Tommy Nightmare (Jenny Pox #2) (15 page)

The gray-eyed boy didn’t bother hiding his
scowl.

Pedro got out of the car and stepped between
the two of them.

“Esmeralda,” Pedro said. “Let’s go.”

Esmeralda hesitated, and Pedro noticed. He
looked again at the gray-eyed boy. Esmeralda knew the boy was her
own age, or younger, so Pedro had to be five or six years older
than him. Pedro was shorter, but much bulkier.

“Who are you?” Pedro took a step toward
him.

“I’m Tommy,” the boy said.

“Tommy. That’s cute, man. Maybe when you grow
up, they’ll call you Tom. Or Thomas, no?”

“I hate Thomas,” Tommy said.

“Okay, Tommy,” Pedro said. “
My
name is
Pedro Ortega Hernandez. And I want to know why the hell you’re
talking to my girlfriend.”

“Pedro,” Esmeralda said. “It was nothing.
Let’s go.”

“I was not talking to you, Esmeralda. You get
in the car.” Pedro glared up at Tommy. “You. Why are you talking to
her at her job? Why you trying to grab her hand?”

“I wanted to,” Tommy said. He didn’t look
very scared by Pedro, but he had never seen Pedro angry.

“Well, I don’t want you to.” Pedro thumped
Tommy in the chest. “I see you near her again, you’ll have to hire
old Mr. Garcia to bury you. You understand?”

“Okay.” Tommy held up his hands defensively,
but he was smirking. “Take her on home.”

“I’ll take her where the fuck I want to take
her.”

“It’s been nice meeting you, Pedro,” Tommy
said.

Pedro glared up at him a moment longer, then
stalked back to his car. “Get in,” he said to Esmeralda.

Esmeralda looked at Tommy again, and he just
folded his arms and winked at her.

“Get in the fucking car!” Pedro yelled.

Tommy didn’t say anything, so Esmeralda got
in the fucking car.

Pedro drove in silence for a couple of
miles.

As they passed the grocery store near her
neighborhood, Esmeralda said, “I need to stop by
la tienda
for a couple things—”

“Who was he?” Pedro snapped.

“He was nobody.”

“It’s so good to know,” he said, “While I’m
building houses for my uncle, and studying law at night, and fixing
your mother’s plumbing because her landlord is lazy—it’s so good to
know you’re out there making new friends.”

“He’s just someone I knew when I was a
kid.”

“First he’s nobody, then he’s an old
friend?”

“It’s not like that—”

“Then tell me what it’s like.”

“You missed the grocery store.”

“You can walk.” Pedro lit a Camel as he
turned into Esmeralda’s apartment complex. “Or use your mother’s
car.”

“I wish you wouldn’t smoke so much.”

“Good. Because I was hoping to take a little
more shit from you today.” Pedro stopped in front of her apartment,
but he left the engine running and didn’t park. “Maybe tomorrow
your friend with the motorcycle can take you home from work.”

“Pedro, stop it!” She kicked open the car
door.

He took her arm and pulled her close.

“Let me go!” she said.

“I just don’t like to see you with some other
guy,” he said. “I love you, Esmeralda.”

“And I love you. Don’t be so jealous.”

“Look in my eyes and tell me he is nothing to
you.”

Esmeralda looked Pedro in the eyes. “He is
nothing,” she said, but her eyes blinked involuntarily when she
said “nothing.”

He frowned at her. “I have to get to class.
I’ll call you later.”

Esmeralda stepped into the two-room apartment
she shared with her mother. Immediately the sound of a Telemundo
soap opera, weeping confessions backed by sappy music, jangled her
ears. Her mother sat on the couch, watching the TV.

“
Hola, Mamà,
” Esmeralda said.

“You should not upset Pedro like that,” her
mother said in Spanish.

“Like what?”

“I was watching you through the window, and
he did not look happy. What did you do?”

“You spy on me and you take his side,”
Esmeralda said.

“What were you fighting about?”

“It was nothing. He is jealous of
everything.”

“You should keep him happy,” Esmeralda’s
mother said. “That boy is going to be very successful one day.”

