Secrets (10 page)

out tB
/

A giggle almost escaped Rae’s lips as the playfulness in the thoughts zigzagged through her. She covered with a
cough.

“Keep or not keep?” Yana asked.

“Not keep,” Mandy said, her voice a little too loud. Rae set the car aside and removed a deck of tarot cards.

Emotions came with the thoughts, flickering through Rae strobe light fast, almost too fast to recognize. There was
pride, excitement, curiosity, fear, apprehension, confidence-and fear again, more intense than anything else Rae
picked up off the deck.

“Was your mom into the tarot?” Yana asked. Rae was glad Yana had. Right now she was too overwhelmed to
speak.

Mandy shook her head. “She said all that stuff, psychic stuff, was bull. Those cards can’t have beenhers. They
must have gotten in the box by mistake.”

Rae put the deck into the not-keep pile. She knew the cards had been Mandy’s mom’s-the thoughts on the deck
had the same flavor as the happy ones from the sweatshirt, the annoyed ones from the tag of the pink sweater, the
silly ones from the red car. Rae knew something else, too-there was a time when Mandy’s mom believed she had a
power-a power to know things from the cards.

“Maybe she used to be more into stuff like that,” Rae suggested. “The group she was in with my mom was
supposed to be New Agey. Tarot cards are New Age, kind of.”

“No, she really hated all that stuff,” Mandy insisted. “I remember this one time when I was little. We had a big fight
because I wanted to see a fortuneteller at my school carnival, and she said no. I had a fit.” Mandy stared past Rae,
her eyes blank. “I remember I told my mom I hated her.”

“Who hasn’t said that to one of their parents?” Yana asked before silence could pour into the room again.

Rae dropped the cards and grabbed a half-finished sock puppet-a cat, at least it looked more like a cat than
anything else.

A burst of impatience and frustration poppedthrough Rae. Making the cat had not been fun, fun, fun.

“Keep,” Mandy said. “I remember when she was making that. Trying to make it,” she corrected herself. Mandy held
out her hand, and Rae gave her the puppet. Then Rae reached into the box again, touching something smooth and
cool. /Meliss
a/

Rae’s fingers convulsed when her mother’s name and a stab of concern entered her through a fingerprint. Slowly
Rae withdrew the item-a Polaroid photo of a group of women. Near the center was Rae’s mother. Standing next to
her, arm around Rae’s mother’s shoulders, was Erika Keaton. The woman who had been her mother’s best friend.

The woman her mother had murdered.

“Keep or not keep?” Rae heard Yana say, although it sounded like she was talking from a couple of rooms away.

Fingers trembling, she searched the photo for more prints.

Rae felt the photo being tugged out of her grasp. She tightened her grip.

“Rae?” Yana asked, still sounding far away.

“My mother,” Rae managed to get out. “She’s in this picture.”

“It must be of the group,” Yana said. She leaned over to get a look. “The sign they’re standing aroundsays Wilton
Community Center. Is that where the group was held?” She took the picture from Rae and looked at it more closely.

“Weird,” she said. Her voice was so quiet, Rae could barely make out the word.

“What?” Rae asked, scooting closer. She took the picture back and studied it.

“No, it’s just weird to see your mom,” Yana said. “I’d never seen a picture of her or anything, but she-she looks like
you.”

“I don’t think I was even born when this was taken,” Mandy said, peering over Rae’s shoulder. “No wonder I don’t
know anything about the group.”

“I just need-is there a bathroom I can use? Something I ate is totally turning against me,” Rae said, words tumbling
over each other.

“Right across the hall,” Mandy answered.

Rae bolted. As soon as she got inside the bathroom, she locked the door, then sank down on the edge of the tub.

The feelings from Mandy’s mother were still slicing through her, sharp as broken pieces of a mirror.

Disgust. Revulsion. Anger. Terror. Urgency.

