13 to Life (5 page)

Pietr had already leaped out of his seat.

Mr. Miles ruffled through a few papers on top of his desk before saying, “Oh, Pietr. You’ll tag along with Jessie. Her group could use an extra member.”

Pietr nodded, accepting his fate without question. I nearly smacked my forehead on the desk in frustration.

I jostled my books and papers together, shoving them unceremoniously into my backpack as I kept an eye on the clock. My Service Learning assignment was the one place I could forget about everything else that was (and had been) going on. I was assigned to the Golden Oaks Adult Day Care and Retirement Home in town. Brimming with people who averaged twice the age of my parents—my parent, I mentally corrected myself—I could focus on the idea that people could grow old without tragedy.

Sure, Golden Oaks wasn’t the happiest place—there were lots of people whose relatives avoided them as if old age were catching—but that’s where my Service Learning group came in.

I hopped to my feet, dodging out the classroom door and down the hall. I paused at my locker, spun the dial, and yanked the handle. Another moment and I’d made the exchange of class stuff for home stuff and slammed my locker shut. There was Pietr, his backpack slung carelessly over one shoulder, glancing from me to the clock hanging in the hallway and back.

“Gotta hot date?” I asked.

“What?”

“The way you’re always watching the clock. I figured there was someplace you’d rather be.”

“Maybe,” he said.

“Let’s go,” I muttered, heading out. Our van was already idling outside along with others.

Sarah was in the distance, getting ready to do her part. I felt sorry for her immediately. She always looked so out of place now if she wasn’t with Amy and me. Jenny and Macie were beside her, sweeping her along with them into their waiting van. It was one thing I hadn’t been able to fix for her: Service Learning assignments were basically set in stone.

Amy waved to me from farther down the line. With a grin she slid into the van, her off-and-on boyfriend, Marvin, with her. She didn’t often talk about her assignment. There were certain restrictions, including maintaining strict confidentiality, placed on everyone in her program.

Participants in Amy’s assignment couldn’t give clients’ names or interact with any of the people they helped outside of the program’s scheduled hours. I couldn’t handle that. I had to get everything out. Well, at least, I used to. Although
Amy couldn’t say much about helping specific “clients” get their emotions out through art, when she
did
talk about what she was allowed to talk about, she glowed with satisfaction.

I glanced over my shoulder. Pietr was there. Of course.

I motioned to the van, and we both climbed in.

“Cool, Jessie brought us the Russian,” a voice from the back proclaimed. Jaikin snapped shut his magnetic chess set and stared at Pietr as if viewing a new species of animal. Hascal, my favorite gamer with absolutely no game of his own, and Smith, captain of the debate team, chuckled at Jaikin’s overt enthusiasm.

“I’m concerned that this addition to our group will negatively impact my odds of getting to take you to the senior prom, Jessie,” Smith said with a sniff.

I turned in my seat and saw him leaning across the back of it, arms hanging over my side as he smiled impishly at me. “Oh, Smith.” I patted his cool, pale arm. “You know an amazing brain does far more for me than a nice face and a hot body.”

His smile grew into a grin, but the geniuses sitting as his bookends piped up with, “Ohhh, she thinks Pietr’s got a hot body!”

“That was
not
what I meant.” I seethed. I tried to get myself back in control, modulate my tone and my pitch, and think of a snappy comeback, but . . . nothing.

On the bench in front of me I noticed Pietr’s shoulders going up and down. He was chuckling.

“Besides,” I said, “dear, dear Smith, you know I only have eyes for one man.” I glanced toward Pietr. His chuckling had stopped and he seemed somehow stiffer, knowing I wasn’t talking about him.

Jaikin followed it up with, “Oh, yes—the power of unrequited love.”

Hascal sneezed. “ ’Scuthe me,” he said, reaching into a pocket for a tissue.

“Allergies?” I asked, although I knew the answer.

“Yeth,” Hascal admitted. “But ith highly improbable. I only react thith way to thertain memberth of the canid family.”

“Canid?”

“Dogth, jackalth, wolvth . . . ,” he muttered, trying to be nonchalant. I barely kept from laughing as his every
s
became a
th.

“Jessie, you’re way too good for Derek,” Smith jumped in. “I admit I can understand the attraction—”

Hascal and Jaikin spun and looked at him, eyes wide.

