He cut her off. “Don’t you mean Chauffeur?” She flinched. “Yeah, Gabby told me about your little nickname for me—she slipped up at the pep rally. I know that’s all I am to you, Emily.”
“JD, that was just a silly nickname. I don’t feel like that. Things have changed. You have to believe me. You mean so much more to me than that.” She put her hand on his arm. He shook her off.
“Things haven’t changed one bit. You ditched me at the pep rally because something better came up.” The disdain dripped from his voice. “You made up that story about Gabby being in trouble, and then you ditched me to go make out with some other guy at a construction site. That is low, Em. Especially for you.”
Em was practically shaking. “I—I don’t understand.”
“No, you sure don’t,” JD spat out, grinding his boot into the slushy pavement. “I was worried about you, Em. Don’t you get that? That’s why I followed you. And when I saw that you’d just gone on some romantic rendezvous—” He broke off. “And, Christ, you laughed at me.”
She’d laughed at him? No, she hadn’t. But as he said it, the silver sound of the Furies’ laughter, like a wind chime that wouldn’t stop tinkling, resounded in the back of her mind.
“No—no. Gabby wasn’t there. It was a trick. They tried to hurt you. I saved you,” she said without thinking. JD’s memories of that night . . . they were all wrong. And now she didn’t know what was going on. She was letting things slip.
JD rolled his eyes. “You saved me? Oh, thank you, fearless warrior,” he said with an exaggerated clasping of his hands. “Thank you so much for saving me by bringing me to the hospital after your new loser boyfriend—or whoever the hell that was—clobbered me with an industrial pipe. You really pick the good ones, don’t you, Em?”
She took a step back, knowing that the insult was meant to remind her of Zach. How badly she’d misjudged. She wanted to defend herself, but she knew that she had to stay silent. She was on the verge of breaking her pact with the Furies.
“So no,” JD continued, “I will not believe you, or trust you ever again.”
“JD, please, you’ve got to listen to me. . . .” But then she trailed off, reminding herself that it was JD who would suffer if she screwed up. The Furies didn’t play fair. And she refused to take that risk. She knew she’d already said too much.
“Nothing to say, huh?” JD took a quick step forward. “Then please get out of the way.”
She moved away from his car mutely. There was nothing she could do. Her throat was so tight, it felt like it was clenching her windpipe.
JD paused, and then turned and looked over his shoulder. “You laughed at me,” he repeated. “Why did you have to laugh?”
Then he threw open the car door, ducked inside, and was gone.
Watching him peel out of the parking lot, she choked back a sob as she wrapped her arms around her body. The cold seemed to reach inside her now. She wanted to go home.
Em managed to get Drea’s attention through the window. Urgent, she motioned with her hands. And then they were driving home, Drea knowing better than to pry.
Drea didn’t speak until they were nearing Em’s house. “You want to get lunch tomorrow?” she asked. “Deli? I have this weird craving for a Reuben.”
“Ummm, I don’t know.” Right now it was impossible to think about having to face school tomorrow. Her stomach hurt, and her heart hurt, thinking about how angry JD was. How she couldn’t do anything to fix it. “I mean, maybe later in the week or—” Em cut herself off as she spotted a glint of white in the moon-silvered trees at the end of her street. She peered out the passenger-side window, trying to get a closer look. “Slow down,” she said.
Sure enough, there was something white hanging from the oak tree by the small park at the end of her block. It was a sheet of sailcloth, just like what Em and JD had used as a signal flag when they were younger—he used to put it in his tree house as a sign that she should meet him there. She hadn’t thought about that flag in years, but seeing it now made her heart speed up.
“Can you drop me here?” Em knew it was an odd request on this dark, cold night, but she was equally certain that Drea wouldn’t care.
“A bit brisk for an evening stroll, isn’t it?” But Drea stopped the car and didn’t ask any other questions as Em gathered her things and said good-bye.