Look Both Ways (18 page)

“I . . . I was running,” Mallory said. “I’m just going down.”

“That’s okay,” said the skinny boy, who had buzz-cut black hair to go with his mini-mustache. “You come on down by us and have a brew.”

“No thanks.”

“No, you come on down. Right, Ry?”

“No. I’m only twelve.”

“You’re pretty cute, though. I was brewing up a storm when I was twelve. No time like the present to get started.” The skinny boy with the black buzz stepped forward and grabbed Mallory’s arm.

“Leave me alone!” she said sharply. “My brother’s down there.”

“Let him come too, then. We don’t want you going to tell Mommy what you saw at the reservoir, right?”

Pulling her miner’s light off her head, Mally switched it on-off three times and then back on. “Ooooooooh,” said Buzz Head. “Secret code.”

“I know her,” said the other boy, the one called Ryan. “That’s the little chick that was on TV when that big fire happened. The twin. And she was the one there when the guy went over the cliff in Ridgeline. That was intense. Did his head break like a pumpkin? Was it sick?”

“Leave her alone, you idiot,” said a familiar voice. Kim stepped out from behind the Buzz Head boy. “Mally, is that you?” Mallory nodded. Kim wore a sweatshirt ripped open to the top of her bra, and a parka. Her skintight black jeans were stuffed into furred boots that outlined her calves. “Evan, she’s a little kid. She’s my friend’s sister. Let her alone.”

“I’m no more a kid than you, Kim. Why are you here?”

“Why do you care?” Kim asked. Whipping a lighter out of her parka pocket, she stumbled a little. In the light from her headlamp, Mally saw that Kim’s eyes were black pits at the center, wavering and bloodshot. The cigarette was just a Marlboro, but there was more going on than that. Mallory didn’t know whether to be more afraid of Kim or the boys. More were making their way up the hill.

“Ev!” one called. “Evan! What are you doing, Tauber? Taubsky? What’s going on? Where’s Kim?” A guy at least a head taller than Drew stepped out onto the path. His head was shaved and, in the cold, he wore nothing but a T-shirt with the sleeves ripped off and “Dead Meat” scrawled on it in crude strokes of marker. “Who’s the midget?”

“Leave her alone, Evan, Brett. She’s leaving. She was just up here for a run,” Kim said.

“Kim, come home with me. Drew’s down there. We’ll drive you.”

“My parents would just love to smell my breath now,” Kim said, with a laugh that came out more like a croak. The bare-headed boy, Evan, grabbed her arm and kissed her deeply. Kim broke away. “You go home, Mally.” She dragged deeply on the cigarette. “My friends are nicer to me than the stuck-up little preps and princesses at Ridgie.”

“I’m sure they’re nice, but Kim, you’re not even fifteen.”

“Since when?” the boy asked.

“She’s nuts,” Kim said. “I told you. I’m a senior.”

Mallory said, “She’s not. She’s a freshman. Just like me. Her brother was the boy who died in Ridgeline last spring. The one who fell off the cliff. Deirdre’s guy. You just said.
She’s
just a kid. You’re giving beer and cigarettes to a
kid
. And I’m going to say so. I recognize you. And I don’t care what you think. I heard your name. Evan Tauber. I’ll tell the cops.”

“I don’t think you will,” the bald-headed giant said gruffly. “I don’t think you’ll want to tell anyone if you hear what might happen to you if you open your mouth, little teeny girl.” He grabbed one of Mallory’s arms, but Kim reached for Mally’s other hand. The boy called Ryan pushed Kim’s hand away, nearly knocking her down. Mallory struggled, as the bald giant held her tighter.

Then they all heard the high, impossibly loud cry, humanlike but not human.

Behind them, the mountain lion crouched on a rock.

She rolled her shoulders and growled again, her claws like individual teeth, her teeth glistening in a mouth that yawned so large Mally could have put her head and shoulders inside it. The cat lay low on the boulder, her head restlessly swinging. The moon had risen, bathing the path in white light. The puma looked cut from marble, like a statue of a beast, except that it moved.

“Mother . . . man, what is that?” Ryan whispered, backing up.

“You’re lit, man,” said the skinny guy

“You see it too.”

“I think I’m seeing what I smoked. I’m out of here. . . .”

