Vengeance (16 page)

There was a list, and we were supposed to meet up tomorrow in the lobby with a specified teacher. I was still mostly undecided. Would probably go wherever Kevin ended up going.

Delaney kicked at the grass on the ground. Looked at the streetlight overhead, like she was buying time.

“I’m not gonna stalk you or anything,” I said.

“That’s a given.”

And now I was getting irritated. I was making an effort and she wouldn’t even go along with it. “It’s not really a trick question,” I said.

“I’m not going to any of them,” she said.

Not what I was expecting.

“You change your mind about Boston?” Because of me? I wanted it to be because of me.

“No. I just have other plans.”

Other plans. “Because …”

“Because I have an appointment with this guy.” She unfolded and refolded her legs. “This guy doing his post-grad work. He’s doing research. About, you know …”

No, I didn’t know. And then I understood. “Brains?”

“More like … pheromones. But related to brains. So, yeah.”

That’s what she’d told my dad. She’d said it was like pheromones. I wondered if she’d been studying up on it for a while. But she’d never said anything to me.

“I don’t understand … why you need to talk to this guy.” When what I meant was, I don’t understand why you need to tell this guy about you. It felt private. Fragile.

“Because I don’t understand, don’t you get it?” I thought of her notebook. The numbers, meaning nothing. “Sometimes, everything makes sense: somebody is sick and they are going to die. But sometimes, I can’t tell. Like with Maya’s mom …”

My stomach turned. Her, still alive. My dad, gone. “Because she’s still alive?”

“No, because I can’t feel anything. I used to get pulled right there. And I saw her once, sitting with Maya out by the lake, in a wheelchair. And I went back home, because I remember thinking … I remember thinking they wouldn’t have a lot of these moments left.” I wondered if she knew what she was saying. “But now when I go by her house to pick her up … there’s nothing. I feel nothing. I thought maybe it was fading. I asked Maya if her mom was better, because I hadn’t seen her, I kept asking, but she said everything was the same. So I thought maybe
I
was getting better … and then …”

And then my dad.

“I don’t understand,” she whispered.

“And you think some stranger is going to help you understand?”

“He’s not a stranger, exactly. I’ve been talking to him,” she said. “And now I have an appointment.”

“You’ve already told him?”

“No. Not really. His study is on the idea that humans have the ability to sense pheromones, that our bodies can involuntarily respond to signals that typically only other animals respond to. But that it’s gone latent or something. So I sent him an e-mail … told him I did. I said I’d had a brain injury. I said I had changed. He called and asked me to come. I told him I already had plans to be here.”

This sounded like the equivalent of online dating, like she was meeting some stranger at a bar and had to cross her
fingers he wasn’t there for some other reason. I knew she was smarter than that, had probably done her homework, but it made me feel out of control. It made me feel like
she
was out of control.

Everything was out of control. Nothing like it had been planned. Not our plans. Not mine.

Her phone beeped, and she frowned at it, then silenced it.

She stretched her legs out in the grass in front of her. “Also,” she said, “I have no clue what I want to go to college for anyway.” Which was the most un-Delaney-like thing to say.

I shrugged. “You can do what ever you want.” What ever she chose to do, she’d be great at it. Nothing slowed her down. Not a coma. Not Troy. Not me.

“No, I mean, I don’t know what I’m
supposed
to do.”

“Well, from what I’ve learned from the majority of movies set in college, apparently we’re supposed to be generally irresponsible and directionless. I, for one, am really looking forward to it.”

She rolled her eyes at me, trying not to smile.

“You’re thinking too hard,” I said. “Do what you want.”

“There’s got to be a purpose, right?” she asked. “Because otherwise I’m just some tragic character from Greek literature.”

“Okay, try not to freak out,” I said, “but I actually know who you’re talking about. That chick who could see the future, but nobody believed her, so she couldn’t stop it.”

She smiled. “Cassandra.”

We were both sitting in the grass with our knees bent,
facing the river. But she was looking at me, and I was looking at her. And it was just us in this moment, with no history.

This would be the part where I moved closer, put my arm around her. “I miss him, too,” she said.

