The Locket (12 page)

Basketball and boy movies. They could both go suck it.

“Hell, let’s get some cider too,” Mitch said, playing along. “And we’ll warm it up and go sit right in front of his house and drink it.”

“And when he smells it and comes begging for a sip, we won’t give him one.”

“Not even
one
. And then he’ll cry,” Mitch said, absolutely serious, so serious I wanted to laugh, but I didn’t. It was more fun not to.

“That’s right, but we still won’t give him one.” I narrowed my eyes, doing my best Mom impression. “And he’ll learn not to stand us up ever again.”

Mitch nodded sagely. “It will be a bought lesson.”

“That’s right.” I fought a smile as I walked around to get into the passenger’s seat. “Sometimes you have to show people a little tough love.”

“Speaking of, I love you in that bandana.” Mitch hopped into the car, the light in his eyes making me glad we hadn’t canceled.

“Thanks. I love your overalls.”

“All the ladies do, Katie.” He winked at me and fired up the van. “All the ladies do.”

We laughed as Mitch pulled out of the parking lot and down the street lined with fire orange trees. Crisp fall air rushed in the windows and a demo tape Mitch had scored from one of his music connections blared from the speakers. It was going to be a perfect afternoon, whether Isaac was there or not.

Chapter Eight

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2, 5:23 P.M.

M
itch sneezed again, and the little girl with pigtails seated next to him in the hay-filled trailer scooted a few more inches away. At this rate she was going to fall off the back of the cart before we reached the apple orchard.

I pressed my fist against my mouth and fought the urge to laugh.

“This is picturesque.” Mitch motioned toward the cornfield flowing down the hill away from the tractor trail and the pumpkin patch beyond. “I’m glad we—decided to—take the hayride—to the—”

Mitch lost the battle with another sneeze, making the little girl shoot first him, then her mother—seated on the opposite side of the trailer—an outraged look.
Somebody needs to do something
, the look said. This diseased sneezing was unacceptable!

Clearly a little Rachel Pruitt in training.

“Sorry,” Mitch said, turning to whisper in my ear. “I’m allergic to hay.”

“I sort of figured,” I whispered back.

“I would have taken my allergy medicine this morning, but I forgot about the whole hayride thing. Do you think I’m bothering anyone?”

“No, not at all.” I bit my lip to keep from smiling.

Mitch squeezed my knee right at the ticklish place, making me jump and giggle before slapping his hand away. “I take back every nice thing I ever said about your acting. You are a bad actress. Very, very bad.”

“I’m not a bad actress, I’m a bad
liar
. There’s a difference.”

Mitch reached for my knee again, but I dodged him with a karate chop and a handful of hay to the face. He sneezed again and we both started laughing.

“This is embarrassing.” He sniffed.

I pulled his bandana out of my hair and pressed it into his hands. “Here, I think you need this more than I do.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“No problem.” I was still grinning when I turned back to watch the apple orchard come into view and caught the mom of the little girl giving me and Mitch “the look”—the same “aren’t young people in love the cutest thing” look old people had always given me and Isaac. She turned and kissed her husband on the cheek. He wrapped his arm around her, pulling her close.

A chill slipped into my chest, tamping down my giddiness to a nice, respectable level. This was a friendly trip. A
friend
trip. Mitch and I had always been physical with each other—a side effect of becoming friends when we were little enough to think wrestling in our swimsuits on the Slip ’n Slide was completely acceptable—but maybe we should tone it down a little. We wouldn’t want to give anyone the wrong idea.

Not that it really mattered on a hayride in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by a bunch of families and little kids, but still . . . It would probably be a good habit to get into.

Mitch sneezed again, and the little girl made a face like she’d been sprayed with monkey pee. “It should stop once I get away from the hay,” Mitch said apologetically, loud enough for the girl and her family to hear.

“It’s fine,” I said. “You can’t help it. And we’ll walk back when we’re done picking. It’s not that far to the van.”

I could see Mitch’s relief on his face. In that moment, I knew he’d done the hayride thing for me, because I’d been so excited to see the faded green tractor pulling the hay-filled trailer the same way it had when we were little. It kind of made me want to hug him, in spite of my non-touchy thoughts.

“Here we are.” The old man driving the tractor—the same ancient, crooked-faced farmer who had helped me and Mitch lift our apple baskets into our red wagons when we were little—turned around at the end of the gravel trail. “Baskets are at the beginning of each row and ladders at the end. Children, be sure to watch your parents. Don’t let them get lost.”

The mom and dad across from us laughed. The little girl rolled her eyes. Still in pigtails and already with the eye rolling. Good thing her parents were gross in love because she was going to be a heck on wheels. I didn’t think I eye-rolled until I was at least old enough to wear lip gloss.

Farmer Funny killed the engine. “Last tractor leaves in forty-five minutes.”

“I forgot about the ladders,” Mitch said as he jumped off the end of the trailer and turned to offer me a hand down. “I was so scared of those when we were little. My dad had to climb up behind me.”

“Really? You were scared of ladders?” I’d forgotten about the ladders too, even though I’d nearly been crushed by one an hour earlier. Still, climbing a little apple-picking ladder should be a piece of cake after braving the light grid.

I followed Mitch through the trampled grass, heading toward the last row of the orchard. The sun was going down and everything was bathed in a rosy pink light, blushing like the ripe apples peeking from the tree branches. It was beautiful, but the fading light meant fading warmth. We were going to have to pick fast if we didn’t want to freeze on the walk back to the car. It was starting to get cold at night.

“I’m
still
scared of ladders,” Mitch said. “Heights, really. Terrified of them.”

