During a hectic day in drama class, when Pamela turned her back on the sweater and her purse was sitting out in the open, lip gloss and all, Candace dared me to steal them back for her. Begged me. My desk was next to Pamela’s, so it would be easiest for me to do it. They needed me. They said they’d take me shopping after school if I did it.
This was my chance. I had crooked teeth, insubordinate hair, and clothes bought from my parents’ favorite thrift store. I needed help—a mentor. Like Candace. Someone who could help me navigate my way through high school.
It was only right, too. Pamela had taken from Candace. I convinced myself I was doing the right thing.
I enter the counseling office, my stomach churning at the memory. I got caught, of course, and I’ve never lived it down. To everyone in that class, I was a thief. Whether Pamela really stole that sweater and lip gloss from Candace or not I’ll never know. Recalling the little smirk on Candace’s face when our teacher caught me, however, I have a good guess.
I sit in Mrs. Hale’s private office, looking at the middle-aged counselor with dark hair. Almost the same shade as Mama’s. I think about Vic and the money he stole from my drawer. I think about Mama, about what she did, and the possibility that I might be no better.
After that incident in seventh grade, I knew I had been a fool. Hot with shame, I had promised myself I would be different. Now I fear nothing has changed.
The full weight of guilt hits me as I sit here in the counselor’s office—a troubled student—and, like Mama and Dad hunched over the toilet, I think I might be sick.
CHAPTER 12
Cody
She’s deep in thought. Exhausted yet jumpy. Nervous yet relieved. She’s hard to read. I sit at the side table in calculus while Mortimer drones on, leaning over enough to see Julianna.
I feel a tap on my leg. Candace gestures to her notebook. A stick-figure version of Mortimer stands at the whiteboard, his back to the class of stick-figure students with their heads on their desks. Little zs float up from each sleeping student.
I chuckle. Candace bursts into laughter. Everyone looks our way, including Mortimer.
“Settle down, Candace,” he says and turns back to the board.
Julianna’s piercing blue eyes rest on me.
I straighten up. She never looks at me in class. It’s like I don’t exist.
Julianna shifts her gaze away, not in an uncomfortable, edgy sort of way. More like she’s bored. Almost annoyed.
Frustration settles in as I lean back, propping my textbook open. I look down at the boot, frustrated that I can’t remember anything about the night this happened. I hate this school, too; the daily grind and the fact that I’m dumb enough to hope tomorrow will be better than today. And obviously I’ve let yet another person down.
Something was there between us at the mall that night. I see it in the pictures. How did we come to this? Did I see the Julianna then that I see now? Tired, stretched to her limit. Maybe even in trouble.
That was a weird thought. Random.
But true?
A feeling creeps in. The shadow of a memory on the horizon. A memory blocked. Trapped. I get all tense. It begins to fade and I clench my fist, realizing how much I want to recall that night. I grasp for something I can’t remember yet feels so close.
Adrenaline courses through my veins. My heart thrusts against my rib cage. Buh boom, buh boom.
Danger.
My eyes zero in on Julianna as recollection of that feeling rushes in. It’s strong. Suffocating. Linked to Julianna? This is messed up. I feel a sudden urge to protect, an impulse I’ve only felt so strongly one other time.
Jimmy.
And now Julianna. Something must be up with the school’s AC because it’s suddenly way too hot. I close my eyes, the unrelenting beat of my heart hammering a strange feeling through me: fear. I’ve felt this before.
A shiny floor, bright lights, potted plants, a trash bin—the mall.
I walk alongside what few shoppers remain in the mall. Blending in. Hiding. I pull the brim of my hat down, glancing side to side. Searching for something, someone. Scared.
And then I see her. Long dark hair. And those eyes.
I almost take the first step toward her . . . to make sure she’s okay. She is in danger.
621039
Those numbers again.
The hazy awareness of something slipping off my lap and tumbling to the floor yanks me out of it. My textbook lies face down on the floor, pages crinkled against tile. Every eye is on me. I realize I’m sweating.
