The Girl Who Slept with God: A Novel (32 page)

“Right now and always.”

Grip laughed. “Her intentions are good.” He turned sideways in his seat. “She’s a very honorable person.”

“You don’t think I’m an honorable person?”

“No.” He laughed again. “You’re more like me.”

“Well, thanks a lot, I guess.”

“I just mean that you’re more human. You do more of what you want to all the time. You don’t struggle so much.”

“I struggle,” said Jory.

“Not like that,” he said, gesturing back toward the house. “That’s a hard road. That takes a weird form of guts.” He shook his head.

“I have guts,” said Jory, knowing immediately how untrue this was.

“Sure you do,” said Grip. “So time to go in and face the music. With guts.”

Jory pulled the feather out of the headband and let it fall onto the floor. “Where
do
you live?”

“Well, Missy Miss, if you must insist on knowing every little detail of my life . . . I live at the Bali Hai Trailer Court out on Rim Road. Space number 23. It’s very,
very
posh, you know.”

“How old are you?”

Grip stared fixedly out the windshield. “How old do you think I am?” His voice sounded deliberately casual.

Jory blinked several times. “Twenty-two,” she said finally. “Or twenty-three.”

“Good guess,” said Grip. “Give or take a few.”

“And why don’t you have any friends your age?”

Grip turned to her with a mock look of exasperation. “I do,” he said. “Good God, woman!”

But for the very first time Jory could hear that he was lying.

“Okay,” she said, and leaned over and kissed him on his freshly shaved ice cream man cheek. “Night,” she said, and raced to open the door before she could feel the extent of her daring. She clattered up the stairs and flung open the door to Henry’s house. Halloween was over.

R
hea wasn’t grounded anymore. At least not as utterly grounded as she had been, which meant that Jory and Laird were going to go to Homecoming with Rhea and . . . Randy Asumendi. This turn of events was, in Jory’s view, Shakespearean in its scope and perfectly unexpected expectedness. They were reading
Romeo and Juliet
in English I, and Jory was trying to write an essay about the idea of the inexorability (she had looked this up) of fate. Fate in quotation marks. Fate, according to William Shakespeare. So far, she had one small paragraph and several extensive doodlings of vines and stars and winking moons.

Fate had also decreed that they would have a quiz in earth science today, and that Jory would not know the answers to questions 4, 17, 24, 28, and 33. And it did not matter how long she might sit contemplating and clicking the lead to her mechanical pencil in and out—she was never going to know the answers to these particular questions. She had not studied. Not nearly enough. She sighed and reread question number 4: “What is the age of the most abundant surface bedrock in the Finger Lakes region of New York State: Cambrian, Devonian, Pennsylvanian, or Permian?” This seemed like a trick question, and did it have anything to do with the fact that Pennsylvania was somewhere close-ish to New York? Jory sighed again. She could feel a trickle of sweat making its way down the inside of her sister’s bra.

Laird glanced up from his quiz.
What’s wrong?
his eyebrows asked.

Everything,
hers answered. She made an even more despairing face.

Laird leaned back in his chair and stretched, moving his quiz paper slightly in Jory’s direction. Jory squinted hard at Laird’s printing.
Devonian
was the answer to number 4.
Devonian,
she wrote down on her paper.

“Miss Quanbeck and Mr. Albright?” Mr. DeNovia was looking sharply in their direction. “Bring your papers and come up to my desk, please.”

Jory picked up her paper. Her heart was pounding and she felt suddenly sick to her stomach. Some tiny perverse part of her was making her face do strange things: the corners of her mouth kept jerking upward as she walked past the other quiz-taking students, who appeared both intrigued and empathetic at this unexpected expectedness.

“You find this amusing?” Mr. DeNovia took Jory’s paper and then took Laird’s and placed them both facedown on his desk.

“No,” whispered Jory. “My face just does that sometimes.” She blushed furiously.

