Poison Ink (14 page)

Glancing away, Cori shrugged one shoulder. “Sorry. Just the way things are.”

“I don’t get it, though,” Sammi whispered. “Why—”

“Rafe’s gotta act like it didn’t mean anything. If he did anything himself, he’d look even worse. But Marisol can’t let it go. It’s an insult to all of us.”

Sammi thought about Las Reinas and the way they always stuck together—not just them, but the Puerto Rican boys, too. In the cafeteria, they always sat in clusters, the same way some of the black students and the Dominicans did. They weren’t gangs; she’d realized that a long time ago. But they shared culture and heritage and often neighborhoods as well. These were the kids they’d grown up with. But they were no strangers to violence, so sometimes in order to get their point across, they got reacquainted with it.

“I still don’t get it, but it’s not my problem.”

“No,” Cori agreed. “You got other problems. You’re all on your own now, huh?”

Lips pressed grimly together, Sammi nodded.

“Sometimes that’s better,” Cori told her, handing her the last of her books.

The toilet flushed. Sammi looked in the mirror at the red mark on her face from where she’d been slapped. She set her books on a ledge by the window and washed her hands. When Cori left, she said nothing, and when the girl came out of the stall—looking as if she might want to ask what had happened—Sammi kept her gaze straight ahead.

She grabbed her books and left the bathroom just as the bell rang for class. It seemed incredible to her that the confrontation with Las Reinas had taken only a few minutes. Now, though, she had to dump her books in her locker and get the notebook for her next class.

When she opened her locker, she found that her hands were trembling.

More than anything, she hated the temptation she felt to call Caryn and warn her that trouble was on the way. Sammi wanted to protect them, if she could. No matter what they’d done to her. Crazy as she knew it was, she realized that she felt responsible for everything that was happening. They were being totally irrational, but if she’d just gotten the tattoo, none of this would have happened.

But she thought again about the way they’d defriended her and their bizarre behavior the day before. Caryn and Letty had brought trouble on themselves. They were just going to have to deal with it.

The Merrimack River Walk usually had mobs of people strolling back and forth, streaming in and out of stores. That night shoppers were scarce. The crowds of teenagers that would have thronged the area in front of the movie theater and the Starbucks on Friday or Saturday night had other things to do on Wednesdays.

Sammi didn’t mind. In fact, she preferred it that way. She had never spent much time at the River Walk, shopping at Old Navy and Borders and Abercrombie. Even tonight she would normally have been at home, but both of her parents were there. In a million years she would never have imagined wishing her father would take a business trip, but the way things were going in her house she wanted him to be anywhere but home. When her mother had come home from the bank, Sammi had felt as if she had to hold her breath. At any moment, it seemed, the place might explode.

She had called Adam, not patient enough to text.

Now she stood leaning against a lamppost near a small tree set into the concrete sidewalk as she watched the parking lot for his car. The sky had started to darken, but night had not fallen quite yet when the Borders sign flickered to life. When a fortyish couple went past her and opened the door, she could smell fresh coffee brewing inside and craved a mochaccino. But she wasn’t moving from this spot.

When Adam drove past her, searching for a parking space, he waved to her. That simple act lightened her mood incredibly and she waved back.

He parked the car, and she watched as he crossed the lot toward her, admiring him. His unruly hair made him appear to have just rolled out of bed, but she liked that about him. Adam wore a short-sleeved, open-collared shirt, and black jeans with black shoes to match.

“You look nice,” she said as he stepped up onto the sidewalk.

“You too,” Adam said.

Sammi had taken her time getting dressed. She knew girls who wore nothing but flip-flops, but that look just seemed sloppy to her. She’d put on a pair of tank tops—one black and one burgundy—and dark jeans with her sandals. She’d spent time on her hair and makeup, too. The more time she’d spent getting ready, the less time she had to be with her mother. And when her father had come home, she’d met him in the driveway and asked for a ride to the River Walk. He’d complied without complaint. Neither of her parents had balked when she’d told them she was going out. Maybe they understood.

“So, where do you want to eat? Bertucci’s?” Adam asked.

“Sounds good. But can we just walk a little first?”

“Sure.”

He took her hand—which Sammi liked very much—and they wandered along the River Walk, looking in store windows. Bertucci’s was behind them, but that was all right because Sammi wanted to drag Adam into the bookstore before dinner.

“So, I guess I kind of showed my hand, huh?” Sammi said. “Calling you today, I mean. Just saw you on Friday night, and now I’m, like, dragging you out to dinner. Blew my cover.”

Adam laughed. “You’re cute when you babble.”

“Which is good, considering how often it happens.”

“Yeah, it’s just, what are you talking about?”

Sammi felt her face flush with heat and knew her cheeks must be turning red. “Well, I had the whole aloof thing going, kind of. Now I didn’t even wait till the weekend to see you. Kind of putting my cards on the table, right? Embarrassing.”

Adam squeezed her hand. “I’m glad you called. And I’m not very good at card games. Or any other kind of games, really.”

She smiled and started to reply.

He kissed her into silence.

Sammi held him close. Adam traced his fingers along the sides of her face, and they lingered in the midst of that kiss so long that when at last they separated, she had to catch her breath. All her tension and fear and sadness had evaporated for the moment.

With a look of pure mischief, Adam took her hand, and they walked on as though nothing had happened.

“So, you want to tell me what’s got you so worked up?” he asked after a minute.

She laughed softly. “I’d think that’d be pretty obvious.”

When she glanced at him, she saw that his expression had turned serious.

“You know what I mean. I’m glad you called. But my ego isn’t so big that I couldn’t tell it was more about getting out of the house than hanging out with me.”

Sammi shot him a sharp look. “That’s not true.”

“What, about my ego?”

In spite of herself, she smiled.

