Then the sound of the towel dispenser coughing up a couple of towels.
“I think it’s time I threw a party,” Tara said slowly. “When in doubt, throw a party.”
“A party?” Jessica said. “You mean, at your house?”
“Where else? Listen, don’t you think that if he sees me on my home turf, he’ll forget all about Julie Hagan?”
“He ought to,” Shelley said. “Your home turf is pretty impressive.”
“I don’t think he realizes just who you are, Tara,” Jessica agreed. “I mean, you’re not some little nobody from nowhere, you know. So when’s the party?”
“As soon as possible. This weekend, if I can set it up.”
“Are you going to invite Julie?”
Tara barked a laugh. “Do I have any choice? If I don’t, people will talk. After all, we’ve been friends for years, haven’t we? The last thing I want is anyone feeling sorry for Julie.”
Julie, in her booth, didn’t dare make a sound. If those three knew she’d overheard what they were saying, she’d be in bigger trouble than she was already. She hoped they’d leave soon. How much more could they possibly do to their faces and hair?
The class bell rang. Julie heard them leave. When she felt it was safe to follow, she slipped out of the room and ran down the hall to class.
The next couple of days were hard for Julie. She wasn’t good at lying, yet she had to walk around looking happy and normal, in spite of Tara’s little underhanded put-downs—the raised eyebrow and slight sneer whenever Julie said something, the shoulder turned to her, shutting her out of the group, the glances exchanged with Jess and Shelley that indicated they were sharing something that didn’t include Julie.
She tried talking to Shelley about what was happening, but Shelley only said, “I really can’t talk about it now, Julie. I need some distance from it, you know? Maybe we can go into this another time.”
And Jessica was even worse. “You really let Tara down,” she repeated stubbornly, in spite of Julie’s protests that she had done nothing to make Quinn ignore Tara. “And after all Tara’s done for you, too!”
And in the meantime Julie was being frozen out of the old foursome.
Mollie was the only person she was able to confide in.
Mollie was her usual optimistic self. “Hang in there, Julie. Tara will settle down after a while. You know her. When she sees that Quinn isn’t interested in her—and he certainly doesn’t seem to be—she’ll find somebody else, or she’ll decide Nick’s the one she wants after all.”
Quinn didn’t come to school on Wednesday. He’d been out for half a day Tuesday, too. Julie wondered about him, hoping he wasn’t sick, yet she was glad he wasn’t there to see her being cold-shouldered by Tara. And she was glad she didn’t have to watch Tara coming on to him again, either.
What if Tara’s right? she asked herself. What if she does succeed in getting Quinn interested in her? How will I be able to handle something like that?
The thought made her almost sick. Again, she was surprised at the intensity of her feelings for Quinn. And they hadn’t even really met or spoken to each other yet!
Today, Wednesday, she’d borrowed her mother’s car and driven off campus for lunch, glad to get away from Tara’s pettiness.
Brad had noticed. Brad knew what was happening. How many others did?
And how much more of this can I take? she wondered.
Quinn was still absent on Thursday. Julie began to worry about him, but was relieved to see him turn up at school Friday morning.
So, obviously, was Tara. If he wasn’t available for her party, all her plans would go down the tube.
She’d been running around all morning, inviting everybody on her list of “eligibles” to her house on Saturday night.
Julie wondered when Tara would get around to inviting her, and she’d been debating whether or not she should accept.
She knew that if she didn’t, there would be a lot of gossip around school. If people were beginning to notice the big chill between her and Tara, this would confirm it. And she wasn’t ready for that yet.
If she went and had a terrible time, so what? She’d go, put in a couple of hours, and leave. No big deal. At least Brad would be glad to see her.
When Tara finally came up to her and, pretending they were still good friends, told Julie about the party, Julie accepted.
“Yeah. Sounds good, Tara. What time?”
“Seven,” Tara replied. “The usual.”