“You know I’m going to have to report this.” Mr. DeNovia looked genuinely unhappy. “Plus, you’ll both get failing grades on the quiz.” He sighed and pulled at his eyebrow. “Don’t you people ever learn?” He pitched his voice loud enough for the whole class to hear. “Can’t you think of something more original?”

“Like what?” said a boy in the back row. “There’s only so many ways to cheat.”

Muted laughter ran through the room. Mr. DeNovia clapped his hands. “Anyone else want to flunk this quiz?” The classroom was immediately silent.

“Go upstairs to Mr. Mullinix’s office. I’ll meet you there after class.” Mr. DeNovia shook his head. “Go on,” he said. “Get.”

The school secretary gave them both a scowlingly sympathetic look. Everyone else had left for the day. The buses had come and gone. The janitors were mopping the floors and emptying the garbage cans. Rhea had walked past the office a long time before and stuck out her tongue at them in a show of solidarity. Jory’s father and Laird’s mother were now in the inner office with Mr. Mullinix. Jory and Laird were in the reception area sitting on the squeaky orange chairs.

“How mad will he be?” Laird whispered.

“Mad enough not to say anything about it for a while.” Jory slumped a little lower in her chair.

“My mom’s gonna kill me,” said Laird. “And she’s not gonna wait till later, either.”

“Tell her it was my fault. Seriously. Tell her I forced you to let me look at your paper.” Jory sat up. “Or that you didn’t even know that I was looking at your paper.”

Laird shrugged. “It doesn’t matter,” he said in a tone of voice that revealed how very much it did.

The office door opened and Dr. Quanbeck and Mrs. Albright stepped out, followed by Mr. Mullinix. None of them was smiling.

“Bye,” whispered Laird.

“I’m sorry,” whispered Jory.

Jory wondered how many silent car trips this made for her. Surely quite a few. Her father stopped the car in Henry Kleinfelter’s driveway and ran his hand through his hair and then rubbed his eyes and the bridge of his nose. Finally, he put both his hands back on the top of the steering wheel. Turning his head as if it hurt to do so, he regarded his daughter. “Are you trying to get back at me? To punish me for moving you girls out here?”

“No,” said Jory, but it came out as more of a squeak. Or half a squeak.

“Well, of the little I know of psychology, it certainly seems like a possibility.” Her father paused and simply sat staring out the windshield.

“Dad,” said Jory.

He didn’t change expression or move his head.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“I know,” he said.

They sat in the car. Neither one of them said anything more.

Mrs. Kleinfelter was standing on their front porch in the waning afternoon light. She had a wriggling So Handsome squeezed in a headlock next to her flatish bosom. She waved at Jory’s father as he reversed out of the driveway and then turned as Jory came up the steps. “I was just going to knock. Here,” she said, thrusting the kitten at Jory. “You missed all the fun.”

Jory let herself look as sad as she felt. “Were the shots bad? Did So Handsome cry?”

“He certainly mewed some.” Mrs. Kleinfelter wiped her hands down the front of her dress. “He has to go back in four weeks for a second round. You can come and be a part of the painful process then.”

Jory opened the front door and ushered Mrs. Kleinfelter inside.

Grace got up from the couch. “Where have you been? Was that Dad?”

Jory sat down in the horsehair chair. She let her bag drop onto the floor next to her.

Grace lifted her empty tuna salad bowl off the coffee table and set it on the floor. The kitten jumped down after it. “What? Did you miss the bus again?”

“No,” said Jory. “I cheated on my earth science quiz.”

“Oh, dear,” said Mrs. Kleinfelter. She pursed her lips. “Maybe I should be heading home.”

“Jory.”
Grace looked genuinely shocked. “You cheated?”

Jory examined her skirt hem.

“Why did you do that?”

“I don’t know,” said Jory, shrugging slightly. “I didn’t know some of the answers.”

“You’ve never cheated before.” Grace was silent for a second. “Have you?”

Jory shook her head.

