Over Her Head (6 page)

Laurie thought of poor Tanya, working fourteen-hour days to keep their heads above water, and her daughter making up a life
that sounded exciting and cool so she could survive the first year of high school.

She wondered if Randi had known it wasn’t working, that the other kids had seen right through her and despised her for it.

“So when was the last time you saw Randi?” Gil asked.

Anna raised her eyebrows and turned down the corners of her mouth in an expression that said, Who knows? “I don’t remember.
We had phys ed on Tuesday, so she was there, probably.”

“What about Wednesday? Did you see her that day?”

Anna shrugged and shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t keep tabs on people.”

“And you’re not really friends, so you wouldn’t pay attention,” Laurie put in.

“Yeah.”

“So what did you do Wednesday night?” Nick asked.

The night Randi had been killed.
Wait a minute.
“We had supper, Anna did her homework, we watched TV, and we went to bed,” Laurie said. “What are you—”

“Lor,” Colin said in a warning tone.

“Please let Anna answer the question, Mrs. Hale,” Gil said. His tone was polite, but Laurie bristled anyway.

“It’s a ridiculous question! Where do you think she was?” Laurie lifted her arms to encompass the room where they sat, and
by extension, their home.

“Lor,” Colin said again, a little louder this time.

“What?” she snapped. Couldn’t he see what they were implying?

“Calm down, Laurie,” Nick said. “We’re trying to establish a time line here. And trying to figure out where everyone was Wednesday
night.”

“Everyone who? Who all are you talking to?”

“At this point it seems like everyone in the high school,” Gil said, obviously trying to lighten the mood.

“But why?”

“A clerk at the Stop-N-Go by the bridge says there was a big gang of teenagers hanging around there at about ten thirty that
night. It’s significant that Randi’s body turned up the next morning. We’re trying to establish whether the two events are
connected.”

“Whether they are or not, it has nothing to do with Anna.” Laurie knew she sounded like an angry bear defending her cub. Nick
should have known better than to even bother coming here. They were a good family. They always tried to do the right thing,
to pitch in and help when there was a need, to be good examples in the community. Why, Colin hadn’t even had a traffic ticket
in twenty years. And as far as Anna and Tim went, you couldn’t find better kids. They were loyal, got good grades, had lots
of friends.

Why would he think he needed to bother interviewing his own cousin?

“Probably not,” Nick said gently, “but Anna, you still need to confirm for us about that night.”

“Mom already told you,” Anna said, glancing at her mother and back at Nick. Her blue eyes were huge, and she was pale. “I
was right here. We watched
The Planet’s Funniest Animals
and then I went to bed.”

“And you can corroborate that?” Nick looked from Laurie to Colin.

Laurie sucked in a breath. “Of course I can. For heaven’s sake, Nick, you almost sound like you doubt her word.” She waited
for him to laugh and say of course he didn’t, but he was writing in his notebook and didn’t look up.

“So. One down, two hundred to go. Do you guys want a hot chocolate or coffee?” She felt compelled to hint that they were on
the cops’ side. The good guys. They were family, too. This was just a formality so it wouldn’t look as though Nick was playing
favorites as he went around town doing his interviews.

Nick and Gil got to their feet. “No thanks, Mrs. Hale,” Gil said. “We just had about a gallon of coffee at the station, and
we have a pretty long list of kids to talk to yet tonight.”

Colin saw them to the door and closed it behind them. Anna jumped to her feet.

“Hang on, sweetie.” He put an arm around her shoulders and guided her back to the couch. “I want to make sure you’re okay.”

“Sure, I’m okay.” She wriggled out from under his arm, scooted over into the corner of the couch, and grabbed one of the matching
pillows. She hugged it to her chest the way she did when they watched
The Princess Diaries
. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“It’s not every day the cops come by asking where you were on the night of a crime,” Laurie said in a voice that wobbled a
little, as if she were about to either giggle or weep with relief now that it was over. “Fortunately, it was just a fact-finding
mission. Not . . . anything else.”

“I didn’t do anything. I don’t
know
anything.”

“I know, honey. But it’s Nick’s job to make sure they cover everything—especially if they think it might be murder.”

