Don't Look Behind You (11 page)

“State was a disaster,” said Jodi. “Since you weren't there, I had to play with Cynthia, and you know what a waste she is at the net. We lost the first round of doubles, and that threw my game off so badly that I ended up not making it to finals in singles either. But enough about me, I want to know about you. You'll be back before school starts, won't you?”

“No, but I'll be there for the second semester,” I said. “Tell Coach Malloy to hold a place for me on the team. Look, Jodi, it's been wonderful seeing you, but I've got to split. I'm supposed to be meeting my brother at the Haunted Mansion.”

“But you can't run off without telling me what happened!” Jodi protested. “Everybody's going to freak out when I tell them I saw you. It's been like you just disappeared off the face of the earth! I saw Sherry and Steve at Ashley Steinmetz's pool party last weekend, and they said neither one of them had heard one word from you. There are all sorts of crazy rumors going around, like you had to move because your dad testified in that drug case.”

“Sherry and Steve were at Ashley's party together?” I asked her. “You don't mean… you can't mean the two of them have hooked up!”

“Not seriously, of course,” said Jodi, obviously embarrassed. “You know how it is with guys when their girlfriends take off somewhere. I'm sure it doesn't mean anything, so don't let it bother you. Steve will be leaving for college in a few weeks anyway, and of course you'll be back to go to the Christmas parties with him.”

“Of course,” I said. “I wouldn't miss the bash at Sherry's house. I had such an awesome time at that party last year.”

Without further comment, I jerked my sleeve from her fingers and set off at a run in the direction of the Haunted Mansion. I must have crashed into a dozen people on my headlong flight into nowhere, for I carried no cane to warn them I was blinded by tears.

CHAPTER 12

My parents could tell I'd been crying when
we met at the gate. When I told them about meeting Jodi, they both turned pale, and the carefree mood of the day was quickly dissipated.

Immediately, Dad asked me, “What did you tell her?”

“Nothing,” I said defensively. “I didn't tell her anything.”

“You must have said something! You couldn't have stood there in silence. Didn't she even ask you where we're living?”

“Of course, but I didn't give anything away,” I said. “I didn't even say we were living in Florida. I told her we were vacationing at Disney World. For all she knows we could have flown in from Alaska.”

“It sounds as though you handled it well,” Mom said.

“This was all my fault,” said Dad. “We never should have come here. I don't know what possessed me to suggest such a thing. Disney World is the biggest vacation resort on the whole East Coast. How could we not have run into somebody we knew here?”

“ Jodi said Steve and Sherry are dating,” I said miserably.

“So that's why you've been crying!” Mom put her arms around me. “I can see why you're upset, but I'm sure it doesn't mean anything. Steve is bound to be lonely and miss you, and since Sherry is your best friend, it probably makes him feel closer to you to be with her.”

“There are other fish in the sea,” Dad said unfeelingly. “Adolescent romance is the least of our problems.”

“How can you be so insensitive!” exclaimed Mom. “It's natural for a girl to feel hurt when something like this happens.”

“It's time Val grew up and got her priorities in order,” Dad said. “If she wants to date, there are teenage boys in Grove City.”

“You're a fine one to talk about setting priorities,” snapped Mom. “Where were your priorities when you put all our lives on hold so you could play James Bond?” By the time we were in the car, the two of them had settled into stony silence, and we drove straight back to Grove City without stopping for dinner.

The phone was ringing when we entered the house. It was Larry.

“Where have you been?” he demanded. “I've been calling all day.”

“We just got back from Disney World,” I told him.

“I thought we were going to the beach today,” he said accusingly. “What made you decide to ditch me for Pluto?”

“I didn't,” I said. “Dad sprung this trip on me this morning. Besides, our plan to go to the beach wasn't definite. I told you I had to check it out with my parents.”

“And I told you I'd call in the morning,” Larry said. “Whena girl knows I'm going to call her, I expect her to be there. I'm not a guy who appreciates being stood up.”

The surliness of his voice was more than I could handle. The day had been upsetting enough without this added unpleasantness.

“I don't appreciate being snarled at!” I exploded. When I heard him draw in a breath to fire back a retort, I did something I'd never done to anyone before—I hung up on him.

The discovery that Steve was seeing Sherry was so devastating that for most of the week that followed I had no energy for anything. Without my regular tennis games to get me up and moving, I continued to lie in bed long past my usual rising time, listening to the rest of the house come to life on the far side of my bedroom walls. If I blocked everything else from my mind and concentrated on the surface of the wall across from me, the map work of cracks in the plaster looked like a spider web, and I found that if I stared at it long enough, I could even make out the shape of a fly ensnared in it.