“Great!” Julie said, trying to sound enthusiastic. “I’ll be there.”
And if Quinn’s there, too, she wondered, will he finally talk to me? What can I say to make him think I’m as interesting as he seems to think I am?
And what will Tara do to me if I succeed?
CHAPTER SEVEN
He hadn’t realized his absence from school would be that obvious.
No problem. He’d told his landlady, Mrs. Landon, he was sick, hadn’t he? And she’d backed him up to the police. And she would again, in the highly unlikely event the police came around a second time, asking questions.
Yes, on Wednesday he told her he had one of those stomach bug things, said he’d come down with it on Tuesday afternoon, had to come home from school, even, and that it didn’t seem to be going away. Right away she’d brought him down a big pot of chicken soup. Nice lady, but a lousy cook. Terrible soup. He’d thrown it down the garbage disposal after she left. But still, she’d be able to swear in court, if it ever came to that, that he’s been sick and she’d ministered to him.
And she was absentminded, too, and suggestible. When he asked her if he’d been playing his TV a little too loudly on Tuesday afternoon, she said yes, maybe he had . . . not that it bothered her, but he ought to have been sleeping, not watching TV, sick as he was.
He hadn’t had his TV on at all. He’d just asked her that, planted the idea in her head, so that she’d say, “Yes, that nice Quinn McNeal was in his apartment on Tuesday afternoon. I heard him moving around, watching his TV.”
He’d realized everyone knew he was missing from school when that black-haired witch, Tara, practically attacked him Friday morning, all smiles.
She was throwing a party, she said, and she wanted him to come. Wanted him to come to her charming old antebellum mansion—it even had a name, Maywood—for a party on Saturday night. Just her, him, and the cream of Braxton Falls society.
But Julie would be there. He knew she’d be there, so he’d accepted.
Tara had seemed relieved when he said he’d come. You’d almost think she’d planned the party around him. Maybe she had. She sure was trying to come on to him. Did she really think he’d be interested in a shallow flirt like her?
Well, that didn’t matter. He was going anyway. What a laugh. He, Quinn McNeal, partying in a mansion with all those snobby little rich kids. Things sure had changed since Alison.
Alison’s friends had thought he was scum. Treated him like scum.
So why wasn’t he scum now? Maybe because his father, Daddy Dearest, was dead. They didn’t know anything about Quinn’s father, but his death was going to help Quinn anyway.
Funny, wasn’t it? The only decent thing his father had ever done for him was tumble down those stairs so neatly and break his neck.
What a shame this hadn’t happened four years ago, when Quinn had been so violently, passionately, in love with Alison. It would have made for one less enemy, one less abuser, at least.
But now his father was dead, and for the first time, he’d actually done something constructive for Quinn. All those years of abuse and drunkenness . . . and to think that now he, Quinn, was heir to a piece of fairly valuable property in Middledale, a small town nearly seventy miles west of Braxton Falls.
The town was spreading. There was talk of a mall. A real-estate developer had been quietly approaching the home owners in Dad’s rundown neighborhood. Most of them had sold, and for a good price, but his fool of a father had turned the man down
flat. Quinn couldn’t understand why. Maybe his brain had turned to mush from all that drinking.
But now Quinn would be able to sell the house. Get a good hunk of cash for it, too.
When he’d met Julie, he knew right away he’d be needing some money. She was special. Classy.
At the present time he was working four, sometimes five evenings a week delivering pizzas, making only enough to meet his everyday expenses. The sale of the house, when it came through, would give him a decent income. He could quit his job at the pizza parlor.
A girl like Julie needed to be taken places, nice places. Expensive places. Besides, if he had to work nights, some other guy might move in on her. That blue-eyed guy in the cafeteria, for example. He didn’t want her having anything more to do with that bunch of phonies. As soon as she was his, he was going to see to it she didn’t run with that crowd anymore.
So far, everything was working out nicely for him.
At least he hoped so.
