ear toward the ceiling. “Do you hear that?”

              She listened for a moment. “I don’t hear anything.”

              “No? Listen…”

              She listened again, lightly shaking her head.

              “I’ve never heard anything like this before. It’s busting my eardrums. You really can’t hear that?”

              She closed her eyes, as if by depriving herself of one sense she could enhance another. She heard nothing. Her smile faded and panic edged her voice. “Camden, what is it?”

              “Clicking.”

              She hurled a handful of grapes at him.

***

              Every room in the Dougherty house was comfortable if not exactly cozy, but Camden’s bedroom held all the warmth of a monk’s cell. A double bed with a solid oak headboard shared a wall with a sparsely filled bare oak bookcase. An oak desk with a computer, printer, and a straight-backed wooden chair filled the corner diagonal to the bed. A tall oak chest of drawers and a white plastic waste bin rounded out the decor. Camden had no audio system, no television, not even an alarm clock. No pictures or knickknacks gave the room personality. Nothing in the room revealed anything about the personality of the person inhabiting it.

              “Are you being punished?” Siobhan asked. “Your room is so bare.”

              “It’s perfect for studying and sleeping,” he explained. “No distractions.”

              “I’ll say,” she mumbled.

              Siobhan was the only dream he’d ever had in this room. Seeing her real and wandering about raised pleasant goosebumps on his skin.

              She opened the closet. His clothes hung neatly from cedar hangers. His bed was made with military precision. She sat on the edge of the mattress and tried to bounce on it. The skin of a trampoline had more give. She fluffed his pillows, grimacing as she stepped away from them. They felt as if they were stuffed with wet newspapers.

              She rifled through a neat stack of papers on his desk, noting his perfect scores on a history term paper, a physics report and a calculus exam.

              She passed him on her way to the windows, and he caught the scent of wildflowers in her wake. The delicate aroma brought life to his barren space.

              “Do the accommodations pass inspection?” The room was so bare, his voice slightly echoed.

              She turned to him, framed by the night. “You’re punishing yourself,” she whispered somberly.

              Courtney had told him to throw posters on his walls. Brian had suggested a pet, something huge and lovable, such as a golden retriever or a Labrador. Michael wanted him to get an ultra-high definition, bendable television with multi-view, and a list of porn titles Michael would have happily supplied. Mr. Dougherty had offered to hire an interior decorator to enhance the drab ecru walls and bare hardwood floors. Camden had never been interested in making the room more full. The décor directly reflected the emptiness within him.

              He reached for her. He meant to take her hand but his palm instead found the gentle curve of her jaw.

              “There’s nothing wrong with you.” Siobhan covered his hand with hers. “She left because there was something wrong with
her
.” He hugged her, nuzzling his face in her hair. “And you still have your dad. You’re not alone.”

              He pulled away from her, leaving a rush of cool air where his warmth had been. “He puts in a hundred hours a week at the law firm. We communicate through voicemail and texts. He’s in his room right now, asleep, but he might as well be on the other side of the planet. He’s here but he’s not. It’s been that way since she left us.”

              Wounded anger amplified his voice. “I am not one of his top priorities. He’s never been to any of my football games or seen any of the plays I’ve worked on. Every time, he says he’ll be there. Every time, something more important comes up.” He sat at the foot of his bed, his elbows propped on his knees. “When Mom left, she took him with her.”

              Siobhan sat beside him and stroked his back. “He’s hurt. He lost something too. It’s like with me and my dad. After my mom died, he didn’t know how to connect with just me. We have to work at it, every day.”

              “It’s not the same, Siobhan, you said so yourself. Your mother didn’t choose to leave. Mine did.”

              “That doesn’t mean she doesn’t love you. Call her.” She went to his desk and grabbed his cordless phone. “It’s not that late out west.”

              He went to her and took the slim black phone only to slam it back onto its charger.

              Siobhan woke up his laptop. “Send her an e-mail.”

              He closed the computer. “Why do you care if I contact her? What difference would it make? Just let it go. I did, a long time ago.”

              “Maybe if you talked to her, you could—”

              “What?” The word came at her with the viciousness of a hornet.