Gazing up at the ceiling was just as depressing. Rain had leaked through the roof to form puddles in the attic, and the stain on the plaster above me grew larger with each rainfall. It had spread so far that a portion was over my bed, and I kept expecting something dark and nasty to leak down on me. My bedroom became a symbol of our life in Grove City, and by the time I dragged myself out to face what was left of the morning, I was so immersed in self-pity that I had no desire to go anywhere or do anything.

It was Kim who jolted me to life and started me functioning again. Four days after the Disney World trip, she called me.

“I just thought I'd call and check in with you,” she said awkwardly. “Larry's plenty freaked out about your breakup.”

“Our
breakup
?” I exclaimed. “What do you mean, our breakup? You can't break up with somebody unless you've been a couple. All Larry and I had going between us were tennis balls.”

“That's not the way he wanted it, though,” Kim told me. “He thinks you're cool, and he was planning to start going out with you. You've got to understand how it is with Larry. He's used to having the local girls fall all over him, and he takes it as a huge insult when somebody doesn't.”

“Poor baby,” I said sarcastically. “Did he ask you to tell me that?”

“Not exactly,” Kim said, “but he did hint around about it. What he wants me to do is find out if you're still pissed off at him or whether, if he was to call you, you'd want to start seeing him again.”

“Maybe if he apologized.”

“That's not his style. Larry never apologizes to anybody for anything.”

The day was hot, and it hadn't rained for a week, so I knew the courts at the school would be dry and hard. Dad was at Zip-Pic, Mom was busy at the typewriter, and Jason and his friends were holed up in their hideout, thumping around in the attic like a herd of elephants. My muscles felt tight from lack of exercise, and the thought of a game of tennis was irresistible.

“Tell him to call me,” I said. “I shouldn't have hung up on him. I was in a bad mood that evening and overreacted.”

Princess April would never have made such a statement, but Valerie Weber was desperate with loneliness and boredom. Either Kim called Larry immediately, or he'd been standing there at her elbow when she made her call to me, because less than five minutes later he was on the phone. As Kim had predicted, he didn't apologize, which irritated me so much that I didn't either. Neither of us referred to the last conversation we'd had, we just made a date to play tennis at seven the next morning. After that we swung naturally back into our old routine, and our daily morning tennis games became the norm again. We also started playing in the early evening after the sun had dropped below the tree line and the blazing afternoon heat had lifted from the courts.

One evening, after playing three sets at twilight, we stopped for Cokes at McDonald's and found ourselves in line behind Fran and Amy, two of the girls I'd met at the vampire movie. I was worried at first that they might be the girls from the restroom, but as soon as we started talking, I knew that their voices weren't the ones that I'd heard there. We ended up sharing a table, and in the course of conversation, Amy invited us to a party she was having on Saturday.

I realized the invitation was directed primarily at Larry, but he turned to me and asked, “Are you busy that night?”

When I said no, he flashed me that cocky grin of his.

“Great,” he said. “I'll pick you up around eight, then.”

So once again I was committed to a formal date with him. This time, though, I didn't feel guilty about it. Steve wasn't sitting at home by himself every evening, and if he could date Sherry for parties, then I could date Larry. Besides, it wasn't as though this would ever get serious. There had once been a time when I'd been attracted by the burly, muscle-man type, but my taste in boys had changed since I'd started dating Steve, and Larry's gigantic ego was a definite turnoff. Still, I felt sure he'd be fun to be with at a party, and fun was something I very much needed.

I went to the party determined to have a good time. What I ended up doing instead was talking too much. I blame myself, but I also blame the punch. Amy's parents were out of town, and she and Fran and their boyfriends had created a frothy concoction they'd christened “Suicide.” I woke up the following morning with a skull-splitting headache and a tongue that was stuck to the roof of my mouth with invisible Velcro.

The punch was deceptive because it tasted like fruit juice, but I have to admit I suspected there might be something else in it, and I drank it because I wanted to chill out. When Larry and I first got to the party I was uptight and nervous, surrounded by so many strangers who had known each other since kindergarten. To make things worse, Sandi was there, encircled by a tight group of girlfriends who kept glaring at me and whispering to each other and making me feel more and more uncomfortable. After two or three swallows of punch I started to feel better. Tension ran out of me the way it did after a hard game of tennis, and my artificial smile began to lose its rigidity. Then Amy put on some music, and Larry whipped me out onto the dance floor, and within a couple of minutes the room was like a club. When we finally took a break, we were both sweating, and my heart was pounding so hard that my ears were ringing. Larry thrust another cup of Suicide into my hand, and I gulped down the tangy liquid gratefully.