And instead of moving closer, my head was between my knees and everything about being here, about living here, felt wrong. Like maybe I was leaving him behind.

“When in July?” I asked.

I just said it. No premeditation. Her whole body went stiff, but I had to know. It mattered.

“I’m not really in the mood to get yelled at,” she said.

“One question,” I said. Because there was only one that mattered to me right then. She stared at me, the air between us charged. “July Fourth. … Did you know?”

“No,” she said. I felt the biggest sense of relief. Something uncoiling inside of me. “It was the next day.”

The next day I had seen her at work, and she’d hugged me tight and buried her face in my shoulder, not letting go until our boss cleared her throat as she passed. I’d smiled at her. Kissed her. Thinking she’d meant something else. But everything she’d done that day, and in the month after, meant something else.

I could hear someone kayaking close to shore, but I couldn’t see it in the dark. Just heard the dip of an oar, the sound of the boat skimming the water, and then another dip.

Listen
.

“It freezes over,” she said. Her eyes were wide when she looked at me. “I didn’t know rivers could freeze, but they can. If they’re slow.”

The wind blew in off the water, moving her hair. Ever since Delaney fell through the ice, I felt like something was chasing me, right up against my back. It still was.
Move faster
, it whispered.
I’m coming
.

Even here.

I edged back from the water, but it didn’t feel far enough. “We missed room check,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure if that was true. I needed her away from the water. I needed her
always
away from the water.

“I know,” she said, squinting at the dark water.

“You know?”

She pointed to her phone, then stood up and brushed her pants off.

“You set an alarm for room check?”

She put a hand on her hip, just like she’d done the day my dad died, standing knee-deep in Falcon Lake. “Of course I set an alarm for room check.”

And she knowingly missed room check.

I rubbed my hand over my face so she wouldn’t see me smiling. And when she reached a hand down to help me up, I took it.

We walked back slowly, sharing the same space, in silence.

We ran into our advisor in the lobby, holding a clipboard. Apparently we weren’t the only ones to miss room check. She didn’t even look concerned. Delaney was starting to apologize, but she just waved us past. “Go,” she said as she made a mark next to our names.

We took the elevator up together, too. She got off on the
fifth floor. She didn’t ask me to stay. I didn’t offer to. “Good night,” she said as the doors closed behind her.

Kevin was in the seating area on our floor with a few other seniors. Everyone knew that, after check-in, we pretty much had free reign anyway. As long as you didn’t make a scene. The waivers we signed said we had to check in to our rooms by nine; it didn’t specify what we had to do after that. Justin’s brothers said as long as you stayed in the hotel and didn’t do anything illegal, you were in the clear. It was a big hotel.

Kevin jerked his head to the side, motioning for me to walk with him. “You are not going to believe this,” he said, his mouth splitting into a wide grin. “We’ve been evicted.”

“By who?”

“Justin.”

“Bullshit,” I said, walking toward our room.

“And Janna,” he added.

I stopped walking. “No.”

“I wish I was lying,” he said, but he was still smiling for all he was worth. “Oh, trust me, I wish I was lying. I was in the room for check-in, which you missed, FYI, and then afterward, I went down to the bar to see if I could get served. Which you can’t, FYI. And also, apparently, that’s where the teachers hang out. Funny.”

“And?”

“Right. And I come back up and someone is
in my bed
except it’s
two people in my bed
and Justin’s all, ‘Shit, I thought
you were out for the night.’ And I’m all, ‘How the hell did you get in here? And who the hell is that?’ Justin was like, ‘I took the key from Decker’s wallet,’ so you know, you might want to keep a closer eye on your shit. But anyway, she tried to hide, but it was totally her.”

“Are you sure?” I asked. I had a hard time picturing Janna with Justin. Then again, it’s not like I was paying all that much attention.

“The question you should be asking is, where do we sleep?”

We ended up knocking on the door of Justin and Parker’s room a little after midnight. Parker looked somewhat confused, but he always looked like that, so it’s hard to say if he was really thinking anything at all. Kevin stole Justin’s bed, and also dumped Justin’s shit out all over the bathroom, just because kicking us out was kind of a dick move.

