Blood on My Hands

CHAPTER 35

Tuesday 5:52 P.M.

“SLADE,” I IMPLORE him in a whisper from the backseat of the pickup. “Please?”
He still doesn’t answer. He’s turned away and is facing the front. All I see is the back of his head.
“Don’t you care?”
He grips the steering wheel and leans forward, resting his forehead on the back of his hands. “Don’t I care? For God’s sake, Cal, did you forget that you’re the one who broke up with me? Did you ever stop to think about what you did? You just plain straight up wrecked me. And now … now you want me to help you?”
We sit in silence. So I guess the picture on his computer means less than I thought. And he still hasn’t explained the panty hose. Maybe I should just open the door and get out. But I can’t give up. I just can’t! “Okay, Slade, you’re right. I’m not in a position to ask you to do anything. Just tell me one thing. What time is Congresswoman Jenkins scheduled to speak tomorrow?”
He sighs loudly and shakes his head as if he thinks I’ve lost my mind, but he also digs into his back pocket, comes up with a piece of paper, and holds it close to the window and near his face, trying to read it in the dim light. “She’s supposed to arrive at ten and take a tour of the facility. The ceremony starts at eleven. She leaves right after.”
“There has to be some time in there,” I tell him. “After the tour and before the ceremony. She’s going to want to primp before she goes in front of the cameras.”
He twists around and looks over the seat at me. “And what do you think you’re going to do? Just stroll in the front door and have a chat?”
I can’t answer. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I only know that I’ve got all night to come up with a plan. “I’ll think of something.” I expect him to turn away, but he doesn’t. He stays there, twisted in his seat, looking at me.
“I’m sorry, Slade. I really am. And … I know you don’t want to hear this, but I really do still love you, no matter what happens.”
He lowers his head and stares down. I can’t believe what an idiot I was. Here is the one real, true thing in my life and I threw it away. How pathetic. And yet … and yet … there’s still a little time. There’s still tonight. Maybe there’s a chance. I reach out and touch his hair, run my fingers gently over his cheek.
This time, he doesn’t yell. He raises his face. Is it my imagination or are his eyes glistening? He reaches around the seat toward me and I feel his fingers touch my cheek. He slides his knuckles along my jaw and toward my lips and I kiss his fingers. Maybe it’s insane to feel happy in a situation like this, but I do. I’m so glad to be with him again … to feel his caring again. The seat stops him from coming closer to me, but it doesn’t keep me from stretching up toward him. Closer … closer … until at last our lips meet.
We kiss in that awkward position. The dampness I feel where our cheeks meet must be from tears. His tears.
“I made a mistake,” I whisper. “Crazy things happen. Things you never expect. You look back and can’t believe what you did. Like it couldn’t have been you.”
“I know,” he whispers, kissing my face and lips. “I know.”
“And … you forgive me?”
“Sure, Shrimp. I forgive you.”
“And the panty hose in your truck?”
“Some clients want a texture in the plaster so we rub it with old panty hose.”
That’s a relief! “And … you still love me?”
He’s quiet for a moment. Then he sniffs. “I’ll always love you.”
He tells me to lie low in the truck and wait. After the last worker leaves, he’ll come get me. I fall asleep trying to figure out what I can say to Congresswoman Jenkins tomorrow.
When I wake up, it’s dark and very quiet. I’m instantly alert. Something isn’t right. Raising my head, I look through the windshield of the pickup. The parking lot is empty.
Then, near the back of the town center, I see something glow red in the dark—the ember of a cigarette.
I let myself out of the pickup. The air is cool and chilly and I hug myself to stay warm. Slade is sitting in the shadows, smoking, with a half-finished bottle on the ground beside him.
“Everyone’s gone. Why didn’t you come get me?”
Instead of answering, he takes a drag of his cigarette and exhales a plume into the air. “Know what I was just thinking about?”
“How could I?”
“How unfair it was that your birthday came right in the middle of those two months when I wasn’t allowed to speak or write to you.” He looks up with a crooked smile on his face. “Happy birthday, Shrimp.”
“Thanks.” I offer him my hands, to help him up. “Now come on. We’ve got things to do.”
He studies my hands, then shakes his head as if he can’t believe that someone as little as me really thinks she can help him up. But he takes hold just the same.
Limping slightly, he leads me across the dark, empty parking lot, around the orange cones blocking the newly painted white lines of parking spaces, through the back door of the new town center. In the hallway, under a bare yellowish lightbulb, he stops and looks back at me. His eyes are sad.
“What?” I ask.
Instead of answering, he gives me half a smile and shakes his head again, then takes my hand and leads me up the concrete steps to the second floor.