“A very successful asshole,” Esmeralda
muttered in English as she walked into her room.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing!” Esmeralda closed her door. Then
she locked it, which she rarely did. She even made sure the blinds
were down, as if Pedro would be outside her room, staring at her.
Sometimes she felt like he was. She’d had enough of her mother
always taking Pedro’s side, too. Her mother wasn’t exactly a master
in the art of picking good men, anyway.

Esmeralda opened her closet door, stood on
her tiptoes, and felt around on the top shelf. She brought down a
Reebok shoe box, which she had long ago decorated with glue,
glitter, butterfly stickers, and markers. Much of the glitter had
fallen off over the years, and the butterflies were curling off the
cardboard.

She sat down on her bed and took off the box
lid.

The shoe box held a few pictures from her
childhood, a letter from her grandmother in Matehuala, one of
Esmeralda’s baby teeth, some Valentines she had received in middle
school. Esmeralda dug through these to the bottom of the box.

She took out the gold coin. It was engraved
with an Indian chief’s head, and the word “Liberty,” on the front,
and a bald eagle on the back. The coin was dated 1908. She had
never taken it to a coin shop to check its value, for fear her
mother would somehow find out and ask questions.

Esmeralda had also never turned over the
thousand dollars to her mother.

When Tommy suggested she hide the money, it
was the first inkling Esmeralda had that she could hide anything
from her mother, even for a minute. The farmer woman who had called
them to the middle of nowhere, in Oklahoma, had been livid when she
opened the dead man’s trunk and found nothing. Esmeralda’s mother
had screamed at her, but Esmeralda had kept the secret.

As they drove home, Esmeralda wasn’t sure how
to tell her mother what happened. The longer they drove, the more
possible it seemed that Esmeralda could keep the secret
forever.

The real secret, though, wasn’t about the
stolen money.

“What is wrong with you?” her mother had
screamed as they drove back to Texas. “Why did you lie?”

“I can’t do it anymore,” Esmeralda had
whispered.

“Can’t do it? Can’t do what?”

“I can’t talk to the dead anymore,” Esmeralda
had said. “I don’t remember how.”

“Remember? What is to remember? You have
always done this.”

“Yes,” Esmeralda said. “But maybe I am too
old now.” At the age of thirteen, Esmeralda was sick of her mother
dragging her around like a freakshow attraction, charging people
money to hear from their dead relatives. The dead didn’t bother
Esmeralda, but the living did—people greedy to find money, jealous
wives wanting to know whether their husbands had cheated on them or
not, and too often, there were children crying and upset as they
learned the pain of losing someone close.

Esmeralda didn’t like it. And if she could
get away with lying about money, maybe she could get away with
more.

And she had. Her mother hadn’t dragged her
out to read the dead again. Instead, her mother had finally gone
back to her housekeeping job at the hotel and stopped living off
her daughter’s strange gift.

As far as Esmeralda’s mother knew, Esmeralda
hadn’t had the special touch in nine years.

Esmeralda rubbed the gold coin. The paper
dollars had trickled away over the years, on movies and candy and
shoes, but she kept this because it reminded her of him. His unreal
gray eyes, the power in his hands and lips. He had frightened her
deeply…but she had liked it, and relished the memory again and
again.

Until today, she had almost forgotten he was
a real person, and not a dream or a fantasy.

He had found her, after all these years.
Esmeralda didn’t know what it meant, but she felt scared and
exhilarated. She needed to see him again.

She closed her hand around the gold coin and
held it tight.

When Fallen Oak High School re-opened at the
beginning of May, Jenny drove herself there for the first time
ever. She’d always ridden the bus, until the past few months when
Seth had started picking her up. The school issued a limited number
of the jealously guarded student parking passes, and those were
earmarked for certain juniors and seniors—student council, varsity
football players, people like that.

Jenny had killed a lot of those people,
though, so there was probably room for parking.

She drove to school, listening to Willie
Nelson and Merle Haggard sing “Pancho and Lefty” on the
country-gold radio station. Her dad had been distant for days now,
ever since her confession. Jenny knew he didn’t see her the same.
It was hard to adjust to your only child being a mass murderer, she
thought. And it looked like she was going to get away with it,
which, in a weird way, only made things worse.

