Tempestuous (17 page)

“Well, anyway,” I said, flustered. “That was mind-blowing. I’m pretty sure we all needed something like that tonight. It’s been … something.”

“Noooooo kidding.”

While Ariel helped Chad take down the drum set, I grabbed the case for the bass so Caleb and I could walk both guitars back to the music store.

“Is that too heavy for you?” he asked, as we headed upstairs.

“No, I got it. But thanks. Good thing you’re not the type of rocker who smashes the guitar onstage,” I said with a laugh. “You break it, you buy it.”

“I tried to be gentle. Thanks again. That was pretty cool.”

“I just had the idea. You’re the one with the actual talent.”

“Yeah, well, don’t sell yourself short.”

After returning the guitars no worse for wear, we were about to hop the down escalator back to the food court when Caleb instead grabbed my hand and steered me into the Got Games store.

“Why are we stopping here?” My heartbeat kicked into gear for some strange reason as he led me through the empty, darkened store to the register. “Don’t tell me you’re planning to check the weather forecast on your trusty Magic Eight Ball,” I said.

“Nah. It’s just a little detour. There’s something I wanted you to have.” He reached under the counter and retrieved a cellophane-wrapped flat rectangular box. “Here.”

“The
Avalanche X
game,” I said. “You had a copy?”

“Yeah. We keep one on hand, on the down-low, in case some V.I.P. comes in looking for it.”

“But I’m not a V.I.P.”

“Says who? I’ve been chained to you all night, and from what I’ve seen, you are … well,” he cleared his throat, “you’re clearly someone special. You acted like getting your hands on this game was important, and if you say it is, then I trust you.”

“Gosh. I don’t know what to say other than, thank you. It’s definitely going toward a good cause. I mean, I don’t want you to think it was just something I wanted for myself.”

“That’s pretty evident. I wouldn’t mistake you for a gamer. Besides, you may be infuriatingly stubborn and a born meddler, but I can tell your heart’s definitely in the right place.”

Before I could respond, we heard a shuffling sound coming from behind a display on the other side of the darkened store. I instantly remembered the thief, and Caleb must have been thinking the same thing. He put his finger to his lips and grabbed one of those video game baseball bats, which looked hollow and flimsy. Keeping me safely behind him, Caleb silently inched forward to where the sound of the noise had come from. He peered around the corner of the display while I waited with sweaty palms, knowing a one-handed swipe with a fake plastic baseball bat didn’t stand a chance against some nut job with a gun.

While I prepared myself to scream bloody murder and aim a swift kick at the felon’s family jewels, Caleb placed the bat on the floor, then glanced back and gestured for me to check it out. Huh? I inched forward. Curled up, sound asleep on the store’s threadbare carpet was none other than my glitter-bestrewn former flame.

“Brian!!!???” My shriek woke him with a frightened start.

“Wha—?!!! Miranda!” He rolled out of his fetal position and got to his feet, still groggy-eyed and confused.

“What are
you
doing here?”

“I guess I fell asleep. I wandered off to get away from all the drama.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I’m about as welcome in your food court as parents at prom.”

“So. I thought you were dictator down at your end of the mall?”

“Yeah, but they all revolted and came down this way. Meanwhile, Rachel and the girls want my head on a stake.”

“Ah yes, the downside of having multiple girlfriends.”

“They aren’t my girlfriends.”

“Harem, hootchie mamas … call them what you will. We talked to them earlier.” I gestured to Caleb. “They were steamed.”

“I don’t know what they told you,” Brian said, scratching the back of his neck, “but I made it pretty clear to all three of them where my head was at. They knew I wasn’t interested in a relationship. It was a friends-with-benefits sort of thing. I assumed they were all in the loop. I mean, that’s all you chicks do is gossip about stuff like that.”

“That’s an interesting take.”

“Why would I want to get into something heavy a month after you dumped me?” he said.

“Come again?”

“You broke my heart, Miranda!”

Had I been socked in the face with a frozen turkey, I couldn’t have been more stunned.

“What … the HELL … are you talking about? I took the fall for your asinine cheating scam! You LIED. You accused me of orchestrating it! Then you topped it all off by carrying on with my best friend, and you’ve been treating me like pond scum ever since!”

