Hush Money

by Susan Bischoff

  Suddenly, I felt her go completely rigid next to me. I leaned over to see what she was looking at.

  Her little sister was in the sandbox, behind a small rose bush. It took me an instant to realize that it had no business being there, and that it was too perfect, too—unnatural. It was like a Eureka! moment. This, together with what Joss had said about Emily Gianni being her best friend, explained so much about why she was the way she was. And probably her dad too.

  Joss’s sister was a Talent.

  All that was clicking into place in my head so fast that in that first moment I didn’t even grasp the whole situation. But then Marco picked one of the roses, sniffed it, offered it to Jill, and looked right at Joss.

  Son of a bitch.

  “Son of a bitch!” Joss’s hand cracked against my face so hard I had to catch myself with my hand to keep from falling over. “‘Trust me.’ Ugh! I am such an idiot! I should have known Marco would try something like this, and I should have known you’d be in it with him.”

  By the time I got to my feet she was stomping across the sand and holding out her hand to her sister, who got up and went with her instantly. I tried to follow her, but Marco intercepted me by grabbing onto my arm. I knew there was no point in struggling if he didn’t want to let me go yet.

  “Ooh, that musta hurt, huh?”

  “What are you doing with Joss’s sister?”

  “The kid was just showing me what she could do. Pretty cool, huh?”

  “There’s no way you can use something like that, so just leave her alone, ok?”

  “If you say so, buddy. Now go on,” he said, giving me a shove. “Make up with your girlfriend.”

  I sprinted over the hill, with my cheek still stinging and the horrible sound of Joss’s angry, agonized voice stuck in my head. They had stopped at the edge of the parking lot. Jill was sitting on the ground with both legs wrapped around one of the wooden posts of the low fence that kept the cars off the grass, like she wasn’t going anywhere. Joss was sitting on one of the cross pieces with her face in her hands. I had the terrifying idea that she was crying and thought about going invisible. But that was lame and wouldn’t help, so I approached with caution.

  She was saying, “I just don’t understand how you could do such a thing. How many times have we told you, and told you—”

  “But he’s your friend. He said so.”

  “No! Marco is so not my friend. I—We don’t have friends. Marshalls don’t make friends. And this is why, Jill. This is what we’ve been trying to make you understand. Friends make you do stupid things.”

  “He’s your friend. I ‘member from the store.”

  Joss jerked her head up at that, and fixed me with a bright-eyed glare—she wasn’t crying, but close. “No,” she said, plenty loud enough for me to hear, “he’s not. Let’s go.”

  “Hey, just hang on.” She was already on her feet, reaching for Jill, and I felt the need to grab onto her. But I didn’t. “Calm down, Joss. You’re making her cry.”

  “She damn well should be crying! You, of all people, understand exactly what she’s done.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I wish you would stop playing dumb already. I know all about Marco and his blackmail. I was there when he gave his terms to Kat, remember? You were watching from across the lawn. I was there when she found the copies of the picture of Krista in her locker.”

  “What pictures?”

  “The ones of Krista using her Talent that he used to turn her in when she wouldn’t pay. And you know that because you were probably there that day to check up and make sure that Kat had found them. I knew Jeff was in on it because Marco made me watch Jeff harassing Trina, and I still can’t figure out if that was to find out if she had a Talent or I did—which obviously neither of us does, but he still managed to get Kat to reveal herself.”

  “Wait, Kat has a Talent?”

  “I swear, if you don’t stop that, I’ll hit you again.”

  I was starting to get really concerned about Joss. I was thinking about her dad, about the time he spent in the hospital, about how close to the edge he seemed to be. And now Joss was losing it. This was not the quiet, self-contained, never gets involved or opens her mouth girl I had been going to school with for years. And either she was suddenly spouting a lot of paranoid crazy talk, or there was a lot of shit going down, the guys I was calling my friends were shoveling it, and I had no clue it was happening. I wasn’t really sure which was worse.

