Abandon (27 page)

“We can’t do this,” I said, even as he was kissing my throat.

“Yes,” he said, a glow in his eyes I’d never seen there before. “We can.”

“No,” I said. “I mean,
I
can’t.” My pulse was racing so fast, I thought my heart was going to explode right out of my chest, the way it had seemed to when I’d run down those steps away from him. Only now it was definitely
not
from epinephrine. “I need to think about this.”

He lifted his head to look down at me.

“I’ve given you long enough to think about it,” he said. “Almost two years. You wore the necklace that whole time. You even took it back after I gave you a chance to be free, by throwing it away. Now you know what it is, and you’re
still
wearing it. You know what that means, Pierce.”

I realized now what the glow was in his eyes. It was triumph.

No wonder my heart was beating so fast. He was fire, and I was kindling.

I was doomed.

“All that means,” I assured him, struggling to wiggle out of his arms, “is that it’s possible you aren’t as big a jerk as I may once have accused you of being.”

To my relief, he let go of me. He didn’t look happy about it, just like the time I’d made him let Mr. Mueller go. But he did.

“It means you care about me,” he said.

“I care about everyone,” I retorted. “You said so once yourself. I’m a very caring person.”

“When can I see you again?” he demanded.

Of course he’d seen right through me. My sarcasm was just a defense mechanism to hide how truly unnerved I was at my body’s reaction to his.

I’d known from the fact that I hadn’t been able to keep away from the cemetery that I was drawn to him.

But I’d been telling myself it had just been because of the unfinished business between us. And the fact that he kept going around trying to kill people on my behalf. How could I ever have anticipated what I’d heard in Richard Smith’s office? Or
this
…the immediate chemical reaction that seemed to occur when our lips met? My mouth was still tingling.

What did any of it mean? Where could it go? He was a death deity. I was a senior in high school.

This was never going to work.

He didn’t share my pessimistic views.

“Tomorrow,” he said, climbing to his feet. His gaze seemed to consume me. “I will see you here tomorrow. At dawn.”

“John,” I said, shaking my head. This was happening way too fast. “No. Not dawn. That’s when normal people are still sleeping. Plus, I have school.”

“Dusk, then.” The silver eyes flashed. “Meet me here at dusk.”

“John. We need to talk about this rationally. You warned me last night,” I said, “not to go back to the cemetery. That it wasn’t safe for me there. Was that just hyperbole?” I had looked up the word. It means an exaggerated statement not intended to be taken literally. “Or did you really mean it?”

He stepped forward, wrapped an arm around my waist, pulled me against him, then kissed me some more.

It was impossible to think about the cemetery or Furies or Coffin Night when he was kissing me. It was impossible to believe anything bad could happen, ever, when he was kissing me. All I could think about was him.

He let his mouth linger on mine, neither possessively nor sweetly…like his mouth just belonged there on mine.

And he was right. It did. It always had.

I couldn’t believe I hadn’t known this before. Maybe I had.

Maybe that had been the problem all along.

When he finally let go of me, I felt as if my skin might actually be giving off the same shimmery reflection as the pool water.

“You should very, very definitely stay out of the cemetery,” he said in a slightly raspy voice. “That is not hyperbole. I’ll meet you here tomorrow night at seven o’clock. I won’t wait a minute longer. Wherever you are then, I’ll come looking for you.” He looked down at my pajamas and frowned a little. “Wear that dress you had on last night, the one with the buttons.”

And then he was gone.

T
he next morning
, I didn’t get up so much as float up.

“You’re in a good mood,” Mom said as I poured milk on my cereal.

“What?” I asked her distractedly.

“You’re humming,” she said with a smile. “You seem like you’re in a good mood.”

“Mom,” I said. “You know that guy Tim?”

She raised her eyebrows. “Yes?”

“You should totally go to the boat show with him. I think it would be good for you.”

“Really?” she said, looking amused. “What caused this change of heart?”

“Oh,” I said. “I don’t know. You should be happy.”