I push myself up and grab my crutches. “Hall pass?” I ask on my way out, not that I’m really asking.
“Go ahead,” Mortimer says, looking a bit taken aback. And no wonder.
I head to the bathroom, not sure where else to go, and run straight into Vic.
“Whoa,” he says, kind of jittery. “Hey, man.”
He sniffs and wipes his nose, a trace of something red smearing the back of his hand. Blood. This is the first time I’ve seen Vic at school in the past week and I clam up. He’s blinking a lot, like the lights are too bright for him. And he smells, or is it the bathroom?
“Hey, Vic.”
“Been a while, man,” Vic says. “What you been up to? I see you’re back on your feet.” He moves to the door, giving me little chance to reply. He’s not himself, but then again, would I know? We hardly know each other. This thought reinforces the impulse to guard my trust.
“Hey, I can’t remember—which restaurant did you say you dropped me off at that one night?” I ask anyway.
Vic rubs his chin. “McDonald’s. Something like that. I can’t remember,” he says and swings open the door. “I gotta get back yo.”
I lean on my crutch. “Maybe we can catch up sometime.”
So many questions I should have asked him about that night.
“Yeah, sure, man,” Vic says. “Whatever. See ya.”
I stand in the bathroom entrance after he’s gone. Wendy’s. At the hospital Vic told me he’d dropped me off at Wendy’s, not McDonald’s. He very well could have forgotten. And it’s obvious Vic doesn’t have the answers I need. He dropped me off and left, leaving only one person I know of who can tell me what I was doing that night.
Julianna.
Her family is nothing but trouble. Vic is messed up. I remember what Dad told me in the hospital, about how Vic had a drug problem. Is he still using? No. He’s Arizona’s Division 1 basketball star. Ranked second in the state. There’s no way he’d jeopardize those scholarships.
Obviously he wants nothing to do with me anymore, and neither does Julianna. Not that I want much to do with them. But the irritation of not being able to remember something that feels so important is turning me into a nut job. I went out for fast food with Vic, ended up in a photo booth with Julianna instead, and then got hit by a car?
621039
The recollection of those numbers tied to that random flashback in math is proof: they do mean something.
I’m hobbling along toward my locker between classes when I see her. She stands on tiptoe, searching her locker. Her shirt hugs her slender waist and every other curve. She’s Mentos in Coke for sure—an explosion of spunk and nerve waiting to happen—but she sure is beautiful. And yet she hides in the shadows. I’ve watched her long enough to know that.
She hasn’t noticed me yet, so I quickly form a plan and move forward before I think better of it. I’m leaning against the locker two down from hers when she sees me and jolts back.
The smallest hint of humor in her eyes disappears as fast as it appeared. Like she was about to smile but composed herself at the last second. Ice princess again.
“I think we got off on the wrong foot,” I say, underscoring the words with a smile. My crutch supports me as I offer my hand.
Her gaze drops and she regards my hand like something that could bite if she gets too close. This is not going well.
“Hi,” I say, pressing on anyway. “I’m Cody Ru
sh.”
She hugs a textbook close to her chest, her lips parted in a speechless albeit enticing little o that leaves me wondering what on earth she’s thinking. Her jaw snaps shut and she looks around, as if she suddenly realizes there are people walking past. Onlookers.
Her eyes rest on my hand again. The corners of her lips twitch, almost a smile. Fleeting but there nonetheless.
Her hand slides into mine, and it feels good.
“Julianna Schultz.”
Our gazes collide as we shake on it. It’s not much, nothing more than one step in the right direction after taking so many steps in the wrong one. I smile, heeding the impulse to leave before I do anything that might retract that step. Our hands drop, and for the first time in more than two months I hardly notice my crutches as I make my way down the hall.
“Lace up, Lizzy,” I call out. “Ice cream for two. It’s on me.”
