“You know?”
She nodded.
“How’d you find out?”
“Don has a lab in his garage,” she told Kenny. It felt so good to finally say the words out loud, instead of just in her head. And maybe together, she and Kenny could figure a way out of this. “I accidentally walked into it on Friday and he and my mom freaked out. Don said I had to keep quiet about you and the lab, too, ’cause he does experiments you’re only supposed to do in real labs and not at home…”
She couldn’t say the words fast enough there were so many of them. But she stopped when Kenny started shaking his head.
“What?” she asked him.
“You’re such a baby, you know that?”
“I am not.” She hadn’t been a baby for a long time. And now she could go to jail.
“That wasn’t a science experiment, Kelsey,” Kenny said, sounding like a know-it-all. But nice, too. “It’s a meth lab.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
KELSEY TILTED HER HEAD against the sun’s glare. “What’s a meth lab?”
“You know, where they make tweek…glass…crank…”
He was acting like she knew what he was talking about.
“Ice, Kelsey,” he said, hiking his jeans up over the boxers on his hips and letting his long blue T-shirt fall back over them. “Crystal. It’s all the same thing.”
Kelsey brightened fractionally. “He makes those crystals?” She pointed to the bag. “I thought they were rocks from the ground.” Hadn’t Don said so? She couldn’t remember.
“Of course he makes them,” Kenny said. “And I sell them to kids at school.”
“No you don’t.” She shook her head. “You use them for your art.”
“Hey.” Kenny stepped back. “I don’t use them at all. I’d never touch that stuff. It could kill you.”
“How can crystals kill you?”
“It’s drugs, Kelsey. You know, methamphetamine. People snort them or dissolve them in coffee or smoke them, and they get high.”
How did people suck rocks up their noses? Kelsey didn’t want to know.
“Real drugs?” she asked. “Like on TV?”
He nodded.
“Like they tell us to stay away from?”
“Yeah.”
“Drugs are pills. Or needles.”
“They used to be,” Kenny said, sounding important again. He sure knew a lot. “But now there’s this stuff and it makes you feel really happy and energized and you can make it in your own house.”
“Like Don does.”
“Right. Except my dad says he does it different than most people around here. He does a ‘pseudo’ method, using cold pills, instead of Nazi, which used batteries or something because cold pills are watched now. Anyway, the cops aren’t used to that around here, which is why we won’t ever get caught.”
She didn’t get half of that. And didn’t care. “Do kids take them?”
He nodded. “You’ll learn all about them in fifth grade.”
“So I’ve been bringing you drugs.” She just couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe her mother would let her do something like that. Which meant that her mom must not know.
“Right,” Kenny was saying. “Don makes them. You deliver them. And I sell them to make money for a lawyer, so I can go live with my dad.” He sounded pretty pleased about the whole thing.
“I’m a drug dealer?” She’d seen shows on TV about that. The dealers were always horrible, dirty people who killed other people and then died.
“No, goof,” Kenny punched her arm lightly. “You’re a kid who don’t know no better. You’re safe. Trust me.”
She didn’t feel safe. She felt sick—and scummy. And like she couldn’t live with her dad at all anymore or some of her dirt would rub off on him.
“I gotta go,” she said, pushing through the bushes and scrambling over the fence so fast she scraped her arm. On the other side, Kelsey ran, as fast and as far as she could. And when she got too tired to do that, she lay on the ground and cried.
Until it was time to go to Josie’s to meet Dad and go home for dinner.
THE LETTER FROM the superintendent came on Wednesday. Mark hand-delivered it to Meredith’s room after school. And invited her to follow him home for dinner so they could talk strategy. She suspected he was also feeling sorry for her, but she went anyway. If she had any hope of surviving this intact, she needed his help.
She’d talked to Susan and her mother on Sunday, and both had adamantly insisted that she wasn’t crazy and that her only course was to listen to her intuition and her heart and to do what they told her. It had sounded so simple then.
“How’s Kelsey been?” she asked as they walked together out to the parking lot.
She wasn’t surprised when he frowned. “Odd,” he told her. “I think she got in a fight on Monday.”
“A fight?” Meredith stopped. That didn’t sound right at all. “With who? About what?”
“I don’t know.” He squinted against the sun as he faced her. “She wouldn’t say.”
“But she admitted to fighting?”
“No, she didn’t. But her clothes were dirty like she’d been rolling on the ground, she had a scratch on her arm and she’d been crying.”
Meredith tried to clear her mind, her inner self. Her own problems were minor, if Kelsey was in trouble. She’d sensed something the other night and ignored it. And this afternoon she couldn’t get through her own muck to find the little girl. Frustrated, she asked Mark, “How did she explain the state she was in?”
“Said she fell on the playground on the way to Josie’s.”
“Wouldn’t Josie’s mother have cleaned her up?”
“That’s what I asked. She said they played at school until it was almost time for me to come pick her up.”
“Do they do that often?”
“Often enough.”
So it could be true.
But Meredith knew it wasn’t.
