Night Road (3 page)

The woman in the driver’s seat turned around, and Lexi was stunned by her beauty. Mia’s mom looked like Michelle Pfeiffer with her perfect, pale face and sleek blond hair. In an obviously expensive salmon-colored sweater, she looked like she belonged on the Nordstrom catalog cover. “Hello, Lexi. I’m Jude. It’s nice to meet you. And how is it that I don’t know you?”

“I just moved here.”

“Ah. That explains it. Where did you move here from?”

“California.”

“I won’t hold that against you,” Jude said with a bright smile. “Will your mother mind if you’re not home right away?”

“No,” Lexi said, tensing for the inevitable next question.

“I could call her if you’d like, introdu—”

“Mo-
om,
” Mia said, “you’re doing that thing again.”

Jude flashed Lexi a smile. “I’m embarrassing my daughter. Something I am sadly wont to do these days, just by breathing. But I can hardly stop being a mother, can I? I’m sure your mom is just as embarrassing, right, Lexi?”

Lexi had no idea what to say to that, but it didn’t matter. Jude laughed and went on as if she hadn’t asked a thing. “I’m supposed to be seen and not heard. Fine. Buckle up, girls.”

She started up the car, and Mia immediately started talking about a book she’d heard about.

They drove away from the school and onto a pretty little main street. The traffic was stop-and-go all the way through town, but once they made it onto the highway, the road was clear. They followed one curvy, tree-lined, two-lane road after another until Jude said, “Home sweet home,” and turned onto a gravel driveway.

At first there was nothing but trees on either side of them, trees so tall and thick they blocked out the sun, but then the road curved again and they were in a clearing full of sunlight.

The house was like something out of a novel. It sat proudly amid its landscaping, a soaring structure made of wood and stone, with windows everywhere. Low stone walls delineated magnificent gardens. Behind it all was the blue Sound. Even from here, Lexi could hear waves hitting the shore.

“Wow,” Lexi said, getting out of the car. She had never been in a house like this before. How should she act? What should she say? She would do the wrong thing for sure and Mia would laugh at her.

Jude slipped an arm around her daughter and they walked ahead. “I bet you girls are hungry. Why don’t I make you some quesadillas? You can tell me about the first day of high school.”

Lexi hung back instinctively.

At the front door, Mia looked back. “Lexi? You don’t want to come in, do you? You’ve changed your mind.”

Lexi felt her insecurity dissolve, or perhaps more accurately, it joined with Mia’s and morphed into something else. They were alike; impossibly, the girl who had nothing was like this girl who had everything. “No way,” Lexi said, laughing as she hurried toward the door.

Inside, she slipped out of her shoes, seeing a second too late that her socks had holes in the toes. Embarrassed, she followed Mia into the magnificent house. There were walls of glass that framed a stunning ocean view, a stone fireplace, gleaming floors. She was afraid to touch anything.

Mia grabbed her hand and dragged her into a huge kitchen. There were gleaming copper pots hanging from a black skeletal thing above the eight-burner stove and fresh flowers in several places around the room. They sat down at a long black granite counter while Jude made quesadillas.

She just walked right up to me, Madre. And I told her it was social suicide to sit with me, but she didn’t care. Is that cool or what?

Jude smiled at that, and started to say something, but Mia kept talking. Lexi could hardly keep up with Mia’s steady stream of stories. It was as if Mia had been holding observations and thoughts inside of her for years, and now they were coming out. Lexi knew about that, about holding things inside and being afraid and trying to stay quiet. She and Mia compared opinions on high school, boys, classes, movies, tattoos, belly button piercings, and they agreed on
everything.
The more they agreed on, the more Lexi worried: what would happen when Mia found out about Lexi’s past? Would Mia want to be friends with a drug addict’s kid?

At about five o’clock, the front door banged open and a group of kids burst into the house.

“Shoes,” Jude yelled from the kitchen without looking up.

