by Nicole Baart
Meg caught the little box in one hand but dropped it to the floor the moment it made contact with her palm. “I don’t smoke girly cigarettes.”
Jess tried to hide a smile, but Dylan grinned outright, only bothering to bring a concealing fist to his mouth when Meg glared at him.
“What?” Dylan said defensively when she didn’t avert the icy insistence of her gaze.
“Don’t laugh at me.” She made each word hard and cold, a tiny pebble of anger that she aimed with lethal accuracy.
“I’m not . . .” but Dylan trailed off, incapable of defending himself.
“Oh, yes you are.”
Jess split the taut moment by slipping his guitar strap over his head and crossing the cement floor to take Meg by the arm. One hand held his guitar by the neck, and the other hand cupped Meg’s elbow. “Nobody’s laughing at you,” he said, steering her toward the center of the room. “You’re . . .” he fumbled, “you’re perfect, Meg. Always have been, always will be. There’s a reason Dylan prefers your company to ours.”
There was something left unsaid in the room, and Meg could feel the small bubble of shared tension tight against her chest. But just as quickly as she perceived it, the feeling dissipated, and she was left standing in the middle of the group with empty hands and a sour look on her face.
All at once she realized that the boys stood over her, taller, bigger, and older, and a prickle of unease raced across the surface of her skin. Out of habit, she looked to Dylan and was happy to see that he was already coming off the stepladder, swinging his leg down in a theatrical dismount that made it seem as if he straddled a horse instead of a paint-splattered tower of aluminum. To Meg, it seemed as if he was coming to her rescue.
“Don’t tease her,” Dylan said, reaching for Meg’s other arm and holding on tight. “She bites. I know from experience.”
The friction Meg felt burst and scattered, and within a few seconds she became aware that the guitarist was strumming the first three chords of “Free Fallin’.”
“Can you play anything other than Tom Petty?” Jess bellowed, letting go of Meg so he could cuff the boy on the side of the head. But though his attention seemed immediately diverted, Meg felt the slow release of his fingers and understood in a moment of unanticipated clarity that he was reluctant to let go.
“You’re pretty young for this crowd.” Dylan’s hot breath tickled Meg’s ear as he led her to the corner where his amp crouched in wait. He didn’t push her down, but she sank anyway, and sat looking up at Dylan with an uneven fringe of bangs falling in her eyes.
“Jess invited me,” she said.
He glanced over at the older boy and chewed his bottom lip in an uncharacteristic display of . . . concern? worry? thoughtfulness? Meg couldn’t quite tell.
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” she spat. “He thought you wanted me around, I guess.”
Dylan turned his gaze toward her and didn’t say anything for a moment. “I do want you around,” he managed eventually, but Meg could tell that he didn’t mean it. Or, at least, he didn’t mean it completely. She couldn’t read his expression, but he stayed close to her, almost hovering, his stance bordering on protective.
“What happened?” Meg asked, surprising herself. The room was filling with noise again and she hoped that Dylan hadn’t heard her, but he squatted down and began to fiddle with the dials on the amp where she sat. She shifted her legs to the side.
“What do you mean?” Dylan sounded nonchalant.
“Nothing.”
“You asked what happened. With Jess?”
With us, Meg wanted to say, but she held her tongue and motioned instead to the bass that he had propped against the stepladder.
“Oh,” the word seemed laced with disappointment. “It was my brother’s. It cracked.”
“Obviously.”
“The strap peg pulled out and he dropped it on the kitchen floor,” Dylan clarified. “He was never very good at playing it anyway.”
“Are you?”
“No.”
“Figure this will go anywhere?” Meg was asking about the band, but for some reason the question came out unnaturally high.
Dylan didn’t seem to notice. “Of course not. It’s just something to do.” Then, out of the blue he said, “Do you remember when we met?”
“Last year. Fourth of July. Behind the raspberry bushes.” Meg could still smell the candied-tartness of the berries and the sharp, warm tang of her own summer sweat. It was a sweet and sudden memory. She flushed.
