Chaste (17 page)

I bite my tongue. Rude as that was, she’s right. The man would not be living on the street if he weren’t an alcoholic. If he could handle a family, he wouldn’t be begging. Don’t misunderstand me. People end up homeless for different reasons. Some are addicts, some fall on hard times, others are crazy. But everyone knows the man on
Duke Street
is an alcoholic.

“He keeps a garbage bag next to a tree behind the guard rail,” Brother Parker says. “Filled to bursting with empty liquor bottles.”

“That doesn’t mean the dollar you gave him was spent on alcohol, though. Maybe he used it to buy himself a burger or a cup of hot chocolate,” Quinn says.

Preston slaps a hand on his knee and laughs. “You’re kidding me, right bro? Please tell me you’re not one of those bleeding-heart liberals.”

“We’re talking about King Benjamin.” Quinn rolls his eyes. “You know, the man who said we’re all beggars. What right do we have to deny anyone, to judge someone poor when we’re beggars ourselves?”

“Exactly, Quinn,” says Brother Parker. He walks to the white board, takes out a red marker and circles the word beggars. “We’re all beggars. God gave us life regardless of how we use it. And in the book of Mosiah we’re commanded to give without strings. What the homeless man does with the money isn’t my concern.”

Fire crackles in the silent room. The air feels electric as Molly and Preston exchange a look. A piece of wood shifts and rolls out onto the mantle. Preston’s dad grips the poker, prods the log back into the fireplace and then squats down and blows into the heat. Flames rise, embers glow, changing from black to sooty red. The fire comes alive.

“You’re wrong,” I say.

Brother Parker turns. All eyes fall on me. I’ve never been one to voice my opinion on this kind of thing. Not when it means offending someone good like Quinn and certainly not in the company of a girl who hates me, but something inside me strains to come out, to be heard and seen and above all to be known. That’s when it hits me.

No one knows me anymore.

They know the girl I pretend to be, the one who projects a badass image.

They know the strong girl who shoulders the grief. The friend who never cries and the siren who uses her power to turn heads.

They know the pastor’s daughter, who has her father pull strings for her, but not the girl with this rage inside, this fear, this guilt, this constant regret.

No one knows who I really am. I’m too damn good at putting on an act.

With Quinn’s eyes on me, my façade chips. Some things need to be said.

“You may think you’re being charitable,” I tell them. “But your kindness hurts him. He drinks because he can. By giving him money, you’re killing him.”

It’s the tip of the iceberg. Roland was drunk when he climbed into his car that night. When he ran into a tree, he was drunk.

Worse, I’d known he would be.

Even though I’d nagged him about the party for days, he didn’t take me out of the goodness of his heart. He took me to be his designated driver, to be the one responsible for keeping him alive. And I made him stop the car so I could storm away in anger. Too selfish to care about his safety. Too selfish to think of anyone but myself.

The moment my shoes hit the pavement, I killed him.

***

As I drive Quinn to school, I tell him the story. Not how I knew Roland would drink, or how I could have saved him, but how my brother and I got into a nasty fight that night.

I tell him about how Roland didn’t approve of my dating Mike. I explain how I walked to the Springfield metro in the dark after my brother dropped me at the curb and laid down some rubber. I tell him why I drive a Jeep, about my father building Roland’s house and the reasons my parents force me to see the school counselor.

It takes so long that I drive at a snail’s pace, take wrong turns and pretend I’m lost.

It takes so long that my left leg starts to fall asleep. When I glance at Quinn, I know I’ve affected him.

His fingers keep creeping over the edge of the seat, hovering like he wants to hold my hand. He doesn’t dare, of course, because he keeps pulling his fingers back. But the empathy is there and the need to take away my pain. I see it in the way his eyes soften when he looks at me, in the creases that spread from the corners of those sea-blue eyes. He cares.

I hadn’t planned on spilling my guts to Mr. Gullible this morning, especially not after guilt-tripping him away from Molly. But something about telling him feels right. It isn’t just that he’s easy to talk to, or that I went through a patch of unease at Preston’s house. It isn’t just about the bet either, even though it should be.

I tell myself he needs to think I’m letting him in, to think I have feelings behind my tough-girl image. If I’m going to keep my camera and my reputation, he needs to see I have a heart. Love is the ultimate draw. I learned that from Mike.