“No, not like
that
—I mean, not that there’s anything wrong with that,” he qualified. “But as a strictly objective observer aware of what the average adolescent female finds attractive in a male of the species, I can understand what Jessie might presuppose about the masculine attributes of Derek Jamieson,” he specified, wiping his brow and taking a deep breath.

“Oh, now stop talking that way, Smith. You know it just makes me
desperate
to hear more . . .” I grinned at him.

Jaikin and Hascal started cracking up.

Smith looked slightly peeved.

From the front I heard Pietr turn around to watch the show. I tried to ignore that fact. The boys and I had been playing the flirting game since the start of freshman year, when we were lumped into this assignment together. I tried out my most ridiculous material and moves on them, they returned the favor, and we were usually rolling with laughter by the time the van pulled in to the lot at Golden Oaks.

The boys took my mind off everything else. They were brilliant and awkward but, most important, they were safe. After graduation they’d be off to Silicon Valley, and me—I’d be trying to find life beyond Junction.

“Go on, Smith, say something else—say
algorithm,
” I purred, rolling the
r
and leaning across the seat. Jaikin and Hascal collapsed in hysterics. The corner of Smith’s mouth twitched into a smile.

The van stopped.

“We’re here,” Pietr announced, stepping out.

“Does he always state the obvious?” Smith asked, adjusting his glasses.

“So far,” I said with a shrug and a glance at Pietr.

He looked down at me. “I’ve found the obvious is too often overlooked.”

Hascal grinned. “Like common thenth being quite uncommon.” He snorted and blew his nose again.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, waving a hand dismissively.

“Thank goodneth for fresh air,” Hascal whispered.

“You’re looking better already,” I encouraged.

Pietr paused in the parking lot, his eyes roaming the brick structure that comprised most of Golden Oaks’ living quarters. I wondered briefly what he was really seeing as he looked and I turned to examine the building again myself. It was standard 1970s construction, from what I’d been told, and as red as brick could be. Some of the details were starting to smudge under the thumb of time; corners and ledges weren’t as sharp or strong as they were in their prime. But the facility was well maintained and its people well loved. I hoped Pietr would see that, too, once we started inside.

“So what do we do here?” Pietr asked. He looked at the face of his cell phone. Another clock.

I blinked at him. “Help improve people’s quality of life.”

“Is that on some brochure?” he asked. “It’s catchy, but what do we really do? How long do we have to stay? There are things I’d rather be doing—”

“I hope one of them is shutting your mouth and realizing we don’t just . . . ugh!” I exclaimed in frustration, “We don’t
just
live our lives for ourselves,” I retorted.

Hascal wrapped an arm around my shoulders, dragging me forward. “That’s Jessie’s new motto,” he explained.

I immediately understood that to Hascal “new” equated with “since the accident.”

“What was your old motto?” Pietr asked.

Annoying Pietr.
“I didn’t have one,” I admitted.

Madge greeted us by the local animal shelter’s van, where it was parked near Golden Oaks’ main entrance. The shelter loaned us a few of its permanent residents each week so we could make our rounds. Madge looked far less ham-like. She smiled and tugged gently on a leash wrapped around her legs. “This is Tag,” she said as a little pug waddled out from behind her.

“Wow!” I said, looking at its bulging eyes. The tip of its tongue stuck out beneath its squished nose, giving Tag the look of something that had run head-on into a fence post. More than once. “He’s so—”

Pietr jumped in with, “Ugly, he’s—”

“Adorable,”
I snapped. I glared at him, patting Tag. “I’ll take Tag,” I offered, accepting the leash and scooping him into my arms. He felt like he was lead-loaded. I silently hoped he was absolutely
not
loaded. With anything. I readjusted my grip. “Did you bring Victoria?” I asked.

Hascal, Smith, and Jaikin stepped back.

I looked at them skeptically. “With all the allergies you guys have to different stuff, I’m surprised any of you can handle anything other than fish and reptiles.”

“Amphibians are cool, too,” Jaikin insisted.

“Literally,” Smith quipped.

Hascal pouted. “Speak for yourselves,” he said. “They give me hives.”

“I have Victoria,” Madge confirmed. She reached into a cat carrier and extracted an adorable kitten. As she held it out for Pietr, what had been a cute ball of colorful fur unrolled to become a spitting, hissing, absolutely insane calico kitten. A calico kitten capable of starting bloodbaths and devastating humanity like a fanged plague.