Dylan completed the scene for her. “We were playing Ghost in the Graveyard.” He had abandoned the dials and now crouched with his forearms on his legs, meeting Meg’s eyes with a look so serious he demanded her full attention.
“We call it Bloody Murder,” she said slowly. “What about it?”
“Remember how you were the best player? How you always knew where everyone was?”
Meg’s brow darkened in warning. “Don’t you dare make fun of me—”
“I’m not,” he insisted. “You were the best player. You did always know where everyone was. And I think it means you understand people.”
She grunted.
“Come on. You knew that Sarah avoided the shadows because she was afraid of the dark, and that some kids wouldn’t go near the trees or back by the fence where your dad cleans his pheasants after hunting.”
She inched her knees imperceptibly closer to his.
“You’re observant,” Dylan admitted. “I don’t think you have some sixth sense or anything, I just think that you have a good head on your shoulders and an ability to see things in people that others are too preoccupied to notice.”
When a smile splintered the granite of her gaze, he smiled back.
“I’m right, aren’t I?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Can’t say I’ve ever thought about it.”
“Okay, I’ll tell you then: I’m right.”
“Fine. So what?”
The smile faded from Dylan’s mouth. “Do you still have it?”
“What?”
“Your good sense? Your ability to see things in people that others can’t?”
Meg shrugged. “I don’t know. Does it matter?”
“It might.” Dylan looked over his shoulder, then stood up quickly, placing his hand on the amp beside Meg and brushing past her cheek as he moved. “Be careful around Jess,” he whispered.
When Dylan strode off across the garage, Meg was left to ponder if she had heard him correctly. Maybe he had said: Be careful with Jess? Or: Be careful about Jess? But try as she might to ascertain why Dylan would say such an incomprehensible thing, by the time practice was officially over, nearly an hour later, she was no closer to determining his intent than she had been in the split second after he gave his cryptic warning.
It was a senseless caution, an utterly useless admonition, when Meg had known Jess practically her entire life. Jess was a year younger than Bennett, and just as much a brother to her as her own snarling excuse for a sibling. In fact, Jess was probably more of a brother to her. After all, before he outgrew such childish nonsense, he had spent many long evenings with her playing Kick the Can, Bloody Murder, and Capture the Flag. He had taught her to balance, align her elbow beneath the ball, focus on the rim, and follow through for the perfect shot. Every once in a while, he even went so far as to throw a bag of microwave popcorn in for her and Sarah when she was spending the night. And, of course, there was the night he escorted Meg and Sarah to the secret cast party. Why did she need to be careful around Jess?
Meg decided to corner Dylan before he left and demand to know why he would say something so ridiculous. The cloak-and-dagger menace of his dark advice scared her a little—she didn’t mean to draw parallels between her favorite childhood game and her trusted neighbor, but for the first time, the name Bloody Murder seemed unnecessarily gory, even obscene.
But she never got the chance to press Dylan for more information.
When everyone started packing up, Jess unplugged his acoustic guitar and went to sit on a lawn chair that he snagged from a nail in the garage wall. With the chaotic shriek of instruments stilled, he began to pluck out a tune so lovely and soulful that Meg found herself completely transfixed. The steel strings cried a little as Jess’s fingers rose and fell in a quiet, unhurried step that reminded Meg of slow dancing. The melody was all stops and starts, back and forth, cheek-to-cheek. In the moments between notes, Meg’s heart ached with the agony of waiting.
No one else seemed to notice that Jess could play. That he could really play. It was unplugged, it wasn’t rock and roll, and Meg was convinced that what she was listening to was a language that the other boys didn’t understand and therefore didn’t hear. She felt sorry for them.
After a long while, Jess’s fingers stilled, and Meg came to so suddenly she felt a jolt of surprise. Blinking, she looked around and discovered that she was alone with Jess in the garage. He was staring at her. She remembered Dylan’s words, but she wasn’t afraid.
“I didn’t know you could play like that,” she said when the silence in the room demanded that she break it.
Jess ducked his head to hide the smile that bloomed there. “It’s not that hard,” he demurred. “I could teach you.”