The Middledale police, though, had come snooping around.
That’s where he’d been Thursday. The Middledale police station.
They’d called him Thursday morning and told him about his father’s death and asked him to come in for questioning.
Neighbors had found his father’s body Wednesday afternoon, all crumpled up at the bottom of the staircase in the front hall. The police said he’d been dead about twenty-four hours.
Accidental deaths, they told him, had to be investigated. Quinn’s father was being held in the local morgue, with an identification tag hanging around one dirty big toe.
“Yes, that’s my father,” Quinn had told them.
Of course, they wanted to know when Quinn had seen him last. They hinted that it appeared his father had fallen down the stairs with a force not commensurate—that was the word they used—with a simple fall. That maybe he’d been violently pushed.
“Your father’s neighbors say the two of you never got along,” said the fat-faced sergeant in charge of the investigation. “So can you tell us where you were on Tuesday afternoon?”
“I was sick in bed in the basement apartment I rent in Braxton Falls,” he told them. “Ask my landlady. She can vouch for me.
Mrs. Landon had come through for him, the old sweetheart, just as he’d known she would. So he was in the clear, and the police seemed satisfied that the death was, in fact, accidental.
Well, no wonder. The death fit the conventional pattern, didn’t it? Every town had its local drunk. And what could be more natural or predictable than this colorful character, the town drunk, falling to his death one day down a long, steep flight of stairs?
He’d made arrangements with a funeral director for his father’s cremation.
“No, I don’t want the ashes. And no service, please. My father didn’t have any friends and often told me he didn’t want any kind of burial ceremony.”
That wasn’t what his father had really wanted, but what difference did it make? He was gone forever, and what he wanted didn’t matter now.
Quinn was free. Free of his father and the miserable past. And soon he’d have enough money to compete with those snobby rich guys who were always coming on to Julie.
He’d go to that party on Saturday night, and when the time was right, the moment absolutely perfect, he’d get Julie alone and tell her what she meant to him.
And then she’d tell him she loved him, too.
CHAPTER EIGHT
When Julie arrived at Maywood Saturday night, the party was in full swing, judging by the number of cars in the driveway. She had to park down by the tall wrought-iron gates at the entrance to the broad circular drive and make her way up a slight incline to the front door, careful of her heels in the crushed gravel.
The wide marble foyer was lit by a huge, glittering crystal chandelier that hung down from an upper floor. Wanda, the Braxtons’ maid, directed Julie downstairs to the entertainment area.
As she went down the winding, carpeted stairs, Julie marveled at the enormous effort and expense that must have gone into restoring and redoing an old plantation house like this.
To her left was the games room. Julie wandered in and looked around. No sign of Tara . . . or Quinn.
A huge antique pool table with massive carved legs stood in the middle of the room with a triple-width Tiffany-style lamp suspended over it. A couple of guys from the football team were intent over a cutthroat game of pool and didn’t look up as she passed them.
Over in a corner a small group, cheered on by Lisa Doyle and a couple of other pom-pom girls, were playing electronic games.
Brad’s head surfaced and he grinned.
“Hey, Julie! Over here!”
Julie smiled and shook her head slightly. This was not the night to get clutched to the side of Brad Stafford.
French doors in the games room led out to a half-enclosed deck, but the doors were shut. Julie walked over and looked out.
A large, luxurious hot tub sat in the middle of the deck. It was cold. No steam was rising from its depths.
The Braxtons had been the first family in town to get a hot tub. In an uptight little burg like Braxton Falls, hot tubs were initially viewed with distrust and considered suspiciously decadent, although Mrs. Braxton went around telling people that it was doing wonderful things for her arthritis.
Tara had a few other tales about the uses of a hot tub, but Julie never stayed around to listen to them. Tara exaggerated a lot, anyway.
“Don’t be such a prude, Julie,” Tara had called once to Julie’s rigid, retreating back. “What’s wrong with skinny-dipping? You can’t see anything. You’re under all those bubbles!”