Madge looked shocked as Victoria tried to maul Pietr with paws no bigger than his thumb. And tiny, razor-sharp claws. “I think she just needs to be better socialized,” Madge suggested.

“And you accuse
me
of stating the obvious,” Pietr muttered in my direction.

“Dude,” Hascal whispered, “I think you’re bleeding.”

Madge handed him a pack of Band-Aids. “She’s always so sweet to the old folks. . . .”

Pietr carefully held Victoria by the nape of the neck, up and out in front of him.

She twisted and batted. Snarled. Spat—she was a whirlwind of fur and whiskers.

Pietr looked her directly in the eyes and said, “This is ridiculous behavior,” in a totally parental tone. I heard the faintest hint of an accent in his carefully chosen words. “I know you don’t like me, and—and frankly—you aren’t doing anything to encourage my potential interest in cats.”

Victoria spat again.

“But we have a job to do,” Pietr pointed out. “I would appreciate your assistance.” He blinked at her. Once.

And then Victoria just stopped hissing and growling and, instead, mewed. She turned from crazed to cute in a heartbeat.

Pietr said, “Thank you,” and, resting her in the crook of his arm, suggested we get started before she changed her mind.

Madge said, “If you can do that consistently, boy, do I have a job for you.”

Pietr shook his head as the other guys chose animals, too.

Once inside, we boarded the elevator to begin our rounds. My boys got the first two floors; Pietr and I got the third and fourth. As the elevator doors opened, he wrinkled his nose.

“It reminds me of a hospital,” I confessed.

“I hate hospitals,” he replied.

“As much as you hate
Romeo and Juliet
?”

He smiled at the comparison. “Almost exactly.”

“Let’s start at Mrs. Feldman’s,” I said, leading the way. I knocked on her door.

“Come in, come in!”

I ran my hand across the chimes that hung from her doorjamb, enjoying their sparkling sound. “I just don’t understand why you hate
Romeo and Juliet,
” I said as we entered.

Mrs. Feldman’s eyes grew wide. “Who hates
Romeo and Juliet
?” she asked, her gaping mouth accentuated by the stretched and ghostly wrinkles of laugh lines. She set aside the strange cards she was shuffling, tucking them into one of the folds of her voluminous and colorful skirt.

I looked at Pietr accusingly, then moved a small, wheeled table covered with a variety of stones and colorful crystals out of my way to stand beside Mrs. Feldman so she could pet Tag. “
He
hates
Romeo and Juliet.
”

“Well, finally!” she exclaimed. “A sensible young man!”

Pietr beamed.

“Close your mouth,” she instructed me. “You’ll only catch flies that way.”

I obeyed.

“Why anyone finds that play romantic is beyond me. Both Romeo and Juliet are so”—her jaw worked silently, pushing her
expression around until she found the word—“naïve! Instead of enlisting their friends’ help, they go behind everyone’s backs, lying.” She snorted.

“The cat, please,” she said, her fingers twinkling with gaudy rings set with chunky stones. “Why you must always bring cats and dogs eludes me,” she whispered as Pietr stepped to her other side. “Why not a little bunny? They’re so cute and innocent. Cats are always thinking up trouble.” But she petted Victoria, her hands relaxing at the feel of plush fur. Victoria purred so loudly Tag wiggled around to watch.

“Hmph. Romeo and Juliet. The boy—Romeo!” Mrs. Feldman shook her head. “Hardly a romantic hero. He was head over heels for Rosaline, and then—poof! She’s out-of-sight-out-of-mind as soon as Juliet comes into view.” She grimaced. “And why does he really want Juliet?” She looked at me, waiting for an answer. “Why?” she prompted.

“He thinks she’s beautiful,” I said softly.

“Pah! She’s unattainable! He knows he can’t truly have her, so he wants her even more! They’re so blinded by hormones—
hormones
!” She set Victoria on her lap and petted her. “They think love will be
easy.
” Putting her lips together, she blew, reminding me of my horses. “Pah! They wouldn’t know love if it—if it”—she held Victoria out, giving her a little shake in emphasis—“
bit
them.”

Pietr flinched when the kitten was thrust into his arms, but Victoria simply curled back up.