“It can’t be there, because it can’t exist. Even though we’re seeing it. It can’t be,” said Buzz Cut. Their friend had already cut out for the scrubby path downhill.

“What is?” Kim asked. “What’s that sound?”

The huge guy was looking over Kim’s head at the cat and beginning to back down the slope.

“It’s really there,” Mallory said to the guys. To Kim, she said, “Kimmie, listen. For your mom’s sake. For David’s sake. Listen. Look right at me and walk down the path. I’m so serious, Kim. Don’t turn around.”

As if hypnotized, Kim began to walk down the ridge path toward the parking lot. The cat snarled again. Kim began to run. Mally followed her.

“I’m gone. Tell Jaybird and Detox to grab a ride.” The boy called Ryan began to jog down the path. Buzz-cut was nowhere to be seen. The huge bald guy had just turned his back when Eden sprang. She sailed ten, maybe fifteen feet, like something light instead of something that weighed easily four times what Mally did, but she hit the ground in long, easy running leaps and was almost upon the giant within seconds.

“Eden, no!” Mallory shrieked. “He didn’t hurt me!”

Kim had disappeared.

Mallory heard the shrieks and scrambling from below as everyone made for their cars. As Mallory watched, Eden closed the distance between her and the scrawny boy with the ripped T-shirt; she saw his face as he glanced back once, bone-white with fear.

And then Eden fell.

She fell flat just a foot from where she had caught up to the boy, taking a first step and then stumbling into a copse of low bushes.

“NO!” Mallory cried. “NO!”

She hadn’t heard a shot. The animal control wasn’t supposed to come until tomorrow.

She turned the light toward where Eden lay and ran to her side. Kneeling, she ran her hands over the tiny spot of blood on the cat’s thigh. She heard a stick break behind her and looked up into Cooper’s face, his wonderful face she’d missed so much. Mally cried, “What did you do to your sister? How could you hurt her?”

“It’s okay,” Cooper said, pulling her close to him, kissing her hair, then her mouth. She could see that he was crying. “There were herbs on the arrow. From our grandmother. She’ll sleep an hour and then head north. I heard on the radio that she hurt that man. That’s the ancient way. I don’t think she meant to hurt him.” Cooper held Mallory close to him and said, “I’m scared to death. What if I hadn’t hit her? And it’s Eden! How could I do this to Eden? I never thought it would be like this.”

Mallory pulled away.

“How did you think it would be? Did you think Eden would just be happy being everyone else’s fairy godmother? Is this okay with you? That your sister takes out the occasional little old man who has the bad luck to see her, just because it’s the
ancient way
?”

“No, but Edensau should stay away from people!”

“Maybe she’s mad, Cooper. Maybe she’s lonely! She’s taking too many chances.”

“But that old man told what he saw,” Cooper went on. “And those stoner kids are going to tell too.”

“No they won’t. They’d have to explain what they were doing down there. Everybody knows what Rose Ridge means.”

“True. But she has to hide. The animal control . . .”

“I know, Cooper. The old man shot at her! He said he did, at the hospital. My mom was there. She treated the guy and his grandson. He shot at her with a gun. If he wasn’t so drunk he’d have hit her.”

“He did hit her,” Cooper said, leaning over Eden’s fallen form. Mallory clutched his arm. “But, look, she’s okay. The bullet barely creased her skin. Right there. That hide is tough.”

“But Eden’s hide isn’t! Will it show on her real skin?”

“I don’t know. Why do you keep blaming me? I love her as much as you do! She’s been scratched by branches, yes, and growled at by bears. But never hurt. She’s tough. She’s stayed out of sight and safe. I don’t know what’s come over her!” Cooper raked his hair back with both hands.

“James has.”

Cooper let his breath out in a rush. “Of course. That’s why.”

“Is something going to happen to us? Because we saw her?”

“I don’t think so,” said Cooper. “I’m under her protection. I assume you are too. And anyway, I’m not having particularly good luck tonight.”

“And my luck is generally bad.”

Cooper said, “This is a hell of a mess, Mallory.” In his dark shirt and jeans, he looked like part of the sky, part of the dark trees and suddenly starless sky. Star blanket. His name. Mallory couldn’t have seen Cooper if he hadn’t been standing so close. Suddenly, he took her hand. “I think about you all the time. Why do you have to be such a kid?” He kissed her again. Mallory, ready this time, leaned into him and kissed him too, reaching up to put her arms around his neck. Cooper pulled her close to him. She felt the buckle of his belt against her sternum. There would be a mark there.

