Avalon High (8 page)

So I just shut my mouth and didn’t say anything for the rest of the game….

Until, sometime in the fourth quarter, when the teams were tied at twenty-one, something weird happened. At least, I thought it was weird. Not having been to a football game before, maybe it happened every day. Who knew?

But I did see exactly how it happened, because it involved Will, so I’d been watching closely. Will had called out some numbers and someone had snapped him the ball. He’d run with it for a few feet, looking for someone to throw it to.

Then something happened that hadn’t happened at any time before during the game: Lance wasn’t there to
keep Will from getting tackled. Instead, Will got hit, hard, by a member of the opposing team.

Seeing this, I gasped and leapt to my feet, then looked around accusingly for Lance. He came running over from where Jennifer Gold was standing on the sidelines.

Jennifer Gold? What had Lance been doing, chatting up Jennifer Gold while Will was getting the snot knocked out of him?

I wasn’t the only one who was appalled. The Avalon coach whacked Lance on the back of his helmet as he went racing to Will’s side. A lot of whistles got blown, and the guy who’d tackled Will peeled himself off him. Lance fell to his knees beside Will’s crumpled—oh, God! Don’t let him be dead!—form, ripped off his own helmet, then leaned over to grab the front of Will’s uniform, calling his friend’s name.

I watched, my heart in my throat, not realizing I’d been holding my breath until a second later, when Will started, slowly and painfully, to get up.

Then I let out my breath in a whoosh and, my knees too weak to hold me up anymore, sat down….

To find both Stacy and Liz staring at me with their eyebrows raised.

I felt myself blushing, and hoped they wouldn’t notice in the darkness.

“I had no idea football was so exciting,” I said lamely.

A second later, with Will seeming to have brushed off Lance’s apologies with a good-natured laugh, the game started again.

Only this time, no one got close to tackling Will. And the guy from the opposing team who’d knocked him down before? Well, first chance he got, Lance brought him down so hard that the game had to stop again, and the guy had to be removed from the field on a stretcher.

One thing was for sure: Nobody was going to hurt A. William Wagner and get away with it if his best friend Lance had anything to say about it.

Avalon won by seven points. The crowd went nuts.

And then it was time for Will’s party.

I made Stacy and Liz come with me. No way was I going to a party by myself, not knowing anyone but the host, who’d doubtless be too busy hosting to talk to me.

Besides, I’d asked Will, when I’d e-mailed him back the other night, if it was okay if I brought a couple of friends, and he’d replied that it was fine.

Stacy had been nonchalant at the invitation, but Liz was excited by the idea of going. She had never, she confessed to me, been to a party at a popular person’s house—let alone president of the senior class—and she was dying to see what it was like.

She found out soon enough. What it was like could be described in one word: crowded. Will lived in one of the
really nice houses by the Severn Bridge—on a hill overlooking the bay, in fact—and we had to park way down the hill, because there were already so many cars in front of the house that it made getting close to the driveway impossible.

“Holy—” was what Liz started to say, when we finally made it up the hill and into the Wagners’ foyer. Because Will’s house was really nice, all marble floors and giant mirrors in gilt frames. You had to wonder how his dad afforded it all, on a naval salary.

Liz had apparently been thinking the same thing, since she whispered to Stacy and me, “Family money,” in a knowing voice.

I met Admiral Wagner almost as soon as we walked through the door. He was standing in the living room greeting people as they arrived, a drink in one hand, and an attractive blonde in the other. This, I assumed, was the dead friend’s widow, and Will’s new stepmom.

“Great game, wasn’t it?” Will’s dad was saying to anyone who would listen. “Help yourself to a drink. Great game, didn’t you think?”

Will’s dad certainly didn’t look like an ogre who would purposefully get his own best friend killed, then marry his widow and, oh yeah, force his son into a career he didn’t want. He was tall, like Will, with salt-and-pepper gray hair. He wasn’t wearing his uniform, or anything, although the creases in his khakis looked kind of sharp for civilian clothes. But that might just be because I’m not used to seeing a man in ironed pants.
My dad’s never worn anything ironed in his life.

I went straight up to him and introduced myself and Liz and Stacy, because it seemed like the polite thing to do. I’ll admit that I was also curious to see what Admiral Wagner would be like, after everything I’d heard about him.

But he was totally charming, shaking my hand with energy, seemingly thrilled to pieces that his son had so many friends. He went, “Glad to meet you, girls. Go and get yourselves a drink. Sodas are out by the pool,” in a happy, booming voice.

I looked closely at the admiral’s new wife, to try to gauge how much she had to do with what Will called “things being weird lately.”

