Reunion (23 page)

“Something,” I said dryly, “that I’m sure she heard from you.”

Gina looked innocent. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Adam sent you those” — Gina pointed at an enormous bouquet of pink roses on the window sill — “and Mr. Walden, according to Jake, is taking up a collection to get you a complete set of Nancy Drew books. He apparently thinks you have a crime-solving fixation.”

Mr. Walden was right about that. But my fixation wasn’t on solving crimes.

“Oh, and your stepdad’s thinking about buying a Mustang to replace the Rambler,” Gina informed me.

I made a face, then regretted it. It was hard to make expressions of any kind with my sore lip, not to mention the stitches in my scalp.

“A Mustang?” I shook my head. “How are we all supposed to fit into a Mustang?”

“Not for you guys. For himself. He’s giving you guys the Land Rover.”

Well, that, at least, made sense.

“What about…” I wanted to ask her about Jesse. After all, she was sharing a room with him — alone, thanks to my being held overnight in the hospital for observation. The thing is, she didn’t know it. About Jesse, I mean. I still hadn’t told her about him.

And now, well, there didn’t seem to be any reason to. Not now that he wasn’t speaking to me anymore.

“What about Michael?” I asked instead. None of my other visitors — my mother and stepfather; Sleepy, Dopey, and Doc; CeeCee and Adam; even Father Dom — would tell me anything about him. The doctors had advised them that the topic might be “too painful” for me to discuss.

As if. You want to know what’s painful? I’ll tell you what’s painful. Having two broken ribs, and knowing that for weeks, you’re going to have wear a one-piece to the beach in order to hide the black and blue marks.

“Michael?” Gina shrugged. “Well, you were right. What you said about him keeping stuff on his computer. The police got a warrant and confiscated his PC, and it was all there — journals, e-mails, the schematics of the Rambler’s brake system. Plus they found the wrench he used. You know, on the bolts that held the guardrail in place? They matched the metal tracings. And the clippers he used to snip the Rambler’s brake line. They got brake fluid off the blades. The boy didn’t do such a good job cleaning up after himself, it appears.”

I’ll say.

He was arrested on four counts of first-degree murder — the RLS Angels — and six counts of attempted murder: five for those of us who’d been in the Rambler the afternoon the brakes had given out, and one for what the police were convinced Michael had done to me out at the Point.

I didn’t correct them. I mean, it wasn’t like I was about to sit there and go, “Uh, yeah, about my injuries? Yeah, Michael didn’t inflict them. No, the ghosts of his victims did that because I wouldn’t let them kill him.”

I figured it was just as well to let them go on thinking it was Michael who was responsible for my broken ribs and the fourteen stitches in my scalp…not to mention the two in my lip. I mean, after all, he’d been
trying
to kill me. The Angels had just interrupted him. If you thought about it, they’d actually saved my life.

Yeah. So they could kill me themselves.

“So listen,” Gina was saying. “Your grounding — you know, for sneaking out and getting into a car with Michael when your mother had told you expressly not to — isn’t supposed to start until after I leave. I say we spend the next four days at the beach. I mean, there’s no way you’re going to school. Not with broken ribs. You wouldn’t be able to sit down. But you can certainly
lie
down, you know, on a towel. I should be able to talk your mom into letting you do
that
, at least.”

“Sounds good to me,” I said.

“Ex,” Gina said. She apparently meant excellent, only she’d shortened it — much in the way Sleepy often shortened words because he was too lazy to say all the syllables. Thus pizza became “ ’za,” Gina became “G.” She had, I realized, more in common with Sleepy than I’d ever guessed.

“I’m going to get a Diet Coke,” she said, climbing down from my bed — careful not to jostle the mattress since the nurse had already come in twice and warned her not to. Like I hadn’t consumed enough Tylenol with codeine to block out the pain. Somebody could have dropped a safe on my head and I probably wouldn’t have felt it.

“You want?” Gina asked, pausing by the door.

“Sure,” I said. “Just make sure —”

“Yeah, yeah,” she said over her shoulder as the door swung slowly shut behind her. “I’ll find a straw somewhere.”

Alone in my room, I adjusted the pillows behind me carefully, and then sat there, staring at nothing. People who are on as many painkillers as I was tend to do that a lot.

But I wasn’t thinking about nothing. I was thinking, actually, about what Father Dominic had told me when he’d visited a few hours ago. In what could only be the cruelest of ironies, the morning after Michael’s arrest, his sister, Lila Meducci, had wakened from her coma.

Oh, it wasn’t like she’d sat up and asked for a bowl of Cheerios, or anything. She was still severely messed up. According to Father D., it was going to take her months, even years, of rehabilitation to get her back to the way she’d been before the accident — if ever. It would be a long, long time before she’d be able to walk, talk, even eat on her own again like she used to.

