“A lot changed while you were gone—”
“You think I don’t know that?” I didn’t mean to keep pouncing on her, but I couldn’t understand how she could stand there and lecture me. Who was she to give me advice? Had she ever been through anything remotely similar? “Trust me, I get it. And I’m scared. I know I can’t go back, and it terrifies me. But at the same time—” How was I supposed to explain it to her, when I couldn’t even explain it to myself? Back there was safe. Back then I was in control. How was I supposed to jump forward, when the platform beneath my feet had been yanked out?
She blew out a deep, frazzled breath. “Hank Millar and I are dating.”
Her words drifted through me. I stared at her, feeling my forehead crease in confusion. “Sorry, what?”
“It happened while you were gone.” She braced a hand on the counter, and it looked to me like it was the only thing holding her up.
“Hank Millar?” For the second time in days, my mind was slow to throw a net around his name.
“He’s divorced now.”
“Divorced? I was only gone three months.”
“All those endless days of not knowing where you were, if you were even alive, he was all I had, Nora.”
“Marcie’s dad?” I blinked at her, bewildered. I couldn’t seem to push through the haze strung ear to ear inside my brain. My mom was dating the father of the only girl I’d ever hated? The girl who’d keyed my car, egged my locker, and nicknamed me Nora the Whore-a?
“We dated. In high school and college. Before I met your dad,” she added hastily.
“You,” I said, finally pushing some volume into my voice, “and Hank Millar?”
She started speaking very quickly. “I know you’re going to be tempted to judge him based on your opinion of Marcie, but he’s actually a very sweet guy. So thoughtful and generous and romantic.” She smiled, then blushed, flustered.
I was outraged. This was what my mom was doing while I was missing?
“Right.” I snatched a banana from the fruit bowl, then headed for the front door.
“Can we talk about this?” Her bare feet thumped on the wood floor as she followed after me. “Can you at least hear me out?”
“Sounds like I’m a little late to the let’s-talk-it-over party.”
“Nora!”
“What?” I snapped, spinning around. “What do you want me to say? That I’m happy for you? I’m not. We used to make fun of the Millars. We used to joke that Marcie’s attitude problem was mercury poisoning due to all the expensive seafood their family eats. And now you’re dating him?”
“Yes, him. Not Marcie.”
“It’s all the same to me! Did you even wait until the ink on the divorce papers was dry? Or did you make your move while he was still married to Marcie’s mom, because three months is awfully fast.”
“I don’t have to answer that!” Apparently realizing how red in the face she was, she composed herself by kneading the back of her neck. “Is this because you think I’m betraying your dad? Believe me, I’ve already tortured myself enough, questioning if anything short of eternity is too soon to move on. But he would have wanted me to be happy. He wouldn’t have wanted me to mope around feeling sorry for myself forever.”
“Does Marcie know?”
She flinched at my sudden transition. “What? No. I don’t think Hank has told her yet.”
In other words, for the time being, I didn’t have to live in fear of Marcie taking our parents’ decisions out on me. Of course, when she did figure out the truth, I could guarantee the retribution would be swift, humiliating, and brutal. “I’m late for school.” I rummaged through the dish on the entryway table. “Where are my keys?”
“They should be in there.”
“My house key is. Where’s the Fiat key?”
She applied pressure to the bridge of her nose. “I sold the Fiat.”
I directed the full weight of my glare at her. “Sold it? Excuse me?” Granted, in the past I’d expressed just how much I hated the Fiat’s peeling brown paint, weather-beaten white leather seats, and untimely habit the car’s stick shift had of popping out of the shifter. But still. It was my car. Had my mom given up on me so quickly after my disappearance that she’d started hocking my belongings on Craigslist? “What else?” I demanded. “What else did you sell while I was gone?”
“I sold it before you went missing,” she murmured, eyes lowered.
A swallow caught in my throat. Meaning once upon a time I’d known she’d sold my car, only I couldn’t remember it now. It was a painful reminder of just how defenseless I really was. I couldn’t even conduct a conversation with my mom without looking like an idiot. Rather than apologize, I flung open the front door and stomped down the porch steps.
“Whose car is that?” I asked, coming up short. A white convertible Volkswagen sat on the cement slab where the Fiat used to reside. From the look of it, it had taken up permanent residence. It might have been there yesterday morning when we’d pulled in from the hospital, but I’d hardly been in the frame of mind to soak up my surroundings. The only other time I’d left the house was last night, and I’d gone out through the back door.
“Yours.”
“What do you mean, mine?” I shielded my eyes from the morning sun as I glowered back at her.
“Scott Parnell gave it to you.”
“Who?”
“His family moved back to town at the beginning of summer.”
“Scott?” I repeated, thumbing through my long-term memory, since the name provoked a vague recollection. “The boy in my kindergarten class? The one who moved to Portland years ago?”
Mom nodded wearily.
“Why would he give me a car?”
“I never got the chance to ask you. You disappeared the night he dropped it off.”