But she didn’t look mean or anything. She was very beautiful, petite, and blond…sort of like Jennifer Gold, actually.

But she also looked kind of sad. Like maybe she missed her dead husband, or something.

Or maybe she just didn’t want to be at some dumb high school party. It was hard to tell.

Stacy and Liz and I did as the admiral told us to, and made our way out to the pool. We had had a little trouble finding the house, so Will and Lance and the rest of their teammates—not to mention the Avalon High cheerleading squad—were already there, high-fiving one another and jumping into the heated pool in the glow of about a million paper lanterns.

Stacy and Liz and I went and got ourselves sodas and then stood by the guacamole—which is where tall girls
always end up standing at parties—watching everyone. No one paid us the slightest bit of attention. No one, that is, except a Border collie who came over and thrust her nose into my hand.

“Hey, there,” I said to the dog. She was gorgeous, her long, silky coat white with just a few black patches. She was well-behaved, too. She didn’t jump up and only licked me once.

This, I knew, could only be Will’s dog, Cavalier. I found out I was right when Will managed to break away from the adoring throng around him and hurried over, exclaiming, “You came!”

While Liz and Stacy both looked behind them, trying to figure out who he was talking to, I felt myself starting to flush.

Because I knew he was talking to me.

“Yes,” I said, as he stopped in front of me. He’d changed into baggy swim trunks and a Hawaiian shirt that was open to the waist. It was hard not to look at his abs, which were extremely six-pack–like. I tried to ignore them as I said, “Thanks for inviting me. These are my friends Stacy and Liz.”

While the two girls looked on in total astonishment, Will said hi. Then he said to me, “I see Cavalier found you. She must like you.”

It was true. The dog had kind of been leaning on me as I stroked her soft ears. At least until Will came over. Then all of her attention shifted to him.

“She has nice manners,” I said lamely, because it was
the only thing I could think of to say. Other than,
I love you! I love you!

Which wouldn’t, you know, have been too socially acceptable.

Will just smiled, then asked us if we were going to swim.

“We didn’t bring suits,” Liz lied, with a quick glance at Jennifer Gold, who was wandering around, looking perfectly angelic in a snow-white tankini.

“Oh, we have plenty of spares,” Will said. “Over in the pool house. Help yourselves.”

Stacy and Liz just stared at him, guacamole-laden chips forgotten in their hands. There was about as much chance of the three of us strutting around in our swimsuits in front of the cheerleading squad as there was of a giant meteorite plummeting from the sky and incinerating them.

Not that I was wishing this would happen. Much.

“Have fun,” Will said to me, with a grin, completely oblivious to our discomfort, as any guy would be. “I have to go do, you know. The host thing.”

“Sure,” I said, and watched as he—Cavalier padding close at his side—went to go talk to a tall, good-looking boy who I’d never seen before. Dark-haired, like Will, he seemed vaguely familiar. But I knew he didn’t go to Avalon. Liz was only too happy to clear up the mystery of his identity.

“That’s Marco,” she said, her mouth full of guacamole. “Will’s stepbrother.”

I stared. Marco was chatting amiably with Will and some of the other team members. He didn’t look like he was too upset with the way things had turned out—you know, living in the home of the man who’d sent his father to his death, then married his mother. I mean, that kind of thing could mess a person up.

He also didn’t look like the monster I’d been led to believe he was. He certainly didn’t look like someone who’d try to kill a teacher. It was true he had a hoop through both ears. And one of those tribal tattoos around one bicep.

But that’s pretty much normal, you know, these days.

I watched Marco make his way around the pool, greeting people the way a politician does, with a handshake and a slap on the shoulder if they were guys, and a kiss on the cheek if they were girls. I wondered how I would feel, living under the same roof as the man who was responsible—however indirectly—for my dad’s death.

Things were much more interesting in Annapolis than I’d ever suspected they would be, back when my parents had announced that that was where we were moving for the year.

It didn’t take Liz long to figure out that she hadn’t been missing much, not having been invited to popular kids’ parties before. Stacy soon grew bored as well. When they finally announced that they wanted to go—we’d managed to polish off all the guacamole, and it didn’t look like more was forthcoming—I nodded,
because by then, I wanted to go, too. I’d seen what I’d wanted to see—Will’s dad, who, in spite of what I’d been led to believe, seemed very nice; his stepmom, who seemed lovely; and the way Will interacted with Jennifer, which was exactly the way you’d expect a boyfriend and girlfriend to interact…not too lovey-dovey, or anything, but they held hands a lot, and I saw him lean down to kiss her once.