“Is that really what you think?” Brian said, looking aghast.

“It’s not what I think. It’s what actually happened.”

“I know it was wrong to have singled you out about the SATs, and believe me, it killed me to have to do it. But here’s the thing: You didn’t have anything to do with the cheating, so I knew you couldn’t actually get busted. At least not in a legal sense.”

“Oh, nice. As if that explains everything?”

“Look, I was certain there’d be no case against you, and I figured you wouldn’t get hurt. I mean, you’re Miranda Prospero, ‘the Teflon teen.’ When have you not been able to land butter-side up in the world?”

“Yeah, well, I was toast, all right.”

“I know, and I’m so sorry about that. I never figured the school board would come down so hard on you, but that’s nothing compared to what I would have been facing had I not ‘named names.’ I wanted to try to explain all that to you at the time,” he continued, “but as part of the deal they’d instructed me not to speak with you. That day of the meeting with our parents, I could tell from the look on your face that you’d never forgive me. You can’t even begin to fathom how that wrecked me.”

“But I….” I tried to jump in, to no avail.

“Crap, Miranda, I was in
love
with you. I still am.” The room got eerily quiet. Caleb had wisely chosen to remain silent as my conversation continued.

“What about Rachel? Britney? Whitney? Am I missing anyone?”

“No. I don’t know. I guess they’re the ‘cleanup’ crew. They saw how much I was hurting and they were pretty overt about wanting to help me through it—with no strings attached. I mean, hell, they all three have boyfriends in college! As far as I was concerned, I thought we were just having a little fun. Apparently, they saw it differently.”

“Apparently.”

“I guess maybe I just don’t understand chicks that way. But you weren’t just some casual thing for me. You’ve got to know that. I mean, I’d do anything to turn back the clock and have you back in my life.”

“But you’ve been so cruel to me! I don’t understand any of this!”

“It was just stupid pride. I’m a guy; that’s what we do when we’re hurt. We try to hurt back. But I didn’t mean any of it. What I said to your friend, the ‘manic pixie girl,’ was totally uncalled for, too. I need to apologize to her for that, I know. I just let Rachel and the girls egg me on. Tell me what I need to do, and I’ll make it up to you!”

He spoke all the words I’d been wanting to hear, and yet, as they filtered through my brain they felt, at once, both consoling and slippery. In the past month, he had shown me exactly the kind of man he was, but now here he was, changing his colors quicker than a chameleon in a Crayola factory. For weeks, I’d been wishing I could see him crawl through broken glass to make his way back to me, and to tell me this was all some giant mistake. Now, practically speaking, that’s basically what he was doing, and my thoughts were all slamming into one another trying to sort out a response.

Despite my best efforts at keeping my shit together, the dam broke. I started to cry. These last few weeks had been so exhaustively painful for me, and I felt like I was reliving it all. My heart literally felt pierced; a shooting pain radiated up into my tightened throat as I breathed in uncontrollable little shudders. I instinctively reached my left hand up to wipe away the tears, inadvertently dragging Caleb’s hand with it. Brian brushed my mangy bangs out of my eyes and tried to console me.

“Don’t be sad,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry I hurt you. Please let me try to fix it.” I avoided his gaze, staring instead at a stack of classic board games on a lower shelf. When you really thought about it, the world was really just one giant board game on which we were mere pawns, subject always to a roll of the dice, or so it seemed. I eyed the titles on the boxes:
Chutes and Ladders … Trouble
…
The Game of Life … Mousetrap
. There were always going to be winners and losers, and one thing I knew about the human existence is that it basically boiled down to a series of calculated moves. I wondered, at this moment, if I was about to make the right one.

I allowed myself to imagine what it would be like if I let Brian back into my life. My worries would presumably vanish in an instant. With his rich-as-sin background, he’d take care of my debt and, best of all, I would no longer be Eastern Prep’s resident pariah. A phoenix rising from the depths of the food court to become ruling snow bunny and shopaholic once again. Ignoring Caleb entirely, I glanced back up at Brian and eked out a small smile amid my sniffles.

“I’ve missed you so much,” I choked through my tears. “I’m still really confused, and we’re going to need a lot of time to rebuild and start over. But believe me when I say my life hasn’t been the same without you in it.”