A little voice in the back of my mind tells me I’m making rationalizations. It asks me to stop and be honest with myself, but I shove it down and tell it to shut up. Quinn Walker means nothing to me.

“I’m sorry you lost your brother,” he says.

It’s the understatement of the century. I’d much prefer he hold my hand or give me a nice soft kiss on the forehead. Maybe let his lips travel to my cheeks and lips. I wonder if he’ll use his tongue when he kisses me. Then I remember Little Miss Know-It-All.

“So,” I ask. “Is Molly your girlfriend?”

She held onto him so tight at seminary, I’m surprised he still has circulation in his fingers.

“I don’t know,” he says, dragging a hand through his curly hair. “Let’s not talk about Molly, okay?”

I nod and wish I could see into that brain of his, figure out what he means by “I don’t know.” The thought of him with that hypocritical redhead makes me want to throw up in the bushes. Not that I should care. Technically, Molly is irrelevant to the bet. So what if I cause more collateral damage than I planned? It really shouldn’t matter.

Except it does.

When I pull into the parking lot two minutes before school is supposed to start, I’m in such a rush that I don’t see Mike guarding the entrance like some bulky security guard. At least, not until I smack into his chest. Try as I might, I can’t get around him. Alarm bells go off in my head. With the back of my hand, I motion for Quinn to run ahead.

“We need to talk,” Mike says, grabbing my shoulders too hard. His fingernails dig into my muscles until they ache and scream with pain.

I pray Quinn’s gone, but when I turn my head, he’s still standing silent as a shadow in the hall.

“I need to get to class,” I say, narrowing my eyes at my stubborn ex-boyfriend. I wiggle my shoulders, but Mike won’t let go. Damn the man. He’s holding me at arm’s length. Close enough that I can’t squirm away, far enough that my knees won’t make contact if I try to kick him in the nuts. The bell rings. The hallway goes quiet. It’s unbearably hot; I can’t breathe.

“Why don’t you return my calls?” he asks.

“We’re done, Mike. There’s nothing to talk about.” His fingers dig in harder. Pain shoots down my arm.

“You’re hurting me. Let go!”

His grip loosens, but his eyes turn hard as polished stones.

“You’re sleeping around.”

“That’s a lie. The only person I’ve slept with is you. Not that it matters. You cheated on me, remember?”

I smell the coffee on his breath as his face gets closer. Dread runs down my spine.

“You can’t end what we have without my consent.”

I’ve never seen Mike this crazy when he’s sober. It’s scaring the hell out of me. Time to end this conversation.

I spit in his eye.

He lets go and staggers back.

The hallway tilts as I take a step forward in my teetering high heels. I’m confident he won’t stop me. Not if I move fast enough. Ducking, I shove past him, but he grabs my wrist and whirls me around.

“You’re a slut!” he screams in my face, teeth ground together, vein jumping in his neck. His fingernails dig hard into my wrist. When I try to pull away, he squeezes harder. I bite my tongue to keep from crying out. Blood oozes from around Mike’s nails.

“Get off her!” Quinn yells.

Something wet hits my cheek.

Mike collapses to the ground.

27

Quinn

I‘d never punched anyone in my life, but seeing Mike treat Kat like crap was more than I could stand. Instead of running for help, I pictured Mike as the one hundred pound practice bag in the weight-lifting room, pulled back my fist and put my body behind the punch.

Now I glance down at the bastard’s face, rub my sore hand and try to forget the sickening sound his jaw made when my knuckles made contact.

“Please, don’t be dead,” I say to his body, squatting down to feel the pulse in his neck.

It jumps against my fingers.

Good, I didn’t kill him.

Kat speaks up. “How did you—?”

“I dunno,” I shrug. “Must’ve hit him harder than I thought.”

She clears her throat. “Well, it wasn’t nice.”

No way! She did not
just say that, not when I just risked my neck to save hers. My parents are going to be furious, Molly’s going to foam at the mouth, and Mike’s two thugs will hunt me down and beat my face in.

I look up at Kat, but she’s not frowning. She smiles while she wipes Mike’s spittle off her cheek. Oh wow, she meant that as a compliment.

