Night Road (2 page)

“You’re up early.”

She turned. Her husband stood on the stone patio, just outside their bedroom door. In a pair of black boxer shorts, with his too long, graying-blond hair still tangled from sleep, he looked like some sexy classics professor or a just-past-his-prime rock star. No wonder she’d fallen in love with him at first sight, more than twenty-four years ago.

She kicked off the orange clogs and walked along the stone path from the garden to the patio. “I couldn’t sleep,” she confessed.

He took her in his arms. “It’s the first day of school.”

And there it was, the thing that had crept into her sleep like a burglar and ruined her peace. “I can’t believe they’re starting high school. They were just in kindergarten a second ago.”

“It’s going to be an interesting ride, seeing who they become in the next four years.”

“Interesting for you,” she said. “You’re in the stands, watching the game. I’m down on the field, taking the hits. I’m terrified something will go wrong.”

“What can go wrong? They’re smart, curious, loving kids. They’ve got everything going for them.”

“What can go wrong? Are you kidding? It’s … dangerous out there, Miles. We’ve been able to keep them safe up until now, but high school is different.”

“You’re going to have to let up a little, you know.”

It was the sort of thing he said to her all the time. A lot of people gave her the same advice, actually, and had for years. She’d been criticized for holding the reins of parenthood too tightly, of controlling her children too completely, but she didn’t know how to let go. From the moment she’d first decided to become a mother, it had been an epic battle. She had suffered through three miscarriages before the twins. And there had been month after month when the arrival of her period had sent her into a gray and hazy depression. Then, a miracle: she’d conceived again. The pregnancy had been difficult, always tenuous, and she’d been sentenced to almost six months of bed rest. Every day as she’d lain in that bed, imagining her babies, she’d pictured it as a war, a battle of wills. She’d held on with all her heart. “Not yet,” she finally said. “They’re only fourteen.”

“Jude,” he said, sighing. “Just a little. That’s all I’m saying. You check their homework every day and chaperone every dance and organize every school function. You make them breakfast and drive them everywhere they need to go. You clean their rooms and wash their clothes. If they forget to do their chores, you make excuses and do it all yourself. They’re not spotted owls. Let them loose a little.”

“What should I give up? If I stop checking homework, Mia will stop doing it. Or maybe I should quit calling their friends’ parents to make sure the kids are going where they say they’re going? When I was in high school we had keggers every weekend, and two of my girlfriends got pregnant. I need to keep
better
track of them now, trust me. So many things can go wrong in the next four years. I need to protect them. Once they go to college, I’ll relax. I promise.”

“The right college,” he teased, but they both knew it wasn’t really a joke. The twins were freshmen in high school and Jude had already begun to research colleges.

She looked up at him, wanting him to understand. He thought she was too invested in their children, and she understood his concern, but she was a mother, and she didn’t know how to be casual about it. She couldn’t stand the thought that her children would grow up as she had, feeling unloved.

“You’re nothing like her, Jude,” he said quietly, and she loved him for saying it. She rested against him; together they watched the day brighten, and Miles finally said, “Well, I better get going. I have a surgery at ten.”

She kissed him deeply, then followed him back into the house. After a quick shower, she dried her shoulder-length blond hair, put on a thin layer of makeup, and dressed in jeans and a boatnecked cashmere sweater and faded jeans. Opening her dresser drawer, she withdrew two small wrapped packages; one for each of her children. Taking them with her, she walked out of her bedroom, down the wide slate hallway. With morning sunlight streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows, this house, constructed mostly of glass and stone and exotic woods, seemed to glow from within. On this main floor, every viewpoint boasted some decorating treasure. Jude had spent four years huddled with architects and designers to make this home spectacular, and her every dream for it had been realized.

Upstairs, it was a different story. Here, at the top of a floating stone and copper stairway, it was kidland. A giant media room, complete with big-screen TV and a pool table, dominated the east side of the house. Additionally there were two large bedrooms, each with their own en suite bathroom.

At Mia’s bedroom door, she knocked perfunctorily and went inside.

As expected, she found her fourteen-year-old daughter sprawled on top of the blankets in her four-postered bed, asleep. There were clothes everywhere, like shrapnel from some mythic explosion, heaped and piled and kicked aside. Mia was actively engaged in a search for identity, and each new attempt required a radical clothing change.

Jude sat down on the edge of the bed and stroked the soft blond hair that fell across Mia’s cheek. For a moment, time fell away; suddenly she was a young mother again, looking down at a cherubic girl with corn-silk hair and a gummy grin who’d followed her twin brother around like his shadow. They’d been like puppies, scrambling over each other in their exuberant play, chattering nonstop in their secret language, laughing, tumbling off sofa and steps and laps. From the very start, Zach had been the leader of this pair. He’d spoken first and most often. Mia hadn’t uttered a real word until after her fourth birthday. She hadn’t needed to; her brother was there for her. Then and now.