MARK WOULDN’T LET Meredith help with dinner. He was making his specialty—a boxed meal, for which all he had to do was add hamburger and water—and there weren’t enough jobs for two. She couldn’t help with the table, either, because it was Kelsey’s job and he didn’t think it was healthy for the girl not to follow through on her responsibility.
She insisted on helping with the dishes and by then he’d run out of excuses. She was too close, the situation too intimately domestic without Susan there. Meredith might be a friend, but she was also an employee. He was her boss. They should have gone out to eat.
As soon as Kelsey went to her room to do her homework, Mark got down to business. “The hearing is set for twenty days from today,” he said. “That’s Tuesday, May 9. It’s the soonest possible date according to Oklahoma statutes.”
She dried her hands and hung the kitchen towel on the rack Mark had installed inside the cupboard door. Kelsey had picked out that particular towel, and it had butterflies all over it.
“I intend to spend most of the next couple of weeks contacting individual parents and board members, making sure that anyone who doesn’t know about you and your work has an opportunity to do so. It would help if you’d give me a list of all the parents you can think of to whom you’ve given nonacademic advice over the years.”
She nodded.
“Susan said something a few weeks back about your track record—wanting to know the number of times you’d advised parents according to your hunches and ultimately been proven correct. I think she’s on to something. A chart like that would be solid proof of your ability to figure out the truth in some difficult situations.”
“Makes you feel good, doesn’t it, Mark?” she asked him, her eyes clouded as she reached for her bag. “The idea of having that proof in your hand before you stand up for me?”
And just like that she’d pissed him off again. The woman was intent on making his life hell. “Do you want to beat this thing or not?”
“Of course I do,” she acknowledged. And as
he watched her deflate, he wished he hadn’t caused her pain.
“Do you think you could collect any information to refute Barnett’s experts from the other day?”
“I’m sure I can. My spare bedroom is full of it.”
“Twenty days isn’t very long.”
“I’ll be ready,” she said calmly. Mark couldn’t figure out how she did it—remaining steadfast in the midst of so much turmoil. He made his decisions based on fact, on what he could prove, and he often doubted himself. Had he been in her shoes, he might be tempted to cut his losses.
“You’re really okay with all of this, then?”
“No.” She glanced up surprised, her bag over her shoulder. “I have no idea how I’m going to get through the next three weeks.”
He wasn’t certain, but he thought her lower lip trembled.
“I’m going in to tell Kelsey goodbye,” she said.
He played it safe and let her go.
ON FRIDAY, Susan called Meredith to say she had a date. The man was an administrator from the hospital. He flew planes, and they were going to Dallas for dinner.
“You sound different, Suze,” Meredith told her friend, staring out the window of her classroom during planning period as she spoke on her cell phone. Susan felt different, too.
“I… Steve’s been bugging me to go out with him for a couple of months,” she admitted, “but I wouldn’t even consider it.”
“Because of Mark.”
“That. And Steve’s so different from me. He lives life by the seat of his pants, Mer, while I plan every holiday a year in advance.”
Meredith chuckled. “You do not.”
“I live pretty rigidly.”
“You didn’t used to.”
“I know.”
“He makes you spark, huh?” A picture of Mark’s face swam before her mind’s eye. Susan might have married him.
“Yeah, I think he does.”
Hallelujah.
“Now, tell me about Kelsey. Your message said you were worried.”
“Something’s up with her,” Meredith said. “But I’m so depleted I can’t get a fix on what it is.”
“How sure are you about this?”
“Ninety-five.”
“Okay.” Susan’s take-charge voice kicked in. “You have to find a way to spend some time with her. You know once you’re with her, you’ll be able to get through the noise and figure out what’s going on.”
Meredith did know that. And still she hadn’t made any attempt to see the little girl—not even on the playground or in the cafeteria. “What would I do with the information if I got it?” she asked. “Tell Mark his daughter’s in trouble? That she needs help? He’ll never believe me.”
“And now’s not a good time for that, huh?”
Mark was just about her only hope of getting through the Barnett thing. And it was a slim hope at that.
“If I thought I could be of any use to Kelsey, I’d do it anyway.” At least the old Meredith would have.
“How do you know you can’t be, until you know what kind of trouble she’s in? You might be able to help her without anyone being the wiser.”
It wasn’t her way. She always went to the parents. These children were not hers.
But until she knew…
“I’ll see what I can do,” she said, feeling marginally better.
“And in the meantime, you can spend some time with her father and figure out what’s going on there.”
Meredith glanced toward her classroom door, as if someone could have overheard her friend’s absurd statement.
“There is nothing going on between me and Mark,” she said in an urgent whisper.
“Then there should be.”
“Susan, just because you’ve found someone, doesn’t mean that everyone has to.”
“I’m a doctor, Mer, not an idiot.”
“Then stop talking nonsense.”
“You spent Saturday with him.”
“Kelsey felt sorry for me.”
“And that’s why Mark gave up his whole day?”
“Saturday was Kelsey’s choice and she chose me.”
“And that’s why you spent the entire afternoon and evening with Mark Shepherd? Watched a movie with him after his daughter fell asleep? Because Kelsey chose you?”