Across the hall from the games room was the family room, if you could call something that vast and luxurious a family room. Julie wandered into the dimly lit room and looked around.
Soft music, old-fashioned cheek-to-cheek dance music, was playing, and some of the Oriental throw rugs had been moved to the side of the room. Several couples were in the middle of the floor, heads together, swaying dreamily to the music. . . .
Jessica was there with Thad Turner, a freshman at college who was home for the weekend. They’d been an “item” since last summer. According to Jessica, it was the real thing.
Well, good luck, Jessica, Julie thought. I hope you’re right. Maybe dating a college guy will help get you out from under Tara’s thumb.
Shelley Molino was dancing with Colin King. The two of them seemed to be getting together more and more often these days. Shelley looked over at Julie but didn’t wave and smile at her, the way she would have two weeks ago.
That hurt a little. Julie had to remind herself that Shelley wasn’t mean, just weak, and was easily led around by Tara.
Shelley and everyone else I know, Julie thought.
She heard Tara before she saw her. Even over the music, Tara’s wild soprano laugh stood out.
She was over in a corner, surrounded by a group of people, mostly guys. The turquoise silk outfit she was wearing—plunging vee-necked crop top and palazzo pants—lit up her part of the room.
Julie realized immediately that Tara was playing to an audience, and it wasn’t those cute jocks and student-body leaders clustered around her, either.
Sure enough, there was Quinn.
He was sitting in a dark corner opposite Tara, but he wasn’t looking at her. As far as Julie could see from the bored, slightly cynical expression on his face, Tara was playing to an empty house.
Then Quinn looked up and saw Julie. His eyes widened, and he leaned forward in his chair.
Julie felt the warm blood rise in her cheeks.
Get up. Come over here. Talk to me, she willed.
“Look, everybody, here’s Julie,” Tara called out. “And doesn’t she look sweet!”
There was a chorus of “Hi, Julie” all around. Julie nodded back and then glanced over at Quinn.
The mood of the moment had been shattered. Quinn had sunk back in his chair, his face unreadable, nursing
his cola. A sour, bitter anger replaced the aching tenderness Julie had felt for him just a brief moment ago.
I’m getting tired of this, she thought suddenly. What’s he up to, anyway? If he’s as interested in me as he’s pretending to be with those long, brooding looks, then why hasn’t he done something about it?
And suddenly Julie realized she’d had too much.
Too much of Tara and her nastiness. Too much of Quinn with his silent, eternal, devastating stare.
She’d been hoping tonight would be the night. That Quinn would finally do something to break the ice—talk to her, ask her out, something!
She turned on her heel and left the room. Brad was out in the hall. He tried to say something to her, tried to take hold of her arm, but she brushed him off and kept going.
Up the stairs, hitting every tread, wishing it were Tara. Or Quinn.
A minute to get Wanda to help find her purse, and then out into the night.
The wind had picked up a bit and was blowing fluttering rags of clouds across a fat yellow moon.
Julie walked quickly down the driveway to her car, not caring if the gravel chewed the suede off the heels of her shoes.
She was just opening her door when she heard a light, firm tread behind her.
She knew who it was.
She turned, not knowing what to say or do.
And then, smiling, Quinn McNeal came to her through the moonlight.
Up close, under the streetlight, Julie saw that Quinn’s eyes weren’t as dark as she’d thought. They’d appeared almost black from afar.
“Why, your eyes are blue . . . dark blue,” she said softly, reaching out and gently touching his cheek with her fingertip.
It was an involuntary gesture that she regretted immediately.
Why on earth did I have to go and say that? she asked herself incredulously.
She dropped her hand and blushed furiously. What a stupid thing to say . . . and do, she thought.
But Quinn, still looking at her, reached down and took her hand, holding her palm against his warm, rough cheek.
Julie was surprised to feel his hand tremble.
Love You to Death Page 4