Mia rolled over sleepily and opened her eyes, blinking slowly. Her pale, heart-shaped face, with its gorgeous bone structure—inherited from her father—was an acne battlefield that no amount of care had yet been able to clear. Multicolored rubberbands looped through her braces. “Hola, Madre.”

“It’s the first day of high school.”

Mia grimaced. “Shoot me. Really.”

“It’ll be better than middle school. You’ll see.”

“Says you. Can’t you homeschool me?”

“Remember sixth grade? When I tried to help you with your math homework?”

“Disaster,” Mia said glumly. “It could be better now, though. I wouldn’t get so mad at you.”

Jude stroked her daughter’s soft hair. “You can’t hide out from life, Poppet.”

“I don’t want to hide out from life. Just from high school. It’s like swimming with sharks, Mom. Honest. I could lose a foot.”

Jude couldn’t help smiling. “See? You have a great sense of humor.”

“That’s what they say when they’re trying to set up an ugly girl. Thanks, Madre. And who cares, anyway? It’s not like I have friends.”

“Yes, you do.”

“No. Zach has friends who try to be nice to his loser sister. It’s not the same thing.”

For years, Jude had moved heaven and earth to make her children happy, but this was one battle she couldn’t fight. It wasn’t easy to be the shy twin sister of the most popular boy in school. “I have a present for you.”

“Really?” Mia sat up. “What is it?”

“Open it.” Jude offered the small wrapped box.

Mia ripped open the box. Inside lay a thin pink leather diary with a gleaming brass lock.

“I had one when I was your age, and I wrote down everything that happened to me. It can help—writing stuff down. I was shy, too, you know.”

“But you were beautiful.”

“You’re beautiful, Mia. I wish you saw that.”

“Yeah, right. Zits and braces are all the rage.”

“Just be open to people, okay, Mia? This is a new school, make it a new opportunity, okay?”

“Mom, I’ve been going to school with the same kids since kindergarten. I don’t think a new address is going to help. Besides, I tried being open … with Haley, remember?”

“That was more than a year ago, Mia. It doesn’t do any good to focus on the bad things that happen. Today is the first day of high school. A new start.”

“Okay.” Mia tried gamely to smile.

“Good. Now get out of bed. I want to get to school early today, so I can help you find your locker and get you settled into first period. You have Mr. Davies for geometry; I want him to know how well you did on the WASL test.”

“You are
not
walking me into class. And I can find my locker by myself, too.”

Intellectually, Jude knew that Mia was right, but Jude wasn’t ready to let go. Not yet. Too many things could go wrong. Mia was fragile, too easily flustered. What if someone made fun of her?

A mother’s job was to protect her kids—whether they wanted it or not. She stood up. “I’ll be practically invisible. You’ll see. No one will even know I’m there.”

Mia groaned.

Two

On the first day of school, Lexi woke early and staggered down the narrow hallway to the bathroom. One look in the mirror confirmed her worst fears: her skin was pale, a little sallow, even, and her blue eyes were puffy and bloodshot. She must have cried in her sleep again.

She took a quick, lukewarm shower, careful not to waste her aunt’s money. There was no real point in drying her hair. The waist-length black strands would curl and frizz and do whatever they wanted to, so she pulled it all into a ponytail and went back to her room.

There, she opened her closet door and stared at the few articles of clothing she owned. There were so few choices …

What did kids wear here? Would Pine Island be like Brentwood or the Hills, where kids dressed like avant-garde fashion models? Or East L.A., where rap-star wannabes and grungoids filled the classrooms?

There was a knock at her bedroom door, so quiet Lexi barely heard it. She made her bed quickly and then opened the door.

Eva stood there, holding a cotton-candy-pink sweatshirt with a rhinestone butterfly bedazzled onto the front. The kidney-shaped wings were purple and yellow and shamrock green. “I got this for you at work yesterday. I figured every girl should have something new to wear on the first day of high school.”

It was the ugliest thing Lexi had ever seen, better suited to a four-year-old than a fourteen-year-old, but she loved it instantly. No one had ever bought her something special for the first day of school. “It’s perfect,” she said, feeling a tightening in her throat. She’d only lived with her aunt for four days, and every hour she felt a little more at home. It scared her, that settling in. She knew how dangerous it could be to start liking a place. A person.

“You don’t have to wear it if you don’t want to. I just thought—”

“I can’t wait to wear it. Thanks, Eva.”

Her aunt gave her a smile so bright it bunched up her cheeks. “I told Mildred you’d like it.”

“I do.”

Eva bobbed her head in a little nod and backed into the hallway, closing the door behind her. Lexi put on the pink sweatshirt and stepped into a pair of faded Target jeans. Then she filled her hand-me-down backpack with the notebooks, paper, and pens Eva had brought home from work last night.

