While they’d walked from her locker to his, Trisha had told him about her conversation in the bathroom with Christina. “He tries to control her, and she won’t stand up to him,” Trisha grumbled now, not pleased with Cody’s assessment of Tucker. “I think that’s pretty bad.”
Cody grinned down at her. “Like how you tell me to meet you at the library at seven and don’t be late or else?”
“That’s different and you know it. I’m talking about the way he blows up if she goes against his wishes. The very idea of telling her where to go to college. Or who she can have coffee with. You don’t treat me like that.”
“So he’s a little jealous. We guys get that way when somebody makes a move on our girl.”
“A move! We’re talking Billy Lawler here. The guy’s no more a threat to Tucker than I am to Miss America.”
Cody put his arm around Trisha’s shoulders. “I’m sure Lawler thought he’d died and gone to heaven when the lovely Christina graced him with her presence, so you’re right—Tuck has no reason to worry. But it’s just his way.”
“Don’t defend him.” Trisha pulled on her gloves before they walked out into the snow-covered parking lot.
Cody jammed his hand into her coat pocket and pulled her closer. “They’ve been acting that way for years. I can’t see it changing.”
“But why? Christina’s smart. Why does she let him treat her like she’s stupid?”
“They love each other,” Cody said with a shrug. “Just like I love you.” He nuzzled her neck as they walked to his car.
“But you treat me right. That’s the difference.”
“I do, do I? I can change that.” He took the lapels of her coat in both hands and pulled her against his chest. His eyes danced mischievously. “Into the car, girl,” he growled.
She arched one eyebrow. “You going to make me?”
“I’m bigger than you. And uglier, so watch your step.”
“Don’t make me wrestle you and humiliate you in front of the school,” she said, pulling herself up to her full height of five feet, three inches.
He kissed the tip of her nose. “Wrestle me. Please.”
A horn honked two rows over and a male voice shouted, “I said, get in the car right now!”
Startled, Trisha and Cody looked over to see Tucker driving beside a walking Christina, who was pointedly ignoring him.
Tucker called Christina some names and demanded she do what he said. Christina stopped, and so did Tucker’s car.
“You want a ride, Chrissy?” Trisha yelled. “Cody and I can take you home.”
“Sure,” Cody said. “Come on.”
“I’m taking her home,” Tucker said. “We have to talk, don’t we, honey?”
Christina turned toward them, and Trisha saw the tracks of tears on her cheeks. “Don’t get in the car,” Trisha said under her breath. “Don’t go with him.”
“Thanks,” Christina said to Trisha and Cody after an agonizing minute. “But I’ll go with Tucker. It’s all right.”
Christina opened the car door, and Trisha’s heart sank. “I’ll call you just as soon as I get home,” she called out as Tucker gunned the engine.
Christina hadn’t even gotten the door shut before Tucker sped out of the parking lot, tires spinning on the slick, blackened snow. “Jerk,” Trisha said, watching him turn the corner without even stopping at the Yield sign.
Cody slipped his arm around her again. “Let’s go.”
Tears filled Trisha’s eyes. “She didn’t have to go with him, you know.”
“I know.” Cody opened his car door and helped Trisha inside. “I’ll talk to him, okay? Maybe he’ll listen. He’s not really a bad guy.” He got in, turned over the engine, and turned up the heater. “He’s scared of losing her. If she goes away, he’s afraid she won’t come back.”
“I hope she doesn’t,” Trisha said, drying her eyes and simmering with anger. “I hope she leaves him flat.”
Two
Trisha banged into her house and was partway up the stairs to her room when her mother intercepted her. “Slow down. I need you to do me a favor.”
“I have to call Chrissy.”
“Wasn’t she at school today?”
“Yes, but—”
“Then it will keep. Charlie has to be at basketball practice in fifteen minutes, and you have to take him.”
“Aw, Mom … hanging around the gym for an hour waiting for him to finish practice is the pits.”
Her mother gave her a level look. “You don’t say? This from the girl who swore that she’d be my virtual slave if I allowed her to get her license last October.”
