Broken (10 page)

I could feel myself blushing again as I
pulled myself free and fled into the house with a single wave
goodbye. Normally I wasn't flirtatious. Heck, I hardly knew the
meaning of the word, but something about Brandon turned it all into
a harmless game. A game with rules that were nearly comprehensible
for a change. One where there was very little to lose and an
undreamed of potential for achieving amazing things.

As soon as the door was shut I ran to the
window and hid behind the blinds, watching as the black Mustang
drove up our lane. Overcome by the sudden urge to giggle, I ran
upstairs looking for my mom. I made it all the way to her door
before remembering the Jeep hadn't been downstairs.

Typical. The one time I had good news, and
she wasn't around.

I wandered back downstairs, more because it
was cooler down there than because I had any real desire to work on
homework. Once I was down there though, I grimly decided to open up
my bag and make some progress before mom got home. I pulled my feet
up on the couch, leaned back against the arm and rested my Spanish
book on my knees. I momentarily wondered if I should make myself
quite so comfortable as my eyes closed.

The doorbell came as an abrupt surprise,
waking me from the nap I hadn't intended on taking. I'd been in one
of the surreal, vivid dreams. It was already too distant to
remember details, but I had the impression of being on a mountain
top during the day with vision so acute that I'd been able to see
the individual motes of dust. Oddly enough it almost seemed like
Alec had been there too.

The person waiting outside wasn't anyone I
recognized, but he had the cultured, high-brow appearance of
someone who was either really rich, or who moved in the kind of
circles where you didn't get seated unless you were properly
attired.

"Why hello, you must be Adriana. Can I call
you Adri?"

I shook my head. "I prefer my full name,
Mr..."

"Wilkenson, Mayor Wilkenson. Is your mother
home?"

Suddenly struck by the fact that living in
the country meant there wasn't anyone around to hear your screams,
I almost lied, but for whatever reason I believed him. Maybe
because he exuded the false, overabundant sincerity I'd come to
associate with both the class presidents I'd known back in
Minnesota.

"She's out photographing one of the parks. Is
there a message you'd like me to pass on?"

He looked surprisingly uncertain, almost like
he was used to working from a script, and didn't know what to do
when things didn't go as planned.

"Do you know when she'll be back?"

My head shake seemed to unnerve him a little
more. Presumably he was having a hard time believing in a world
where people didn't have fixed schedules, where moms didn't let
their daughters know when they'd be back from their outings.

"The message really is quite urgent. Are you
positive you don't have a way to contact her? Well then, I suppose
I've no choice."

Most people say they don't have a choice
rather flippantly, but he seemed rather more like he had his back
against the wall than I expected.

"You know, I presume, that there was some
confusion regarding the tourism project she bid out for the city?
Well, I've managed to get to the bottom of the situation and it
appears we did indeed award the contract to her."

The news seemed too good to be true. "You
mean she's got the job?"

"Technically it isn't an employment offer.
It's more in the way of a consulting project, but yes, she'll be in
a sense working for the city. I've asked my staff to make sure that
the confusion is cleared up with the bank as well so you shouldn't
be in any kind of danger of losing your house anymore."

I almost clapped for joy, only there was
something off about it all. Since when did the mayor personally
come to deliver a piece of relatively insignificant news? Not only
that, why would he be so shaken up? He'd actually seemed to be
trying to determine whether or not it would be ok to just leave a
message. Like he was operating by a set of rules he didn't
completely understand. Or maybe at the order of someone else?

Normally I wouldn't have been brave enough to
press, but the words were out of my mouth almost before I realized
what I was doing.

"That's great sir. Do you often work so
closely with the local bank? I mean when the loan officer talked to
my mom he said that there was no way to keep us from losing our
house. I think she said his exact words were that it would take an
act of God to change things now."

A tiny fragment of memory rose to the surface
of my mind. A time when dad had been talking about negotiating with
someone for work. "Don't be afraid of silence, Adri. Especially not
when you know you're right. Let the silence work on people for a
little while and they'll usually start to crack."

That was the last thing I wanted to do right
now, but I kept my mouth shut anyways. It was almost like I could
see the gray matter starting to heat up as the mayor tried to
figure out exactly what I knew and how much I just suspected.

"Act of God indeed. Fancy that. Well,
surprising as it may be, Fredrick doesn't know everything there is
to know about the world."

He was turning to leave, and most of me was
screaming to just thank him and wave goodbye, but there had been
something in his eyes that had me convinced he'd been lying.

"Thank you, sir. I guess I need to learn more
about civic government. I can't wait to go into whatever records
are public and learn about all of the ways the mayor works with the
banks. I'll bet there are plenty of other people who'd be
interested too. Maybe I can start a club at school."

It was like someone else was doing the
talking for me. I'd never been this bold, and to do so now with
someone who could arrange for my mom's job to disappear again
seemed like the worst kind of stupidity, but I couldn't fall apart
now.

I almost couldn't believe my
eyes when his face turned red. "Listen here, Missy. I've been in
politics longer than you've been alive, and it takes a whole hell
of a lot more than a precocious teenager to blackmail me. So, you
can just drop your veiled threats and pretend like we never had
this conversation, or I 
will
 see that your mom is once
again unemployed, and we'll just see whether or not your protector
is bluffing."

Stepping out of my front door and being hit
by a cement truck would have been less of a surprise. I'd thought
something odd was happening, but the idea of someone protecting us
was almost unbelievable.

The mayor took my shock as a sign he once
again had the upper hand. Smiling smugly, he turned to leave, but
not before I could grab at the sleeve of his sport coat. "Wait. Who
is it? Who's helping us?"

The smirk hadn't left. "No, he was very clear
on that point. You're not to know. That's the one thing guaranteed
to make him go through with his threats. You'll just have to be
satisfied with the fact that you'll both continue to be able to
live in our fine city."