              “You could forgive her.” She cupped his face and he held onto her wrists. “I don’t think you’ll be able to trust me until you forgive her. This is a risk for me too, but I want to take it. I am so afraid of getting my heart broken. You’re afraid of getting yours broken again.”

              The longer he held her gaze, the more clearly he saw an end to loneliness.

              “Can we do this?” she whispered.

              He touched his forehead to hers. His answer brushed her lips. “I already have.”

***

              Camden walked her to her front door.

              “This was an excellent date.” She fished her keys from her tiny black bag.

              “I know why,” he said.

              “Why the date was so good?”

              “Why I want to kiss you.”

              He cradled her face in his hands. The stars in her eyes outshone those in the pre-dawn sky. Her keys and purse fell to the cement walkway, her hands clenched at his belt loops. Camden brought his lips gently to hers. The hard knock of his heart beat against her chest as he kissed her, tenderly deepening it. With a hand at the small of her back and one at her nape, he shaped her body to his. Her fingers threaded through the sun-kissed locks of his hair. The magic of this first kiss might have carried them away if the obnoxious honk of a passing car hadn’t startled them apart.

              “Don’t you want to know why?” he asked, stroking her hair from her face with the backs of his fingers. “Why I want to kiss you?”

              “No,” she chuckled. “I just wanted
you
to.”

Chapter Five

“That was his problem, I think. He always expected things to work out his way because they usually did. He wasn’t so lucky, that time. None of us were... ”

—Ann Lewis,
Newsline

              Siobhan pulled her hair into a ponytail and secured it with an elastic band. “I’m dead,” she moaned. “I could sleep right here on the gym floor.”

              Courtney—walking, talking school spirit in a gold Prescott T-shirt and navy Prescott gym shorts—laughed out loud. “I called you six times last night to find out how things were going with Evan. If I’d known you’d upgraded, I’d have called you twelve times.”

              Siobhan advertised no school allegiance in her cut-off white sweatpants and a black sweatshirt that looked like it had spent a previous life as a drop cloth. She went through the motions of stretching for a cardio kickboxing class in the lower gym. “I silenced my phone off in the theater and forgot to turn it back on. It was too late to call you by the time I got your texts. And voicemails. And the email.”

              Courtney sat opposite Siobhan, the soles of her sneakers flat against Siobhan’s. The girls took hands, and Courtney leaned back to execute the stretch. “So how’d you get Evan to take you to a date with another guy?” she asked.

              “I told him I was on a journey of self discovery, and that my spirit guides told me I had to see
Forever Plaid
.” Siobhan leaned back, drawing Courtney forward.

              “So how was your night with Cam? You have three minutes before the Troll gets here.”

              The Troll—known professionally as Girls Athletic Director Matilda Griffin and casually as “Mitzi” to the parents of her favorite students and her college field hockey teammates—had the body of a Mexican wrestler, the voice of a hacksaw, and a face Mr. Cleese likened to that of “a bulldog sucking a dill pickle.”

              Siobhan gave Courtney the sparest highlights of her night while they fell into line with the other girls in Mrs. Griffin’s cardio kickboxing class. Right on time, Mrs. Griffin entered the gym, blowing her whistle like a drill sergeant, her legs a pair of candy-coated tree stumps in pink and purple bike shorts.

              Mrs. Griffin pressed a button on the giant boom box behind her. Frenetic canned music echoed through the gym and the girls began their warm-ups. A line of boys, led by a new assistant boys coach, filed into the lower gym.

              “Ignore them, ladies!” Mrs. Griffin bellowed in time to her roundhouse kicks. “Focus! Maintain your target heart rates!”

              Yawning, Siobhan glanced in the boys’ direction as they headed for the door leading to the upper gymnasium. Her gaze found Camden. Smiling, she dropped out form and almost stumbled into a kick in the head from Courtney.

              Camden abruptly froze. He stared at Siobhan, his answering smile as goofy as it was gorgeous.

              Brian walked into Camden’s back, breaking Camden’s shared fugue with Siobhan. He gave Camden playful shove and Mrs. Griffin blew her ear-piercing whistle. “Curran!” she hollered above the pounding music. “Get the stars out of your eyes and the lead out of your feet and give me some good, hard roundhouse kicks!”

