She Died Too Young (9 page)

Lacey joined her on the couch, curled her long legs beneath her, and snuggled into the cushions. “I didn’t mean to ignore you. When’s that fancy jet of Jillian’s heading out?”

“Tomorrow after lunch. How about you?”

“A staffer is taking me to the airport early in the morning. My plane leaves at nine.”

“Then all we have is the rest of today and tonight,” Chelsea said with a sigh. “Boy, I hate leaving this place.”

“Me too, in a way. But lots is going on back home.”

“It didn’t sound like things are great for you, but you sure sound busy.”

“There’s no such thing as too busy for me.”

Chelsea took a deep breath. “How’s your diabetes doing? You know—your blood sugar control?” She knew enough from the summer to understand that the tighter control Lacey kept on her blood sugar levels, the better she would feel and function day to day.

“You’re not my doctor,” Lacey grumbled. “Honestly, you and Katie both act as if I don’t have good sense. I’m taking care of myself.”

There was something in Lacey’s defensive tone that made Chelsea doubt her. “Oh, really? You look to me like you’ve lost weight.”

“Who wants to be fat?”

“You’re not fat.”

Lacey made a face. “Mirrors don’t lie. Most of the girls in my crowd are thin as pencils. They look so cool and wear the neatest clothes. Sizes five or seven. I’m still a size eleven and feel like a cow next to them. Besides, Mom’s so busy with work and fighting with Dad, she hardly ever cooks anymore.”

“Can’t you cook?”

“Oh, please!” Lacey rolled her eyes dramatically. “I hate the kitchen.”

“But it seems to me like you should know how to cook the right foods—”

“Stop,” Lacey interrupted. “You sound like a dietitian. I don’t need this from you.”

“All right, forget the health lecture. How’s Todd Larson?”

Lacey shrugged and glanced toward the logs crackling in the hearth. “He’s the coolest guy in the high school, and he can have his pick of any girl he wants. He’s rich and drives a bright red Miata, and he’s paid some attention to me. But every girl’s after him.”

“Does he know about your diabetes?”

“Get real. Why would I tell a guy about
that?”

“In case you had an insulin reaction on a date.” Chelsea thought her answer was perfectly logical, but Lacey reacted to it instantly.

“Why would I make an issue of a turnoff like a disease. Guys aren’t interested in girls with problems.”

“Jeff was.”

“Don’t you start in on me,” Lacey snapped. “Katie’s already told me what a mistake I made in letting Jeff get away. As far as I’m concerned, Jeff is ancient history, and I have no plans to excavate the past.” She stood up, which was Lacey’s way of saying the conversation was over. “Let’s not ruin things here. Come downstairs with me and we’ll play a game of VR.”

Chelsea was tempted, but she had another idea and knew that if she was going to manage it, she’d need to rest. “Actually, I’d like you and Katie to do something with me later. Maybe before supper tonight.”

“What?”

Chelsea rubbed her temples, fighting off fatigue. “More than anything, I want to take Jillian up to the mountain Amanda took us to. The one where we put her memorial sign. Will you get the horses ready and go with us?”

T
HE FOURSOME HAD
to leave Jenny House by three-thirty in order to get up the mountain and back down again before dark. Jillian’s private-duty nurse was against the trip, but Jillian argued persuasively to get her way. Jillian won. “If we’re not back by five, send out a posse,” she called to the anxious-looking nurse as the trail horses left the stables and headed into the North Carolina woods.

Chelsea had the same horse she’d ridden during the summer. He was lazy, but she felt safe on him. She looked down as she rode, watching his hooves strike the packed brown, dead leaves. Above, bare tree branches soared into a cloudy gray sky. The air felt raw and cold, not like the humid weather of July. She shivered and pulled the sheepskin
jacket she’d borrowed from Jillian tighter around her.

Earlier, when she’d first mentioned the ride to Lacey, her friend hadn’t been enthusiastic. “I’m not sure I want to share the place with anybody else,” Lacey had said pointedly. “It was Mandy’s. And ours.”