“Let me see your wrist,” I say, taking the back of her hand in my palm. Her skin is soft and warm to the touch when I run my fingers from her elbow to the base of her hand. Mike’s fingernails have left a mark, half moon scabs with crusty brown edges.

“You’re half his size,” I point out as the scene I just witnessed plays a second time in my head. I find it revolting that super jock Mike, solid at six-foot-three inches tall, would choose to injure and belittle a girl who barely comes up to the top of his shoulders.

Bastard.

I drop her arm and try to clear the curse word from my brain.

Mike groans, footsteps echo through the hall and I snap to attention. A woman in a gray pantsuit with a red face is running toward us. Her hair is long and flat.

“Ms. Jackson, what’s going on here?” the woman asks.

“Nothing,” says my physics partner.

The woman in the pantsuit is Kat’s counselor, the one who thinks I’m violent. The one who stares at me like a villain whenever I pass her in the halls. This doesn’t look good: me standing over a semi-conscious Mike.

He opens his eyes and trains them on me. “This isn’t over, Walker,” he rasps.

Way to go, Quinn. You’ve landed yourself another suspension, possibly even an expulsion. Plus, a death threat from West Springfield’s player of the year!

“Who hit him?” Mrs. Burns asks, staring at the big red mark on the side of the fallen basketball star’s face.

She looks at me, back to him, and then at me again, this time narrowing her eyes. Guess she’s made up her mind.

“Quinn?” she asks.

My mouth goes dry.

“I did,” Kat blurts.

Crap, I don’t need her to lie for me! I think of my sister and the car I wrecked three days after my fifteenth birthday. The entire incident had been my fault, but she’d insisted on taking the blame. She believed herself responsible just because she’d let me drive. After my parents took away her driving privileges, she changed her tune and said I’d gotten away with murder. If that was murder, I don’t know what I should call this.

Mrs. Burns’ voice pulls me out of my thoughts. “Who hit you?” she asks Mike as he groans and rises.

The bastard puts a hand to his jaw. He steadies himself against a locker while I take a breath and prepare for the end of my life. Having a suspension on my record is bad enough, but having an expulsion will mean flunking out of senior year.
Say goodbye to college, Quinn.

Mike opens his mouth to speak.

“I’m sure a suspension will look real good to the Tar Heels coach at Chapel Hill,” Kat cuts in. “Go ahead, Mike. Tell her who hit you. When you’re done, I’ll tell her who did this.”

She shoves her scabbed up wrist under Mrs. Burns’ nose.

Mike moves his jaw from side to side. “It was Kat,” he rasps. “Kat hurt me. Kat betrayed me.”

“Who scratched you up, Ms. Jackson?” the counselor asks.

Mike is looking at Kat now. His gaze slides from her ankles to her hips to her breasts as if her face doesn’t exist. She shivers and I feel the urge to throttle him. Instead I clench and unclench my fists, hating how out of control I feel, how hard I have to fight to quash my rising anger.

“I did it to myself,” she says. “Not on purpose. I woke up with an itch.”

“I guess I should be grateful you didn’t say you fell down the stairs.” Mrs. Burns sighs, infusing her voice with sarcasm. “The three of you need to follow me.”

Mrs. Burns power-walks down the hall, but Kat can’t just leave things as they stand. She stomps her foot before running ahead to face the counselor.

“You don’t believe me,” she accuses.

“Doesn’t matter. There’s surveillance,” Mrs. Burns says, pointing to a camera with a blinking red light suspended from a bar on the ceiling.

Time to kiss my future goodbye.

***

“I can’t believe you screwed up again,” Amy says from across the room. She holds Elijah over her shoulder with one hand and hits his back with the other.

As she gives me one of her how-dare-you-waste-my-precious-time looks, I lower my eyes to Chapter eleven in my physics book, “Einstein’s Theory of Relatively.” Speaking of things being relative, doesn’t she think it’s relatively ridiculous for
her
to call
me
a screw up? I mean, it isn’t like I’m the one who dropped out of college because I let my hormones override my ability to think.

“Because of you I had to wake up Elijah,” she spits out. “Because of you I had to strap a screaming baby into the car, drive to school and pick you up. Do you have any idea what a pain in the butt that was?”

I tune Amy out and think back to the lecture I received in Principal Bates office. The one where he’d gone on about the evils of using your fists.