  “I kept wanting to believe it was just something the two of them were doing and you didn’t know about it. Isn’t it funny how stupid I am? Isn’t it funny how I kept thinking how weird it was that you were talking to me, but kept telling myself to give you the benefit of the doubt because you’re such a nice guy? Why would I do that?”

  “Because I am a nice guy!”

  “You’re a fucking extortionist.”

  “Joss, that’s a bad word,” Jill piped up.

  “Shut up,” she snapped back.

  “Look, I don’t know where all this is coming from, but I don’t see how…I mean, look, Marco’s a jerk. I know that. But you can’t tell me he’s been…” Well, why not? He’s using Joss’s secret to make you rob a bank, for chrissake. He’s got to be threatening to reveal Rob’s secret, and how did he find that out in the first place? Jeff’s jealous of Talents; he always has been…

  “What’s the matter, Dylan? Run out of charm? Lies? That’s ok, I was pretty much done listening anyway.”

  She yanked on Jill who let herself be led, and they hurried off across the parking lot. I didn’t even try to follow. I had some stuff to figure out.

  Chapter 14

  Joss

  Monday morning it rained. Mom had dropped me off early because she had an appointment. I was hanging out in my spot thinking about how I needed to find a new place, and worrying that Marco would be coming up the stairs to hassle me any minute.

  But instead it was Kat.

  “Go away.”

  She just smiled in that infuriating way she had of ignoring my wishes and sat down next to me. “What’s that about?”

  “It’s about go away, I want to be alone.”

  “You’ve been alone. I kept calling you all weekend but your parents wouldn’t let me talk to you.”

  “Yeah, thanks, they really appreciated that.”

  “Well, they were being unreasonable.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that maybe I didn’t—don’t—want to talk to you?”

  “Of course not. That would be insane. Anyway, look, I brought your stuff.” She handed me a big bag with the clothes I’d left at her house.

  “Thanks.” I shrugged out of my second string jacket and dug my favorite one out of the bag. Then I went for the boots. I like what I like. “I didn’t get your stuff washed yet.”

  “That’s ok. I’m not hurting for clothes. So my mom’s taking the day off work to stay home and wait for the insurance adjuster.”

  I cringed. “How’s that gonna go?”

  “I don’t know, really. We’ll just have to wait and see. We spent the rest of the weekend trying to clean up what we could and eating all kinds of takeout. Damn, I can’t believe what happened to my kitchen. Who do you think it was?”

  She actually sounded like she thought the whole thing was cool. I shook my head. She was like an older version of Jill. I’d spent my weekend sick to my stomach and sleepless over what I’d done, what Jill had done, who would find out about it… And I don’t think I could have faked enthusiasm for this conversation on a good day.

  “Kat, would you please just leave me alone?”

  “What’s up with you?”

  “What do you think is up with me?”

  “I think you’re cranky ’cause you got grounded. Which is totally bogus anyway. How was any of that your fault? I mean, if Phil had just kept his mouth shut…I’m this close to saying he deserved to get caught. And maybe we can also blame whoever started throwing Tasers—
although that was totally cool, don’t you think?”

  “No, I don’t think. Kat, anything could have happened. What if those guys had been using real bullets?”

  “But they weren’t. Maddy touched one of them, so she knew they weren’t.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Didn’t you wonder how she knew stuff? Or why she wears gloves all the time? Any time she touches someone, skin to skin, BAM! She knows everything about them. Everything they know, every thought they ever had.”

  “Jesus,” I breathed, taking that in. Note to self: stay AWAY from Maddy. “Wait! Just stop.” I put my hands over my ears. “I don’t want to know this stuff.”

  “You already know this stuff. You were there. I’m just clarifying ’cause, you know, you’re one of us.”

  “What?!”

  “Part of our group, one of our friends, you know.”