I had to sleep on the freaking floor. Which seemed about right. I hadn’t had a bed in over a month.

Screw you, universe
.

Justin barged into our room—his room—before six. He saw me on the floor and said, “Ha.” And something about that, about him sounding just like I pictured the universe laughing at me, filled me with anger. Or maybe it was the fact that, when I signed up for this trip, I pictured sneaking into Delaney’s room. Not sleeping on some random floor. Alone.

I stood up and ran at him, even though I was half-asleep. I pushed him back against the wall. I’d guess we’d usually match up pretty fairly in a fight, but I had surprise on my side. And rage. I drew blood before Kevin pulled me off. Parker was sitting up in his bed, his hair like something out of an eighties horror flick, looking totally disoriented.

“Gah,” Justin said, bent over against the wall, looking at the blood in his hands. “I have an interview, you asshole.”

“Hope you slept well,” I said.

I pushed past him out into the hall, the light too bright. Kevin caught up with me before we reached our room, which was good since I didn’t actually have a key. He put his hand on my shoulder. Then patted the back of my neck. Looked at his bed, decided against it, and took a shower.

When his shower turned off, I could still hear water. Rain, like Delaney had warned me. I wondered where she’d be today. If there was any point to me going on any of these tours, anyway. I had no clue what I wanted to do here. I was here because I was following a girl. Her.

I looked at the clock, at the door, at the schedule.

I was still following her.

Chapter 10

Ten. That’s what she’d said on the phone. Ten. Not ten at night. Ten in the morning. She’d probably leave around nine. No, this was Delaney. Eight thirty. I checked the clock and started getting ready. I was outside her door by 8:29.

She opened the door at 8:34, an umbrella in her hand, and did a double take when she saw me. “I forgot to pack an umbrella,” I said.

She smiled, then stopped. Raised her hand to my mouth, still stinging from Justin’s fist. She put her hand on my lip. “What happened?” Then remembered she wasn’t supposed to touch me, definitely not my mouth, and pulled her hand back like I was an animal ready to bite.

I ran my tongue along my bottom lip, which was swollen and cut but wasn’t bleeding anymore. “Fight. Not even. Skirmish.”

She frowned at me, and I pointed to the bathroom door,
where I heard the shower going. “You know where Janna was last night?”

“I have no idea where she was last night.”

“In my room,” I said, and Delaney turned this horrible color, like she was going to be sick. She looked like she did when she heard Kevin talking about me and Tara.

It took until May for her to finally ask me about Tara. Not so much ask as assume. We’d been hanging out with Kevin, who was talking about Tara—about him and Tara specifically—and he’d turned to me and said, “Well,
you
know,” without even caring that Delaney was right there. Like I said, he could be a real ass.

And Delaney looked like she always did right before she got sick.

“Uh, no, I don’t,” I’d said.

And Kevin looked at Delaney and said, “Oops.”

She didn’t say anything. Not until we were back in the car. “Okay, about that,” I said.

“Don’t,” she said, and she put her hands over her ears like she did when she was ten. “I hate it, okay? I hate it. I don’t want to hear it. And I don’t want to … picture it.”

My history with Tara was something I wished I could erase, but I couldn’t. But I thought of my memory of Delaney and Carson on my couch, and I understood. I couldn’t stomach thinking about it. So I didn’t.

“It makes me physically sick. Like, I want to throw up. I hate that she knows you like
that
,” she said, with her head against the window. It took me a second to realize what she meant.

“Oh,” I said. “
Oh
. No. Uh-uh. We never. I didn’t.”

We were at a stoplight, and I cut my eyes to her for a second and added, “I haven’t.”

“Oh,” she said. Then she put her feet up on my dashboard, and her whole body seemed to relax. The light turned green, and I thought the conversation was done. We were moving again when she said, “Do you want to?” I moved my foot to the brake, and the car behind me honked, jarring me back to reality.

I laughed. Turned the wipers on by accident when I was reaching for the turn signal.