Breathless (21 page)

“Only on the first day,” I joked back.

What I didn’t say was that Mona, our housekeeper, had brought my meals to me each day. As per my parents, this meant oatmeal or a protein shake for breakfast, a thinly sliced turkey sandwich with a side salad of organic greens for lunch, and dinner was either grilled chicken or wild salmon served with precisely two servings of vegetables. I picked up the still warm cinnamon roll Aunt Portia had given me and took a bite, inhaling the buttery smell and savoring the sugary icing that melted on my tongue. This was heaven.

Mila leaned in over the table. “Well, I’m glad you’re free now because Emma Easton and her cheer crew are doing a back to school mixer, and
moi
and you are going.” She held her hand up when I opened my mouth to interrupt her. “I know you and Emma aren’t BFFs, but the entire senior class is invited.”

“Emma Easton slashed my tires last year, and she calls me Nerdy Nora,” I said, arching my brows. “And let’s not forget the other names she has for me: bee girl,
geek girl,
blonde bitch,
and my favorite . . . Amazon girl,” I said, ticking them off on my fingers.

“You forgot brownnoser. And she started the rumor about you and the janitor.”

“Exactly!
She’s hated me since I beat her out of class president. Why would I go to her party?” I asked.

Mila seemed surprised at my declaration. “When she started the rumor about you and Mr. Bronski, you just laughed it off. Everyone thought you didn’t care.
I
thought you didn’t care.”

True, her repertoire of insults had never hurt me. After all, I’d had other more important things to worry about, like my essay on the merits of Walt Whitman’s nature poetry or whether Finn would be coming home for a visit that weekend.

“You should go and break out of this serious funk you’ve been in since Drew. You haven’t even been out on a date all summer. You need some male meat, chica,” she said seriously.

I bit back a grin because Mila had
never
had any male meat. She was still a virgin, and if she knew what I’d done with my body, she’d never speak to me again.

I nodded. “You know what, I
do
want to go. There’s something I want to tell Emma about her quarterback boyfriend. I figured it out last year, and she deserves to know,” I said, tapping my fingers on the table, remembering what I’d seen.

Yeah, a bad girl wouldn’t let Emma Easton run over her.

“Don’t have a clue what you’re talking about, but if it gets you to go, then I’ll take it,” she said with a triumphant grin. “But you gotta tell me the scoop. You’ve got this evil gleam in your eye which means you know something on somebody.” Her gray eyes focused in on me. “Yep, you’ve been people watching again. Tell me what you know, chica.”

I laughed for the first time in over a week. “I’ll tell you this much: it involves her best friend April Novak,” I said, rummaging through my backpack. I pulled out dad’s silver flask. If I wanted to get to rehab, I better get started. I had some catching up to do.

I unscrewed the metal top and sniffed it gingerly. Mother had let me have glasses of wine and champagne on special occasions, but I’d never tried vodka. I poured a healthy shot into the glass of Sprite I had.

Mila’s eyes widened as she took in the flask. “Are you insane? What is that?” she whispered, furtively looking back over her shoulder for Aunt Portia.

“Grey Goose vodka,” I said, taking a test sip and shuddering at the harsh aftertaste. “I stole a bottle from dad’s liquor cabinet, and according to the Internet, this particular brand is expensive and made in France.” I raised my glass to her. “Therefore, it must be awesome, right?” I tossed back another big gulp, trying not to grimace.

She shook her head, and her mouth gaped open. With her Emily Post-type personality, it wasn’t surprising that she’d never taken a drink of alcohol.

“Since when do you drink?” she said heatedly, in a quiet way, sniffing my cup and making a gagging face. I laughed because vodka really didn’t have a scent.

“Today is officially my first day of becoming an alcoholic. And this drink is making my soda very good—actually, no, I take that back. It tastes like shit, but I’m going to drink it anyway. Want some?”

Before she could answer, my attention was caught by a black Escalade pulling up at the warehouse directly across from the shop. When two guys got out of the vehicle, a memory tugged at me, and I focused harder on them, but they were too far away and it had gotten dark outside.

Mila let out a long sigh, pulling my attention back to her. “Anyway, you wanna hit downtown tomorrow? Maybe do some shopping at the Galleria?” she said, choosing to ignore the alcohol.