             
I wish
, Siobhan thought, falling back into step with the class.

***

              Michael forged an excuse note and skipped PE when he saw that Chrissie had signed out of school early, supposedly with a headache. For three days he had been itching to know the result of the Curran vote at Twin Lakes. He had tried to get the inside info from Camden. Instead of a simple yes or no, Camden had given him earfuls of bitch about being on time for dress rehearsal. Chrissie had volunteered nothing.

              Michael sat within the Colonial blue walls of the Abernathy den, half watching some music video countdown show on the wall-mounted flat-screen television. Chrissie, in pink leggings and one of her older brother’s chambray shirts, lounged on the chintz sofa, idly texting someone on her phone.

              They had talked very little since his arrival. Actually, they rarely talked at all anymore, which would have suited Michael if the silence had been filled with kissing, groping, and other forms of flesh handling. Over the past few days, Chrissie behaved as if he were diseased when he tried to touch her.

              “Where’s your mom?” He leaned over to finger the top button of her shirt. “Do you think she’ll be gone long?”

              She flung his hand away. “She’s with Moms Against Murder Always. They picketed the Planned Parenthood downtown today. I’m sure she’ll be home soon. It’s close to dinner and Mom works up an appetite after a day of butting into other people’s business.”

              Scrubbing his hands through his hair, Michael shifted to the opposite end of the sofa. “Has the Twin Lakes membership committee voted yet?”

              “Yes.” She kept her eyes on her phone, her thumbs rapidly composing a text message.

              “Well?” he prompted.

              “I’m not supposed to tell,” Chrissie mumbled, her mind on her text.

              “They were invited to join, weren’t they?” he asked petulantly.

              “Why do you care?” she demanded, exasperated. “It’s just a stupid country club.”

              He hurled one of the needlepoint sofa pillows across the room. “Just give me a straight answer!”

              “Yes,” she snapped, finally looking at him. “The vote was unanimous! The committee drooled over Damon Curran and they can’t wait to get Siobhan on the Twin Lakes Tournament Team. She beat two of the house pros after you left Sunday, did you know that? Twin Lakes can’t wait to welcome Siobhan and her father!”

              Michael paced a tight circle in front of the television. He banged his fist against the screen, temporarily pixelating the picture. He kicked the leg of the accent table beneath the television, felling the framed photos of Chrissie the debutante at the Daughters of the Gateway Cotillion.

              He turned to Chrissie and pitifully barked, “Why?”

              She instinctively shrank away from the grim realization glimmering in his pale eyes.

              “Because they’re black?” he shouted. “That’s so damned unfair! They don’t deserve to be there!”

              Chrissie clutched a throw pillow to her chest. “What difference does it make? You spend more time at the club than any of the real members anyway.”

             
The real members?
The words seared his brain. “You are such a stuck-up, spoiled little bitch.”

              “I didn’t invite you here,” she calmly reminded him. “My personality flaws obviously bug you, so why don’t you go whine to one of your other girlfriends? Maybe Karen Jefferson, that Maplewood High School girl you met at the bowling alley. Or Maleah Ayers, the girl from the frozen yogurt shop.” Chrissie cracked her knuckles. They sounded like gunshots. “Veronica Armistead probably at home just crying out her eyes, waiting for you to go back to her.”

              Michael paled.

              “Did you really think I wouldn’t find out about your ‘brown sugar?’ Does your grandpappy know about her? That’s a conversation I’d
love
to hear. I’d call and tell him myself, but the old bastard makes my skin crawl.”

              With a satisfied smirk, Chrissie turned to her music videos. Fate, in the form of Emma Medeiros, the Abernathy’s portly Portuguese cleaning woman, had spilled Michael’s secret about Michael and Veronica. Emma took the bus to work every day with Virginia Armistead, Veronica’s mother and the Littlefield’s housekeeper.

              The two women occasionally spoke by phone during the day. Chrissie, home from school early one afternoon, stumbled upon one of their conversations when she almost walked into the laundry room during Emma’s ironing.

              “You did right to stop it,” Emma had said in heavily accented English. “No good was gonna come of Ronnie sneakin’ ‘round with that Littlefield boy. I see him around here with Miss Chrissie. He’s nothin’ but no good! What was Ronnie thinking? Thank the Lord he didn’t get her with a baby.”