“Well,” Mom said. “Thank you, Pierce. That is so generous of you to give me your permission to be happy.” She looked thoughtful. “Maybe I will give him a call later, though. I was thinking the New Pathways kids might like a tour of the marine lab. You know we’ve made a lot of strides in —”

“You do that, Mom,” I said, and patted her on the shoulder. I wasn’t so blissed out that I wanted to hear about the strides the marine lab was making.

In the car to school, Alex wasn’t so amused by my good mood.

“I’m still mad at you for yesterday,” he said, honking at a chicken that wouldn’t get out of the middle of the road. There were chickens and roosters all over Isla Huesos. They ran wild around the island. “It’s just not cool. Seth and those guys — they’re bad news. You just don’t know.”

“I do know,” I said. Alex had no idea what I knew. But he’d reminded me of something. How was I going to see John if I had those stupid A-Wingers in my house, building that coffin?

And what about Uncle Chris? He was supposed to give me driving lessons after school.

Oh, well. I didn’t care. Everything would all sort itself out somehow. It always did. What did it matter, anyway? For the first time in the longest time I could remember, I was happy. Didn’t I deserve to be happy? I certainly thought so.

“Are you even listening to me?” Alex demanded. We were pulling into the parking lot at school.

“I’m sorry, what?” I asked him.

“Jesus,” he said. “What is wrong with you this morning? Did you not take your pills?”

“I’m sorry, Alex,” I said. “I’m listening. It’s just…well, there’s something I should probably tell you. But you’re not going to like it.”

He swung into a parking space and pulled on the brake. “I swear to God, Pierce,” he said. “If you tell me you’re going out with Seth Rector, I’m going to throw you out of this car.”

“No,” I said. “What? Don’t be stupid. But those guys kind of invited themselves over to my house to build the senior coffin this year.”

He stared at me for what had to be a full minute. For a few seconds, I actually got scared, thinking he might be having a stroke or something. His eyes looked as if they were starting to cross.

“Look, Alex,” I said hurriedly. “Don’t be mad. I only told them they could do it if Mom said yes, because you saw how happy she looked when everybody was talking about Coffin Night in the New Pathways office yesterday. And then they just showed up with the wood before I even got a chance to talk to her. She let them in. You know how much she wants me to fit in here. I can totally tell them to come pick up the wood if it really upsets you —”

But by then he was already shaking his head. “Pierce,” he said. “Pierce, Pierce, Pierce.”

“What?” I asked anxiously. “Please don’t tell me anything about how they burned down the garage of the last guy whose house they built the coffin in, because I already know that, Alex. I know
what I’m getting myself into, okay?” I reflexively touched my necklace. “It’s going to be okay.”

It was going to be
more
than okay. At least, I hoped so. But I couldn’t tell him that, of course.

He was still shaking his head. But he was grinning, too.

“You know what?” he said finally. “You’re right.”

I stared at him, not sure I’d heard him correctly. “What did you say?”

“You’re right.” He shrugged. “It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be
great,
actually. It’s kind of perfect.” He reached out his right hand. “Put it here, cuz. You’re my girl.”

I looked at his hand warily. But I stuck mine into it and let him do some complicated things to my limp fingers.

“What are you talking about?” I asked him as we made our way into school along with the rest of the hordes. “How is it kind of perfect? I thought you’d be mad at me.”

“It just is,” Alex said. There was actually a bounce in his step. “Don’t worry about it, all right? Forget you even told me. It’s all good. Hey,” he said to a guy who’d greeted him with a cry of “Yo, Cabrero.”

“But…” My bubble of happiness wasn’t entirely shattered. Though it was slightly tarnished. “I don’t get it. I thought you hated those guys.”

“Oh, I do,” he said. “But here’s the thing.” He slung an arm around my neck. “If they’re at your house, I’ll always know where they are. Because you’ll let me know when they’re there. Right?”

“Of course,” I said. “If you want me to. But why do you need to know where they are?”

“Don’t you worry about it. Like I said.” He grinned down at me. He really did look happy. “We’re good.”

“But you’re not going to tell, right?” I still had a slightly bad feeling about all of this. “Where the you-know-what is? Because that would reflect badly on both of us, I think.”