In the kitchen, she found Eva standing by the sink, dressed now for work in her blue Walmart smock, lemon-yellow acrylic sweater, and jeans, drinking coffee.

Across the small, tidy space, their gazes met. Eva’s brown eyes looked worried. “Mrs. Watters worked hard to get you into Pine Island High. It’s one of the best schools in the state, but the school bus don’t come over the bridge, so you’ll have to take the county bus. Is that okay? Have I already told you all this?”

Lexi nodded. “It’s fine, Eva. Don’t worry. I’ve been riding buses for years.” She didn’t add that she’d often slept on their dirty seats when she and Momma had nowhere else to go.

“Okay, then.” Eva finished her coffee and rinsed out her cup, leaving it in the sink. “Well, you don’t want to be late on your first day. I’ll drive you. Let’s go.”

“I can take the bus—”

“Not on the first day. I got the late-shift special.”

Lexi followed her aunt out to the car. As they drove toward the island, Lexi studied her surroundings. She’d seen all of this on maps, but those little lines and markings only told so much of the story. For instance, she knew that Pine Island was twelve miles long and four miles wide; that it was accessible by ferry to downtown Seattle and by bridge to mainland Kitsap County. On the Port George side of the bridge, the land was tribal. Pine Island, she saw now, was not.

She could tell by the houses that the people who lived on the island were rich. The houses over here were practically mansions.

They turned off the highway and drove up a hill to the high school, which was a collection of squat redbrick buildings huddled around a flagpole. Like many of the schools Lexi had attended, Pine Island had obviously grown faster than expected. A collection of portables ringed the main campus. Eva parked in the empty bus lane and looked at Lexi. “These kids are no better’n you. You remember that.”

Lexi felt a rush of affection for this careworn woman who had taken her in. “I’ll be fine,” Lexi said. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

Eva nodded. “Good luck,” she said at last.

Lexi didn’t say that luck was useless at a new school. Instead, she forced a smile and got out of the car. As she waved good-bye, a school bus pulled up behind Eva, and kids poured out of it.

Lexi kept her head down and started moving. She’d been the new girl often enough to know the tricks of the camouflage trade. The best tactic was to blend in, disappear. You did that by looking down and moving fast. Rule one: never stop. Rule two: never look up. By Friday, if she’d followed this pattern, she’d just be one of the kids in the freshman class, and then she could try to make a friend or two. Although it wouldn’t be easy here. What could she possibly have in common with these kids?

When she made it to Building A, she double-checked her schedule. There it was. Room 104. She merged into the crowd of students, all of whom seemed to know one another, and let their tide carry her forward. In the classroom, kids slid into their seats and kept talking excitedly.

Her mistake was to pause. She looked up just long enough to get her bearings, and the classroom went quiet. Kids stared at her; then whispering began. Someone laughed. Lexi felt her flaws keenly—her thick black eyebrows and crooked teeth and frizzy hair, her lame jeans and lamer sweatshirt. This was the kind of place where every kid got braces at adolescence and a new car at sixteen.

In the back of the room, a girl pointed at her and started to giggle. The girl seated beside her nodded. Lexi thought she heard
nice butterfly,
and then:
did she make it herself?

A boy stood up, and the room went quiet again.

Lexi knew who he was. Every school had a guy like him—good-looking, popular, athletic, the kind of boy who got what he wanted without even trying. The football captain and class president. In his aqua blue Abercrombie T-shirt and baggy jeans, he looked like Leonardo DiCaprio, all golden and smiling and sure of himself.

He was coming toward her. Why? Was there another, prettier girl behind her? Was he going to do something to humiliate her, to make his friends laugh?

“Hey,” he said. She could feel everyone looking at them, watching.

Lexi bit her lower lip to hide her crooked teeth. “Hey.”

He smiled. “Susan and Liz are bitches. Don’t let them get to you. The butterfly’s cool.”

She stood there like an idiot, dazzled by his smile.
Get a grip, Lexi. You’ve seen good-looking guys before.
She should say something, smile;
something.

“Here,” he said, taking her arm. At his touch, she felt a little jolt, like an electrical charge.

He should have moved, led her somewhere. That was why he was touching her arm, right? But he just stood there, staring down at her. His smile faded. She couldn’t breathe all of a sudden; the whole world drained away until only his face was left, only his amazing green eyes.

He started to say something, but Lexi’s heart was pounding so fast, she couldn’t hear his words, and then he was being pulled away from her, led away by some beautiful girl in a skirt that was smaller than a dinner napkin.

Lexi stayed a moment too long, staring at his back, still feeling out of breath. Then she remembered where she was and who she was: the new girl in the bedazzled pink sweatshirt. Tucking her chin into her chest, she bolted forward, made her way to a seat in the back row. She slid onto its slick surface just as the bell rang.