  “No, I don’t. I mean, I’m not. I don’t want to be in your group. I don’t want to be friends.”

  “What’s up with that?”

  “Just what I said. I don’t want to be friends. With anyone. I just want to be left alone. Is that really so much to ask?”

  “Girl, what is wrong with you? I have done everything I can think of to try to be nice to you, to bring you out of that shell of yours, and all you do is give me static. Did you have some kind of deeply scarring childhood trauma that makes you such a bitch?”

  “My best friend was one of the first kids in Fairview who got taken to a State School. Because she burned a house down. One we were trapped inside. NIAC came and took her before we were even out of the hospital.”

  Kat just sat there with her mouth open. I could have gotten up and walked away at that point and she probably would have let me. But for some reason, my mouth just kept moving.

  “We were five. It was summer. Emily lived next door to me, and we had played together since birth, practically. I always knew what she could do. But Trina was new and had just become our new bestest pal. We were the three Musketeers that summer, and we were going to let Trina in on the cool thing Emily could do.” Actually, after Emily’s demonstration, I was supposed to go next. But we never got that far, I had just about edited that part out of my head over the years, so I left that out.

  “Trina? Jeff and Trina in the stairwell Trina?”

  “Yeah, but this has nothing to do with that. So one day we left Emily’s yard, snuck through the yard behind to the next street, and over to the house for sale two doors down. This was a huge adventure in itself. We got into the house and explored for a while, and then decided that the pink and purple bedroom of the girl who used to live there would be the place to show Trina the secret.”

  “So we gathered up some trash into the middle of the room, Emily held her hand over it, concentrated, and it burst into a little flame. It wasn’t like it was the first time she had ever done something like that—or that I had seen it. But that time, there must have been something flammable on some of the trash because this flame just shot up in the air and burned her hand. She fell back screaming, and Trina and I were so busy trying to see her hand that we didn’t notice the fire spreading and catching the curtains.

  “It all happened so fast. It got so dark in there, and hard to breathe, we were just terrified little kids, so we couldn’t think what to do or how to get out. We couldn’t get the windows open to call for help or anything.”

  “That’s horrible.”

  “It was horrible. We had gotten in through a window on the back porch, so we got back to the kitchen. But, I don’t know, we got trapped in there somehow. I think part of the house collapsed because I remember that when the firemen got there, and heard us screaming, they had to come in with axes to get us out. They took us to the hospital, and as soon as we were stable, people started coming in and asking us how the fire had started.

  “Emily and I knew that we were never supposed to say anything about what she could do, but Trina was new. She didn’t know. And I think even if she had, her parents were really upset and telling her to tell the truth about how the fire started. So she did. And then Emily went away.”

  “Aw, honey, I’m really sorry.”

  “Yeah? Because I’ve spent all these years from then until now trying to avoid having to go through anything like that again. And I was doing just fine until you came along. Then I had to start getting involved in your problems with Marco and look where that’s gotten me? First the whole mess at your house, my parents are furious at me all over again, my dad’s about to have a breakdown, and then my idiot little sister goes and reveals her Talent to Marco, of all people!”

  “Wait. Wait, wait. Your sister’s a Talent?”

  I dropped my head into my hands. What the hell was wrong with me? “I can’t believe I just said that.”

  “Joss, it’s ok. You know I’m not going to tell anybody.” She rubbed her hand in circles on my back and I actually wanted to lean into her. All this talking was making me crazy. So I told her, all about what happened at the park, about Jill and Marco. And I told her about Dylan, all my suspicions about how he kept talking to me, and then the fight we’d had…

  “So wait, back up. You hit him?”

  “Hard enough to knock teeth loose, maybe. I was pretty upset.”

  She actually laughed. “I’m sorry I missed that. But I don’t really believe it.”

  “I don’t believe I did it either, but I was pissed.”

  “No, I believe that. But not about Dylan. I don’t think he’d do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “I just don’t. Hey! Let’s ask Heather.”