But she was alive. She was alive and she was conscious. It wasn’t much of a consolation prize for poor Mrs. Meducci, but it was something.

It was as I was reflecting over the vagaries of life that I heard a rustle. I turned my head just in time to catch Jesse trying to dematerialize.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” I said, sitting up — and jolting my ribs quite painfully, I’d like to add. “You come back here right now.”

He came back, a sheepish expression on his face.

“I thought you were asleep,” he said. “So I decided to come back later.”

“Baloney,” I said. “You saw I was
awake
, so you decided to come back later when you were sure I was asleep.” I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe what I’d caught him trying to do. This hurt, I discovered, way more than my ribs. “What, you’re only going to visit me when I’m unconscious now? Is that it?”

“You’ve been through an ordeal,” Jesse said. He looked more uncomfortable than I’d ever seen him. “Your mother — back at the house — I heard her tell everyone they weren’t to do anything to upset you.”

“Seeing
you
won’t upset me,” I said.

I was hurt. I really was. I mean, I’d known Jesse was mad at me for what I’d done — you know, that whole tricking - Michael - into - coming - out - to - the - Point - so - the - RLS - Angels - could - kill - him thing — but to not even want to
talk
to me anymore…

Well, that was harsh.

The hurt I felt must have shown in my face since when Jesse spoke, it was in the gentlest voice I’d ever heard him use.

“Susannah,” he said. “I —”

“No,” I interrupted him. “Let me go first. Jesse, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for that whole thing last night. It was all my fault. I can’t believe I did it. And I’ll never, ever forgive myself for dragging you into it.”

“Susannah —”

“I am the worst mediator,” I went on. Once I had the ball rolling, I found it was hard to stop it. “The worst one that ever lived. I should be thrown out of the mediator organization. Seriously. I can’t believe I actually did something that stupid. And I wouldn’t blame you if you never spoke to me again. Only —” I looked up at him, aware that there were tears in my eyes. Only this time, I wasn’t ashamed to let him see them. “It’s just that you’ve got to understand: He tried to kill my family. And I couldn’t let him get away with that. Can you understand that?”

Jesse did something then that he’d never done before. I doubt he’ll ever do it again, either.

And it happened so fast, I wasn’t even sure afterward if it had really happened, or if, in my drugged-out state, I imagined it.

But I’m pretty sure he reached out and touched my cheek.

That’s all. Sorry if I got your hopes up. He just touched my cheek, the only part of me, I imagine, that wasn’t scraped, bruised, or broken.

But I didn’t care.
He’d touched my cheek.
Grazed it, actually, with the backs of his fingers, not the tips. Then he dropped his hand.

“Yes,
querida
,” he said. “I understand.”

My heart started beating so fast, I was certain he could hear it. Plus, I probably don’t need to tell you, my ribs really, really ached. Each pulse seemed to send my heart slamming into them.

“And the only reason I got so angry was because I didn’t want to see
this
happen to you.”

On the word
this,
he gestured toward my face. I must, I realized, have looked pretty bad.

But I didn’t care. He’d touched my cheek. His touch had been gentle and, for a ghost, warm.

Am I pathetic, or what, that a simple gesture like that could make me so head-over-heels happy?

I said, idiotically, “I’ll be all right. I won’t even need any plastic surgery, they said.”

As if a guy born in 1830 even knows what plastic surgery is. God, can I spoil a mood, or what?

Still, Jesse didn’t exactly draw away. He stood there looking down at me like he wanted to say more. I was perfectly willing to let him, too. Especially if he called me
querida
again.

Only it turned out he didn’t call me anything. Because at that moment Gina came bursting back into the room clutching two cans of soda in her hands.

“Guess what?” she said as Jesse shimmered, and then, with a smile to me, disappeared. “I ran into your mom in the hallway, and she said to tell you your second MRI came out normal, and you can start getting ready to go home. She’s having all the paperwork done right now. Isn’t that great?”

I grinned at her, even though doing so hurt my split lip.

“Great,” I said.

Gina looked at me curiously. “What are you so happy about?” she wanted to know.

I continued to grin at her. “You just said I get to go home.”

“Yeah, but you looked happy before I said that.” Gina narrowed her eyes at me. “Suze. What gives? What’s going on?”

“Oh,” I said, still smiling. “Nothing.”

Meg Cabot
is also the author of the Princess Diaries series, upon which the Disney movies are based. In the books, though, Princess Mia has yield-sign-shaped hair, lives in New York, and Fat Louie is orange. And those are the least of the differences. The following is a complete list of the Princess Diaries books: