Seashell Season (19 page)

Chapter 55

“I
hope Gemma will have a good time with Cathy's friends.”

Annie sat down across from me at my kitchen table. Even though the coffee at my place isn't half as good as it is at hers, out of fairness I do have to be the host sometimes. “You sound worried,” she said.

“I am,” I admitted. “Frankly, I'm surprised she accepted Cathy's invitation.”

“Because they haven't really been talking since the anniversary party, you mean.”

I frowned. “What was that about, anyway?”

“I don't know, exactly. Cathy won't tell me. I assumed they argued about something.”

“I didn't even know that anything had happened. I just thought . . .” I shrugged. “I don't know what I thought. Well, I guess I put it down to the fact that they're two very different young women.”

Annie laughed. “They're like night and day! And I don't think it's only because of how they each grew up. But maybe it is. Who can say?”

Ah, yes,
I thought.
There's the old nature versus nurture theme again.

“She asked me about the day she was taken,” I said.

Annie looked surprised. “Really? And what did you tell her?”

“I kept it simple, by which I mean I left out the violent shaking and the vomiting that followed the phone call from Barbara and the fact that when we were at Barbara's house later that afternoon, two police officers had to restrain me.”

“Christ, why restrain you? You never told me that!”

“They thought I was going to harm myself,” I said, at this distance of seventeen years feeling none of the shame I'd felt for a long time after. “I don't remember it too clearly, but supposedly I was sort of ranting on about it being all my fault, Gemma's being missing. Supposedly, I started to scratch my face.”

Annie sighed and put a hand on mine. “Poor you. Okay, so if you left out the ugly details, what did you tell Gemma?”

“I told her I'd been at the office when Barbara called. I told her that Barbara left Yorktide soon afterward because she couldn't stand the memories. Gemma also asked if her father had had friends, and I told her about Rob. Oh, and she asked why I didn't leave town too.”

“How did she take it all?” Annie asked.

“Calmly. I guess she needed to know.” And then I smiled.

“What?”

“She mentioned Alan's love of NASCAR to me one day and how she thinks it's lame, and I told her how I'd spend hours at a local pub with him, watching the cars go around that stupid track over and over again, just because he liked my being there with him. And then we talked a bit about being in love. And about falling out of love.”

“Verity, this sounds like fantastic progress! You're actually getting more than one-word answers! And you're talking about things that matter. You must feel so relieved.”

I did. I do. Still . . .

“At least once a day,” I told Annie, “I find myself apologizing to Gemma for something, even stuff I can't possibly be blamed for. I'm sorry your room isn't bigger. Not that she's ever complained about it. I'm sorry we're out of the milk you like. Which is full fat, by the way. I'm sorry it's raining today and you can't go out on your bike. I'm sure I'm driving her nuts. What I really should be saying is,
I'm sorry all this has happened to you. You're innocent in all this
.”

Annie leaned forward. “As are you, Verity,” she said in that forceful way she has that can make you believe almost anything she's saying. Almost. “Don't ever forget that.”

But the thing is, I do forget that, all the time.

“I'll try not to,” I said. “Now, how about another cup of coffee?”

Annie grimaced. “No offense, but no thanks.”

Chapter 56

T
his morning, when I was going through the pile of magazines on the living room coffee table, looking for something good, like a copy of
People
(no luck; I don't think Verity likes celebrity gossip, though I get a kick out of it), I found the card Verity's father had sent me not long after I came to live with her. I have no idea how it got there. Anyway, I'd spent the twenty dollars he sent me on that bag, but I'd never written back to him. Now I decided I would send him a note or something. At least I could thank him for the money. I probably should have done it before. For all I know, the guy's on a fixed income and twenty dollars means a lot to him. I mean, he's probably retired. I know Marion is retired. So far she hasn't given me any money, not that I'm looking for her to.

You know, Dad always used to say that money is the root of all evil. I think having that attitude was for him a way to justify the fact that he never had any money. I doubt that anyone with a decent amount of money in the bank thinks it's evil.

Anyway, I wrote a thank-you note to Verity's father, and then I thought:
Why do I feel sort of antsy?
And then I thought:
Because I'm nervous about going to Cathy's house to hang out with her friends.
I've never had my own group of girlfriends, not the sort that had parties at one another's houses and told one another secrets and had pillow fights while wearing their pajamas. (Do real girls really do that, or is that totally male fantasy? It's gotta be male fantasy.) I never even went to a sleepover when I was a kid. Dad wouldn't let me. He'd say he didn't know the parents well enough to trust them. Now I know the truth. He didn't know the parents—anyone—well enough because we were in hiding and he didn't want to know anyone closely in case they somehow figured out who we really were. So I was kept home while other kids were having fun staying up all night and gorging on ice cream and pizza. Whatever.

