Handcuffs (33 page)

“Um, Kyle, if you were just watching Paige to protect her, what were you doing taking pictures of me? You know, the whole hot tub thing?”

“I didn’t take those pictures. Marion has convinced some moron to supply pictures of you. She keeps a counter on the blog, and apparently the entries about you get lots of hits. The hot tub pictures and the ice in the locker were done by the same guy. He was planning on taking your picture when you opened it, but you came to school late.”

“Oh.” What do you say to something harsh like that? Being treated like that. “So you don’t know who did it?”

“No, but I can promise you that she won’t be posting any more of that garbage.” Kyle looks at me quietly for a second, then changes the subject. “So, Parker, what did you do with the money?”

“I put it in my parents’ checking account.”

He laughs. “Seriously? Why?”

“To keep the mortgage company from foreclosing on our house.”

He just kind of sits there and looks at me. “Marion’s right. You are different from your sister.”

“Marion hates me.”

“Yeah. This whole thing has been hard on her. She always looked up to Paige, and she’s crazy about me.” He smiles here, the way a nice older sibling might smile when thinking about his little sister. It makes me feel a little left out or something. “My parents had a hard time dealing with everything, and Marion had to be the go-between, trying to smooth things over. She was too young for all that pressure. Plus, she lost her friendship with you, and that was important to her, even if she won’t admit it.”

“Don’t you want your name cleared?” I ask him. It seems like he would.

“Of what? I guess I am a stalker, really. I sat outside your house for hours, sometimes in the rain, sometimes in the cold, just to get a glimpse of your sister. What does that make me?”

A stalker? And yet, if he was doing it for a good reason . . .

“You still want to go out with her, after the way she treated you?” I can’t help asking.

“Yeah.” I knew he was lying whenever he said he was over her.

“You’re crazy,” I tell him.

“Yeah, but see, I think she felt the same way about West that I felt about her, which means that she would do anything to keep him. I understand her.”

“I don’t know why she had to stay with him and why she needed to get drunk all the time.”

“Your parents seemed to think it was just regular teenager stuff, but I think she needs help. With the drinking and maybe with getting away from West.”

“And then she’s going to go out with you?”

“I hope so,” he says quietly.

“You and Paige are both crazy, and maybe you deserve each other.” Except that he’s nicer than my sister, but maybe her hotness makes up for not being nice, who knows?

“Parker, I hope you are much happier with your current obsession.” I wonder what he knows about that. Probably just what he’s read on Marion’s blog. I think he means it, he isn’t even being sarcastic. Wow.

“Do you think Paige is happy?” I ask him.

“No.”

“Do you think Paige was happy in high school?”

“No.”

“Not ever?”

He shakes his head. “She smiled a lot, but it hardly ever touched her eyes. I don’t think she was happy.”

That’s the part that’s a revelation. I knew she drank sometimes, and it’s becoming clear that she probably should’ve stayed away from West, but I thought that behind all that partying, she was happier than I would ever be. I thought she was bubbly, happy, alive.

“I never wanted to press charges, but since I filed a complaint the officers wanted to bring you down here, to scare you,” he says, his voice apologetic.

Kyle walks me out of the police station. My dad is there waiting for me. We walk silently to the Jeep and get in. Mom is sitting in the passenger seat. She looks like she’s been crying. I get in the back and buckle my seat belt.

“You put the money into our bank account,” he begins.

“Yes.”

“But she stole it,” Mom says.

“I know, but she was trying to help.”

“I stole the money, Daddy. It was wrong,” I say. I’m tired of excuses.

“I know it was wrong,” he says, “but I am aware of why you took it. It does make a difference to me.” I look up and see his eyes in the rearview mirror. For the first time since the handcuffs incident he is looking straight at me. We smile at each other. I can almost hear my mom’s eyes rolling. She sighs. It’s okay. She has her favorite golden princess, and Daddy has me.

“I guess I need to pay Kyle Henessy back the two thousand dollars,” I say.

“I already gave him a check,” Mom tells me. I can’t help wondering if we have enough money in the account to cover that check, but I don’t ask.

Dad drives up to our house. Even though I was kind of hoping that it would have disappeared, the for-sale sign is still in the yard. I go into the house and straight upstairs to my room.