“Yay!” Lizzy jumps up from her pile of homework in the living room. “With sprinkles?”
“Yep, tons.”
“Wait a minute,” Mom mumbles with a ribbon between her teeth. She’s making flower arrangements for a wedding. Vases line the counter. “You have homework, Lizzy.”
“I’ll help her when we get back,” I offer, perfectly fine with the fact that I’m fighting for an eight-year-old’s company. Lizzy’s the only one for the job, though.
Since I’ve safely driven the automatic to school and back a couple of times, Mom doesn’t argue further.
“I want to push the button,” Lizzy protests twenty minutes later at the mall. She reaches for the handicap button for the automatic door as I reach for the handle.
The slick metal glides along my palm and I wait for a flash of remembrance.
“I didn’t use the button that night,” I say to myself, knowing I wasn’t on crutches then.
“What?” Lizzy asks.
“Nothing,” I say and stand aside while she pushes the button.
An air-conditioned breeze hits us when we step in. I try to imagine what this place would look like at night. That night.
Lizzy tugs at my arm. “C’mon, Cody. Ice cream!”
“You’re on.”
An escalator takes us up to the food court. I get Lizzy a huge ice cream with tons of sprinkles and we find a table in the hallway. Only four bites of double fudge ice cream make it down before I’m too preoccupied to care. Definitely not like me. The chair, the table, the lit-up display windows: I take in everything, but nothing comes. No flashback like before.
Giving up, I look down at my ice cream. Light reflects off the tile below.
A shiny floor—tile.
I focus, thinking back on the little pieces I remembered in math that morning. I was definitely here and I was nervous. Admit it; I was scared. The feeling rushes back even now. Or do I simply fear what I can’t remember? Am I making this up?
To say that some wires got crossed when I hit my head that night is no exaggeration.
Lizzy’s lips are covered in pink ice cream when I look back up. “Can I do the carousel after this?”
“Sure,” I say. “And then you and I are going to do a photo booth.”
“Ooo.” Her eyes go wide and she takes another bite of ice cream.
Lizzy rides the carousel three times in a row, switching from a pink horse to a giraffe and finishing off on a zebra before I can convince her it’s photo-booth time.
I stare at the photo booth downstairs, the black curtain and ads of people making cheesy faces at the camera, waiting for it to jar a memory. Again, nothing. Julianna and I were here? I glance around, noting a toy store, a women’s clothing store, and a hat store. The hat.
Buckle.
The sight of the big Buckle sign sets something off inside me. I still don’t remember being here, but the debit-card statement is proof that I was. I stare at the sign down the hallway. I study the red logo. 621039—what do those numbers mean? Sixty-two, ten, thirty-nine? I pair off numbers, trying to make sense of them.
Lizzy lets out a tired breath of air. “Can we take the picture now?”
“Oh, yeah,” I say and turn.
Dark hair and blue eyes catch my attention. I do a double take. The same shirt hugs her form.
I almost slip off my crutch.
The chocolates.
Now I remember, not from the night of the accident but from my first day at school, when Julianna walked into Ms. Quinn’s room and yelled at me. She mentioned the chocolates. It made no sense then. Staring at the store sign now, I understand.
“Aw, look at those stuffed animals,” Lizzy exclaims and rushes off.
Julianna works in the mall? I try to imagine her reaction if she sees me standing here, staring at her. I get the feeling I don’t want to hang around to find out. Warning: abort.
“I wonder if they have a polar bear,” Lizzy says, standing at a retail kiosk full of stuffed animals. “Can I have an animal and photo-booth pictures?”
“Lizzy,” I whisper, “we gotta go.”
“What about the photo booth?”
“Later, I promise.”
“But you said this photo booth is extra cool.”
“It is,” I say, knowing that Julianna and I sat side by side in there, my lips above her ear, my nose testing out the scent of her shampoo. Suddenly I admit it: perhaps I do want something to do with Julianna. And I’m talking more than just answers. “We gotta go, though.”
