Poison Ink (5 page)

Sammi peered over the tops of people’s heads, searching for red hair. At her height and with that hair, T.Q. was hard to miss. She weaved her way through the hordes as they laughed and shouted to one another, but saw no sign of T.Q. anywhere.

“Hey, Holland!”

She turned to find Caryn striding toward her, dressed impeccably, as always. Sammi knew her friend could take just about any piece of clothing and make it look great—today’s combination of sheer blouse over tank top and slit-leg skirt presented a perfect example—but she could never figure out how Caryn managed not to spill any food on her clothes at lunchtime. Only the first day of school, and she’d already managed to dribble Sloppy Joe sauce on her chin and tray without getting it on her clothes.

Superpowers. The only answer.

“How was the rest of your day?” Sammi asked.

“Very cool,” Caryn replied with a half nod. “I could live without the bio class. Mr. Pucillo bores me out of my skull, and just the thought of the lab sessions grosses me out. Other than that, it’s kinda good to be back.”

“Thumbs-up from me, too,” Sammi said. “I’ve got Intro to Psych. I think I’m gonna like that, as long as there aren’t too many papers.”

With a groaning of engines and a squeal of brakes, the buses began to make their appearance in the parking lot. While the first bus pulled up at the curb, Sammi glanced around.

Letty stood on the sidewalk, waiting for her bus.

“Hey,” Sammi said, tapping Caryn and pointing Letty out.

They hurried over to her. Letty hefted her backpack and pushed her hair out of her face. When she looked up at them, she squinted at the sun in her eyes.

“You guys, I so cannot wait until I get my license,” she said.

Sammi rolled her eyes, sharing Letty’s frustration. Riding buses had been fun back in elementary school, but they were smelly and cramped and the total opposite of cool.

“Next year, we’ll be carpooling,” Caryn said.

“I guess Katsuko is at some swim team thing, first meeting of the year or whatever,” Sammi said, “but I didn’t see T.Q., either. Did you guys see her?”

Letty adjusted the strap of her backpack. “Yeah. She’s at tryouts for basketball.”

Sammi and Caryn stared at her in surprise.

“Seriously?” Caryn said.

Letty shrugged. “Guess she figures she’s tall enough.”

“That’d be cool if she makes it,” Sammi said.

Caryn raised an eyebrow. “Except it’ll mean we have to go to the games. But I guess we’ll survive.” She turned to Letty. “So, are we all set for Saturday night?”

A troubled look passed over Letty’s face.

“Is that a no?” Caryn asked.

Her eyes brightened and she shook her head. “No, no. We’re good.”

Sammi studied her. Letty glanced away a second and then met her gaze, and Sammi saw a soft sadness in her eyes.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

More buses rumbled into the line. Together the girls started to move down the line and stopped at the third bus, which would take Letty home to her neighborhood. Caryn’s and Sammi’s buses were farther along the sidewalk.

“The usual stuff with my parents,” Letty said, one corner of her mouth lifting in a halfhearted smile. “I think they’re a little worried about you all sleeping over, like, what are all these girls doing hanging out with our lesbian daughter.”

Sammi glanced at Caryn. “Well, duh, lesbian orgy.”

Caryn nodded, all serious. “Absolutely.”

Letty let out a burst of laughter that brought stares from a lot of the guys and girls around them. “I love you guys,” she said.

Solemn, Sammi crossed her arms. “That’s what your parents are afraid of.”

Letty gave them each a small hug and jumped onto her bus, the last one aboard before the doors closed.

As the engine rumbled and the yellow monster pulled away, the other two girls hurried along until they reached Sammi’s bus.

“Wow,” Caryn said. “For Letty’s sake, I hope her parents don’t make it too weird this weekend. Can’t they just be happy their daughter has friends?”

“It’s never gonna be that easy,” Sammi replied. “Letty told me she feels lucky her father still speaks to her. In her culture, I guess a lot of times it doesn’t work out that way.”

“Not just in her culture.”

“I guess. But, yeah, hopefully they won’t be too high-strung that we’re sleeping over.”

A sly smile crept across Caryn’s face. “Guess I better get to work on those tattoo designs. I want to find something that’s perfect for us.”

Sammi forced a smile and stepped onto her bus.

“You’ll do it. I know you will,” she said.

She and Caryn said their goodbyes, and then Sammi worked her way toward the back of the bus and found a seat. A couple of rowdy guys got on right after her, and the bus driver told them to be quiet and sit down, that he’d let them off in the middle of the street if they started trouble.

Caryn might have waved to her, but Sammi didn’t even turn to look. For most of Monday she had worried about the whole tattoo plan, trying to figure out a way to tell her friends that she loved them but that her parents would just never understand. Today, at school, she’d managed to avoid thinking about it very much, and when they only briefly mentioned it at lunch, she’d told herself that the idea would wither and die and she wouldn’t have to go through with it.

No such luck.

Butterflies darted around in her stomach. As she started to turn the problem over in her mind again, her cell phone vibrated. Flipping it open, she saw that she had a text message from Cute Adam.

How wz yur 1st day?

Smiling, she put the issue of the tattoo aside for the moment.

i survived.

anyplace special u wnna go fri nt?

surprise me.

Come Friday night, Sammi found that Adam had taken her seriously. Of all the places she might have guessed he would take her, the Peddler’s Daughter wouldn’t even have been on the list. Growing up in Covington, she had passed the place a hundred times, but she had never been inside. Just around the corner from both England’s MicroCreamery and Krueger’s Flatbread, down a side street known for its little art galleries and a dance studio, the little Irish pub sat tucked away in the cellar of another, trendier restaurant.