Nine or ten kids surged forward, boys and girls. Lexi could tell they were the popular kids. Anyone would have recognized them—pretty girls in low-rise jeans and midriff-baring Tshirts, and boys in PIHS blue and yellow sweats. They’d probably come here from football and cheerleader practice.

“My bro is the one in the gray sweats,” Mia said, leaning closer. “Don’t judge him by the company he keeps. Those girls have the brains of breath mints.”

It was the guy from first period.

He peeled away from the crowd with the ease of one who knew how popular he was and sidled up to Mia, putting an arm around her shoulders. The resemblance between them was startling; Mia’s face was a feminine, sculpted version of his. He started to say something to his sister, and then he noticed Lexi. His gaze sharpened, grew so intense that she felt that fluttering start in her chest again. No one had ever looked at her like that before, as if everything about her was interesting.

“You’re the new girl,” he said quietly, pushing the long blond hair out of his eyes.

“She’s my friend,” Mia said, grinning so wide her braces were a multicolored blur.

His smile faded.

“I’m Lexi,” she said, although he hadn’t asked her her name.

He looked away from her, disinterested. “I’m Zach.”

A girl in tiny shorts and a midriff-baring top moved in behind him, draped herself along his side, and whispered something in his ear. He didn’t laugh, barely smiled in fact. Instead, he backed away from Lexi and Mia. “Later, Me-my,” he said to his sister. Slinging an arm around short-shorts girl, he led her toward the stairs and disappeared into the crowd of kids running upstairs.

Mia frowned at her. “Is something wrong, Lexi? It’s okay if I say you’re my friend, right?”

Lexi stared at the empty place where he’d been, feeling unsettled. He’d smiled at her, hadn’t he? At first, for a second? What had she done wrong?

“Lexi? Is it okay if I tell people we’re friends?”

Lexi let out the breath she’d been holding. She forced her attention away from the stairs. Seeing Mia’s nervousness, she realized what was important here, and it wasn’t a guy like Zach. No wonder he confused her. He would always be incomprehensible to a girl who’d grown up in the weeds. What mattered was Mia and this fragile beginning of their friendship. “Of course,” she said, smiling. For once, she didn’t care about her teeth. She was pretty sure Mia wouldn’t care. “You can tell everyone.”

*

The media room was full of kids, as usual. Some women might be overwhelmed by the noise and mayhem, but not Jude. Years ago—back when the twins were starting sixth grade—she’d made a conscious effort to make her house welcoming. She wanted the kids to hang out here. She’d known herself well enough to know that she didn’t want to be dropping her kids off into other women’s care; she wanted to be the one in charge. To that end, she’d designed the upstairs carefully, and it had worked. Some days, there were fifteen kids here, eating their way through her snack provisions like locusts. But she knew where her children were and she knew they were safe.

Now, as she unlocked the great room’s series of wood-framed pocket doors and opened them wide, she could hear movement upstairs; the floors groaned and footsteps thudded through the house.

For once, Mia wasn’t hiding out from all that horseplay in the media room, she wasn’t locked in her bedroom, watching
The Little Mermaid
or
Beauty and the Beast
or another of her Disney comfort movies. She was out on the beach, sitting on the sandy edge with Lexi beside her. A heavy woolen blanket wrapped them together; black and blond hair tangled together in the salty air. They’d been sitting out there for hours, talking.

Just the sight of it, of her daughter talking to a friend, made Jude smile. She had waited so long for this, hoped for it so fervently, and yet now that it had happened, she couldn’t help worrying just a little. Mia was so fragile, so needy; it was too easy to hurt her. And after the thing with Haley, Mia couldn’t take another friend’s betrayal.

Jude needed to learn a little bit about Lexi, just to know who her daughter was hanging out with. It was a parenting choice that had yielded good results over the years. The more she knew about her kids’ lives, the better mother she could be to them. She stepped out onto the patio. The breeze immediately plucked at her hair, whipped strands across her face. Without bothering to step into any of the shoes that lay cluttered outside the door, she walked barefooted across the flagstones, past the collection of dark, woven outdoor furniture. At the edge between the grass and the sand, a giant cedar tree rose tall and straight into the pellucid blue sky. As she approached the girls, she heard Mia say, “I want to try out for the school play, but I know I won’t get a part. Sarah and Joeley always get the leads.”