“Talk to me, Sammi.”

She didn’t look at him. Now that she had Adam there, Sammi found that what she really wanted was for him to make her forget her troubles, not to talk them out. But he had made the trip down to meet her and he deserved an answer.

“Let’s turn around. I want to hit the bookstore before dinner.”

Adam obliged her but kept casting expectant looks in her direction.

“You just met me,” Sammi said. “I don’t want to scare you off.”

“Sammi…”

“Okay. All right.” She took a deep breath. “You were right. I needed to get out of there. Turns out my parents are trying to figure out if they want to still be married to each other.”

Adam shook his head. “Man, that’s rough. I’m sorry.”

“Me too. And maybe they’ll stay together, and maybe they won’t. But either way, I don’t want to be there right now. They’re working so hard to ignore each other that they don’t really notice me.”

“And your friends? You still on the outs with them?”

Sammi swallowed. The situation with her parents truly was bothering her, but she’d brought it up to avoid having to talk about the wreckage of her relationship with all four of her best friends.

She nodded. “Yeah. I can’t really talk to them.”

“So I’m your basic distraction, someone to take your mind off of your troubles?”

Horrified, Sammi looked at him. “No, why would you say that?”

“No?” he asked, raising one eyebrow.

Confused, she shrugged. “I don’t…Maybe? A little? But you make it sound so cold, and it’s not like that.”

“I don’t know. I kind of like the idea of being your distraction.”

They passed by Abercrombie, and he studied the window displays. Sammi tugged on his hand to get his attention.

“Was that supposed to be romantic, or just sexual innuendo?”

“Both.”

Sammi rolled her eyes. “Boys.”

Some guys she knew would have bristled at being called a boy. Adam only grinned and walked on beside her. She had been concerned that he would push her to talk more about the situation with her parents, but he seemed content to let her decide how much, if any, she wanted to discuss. They’d only seen each other in person three times, but they’d texted and talked often enough that it seemed much more than that. She liked him, a lot. Liked being with him.

And he was a very cute distraction.

They wandered into the bookstore, where Sammi perused the mystery shelves and Adam led her through the science fiction section. She told him about Cruel and Unusual Books in Covington, and he confessed he’d never been through the front door. She much preferred it to any of the big stores. The chains had a better selection, but the people at Cruel and Unusual knew her, and knew what she liked. Sammi liked the intimacy of the place.

“Coffee?” Adam asked.

“We haven’t had dinner yet.”

“Is there some kind of rule nobody told me about?”

Sammi pushed him toward the café in the front corner of the store. “Mochaccino, then. Dessert before dinner.”

While they were in line at the café, Sammi glanced past Adam and was stunned to see Caryn and Katsuko come into the store. If he hadn’t been looking up at the menu board at that moment, he could not have failed to notice the way she stiffened at the sight of them.

Sammi stood beside Adam, standing in his shadow, hiding from them. As they ordered she kept stealing glimpses at them as they moved through the music and DVD section. The machine that whipped her mochaccino whined like a dentist’s drill.

Adam said something, but the words didn’t filter into her head.

“Sounds good,” she said, with no idea what she’d agreed to.

He received his coffee and went over to the small side-bar to pour cream and sugar into the cup. When they handed Sammi her mochaccino, she went and stood behind him.

Over Adam’s shoulder, she watched as Katsuko and Caryn browsed a shelf of TV series boxed sets on DVD. The expensive ones were all locked away in a glass case, but this stuff was right out in the open. As Sammi looked on, the two girls turned toward one another, maybe to shield their actions from the view of cameras. But Sammi could see between them. Katsuko stripped the plastic from the DVD box, opened it, popped out all four discs, and handed them to Caryn, who pushed them down the front of her pants.

Katsuko stuffed the plastic wrapping into the box and closed it, putting it back on the shelf. Whatever antitheft devices the store used, they’d be in the box or the wrapping.

They left the store, chatting casually, as though they hadn’t just committed a crime.

Sammi burned her tongue on the mochaccino and barely noticed.

9

O
n Thursday morning, Sammi walked through the corridors of Covington High holding her breath. Every slam of a locker and raised voice made her blink or flinch. Her house had become colder and more silent than ever, but despite the noise and the usual frantic pace in the halls at school, it felt somehow the same to her. At home she always felt as if she was in the midst of a truce, and war might erupt at any moment. And that morning as school bells rang to move her from one class to the next, she kept watch for Marisol and the other Reinas with one eye, and Letty and the girls with the other.

Whatever mystery ailment they’d used as an excuse to skip school on Wednesday, they had obviously recovered from it. Sammi ran into T.Q. and Katsuko before homeroom and saw Letty in history class, and passed Caryn in the cafeteria. They pretended not to even notice her. Part of her exhaled in relief that they did not approach her, but still it hurt. People were nice to her. Sammi had gone back to floating from group to group, smiling and trying to fit in, but for the first time in her life she hated being a floater. She could never have predicted how lost she felt. She missed being a part of something, even if she no longer knew exactly what that something had been.

And those were the questions that haunted her through much of that morning. Who
were
these girls? Had they always been so cruel and malicious at heart, and she’d just never noticed it because they had accepted her before? Now that they had banished her from their lives, was she simply seeing their real faces for the first time?

The idea made her want to puke.

After lunch she stood at her locker, staring at the books piled inside and just drifting, wondering how it had all come to this. The metal felt cool under her touch. She tuned out the voices around her. Whatever happened with Las Reinas and the girls, Sammi decided she didn’t want to witness it. The hell with that idea. Maybe Letty and Caryn had earned an ass-kicking—maybe it would even be the shock they needed to stop acting like such bitches—but she didn’t want any part of it. Sammi had let her friends down, but their reaction had been totally out of proportion.