“Is there a good tattoo place around there? If not, I wanna try this new shop that just opened around the block.”

Her hands went nuts, fluttering up and down, like the girly girl she was. “I’ll never see you again because your mother will
kill
you! God, Nora, do you
want
to be incarcerated again?”

Seeing her dramatic tirade triggered something in me, and I burst out laughing as she chuckled along with me. I laughed and laughed so hard my chest burned and tears streamed down my face. Embarrassed by the emotion, I tried to suck it in and stop, but I couldn’t. I gripped my waist with my hands, but it didn’t help. She eyed me, and you know that awkward moment when everyone else has stopped laughing at something, but you still are, so they start staring at you? It was like that, only worse, because she could see my hilarity had turned into something strange and dark. I pressed my hands over my mouth and stopped the awful laughter, but then the panic set in. A cold sweat rippled over me and my heart hammered, making me feel like I was going to pass out. I bent over, my body aching as if I’d just run a hundred yard sprint. I squeezed my eyes shut, took a deep breath, held it for five seconds, exhaled, and then repeated it until my heart finally slowed.

I sat up with care, and Mila was standing and staring at me, her face washed out.

“What was
that
?” she asked, blinking.

“I think . . . I think it was my version of a panic attack,” I gasped out, wiping my face with some napkins from the table.

“Damn. Has it happened before?” she asked in a scared voice. “Should I go get Portia?”

I shook my head. “At the open house I had some dizziness, but nothing this dramatic,” I said, shuddering at the horrible laughter that had come out of me. Had I lost my mind completely? Had just the mention of Mother and being locked in my room sent me off the deep end?

“You okay now?”

I bit my lip and nodded, but I was lying.

“Hey, maybe I’m just that funny. You think I could do stand-up?” she said.

I shook my head at her. “I’m screwed up, Mila.”

“No, you’re not,” she said firmly, settling back down in her seat. “Maybe a little weird sometimes, but that’s just because you read dictionaries in your sleep.”

My eyes were drawn back to the warehouse across the street when the door opened and the taller of the guys came out. He strolled over to the SUV and popped open the back. He wasn’t facing me, but I could see he was wearing jeans and a black wife beater. I squinted, trying to make out the shadows on his muscled arms, recognizing them as some sort of tattoo. I wished he’d step into the street light so I could see him better, but he didn’t. He picked up a couple of guitars from the car, slammed the door shut, and walked back to the warehouse. My eyes followed him until he’d disappeared inside.

Something about him pricked at me and made my stomach flutter, almost like I knew who he was but couldn’t place him. I needed to get a good look at his face.

I called out for Aunt Portia to come over. “Who’s the guy next door?” I asked her, gesturing out the window.

“Where?”

“Some guy just went inside the warehouse across the street. He was driving the black SUV there,” I said.

She nodded. “Leo Tate. He’s been renovating the old gym all summer and turning it into a health club. Supposedly, it’s going to be brand new with a pool, tennis courts, yoga classes, the works.”

“Huh,” I said with a dismissive laugh, remembering that exercise and I did not get along, not since Mother had hired a personal trainer for me when I was fifteen, forcing me to take a 5:00 a.m. boot camp class three mornings a week. Her goal was to squeeze me into a size double zero. Ha. True, I was slimmer now, but only because I’d grown five inches, not because I could run a mile in six minutes.

Prompted by thoughts of Mother, the filth that gnawed at me flared deep in my gut. I
needed
balm for my soul. I needed to lash out again at something or someone. Was it wrong? Yes, definitely. Would it make me feel better? I didn’t know, but I was willing to do anything to feel better, to stay sane.

So as Mila and Aunt Portia talked about the new neighbors, I sat and thought about the bad things I could do. When I had my plan in place, I went to the back of the shop. There inside the utility closet, I found exactly what I needed. I grabbed a can of yellow spray paint, the same one Aunt Portia had used to repaint the kitchen’s back door. I shook it, checking to see if there was enough. There was. I stuffed it inside my backpack.

***

Much later, after Aunt Portia had gone home, I found myself standing in front of the new gym doors, which had the name Club Vita written in bold red letters. I cupped my hands to better see inside the glass doors, but all the lights were off. At midnight, odds were the owner had left for the night. Yet the Escalade was still here. Did that mean they lived here, too?