“But Jillian’s one of us,” Chelsea countered.

“She hasn’t got a history with us.”

Chelsea hated it when Lacey grew stubborn. “Listen, history for Jillian and me might be brief.”

Lacey waved aside Chelsea’s pessimism. “We promised Amanda it would be our place alone. Don’t you remember?”

“She’d be the first to want us to share it,” Chelsea insisted. “I know she wouldn’t want to hold us to that promise.”

“We made plans with one another to meet up there this summer. It’s only fall. If you keep your promise, and get
better”
—she stabbed her finger into Chelsea’s chest—“let Jillian come with us then.”

“You know I will if I can, but we’re at Jenny House
now
, and I want to take Jillian up the mountain
now.”

Just then, Katie entered the lobby, breathing hard from her run, her hooded sweatshirt damp with perspiration. Chelsea called her over and explained her plan.

“I think it’s a good idea,” Katie said after a minute of thought. “I’ve wanted to go and check out
the memorial myself, but wasn’t sure if the two of you wanted to go.”

“I want to go,” Lacey replied. “I’m just not sure about taking Jillian.”

“Then
we’ll
take her,” Kate said. “And you can go whenever you like.”

Chelsea admired the firm way Katie handled Lacey without being rude or argumentative.

“Oh, all right,” Lacey grumbled once she realized Katie wouldn’t back down. “Do you think we can pry her away from her nurse, or are we going to have to take the entire staff and Mr. Holloway with us?”

“Leave the nurse to Jillian,” Chelsea said with an exasperated smile over Lacey’s sarcasm. “She’ll shed her one way or another.”

Now, as they plodded up the looping trail, Chelsea felt herself growing apprehensive. The sight of the memorial and the memories it evoked might be too sad. What if they all started crying? What would Jillian think?

“This way!” Katie called. A small piece of faded yellow material Amanda had tied to a tree marked the ascent up the mountainside.

Jillian brought her horse alongside Chelsea’s. “Boy, does it feel good to be riding again.”

The effortless way Jillian rode, as if she were one with the horse, impressed Chelsea. “You ride like a cowgirl,” she said. “I never rode until this summer, and my fanny hurt for three days.”

Jillian laughed. “Daddy had me sitting on a
horse from the time I was a baby. Even though I was sick, he bought me my first pony when I was three. DJ had a matching one, and the two of us learned to ride together. Of course, DJ got better at it because he did it more often. When we were ten, we got quarter horses—mine is a roan. I named him Windsong. DJ has a chestnut he calls Cochise. He rides him in rodeo competitions, and no one can chase down a calf and tie it down faster than DJ.”

She sighed, and some of the sparkle left her eyes. “That’s something else I want to do when I get a new heart. I want to ride in the rodeo.”

Chelsea couldn’t imagine such a thing. Plodding along on a horse as tame as the ones at Jenny House was about as much adventure as she could handle. “I hope you get to do it.”

“When we both get these operations behind us, you can come out to our ranch in the summer. I’ll teach you how to ride and rope and cut cattle.”

“Are those marketable skills?” Chelsea asked with a laugh. “I always thought I’d like to be a teacher. Or a guide and lecturer in a museum of art.”

“Why would you want to be around people all day? Give me the wide open spaces anytime.”

“I guess because I’ve never been around people. I’ve been stuck off by myself most of my life. I get lonely.”

Jillian shook her head. “Don’t you know you can sometimes be lonely even in a crowd of people?”

“Are you? The way your family rallies around you, it’s hard to believe.”

“Sometimes. Maybe it’s because of my medical history. Hospitals have a way of making a person feel less than a person.”

Chelsea knew that much was true. Some of her hospitalizations had been positively dehumanizing. “Sometimes they treat you as if you were a machine with a bad gear.”

Chelsea laughed as Jillian told her a story.

“What’s so funny?” Lacey called over her shoulder.

“Just hospital stories,” Chelsea replied, wiping the sleeve of her coat across her eyes, which teared with her laughter.

“Nothing’s
funny about hospitals,” Lacey insisted.