Brian grabbed my face in both his hands and laid a small, tender kiss on my lips. I couldn’t bring myself to glance in Caleb’s direction, but we were in close enough proximity that I could hear the air escaping through his lips as if whispering to me his disappointment. I knew I was making the right decision, and yet I wanted so badly to offer him an explanation, to tell him why I needed to see things through with my ex. But not here. Not now. In time, hopefully I could reassure him that the Miranda he’d come to know and, well, at least
like
over the course of this night hadn’t changed. Had it?

“Talk about awkward,” Brian said, looking over at Caleb (at least one of us had the courage to). “Three is
most definitely
a crowd. What’s the story behind the handcuffs, anyway?”

“Stupid, really. Don’t ask.” I said. “We don’t have the key, obviously.”

“I’m going to go hit up the maintenance department and see if I can find something to break the lock or saw through those. I’ll meet you back at the food court.” He grabbed my free hand and squeezed it. “We can talk more freely then.”

Caleb didn’t say a word as he and I left Got Games and headed back toward the food court. I was speechless with embarrassment about the drama he’d witnessed with Brian and still couldn’t bring myself to make eye contact with him. The silence between us was agonizing, but I preferred it, frankly, to anything he might have to say to me. I knew what he must be thinking, and no matter how justified I felt in my own heart, I didn’t want to be one of “those girls” in his eyes. Though feeling uncharacteristically sheepish, I broke our silence when, out of my peripheral vision, I saw someone stumble out of the hallway that led from the janitorial staff’s locker room.

“Oh my god,” I said, stopping short. “It’s Mike!” Deathly pale, the missing Treasure Hunt employee lurched toward us like a Spanish galleon bucking its way through a storm. Caleb rushed forward, dragging me along with him. We reached Mike just in time to catch him as he lost consciousness.

“Hey, Mike! Buddy, are you okay?” Caleb said. Crouching on the floor next to him, he pushed aside a piece of frayed rope to take Mike’s pulse. A nasty gash on his forehead puckered with dried blood.

“He’s not—” My hands flew to my mouth.

Caleb shook his head and, snapping his fingers in front of Mike’s face, called out to him again. He blinked and opened his eyes. Groaning, he reached up to touch his forehead.

“Ow….” he winced.

“That looks pretty bad. What happened?”

“I was in the back of the store polishing some antique silver we’d just got in.” He tried to sit up, and we helped him scoot over so he could lean against the wall. “A dude wearing a ski mask came in through the back entrance brandishing a gun. I don’t know, I guess we scuffled. Next thing I knew, I woke up in the janitor’s locker room, duct tape over my mouth and tied to a chair. Finally managed to shred my way through the ropes with the corner of a desk … it took hours. I tried to call the cops, but the phone isn’t working in there.”

His brow furrowed in confusion, he looked back and forth between us. “What are you two still doing in the mall? It’s the middle of the night.”

“Just relax for a sec,” Caleb said. “We’ll catch you up on everything, but I want to make sure you’re okay first.”

“I’m fine, really. Just tell me what the hell’s going on,” he said, rubbing the raw marks on his wrist.

We sat down and filled him in on most of what had happened over the last few hours—the relevant stuff anyway.

“We should get him down to the food court,” Caleb said to me. “Chad can take a look at his forehead.”

“Quinn’s there, too,” I said. “She’s been worried sick about you.”

“Guys!” Appearing at the top of the escalator, Grady’s face gave way to alarm when he saw us.

“Don’t worry, he’s okay,” I said. “He had a run-in with the thief. Too bad he didn’t get a glimpse of the guy’s face.” Once he realized Mike wasn’t gravely injured, Grady excitedly referred to the incident as a “10-53,” and we gave him the digest version of Mike’s assault. I saw Seth materialize at the top of the escalator, and he dashed over when he saw us.

“And you can’t remember anything else about the guy who did this?” he said after we’d filled him in.

“No, dude. I completely blacked out after he clocked me.”

“This is why I’ve been asking you kids to quit wandering off,” Grady said. “Miranda, you and I have always had an understanding with one another, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to pull rank and insist that you return to the food court, ASAP. And stay there, this time.”

“We wouldn’t have found Mike if we hadn’t been up here,” I said.