“Can I at least have an animal?” Lizzy asks, still peering around for a polar bear.
“How about this,” I offer as I scoot around the stand of animals, keeping my eye on Julianna from a safe distance. “I’ll buy you a polar bear on Amazon. Or another pair of those polar bear slippers; yours are falling apart.”
Lizzy’s eyes narrow to form her game face. “And a bathrobe to go with my slippers,” she says. Definitely the youngest child.
“Deal.”
We make a clean exit, unnoticed.
“You look angry,” Lizzy says as we cross the street.
“I can’t remember anything about the night when I got hit by that car,” I admit. “I know I went into the mall, but I don’t even remember walking in there.”
“Well, maybe you were skipping in,” she says.
I chuckle. “Yeah, maybe.”
“Running?” she suggests.
I pause, glance back.
“Come on,” I say, pushing the unlock button on the car key. “Let’s get home.”
So many questions, so many things I’m still unsure about. But one thing I’m sure of now more than ever: If I’m going to get close to the buried details of that night, I’ll need to get close to Julianna first. And that might not be such a bad thing after all.
CHAPTER 13
Julianna
I organize the bills in the cash register at The Chocolate Shoppe, regretfully reminded of the wallet that tempted me in the school office. There’s no light way to put it: I definitely considered it.
I head out after my shift, keeping my eyes averted from the photo booth in the hallway. Being called into the counseling office had nothing to do with the wallet. Mortimer had turned my detention essay in; whether for the pure delight of proving I am mischief or because he’s genuinely concerned, I’m not sure. I regret dashing off those truths about my life, writing all about my mom’s imprisonment and stress at home, how I can’t sleep, can’t focus on homework. I even spouted off about how unfair our government is.
Idiot. What did I expect? Regardless of how hard I tried to convince Mrs. Hale I’m fine, she wants to talk again. This only made me feel worse, like a teen in need of intervention.
Then Cody showed up, standing next to my locker like he’d been watching me for some time. The special agent’s son, sniffing out trouble. But he smiled that smile of his and even reintroduced himself with charm, offering his hand like he wasn’t ashamed of being associated with a nobody like me. Whether I like to admit it or not, that meant something.
But am I kidding myself?
Cody doesn’t know about the wallet, doesn’t know I considered taking someone else’s money.
When I get home I find my dad at the darkened living room window, his tools spread out amid piles of laundry and a pizza box. A rusty piece of junk is wedged in the window—the old swamp cooler. Dad had kept it in our garage all these years.
“What’s this?” I ask, tapping my foot against a second hunk-of-metal swamp cooler that’s even uglier than the first, if that’s possible.
“Oh, that,” Dad says. “It’s a portable swamp cooler. I found it for next to nothing at Goodwill.”
“I figured.” It was either that or he traveled back in time to get it. Two swamp coolers, though. This should help.
Seeing as how Dad went out to buy an extra swamp cooler and even grabbed pizza for dinner, I start to hope our financial situation isn’t so bad after all. So I decide now is as good a time as any to bring it up.
“Hey, Dad?”
“Yeah?” he says, using his ratty T-shirt to mop up the sweat on his forehead. The veins on his arms bulge, his muscles reduced to nothing. His hair has flecks of gray where there used to be none and dark circles shadow his eyes.
Stress has done this to him, stress and working hard in the only way he knows how to earn a living for our family. Looking at him now, I almost chicken out and say nothing.
“I need money,” I blurt out, instantly aware that I should have crafted my request better. “I mean, it’s for the pageant. There’s a fifty-dollar entry fee, and we’re supposed to donate money for the Children’s Miracle Network on top of that. Then there’s the two hundred dollars in sponsorship money; I’ll need to find a local business willing to sponsor me.”
I stop there, leaving out money needed for dresses, makeup, and hair. I’ll have to borrow.
If it’s possible, Dad looks even older now than he did a second ago. “Do you even want to be in a pageant?”
Between Now & Never Page 12
