VIOLET EYES

by Nicole Luiken

  I got my first inkling that things might not be so simple the next evening at Wendy’s house.

  Her pregnant stepmother was having a baby shower, and Wendy claimed she would go nuts alone listening to a bunch of women ooh and ahh over fuzzy sleepwear with fuzzy feet. “And Raven will be so careful not to tear the wrapping paper; she’ll fold it all up to reuse it. What’s she going to use it for, I ask you? None of her friends are pregnant; they’ve all had their kids.” Resentment shaded Wendy’s voice as I followed her down into the basement den.

  Wendy didn’t get along with either her stepmother or her father.

  Witness our first meeting back in January, when I’d persuaded the entire social studies class to lie about their names to our new teacher. “Then tomorrow answer to your real name, and the next day switch again. By Friday we should have him totally confused, all right?”

  “One small problem,” Wendy had said, looking cool and tough in a black long-sleeved shirt and acid-wash jeans, her long brown hair stiff with hairspray. “Mr. Lindstrom knows me, so I’ll have to go by my real name.”

  I didn’t find out Mr. Lindstrom was her father until two days later, and she never told him about our joke. Her dad still sometimes called me Harriet.

  I expected Wendy to ask me why I’d run off the day before, but she only referred to it obliquely. “You should have stayed longer yesterday. We had a marshmallow cook-off to see who could get the best golden tan. Then we did polka dots and stripes. We had a blast.”

  My stomach tightened. “Whose idea was that?” As if I couldn’t guess.

  “Mike’s. He’s cool. Carl asked him to play volleyball with us on Saturday. We’re always short a player.” Wendy looked at me sideways, but I didn’t object.

  Inside, my heart sank. In one short evening he’d managed to get in tight with all my friends.

  I changed the subject, and we talked about movies and clothes while listening to rock music. Loud rock music. Def Leppard and Bon Jovi. Whitesnake.

  “This is the only way to listen to music,” Wendy said. “So loud you can feel it vibrate in your chest.”

  Just before eight, when the guests were scheduled to arrive, Mr. Lindstrom came downstairs and asked Wendy to turn the music down.

  “What?” Wendy pretended not to hear.

  “Turn it down!”

  She turned it down one notch.

  He winced. “More.”

  She turned it down two more notches. “How’s that?”

  “All right,” he said grudgingly, and started back up the stairs.

  “Wouldn’t want to disturb the unborn child,” Wendy said softly.

  He paused at the top, a slim, neatly dressed man with thinning hair. He looked oddly helpless. “I don’t understand how you can listen to this stuff. You used to love classical music. How come you never play the piano anymore?”

  “I have a tin ear,” Wendy said.

  “You were so good at it.”

  “Sometimes we outgrow things,” she said between clenched teeth.

  He just shook his head and left.

  Wendy hugged her elbows, staring straight ahead. “He doesn’t listen. I’ve told him a hundred times I’ll never play the piano again.”

  For the first time, I noticed the piano in the corner of the room. Wendy had done her best to bury it under stacks of paper and some clothes.

  I risked a question. “Were you a child prodigy or something?”

  “You’d think so, but no. I just took some piano lessons as a kid.” Wendy clearly didn’t want to talk about it. “Which movie do you want to watch first? Police Academy 3 or Top Gun?” She held up the two tapes.

  I voted for Top Gun even though we’d already seen it once before, and we drooled over Tom Cruise. Wendy had provisioned the den with soda pop and chips, so we didn’t poke our heads upstairs all evening.

  Raven called down for us to go to sleep at one o’clock. We broke out the sleeping bags but continued to talk for an hour.

  Just before we dropped off to sleep, Wendy mentioned Mike again. “He was asking about you. Did you know him Before?” She laughed. “Or should I say After? Get it?”

  I didn’t get it, and my heart began to pound against my rib cage. “What do you mean?”

  But Wendy was through being indiscreet. She looked at me in admiration. “You never slip, do you? I catch myself half a dozen times a day about to say the wrong thing, but you never slip. It’s disgusting. I’d better go to sleep before I cost Dad a thousand bucks. Good night.” She turned over and slid straight into dreamland.