Did the sight send a dagger of envy into my heart? Yes. Did I think I’d make a better girlfriend for him than she did? Pretty much.

But the thing was, I wanted him to be happy. It sounds weird, but I really did. And if Jennifer made him happy, well, so be it.

Except…

What about that rose? The one that was fully blooming now in its vase on my nightstand, where it was the first thing I saw every morning when I woke up, and the last thing I saw every night before I turned out the light?

It wasn’t until we were on our way out that I suddenly remembered I needed to let Lance know about our meeting with Mr. Morton on Monday morning. Telling Liz and Stacy I’d meet them out by the car, I went to find Lance to break the news.

But he wasn’t out by the pool where I’d last seen him. And he wasn’t anywhere on the first floor of the house, either. Finally, someone hanging out in the line for the bathroom on the second floor said they’d seen him go through the door to a spare bedroom. I thanked them,
then went to the door and knocked on it.

But the music floating up from downstairs was too loud for me to hear whether or not Lance had said come in. I knocked a little harder. Still nothing.

Figuring if I couldn’t hear him because of the music, he probably couldn’t hear my knocking, I opened the door—just a crack—to see if Lance really was in there.

He was in there, all right.

In there making out with Jennifer on the bed. Jennifer, his best friend’s girlfriend.

They were so wrapped up in each other, they didn’t even notice the door opening. I quickly closed it, then hurried to lean against the wall across from it, my heart feeling as if it were about to leap out of my chest.

But before I even had time to register what I’d just seen—let alone wonder what it meant—I saw something even more horrifying.

And that was Will coming up the stairs, and heading for the very door I’d just closed.

“Oh, hey, Elle,” Will said, when he saw me.

It was a sign of how freaked I truly was by what I’d just seen that my heartstrings didn’t so much as quiver at hearing him call me Elle.

“Hi,” I said faintly.

“Have you seen Jen?” Will wanted to know. “Someone said they saw her come up here.”

“Jen?” I echoed. My gaze, though I tried not to let it, strayed toward the closed door to the spare bedroom. “Um…”

What was I supposed to say? I mean, really? Was I supposed to go, “Sure, I’ve seen her, she’s right in there,” and let him walk through that door and find Jennifer
and Lance in there, going at it?

Or was I supposed to lie and go, “Jen? Nope. Haven’t seen her,” and let him continue to live in total ignorance of the fact that his girlfriend and best friend were a couple of lying skanks?

Who could make a decision like that? Why did
I
have to be the one who’d walked in on them? I mean, I wanted Will to break up with Jennifer so he could be free to hook up with me—you know, if hell happened to freeze over, or something, and he asked me out.

But I didn’t want to be the person who, however indirectly, caused that breakup by revealing his girlfriend’s true nature to him! Because whenever this happens to girls on soap operas or the WB or whatever, they never end up getting the guy….

But before I could decide what to do, Will looked more closely at me and went, “Are you all right, Elle? You look sort of…pale.”

I
felt
pale. In fact, I felt a little like I might throw up all that guacamole I’d scarfed down earlier.

“I’m fine,” I said, though it sounded like a lie even to my own ears.

“You’re
not
fine,” Will said firmly. “Come on. Fresh air time.”

Then something amazing happened. He took my hand—grabbed it like it was the most natural thing to do in the world—and steered me toward a door I hadn’t noticed before. Then he pulled me up a narrow, steep stairway that opened out onto this kind of deck all along
the roof of the house.

In spite of the party below, which was in full swing, it was quiet out on the narrow little deck. Quiet and dark, with a fantastic view of the stars overhead, and the bay stretched out below us, the moon reflected like a bright ribbon of light across it. A cool breeze lifted my hair from my face, and immediately, I started to feel a little better.

I leaned against the ornately carved railing that ran the length of the deck and gazed out at the bay, at the bridge that arched across it, and the occasional glow of a car’s headlights as someone drove over it.

“Better?” Will asked.

I nodded, feeling a little ashamed of myself, and wanting to distract him from looking at me too closely—I sensed that I was still slightly green around the gills—I asked brightly, “So what
is
this thing, anyway?” meaning the narrow parapet Will and I were standing on.

“You really aren’t from around here, are you?” Will asked, with a grin. Then he joined me at the railing and said, “They call it a widow’s walk. All the old houses around here have them. People like to say they were built for the wives of sailors so they could come out and watch for their husbands’ ships to return.”

“Nice,” I said sarcastically. Because, of course, if the husband didn’t return, it meant that his ship had gone down and the wife was now a widow, thus making her pretty little lookout post a widow’s walk.