I needed to clear my head.

I told Verity I was going out on my bike for a while, and she told me to be careful, like parents are supposed to do. Like Dad always did, even if I was only going to the corner and back. Anyway, I headed to the post office in town to mail the note to Tom. It was the first time I went into the heart of Yorktide on my own, without what protection Verity could offer, which wasn't much, though she did her best to fend off idiots who wanted to stare at me, say stupid things to me, or worse, take a picture of me, The Little Kidnapped Girl. I didn't get off my bike and go inside the post office, though, just stuck the envelope in the mailbox outside the building and headed back to the house. Still, I felt kind of good that I'd made the trip on my own (mostly just focusing on traffic and not getting myself run over by moronic drivers and avoiding hitting the tourists who for some reason tend to wander out into the middle of the street).

When I was coming up our driveway, I saw that neighbor Verity had told me about, Mr. Pascoe, at his front door, bent over and looking closely at the doorknob. Then I saw he was actually peering at the lock and jiggling a key in it. I hadn't met either Mr. or Mrs. Pascoe yet, though a few times I'd seen one or both of them peeking out a slit in the curtains in what I think might be their kitchen. From there they can see our kitchen and the back deck. I was tempted just to go inside and ignore the old man—Verity had warned me that the Pascoes liked to talk endlessly and that they could be nosey—but he looked kind of pathetic all bent over, and a better instinct made me go over to him after I'd parked my bike.

“Can I help?” I said.

I must have startled him—maybe he has bad hearing and hadn't heard me coming—because he turned around quickly and dropped the key. I bent over and picked it up.

“Darn thing won't turn,” he said. He seemed genuinely flustered, whether because of dropping the stupid key or meeting me in this way.

“Let me try,” I said.

Mr. Pascoe stepped aside, and I inserted his key into the lock. It was a bit stiff. “I think maybe the lock should be oiled,” I said, continuing to jiggle the key. And then I got the key to turn, and I pushed open the door.

You'd have thought I handed the guy a check for a million bucks or something, the way he smiled at me. “How can I ever thank you?” he said.

I was embarrassed. I shrugged. “It was nothing. Maybe you should try a spare key. See if that works any better.”

I began to turn to head back to my house—Verity's house—when he said, “It's so nice to finally meet you. My wife and I are so glad you're all right.”

I felt . . . I felt touched. This guy and his wife were strangers, and yet they were glad I was okay. See, I believed the old man. Against all my worst instincts.

And am I all right? Am I really okay?

I smiled. “Thanks,” I said, and hurried back home.

Chapter 57

“I
hope you have a good time.”

I didn't look at Verity. I couldn't because I didn't want her to see any evidence on my face of the near panic I was feeling.

“Thanks,” I said, getting out of the car.
You can do this
, I told myself.
You've done much scarier things
.

Had I really?

Verity pulled away from the Strawberries' house, and I rang the doorbell. Annie opened it, and I felt glad it was her and not Cathy. I still needed a bit of time before joining those girls.

“Follow the sound of the shrieking,” Annie said in a tone that made me feel like a conspirator, like we both knew this was hard for me. But maybe I was imagining that.

There wasn't really shrieking, but there was laughter. I went downstairs to the basement, where I found Cathy and three other girls sitting where Verity and I had sat the first time I'd been to the house.

“Marni!” Cathy jumped up and rushed over to me, and I tensed, knowing she was going to throw her arms around me. But she didn't; she just took me by the arm and led me over to the others. I resisted the urge to yank my arm away. Finally she let go.

“Everyone,” she said. “This is Marni, my new friend.”

The three girls said things like “hi” and “hey” and I sank into the one empty chair with a weak smile. “Hi,” I said.

“Help yourself,” Cathy said, pointing to the low table on which were bowls of chips, dips, and what I found out were mozzarella sticks. They were kind of cold by then but still good. And there was soda.

“Since Marni's new to the group,” Cathy said, “let's everyone tell her about who we are, and then she can tell us all about her.”

It sounded like a horrible idea to me, especially that last part. What could I possibly say about myself without dragging into it the fact that I was kidnapped by my father, who's now in jail? (Not that everyone doesn't already know.) I mean, most days I feel like a total stranger to myself, so how am I supposed to describe that stranger to anyone else? But before I could make a dash for the stairs, the girl sitting to my right began.

“I'll go first,” she said. “My name is Hildy, and the biggest thing you need to know is that I'm totally into soccer.”

Cathy laughed. “She's obsessed!”

No surprise there,
I thought. Hildy looks like one of those super-healthy people, who probably runs five miles each day before breakfast and lifts weights before and after lunch. Seriously, I bet that girl can bench-press five hundred pounds or something. (I don't really know anything about bench-pressing. I just know the expression.)