  I lay awake half the night, staring at the ceiling, trying to figure out what she had meant. I felt chilled, as if I had touched the tip of an iceberg but had not yet begun to comprehend the vast, dim shape below.

  CHAPTER 2

  I DREAMED OF CHOKING SMOKE and twisting orange flames. Flames that roared, taller than my head, taller than the ceiling. I was small, crawling on hands and knees like a mouse chased by a cat, searching for a bolt hole. But the fire cut me off, climbing the curtains and ringing the window. Burning timbers fell from the ceiling, and I screamed, trapped. As the ferocious heat of the blaze began to singe my hair, I squeezed my eyes shut.

  Fire painted the inside of my eyelids—

  I jerked awake and found myself still in Wendy’s basement. No smoke, no fire, just a fluorescent light overhead that all but blinded me. I rolled over and tried not to shake with relief. It was just a dream. An old dream, at that. An old memory.

  “It’s eight o’clock,” Raven said. She was standing at the top of the stairs. Heartlessly, she turned on the rest of the lights. She was a tiny, exotic-looking woman with dark hair and high cheekbones. Wendy had once told me she had the blood of Indian princesses in her veins. I could almost believe it. Raven had an inborn serenity that made me think of royalty.

  When Wendy pulled a pillow over her head and grumbled that it was too early to get up, Raven calmly reminded her that Carl was coming to pick her up at eight-thirty.

  Wendy gave a shriek worthy of a scalded cat and leaped out of bed. “I haven’t even taken a shower yet.”

  Raven looked amused. “Don’t worry. I told him to give you an hour.”

  “You told him?” Wendy raised an eyebrow in disbelief. “You actually spoke to him on the phone?”

  For reasons that baffled me, Wendy’s parents didn’t approve of Carl.

  “Yes,” Raven said evenly.

  Wendy nodded. “Of course. If you hadn’t told him, he would be sitting in your driveway for half an hour.” She headed for the bathroom, and Raven went away.

  We each took a shower, then shared the tiny bathroom to do our hair and makeup. It took me ten minutes to blow-dry my hair and put on a touch of eye shadow and blush.

  Wendy carefully outlined her left eye with black eyeliner and mock-glared at me. “How can you be done already? I still look like I’ve been hit by a tornado.”

  Wendy had twice as much hair to style as I did, and her recent perm had left her with a tangled mess of corkscrew curls, but I struck a pose and said, “It’s because I’m perfect and you’re not.”

  She laughed. “Well, that’s true. We mortals can’t be expected to compete with goddesses like you.”

  Her remark disturbed me. “I’m hardly a goddess.”

  “Next thing to it. Blond hair, violet eyes, skinny. You’ve got all the boys panting after you.”

  “Not all of them.”

  “Name one.”

  “Carl.” His loyalty to Wendy was legendary.

  “That’s different,” Wendy said, without explaining why. “Name another one.”

  “Sean, then,” I named my ex-boyfriend. We had had a particularly messy breakup a month ago.

  “Ha. Sean had the biggest crush on you of the lot. Why do you think he acted like such a jerk when you two stopped dating?”

  I hadn’t thought of it quite that way. “Jimmy.” Everyone knew he liked Maryanne.

  “Only because you’ve
never paid any attention to him. He was sweet on you back in January. If you smiled he’d switch loyalties in a minute.”

  “You’re exaggerating,” I said, a little more sharply than I’d intended.

  She shrugged. “Not really. You could be a movie star if you wanted to. You naturally attract people. Even Mike. You snubbed him horribly yesterday, and he was still asking about you.”

  I did not want to hear about Mike. “I’m hungry. Are you almost done?”

  Wendy gave her stiffened bangs one more backcomb, then nodded. “Let’s go.”

  If I’d been voting on the most perfect person, I would have voted for Raven. My mother would have let us fend for ourselves with toast and cereal. On a special occasion she might have made bacon and scrambled eggs. Raven had set out cloth napkins and cutlery that matched. Golden waffles steamed on a china plate, and fresh fruit brightened a crystal bowl. The sun shone in through the kitchen window, and all the white counters and cupboards gleamed.