“I’m so surprised,” said Grace. Her face wore an expression quite a bit worse than surprise.

“Oh, I don’t
know
,” said Mrs. Kleinfelter. “Doesn’t everyone cheat sometime? I’m sure I probably did on something or other.”

Grace looked at Mrs. Kleinfelter with dismay. “I don’t really think that’s a good excuse. Simply because it’s common behavior doesn’t make it good behavior.”

“Oh, well,” said Mrs. Kleinfelter. “It’s probably not the end of the world.”

“Would you say that to your own child?” Grace’s brows knit together.

Mrs. Kleinfelter thought. “Maybe not,” she said.

Grace seemed somewhat mollified. She turned to Jory. “What happened after that? Did you flunk the quiz?”

“Yes,” said Jory. “I certainly did. And I have to miss school for the rest of the week.”

“That’s their idea of punishment?” Mrs. Kleinfelter pushed a stray bobby pin into her hair. “Interesting.”

“Well, I just don’t know,” said Grace. She smoothed her dress down over her rounding front, then turned and went into the kitchen.

Jory and Mrs. Kleinfelter watched the kitten licking Grace’s bowl clean and cleaner.

“You were right,” Jory said. “That night after the party when you told me it wouldn’t be the last time I’d disappoint her.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Kleinfelter. “That wasn’t very nice of me to say, was it?”

“It was true, though,” said Jory.

“She’s an easy person to disappoint.” Mrs. Kleinfelter bent and picked up So Handsome’s peacock feather toy off the floor. “Her standards are fairly high.”

“
She
lives by them, though.”

“Hm,” said Mrs. Kleinfelter. “Well.”

So Handsome leaped at the bottom of Mrs. Kleinfelter’s dress, snagging his claws in the process. Jory detached the kitten and scooped him up and held him under her arm like a purse. “I don’t think Laird will get to take me to Homecoming now.”

“Homecoming?”

“A boy actually asked me.” Jory smiled into the cat’s fur. “But I’m pretty sure they don’t let suspended people go.”

“Maybe they’ll have forgotten about it by then.”

“It’s three weeks from now.”

“Oh.”

“It doesn’t matter. Grace would never have let me go.”

“I suppose not.” Mrs. Kleinfelter began rebuttoning her cardigan. “With the dancing and everything. There is dancing, isn’t there?”

Jory nodded. “I don’t know how to dance anyway.”

“Oh, you just move around some.” Mrs. Kleinfelter waved her hands back and forth. “Nothing to it.”

“That’s what you say about everything.”

“Well, that’s what it looks like on the TV—all they do is jump around and wiggle-waggle their bottoms a little.”

“No,” said Jory, laughing. “You have to look really cool. Especially me—I’d have to look more than okay because everyone at Schism already thinks I am the weirdest, most uncool person ever.”

“Obviously not everyone thinks that.” Mrs. Kleinfelter smiled.

“Maybe not entirely everyone.” Jory held the kitten up by its front legs and made it take several steps across the floor on its hind legs. “What will I do for the rest of the week?”

“Well, you can help me pack up some of my things. How’s that for a fun project?”

“But no one’s even come to look at your house yet.”

“No, but if I get started now, I’ll actually be ready when they do.”

“You know,” said Jory, “if you pack up and move, you’ll just have to unpack, and you know how much you hate that.”

Mrs. Kleinfelter shook her head.

“I think maybe you should just avoid unpacking altogether.”

“By the by,” Mrs. Kleinfelter said, lowering her voice and glancing toward the kitchen, “what on earth did happen to her hair? I know your father said no ringworm, but those patchy spots look kind of, well, diseased maybe?”

Jory briefly considered trying to answer this. “It’s not a disease,” she said. “It’s just Grace.”

“That sounds almost motto-ish.” Mrs. Kleinfelter waved the peacock feather as she walked to the front door. “All right—whatever you say. See you tomorrow,” she said, “bright and early.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Jory. She waved the kitten’s paw good-bye.