“I am! So is my dad. I get it from him. Anyway, I'm hoping to get a scholarship to help pay for college. And then, well, if I'm not good enough to play professionally somewhere, I'll become a coach. Oh, and I have twin brothers who are nine. Mostly they're okay, but sometimes I want to strangle them.”

“That's the beauty of being an only child,” Cathy noted, and I thought,
What is?
Sometimes I think I'd
lik
e to have a sibling around to strangle!

The girl to Hildy's right was next. “I'm Becca, and I'm the math nerd,” she said, and she sounded proud about it. “I'm not saying I'm a genius or anything—”

“Yes, she is!” That was Hildy. “She goes to math camp every summer.”

Math camp,
I thought.
What's that about?
I mean, I'm okay in math, but I don't
like
it. I just do it in class and walk away. Anyway, she doesn't look like the old stereotype of a nerd. I mean, she wasn't wearing thick glasses, though maybe she was wearing contacts, and she didn't have bad skin or teeth. In fact, she kind of reminded me of this nun who taught at a Catholic school I had to go to once, only for about a semester. And no, not the old stereotype of a nun, all in black and wielding a stick for beating kids. I really liked Sister Martha. She had this gentleness about her, this sort of otherworldly, thoughtful thing going on, and the weird thing was that kids listened to her. Even though she spoke softly and was about ninety pounds soaking wet, everyone respected her. Maybe, I thought, Sister Martha was into math too, the kind that deals with theories of the universe.

“I go to math camp so I can
learn
,” Becca insisted. “I know I'll be a math major in college. After that, I have no idea. There are so many directions in which I can go. Maybe I'll do the full academic thing, get my PhD and teach and publish articles and write books.”

“Her mother's an engineer,” Cathy added. “That's where she gets it.”

Becca turned to me. “My dad's the stay-at-home parent. I'm the youngest of four. I don't know what he's going to do with himself when I go off to college!”

“What did he do before?” I asked. I don't know why I was interested.

“Believe it or not, he was an executive at an ad firm in Boston, making a ton of money. But when my oldest sister came along, he chucked it all. Mom had no problem with that. She makes good money, and they both really liked the idea of a parent being at home. Anyway, I guess he could do some freelance ad work if he wanted to,” Becca went on. “But maybe he'll finally go on those long cycling trips he's been talking about for years.”

One thing's for sure,
I thought, smiling vaguely at her,
my father won't be going on any long trips, cycling or otherwise, not for a very long time.

“Your turn, Melissa,” Cathy announced.

Melissa is super tall (it was easy to see that, even though she was sitting down), maybe almost six feet, and is seriously pretty in the kind of way that almost makes you uncomfortable. Well, makes
me
uncomfortable. Like, her looks are too good to be true or something. Anyway, she told me she wanted to go to FIT. “That's the Fashion Institute of Technology,” she explained, before I could ask. The look on my face must have told her I didn't know what she was talking about.
And no surprise there, either,
I thought. Melissa could easily make a living as a model if she wanted to.

“It's in New York,” she went on. “But if I can't get into FIT, or if Mom and Dad can't afford it, I'll go to a regular college with a good art program. Either way, I'm going to work in fashion. I want to design, but I also really like to write. I'm starting up a style blog, but I haven't come up with a really catchy name for it yet. The competition is fierce. There are soooo many style bloggers out there, but if you're good enough, you can make a lot of money at it.”

These girls,
I thought,
are exhausting me.
They all have so much ambition and drive. How does that happen? Where do ambition and drive come from? Do they come from a sense of security? If you can trust someone older to be handling the day-to-day stuff for you—like paying the rent or the mortgage and making sure you have plenty to eat and not dragging you around from lousy apartment to lousier rental house, from substandard school to a school with metal detectors at each entrance—maybe then you have the luxury of dreaming and planning and actually envisioning your future. I wouldn't know.

“Cathy,” Becca said. “Last but not least.”

“Well,” Cathy began briskly, “I'm definitely hoping I can get a soccer scholarship, not that I'm as good as you, Hildy. Still, any money will help, especially if I want to go somewhere other than YCC.” Cathy turned to me then. “Because my mom works there, I can get a tuition discount. You can too, Marni. But I think eventually I want to study early childhood development, which means I'll need at least a master's to get a good job.” Cathy laughed. “I'm gonna be in debt till I'm fifty!”

“What are you into, Gemma?” Becca asked. “I mean, Marni. Sorry.”

The question kind of embarrassed me. I mean, I like certain things, but I've never been
into
things. I guess we never had the money for me to get involved in a hobby. Hobbies cost money, don't they? You have to buy equipment, like, I don't know, a loom if you're into weaving. And to collect things, like china dolls or old coins, must cost a lot. But maybe not having money is an excuse.
Maybe,
I thought,
I'm just lazy and dull.