“Yes, but—”
“No buts. Do it.”
Just then, twelve-year-old Charlie came around the corner from the kitchen, bouncing his basketball and eating an apple.
“Kill the ball,” their mother said.
Charlie grabbed the ball in mid-dribble. “She taking me? She drives like an old lady. I’ll be late and Coach makes us do laps if we’re late.”
“So hitchhike,” Trisha snapped.
“Stop arguing,” their mother said. “Just go.”
“If Chrissy calls—”
“I’ll tell her you’ll call her back,” her mother said.
Trisha marched out the front door, trailing Charlie and grumbling all the way.
The gym smelled like sweaty socks, and the noise level was giving Trisha a headache. She sat in the upper bleachers trying to concentrate on an assignment and ignore the drill work of her kid brother’s team below. It was a losing battle.
“How’re you doing?”
Startled, Trisha looked up and saw Tucker standing on the bleacher two rows above her. “Can I join you?”
She had forgotten that his brother, Jeremy, played on the same middle school team as Charlie. “It’s a free country,” she told him.
“Where’s Cody?” Tucker asked, sitting on the bench above hers.
“At his job at the new Home Depot.”
“I forgot he kept working after Christmas break.”
“He says the money’s good and since football season’s over, he’s got the extra time.” She fidgeted because she didn’t have much to say to Tucker. “How’s Chrissy?” she finally asked.
“Mad at me.”
“Go figure.”
Tucker smiled sheepishly. “All right … so I lost my cool today.”
Trisha didn’t say anything.
“You don’t like me very much, do you?”
No, she thought, but said, “Maybe I just don’t like the way you treat Chrissy.”
Tucker leaned back on his elbows, studying her. “I really love her, you know. Tell her that for me.”
“Why should I?”
“Because she listens to you.”
“Not really.” Trisha knew that if Christina really listened to her, she’d dump Tucker.
“Would you also tell her not to go off to Vermont?” He sounded solicitous, as if he really wanted the favor.
“It’s a great opportunity, Tucker. The scholarship is awesome.”
“If she stays, we can be together,” he said as if she hadn’t spoken. “I don’t want her to go.”
“It’s a long time until September. She deserves her chance. Maybe you’ll change your mind.”
“No. She’s all I ever wanted.”
Trisha knew there were kids who’d think Tucker’s statement was romantic. She did not. She thought he just wanted to have his way. “Then treat her like it,” she suggested. “Yelling at her, telling her how to act and who she can see isn’t winning her over, you know?”
For a moment, a dark glower crossed his face. The look passed, and he stood. “You girlfriends really stick together, don’t you? I’m the best thing that ever happened to Chrissy. She’ll never find a guy who cares about her the way I do.”
He started down the bleachers toward the floor, clattering all the way and making everybody else in the gym glance over. Trisha watched, sil
ently fuming over his arrogance. They were certainly worlds apart when it came to the definition of love. She thought of love as a gift one person gave freely to another. Tucker Hanson figured it was something a person used like a rope to tie another down. And worse, it made Trisha want to scream that he had captured the heart of Christina, her best friend.
On Saturday, Christina talked Trisha into going with her to the county nursing home where she was a volunteer. Trisha wasn’t crazy about the place—some of the elderly people looked so frail that it broke her heart, but Christina always said, “It makes me feel like I’m doing something useful. And it makes me feel like Grandpa’s watching from heaven and happy about me helping others.” Christina’s grandfather had lived with her family until it had become too difficult to care for him. They’d transferred him to an assisted living facility, where he’d died two years before.
As they walked inside the old building, Christina said, “Thanks a bunch, Trisha. The staff is shorthanded because of the flu bug.”
“What are friends for?” Trisha said, dismayed by the very atmosphere of the place. The air smelled of disinfectant and medicine. The floors were clean but carpetless, the walls an institutional shade of pale green. Trisha stepped around an old lady in a wheelchair. The woman was asleep, tied to the chair so that she wouldn’t fall out. Trisha and Christina checked in at the front desk, then again at the nurses’ station.