Mila followed and stood apprehensively behind me. “This is the worst idea you’ve ever had, Nora,” she soothed, like to a mad dog. “What if someone sees us?”

“They won’t. Come on, let’s do this,” I replied, taking a swig from the flask, my tongue numb to the taste. I passed it to Mila.

“You know I love you ’cause we’ve been friends since third grade, but we could go to jail. This is trespassing,” she said quietly, her gaze jumping around the deserted parking lot.

“You think?” I said, tucking my hair up inside my Longhorns ball cap and smiling a big Texas grin. Yep, the vodka had kicked in. “
If
we get put in jail, I’ll let you have the top bunk, I promise. I’ll even request silk sheets and a mint for your pillow.”

She didn’t even crack a smile at me. I sighed. “You’ll see, Mila, this will be fun. Come on, let’s live a little.” I walked over to the Escalade, eyeing the huge vehicle. Mr. Fitness must be well-off, judging by leather interior, high-end rims, and tinted windshield. And for some crazy reason this car had caught my attention, and I was going with it. I picked up a small pebble and tossed it on the hood, and when no alarm sounded, I turned back to Mila, victory on my face.

“What are you going to do?” she gasped. “I thought we were just checking the place out.”

I pulled the yellow can of spray paint from my backpack. “I’m going to turn this kick-ass vehicle into a preschool bus.”

“But why?” she said, a look of horror on her face.

Before I could answer, it started pouring, a hard summer rain that drenched us in no time. I tossed my head back and inhaled the suddenly damp air. And as I stared into the night sky, I saw no star in sight; I had no wishes to be wished.

No hope.

This night would not end well.

“Come on, let’s dance in the rain,” I said impulsively, pushing the bleakness away. I pretended to be okay and crooked our arms together and twirled her around, dancing and skipping like the professional square dancers did each year at the Fourth of July picnic in Highland Park. I wanted to be like those dancers. They seemed happy.

“You’re acting insane, Nora,” she said in an agitated whisper, pulling away from me. I stopped and stared at her a bit dumbfounded. Mila always did what I wanted. I was the dominant friend, and she was the follower.

She bit her bottom lip. “This isn’t the time to be trying out the dosey doe. You’re going to wake the whole freaking neighborhood.”

My spirits took a nose dive when I saw how frightened she was. She didn’t have the gumption for it, and I had no right to drag her down with me as I spiraled out of control. This wasn’t about Mila; this was about me. Whatever stupid thing I did tonight, she needed to be far away. I sighed heavily. “You’re right, Mila. Go back home, and I’ll call you when I’m leaving,” I said, taking the flask from her hand. She’d never taken a drink anyway.

“But I hate to leave you here alone . . . in the rain. And I don’t know what you’re going to do to that car,” she said, practically wringing her hands.

“Maybe I like hanging out in the rain,” I said with a shrug.

She shook her head. “You’re drunk, Nora. I can’t leave you.”

“You will because it’s past your curfew, and your parents will be mad. I’ll sleep it off in my car, Mila. Just go.”

She stared at me for a long time. “Okay, but call me when you get in your car. Please,” she begged, looking at the flask in my hands like it was a loaded gun.

Sweet, sweet Mila. You know those fluffy little rabbits you can buy at the pet store? The ones that come in different colors, like white, brown, auburn, and black? Apparently, there was this odd scientific study conducted in Switzerland once about which rabbit color people chose the most. They proved that 88.7 percent of people picked the white bunny to take home. As for me, I’d choose the black one every time because Mila reminded me of those little black bunnies with her gleaming dark hair, gentle nature, and instinct to run at the first sign of danger.

After she’d disappeared from view, I sat down in the rain on the curb and stared at the can of paint, contemplating this course I’d set myself on. I’d never done anything destructive my entire life. I’ve always tried to do every single thing right, and, yet, I sensed that this one act of vandalism would change everything.

And when the rain stopped just as suddenly as it had started, I took it as a sign. I pulled a jacket out of my backpack and used it to dry off a side of the Escalade. I picked up the can and started to work, clueless about the destiny that was hurtling toward me.