Meg laughed. “No thanks. I’d somehow manage to get my fingers twisted in the strings and end up losing a few tips. I hear you don’t need them, but I kinda like them all the same.” She tapped her fingertips together in proof of her affection for them.
Drumming his own fingers on the wooden body of his guitar, Jess created a cascade like falling water drops. “Understandable,” he said. Then he gently lowered the guitar to the floor of the garage and took a few hesitant steps toward Meg.
She didn’t even realize that she was backing up until her bare calves skimmed the edge of a Rubbermaid storage box. It wasn’t fear that made her retreat, but there was something in his approach, something in the intent of his eyes on hers that she couldn’t begin to discern.
“I could walk you home,” Jess offered.
That caught Meg off guard. “I live across the street.”
“I know,” he said quickly, shaking his head a little as if he hadn’t really meant it at all. “I just . . .”
And in a rush of understanding, Meg knew. She was barely fifteen years old, inexperienced and naive in the ways of love, but looking at Jess’s face was like peering into a mirror. The way she felt for Dylan was the way Jess Langbroek felt for her. It was all she could do to breathe around the furious storm of that thought. She wanted to say, You’re almost eighteen. But she could tell that as far as he was concerned, that small truth was irrelevant.
Jess must have interpreted her silence as an invitation because he edged close enough for Meg to see the sun-washed tips of his russet hair. His smile was shy when he reached for her hand, but timidity didn’t stop him from holding her fingers lightly and lifting them as if to study each curve and line.
“I could walk you home,” he said again.
Meg tipped her head because she couldn’t bring herself to look at him anymore. On the floor their toes were almost touching; Jess’s sandals looked enormous and impossibly grown-up next to the dirty gray canvas of her tattered sneakers. She wanted to cover the dingy arc of her tennis shoes, to take her fingers back from his grip, to hide.
But Jess wanted to find her. Before she could contemplate moving, she felt the touch of his forehead against hers. It was light, he barely brushed the surface of her skin, but it made her lift her face almost imperceptibly. When she did, he was there, his mouth against hers giving the faintest impression of warmth and nothing more. It was so soft, so subtle, it was almost as if he hadn’t kissed her at all.
Later, Meg would wonder why she did it. Why she encouraged him when, before the moment his lips touched hers, it had never once occurred to her to think of Jess as anything other than her neighbor, her childhood friend’s older brother. But no amount of future regret could erase the fact that when Jess pulled away Meg leaned into him, finding his mouth so that she could feel, really feel, what it was like to be kissed.
It was a spinning, tumbling, excruciatingly changing experience. It was like flying and falling all at once. It was gentle and perfect and sweet. She never wanted it to end and she couldn’t wait for it to stop.
And it wasn’t until she pulled away that Meg realized she had imagined it was Dylan she kissed.
9
LUCAS
Jenna didn’t come home that night.
Or, if she did, Lucas wasn’t aware of it. He slid between the cold sheets with a sickening sense of remorse, a knot of regret in his stomach that suspended him between relief at her absence and longing to hold her close, to know that his act of betrayal hadn’t put the final nail in the coffin of their marriage. But she couldn’t know, could she? Her computer was right where she had left it, and Lucas had shredded the printed sheets before he left his office. Somehow, knowing that he would get away with it didn’t make him feel any better.
Sleep proved elusive. As he tossed and turned, he continued to slip over the invisible divide in the middle of their mattress where he was supposed to meet the soft resistance of Jenna’s prostrate form, and he missed her even more than he had the first night that she was gone from his bed.
Gone. It was a hollow, echoless word that sank into the marrow of his bones with a heavy finality that made him feel achingly alone. She’ll come back, he told himself. She’s spending the night at Safe House. But the reminder, no matter how calm and logical, did not offer him any comfort.
Lucas stirred early in the morning, surprised that he had slept at all, and sat up straight in bed as if he had failed to keep vigil. Rubbing his face with his hands, he glanced into the hallway and found evidence of her early-morning return. Her clothes were abandoned in a tangled pile just outside the bathroom door, and the carpet was sprinkled with damp where she had walked to the attic stairs after her shower. He hadn’t heard her?