Sometime later I found myself in the yard, half sitting, half lying on one of those aluminum chaises with plastic strips that cut into your back like a waffle iron. The fantastic thing was that Steve was there beside me. My eyes were closed, and I knew I was probably dreaming, but if I was, I had no desire to wake up. Steve's arms were tight around me, and he was kissing my face and my neck and was whispering all sorts of beautiful things in my ear.

“Baby,” he whispered. “Val—” His mouth came down hard on mine, and his hands, which had worked their way inside the back of my blouse, were fumbling awkwardly around with the hooks on my bra. The lips that were pressed to mine had a foreign taste to them, and abruptly the wonderful dream gave way to reality. This wasn't the way Steve acted, and Steve didn't call me Val.

“Let go of me, Larry,” I said, trying to wriggle out from under him.

“Come on, don't play games,” Larry muttered huskily. “We've seen each other almost every day for a month now. If you didn't like me, you wouldn't be spending so much time with me.”

“You don't understand,” I said. “I already have a boyfriend back in Virginia. I wouldn't feel right making out with somebody else.”

There was a moment of silence.

Then Larry said, “Virginia? I heard you tell Abby you'd never even been there.”

“I meant North Carolina,” I said. “I've had too much punch.”

Larry pulled his arms out from under my back and straightened up on the chaise to sit looking down at me. His face was hidden by shadow, but mine was raised to the sky and illuminated by moonlight, and I felt a rush of terror at what he might see there.

“I didn't mean—” I began.

“Yes, I think you did mean,” Larry said quietly. “Abby may be a pill, but the kid's not stupid. You did sit next to her on the plane coming down here. She knew you were from Virginia, because you told her so.”

“What does it matter?” I said. “Who cares where I come from? It doesn't make any difference if it's Durham or Norwood.”

“The difference is that you lied about it,” said Larry. “Abby said you told her your name was April. Why did you lie to Kim and me and say it was Valerie?”

“Because it is!” I insisted. “My name is Valerie! The only thing I lied about was coming from Durham!” The sour taste of punch surged up into my throat, and I swallowed hard to keep it from rising farther. “I don't feel good. Please, Larry, I want to go home.”

“All right,” Larry said. “But don't expect this to be the end of it. I'll take you home, but I want to know what's going on. I don't like being lied to and made a fool of.”

To my relief, he didn't try to interrogate me during the drive, but once he had brought the car to a stop in our driveway, he placed his hand on my arm to keep me from getting out.

“What are you doing here in Grove City?” he asked me. “Why did your family move here in the first place? It's not as though you had relatives here, and it certainly couldn't have been so your dad could buy Zip-Pic.” He paused, and when I didn't respond, he continued. “Is your last name really Weber? I bet it isn't.”

“Of course it is!” I shot back at him defiantly. “We moved here because we were having financial problems. The business my father owned back home went under, and he wanted to go somewhere else and make a fresh start.”

“You mean he went bankrupt?” asked Larry.

“No, not exactly.”

“Nobody comes to Grove City to seek his fortune. What's he running away from, trouble with the law? Embezzlement, maybe, or income tax evasion? A man doesn't change his name without a good reason.”

“You've got everything wrong,” I said angrily. “My dad's no criminal. You don't have any right to cross-examine me, and I don't have to tell you anything I don't want to.” I jerked away from his hand and got out of the car. The headlights paved a straight, bright path to the porch, and I made it nearly that far before I threw up.

The next morning I was so sick I didn't get up. I let Mom think I was coming down with stomach flu and lay in bed with a pillow pressed over my eyes, cursing myself for the stupid things I had said and trying to convince myself that, since Larry, too, had been swigging down punch, he might not remember the whole of our conversation. As the day dragged by, my hangover gradually lessened, although I couldn't believe I would ever feel good again. By mid-afternoon I was able to stagger to the shower, where I stood, shaky and rubber-kneed, under a pounding cascade of water and vowed I would spend the rest of my life sober. I was able to force down some soup and toast for dinner, and by eight that night I was flat on my back in bed again, trying to read and feeling twice as drained and exhausted as I would if I'd spent the day in productive activity. I was just getting ready to turn off the bedside lamp when there was a rap on the door and my father came in with a handful of fifty-dollar bills.