“You’re a sight for sore eyes,” said Mrs. Kimble, the head floor nurse.
“You remember my friend Trisha. She’s helping out today.”
Mrs. Kimble’s big smile lit her coffee-colored face. “Good to see you. And nice of you to lend a hand.” She picked up a chart. “Chrissy, can you feed Mr. Tappin in room six? He just can’t go down to the cafeteria anymore.” Mrs. Kimble looked at Trisha. “Can I get you to take the patients on this list down to the exercise room? They’re all in wheelchairs, but they can’t take themselves.”
Trisha gathered the eight patients on the list one by one and wheeled them into the exercise room, where a cheerful aerobics instructor led them in stretching exercises and coordination drills. Some could barely lift their arms. Trisha helped one woman grip a one-pound barbell and curl it to her chest. The woman offered a wide toothless grin when she succeeded in doing one curl all on her own.
After the exercise class, Trisha folded and stacked towels and linen in the laundry room. It was after five when she wheeled the last of her charges into the main cafeteria for supper and went looking for Christina. “She’s with Mr. Tappin,” Mrs. Kimble said when Trisha asked about her friend. “Honestly, that old man won’t do anything for anybody except her. Why, I’ve seen him shove his tray on the floor if he doesn’t like the person who comes in to feed him. He won’t feed himself. Why, he’d starve to death if we didn’t poke food in his mouth three times a day.” She shook her head, muttering to herself. “Alzheimer’s is a mean condition. Yes, it surely is.”
Trisha went to Mr. Tappin’s room and stopped at the doorway. Christina was on her knees in front of the old man’s wheelchair, patiently feeding him spoonfuls of mashed potatoes. Trisha heard Christina saying, “Now open up wide. This stuff is so yummy. And if you finish all your supper, I’ll read you a story.”
The old man stared straight ahead but opened his mouth. Although he closed his lips over the spoon, the potatoes oozed out of the sides of his mouth and dribbled down his chin. Christina dabbed his chin with a napkin and offered another spoonful. Trisha watched, mesmerized. Christina never ran out of patience, and the old man opened his mouth obediently whenever she asked. Mrs. Kimble was right: Christina had a gift for working with the old man.
After they left the nursing home, the girls stopped for burgers before going home. “I don’t know how you do it,” Trisha said, nibbling on fries. “That place makes me sad.”
Christina smiled and shrugged. “I like to help. I’ve sometimes thought about going into nursing.”
“You’d be good at it.”
“Vermont has a nursing program,” Christina added. “Mrs. Kimble says that some of the smaller hospitals are letting surgical nurses help with routine surgeries. That means lending a hand to the surgeon, maybe even closing a patient.”
“You mean like sewing somebody up?” Trisha made a face. She didn’t find anything appealing about blood and wounds.
Christina laughed. “Somebody has to do it. Why not me?”
“If that’s what you really want to do, you should do it.” Trisha sipped her cola. “Does this mean you’re taking the Vermont scholarship?”
Christina’s smile faded. “I’m still not sure about that yet.”
Trisha told her about the conversation she’d had with Tucker days before. “He wants me to talk you out of going, but I won’t do it. If anything, I’m telling you to go.”
Christina looked resigned. “He’s been putting pressure on me for sure. He makes me feel like I’ll be deserting him. He doesn’t see it as a possible future for both of us.”
“Why do you put up with it? With him? You don’t have to.”
“I’ve known Tucker for more than half my life. He’s just always been there for me.”
“You want loyalty? Get a dog. Tucker’s immature and manipulative.”
Christina dipped her head; her blond hair fell forward, covering her face. “Don’t say mean things about him, please. He loves me and he doesn’t mean to hurt me.”
“But you’re not happy. Maybe the perfect guy is out there—maybe in Vermont—who’ll love you and treat you right.”
“I think about that too.” Christina raised her head. Her blue eyes looked serious. “When Tucker’s sweet to me, when he’s kind, he makes me feel better than any other person in the world. I can’t imagine a day going by and not seeing him or talking to him. He knows what I’m thinking, he knows what I’m feeling, sometimes just by looking at me. It’s hard to explain.”