He pushes through a door and we enter a large shadowy room illuminated by some streetlights outside. The smell of drying paint is in the air. As my eyes adjust to the dark, I can see that this is the new lounge. Or at least, it will be the new lounge once it’s finished. Right now, the floor is still bare concrete. New rolls of carpet rest against a wall. In one corner couches covered with plastic sheets are positioned around a large flat-screen TV. In another corner is the ancient pool table from the old EMS building. Along the wall are cabinets and a sink, a stove, and a refrigerator, all with their new-appliance labels and warnings still attached.
I open one of the cabinet doors under the sink. The space will work. I turn and put my arms around Slade. “I wish we could just stay like this forever,” I whisper, craning my neck up and feeling his lips against mine, his scratchy stubble against my face. “Stay with me?”
He hesitates, then says, “Wish I could, but I’ve got to get home and clean up for the ceremony.” He gives me one last hug, then leans back and looks into the empty cabinet. “You sure this is what you want to do?”
“No, but I don’t know what else to do.”
Lunch was almost over and Mia and I took our trays to the kitchen. Turning back, we found Kirsten coming toward us, no doubt with a message from Katherine.
“Can I talk to you?” she said to Mia.
Mia’s eyes darted toward the table where Katherine was sitting, then back to Kirsten. “Okay.”
I watched the two girls walk off together and stand by the window. Kirsten crossed her arms and spoke. Mia’s mouth fell open. Then, for a moment, it looked as if she would burst into tears. But her lips closed, her jaw became firm, her eyes narrowed, and she began to march toward Katherine’s table.
At the table, Katherine had been leaning forward in conversation, but I knew she must have had one eye on what was happening between Kirsten and Mia. Now, with Mia storming toward her, Katherine sat up straight, and for the first time that I could remember, her face went pale.
Not certain exactly what Mia intended to do, I began to hurry toward the table. Mia, her red face filled with fury, stopped and hovered over Katherine, who was doing her best to stare straight back. Maybe it was only my imagination, but I would have sworn that inside, Katherine was quaking with fear.
“How dare you!” Mia shouted. At the shrill sound of her voice, the closer half of the cafeteria went silent. Heads turned and kids rose from their seats to see what was going on as Mia went off on a tirade. “It wasn’t enough that you had to shut me out of your table, but you had to send one of your little robots over to make sure I knew the reason. Well, let me tell you something, Miss Prim-Proper Phony, you are going to get yours. Believe me. When I’m done with you, you’ll wish you’d … you’d never been adopted!”
Katherine went white. Mia turned and marched out of the cafeteria. Behind her some kids began to cheer and whistle. It was impossible to tell whether they were expressing their personal feelings about Katherine or just voicing their approval of the entertaining nature of Mia’s outburst.
I followed Mia into the hall and down to the girls’ room. By the time I got there, she’d locked herself in a stall and I could hear her gasping for breath and sobbing. “You okay?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’m just … I think I kind of freaked myself out.…”
“You were fabulous!” I said, hoping to make her feel better. “I mean, no one’s ever done that to her before … and in front of everyone!”
“Yeah … I just … I don’t know … lost it. She is such an evil piece of slime.”
“Well, she deserved it,” I said. “So … I think I know what Kirsten said.”
In the stall, Mia blew her nose. “How?”
“Because Katherine wanted me to tell you and I refused.”
“Why?”
“Because it isn’t true. And because I didn’t want to hurt your feelings, and because I knew it would never end. Even if I did what she wanted, she’d just come up with something worse next time.”
“God, I hate her,” Mia muttered on the other side of the stall door. “I just so hate her.”
“I’m not sure she’s worth hating,” I said.
I heard a rustling sound; then the stall door opened and Mia came out. Her eyes were red and her face was splotchy. She went to the mirror and started to fix her makeup. “You’re sure I’m not a fat pig?”
I winced at the thought of Kirsten delivering that news back in the cafeteria. What a horrible thing to do.
“Not even close.”
Mia looked at me in the mirror. “You mean it?”
“Yes. But what was that thing about Katherine being adopted?”
Mia stared down at a sink. “It was really a low blow. But I just couldn’t come up with anything else that I knew would hurt.”
“It’s true?”
She nodded. “She told me once. I mean, a thousand years ago when we were, like, in third grade. Before she became Katherine the Terrible.”
“But there are lots of adopted kids. Why would it hurt her?”
“I don’t know,” Mia said with a shrug. “That’s just the way she is. Whatever problem she has with it is in her head. Not anyone else’s.”
The bell rang; it was time to go to class. “Well, I just want you to know you put on a world-class performance today,” I said, and gave her a hug before heading for the door.
“Would you do something with me?” Mia suddenly asked. I stopped and looked at her.
“I want to write something for the school paper,” she said. “Would you write it with me?”
“What’s it about?” I asked.
“I’ll call you tonight.”