“I went missing the night Scott mysteriously donated a car to me? Didn’t that set off any alarm bells? There’s nothing normal about a teenage guy giving a car to a girl he hardly knows and hasn’t seen in years. Something about this isn’t right. Maybe—maybe the car was evidence of something, and he needed to get rid of it. Did that ever cross your mind?”
“The police searched the car. They questioned the previous owner. But I think Detective Basso had ruled out Scott’s involvement after hearing your side of the night’s events. You’d been shot earlier, before you went missing, and while Detective Basso originally thought Scott was the shooter, you told him it was—”
“Shot?” I shook my head in confusion. “What do you mean shot?”
She closed her eyes briefly, exhaling. “With a gun.”
“What?” How had Vee left this out?
“At Delphic Amusement Park.” She shook her head. “I hate even thinking about it,” she whispered, her voice breaking. “I was out of town when I got the call. I didn’t make it back in time. I never saw you again, and I’ve regretted nothing in my life more. Before you disappeared, you told Detective Basso that a man named Rixon shot you in the fun house. You said Scott was there too, and Rixon also shot him. The police looked for Rixon, but it was like he vanished. Detective Basso was convinced Rixon wasn’t even the shooter’s real name.”
“Where was I shot?” I asked, my skin crawling with an unpleasant tingle. I hadn’t noticed a scar, or any indication of a wound.
“Your left shoulder.” It seemed to pain my mom just to say it. “The shot was in and out, hitting only muscle. We’re very, very lucky.”
I tugged my collar down over my shoulder. Sure enough, I could see scar tissue where the skin had healed.
“The police spent weeks looking for Rixon. They read your diary, but you’d ripped out several pages, and they didn’t find his name in the rest of it. They asked Vee, but she denied ever having heard his name. He wasn’t in the records at school. There was no record of him at the DMV—”
“I ripped out pages in my diary?” I cut in. It didn’t sound like me at all. Why would I do such a thing?
; “Do you remember where you put the pages? Or what they said?”
I shook my head absently. What had I gone to such great lengths to hide?
Mom made a deflated sound. “Rixon was a ghost, Nora. And wherever he went, he took all the answers with him.”
“I can’t accept that,” I said. “What about Scott? What did he say when Detective Basso questioned him?”
“Detective Basso put all his energy into hunting down Rixon. I don’t think he ever spoke to Scott. The last time I talked to Lynn Parnell, Scott had moved on. I think he’s in New Hampshire now, selling pest control.”
“That’s it?” I said in disbelief. “Detective Basso never tried to track down Scott and hear his side?” My mind cranked at full speed. Something about Scott wasn’t sitting right. According to my mom’s account, I told the police he’d been shot by Rixon too. He was the only other witness that Rixon existed. How did that fit with the donated Volkswagen? It seemed to me that at least one crucial piece of information was missing.
“I’m sure he had a reason for not talking to Scott.”
“I’m sure he did too,” I said cynically. “Like maybe he’s incompetent?”
“If you’d give Detective Basso a chance, you’d see he’s actually very sharp. He’s very good at his job.”
I didn’t want to hear it.
“What now?” I said tersely.
“We do the only thing we can. Do our best to move on.”
For one moment, I pushed aside my doubts of Scott Parnell. There was still so much to deal with. How many other hundreds of things was I in the dark on? Was this what I had in store? Days upon days of humiliation as I relearned my life? I could already envision what would be waiting for me inside the walls of school. Discreet looks of pity. The awkward averting of eyes. The shuffling of feet and drawn-out silences. The safe option of shying away from me altogether.
I felt indignation boil up inside me. I didn’t want to be a spectacle. I didn’t want to be the object of rabid speculation. What kinds of shameful theories involving my abduction had already spread? What did people think about me now?
“If you see Scott, be sure to point him out so I can thank him for the car,” I said bitterly. “Right after I ask him why he gave it to me in the first place. Maybe you and Detective Basso are convinced he’s innocent, but too many things about his story aren’t adding up.”
“Nora—”
I thrust my hand out. “Can I have the key?”
After a moment’s pause, she unhooked a key from her own key chain and laid it in my palm. “Be careful.”
“Oh, not to worry. The only thing I’m in danger of is making a fool of myself. Know of any other people I might smack into today and not recognize? Fortunately, I remember the way to school. And would you look at that,” I said, tugging open the car door and dropping inside. “The Volkswagen is a five-speed. Good thing I learned how to drive five-speed pre-amnesia.”
“I know now isn’t the best time, but we’ve been invited to dinner tonight.”
I met her eyes coldly. “Have we.”
“Hank would like to take us to Coopersmith’s. To celebrate your return.”
“How thoughtful of him,” I said, ramming the key into the ignition and revving the engine. By the noisy sputtering, I assumed the car hadn’t budged since the day I’d vanished.
“He’s trying,” she called above the whine of the engine. “He’s trying really hard to make this work.”
I had a snide retort on the tip of my tongue, but decided to go for more impact. I’d worry about the repercussions later. “What about you? Are you trying to make it work? Because I’ll be up front. If he stays, I go. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to figure out how to live my life again.”