Trisha thought Christina’s explanation sounded creepy, but didn’t tell her so. At a nearby table, a group of guys horsed around, blowing the paper casings off their straws and slapping the table surface with flattened palms. They’re flirting, she thought. And why not? They’d caught sight of Christina.
“You make him sound like Santa Claus,” Trisha said with a sigh. “ ‘He knows when you’ve been bad or good.…’ ”
This made Christina laugh. “You can turn the most serious moments into jokes, Trisha. How do you do it?”
“It’s a gift. So what do you want me to tell you? Stay with Tucker and spend the rest of your life on his roller coaster? Go to Vermont and see how you feel about him after he’s not in your face every waking minute? Both are options.”
“You’re lucky. You see things in black and white. I don’t. But I am working on it. I just need time to sort through it all. All right?”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Just be my friend. Don’t take so many potshots at Tucker. It only hurts my feelings.”
Trisha sighed. That was the difference between them—she was a take-no-prisoners kind of person and Christina had a heart the size of Texas. “One more thing, then I promise to shut up about it,” she said. “Don’t let who you’re with define who you are. Sorry if that sounds corny, but it’s what I think.”
“Is that your absolute final word on the matter?”
“Well, maybe for tonight.” Trisha grinned. “Now, turn around and smile at those guys at the table over there before they break their necks trying to get your attention. It’s the humanitarian thing to do, you know.”
Three
On Thursday, a blizzard blew across northern Indiana, shutting down school for two days. Trisha was going stir-crazy when Cody surprised her, arriving on skis the afternoon the snow-plows were digging out the town and rural roads. “Ski patrol!” he shouted from her front porch.
She squealed, yanked open the front door, and threw her arms around him. “I can’t believe this! Come in! I’ll fix hot chocolate. How long did it ta
ke you to get here?”
He released his skis and propped them on the porch. “About thirty minutes across the fields. The snow must be three feet deep. And some hot chocolate would be great.”
She took him downstairs to the family room, where she’d already established a comfort zone with pillows and blankets in front of a cozy fire, and a stack of videos. “If I have to watch The Matrix one more time, I’ll go crazy,” she said. They’d only lost power for an hour on the first day of the storm. Now there was nothing to do but wait until crews cleared the roads.
“But it’s such a cool movie,” Charlie piped up.
“Get lost,” Trisha told him.
“No way.”
She pointed to the stairs. “Hike, buster.”
“I’ll tell Mom.”
Their parents were upstairs in the kitchen doing some kind of project. “She’ll back me. Cody’s gone to extreme effort to be with me, not you.”
“There’s nothing to do up there!”
“You have ten games for your PlayStation. I got you one for Christmas—”
“Hold it.” Cody stepped between Trisha and Charlie. “Tell you what, sport. Give Trisha and me some time together, and I’ll come up and play a round of Spider-Man with you.”
Charlie considered the offer. “Just an hour?”
Trisha rolled her eyes. “Blackmailer.”
“One hour.” Cody set the alarm on his watch.
“You two going to get all kissy-kissy?” Charlie made a face like a fish puckering its lips.
“Hit the road,” Trisha said, picking up a pillow to throw at her kid brother.
“One hour!” Charlie bounded up the stairs, making sucking sounds.
“He’s such a brat,” Trisha said, flopping onto a row of pillows.
“Well, he’s right about one thing. I am going to kiss you.” Cody swept her into his arms.
His kiss was long and deep and Trisha felt her knees go weak. He pulled back and touched her cheek tenderly. “That was worth braving the cold for.”
“Thank you for rescuing me,” she said, laying her cheek against his chest. His wool sweater felt scratchy and smelled of cinnamon.
“Now about that hot chocolate …”
She went upstairs and into the kitchen, where her father had a dismantled garbage disposal spread over the kitchen table. Her mother stirred a large pot of soup on the stove. “Cody’s here,” Trisha said.
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