“Well,” Will said, with a laugh. “yeah. But that’s not
really what they were for. They were built so people could climb up here and put out the flames if their roof caught fire, back when they had to use their chimneys for heat and cooking and everything.”

“Nice!” I said again, this time with even more sarcasm.

Will smiled. “Yeah. I guess they should change the name.” He shrugged. “The view’s the same, no matter what they call it.”

I nodded, admiring the shimmering band of light the moon cast across the water. “It’s nice,” I said. “Soothing.” Soothing enough to make a girl forget why she’d had to come out there in the first place. What was I going to do about Lance and Jennifer, anyway?

“Yeah,” Will said, totally oblivious to my inner turmoil. “I never get tired of it. It’s the one thing that always seems to stay the same. The water, I mean. The color changes. Sometimes it’s flat. Sometimes there’s chop. But it’s always there. You can depend on it.”

Not like his girlfriend and best friend.

But I didn’t say this out loud, of course.

I couldn’t help wondering if the new Mrs. Wagner came out here much, maybe with her morning cup of coffee. Had the irony of his house’s widow’s walk occurred to Will? You know, her being a widow, and all?

“Do you miss her?” I asked Will suddenly. Too suddenly, I realized, when he looked at me like he had no idea what I was talking about.

“Who?” he asked.

“Your mom, I mean,” I said. “Your, um, real mom.” I didn’t figure there was any point in pretending like I didn’t know the story of what had happened with his dad.

“My mom?” He squinted out across the water. “No, not at all. I never knew her. She died when I was born.”

“Oh,” I said. Because I didn’t know what else to say.

“It’s okay,” Will said with a grin, I guess sensing my sadness for him, and wanting to reassure me. “You can’t miss what you never had.”

“I guess,” I said. “Do you like—” I paused, not sure what I should call his stepmom. “—Marco’s mom?” was what I ended up settling for.

“Jean?” Will nodded. “Yeah. I like her a lot.”

“Well,” I said, “that’s good. And Marco?”

“Yeah,” Will said. His grin broadened. “How’d you know about Marco and Jean? Have you been asking around about me, or something?”

“Maybe,” I said, feeling myself start to flush, and hoping he wouldn’t notice in the relative darkness.

If he did, he didn’t let on.

“Marco’s cool,” Will said, with a shrug. “He…” He paused, seeming to struggle with how to put what he said next. “He didn’t have a lot, growing up. He’s been in some trouble. But I think he’s starting to chill a little.”

“He and your dad get along?” I asked casually, but I was really curious. Would I get along with the man who’d ordered my dad to his death, then married my mom? I was thinking probably not.

Will looked thoughtful. Not sad, or anything. Just like he was thinking hard about what I’d asked.

“You know, I think they do,” he said finally. “It’s different for Marco. I mean, he’s not related to my dad. So there isn’t the same…pressure between him and Marco as there is between him and me.”

“So I guess that’s what you meant when you were talking about things being weird,” I said. “About Marco and your dad and stepmom and…what happened with them, and everything?”

I guess it was wishful thinking. You know, that the thing with Will’s parents was really what was bothering him, and not…well, the thing with his girlfriend. I mean, did Will suspect? About Lance and Jennifer? He had to. What had happened at tonight’s game, with Lance not having been there for him because he was over by the sidelines talking to Jen…and now the two of them having disappeared together….

That had to be what he meant about things being weird lately. That had to be the explanation for the dark shadow I sometimes saw fall across his face. Didn’t it? I mean…didn’t it?

“I guess that’s part of it,” he said, looking out into the water. “But it doesn’t explain everything. It doesn’t explain….” He tore his gaze from the bay and looked down at me instead.

And I knew—just knew—what was coming. I even closed my eyes, anticipating the blow.

He’s going to ask me,
I thought.
He’s going to ask me
about Lance and Jennifer. What should I say? I can’t be the one to tell him. I just can’t
. They
should have to tell him. Lance and Jennifer! It’s their fault, not mine.
They
should be the ones to have to break the news. It’s not fair that it has to be me!

But then, to my utter astonishment, what Will ended up saying to me instead was, “It doesn’t explain what’s going on between me and you.”

If that meteorite I’d been fantasizing about earlier had suddenly streaked down out of the sky and taken out the Avalon High cheerleading team, I doubt I’d have been as surprised as I was by what Will had just said to me. I was stunned, in fact, into speechlessness and, my eyes flying open, could only stare at him, my mind sluggishly repeating those last three words over and over again….
Me and you. Me and you. Me and you.

Except that—there was no
me and you
. To me, maybe. But not to Will.

Was there?