Normally I would have just acquiesced, but I
couldn't bear the thought of letting him leave, taking with him the
identity of the only person besides my mom who really cared what
happened to me. I tightened my grip in an attempt to stop him.

"Please, if you won't tell me who it is, let
me write a thank you note. I have to do something. He's done so
much for us."

He stopped partway through shaking his head.
"I can't promise he'll even bother to read it, but I'll take it to
him if you promise never to talk about this again. I don't want to
hear even the slightest rumor anything unusual happened in
association with this project."

I nodded; relieved I'd have a chance to jot
down a couple of lines, that I'd at least have that much of a link
with our protector.

Mayor Wilkenson waited at the door, almost
the perfect picture of a gentleman at his leisure, but his desire
to be done with this whole affair was almost palpable. I hurried
back to the kitchen counter and tore a piece of paper off of the
tablet I'd been drawing on.

Whoever you are thank you so much for what
you've done. Not just for the job, but for smoothing things over
with the bank as well. I wish there was some way I could repay you
for everything.

--Adriana

Chapter 7

My alarm clock jerked me out of a thankfully
dream-free slumber. Actually, as I pulled myself out of bed I
realized I'd had a virtual torrent of dreams, but none of them had
been possessed of the strange vividness that'd begun haunting my
waking moments. I hadn't had one of the special dreams, ergo I
hadn't had any dreams last night.

I really needed to get out of this town
before whatever was in the water drove me completely crazy.
Actually, I probably didn't have much time in which to affect my
escape. When it came to craziness I was already halfway there.
After all, I'd already been diagnosed with the kind of clinical
condition nobody with less than eight years of school could even
pronounce.

As amusing as my internal monologue was, I
didn't let it slow my normal morning preparations. Almost before I
knew it, I was downstairs and once again facing the dreaded
decision of whether or not to eat breakfast. I already knew I
wasn't hungry; the only real decision was how much of mom's wrath I
was willing to face later on.

It wasn't until I had my hand on the doorknob
that I remembered Brandon's promise to pick me up. I was so tired I
actually considered for a second that he might have been serious.
Sitting in his car, fighting not to look at his smiling gray eyes,
it'd all seemed so reasonable. I'd lost my ride and he was grateful
I'd saved him from having to interfere with Cassie, so he was going
to become my personal chauffeur for the rest of the year.

Looking at my empty lane, the school bus only
minutes away, it seemed more likely Brandon wouldn't even remember
talking to me. Just like every hot boy with every loser since the
dawn of time.

The thought hurt a little, but I'd had plenty
of years to come to understand boys like that didn't go after girls
like me. Instead of dwelling on it, greenhouse gases or anything
else I couldn't change, I simply shrugged my backpack a little
higher and started down the lane.

Some kind of bird was merrily announcing to
the world that he was ridiculously happy the sun was just rising,
and that it was already pushing eighty degrees with the promise of
something much, much worse before lunch.

I hadn't been waiting for more than a minute
when a pair of headlights rounded the bend in the road coming from
town. I was so busy worrying how I'd deal with Cassie when I saw
her, that it took me a minute to realize the car had slowed as it
approached.

"Wow, I drive all this way, and then you
deprive me of the pleasure of the last hundred feet."

The deep, smooth voice was unmistakable even
if the light was still too poor to make out anything else. I
slipped inside the Mustang with a grin playing at the edge of my
lips despite my best efforts to remain cool and collected.

"Well, I didn't want to start your day off
too well, or everything else would be anticlimactic."

"Really? You weren't just worried I wasn't
going to show up? Because you understand how someone could've been
thinking you'd walked down your lane so you could catch the bus if
I'd forgotten about you?"

I'd been giving Brandon my crinkled-nose
glare for a solid three seconds before his easy laugh made me
realize what I was doing. I hadn't done that to anyone in months,
it'd been my trademark expression for when a family member had made
me mad.

"Ok, you're right. I didn't think you'd
show."

"I should be very hurt by your lack of faith,
but seeing as how you've been through so much lately, I'll forgive
you."

My heart was suddenly trying to hammer its
way out of my throat, which had somehow constricted so tightly I
couldn't seem to get any air down to my starving lungs.

"How did you...nobody knows..."

Brandon's hand was on my shoulder despite my
inability to remember how it had gotten there. "Are you ok? I was
just kidding, you know, about the near fight and then telling Alec
off and having Britney decide she was moving on to greener
pastures. I didn't mean anything by it."

The attack was still trying to overwhelm me,
but Brandon not knowing the full extent of my weakness robbed it of
some of the momentum necessary to roll me all the way under.

I managed some kind of reply, one that
might've even been witty, but which apparently didn't manage to
cover up the fact I wasn't really ok. We drove in silence the rest
of the way into town, and by the time we turned into the school
parking lot I'd come back to myself enough to be desperately
looking for something else to say. I needed something cool enough
Brandon wouldn't write me off as a lost cause.

Wish granting fairies somewhere were working
overtime, because as Brandon turned off the engine, I saw a mob of
people over by one of the smaller entrances to the school.

"Wow, I wonder what's going on over
there."

We were both out of the car now, and it
seemed the most natural thing in the world to grab Brandon's arm
and tug him over to the crowd. It wasn't until I felt the iron-hard
muscles under my now-tingling hand that I realized what I'd
done.

I felt a surge of heat wash over my face and
neck. Brandon for once didn't have an easy comeback to defuse the
awkwardness. If anything he looked slightly uncomfortable
himself.

"I'm sure it's nothing important..."

He trailed off as my traitorous hand found
his arm of its own accord and started pulling again. I wasn't sure
why I was so anxious; usually I avoided crowds like the plague.
Maybe I was just trying to prolong our time together.