Whatever Amanda Reese had experienced in the group had left her with a hatred of it. And a fear so strong that she
never wanted to see anyone from the group again, not even her friends. And Amanda hadbeen friends with Rae’s
mother; Rae had felt that in the thought. She’d been friends with Erika Keaton, too.

Rae flipped over the photo and saw that a list of names had been carefully printed on the back.
Got to write them

down,
she thought. She opened the medicine cabinet and found a lip liner that would work as a pen, then pulled the
instructions out of a box of tampons for paper. Carefully she copied the list.

Suddenly Rae had a lot more leads. But would any of them take her where she needed to go?

Anthony walked to the quickest exit-the backyard gate-finally free of Marcus and his sniveling. Some of the other
guys had shown up and taken him inside to check out the bathtub they’d filled with beer.

“Jack-ee, Jack-ee, Jack-ee,” he heard as he swung open the gate. What now? Was she seeing how much rat
poison she could down?

He veered toward the crowd gathered on the front lawn. He didn’t exactly want to look, but he couldn’t stop
himself. A blaring car horn jerked his attention to the street, and he realized that the car was what everyone was
staring at-the car with Jackie behind the wheel.

“I’m going to break the all-time world speed record,”she yelled from the lime green convertible. “I’m going to go so
fast, you’re not even going to see me.”

And they ’re all watching this, like they’re waiting for somebody to pass out the popcorn,
Anthony thought,
disgusted. At least Jackie wasn’t going fast. Not yet. She was weaving down the street, getting extremely close to
some parked cars, but she wasn’t in danger of really hurting herself. Not yet.

Anthony trotted around the crowd, heading for the car. “Hey, Jackie, want to take me for a ride?” he called.

Jackie shook her head hard, the car mirroring her movements. “You don’t deserve to get that close to me,” she
yelled. The morons in the crowd gave an ooooh. Was there even one of them who realized that if Jackie did start
slamming on the gas, she could end up paralyzed?
Or dead.

At least the top’s down,
Anthony thought. He locked his eyes on the passenger seat-and leaped. He landed on his
stomach, halfway in and halfway out, the metal of the window frame biting into him. Jackie put on the gas. Not too
much, just enough to attempt to jerk him free. Probably to the alcohol-soaked sponge that was her brain, it felt like
she was going a hundred miles an hour.

He grabbed the dashboard with one hand, the back of the passenger seat with the other, and hauled himself into
the car.

“Get out!” Jackie screeched. He ignored her and reached for the wheel. She jammed her foot on the gas, flooring it.

The car hurtled toward somebody’s SUV. Anthony managed to wrench the wheel to the right in time to avoid a
crash.

But they were going fast now. Way too fast. Anthony tried to get one of his feet under Jackie’s so he could kick it
off the gas. But he wasn’t able to make the maneuver and still watch the road, which he needed to do before they hit
a tree or something.

Jackie took the corner hard, tires squealing-and headed for the intersection. Clearly she didn’t know or didn’t care
that they were flying toward a red light.

“I am
not
dying in this car!” Anthony yelled. Keys, he’d go for the keys. He jerked his body toward the ignition.

Jackie took one hand off the wheel and tried to claw him away. They were five feet from the intersection. Three feet.

Anthony managed to catch Jackie’s flailing hand in one of his own. Then he turned off the ignition and jerked the
keys free. “I want to go fast!” Jackie yelled as the car came to a stop.

“I’ll give these back to you tomorrow,” Anthony said, wrapping his fist around the keys. He shook his head. Why
had he wanted to come to this stupid party in the first place?

Rae tried to pay attention to Ryan Lardner. But God, he defined
monotone.
What had Jesperson been thinking,
assigning Ryan the part of Othello?

She shot her English teacher a glance and found his gray eyes looking right back at her. As usual. Or at least it felt
that way. It was almost like Jesperson thought of Rae as his only pupil, teaching his class just for her. He called on
other people, yeah. But he didn’t look at any of them the way he looked at her.

