Five Minutes More (11 page)

I ease my way downstairs. I open every kitchen cupboard, looking for something quiet to eat. I settle on peanut butter and crackers. The peanut butter should make the crackers crunch less.

Why are there so many infomercials on
TV
late at night? Who's watching them? Okay, I am, but I'm not so stupid that I'd believe that brown goop is really going to look like hair when some bald guy spreads it on his head.

I find a show that's already started, dip crackers into the peanut butter jar and try to figure out what's going on. After a while I get it. The guy with perfect hair and too-white teeth killed his wife for her money. She had figured out what a scuzzbag he was and was going to divorce him to marry her real true love, who she should have married in the first place, but Shiny-teeth had come along and swept her off her feet. True-love knew she had made a new will leaving nothing to the no-good husband. And he knew it had to be hidden somewhere in her house, which had a gazillion rooms. He kept trying to sneak in and find it, plus prove Shiny-teeth was a murderer.

What I don't get is why she hid the new will in the house. She didn't have enough time to get a safety deposit box at the bank, but she had enough time to find a really good hiding place at home? Of course, if she'd been smarter, she wouldn't have married such a jerk in the first place and she wouldn't have ended up dead, which wouldn't make much of a
TV
show.

Just before the commercials, they flash back to the murder. The husband had made it look like a car accident, like she'd lost control of the car and gone over an embankment. Into the river.

I turn off the
TV.
It's a stupid show.

There's a wineglass on a square cork coaster on the coffee table by my feet. I don't know why, but I reach over and pick it up. The glass is about half full of white wine.

I don't drink. Brendan does—well, beer sometimes. I hate the smell of beer—it smells like a horse barn. And the taste is like hay and Ovaltine mixed together.

But the wine smells almost...woodsy. I make it swirl around the glass like they do on those snobby cooking shows. And then, without really thinking about it, I take a drink. It burns a little, and I cough as it goes down. But after a moment, warmth begins to spread out from my stomach.

There's another glass, with a little wine left in it, on the side table next to the lamp. Mark, my dad's friend, was here earlier, talking about money and stuff with my mom.

I finish that glass.

The wine bottle is on the kitchen counter with a couple of inches left inside. I drink it too. The warmth spreads through my chest and up into my head.

Warm. All I feel is warm.

And I don't feel anything else.

Seth is waiting for me by the bottom door of the school, just like he said.

“I don't think I can do this,” I tell him. “I already told you I'm not coordinated, and besides, my hands are cold.”

He slides down off the wall. “At least give it a shot before you give me your excuses.” He's wearing a striped knit hat pulled all the way down to his eyebrows, and the collar of his jacket is up over his chin, so all I can really see are his eyes and nose.

I pull the beanbags out of my coat pocket. “Okay, show me again. What do I do?”

Seth takes both bags, and I jam my hands in my pockets again because I really am cold.

“Toss the first one up,” he says. “Then just as it goes over the top, toss the second one.” It really does look easy when he does it, but I remember from before when he showed me that it isn't. “Here. Now you try.”

I throw the first bag up but...argh...it's too late. I end up with two bags in one hand. “I told you I can't do it,” I say. Even though it's freezing, all of a sudden my hands are sweaty. I rub them on my jeans.

“You didn't drop anything,” Seth says. His eyes kind of smile at me from under the edge of his hat.

I try it again. This time I manage to throw the second bag, but it flies off at a weird angle and lands on the sidewalk at Seth's feet. “At least you got both bags airborne this time,” he says, bending down to pick it up. “Just keep practicing.
Everyone sucks at the beginning. You just need to find your rhythm.”

“Wait a minute. I need rhythm to do this? Forget it then.”

Seth smiles. “Everyone has rhythm, D'Arcy.”

“Not me,” I say. “Remember that hokey square-dancing stuff back in sixth grade?”

“Uh-huh.”

I look down at my boots because it's still a bit embarrassing. “I flunked.”

Seth leans over until he can see my face. “You can't flunk square dancing.”

“Yeah, you can.”

He shakes his head. “That doesn't count. Square dancing is really just follow the leader to cow music. You can
dance
dance, right?”

I shrug.

“Sure you can. Look, like this.”

He starts to do some freakazoid dance right there on the sidewalk, kind of hopping from one foot to the other, punching his arms up in the air and bopping his head from side to side with his eyes closed.

“That's not dancing,” I say, hunching my shoulders against the cold. “You're being a spaz on purpose.”

He ignores me.

“And there's no music.”

“It's in my head,” he says without opening his eyes. “But for you I'll turn up the volume.” He starts singing, “Oooh baby, oooh.” He's trying to sing off-key, but the truth is his voice is good, deeper than I would have guessed.

I can't help laughing. “Stop.” I grab his arm.

He opens his eyes and grins at me. Then he drops his arms. “I bet you can dance better than that.”

“Yeah. I have Mr. Keating for homeroom and
he
can dance better than that.”

Seth pulls off his hat and runs a hand through his hair. “So you can dance, which means you do have rhythm, which means you can learn to juggle.”

I hold up my hands like I'm going to surrender. “You win,” I say. “I'll practice.”

He hands the other beanbag back to me. “Remember, up and over,” he says.

I glance down the sidewalk. Three guys from the basketball team are coming toward us. I could make an excuse and go inside or just head up and hang around the upper door. But I don't. Because I don't want to.

Seth is telling me how he's going to have me juggling flaming torches one of these days. The guys pass us. Jaron, Matthew and Adam. They take up the whole sidewalk. Seth and I have to move to let them by.