As the teacher droned on about the early days of Seattle, Lexi replayed that moment, over and over. She told herself it meant nothing, the way he’d touched her, but she couldn’t let it go. What had he been going to say to her?

When the class ended, she dared to look at him. He moved with the crowd of students, laughing at something the girl in the miniskirt said. At Lexi’s desk, he paused, looked down at her, although he didn’t smile or stop. He kept moving.

Of course he didn’t stop. She rose slowly and walked to the door. For the rest of the morning, she tried to hold her head high as she moved through the crowded halls, but by noon, she was lagging, and the worst was yet to come.

Lunch in a new school was hell. You never knew what was in and what was out, and the whole social order could be upset if you dared to sit where you weren’t supposed to.

At the door to the cafeteria, Lexi paused. Just the idea of walking in there, being scrutinized and judged, was more than she could bear today. Normally she was stronger than that, but Mr. Popular had unbalanced her somehow, made her want the impossible, and she knew firsthand how waylaid one could be by longing. It was a waste of time. She walked back outside, where the sun was shining. She dug through her backpack, found the lunch Eva had packed for her and a well-read copy of
Jane Eyre.
Some kids had stuffed animals or special childhood blankets. Lexi had Jane.

She walked idly through campus, looking for a place to sit down and read while she ate her lunch. Across the campus, she spied a pretty little tree growing up from a triangular patch of grass, but it wasn’t the tree that caught her attention. It was the girl sitting cross-legged on the grass beneath its green canopy, hunched over a book. Her blond hair was divided into a pair of loosely twined braids. Dressed in a delicate pink tulle skirt, a black tank top, and black high-tops, she definitely made a statement.

It was a statement Lexi understood: I’m not like you. I don’t need you.

Lexi had spent a few years dressed the same way herself, back when she hadn’t wanted to make friends, when she’d been afraid of being asked where she lived or what her momma was like.

She took a deep breath and walked toward the girl. When she drew near, Lexi paused. She wanted to say the right thing, but now that she was here, she didn’t know what that would be.

The girl looked up from her book. She was fragile looking, with acne-blistered skin and green eyes that were rimmed with too much purple eyeliner. Brightly colored rubber bands accented her braces.

“Hey,” Lexi said.

“He’s not here. And he’s not coming.”

“Who?”

The girl gave a disinterested shrug and went back to reading. “If you don’t know, it doesn’t matter, does it?”

“Can I sit with you?”

“Social suicide,” the girl said without looking up.

“What?”

The girl looked up again. “It’s social suicide to sit with me. Even the theater kids won’t hang with me. Yeah. It’s that bad.”

“You mean I won’t make the cheerleading squad? How tragic.”

The girl looked interested in Lexi for the first time. A smile quirked her mouth. “Most girls care about stuff like that.”

“Do they?” Lexi dropped her backpack onto the grass. “What are you reading?”

“
Wuthering Heights.
”

Lexi held out her own book. “
Jane Eyre
. Can I sit down?”

The girl scooted sideways to make room on the small patch of grass. “I haven’t read that one. Is it good?”

Lexi sat down beside her. “My favorite. When you’re done with yours, we could trade.”

“That would be awesome. I’m Mia, by the way.”

“Lexi. So what’s the book about?”

Mia began talking slowly, stumbling over her words, but when she started talking about Heathcliff, she kind of took flight. The next thing Lexi knew, they were laughing as if they’d been friends for years. When the bell rang, they got up and walked toward their lockers together, still talking the whole way across campus. Lexi didn’t keep her head down anymore, didn’t clamp her books to her chest or purposely not make eye contact with anyone. Instead, she laughed.

Outside the door to her Spanish class, Mia stopped and said in a rush: “You could come to my house after school today. If you wanted to, I mean.” She looked nervous as she asked it. “I know you probably won’t. No worries.”

Lexi felt like smiling; only nervousness over her teeth kept her in check. “I would totally like that.”

“Meet me at the flagpole by the admin building, okay?”

Lexi went into her classroom and took a seat at the back. She eyed the clock for the rest of the day, willing time to speed up until finally at 2:50, she was at the flagpole, waiting. Kids swarmed around her, jostling one another as they made their way onto the buses lined up outside.

Maybe Mia wouldn’t show. Probably she wouldn’t.

Lexi was about to give up the whole thing when Mia came up beside her. “You waited,” she said, sounding as relieved as Lexi felt. “Come on.”

Mia led the way through the hive of students, toward a shiny black Escalade parked out on the main road. She opened the passenger door and climbed in.

Lexi followed her new friend into the leather-scented beige seat.

“Hola, Madre,” Mia said. “This is Lexi. I invited her home with me. Is that okay?”