She was glad.

“So, okay, this is why I had to drive you up here?” Drew Vaughn asked coldly. “So you could meet him?”

Burrs clung to the cuffs of Drew’s good pants, and he reached up to pull a branch from his hair. “I saw your light, Brynn. I thought you were in trouble.”

“I was. Those boys down there . . .”

“Right. Was he with them?”

“You know he wasn’t. This is Eden’s brother.”

“I know who it is,” Drew said. “I get it now. Thanks a lot, Brynn. Remind me to help you out again sometime real soon.”

Pulling away from Cooper, Mallory raised both hands in a gesture almost like a prayer. “Please don’t think that, Drew. I would never use you like . . .”

“Your mom and dad would go nuts if they knew you were going out to meet him, but it’s okay if good old Drewsky is there. They can trust me! What do you think that’s like?” Drew spat the words on the ground. “Hey, Cooper. You take her home. And don’t worry about Kim. Some psycho in a Buick picked her up. I think she broke one of her high heels, though.”

He turned his back and jogged away down the hill.

Mally turned back to Cooper. He was using a bough to sweep away the tracks and kicking around stones to remove the signs of a scuffle. He kneeled again next to Eden, placing his hand on the thick pelt, where a ruff of white bunched at the neck. “She’s breathing easily.”

“I’m not!” said Mallory. “Eden is my best friend! Drew Vaughn has known me all my life.”

“And he likes you, not just like a friend, and he saw us over there. What can I do about that? I like you not just like a friend too.”

“But he thinks I’m a loser and a user,” Mally said as Cooper picked up his bow. “I only wanted to warn Eden.”

“That’s the price you pay,” Cooper said.

“Easy for you to say if you don’t have to pay it.”

“I do,” Cooper said. “That’s my sister! This is my big sister on the ground. I shot her with the bow she helped me make when I was twelve and she was fourteen. How do you think I feel? How would you feel?”

“Horrible. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I know.”

“Do you have to go right home?” Cooper asked suddenly.

“I’m cold and dirty. And yeah.”

“Right home, right this minute?”

“Why?”

“This night is a nightmare. Only one good thing can come out of it so . . . I thought we’d sit for a moment and look at the stars. The truck is down there.”

“It’s cloudy now. There are no stars to see.”

“Oh, well,” Cooper said, and smiled—a smile weary but real.

“I’m almost fourteen.”

“I just turned sixteen. Two years and a couple of weeks between us. My grandmother was fourteen when she married my grandfather,” said Cooper. “But you don’t have to worry about anything, Mallory. I like you, but I would never hurt you or make anything difficult for you that way.”

“I know that,” Mally said. She took his hand.

“And I’ll get you home in a while. Honest Injun.”

“Don’t say stuff like that.”

“I’m just goofing.”

Cooper was as good as his word, but for the first time in her life, Mallory went home with “kissing chin.” No one but Merry noticed because it was almost gone by morning—except for the memory, both tart and sweet.

W
ithin a few weeks, Campbell’s pregnancy was obvious. And still, nobody had said anything definite about where a nursery would be—or anything else. It was becoming absurd, Meredith thought. Their mom had begun leaving the top buttons open on her jeans a few weeks before and was wearing Tim’s worn-out dress shirts at home.
If it’s up to her,
Merry thought,
she’ll tell us when she’s on the way to the hospital!

On the first morning of Christmas break, Coach was sick and there was no practice. Merry sat down beside Campbell in the kitchen. Campbell glanced up over the tops of her rimless reading glasses and smiled.

“Why are you staring?” she asked.

“Can you feel it yet?” Merry asked.

“I can, but you won’t be able to for another month or more,” Campbell said. “So why didn’t you just say something if you knew? All you do is stare.”

Unnoticed, Mallory slipped into the kitchen and began lacing up her running shoes. She hadn’t done her run in a few days, couldn’t sleep or eat, and thought she might be losing her mind. She barely noticed her mother and sister.

“I’m staring at you because I want to say something and I don’t want you to kill me,” said Meredith.

“Merry Heart, other than telling me that you’re pregnant too, there’s not much you could say that would make me go savage when I’m sitting here eating cinnamon toast.”