“Who’s being murdered? What did I miss?” Tim slid down the banister and landed in the foyer with a thump. “Was that Nick?”

“Timothy Lucas Hale, how many times have I told you not to do that?”

“I was in a hurry, Mom. How come you didn’t call me? Sometimes he lets me turn the siren on in the cop car.”

“He didn’t want to see you, loser.”

“Anna, don’t call your brother that.”

“I s’pose he wanted to see
you
, Anna Banana Breath. Did Brendan O’Day or Kyle Edgar finally call the cops on you for stalking them?”

Laurie opened her mouth to lay down the law, but before she could say a word, Anna leaped to her feet. She swung the couch
cushion at Tim with killing force and knocked him to his knees on the carpet.

“Ow! Mom!”

“Anna!”

Their daughter ignored their simultaneous exclamations, stormed up the stairs, and slammed herself into her room.

Laurie turned to Colin, her eyes wide with disbelief. “My turn to talk to her.” Teenage irritability was one thing, but they
weren’t a family of hitters. Anna needed to get that clear and apologize to her brother.

She marched upstairs and didn’t wait for a response to her knock. The soft glow of the lamp on the bedside table fell across
the carpet and illuminated Anna as she lay on the bed with her back to the door, sketching furiously on a pad.

“Anna.”

“I’m not going to apologize.” The words were sullen, and she didn’t even turn to speak over her shoulder.

Laurie let it pass. She also swallowed the urge to rain down her fear and anger on her daughter’s head, and spoke quietly
instead. “I’m worried about you. Why would you hit your brother like that? You’re not four years old anymore.”

“He needs it.”

“Nobody needs to be knocked off their feet with a couch cushion.” She sat on the edge of the mattress and began to rub soothing
circles on Anna’s back. The flannel shirt was fuzzy and warm, her daughter’s shoulder blades sharp and defensive under her
palm. “Want to talk about what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong.” On the pad of drawing paper, a fairylike creature with huge eyes, a tiny waist, and gossamer wings was
taking shape. Another of Anna’s manga people.

“I think there is. We all go through stuff when we’re teen-agers. School stuff, family stuff. It makes it better to talk about
it. Get some perspective, you know?”

“I have lots of perspective.”

In the soft light, Laurie made a face, but didn’t let the wryness reach her tone. “I know. I’m proud of you for the way you
usually handle things. But this thing with Randi Peizer . . . it might be more than you can handle.”

“What thing?” Anna blacked in the pupils of the fairy’s eyes with fierce concentration.

“Her death, sweetie. Losing a classmate, even one you didn’t know very well, can be hard. People are supposed to die when
they’re old, not when they’re fourteen and haven’t even started to live yet.”

Silence, except for the swoop of the pen. Laurie kept up the slow rhythm of her palm. As a baby, Anna had loved to have her
back rubbed.

“When I was a teenager,” she began in a once-upon-a-time tone, “I had a best friend named Sharon. We had the same classes,
did ballet together, got part-time jobs delivering papers together. Then she got sick.”

“What with?”

“Just an infection. A simple staph infection, like when Tim had strep throat last winter. But Sharon’s system didn’t handle
it well, and she was staying with relatives because her parents had split up. They didn’t catch it in time with antibiotics,
and Sharon died.”

“Your best friend?” Anna abandoned the pen in mid-stroke, turned over, and looked into her mother’s face, her brow wrinkling
with distress. “She died? Really?”

Laurie nodded. “The rest of that school year I had to do everything alone. No partner for biology lab. No one to walk to the
ballet studio with. No one to deliver papers with. We had done everything together, you see, which meant that practically
every minute of the day, I missed her.”

“Wow.”

“It was like there was this big space beside me all the time where she used to be. And even after she’d been gone a long time,
the space didn’t go away. It just traveled around with me, reminding me of her.”

“What did you do?”

“I went to church, went to school, hung out with the cousins and my youth group. That space beside me began to shrink after
a while, until finally it was small enough for me to put it in my heart and tuck it away for good.”

“You still miss her?”

Laurie nodded. “As you guys would say, we were tight.”

Anna’s eyes clouded. “But I wasn’t tight with Randi. I hardly knew who she was.”