But before I could even begin to formulate a reply to his extraordinary statement, he tore his gaze from mine and, looking out across the water again, asked, “Do you ever get the feeling that this can’t be it?”

My brain staggered around, trying to figure out what was happening. I’m afraid it was all too much for me, and I ended up going, “Um…what?” because it was the only thing I could think of to say.

“You know,” Will said, a note of urgency in his deep voice as he looked me in the eye again. “Don’t you ever
wonder if there’s something…more? That we’re supposed to be doing?”

“Um.” Okay.
Okay, apparently this is heading somewhere, hopefully back to what he’d said before, about
me and you.
In the meantime, I’ll humor him.
“Sure. Isn’t that how we’re supposed to feel? Otherwise we’d never move out. We’d all just live with our parents until we died.”

He laughed a little at that. I loved the sound of his laugh. It almost made me forget about…well, what I’d seen earlier.

“That’s not what I meant, exactly,” he said. “Do you ever think”—his blue eyes were very bright in the moonlight—“that this isn’t the first time you’ve been alive? Like that you might have done all this—only as someone else—before?”

“Um.” I looked up into his face, wondering what he’d do if I reached out and grabbed it, dragged it down to mine, and kissed him. “Not really.”

“Never?” He ran a hand through his thick dark hair, a gesture I was starting to realize was habitual for him when he was feeling frustrated. “You’ve never had a feeling that you’ve been somewhere before—somewhere you know you’ve never been? Or read something that you know you’d never seen before that moment, but that felt familiar anyway? Heard a piece of music you could swear you’d heard sometime in the past, but that you know you couldn’t have?”

“Well,” I said. It would be wrong to kiss him. He
might freak. Guys don’t like it when girls make the first move. At least according to Nancy. But how would she even know? It’s not like she ever had a boyfriend. “Sure. But there’s a name for that. It’s called déjà vu. It’s a totally common—”

“I’m not talking about déjà vu,” he interrupted. “I’m talking about knowing you’ve met someone before—the way I feel I’ve met you before—even though there’s no possible way we could have met before. That kind of thing. You don’t feel it? That there’s…there’s something…something between us?”

Oh, I felt there was something between us, all right. It just wasn’t, I was pretty sure, what Will was feeling. I mean, I didn’t feel like I’d met him before. Because if I had, I for
sure
would have remembered.

Although there
was
that…my feelings for him, and the strength of them. The way I wanted him to be mine, but at the same time, I also wanted to protect him from the hurt I knew he was going to feel when he found out—and he
would
find out—about Lance and Jennifer. These weren’t the kinds of feelings that stem simply from a guy being nice to you, and buying you a cup of lemonade, and giving you a rose.

These were far, far more than that.

Could there be something to what Will was saying? Could we have met before? If not in this lifetime, then…in another?

But before I could admit that I knew where he was coming from, Will sagged a little against the railing of
the widow’s walk, and shook his head.

“Listen to me. Maybe Lance and Jen are right,” he said, in a self-mocking voice, “and I really am going nuts.”

Just hearing that Lance and Jennifer had said something like that made me jump to take the opposite stance. Maybe Lance cared about what happened to Will—despite the fact that he was carrying on an illicit love affair with his girlfriend behind his back. I mean, he’d kind of proven that he cared by concussing that guy who’d tackled Will. That showed that he at least felt a little bad about what was going on.

But I had seen no such signs of remorse from Jennifer. In fact, just the opposite, given the way she’d grilled me at my locker about Will’s dinner at my house. It was clear that she’d just been pumping me to see if Will suspected anything about her and Lance.

“You’re not going nuts,” I said emphatically. “Things…things have been weird for me, too, lately. But I just thought—I mean, I just figured it’s a normal part of being a teenager, or whatever.”

“I don’t know.” Will looked dubious. “I thought teenagers are supposed to think they know everything. And I’ve never been more sure in my life that I don’t know anything at all.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, that’s probably just a symptom of the massive brain tumor you’ve got growing inside your head, the one no one’s told you about yet.”

Then I wanted to kick myself.
What is wrong with me? Why do I have to go and make jokes whenever things look
like they’re about to get serious? Nancy is right. I’m never going to get a boyfriend at this rate.

But Will, instead of going—as he probably should have—” Whatever you say, weirdo,” just looked at me for a minute. Then he threw back his head and laughed.

And laughed some more.

And really, what choice did I have but to laugh along with him? At least until a sudden breeze sent a strand of my moussed-up hair flying across my eyes. Then, to my surprise, before I had a chance to push it aside, Will reached up and brushed it back for me with his fingers.

And I froze. Because he was touching me. He was touching me.
He was touching me.