  “Yeah, good luck with that.”

  “You’re probably right. We’ll get Maddy. I can talk her into it. Then you can know anything you want to.”

  I grabbed her arm, like I thought she was going to go do it right now. “No, don’t do it. That’s not right.” There was still some stupid part of me that still wanted to believe Dylan might actually be innocent, and I hated the thought of someone violating his privacy like that. I’d spent part of my sleepless night imagining he would climb up to my window, prove his innocence, and tell me how he was going fix everything, get rid of Marco, save my sister, etc, and all because, he would confess, he had been in love with me from afar, lo these many years.

  And I’d spent the rest of the night imagining all sorts of different ways to take him and his friends apart and hide the pieces.

  Kat snorted. “And you mock Heather’s rules. You’re just as bad. Well, whatever. We’ll figure it out. I totally screwed up that thing at my party—”

  “I don’t even want to talk about that.”

  “—but we’ll come up with something. Don’t worry, Joss.”

  Yeah, sure. I couldn’t even manage to take on Kat and un-friend her. How was I supposed to fix my problems with Marco?

  * * *

  Joss

  I waited on the lawn after school that day, waiting for Marco to approach me. I just wanted to know what he was going to ask for and get it over with. I had thought about going to lunch in the cafeteria again, so maybe he’d pass me a note or tell me when to meet him or something, but a) I didn’t want to have to see Dylan sitting at his table—the liar, and b) I just couldn’t deal with all those people. What had happened at Kat’s party was all anyone was talking about in ridiculous stage whispers all day.

  Anyway, there was nothing about the fact that I was waiting for Marco to come up to me or pass me notes that wasn’t sick and wrong, and I spent my time alternating between fuming at Kat, Jill, and Dylan. Mostly Dylan.

  “Sweetie, we have got to talk,” Marco said, slinging his arm around my shoulders. I let him keep it there and steer me across the lawn and into the little courtyard where he and his friends like to duck out and smoke between classes. It reeked. I ducked out from under his arm and he let me, probably because there wouldn’t be anyone to see us together anymore anyway. And if he wasn’t humiliating me, what was the point?

  “Jus
t tell me what you want.”

  “You’re so…direct. And I dig that about you, I really do. I want $500—”

  “Ok, but it’s going to take—”

  “—a month.”

  “What?”

  “But if you want to break that down into weekly installments, that’s cool too.”

  “I can’t pay you $500 a month, are you out of your mind? Where would I get that kind of money?”

  “I’m sure your daddy would pay at least that much to keep your little sister’s secret.”

  “I can’t tell my dad about this. Besides, he would kill you.”

  “He might try. He just might. But he can’t do anything to me from the locked ward at the loony bin, which is exactly where he’ll be if he finds out about this, isn’t it? After what happened at Kat’s party while you were there, he’s got to be right on the edge. What’s it going to take to push him over?”

  My mind went blank, like I couldn’t process how Marco could know about my dad or the fact that he was threatening half my family now.

  “So you don’t want to ask your dad, but he’s got that store, so… he’s got stuff I like. I’m sure you can smuggle out enough in cash and prizes to keep me happy.”

  “I am not going to steal from my dad!”

  “Since it’s on your dad’s behalf, I’d hardly call it stealing.”

  “You are out of your mind. I can’t do that. Don’t you think he’s going to notice?”

  “How is that my problem?”

  “Look, I understand the position I’m in—”

  “Do you?”

  “—and I’m just asking that you be reasonable. Please.”

  It killed me to say it, but he really liked hearing it, if the grin spreading across his face was any indication. He swaggered over to me, that’s the only way to describe it. His hand hit the wall next to my head and his body followed, but he stopped just short of falling against me.

  “I think I can be reasonable. Since you ‘understand your position’ and all, I think I can be reasonable if you can. ’cause you know that I’ve always liked you, Joss.”