Still shrugging off the final webs of a grasping sleep, Lucas made his way to the bathroom on unsteady legs. Though he was in a hurry, he went out of his way to step on the dark spots scattered across the floor where Jenna’s feet had been. It was a ritual of sorts, a habit that Lucas had started weeks ago and couldn’t shake no matter how ridiculous he felt as he touched his toes to the places where Jenna had walked. Sometimes, brushing against the water that had slid from her body was his only contact with her in a day that seemed longer for her absence.
He showered quickly and dressed without giving a moment’s thought to the shirt and pants that he yanked off their respective hangers. Years of living with Jenna had taught him that if he hoped to see her at all during the week, his best bet was a few minutes over coffee before she left for work. The gurgle and hiss of the coffeemaker dripping a final cup into the pot whispered up the stairs, and Lucas knew that if he didn’t get a move on, she’d leave without saying good-bye.
Taking the steps two at a time, he launched himself onto the main floor of their sprawling house and trotted noisily into the kitchen. Jenna was pouring coffee into a pink breast cancer awareness travel mug, her bag already slung over her shoulder and her shoes on.
“I didn’t hear you come in last night,” Lucas said. He sounded a little too cheerful, even to his own ears.
Jenna spun to greet him, her eyes brilliant with something he hadn’t expected: joy. She was radiant, emanating a sort of tangible happiness that made Lucas want to hold her at arm’s length and study every nuance of her shining face. He was startled into laughter, but Jenna put a finger to her smiling lips and shushed him.
“What?” he asked, crossing the room to embrace her.
“Shhhh . . .” She wiggled out of his grip and took him by the hand, leading him in the direction of the living room.
“What’s going on?” Lucas whispered.
But she just shook her head.
When his cell phone vibrated at his
hip, Lucas yanked it out of the holder with his free hand and studied the screen. Had it been anyone other than Alex, he would have ignored it altogether, but Jenna saw the screen, too, and nodded briefly.
“Take it,” she whispered.
“Hey,” Lucas said into the phone, wrinkling his forehead in the direction of his still-grinning wife. “What’s up with you?” he mouthed to her.
“Lucas, we gotta talk,” Alex barked.
But Lucas was barely listening.
Jenna winked at him as they stopped just behind the sagging plaid couch that sat smack-dab in the middle of their spacious front room. She put a finger to her lips again, then pointed over the back of the couch, indicating a pile of blankets and pillows that rose and fell in a silent, steady rhythm.
“Lucas? You there?” Alex questioned, his voice small and faraway as the phone slipped a little from Lucas’s hand.
There was a woman on the couch.
She was buried beneath a heap of afghans that had been pulled all the way up to her chin. One hand had escaped the press of blankets and rested on the pillow beside her face. The white-blond sweep of her long hair half covered her cheek and the splay of her fingers with a smooth wave of soft curls. Her skin was tan, her lips still stained with yesterday’s lipstick and parted slightly as she breathed.
Lucas took a step back.
“Are you listening to me?” Alex asked, raising his voice as if the connection was bad.
“Yeah,” Lucas finally muttered.
“It’s not her.” The words came out in a rush, a sprint of excitement at sharing the news they had all waited for. “The dental records are not a match. The body isn’t Angela.”
“I know.”
“What?”
“I know,” Lucas repeated, forcing himself to speak around the numbness. His eyes flashed to his beaming wife, back to the still figure on the couch. “I know it’s not Angela. She’s in my living room.”
“What is she doing here?” Lucas demanded when Jenna dragged him back to the kitchen. He had all but hung up on Alex, insisting that the police chief keep his distance until Lucas could at least make a little sense of the situation. If Alex had his way, he would have jumped in the car in his boxers and driven to the Hudsons’ house for an on-the-spot interrogation. But Lucas was insistent, and in the end, he won. Though he seriously doubted that Angela managed to sleep through the hushed ruckus of their discovery. It unsettled him, the thought of her lying on his couch, awake and listening. “What is Angela doing here?” he repeated, his voice tripping over the syllables of her name.