              Chrissie learned of Karen and Maleah on a night when Michael left her in the car with his cell phone for too long while he chatted up the pretty African-American window girl at Mr. Wizard’s Frozen Custard Stand. His text logs, detailed play-by-plays of his secret affairs, had been fascinating reading. Chrissie had collected her aces and had patiently waited for the perfect moment to play them.

                Michael frantically searched his mind for who could have ratted him out. He’d always been careful to keep his secret life secret. As much as he enjoyed bragging of his conquests, he’d only done so to a handful of people, none who would have repeated anything to Chrissie.

              Had Brian told her? Possibly. More than possibly. Brian had never liked him. Brian had laughed in his face when he told him and Camden that he’d been grinding groins with Veronica. But Brian had never known about Karen and Maleah.

              Could Bitsy have told her, stupid Bitsy who had run into him and Karen at the library, and who’d believed him—so he thought—when he said he was only tutoring Karen? Bitsy knew about Karen and possibly even Maleah, having seen him twice chatting with Maleah at the frozen yogurt shop. Bitsy couldn’t have known about Veronica.

             
Bitsy knows I’m her connection to Cam,
he thought.
She’d never rat me out to Chrissie.
So who’d done it? Who was the snitch?

              The most likely candidate came to mind, and his entire body seemed to relax and tense at the same time.

              Siobhan Curran.

              Bitsy couldn’t keep her mouth shut about anything, so she must have told Siobhan about Karen and Maleah the day Bitsy met Siobhan at Twin Lakes. Michael himself had told Siobhan about Veronica.

              Veronica had been so easy. He’d hidden a few pieces of his mother’s good silver in the trunk of his car, then told Veronica that he’d have her mother labeled a thief and fired—and he’d broadcast it all over Prescott. That threat of humiliation terrified Veronica, and Michael happily exploited her fears. She had done everything he told her to, as often and whenever he wanted. The only reason he finally let her go was because she began acting crazy at school: keeping to herself, letting her grades slip—once she exploded in tears when he entered her classroom.

              Siobhan Curran had been entirely different. He couldn’t charm her, as he’d so easily charmed Karen and Maleah, and he couldn’t blackmail her. He’d tried to force her, knowing that as the new girl at Prescott, no one would believe her if she accused him of anything. But she was strong, too strong. And slippery! He’d gotten his hands on her only to take a punch in the face that temporarily blinded one of his eyes. He’d never hated anyone as much as he hated Siobhan Curran, and clearly she hated him right back. Why else had she worked so hard to turn Chrissie against him?

              “That bitch has her hooks in you, too,” Michael muttered angrily, looming over Chrissie. “I don’t know what she told you, but you can’t believe a word of it! When she first moved here, I thought I was being nice by offering to show her around town, since she was new. She invited me to her house, and the next thing I knew, she was all over me! I didn’t give her what she wanted so she made up all that crap about me and those other girls. She threw herself all over me, but I told her that I was already involved with someone, with you. You know how I got that black eye before school started? I ran into a door, trying to get away from
her
!” He grasped for her hand. Chrissie pulled out of reach to grab the television remote.

              “She’s been out to get me ever since school started,” Michael stated shakily.

              Chrissie turned off the television. She plucked a Davidoff from a cloisonné cigarette box on the mahogany accent table behind the sofa. She pulled a silver lighter from the pink candy-striped Bermuda bag at her side.

              “Siobhan didn’t tell me anything, Michael.” She lit the cigarette and took a long draw from it. “The first time I ever really talked to her was on Sunday. You remember Sunday, don’t you? The day she whipped your ass at Twin Lakes?

              “We talked about Camden. We talked about colleges. And we talked about her conditioner. She has the most gorgeous hair, and she told me her secret is coconut oil. She never said say anything about you or your harem, and she definitely didn’t mention her uncontrollable desire for you.”

              Chrissie laughed. The idea of Siobhan Curran going nympho over a steely-eyed, sinewy package like Michael—it was just too funny! Chrissie decided she had tortured her parents, perhaps even herself, enough. “You told me everything I needed to know, Michael. Get out of my house.”