Guardian (7 page)

“Hunter?” Mrs. Wolfe's voice pulls me back from the edge of something really important I was about to realize.

I panic and hit delete, making Gabriel's message disappear. The moment it's gone, I wonder if it was ever really there. But I couldn't help it, my first impulse was to protect him.

“Yes?” I struggle, in a daze, to focus on Mrs. Wolfe.

“You're late for first period.” She points to the clock.

“Yeah.” It's like I'm dreaming and I can't wake up.

“I know e-mail is an exciting new toy,” she says, “but you have to keep it in its proper place.”

I hear the voice of the computer telling me I've got mail. I whirl around and see it's just Jessie, in her reading class, answering me.

“I'll write you a pass,” says Mrs. Wolfe. “Go ahead and answer that one and then log off, okay?”

“Okay.”

These are Jessie's answers to my four questions. Yes, yes, yes, no.

I sit in the shade of Mrs. Chang's linden tree, eating a bowl of the best fried rice I've ever had. I told her if I had to go home for lunch, I might not be able to get to her lawn this week. Now she's bringing me a refill of my drink: iced ginger tea.

“Here's your money too, Hunter,” she says. “I put in something extra because you do such a good job.”

“Oh, you didn't need to do that,” I say, taking the money out of her hand. “The lunch was great.” I hand her back the spoon and bowl, which I have virtually licked clean.

She claps my shoulder with her hand. “Hard to find good boys like you. Want to keep you happy.”

I smile up at her, drain my drink, and hand her the glass. “Pretty soon you're going to have to think about getting a new lawn mower. I really can't do my best work with equipment like this.”

“New!” Her eyebrows fly up. Here in Leisuretown they hate that word. But then she laughs and shakes her head as she goes into the house. For a good boy like me, she'll consider it.

I yawn, stretch, and check my watch. I start my Saturdays early now—these older people get up before the birds anyway—and that lets me pace myself better through the day.

I still have a few minutes in my self-designated lunch break. I watch a blue jay hopping on the limb above me. He makes a beautiful trilling sound. I didn't know blue jays could make pretty sounds like that. That's what I like about working outdoors. There's a whole different world to see. I take the money Mrs. Chang has given me and put most of it in my pocket for Stephanie but a little bit in my shoe, for me. I know just how much to keep without getting her suspicious. I've decided God helps those who help themselves.

Carolina shakes the mayonnaise jar and sets it on our laundry-folding table. She spreads her fingers like pink-tipped fans. We watch and wait. Our sedimentary science project is coming along. Most of the substances we tried the first time mixed together too much and didn't stratify. Sand, potting soil, instant coffee, and Jell-O are all worthless. We're now trying fish-tank gravel, kitty litter, beads, tiny ball bearings, and Cheerios.

While we wait for the water to stop swirling, I get to lean in close to Carolina and pretend to watch the jar, but really I look at Carolina's heavy black curls, pulled back today in a ponytail. She's wearing a pink tube top and capris.

“The kitty litter isn't working,” she reports. “I guess we don't want to use anything that dissolves.…”

I dutifully write that down. “Are you wearing some kind of strawberry perfume?”

“It's lip gloss. Okay, write all this down. The ball bearings dropped immediately, making the first layer. Then the fish-tank gravel. Now the beads and the Cheerios are floating on top of the water, but some of the beads are coming down. So we may get four clean layers. We need to decide on the fifth layer and also figure out what we're learning from this.”

I struggle to concentrate. “I feel like we're cheating,” I say. “In nature, it's sand and soil and everything that makes the layers.”

“Yes, but …” She frowns. “I know! It's the time factor! Nature takes thousands of years, maybe millions, to make the stratification and we're doing it in minutes, so we have to compensate by using more obvious things!”

“
Obvious
is the wrong word,” I say, scribbling. “But that's the right track. What's the reason we switched to these less-dissolvy things? We knew what to do but why did we do it?” This is the kind of thing Mrs. Morales will love.