“Hi, D'Arcy,” Jaron says. He looks at me and then at Seth and then at me again.

“Hi,” I say.

They're going to tell Brendan that they saw me with Seth.

I don't care.

Brendan's waiting at my locker, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, when Marissa and I come down the stairs after our last class of the morning.

“Stud Puppy looks cranky,” she says.

I turn my head and shoot her a look. She makes a face at me.

“Oh, go scratch his belly or blow in his ear and he'll be fine,” she says.

We get to the lockers. Marissa has hers opened and her books stuffed inside in no time. “I'll find you later,” she says. She eyes Brendan for a second and then she's gone.

“What are you doing here?” I ask as I put my things away. Like I don't know.

Brendan's big hand shuts my locker door. He snaps the lock. “I wanna talk to you,” he says.

“Okay.”

“Not here.” He grabs my arm and pulls me down the hall and out the end door into the space under the breezeway where all the kids who smoke go to sneak one. He lets go and leans against the wall.

I tuck my fingers in my armpits. “It's freezing,” I say. “What do we have to be out here for?”

Brendan doesn't answer, and he doesn't offer me his jacket. He grinds a couple of cigarette butts into the concrete with his boot. It doesn't matter how many times Mr. Connell prowls around out here; he can't catch the smokers.

Brendan finally looks at me. “Are you breaking up with me?” he asks.

“No.” I shake my head.

His jaw moves like he's chewing on my answer. “So are you cheating on me then?”

“No.” It's so cold I'm starting to shake. “What are you talking about?”

Brendan grinds another butt into bits of tobacco and paper. “Who's that guy you were with this morning?”

“Guy? You mean Seth? He's the peer tutor in my math class. I told you I had to come early for math.” I shift from one foot to the other to try to keep warm. “Can we go inside now?” I start for the door, but he moves in front of it and grabs my arm.

“If you were doing math, why weren't you in a classroom?” he says. “The guys saw you just standing around.”

I don't know why I want to pick a fight with him. I just do. “Have you got your friends spying on me now?” I ask, pulling my arm out of his grasp. “For your information, I missed a
lot of stuff when my dad...I'm still behind. Seth's helping me because that's what the peer tutor does. If I'm going to get a scholarship, I need a good mark in math. We can't all get scholarships because we're good at some stupid game.”

“I don't see why you can't get help in class from the teacher.”

“Because it's what the peer tutor is supposed to do.” Bouncing off all the concrete makes my voice sound louder than I mean it to. “What? You don't trust me?”

“It's not you I don't trust,” Brendan says. I don't like his I-am-so-right tone.

“Seth wasn't hitting on me, Brendan,” I say. “And even if he was, I can handle it. But he wasn't. Not every guy is a horn-dog like your friends.”

Brendan reaches out and tries to take my hand, but I twist away. “Jaron and the guys were just watching my back,” he says. “You standing around laughing with some jerk. It didn't look good.”

“I don't care what it ‘looked' like. I don't need your permission to talk to anybody. And I am done talking to you.”

“D'Arcy.” He takes another step toward me. Too close. I shove him, the heel of my hand on his chest. It catches him off guard and he almost goes over.

“Leave me alone,” I say, my face close to his. Then I pull the door open and go inside. I listen for Brendan to come after me, but he doesn't. I keep on walking like I don't really care. Because I'm not sure if I do.

I hide out for a while in the third-floor girl's bathroom, sitting on the top of the tank with my feet pulled up.
I can't believe that fools teachers, but it does. After I figure enough time has passed that Brendan will have gone to the gym to shoot hoops with his buddies, I head down to my locker again.

When I get to the main level, I see Marissa and Andie in the stairwell below so I slip down the hall instead. As I come level with the auditorium doors, I hear music. Someone's in there playing the piano. Someone good.

He's playing jazz. My dad loved jazz.

I didn't get that music for a long time. I couldn't find the rhythm and I couldn't follow where it was going. Then one day Dad said, “Don't try to follow it or figure it out. Just let the music be all around you and listen.”

And I did. I just sat there with my eyes closed and listened without thinking. The music ran up my back, it slid over my head, it jumped from one knee to the other and it spiraled down my arms. It was magic. I finally got why my dad liked it so much.

Now I turn the knob and push against the door with my shoulder. It isn't locked.

I shoot a quick glance around, but no one's looking at me. I open the door just enough to squeeze inside. Only three or four of the tiny stage lights are on, and it takes a minute for my eyes to adjust. Then I slip onto the side of the stage, staying close to the curtains so whoever's playing won't see me. The music is even better in here. It fills the room. At least that's how it seems to me.

The piano is almost at center stage. I take a chance and lean around the red velvet curtains for a peek...and suck in
a breath that almost makes me cough, because it's Seth. He's sitting at that big black piano with his eyes closed, and his fingers are making that unbelievable music. I didn't know he could do that.

I just stand there. I don't try to hide but I don't move or say anything. I close my own eyes and feel the music. My throat is tight and tears prickle behind my eyelids, but at the same time I feel like throwing out my arms and twirling around and around and around.

When Seth finally stops, I open my eyes again and see that he's looking at me.

“How long have you been there?” he calls.

“I don't know.” I blink and clear my throat. “A while.” I cross the stage to the piano. “You're...” I don't have the right words to tell him how the music made me feel. “You're...wow.”

He shrugs. “I haven't practiced for a while.”

“You mean you can do better than that?”