  Wendy’s jaw set. “I told you not to go to all this trouble.”

  “I enjoyed it,” Raven said mildly. “Besides it wasn’t all for you. Your father and I already ate. He had a golf game.” School would begin next week, and Mr. Lindstrom would soon have to give up his early morning games.

  I dug in. The food tasted delicious, and I said so. Raven nodded serenely from her rocking chair in the corner of the living room. The turquoise baby blanket she was crocheting frothed over her lap.

  “What are you going to do today?” Wendy scowled suspiciously.

  “I thought I’d do the laundry,” Raven said, unruffled.

  “I’ll go get my hamper.” Wendy stomped downstairs.

  Raven stared after her a moment, yarn wrapped around her fingers. “I don’t understand that girl. She’s furious at her father about the baby, but ever since she found out I’m pregnant she won’t let me do any hard work. She does all the vacuuming, all the hauling things up and down stairs, and all without my saying a word. I turn around and it’s done. Every time I sit down to supper she’s poured me a glass of milk, and when I was having morning sickness she did all the shopping and cooking. Yet she isn’t any friendlier. We aren’t any closer.” She sighed.

  “How long have you and Mr. Lindstrom been married?” I called Raven by her first name, but because he was my teacher I had trouble thinking of Mr. Lindstrom as Don.

  “Six years, but Wendy’s been living with us only for the last four.”

  I wanted to ask where Wendy had lived before that—I’d never heard her so much as mention her real mother—but just then she came back up the stairs, hauling a basket of dirty clothes. She vanished into the laundry room, and we heard the sound of a load being put in the washer. I was starting to see what Raven meant.

  The doorbell rang, and Wendy ran to get it. “That’ll be Carl.”

  “Of course.” Raven looked pointedly at the clock. It was exactly nine o’clock. Carl was never early or late, always on time.

  I got up to follow Wendy, but Raven stopped me. “You seem like a nice girl, Angel.” She pronounced my name with an odd accent. “Wendy’s father and I are concerned about her … attachment to the boy.”

  “Boy?” I forced her to say the name.

  “Carl. We would appreciate your help.” She didn’t say it directly, but she wanted to break them up.

  The half-liking I had been feeling for her slithered down the drain. I could have told her the same thing I had told Mr. Lindstrom, that Carl was the best thing that had ever happened to his daughter and that I was a far more dangerous companion to her—Carl would never have pulled the stunt I had on the bridge. Instead, I just said, “I like Carl,” and left it at that.

  “If you truly like him, you will help me. Wendy is no more good for him than he is good for her. She’s only dating him to rub it in her father’s face. The situation is dangerous.” Ravens voice was low and serious.

  Dangerous?

  “No.” I went down the hall and found Wendy waiting for me at the door. She was tying her shoes, and I couldn’t see her expression, but I felt a slam of fear. Had she heard me talking to Raven?

  Wendy’s relationship with her parents was fragile enough as it was—I didn’t want to damage it unduly—but at the same time, if Wendy had heard, I couldn’t risk not telling her.

  It was a bitter thing, but even if I hadn’t liked Wendy—and I did like her, a lot: her cynical sense of humor, her wildness, her absolute loyalty to her friends—we would still have been best friends. Because Wendy was sometimes indiscreet. Her tongue slipped, and I got hints of puzzles within puzzles as I had last night. I needed her information, so while we were walking to Carl’s pickup truck I said, “Well, that was interesting. Your stepmother just tried to enlist me to her cause.”

  Wendy’s shoulders relaxed infinitesimally inside her red windbreaker. She had heard. “Oh, yeah? What did you tell her?”

  “That Carl was nice.”

  “He is,” Wendy said softly. We’d reached the pickup. “Don’t tell him, okay?”

  I mimed zipping my lips together, something that always cracked Wendy up. They must not have done that at her elementary school.

  Laughing, Wendy climbed into the pickup truck and scooted over close to Carl. She gave him a slow kiss on the lips.