That was what she got for blabbing to her best friend.
“You were gone and I’d just listened to that horrible radio show. I’d have gone out with an alligator if it had asked.”
“And dinner on Wednesday?”
“To talk about the hearing.”
“What do you feel when you look at him?”
“Attracted.” She heard her answer and stopped. Susan always had been better at twenty questions than she had. Her friend would have made a bang-up lawyer. “He’s an attractive man,” she added. “A woman would have to be dead not to notice.”
“And what about when you think of him?”
“I think I’m still feeling your feelings.”
“Like when you think about kissing him? Or try not to picture him in bed?”
“Yeah. See? It’s all you.”
“I never thought of Mark like that unless I was looking at him. In my thoughts it was always Bud. Or occasionally Steve.”
Then…
“It can’t be me who’s feeling that way, Suze. He’ll break my heart.”
“No, he won’t.”
Meredith heard voices in the hallway, reminding her that she was sitting in a third-grade class that would be filling up with third-grade children in another fifteen minutes. She closed her door, embarrassed that her heart was beating so fast.
“One of us would have to quit our job.”
Susan sighed. “I know. And I’m still stumped there. You both love what you do and you’re great at it. I haven’t figured that part out.”
She couldn’t afford to be disappointed. Her life was already enough of a mess without adding even the possibility of unrequited romance. “Because there’s nothing to figure out,” she said dryly.
“It’s not like you not to be honest with yourself.”
That stung. Smacked of moral turpitude. Enough so, that she calmed down and took a look at what might be lurking inside her. And started to panic.
“I have a class to teach in ten minutes,” she said.
“Do you want him to kiss you again?”
No. Absolutely not!
But this was Susan. Demanding honesty. “If things were different, maybe.”
“That’s what I thought,” Susan said. “And you know what else? I’d bet a year’s salary that he feels the same way.”
“You would?”
Susan wasn’t empathetic. There was no reason to believe her.
“Yeah. I suspect that’s part of the reason he’s so mad at you all the time. You wouldn’t be able to drive him crazy, if you didn’t also attract him like crazy. You know how these things work, Mer. For every up there’s a down. Where there’s love, there’s hate. Where there’s joy, there’s sadness. The opposites define each other.”
Susan was making too much sense. Scaring her.
“I’m too intense for him,” she said softly. It was something she’d known for a long time—part of the reason she couldn’t ever love Mark Shepherd. “Mark’s marriage was fraught with conflict because of his wife’s intensity. He certainly isn’t going to trust his heart to another emotional woman.”
“But you use your emotions, Meredith. They don’t completely control you the way they controlled Barbie. She wasn’t healthy.”
“Mark doesn’t believe in my gift.” And there was the final reason she could never allow herself to consider any kind of committed relationship with Mark Shepherd, no matter what her heart and her body felt. She couldn’t risk being left at the altar a second time.
The first time had almost destroyed her.
“There’s no way around that one,” Susan agreed. “He’s just got to come around.”
But Meredith k
new he wouldn’t.
KELSEY WAS JUST GETTING ready to slip through the fence on Friday, when she heard her name being called. Josie had already rounded the corner so she knew it wasn’t her.
Turning slowly, afraid it might be the police, she just about started to cry with relief when she saw that it was Meredith.
“Hi,” she said, happy to see her friend, but worried, too, that her mom would think she wasn’t coming and leave without her.
“What’cha doing out here all alone?” Meredith asked. She had her denim bag today and was wearing it over her shoulder like she was on her way home.
“I’m waiting for Josie.” She hated the lie. Almost as much as the drugs. “She forgot something.”
Kenny said what they were doing was no big deal. Kelsey sure hoped he was right. More, she wished with all her might for a way out—a way to love her mother and have everything else be okay.
“Okay,” Meredith said, glancing around. Kelsey wanted to make sure that she couldn’t see her mom’s car through the bushes, but she was afraid that would make Meredith peer over there, too. “You sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah, I’m sure.” Another lie. If she had to keep telling them, she hoped she’d get a lot better at it. As good as Kenny. She wondered if he’d ever gotten so scared he almost wet his pants. “What’re you doing way out here?” she asked, trying to sound bored and normal.
“I was thinking about you…”
Kelsey froze, remembering Meredith’s secret powers. Josie promised her they weren’t true, but she’d never seen her teacher this far out in the field before and…
“And I saw you heading this way from the cafeteria door and followed you.”
Oh, good. No powers. Oh, bad. “Why?”
“I was worried about you.”
Kelsey tried her hardest to stand still and hope that Meredith wouldn’t wait for Josie to get back before she left. “How come?” Please, Mommy, don’t leave.
“I don’t know,” Meredith said, staring at her like Josie’s mom looked at Josie sometimes when Josie had a problem and she was trying to help. “But if you’re all right, then I guess I’ll go.”
“I am.” Kelsey nodded, relieved. Mom should still be there. She hoped. ’Course now she had to wait until Meredith was back at the school before she dared climb over the fence and slip through the bushes.
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