When I didn't answer immediately, Melissa said, “What's your passion? What do you absolutely have to do or else you'll go mad?”

I was about to say,
Nothing,
when I thought about my drawing. But was that really a passion? I don't know. Besides, my being “into” drawing isn't something I want anyone to know right now. Maybe ever—who knows? The whole conversation was making me uneasy.

Finally I shrugged and said, “I haven't found my passion yet,” in as I-couldn't-care-less a way as I could manage.

“Nothing inspires you?” That was Melissa again.

I thought of making a joke of some sort, but I couldn't think of what sort, so I just shook my head.

“So, what are you going to study in college?” Hildy asked. “I don't think you have to declare a major until your junior year, but I'm not sure about that.”

College? It wasn't something I'd ever given any thought to. Honestly. I mean, I know I'm smart. I don't know how smart I
really
am, because I don't feel I've ever been around any seriously smart people, so I can't compare. (Actually, Verity and Annie are probably the two smartest people I've ever known. There's no point in denying it.) The idea of
learning
sounds good. But Dad never said anything to me about my going to college. Once, a long time ago, he told me he'd dropped out before finishing his degree because he didn't need the degree to get work. It wasn't until about two years ago, during one of those times when our cash was seriously low and we were eating Ramen noodles every night for about a week, that I began to think Dad's dropping out of college might not have been such a smart thing to do. Of course, I said nothing.

“Oh,” I finally said, again pretending a nonchalance I didn't at all feel. “I'll figure out something. Maybe I'm one of those late bloomers.”

There was an awkward silence after that, and I knew every single one of those girls was thinking the same thing. That I was lost. That because I'd come from a “disadvantaged home” (I'd seen that phrase recently online), I'd been deprived of direction. That no one had been around to inspire or encourage me. And the really awful part was that they were right. Dad was a good father to a certain point. And after that, he just couldn't cut it.

I don't like to be pitied. I was on the verge of saying something I'd probably regret—like,
Why are you people even pretending to give a shit about me?
—when Hildy suddenly said brightly, “Enough talk about the future. I want to know about something happening now.” She turned to Cathy and asked, “So, are you going to ditch Jason like you said you were?”

My stomach dropped. This was a nightmare! I had no idea if Cathy had told her friends about what had happened at her parents' anniversary party. But Cathy shot me a quick smile and said, “Yeah. I'm tired of him. And he was beginning to push me to do stuff I'm so not going to do yet.”

“You mean, have sex?” The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them.

Cathy looked mildly disconcerted. “Yes,” she said.

“But sex is no big deal.”
Stop talking,
I told myself.

“Then why do it?” Becca demanded. “I thought sex was
supposed
to be a big deal.”

“I don't know,” I said. “You have sex because it's fun, that's why.”

Hildy frowned. “Snowboarding is fun too, but it's not always good for you. You could break a leg if you're not careful.”

“So,” Melissa said. “You've had sex?”

“Yeah. A few times.” That was a lie. It was a lot more than a few times, though honestly, not in the past few months.

No one responded to that. And I was aware I was presenting myself as, I don't know, colder, less feeling than I actually am. The truth is that I never enjoyed sex as much as I said I did. It was just a clichéd way of rebelling, I suppose, although I don't really know what I was rebelling against; pretty much every kid I knew was having sex. It was the norm. I guess sex was more a way of, I don't know, easing loneliness. Not that it always worked, and when it did work, it wasn't for very long.

You'll have guessed by now that I've never actually had a real boyfriend, someone who I cared about and who cared about me.

Not that I wouldn't want a boyfriend someday, someone who really loves me, someone I can trust. If that's even possible.

“Anyway,” Melissa said forcefully, “the point is that no one, male or female, should be forced to do what they don't want to do. There has to be consent, and not only because someone feels pressured to say yes.”

“You're right,” I said, hoping to make up a bit for the trouble I seemed to be causing without all that much desire to cause it. “It should always be a choice.”

Things kind of wound down after that conversation, and at ten o'clock on the nose Hildy's mother came by to take Hildy, Becca, and Melissa home. She seemed surprised to see me with the group and asked if I needed a ride home. Before I could reply—Verity had told me to call her, and I really didn't want to be stuck in a car with three girls who I suspected didn't like me all that much—Cathy said, “That's okay, Mrs. Leonard. My mom's taking Marni home.”

Annie did drive me back to Birch Lane. (It's too dangerous to ride a bike at night around here. It's so dark, and the roads are very twisty.) Cathy came with us, and I thanked them both when I got out of the car. Still, I'm pretty sure I won't be getting any more invitations to hang out with Cathy's friends.