Swallowing Stones (16 page)

For a split second she considered going up to Amy and pretending she wanted to talk to her, just to get this guy off her back. But then she thought better of it. It really wasn’t any of her business. When she came back through the dining room again a few minutes later, she saw Amy escaping alone out the back door, and she felt an unexpected relief.

She finally found Andrea sitting under a tree in the Passarellos’ backyard. Her eyes were wet and red-rimmed. And the first thing she did when she saw Jenna was yank a fistful of grass from the lawn and throw it at her.

“I can’t believe you did that!” she shrieked.

Jenna kept a safe distance from her. There was no telling what else Andrea might decide to throw. “Come on, Andi. You wanted to meet him, didn’t you?”

A small rock whizzed by, only inches from Jenna’s head.

“I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life.” Andrea kept feeling the space around her with her hands, trying to find another rock to throw.

“Sure you have,” Jenna reminded her cheerfully. “Remember fifth grade, in music, when Miss Cobb tapped you on the head with the ruler, which meant everybody else stopped singing and you had to sing solo? And she kept making you sing it over and over again, smacking that dumb ruler on your desk to keep the beat, because you couldn’t get the notes right?”

“Thank you for reminding me of that.”

Another rock whipped by, just missing Jenna’s shoulder.

“Look, in the ultimate scheme of things, just how important can this be?” Jenna risked taking a few steps forward, then sat down beside Andrea. “I mean, it’s not like this is life-threatening. It’s not like I tried to talk him into taking you out or anything.”

“The ultimate scheme of things?” Andrea’s mouth hung open.

Jenna pointed to the stars that had formed a thick canopy overhead. “You know. The grand design. Or whatever.” She grinned at Andrea good-naturedly. “Sort of puts things in perspective, doesn’t it?”

Andrea punched her in the shoulder. “Michael MacKenzie, for your information, just happens to be part of my
own
grand design. Or was, until tonight, anyway.”

“I’m sorry, Andi. I was just trying to help.”

“I know you were.” Andrea took the sleeve of her shirt and wiped her eyes. Sooty spots of mascara stained the material, but she didn’t seem to notice. “It’s okay. I mean, you didn’t even want to come to this party in the first place, and—”

“I just didn’t think I was ready, that’s all. It’s a little soon. It’s hard to be around people who are having a great time when you feel so empty inside.”

Andrea nodded and sniffed. “And you came anyway. For me.” She rested her head on Jenna’s shoulder. “It doesn’t matter about Michael.”

After a few minutes of silence Jenna said, “All I did was tell him you wanted to meet him. And he said he’d like to meet you, too. Only he couldn’t right then because he had to leave.”

“He said that? He said he wanted to meet me?” Andrea brushed the smudgy wet spots from her cheeks, looking hopeful.

“Yes. He said, ‘I’d like to meet your friend.’ That’s exactly what he said. His exact words.”

Andrea seized Jenna’s arm. “You mean that? You’re not making it up?”

“Why would I make it up?” Jenna shook her head. “Next party. You’ll see.”

Andrea leaned back against the tree, closed her eyes, and sighed. “Next party,” she whispered.

i
t took five difficult math problems before Jenna felt calm enough to go to bed. The whole night had been an emotional roller-coaster ride. First Jason, then Andrea, even Amy. Then there was the odd feeling she had had when she saw Michael MacKenzie watching her from his car. She had begun to wonder if his sitting on those church steps almost every evening had something to do with her.

Jenna erased the proof to the second equation. It was all wrong. She brushed off her paper and stared down at the problem, but the numbers blurred on the page. A larger puzzle filled her mind. Was it possible Michael was interested in her? She shook her head, immediately dismissing the idea. She felt disloyal to Andrea for even thinking such a thing.

Besides, he wouldn’t have been in such an all-fired hurry to drive off if that were the case. And who was she kidding? She might be okay to look at, but Andrea was downright gorgeous.

Jenna bent over the last math problem on the page. If only relationships could be worked out through mathematics. But that was impossible. There were simply too many variables.