“Yeah, this is going to be great when we figure it out.” Carolina grabs the edges of her tube top and makes a tugging adjustment. I start wondering what would happen if she hadn't done that and I have trouble focusing on the project again. “Okay, what did we do? We picked things that didn't dissolve because we don't have the time to let them resettle ….”

I've got it. “It's the relative weights of the things!” I write feverishly. “We picked things with very different relative weights, so that they would stratify more quickly and compensate for the time factor!”

“Yes!” Her arms go around me. I wish I could make another discovery right away. “So we can test this theory by adding a fifth element that's either heavier than ball bearings or lighter than Cheerios.”

I look at the jar where the Cheerios now slowly absorb water and drift down. “Lighter than Cheerios will be more dramatic. How about feathers? Because they have oil on them and they'll float for a really long time.”

“Hunter, you're a genius!” She does it again. I'm lost in a cloud of strawberry fog. My hand touches the silken edge of her ponytail. I decide I need to pull back a little.

“Hunter, we are so going to get an A!” Her face has a beautiful glow.

I feel reckless. “Listen, I've got some money. Let's go to the craft store and get the feathers and then maybe I could take you out for some ice cream or something? Want to?”

“No, I have to get going in a minute. But—we could—I mean, if you're saying you want to go somewhere sometime.… I'm not allowed to date, technically, but maybe we could meet at the mall Saturday, by accident. You know?”

No, I don't know anything about this universe, but it sounds wonderful. Then I remember reality. “I have to work all day on Saturday. But Sunday …”

“We always visit my grandmother on Sunday.”

“Oh.” I look at the jar where even the buoyant Cheerios are now stratified.

Then her eyes do something interesting. She sort of tilts her head down and looks up at me through the lashes. “Do you want to kiss me, Hunter?”

If this isn't proof I have a guardian angel, I don't know what is. “Well, sure,” I say. “I guess so. I mean, if it's okay with you.”

She laughs. “Just do it!”

“Okay.” I lean in, she leans in. Strawberry, marsh-mallow clouds swirl around me … and then …

“Oh my God!” It's Andrea. Taking in the whole scene with her big, bulging eyes and recording it on her tattletale mental videotape.

“No!” I choke out.

“You filthy little dirtbag!” Andrea says. “Is this what you do when Stephanie works late?”

Carolina acts like she's been in this situation before. Keeping her eyes down, she tugs and smooths herself, slides out of her chair, and scoots past Andrea. Our front door opens and closes.

Meanwhile, I'm still in the strawberry fog and can't think. “Please,” I say. “Don't tell Jessie.”

“Jessie?” Andrea frowns and I don't know what I meant either. “I'll tell you who I'm going to tell. I'm going to tell Stephanie, so she can whip your ass. That's who I'm going to tell!”

“Listen to me.” I can at least think well enough to sit up now. “I've got cash. I'll pay you off. Stephanie doesn't have to know about this. Okay?”

Things aren't bad enough. Now Jessie appears in the doorway. “I just crashed into Carolina! What's going on?”

“He was in here making out with her, the filthy little perv,” Andrea says.

Jessie just stares at me, and then she takes off.

“Boy, are you going to get it!” Andrea chuckles.

I get up and run to my room before I give in to the urge to strangle her. I sit on the bed, breathing hard. At first I think I'm going to cry, but instead I feel it go back toward rage. A cold, hard, galvanized rage. I stand up, then I slide to my knees by the side of the bed. I bow my head and pray a simple prayer. “Get her.”

Chapter 7

I start the day by answering three e-mails.

To:
[email protected]

From:
[email protected]

Subject:
Screwed

I'm grounded because of what happened. I'm glad you're not mad at me—I guess things got out of hand … anyway, I'm glad you're not mad at me.

Your friend, Hunter

To:
[email protected]

From:
[email protected]

Subject:
Grow up

Come on, Jess. Cut it out. You're my sister, for God's sake. Stephanie punished me enough. I don't need you doing it too. You're my best friend. Please quit acting like a girl. I can't live in our godforsaken house without at least one friend. Please. I'm begging. Hunter.