The rest of that shortened first week of school had passed uneventfully. Adam had arrived to pick her up at seven o’clock and spent a few minutes chatting with her parents. To Sammi’s profound relief, they seemed to like him all right. Or at least, they didn’t immediately lock her in her room and throw him out of the house, despite his being the first boy to ever take her out in his own car.

In the fading light, Adam led the way down the steps between buildings to the entrance and held the door for her. The moment he opened it, she heard the music. Sammi felt her heart lift and blossom with pleasure as she stepped into the pub. Brass and dark wood and dim light gave the Peddler’s Daughter an authentic air, but nothing added to that ambience more than the music that came from the tiny stage at the back of the pub, where a quartet played a rising, exultant Celtic tune. The two guitars provided the beat, while the girl playing violin and an older man on flute made the song dance and reel.

“Wow,” she whispered.

Adam slipped his hand into hers. Sammi let him.

“You like?” he asked.

She grinned. No other answer was necessary. Just the idea that he had put real thought into where he would take her tonight, that he had worked to surprise her, to please her, felt new and extraordinary. This wasn’t a night at the movies or a stop for pizza, and it certainly wasn’t a stop by some beer bash some of his friends were throwing.

“Can I help you?” the hostess asked, coming around from the dining room.

“We have a reservation,” Adam said.

Sammi marveled at the idea. She had been on dates before, but this belonged in an entirely different category. Cute Adam, it appeared, had a lot more to offer than a mischievous grin and soulful eyes.

“So,” she said, after the hostess had seated her and left them their menus, “how did you know about this place?”

“My father takes me here sometimes. My parents are divorced and he lives in Plaistow. He swears by the place. Says they have the best burger in the Merrimack Valley. But I remembered they had music on weekends and I thought you’d like it.”

“I do. Very much.”

“Mission accomplished,” Adam said, seeming genuinely pleased.

They looked at one another, their eyes lingering a few beats longer than felt comfortable, and Sammi looked away. She glanced at the menu.

“How long have your parents been divorced?”

“Since I was eleven,” Adam said, studying his own menu. “I know I’m supposed to be all bummed, but I can’t summon up the tears. They fought so much when they were married that life is a hell of a lot easier with them apart, for all of us.”

“All of us?”

“I have two older sisters, both in college.”

Sammi looked up, eyebrows raised. “That explains a lot.”

“How’s that?”

“Guys who have older sisters just get it more than guys who don’t. ‘It’ being girls in general. Either that, or you just learn to fake it better as a matter of survival.”

Adam laughed, nodding. “Faking it, definitely. But yeah, there’s a comfort level, I guess. What about you? Siblings?”

Sammi set her menu down. “Nope. Only child, parents still married. At least for the moment.”

“You think that’s going to change?”

She gave a tiny shrug. “I didn’t say they were happily married. The house didn’t need air-conditioning this summer. You have enough cold shoulders around, it gets plenty chilly.”

“Sorry to hear it.”

“Me too. So what about school? What’s it like to be a senior?”

The conversation went on like that for a while. Adam had been held back in the first grade. Minor dyslexia had given him trouble learning to read, which explained why he was eighteen and just starting senior year in high school. He definitely had college plans, with Somerset University just north of Boston his first choice, and UNH as a serious backup.

They both had burgers. By the time they were halfway through dinner, she had decided that if he wanted to kiss her later, she would let him. That was a bit of self-deceit, however. In truth, she had known from the moment he sat down by her on the beach at Kingston Lake that she would very much like him to kiss her. Now, though, she had a feeling she would be gravely disappointed if he didn’t.

Damn,
she thought as they walked hand in hand around the corner to the little park outside England’s,
watch your step with this one, girl.

Adam didn’t wait until the end of the night to kiss her. While they sat in that tiny park eating ice cream, he made her laugh, and then silenced that laugh with his lips. She tasted black raspberry ice cream on his tongue, and a shiver of pleasure went through her.

Not once did she mention that she would be sleeping over Letty’s the next night, or the pact she and the girls had made. The subject of tattoos did not come up. Sammi had been working hard all week to avoid even thinking about it, and being with Adam helped her to forget. Kissing Adam, she could cast off all her worries.

Even that night in bed, drifting off to sleep, she felt a pleasant buzz from her date and imagined she could still feel the touch of his lips on hers.

But she did not sleep well, and her dreams were unpleasant.

Sammi’s mother agreed to pick up Katsuko before going to Letty’s on Saturday. They drove up into the Ardmore section of Covington, over the bridge from the old factory area of the city. Ever since the days when people had sweated for sixteen hours a day making shoes and clothes and glassware while their managers and executives went home to mansions across the river, people who’d grown up north of the bridge had held a grudge against those who made their homes in Ardmore. Even now, all these years later, folks who’d grown up in Covington had an edge in their voices when they talked about Ardmore.

As her mother drove up Valley View Drive, a ten-year-old development full of minimansions and perfectly groomed acre lots, Sammi knew she must be resisting the urge to comment, and appreciated the effort.

The door opened the instant they pulled into the driveway—Katsuko had apparently been waiting for them—and the girl called back into the house and shut the door quickly. She ran down to the car with her overnight bag, smiling brightly.

“Wow,” Linda Holland said as Katsuko approached, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen the girl smile.”

“She smiles, Mom. She’s just very serious.”

Sammi might have said more, issued an indictment about how strict Katsuko’s parents were, but then the door opened and Katsuko plunged into the backseat.

“Hi!”

“Sorry if we’re late,” Sammi’s mother said.

“Not at all. I just couldn’t wait to escape. I cleaned my room twice today, and I think they were inspecting it to see if I had missed anything.”

Sammi glanced into the backseat. “Are you kidding? Why?”

“They didn’t want me to go. I didn’t give them much choice, but I’m sure they were looking for a reason to change their minds.”