  He didn’t smile—he did so rarely—but his gaze was tender, and his hand covered hers for a moment before he shifted the truck into reverse and backed down the driveway. His movements held a calm deliberation that I found soothing. Carl could never be accused of being chatty, but when he did say something it was usually worth listening to. His observations were concise and to the point. I often thought he was Wendy’s rock, her anchor in the wild sea of her recklessness.

  Mr. Lindstrom referred to Carl as “that damn robot.” If someone talked to me like that I wouldn’t be too eager to pin my heart on my sleeve either.

  When Carl and Wendy had first started dating five months ago, a buzz had gone through the entire school. Maryanne had whispered the news to me as if it were a scandal. I hadn’t understood it then, and I didn’t understand it now. The rank prejudice smelled of racism, but Carl was blond and blue-eyed with lighter skin than Wendy, and nobody had so much as blinked when Sean and I dated, and his parents had immigrated from Jamaica.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to come, Angel?” Carl asked me as he slowed to a stop in front of my house. Raven probably thought we were all going to the movies together, but I wasn’t dating anyone at the moment and would have felt like the odd man out.

  “Positive. All I want to do today is laze around by the pool and improve my tan.” A small lie. I fully intended to swim some lengths first.

  “All right,” Carl said, but there was a tiny crease in his forehead—the equivalent of a frown from anyone else. I remembered that he, too, had seen my odd reaction to Michael Vallant, and I was touched by his concern.

  “See you Saturday,” I said cheerfully, before hopping out of the pickup. Saturday was the second-last day of summer vacation, and our group had a big party planned.

  Inside the house, I found Mom in the living room, with her blond hair tied back in a bright yellow scarf and newspapers all over the floor. She was taking a class in watercolors and was trying her hand at painting.

  I studied the greenish blue blobs on the easel. They were either turtles in an ocean or green spaceships in a speckled sky.

  “What do you think?” Mom asked cheerfully. “Should Picasso be shaking in his shoes?”

  “I don’t think Picasso did watercolors,” I said. Our eyes met, and we snickered together.

  “Oh, well,” Mom said, “I’m having fun. Do you have any plans for today?”

  “I thought I’d head over to the pool this afternoon.”

  “Can you pick up some green onions for supper? We’re having company.”

  “No problem.”

  The pool was full of little kids splashing around when I arrived, so I decided to save the laps for later
and sprawled out on one of the lounge chairs. I let the sun soak into my skin and tried, unsuccessfully, not to think about Michael Vallant.

  I had just gotten relaxed when a shadow fell over me.

  “Would you mind moving? You’re blocking the sun.” I didn’t look up.

  “Why go to the pool if you’re not going to swim?”

  I recognized the voice. Fortunately, my sunglasses hid my reaction to Mike’s appearance. “To tan. The sun reflects off the water, and you tan faster,” I explained slowly as if to an idiot. I flipped over onto my side, ignoring him.

  He didn’t like that. Probably not very many girls had ever ignored him.

  “So what you’re saying is that the closer you get to the water the better your tan?” he asked.

  “Give the man a prize.”

  Quick as a cat, he scooped me up in his arms. I’m five feet six, not exactly petite, and I’d never been carried by a guy before. The shock of it blunted my reactions for a precious second.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Just trying to be helpful,” he said blandly and kept walking.

  “Let me go!” I hit his chest with the 00eel of my hand.

  “Okay.”

  At the last second I realized he was holding me over the water, and I grabbed furiously, trying to get a lock on his wrist so I could drag him in with me. He slipped free, but I twisted while falling and grazed my head painfully on the side of the pool.

  I let myself slip down into the water, limp, trailing bubbles, then slowly bob back up in a perfect dead man’s float. I was on the swimming team and could hold my breath for close to two minutes.

  I felt a splash beside me, and Mike grasped me under the arms and towed me back to the edge of the pool in a perfect lifeguard’s hold.

  While he was hauling me out, I stole two shallow breaths, but stayed perfectly limp. He positioned me on my back on the tile, but instead of calling the lifeguard he tipped my head back. Air passageway open. Then he pinched my nose closed and began performing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.