41

M
y mom comes upstairs and sits on my bed.

“Your sister’s going into rehab tomorrow. She wanted me to tell you something. Let’s see if I can get this exactly right. She wanted me to tell you that it’s hard to focus on other people when you are completely focused on yourself, and when you’re drunk.”

Mom had to memorize that? Really?

“Why didn’t Paige tell me this herself?” My voice always sounds abrupt when I talk to my mom, and I don’t know how to change it.

“I don’t think Paige knows how to talk to you, Parker. You’re so different from her friends.” Yeah. None of us knows how to talk to each other, only at least Mom’s trying. I lean forward and press my face into her for a minute, and she has her arms around me before I’m even all the way forward, like she was just waiting for an excuse to touch me. I don’t think about what that means, because it feels good.

I lie down and try to relax, to hide under the pink comforter for maybe half an hour, but then I can’t, and I realize that it isn’t even late, not even late enough for Preston to be in bed.

So I get up and plod downstairs. My parents are sitting on the couch. The recliner seat part is broken where Preston kept pumping it to make it pop out over and over, so Dad is sitting kind of slumped over with his elbow against the armrest. Preston is sitting at the coffee table with a big piece of notebook paper. On it he has drawn five stick figures and labeled them,
Mom, Dad, Parker, Paige, Me.
His Preston stick-boy is only slightly shorter than the one that’s supposed to be me.

“You want me to help you with that?” I ask him.

“You don’t ever draw people,” he says.

“People are really hard, ’cause it’s hard to get all the little details right. Sometimes you don’t even notice the details, but I think we can do better than that.” I jab my finger at the corner where he has drawn and labeled Mom and Dad. They look like identical stick-twins except Dad is wearing enormous glasses.

“Do you want me to go get your special pencil?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I tell him, “that would be cool.”

42

W
e’re back at the nice place, the place he took me on our first date. Things are almost like they were the first time, except some things have changed and I’m not so nervous. I’m watching him over the linen tablecloth, around the lighted candle and the white rose in a cut-crystal vase.

“I’ve never had dinner with an ex-convict before,” he says.

“I’m not . . .” I make a face at him and pretend to study the menu. It’s been exactly one week since I, um, went to jail.

The violinist approaches and stands right in front of us, which seems strange because usually violinists ignore teenagers in fancy restaurants. He begins to play, a sweetly familiar tune followed by a screeching chorus that is strangely familiar.
I don’t belong here.
The violin fades away. I see a fifty-dollar bill exchange hands. Fifty dollars.

“You paid the violinist to play ‘Creep’?”

“Our song. He liked playing it.”

“He was, um, enthusiastic.”

“Infatuation and longing, remember?”

“And self-loathing.”

“I would have found the money for you.”

“Yeah?”

“I could have. Why didn’t you tell me you needed it?”

“I was ashamed.” The waiter brings a basket of bread.

Earlier this afternoon I went downstairs to look for my favorite jeans.

Gasp, Kyle Henessy was on the couch holding my sister’s hand. I just looked at them.

I know they think I am just like her, that I have latched onto my version of West. My parents can’t tell the difference, you see. They barely understand the difference between Paige and Parker, the daughters they created. How could they possibly know the difference between the things we desire? Or—and this is the thing that feels like cold water seeping into my reality, and it’s becoming something like a flood—what if we really are alike and I just don’t see it?

“Parker . . .”

“You don’t know what it’s like to see your whole life changing because of money.”

He kind of shrugs at me. “My parents worry about money. My mom is always worried she’ll have to go back to work. She hated being a lawyer.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, but don’t tell anybody that I listen to anything my parents say. Honestly, Park, they were thrilled when I flunked out of boarding school. The tuition at that place was astronomical.”

“Flunked out. I thought you got kicked—” He puts his finger against my lips to silence me.

“Shhh. Not so loud. There were rumors about one of the guys sneaking a girl into the squeaky-clean upperclass dormitory, but I officially got kicked out because of my grades.”

“Do I want to know?”

“No.” He takes a drink from the delicate little water glass. “Self-loathing, remember?”

“Do I make you?”

“You make it all better.” The sweet smile, pure evil. “Do you want to guess what I have in my pocket?”

I know what he has in his pocket, and he knows that I know.