Not that Jenny really believed she would get
away with murder. People were investigating. They’d taken the
bodies, and they’d taken all kinds of medical samples from Jenny.
Someone was going to put it together.

She now understood the meaning of the phrase
“living on borrowed time.”

School was strange and quiet. Several
teachers were dead, and the state had brought in some befuddled
substitutes. People trudged through the hallways, saying very
little to each other.

They did whisper, though, when Jenny walked
in the front door of the school. They whispered a lot, about how
she was supposed to be dead, everyone had seen her drown.

As usual, nobody talked to her directly. She
sensed something different, though. Where there had once been cold
dismissal, if not outright loathing, the feeling she got from
people now was one of fear. Ashleigh, and even Dr. Goodling, had
accused her of witchcraft, and now a bunch of people were dead with
no explanation. Including all of Jenny’s enemies.

Notes and photographs were taped all over
Ashleigh Goodling’s locker, and there was a heap of flowers and a
couple of little teddy bears in front of it. People had even left
packs of Twix and unopened cans of Cherry Coke—Ashleigh’s favorite
morning vending-machine treats—at the foot of her locker, like an
offering to a pagan god.

In Jenny’s homeroom, there were a lot of
empty desks. Several of the girls were pregnant, and they gave
Jenny the strongest looks of fear or revulsion. Alison Newton,
Brenda Purcell, and Ronella Jones, all former cheerleaders now
quite visibly pregnant, whispered to each other in the front row,
looking back over their shoulders at Jenny.

Jenny sat in the back corner of the back
row.

Darcy Metcalf arrived, and her pregnancy was
really starting to show. She sat in the back row, too, at the
opposite end from Jenny, away from everybody. Abject misery
radiated from Darcy’s face and slumped posture. Jenny knew the
feeling.

Assistant Principal Varney—now acting
principal, since Ashleigh had gotten Principal Harris
suspended—gave the morning announcements over the intercom.

“First,” her deep bass voice crackled over
the boxy intercom, “Let us have a moment of silence for the
teachers and students lost in the tragic accident.”

Jenny’s substitute homeroom teacher, an
elderly man with a bulky hearing aid, closed his wrinkled eyes
solemnly.

The pregnant girls, and a few other kids,
stared at Jenny. Jenny lowered her head, and her eyes, but she
didn’t close her eyes all the way. She had a feeling that people
might pounce on her if she gave them a chance.

“All students are invited to visit with our
guidance counselor, Mrs. Gerbler, for grief counseling.” Assistant
Principal Varney said over the intercom. “She will be available in
the main office all week, along with Mr. Ellerton, a grief
specialist sent by the State Department of Education. Now, despite
the tragedy, we must finish out the school year. Contrary to rumor,
final exams will be held.” This brought groans from all over the
school. “Other announcements will follow as plans become
finalized.”

Jenny wondered what that meant.

“Please be respectful of the new substitute
teachers around the school,” Mrs. Varney continued. “They’re here
to help us through these difficult times. Major extracurricular
activities are suspended until further notice. Lunch today will be
Salisbury steak, tater tots and okra medley. Now rise for the
Pledge of Allegiance.”

Jenny rose with everyone else and quietly
pledged allegiance to the rectangle of cloth hanging over the
chalkboard, and to the republic for which it stood.

The school remained quiet as a funeral parlor
all morning. At lunch, Jenny sat with Seth in their usual lunch
place on dry days, under the shade of one of the big, gnarled old
oak trees that were everywhere in town. This was one of three big
oaks on the narrow lawn between the school and the student parking
lot. The roots were wide enough to use as benches and tables, if
you didn’t mind sitting close to the ground.

Jenny had brought a peanut butter and jelly,
plus an empty butter container full of carrots. She eyeballed
Seth’s lunch with a little disgust. He’d not only bought the
mystery brown rectangle of Salisbury steak, he’d actually paid
extra for a double order.

“Well, all my friends are gone,” Seth said.
“But they did all gang up and murder me. True friends don’t really
do that.”

“They couldn’t help it,” Jenny said. “They
were under Ashleigh’s spell.”

“Could she really keep that many people under
control at once?” Seth said. “She got them going, but it’s not like
they tried real hard to stop themselves. I mean, they kept coming
at you, right?”