CHAPTER
6
AT THE HIGH SCHOOL, I FOUND A PARKING SPACE at the back of the student lot and hiked across the lawn to a side entrance. I was running late, thanks to the fight with my mom. After peeling away from the farmhouse, I’d had to pull to the side of the road for fifteen minutes just to calm down. Dating Hank Millar. Was she sadistic? Out to ruin my life? Both?
One glance at my mom’s pilfered BlackBerry proved I’d missed all but the tail end of first period. The dismissal bell would ring in ten minutes.
Intending to leave a message, I dialed Vee’s cell.
“Hellooo. That you, angel?” she promptly answered in her best temptress’s voice. She was trying to be funny, but I nearly tripped.
Angel.
The mere sound of the word caused heat to lick up my skin. Once again, the color black raced furiously around me like a hot ribbon, but this time there was more. A physical touch so real I stopped in my tracks. I felt an enticing brush along my cheekbone, as if an invisible hand caressed me, followed by a soft, utterly seductive pressure against my lips….
You’re mine, Angel. And I’m yours. Nothing can change it.
“This is crazy,” I muttered out loud. Seeing the color black was one thing, but making out with it was taking it to a whole ’nother level. I had to stop haunting myself this way. If I kept it up any longer, I was genuinely going to doubt my sanity.
“Come again?” Vee said.
“Uh, parking,” I covered up quickly. “All the good spots are taken.”
“Guess who has PE first hour? This is so unfair. I start the day off perspiring like an elephant in heat. Don’t the people who make up our schedules understand body odor? Don’t they understand frizzy hair?”
“Why didn’t you tell me about Scott Parnell?” I asked evenly. We’d start there and work our way forward.
Vee’s silence hung sharp between us, only confirming my suspicions: She hadn’t given me the whole story. Intentionally.
“Oh, yeah, Scott,” she faltered at last. “About that.”
“The night I disappeared, he dropped an old Volkswagen off at my house. That detail slipped your mind last night, did it? Or maybe you didn’t think it qualified as interesting or suspicious? You’re the last person I would have expected to give me a watered-down version of what led to my kidnapping, Vee.”
I heard her chewing her lip. “I might have omitted a few things.”
“Like the fact that I was shot?”
“I didn’t want to hurt you,” she said in a rush. “What you went through was traumatic. More than traumatic. A million times worse. What kind of friend am I if I just heap it on higher?”
“And?”
“Okay, okay. I heard Scott gave you the car. Probably to apologize for being a chauvinistic pig.”
“Explain.”
“Remember in middle school how our moms always taught us that if a boy teases you, it means he likes you? Well, when it came to relationships, Scott never outgrew seventh grade.”
“He liked me.” I sounded doubtful. I didn’t think she’d lie to me again, not when I’d just confronted her, but clearly my mom had gotten to her first and brainwashed her into thinking I was too fragile for the truth. This sounded like a beat-around-the-bush answer if I’d ever heard one.
“Enough to buy you a car, yeah.”
“Did I have any contact with Scott the week before I was kidnapped?”
“The night before you disappeared, you snooped around in his bedroom. But you didn’t find anything more interesting than a wilted marijuana plant.”
Finally we were getting somewhere. “What was I looking for?”
“I never asked. You told me Scott was a whack job. That was all the evidence I needed to help you bust in.”
I didn’t doubt it. Vee never needed a reason to do something stupid. Sad thing was, most of the time I didn’t either.
“That’s all I know,” Vee insisted. “I swear it, up and down.”
“Don’t hold out on me again.”
“Does this mean you forgive me?”
I was irritated, but much to my dismay, I could see Vee’s point in wanting to protect me. It’s what best friends do, I reasoned. Under other circumstances, I might even
have admired her for it. And in her shoes, I probably would have been tempted to do the same. “We’re square.”
Inside the main office, I expected to have to talk myself out of a tardy slip, so I was surprised when the secretary saw me approaching and, after completing a double take, said, “Oh! Nora. How are you?”
Ignoring the buttery sympathy in her tone, I said, “I’m here to pick up my class schedule.”
“Oh. Oh, my. So soon? Nobody expects you to jump right back into things, you know, hon. Some of the staff and I were just talking this morning about how we thought you should take a couple of weeks to—” She struggled for an acceptable word, since there was no right word for what I had ahead of me. Recover? Adapt? Hardly. “Acclimate.” She was practically flashing a neon sign that read, What a pity! Poor girl! I’d better use my kid gloves with this one.
I propped an elbow on the counter and leaned close. “I’m ready to be back. And that’s what matters, right?” Because I was already in a bad mood, I tacked on, “I’m so glad this school has taught me not to value any other opinion but my own.”
She opened her mouth, closed it. Then she went to work paging through several manila folders on her desk. “Let me see, I know I’ve got you in here somewhere… . Ah! Here we are.” She pulled a sheet of paper from one of the folders and passed it over to me. “Everything look okay?”
I scanned my schedule. AP U.S. history, honors English, health, journalism, anatomy and physiology, orchestra, and trig. Clearly I’d had a death wish for my future self when I’d registered for classes last year.
“Looks good,” I said, throwing my backpack over my shoulder and pushing through the office door.
The Complete Hush, Hush Saga Page 64