She’d probably never figure these people out. Not Andrea, or Michael, or Amy, or Jason. It was all so complicated.

Exhausted, Jenna closed her math book, slipped on her nightgown, and crawled into bed, hoping to go right to sleep. Instead she lay awake for hours, trying to decide what to do about Jason.

And when she did fall asleep, her dreams gave her little
peace. Because this time, as she stumbled through the dark forest with Amy beside her, another person appeared. Jenna was almost halfway down the path when she spotted a boy up ahead, sitting beneath the Ghost Tree. And even with his head down, his arms folded about his bent knees, she knew it was Michael MacKenzie.

i
t was almost Labor Day weekend, and Michael had begun to breathe easier. Maybe Joe had been right. The police just didn’t have enough evidence to put together a case. He knew from general neighborhood gossip, usually shared by his mother over dinner, that Healey and Boyle had finally finished questioning everyone in the area. The process had taken a lot longer than expected because many of the families had been on vacation. But no one had come back to his house or asked any more questions. So Michael dared to hope.

With school less than a week away, he had gone back to his daily routine of running, trying to get in shape for track. He had done very little training since early July. But now he ran almost every morning at dawn and again in the early evening, to make up for lost time.

On most nights, after he’d run several miles, he would end up resting on the church steps across from Jenna’s house, just as he had been doing since the accident. But he had grown increasingly uneasy about these visits ever since she had approached him two nights ago at Judd’s party. He could not remember a single word of that conversation with Jenna. He remembered only glancing in the rearview mirror as he maneuvered
out of his parking space, and catching a glimpse of her face, frozen in the pale glow of the streetlight. It was obvious that she knew who he was. She probably recognized him from the pool. She was bound to wonder what he was doing hanging out across from her house.

He had not wanted to stop by Judd Passarello’s party that night. He’d known Darcy would probably be there. So far the two of them had managed to avoid each other since they had broken up. Darcy stayed within the secure confines of her group of friends whenever she came to the pool, and Michael had not been to a single party since Steven Chang’s. That is, he had not actually set foot inside any of the houses where the parties were under way. Instead, much to his dismay, he found himself waiting outside these houses in his father’s car, hoping to get a glimpse of Amy.

He had tried calling her on several occasions, but she had never returned his calls. He even wrote her letters explaining everything, about how Darcy had just been trying to get back at him. The letters came back, unopened. His sense of loss was far greater than he had ever imagined it would be. For the first time in his life, he felt absolutely alone in the world.

He stared across the road at Jenna’s house. The yard was looking pretty good these days. He was proud of that. For weeks the flower beds had gone untended. The Wards did have a local boy mow the lawn each week, but the flower beds had disturbed Michael. They’d been choked with weeds. He wondered what Charlie Ward would have thought if he could have seen them.

And so Michael had taken to weeding the flower beds each night after Jenna and her mother had gone to sleep. He had more or less appointed himself the Wards’ personal caretaker. He thought Charlie Ward would approve.

When the heavy rains had come in mid-August, Michael had noticed how the water flowed off the roof instead of coming down the drainpipe. The water formed large pools around the foundation. If their basement wasn’t already flooded, it soon would be. So he had come up with a plan.

He had waited until almost four in the morning to leave his own house. When he got to the Wards’, he sneaked into the garage, found an extension ladder, and as quietly as possible climbed up on the roof. The soles of his sneakers had almost no traction on the wet rungs, so he kicked off his shoes and mounted the ladder barefoot. Two large plastic trash bags bulged from his back pockets.

Using his hands, he dug at the clumps of wet leaves and twigs, tossing them into the bags. The heavy rain blinded him, making it difficult to see what he was doing and slowing him down. Unlike those other times when he came to weed the flower beds, he had badly underestimated the time it would take to clean the gutters. He had suddenly realized it was almost daybreak. Fearing discovery, he had retrieved his sneakers, carried the ladder back to the garage, then dragged the trash bags out to the woods at the back of the house to dump the soggy contents. He had forgotten his watch, and the thick mist had tricked him into thinking it was earlier than it really was. So the last thing he expected to see as he came out of the woods was Jenna sitting on the steps of the deck, staring right in his direction.