To:
[email protected]

From:
[email protected]

Subject:
Prayer

I guess it was wrong to pray for vengeance like that, although if you read Psalms … well, I don't need to tell you your business. It's just that, well, you see everything so you must know what happened to me last night. In a family like ours, I think the kids should all stick together, not turn one another in, like Andrea does. I'm not saying I want you to hurt her, but couldn't something happen just to shake her up? So she would think twice about what she does. If it's a sin for me to be asking this of you, let me know. You can never get a straight answer from a priest on stuff like this.

I wait to see if anyone is online and wants to answer. No one does. I put my books in my backpack and hang it off my left shoulder. I'm trying to slip out past Mrs. Wolfe unnoticed, but she has eyes like a hawk.

“Hunter! Why are you holding your arm that way? And what happened to your eye?”

“I was Rollerblading and I fell.”

“Oh my goodness. You certainly are accident prone. Didn't something like this happen a couple of weeks ago?”

“Yeah, I tried to jump a fence and hurt my leg.”

She's giving me one of those teacher-stares, like she's five seconds from calling Child Protective Services. The funny thing is, though, they never do. “Well, you try to be careful.”

“Yes, I will.”

About a month after I moved in with Stephanie and Mike, I made a list of one hundred excuses for situations like this. I only used up twelve of them in the first four years. Now that Mike's gone, I'm averaging one a month.

I'm sitting at the kitchen table, trying to get Jessie to talk to me, when Andrea staggers in the front door.

“Oh my God!” Jessie drops her chopping knife and runs to her. “What happened?”

Andrea is a mess. Her hair clip is hanging off one side of her hair, her shirt is twisted sideways, and there's a big hole in her tights that shows a bloody scraped knee.

“A man!” Andrea is clutching her head, holding the door frame with the other hand. “A man tried to …”

“Oh my God!” Jessie says.

No, I tell myself. No.

“Sit down,” Jessie says. “Hunter, get her a glass of water. Get her a washcloth.”

Andrea is trying to gather up her hair, as Jessie pulls out a chair and forces her down. “Hunter! I said, get her a glass of water!”

I heard her, but I'm having trouble coming out of my daze. I stand up with, like, no idea how to get water. I stare at the sink.

“He was crazy!” Andrea is crying now, holding a fistful of napkins to her face. “He chased me for blocks and blocks. He was riding a motorcycle and he shouted these terrible things at me!”

The glass slips out of my hand and splinters on the floor.

Both girls glare at me. I can see on their faces that they hate me right now, just for being male. Normally, that would make me angry, but at the moment I just feel hugely guilty. I get a broom and dustpan.

“Did you get his license number?”

“He didn't have a license. It was a Honda. He was like a thug, in black leather. Hunter, stop cleaning that up and get me a glass of water!”

“I'll get it.” Jessie pushes me away from the sink. “What kinds of things was he shouting? Was it like …”

“No.” Andrea blows her nose. “It was crazy stuff. Religious things. You know how those fanatics talk. Beware the vengeance of the Lord! A house divided shall not stand! He who troubles his house … something about the wind.…”

I realize I've cut my hand on the glass. I wait my turn at the sink, dripping.

“How did you get all banged up?” Jessie wets a paper towel and brings it to Andrea, along with her glass of water.

“I fell down. He was chasing me for blocks calling me a Daughter of Babylon and I fell and I thought he was going to … do something awful to me, but he just kept circling me on that bike, like a vulture, yelling Bible quotes!”

“We should call the police,” Jessie says.

My heart flip-flops. “We better wait and see what Stephanie wants to do,” I say. I know Stephanie will quash this. She doesn't want any officers of the court looking at my eye and my arm.

Andrea is sobbing now. “He scared me so bad. He said I'd have to answer at the Throne of God for my hateful ways.”

I feel weird. Part of me is really frightened by the fact that I have the power to make something like this happen, but another part of me wants to dance for joy. I don't think it's good to be so confused. A house divided against itself cannot stand.

I feel like I have two choices at this point. A guidance counselor or a priest. I choose a priest, since there's nothing for a guidance counselor to do with a story like mine except have me committed. A priest might too, but at least I think he'll have other options.