“I was totally scared to talk to you today,” Lexi said. “What if I hadn’t? It’s no good to be afraid of stuff. You should go for it.”

Mia turned to Lexi. “Would you come with me to tryouts? The other theater kids … they’re so
serious
. They don’t like me.”

Lexi nodded, her face solemn with understanding. “I’ll come. Definitely.”

Jude stopped beside her daughter. “Hey, girls.” She put a hand on Mia’s slim shoulder.

Mia grinned up at her. “I’m going to try out for
Once upon a Mattress.
Lexi’s gonna come with me. I probably won’t get a part, but…”

“That’s wonderful,” Jude said, pleased by this development. “Well. I better take Lexi home now. Your dad will be home in an hour.”

“Can I come with?” Mia asked.

“No. You have a paper due on Friday. You might as well get started on it,” Jude answered.

“You’re already checking the Web site? It’s the first day of school,” Mia said, her shoulders slumping.

“You need to stay on track. Grades matter in high school.” She looked down at Lexi. “You ready?”

“I can take the bus,” Lexi said. “You don’t have to drive me.”

“The bus?” Jude frowned. In all her years of parenting on this island, she had never had a child make that offer. Most said they could call their moms; none ever offered to take the bus. Where would one even catch a bus around here?

Lexi unwound herself from the red and white striped wool blanket. When she stood up, it slumped to the sand. “Really, Mrs. Farraday. You don’t need to drive me home.”

“Please, Lexi, call me Jude. When you say Mrs. Farraday, I think of my mother and that’s not a good thing. Mia, go tell Zach I’m starting the drive. Ask him who else needs a ride.”

Ten minutes later, Jude started up the Escalade. Five kids shoved their way into the plush interior, talking over one another as they buckled up their seatbelts. In the front passenger seat, Lexi sat quietly, staring straight ahead. Jude admonished Zach and Mia to start on their homework and then drove away. The route was so familiar she could have driven it in her sleep—left on Beach Drive, right on Night Road, left on the highway. At the top of Viewcrest, she pulled into her best friend’s driveway. “Here you go, Bryson. Tell Molly we’re still on for lunch this week.”

He mumbled some kind of answer and got out of the car. For the next twenty minutes, she drove the standard route around the island, letting off one kid after another. Finally, she turned to Lexi. “Okay, hon, where to?”

“Isn’t that a bus stop?”

Jude smiled. “I am not putting you on a bus. Now, where to, Lexi?”

“Port George,” Lexi said.

“Oh,” Jude said, surprised. Most of the kids at Pine High lived on the island, and, really, the other side of the bridge was a whole different world. Geographically, only about three hundred feet separated Pine Island from Port George, but there were many ways to calculate distance. Port George was where nice, upstanding boys from Pine Island went to buy beer and cigarettes at the minimart, using fake IDs they made on old magic cards. There was all kinds of trouble in the schools there. She drove out to the highway and headed off the island.

“Turn there,” Lexi said about a mile from the bridge. “In fact, you can let me out here. I can walk the rest of the way.”

“I don’t think so.”

Jude followed the signs to the Chief Sealth Mobile Home Park. From there, Lexi directed her down a winding road to a tiny plot of land, overgrown with weeds and grass, where a fading yellow double-wide sat on concrete blocks. The front door was an ugly shade of blue and cracked up the middle, and the curtains inside were ragged and unevenly hemmed. Rust inched like caterpillars along the seams. Deep, muddy ruts in the grass showed where a car was usually parked.

Jude parked at the edge of the grass and turned off the engine. This was hardly what she’d expected. “Is your mom home? I hate to just drop you off. I’d actually like to meet her.”