Momentarily stunned, he had wadded the empty trash bags in his hands and darted back into the woods, avoiding the path. He stopped a few yards away, crouched behind a clump of shrubs, and watched as Mrs. Ward came out onto the deck and began talking to Jenna. Neither of them seemed alarmed
about anything, least of all a trespasser. He had let himself breathe again. Maybe she hadn’t seen him after all.

But now he wasn’t so sure, because on this particular evening he saw a patrol car drive by twice. It was obvious that the officer was paying particular attention to the Ward house. When the police car came by a third time, Michael recognized the Hangman behind the wheel. He was no longer watching the Ward house. His attention was on Michael. As the car slowed down, Michael got to his feet. It took tremendous effort, but he managed a friendly smile and a wave as he jogged down the church steps and headed nowhere in particular, glancing over his shoulder occasionally to make sure he wasn’t being followed.

It was only six o’clock. So he began to run again, and he would have kept on running until he collapsed if he hadn’t seen Amy Ruggerio getting into her grandfather’s car in front of the local 7-Eleven. He stopped so abruptly he almost fell over.

Amy was obviously flustered by his sudden appearance. Her hand rested nervously on her throat. Caught off guard, she seemed less defensive than the last time he had tried to talk to her. He approached her cautiously, as if he were afraid she might vanish into thin air if he made one false move.

They were standing less than three feet apart. Michael glanced into the car to see if anyone was with her. She was alone.

Neither of them spoke. Then, just as the awkward silence threatened to blow Michael apart, Amy said, “I had to get some eggs. We were out.”

It was as if they were picking up in the middle of a conversation, right where they’d left off. Eggs, for pete’s sake! Michael wanted to burst out laughing. He wanted to throw his arms
around her. But he did neither. “Do you have to go right home?”

Amy glanced back at the 7-Eleven. She seemed preoccupied. “I think I’d better.”

“None of what she said was true, you know. Darcy, I mean. She was trying to get back at me.”

Amy’s eyes glazed over with a few renegade tears. But she fought them back.

“I care too much about you to ever do anything to hurt you.” He had not meant to put it all on the line like that, but somehow the words had just come out.

Amy slowly took a step back toward the car. She reached behind her and grabbed the door handle. “It isn’t just about Darcy,” she whispered, pulling the door open.

Michael shook his head. “Then what? Tell me what it is.”

“Your party …”

At the mention of his party, his body tensed. “What about it?”

“I don’t know.” Amy’s face flushed a soft pink. “I guess I’ve been wondering how—no, not how,
why
—we ended up in your garage.”

Michael had no idea where this was leading. What could he say? That the only thing he’d had on his mind that afternoon was sex? He tried desperately to recall what he had said to her at the party. He’d fed her a line, he didn’t doubt that, but what? And what had he said to her in the garage when they were rolling around on a pile of old lawn furniture cushions his mother was planning to throw away? Something about having wanted her since the first time he set eyes on her. It had been a bald-faced lie. Or so he thought. Now, standing across from her in the 7-Eleven parking lot, he wasn’t so sure.

Amy was still waiting for his answer.

“I wanted you, okay?” He almost moaned the words.

“But I was with Joe.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “I was his … date.”

Michael did not miss the disdain in her voice.

“I’m just trying to understand something. About what was going on. I mean, Joe’s your best friend, isn’t he?” Amy rested one hand on the top of the open car door, as if for support. “Why would you try to move in on your friend’s date?”

Michael spread his hands. He looked like a preacher about to deliver a benediction. “It wasn’t like that.”

“Then what was it like?”

“What?”

Amy sighed and stared up at the sky. “The artful dodger.”

“The what?”

“You keep dodging my questions.” She shook her head and slid into the front seat of her grandfather’s car.

Michael was practically at his wits’ end. “What about us?” he managed to say as she was inching the car out of the lot. “Can I see you again?”

Amy rolled down the window and stared up at him. Then she closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she said, “I need time, Mike. We have things we need to … talk about.”