He just wants be like teacher of the year or some thing,
she told herself.
He’s new at Sanderson, and he just wants

to prove how great he is. His mission isn’t just to stuff Shakespeare into our heads, he wants to understand us, help

us with our problems, have us come to him with our deepest secrets.

Us. Us, right,
Rae thought.
Don’t you really mean
me
? He wants me to come to him so he can help me through all

my teen angst, my poor-little-girl-who-had-a-breakdown garbage.

Rae again tried to focus on the words Ryan was saying-anything to keep from thinking about Jesperson, freak-ofthe-year candidate. But God, didn’t Ryan realize what he was actually saying? It was like he was seeing each word
as… as a
word,
with no larger meaning. Didn’t he get that Othello was talking about how he was planning to kill his
wife? It’s not like she expected Ryan to be a great actor. She was no actress, and she was reading Desdemona. But
come on. He could bring a little something to the party.

“ ‘She wakes,’” Ryan read.

Time to see if you can do any better,
Rae thought. “‘Who’s there? Othello?’” she read. At least they came out
sounding like questions. Her voice actually went up where it was supposed to.

Ryan began his next line but was interrupted by the door swinging open. One of the office ladies came in and
handed Jesperson a note. He read it quickly. “Ryan, you’re needed in the office. Take your things with you.”

The class gave the obligatory soft “ooooh.” But no one thought that Ryan was really in any kind of trouble. Ryan’s
personality was as monotone as his reading voice. It was hard to imagine him doing anything the least bit out of the
ordinary. Although wasn’t it always the guys like that who blew?

“We don’t have too much time left,” Jesperson said. “I’ll just read Othello for the rest of the scene.”

Oh, great,
Rae thought. Her face went hot as she found her place. “ ‘Will you come to bed, my lord?’” she read,
keeping her eyes on her book.

Jesperson walked down the aisle toward her, reciting the next line, not even reading it, which meant he could look
at her the whole time. He leaned down, bracing his arms on her desk. Rae got out the answering line, managing not
to squirm.

Jesperson leaned even closer, close enough for Rae to get a whiff of his sweat. “ ‘If you bethink yourself of any
crime unreconciled as yet to heaven and grace, solicit for it straight,’” he recited. And he was antimonotone. His
voice was charged with passion and an undercurrent of fury.

Rae couldn’t help herself from leaning away from him as she read the next line. Jesperson didn’t let up. As he-Othello-began to speak of killing her-Desdemona-his eyes seemed lit from within. She struggled on. There were
only a few more minutes ofclass, and then this creepy interlude would be over.

But the few minutes stretched out, feeling double or triple their actual length. And with each second that passed,
Rae felt more tense, her hands tight on the sides of her book, her ankles clamped around each other.

Othello/Jesperson got more threatening. More menacing. And now he was making his move-

“Don’t touch me!” Rae cried out, and the whole class laughed.

Jesperson straightened up and backed away a step. “Guess I’m a better actor than I thought,” he said. He smiled
at Rae, an oily smile she could almost feel against her skin. “You didn’t think I was really going to smother you, did
you?”

“Of course not,” Rae said, her voice coming out sharp when she’d wanted it to sound light and jokey. To her huge
relief the bell rang. She jammed her copy of
Othello
in her backpack, snatched up her purse and jacket, and jumped
out of her seat.

“Can I talk to you a minute, Rae?” Jesperson called when she was halfway to the door. Reluctantly she turned
around and walked over to his desk.

“I just wanted to make sure you were okay,” he said, his voice pitched low so only she could hear. “That scene
seemed to really get to you.”

“Well, it
is
about murder,” Rae answered.

“Even so.” Jesperson rubbed the dark stubble onhis chin, the stubble that half the girls in class thought was so
sexy. “Is there anything bothering you? Anything you’re feeling anxious about? You know you can talk to me
anytime.”