“Oh, you do not have to worry about that, cuz,” he said, and gave me a wink. “See you at lunch? Don’t screw it up this time. At the flagpole in the middle of the Quad. It really couldn’t be simpler, Pierce. I don’t know how even you could have messed it up yesterday.”

Yeah. Neither did I. Except that I’d been scared of the cafeteria.

Today, I didn’t think I’d have that problem. Today, I couldn’t see myself feeling scared of anything.

My happiness restored, I floated through first, second, and third periods. I was sitting in fourth period — which happened to be econ, the class I shared with Kayla, who’d greeted me with a smile and a “Hey! How you doing? So you and Alex made up, huh? I just saw him in English. Why is he in such a good mood?” — when there was a knock on the classroom door.

That was what roused me from the little doodle I’d been making of a girl in a coffin rocket ship that shot flowers at people. That and the teacher saying my name.

“Pass for you.” She handed me a pink slip of paper with my name written on it. “You’re wanted in the office.”

The New Pathways office. Everyone in the class began to hoot, knowing I’d probably accrued an ISS or OSS somehow. Though for the life of me, I couldn’t think what I’d done. Unless…

“Stop it,” the teacher — I hadn’t been in there long enough to remember her name — chastised them. “Take your things, Pierce. It’s close to the end of the period. You probably won’t have time to come back for them before lunch.”

I scooped up my books and bag. Kayla made a questioning face at me. I shrugged. I had no idea what it was about.

Except of course I did. I only hoped my fear didn’t show in my face.

What had John done
now?
I’d thought things were finally better. Better? I thought things were good.

And okay, maybe I’d only been fooling myself. Maybe a girl — not even an NDE — can’t have a normal relationship with a death deity.

But why does she have to be punished for trying?

Because as I approached the office, I saw through the windows around it that things were even worse than I’d imagined. Worse than those hoots back in the classroom had indicated.

Chief of Police Santos was there, along with some other police officers. Oh,
God.

I broke into a run.

“What,” I said as I burst into the office. “What happened?”

“Whoa there,” the police chief said. He lowered the cup of coffee he’d been sipping. “Who’s this?”

“Pierce Oliviera, Chief.” Tim was looking paler than usual. His button-down shirt looked rumpled and had come untucked in the back. “She’s the one from the cemetery —”

“Oh, right.” The police chief indicated an office. “Follow me, young lady.”

What was happening? The chief of police wanted to see me? Was I being blamed for the cemetery gate after all?

“Do I need to call my mother?” I demanded, staying where I was.

“I don’t know,” Chief of Police Santos said, raising his gray, bushy eyebrows questioningly. “Do you?”

“No, Pierce,” Tim said. He looked exhausted. “You don’t. It’s all right. The police just want to ask you some questions.”

If it had been anybody else but the person to whom I had surrendered my cell phone the day before — I had forgotten to do it that morning. But then, I had forgotten to bring my cell phone to school, I’d discovered a little while earlier, I’d been so caught up in my happy little love cloud — I probably would have insisted, Zack Oliviera-style, that I needed a lawyer.

But since it was Tim, my mom’s future maybe-boyfriend, I shrugged and followed Police Chief Santos into the office, which happened to be filled with cardboard boxes and pamphlets that said
New Pathways: A New Pathway to a New You!

A female police officer was sitting at a conference table inside the office, writing something down in a notebook. She looked up when we came in. She didn’t smile.

“What was your name again?” Police Chief Santos said to me as I followed him. “Pierce what?”

“Oliviera,” Tim answered for me. He’d come in after us. He was holding, I saw, my file. Over the past year and a half, I’d become expert in reading my name upside down.

“Oh.” The police chief pulled out a chair at the conference table. “Have a seat, Ms. Oliviera.” He said it wrong. “This won’t take long.”

Bewildered — but knowing from experience that nothing good was about to happen — I took the seat he offered.

“If this is about the cemetery gate,” I said, “I had nothing to do with it.”

The chief of police regarded me with some surprise over the top of his coffee mug.

“The cemetery gate,” he said, when he’d lowered it again. “And what do you know about the cemetery gate?”