“I know. But her empty space will still be felt at school, won’t it? Traveling around from class to class?”

“But nobody’s going to put her in their heart. She didn’t have any friends.”

“It would be pretty sad to have only one person in the world—like her mom—left to remember her, wouldn’t it? It would be nice
if there was a little place in your heart for her, too.”

“Maybe,” Anna conceded and picked up the pen.

“So if you can do that, maybe you can say sorry to your brother. Because I know he has a big place in your heart, no matter
how much you guys complain and argue with each other.”

Anna glanced over her shoulder. “You’re grasping now, Mom.”

Laurie leaned over and kissed her. “You’d miss him if he was gone.”

“Yeah, like zits.”

If her sense of humor was reestablishing itself, maybe it was time to go a little deeper. “Getting back to what I said about
Sharon, you see that it’s okay to grieve, and okay to move on as well, don’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“Sometimes our emotions can scare us, maybe make us feel as if we can’t handle them. Then we lie awake at night thinking all
kinds of things that maybe aren’t even real. Are you struggling with that?”

“No.” Anna turned a page and began a fresh drawing. “I was up late studying, that’s all. Math is really hard this year.”

“So things at school are all right, then. You’ve got lots of friends, right?” The pen faltered for a split second, and Anna
turned the page again and started over. “Anna? Is everything okay with you and your girlfriends?”

“Sure.”

“Then how come you just messed up that drawing?”

With a sigh, Anna put the pen down and rolled over. “Because I can’t concentrate with you hovering over me.”

“We were having a talk.”

“You were talking, you mean. You’re always talking. You hardly ever give me a chance to say anything.”

Laurie sat back and stared at her. What had she just spent the last ten minutes doing, if it wasn’t encouraging her to talk?
“I’m giving you the chance now, sweetie. I honestly want to know how it’s going at school. About your friends. How you’re
feeling about Randi. All of it.”

“Why? Why now, all of a sudden?”

“Because you’re not sleeping, that’s why, and you whacked your brother with a pillow, and Nick was here on official business.
These things are not normal. That’s why I’m concerned.”

Anna’s eyes closed briefly, as if she were marshaling her resources. When she opened them again, Laurie realized her little
girl wasn’t so little anymore. There was a reticence, an adult sense of reserve seeping into her gaze that Laurie hadn’t seen
before. The gaze of a young woman who wasn’t going to spill everything to her mother the way a child would, with complete
confidence that Mommy would know how to solve any problem she brought to her.

“Everything’s fine at school, Mom. Math is kind of a pain, but I’ll sweat it out. My friends are cool. You know them. Kelci,
Michelle, Jaimi.”

“Are they the popular girls?”

Anna pulled her chin in and frowned. “Popular? What does that have to do with anything?”

“Well, you know.” Laurie shrugged. “We all want to have lots of friends.”

“Mom,” Anna sighed, “just because you were homecoming queen in nineteen eighty-whatever, doesn’t mean I want to be like that.”

“What’s wrong with being homecoming queen? It was fun. And you might not care now, but when you’re seventeen I bet you will.”

“I doubt it. I don’t care about being popular. Popular girls are—” She stopped.

“What? They’re what?” Anna shrugged and went back to her drawing. Laurie sensed that she’d been on the edge of saying something
important. “Anna?”

“They’re not who I want to be.”

How could any normal girl not want to be popular and well-liked and join all kinds of clubs and activities? High school had
been the most fun years of Laurie’s life. She couldn’t imagine a young girl having that kind of opportunity and turning it
down. But then, as Anna had pointed out, she was not Laurie, and never had been.

“What do you want to be? How can I help?”

“That’s just the thing, Mom. You can’t help. If you do, you’ll just take over and make me do stuff I don’t want to do.”

Laurie blinked at the sudden needle of pain that pricked her heart. “When did I ever do that?”

“You always do it. You pushed me to be in the choir at church even though I can’t really sing. You talked me into being a
counselor last year at Camp Victory when all I wanted to do was go swimming and canoeing and stuff.”

“Being a counselor is a great way to learn leadership, Anna. You aren’t going to do that falling out of a canoe.”