Up ahead, Katie had stopped and tied her horse’s reins to a tree. When the others arrived, Katie said, “We’ll have to go the rest of the way on foot.”

Chelsea looked to Jillian, who seemed to be breathing harder.

“Thin air,” Jillian explained, dismounting. “But I can make it.”

By the time Chelsea had walked her up to the crest of the plateau, Katie and Lacey were crouching and cleaning off an accumulation of leaves from the ground. Chelsea felt her heart pounding from exertion, so she led Jillian to a jutting boulder and sat down next to her. Beneath her lipstick, Jillian’s lips appeared quite blue. Chelsea felt
a momentary stab of fear. She fervently hoped they hadn’t presumed too much about Jillian’s strength.

“Here’s the top of the cross,” Lacey called out excitedly.

Chelsea watched as the leaves were strewn aside and a cross of rocks emerged. “Lacey constructed it with her own hands in tribute to Amanda,” Chelsea told Jillian.

“And here’re the sticks,” Katie called, picking up a tripod of wood and standing it upright. “It’s still intact.”

“Let us see.”

Carefully, Katie and Lacey carried the makeshift memorial over to where Chelsea and Jillian were sitting. “When it stands upright, it forms a tepee,” Chelsea explained.

Katie sat it down, and a photo dangled precariously from a string. Jillian leaned forward and picked up a corner of the photo, now faded and dirtied by the weather. “That’s the four of us in front of the fireplace at Jenny House,” Chelsea continued. “That’s Mandy in the middle.”

Jillian said, “She’s cute. And what a smile.”

Chelsea felt a lump swell inside her throat. Amanda looked so happy. Only months before, she’d been alive. And breathing. Chelsea shivered anew and tugged the coat against her. “She was a doll all right.”

“She discovered this place,” Lacey said, pointing. “We came up here after a rainstorm and built this for her.”

Traces of the lipstick heart Katie had drawn on the photo could barely be seen.

“It was a beautiful summer day, there was a rainbow, and it seemed as if she was right here with us.” Katie’s voice sounded thick with emotion.

“I can retie the photo,” Jillian offered. She pulled a fringe of leather from the suede jacket beneath her heavier coat. “This will last longer than the string,” she said. “The Indians used leather to tie things together all the time.”

Chelsea watched through a film of tears as Jillian’s fingers knotted the piece of leather through the hole where the string was rotting away. “There,” Jillian said, holding it up. “How’s that?”

“Looks good,” Katie whispered.

“Amanda told us that at night, elves and fairies came and danced in the moonlight. So I’m going to set the tripod up again at the head of the cross. That way she can watch them when they come.”

Lacey reached for the tepee, but Jillian pulled it back. “Wait,” she said. “I’d like to leave a little gift for Amanda too.” Jillian pulled off her gloves and unfastened a diamond stud earring from her right ear. With effort, she pushed the sharp end of the stud through the photo directly above Amanda’s head. Even in the failing gray light, the diamond gleamed.

“You’re leaving a real diamond out
here?”
Lacey asked, wide-eyed.

“I figure that a fairy queen should have a real
crown,” Jillian replied. Her freckled skin looked pale, and her eyes large and luminous.

Chelsea felt a tear slide down her cheek. “Thank you, Jillian,” she whispered.

Katie squeezed Jillian’s hands. “Put your gloves on,” she said. “You’re cold as ice.”

“We made a pact to come back this summer,” Lacey blurted.

“Are you inviting me?” Jillian asked.

“It wouldn’t be the same coming without you,” Lacey told her. “But you’ve got to promise to show up,” she added emphatically. “That’s the only rule. You’ve got to promise.”

“I will if I can,” Jillian said solemnly.

“We should start back down.” Katie stood.

They walked, arm in arm, toward the horses. Chelsea glanced backward once. She saw where Lacey had reanchored the tripod at the head of the stone cross. A cold breeze lifted the photo and sent it fluttering. The diamond caught the light and tossed off a tiny spark, like a shimmering beacon … only for the eyes of elves and fairies.