“Me too! ” I studied him out of the corner of my eye. Was this something I hadn’t known about Mitch or something new, something that was different this time around? I’d been lulled into relaxing my guard by the utter sameness of the farm and had almost—for a blissful thirty minutes—forgotten I was living in do-over land.

“I know.” He grabbed a basket and headed down the row. “Remember swim lessons? When you wouldn’t jump off the high dive and the lifeguard had to push you off the end into the water?”

Thank God, I
did
remember that. It was the first time I’d ever really thought I hated someone. I’d plotted the pimply-faced teenage lifeguard’s death for the rest of the summer. “And you hid under the bleachers so you wouldn’t have to jump. You big chicken,” I said as we walked by a pair of little boys struggling with a basket of apples as big as they were. They couldn’t be more than four or five years old.

“You’re just jealous that you lacked the forethought to hide with me,” Mitch said, stopping in the middle of the row as I doubled back to check on the boys.

“I was
seven
. Who has
forethought
when they’re seven? And you don’t count, Mensa boy.” I threw the words over my shoulder before bending down to take one side of the giant basket. “Do you guys need help?” I asked the two boys, smiling at the almost identical freckled faces that looked up into mine. Aw, man, these two were precious.

And trouble. Before I knew what was happening, both of them had narrowed their eyes and lifted their fists.

“Stranger danger!” the one on my right screamed, aiming a karate kick at my knee that I just barely avoided.

I backed up, holding up my hands. “No, I—”

“Stranger danger! Mom!” The slightly bigger boy joined his brother and they both rushed me like mini-ninjas.

“Run!” I grabbed Mitch—who was, of course, laughing his ass off—by the arm and busted a move down the row.

Thankfully, however, our flight was short lived.

“Ashton! Amos! Stop chasing those people!” a female voice yelled from the other end of the row. We turned to see a tiredlooking woman with a little girl propped on her hip pulling a second red wagon toward the boys. She dropped the handle to wave in my and Mitch’s direction. “Sorry about that! They take karate.”

“No problem!” I smiled and waved back, relieved to have been spared some kind of preschool smack down. Sheesh. The perils of trying to be nice!

Mitch chuckled again as we headed back down the row. “Stranger danger. How awesome was that? I’m totally going to teach Ricky to do that. It’s hysterical.”

“So you’re getting used to the little-brother idea?”

Mitch shrugged and his smile faded. “Maybe.”

Hmm . . . sounded like that was still a topic best left alone if we wanted to enjoy the rest of our afternoon. I reached up to grab an apple from a low-hanging limb. It snapped off easily in my hand, still a little warm from the sun. Yum.

I bit in, tasting sweet and sour, simplicity and sin, all in the first crunch.

“That apple is probably coated in pesticides.”

“Mmm . . . pesticides.” I took another big bite and grinned at him around the pulpy white flesh.

Mitch snatched the fruit from my hand so fast I made a yipping sound and juice ran down my chin. I swiped at it and swallowed while he finished off the rest of the apple in three huge bites.

“What about the pesticides, thief?”

“You made them look so yummy, I couldn’t help myself.” He tossed the core into the grass and stopped to stare at the last tree in the row. It was much bigger than the others, with three gnarled main branches that twisted at least twenty feet in the air and dozens of longer, thinner limbs reaching down to kiss the ground on every side. A ladder was already positioned beneath a break in the foliage, near a clutch of particularly delicious-looking fruit.

“Is it wrong that even looking at that ladder kind of makes me want to puke?” Mitch asked, tossing our basket on the ground with a sigh.

Crap! He really
was
scared of heights. This could put a major dent in my tree house plan. Dad was nailing the platform on the lowest limb, but still . . . it was at least twelve feet up. How ridiculous would it be to have a tree house between our yards and both of us be too scared to sit in it?

Ugh. No way. I wasn’t going to let phobia win. I’d beaten my fear once today and survived a mini-ninja attack. I could do this. Mitch could too.

“I climbed out on the light grid to replace a spot at the fashion-show practice this afternoon,” I said, grabbing the discarded basket from the ground. “All by myself.”

“You’re kidding. That’s, like, forty feet up.”

“Fifty.” I stuck my nose in the air, playing up my pride in my accomplishment.

Mitch laughed. “Wow. Aren’t you the badass?”

“I am the badass.
The.
Badass. I am so badass I’m going to climb that ladder even though I am much less coordinated than you are and much more likely to break something doing it.”

“That’s not true.” Mitch followed me over to the base of the ladder, but he didn’t look happy about it.

“It is true. You used to be almost as jocky as Isaac,” I reminded him. “And I get B’s in gym. Nobody gets B’s in gym. Coach Miller gives A’s for showing up and dressing out.”

Mitch grunted as he looked up, his dark eyes flitting from the ladder to the apples and back again. “Yeah. You aren’t the most athletic Katie I know.”

I snorted. “How many Katies do you know?”

“At least ten, and they’re all better at sports than you are.” He grinned a crooked grin and nudged me with his shoulder. “You were pretty bad at swimming too. Did you ever learn to do anything but doggy paddle?”

“Nope.”

“That’s sad. Poor baby.” He started to pet my head like I was a puppy-pound reject, but I growled and snapped at his hand. He pulled away with a laugh. “Hey, that’s okay. I like sad clowns.”

“Thanks, but you know what’s really sad?
I’m
not the one who’s too chicken to climb a little ladder.” I propped the basket on my hip and started to climb, ignoring the gazelle-like leaping of my heart in my chest as my brain complained that it wasn’t safe to climb a ladder without both of your hands free.

People had been picking apples for hundreds of years, maybe thousands, and you never heard of anyone falling off a ladder and dying at their friendly local pick-it-yourself farm. This was perfectly safe. Besides, I was only five feet in the air, six . . . seven . . . eight.

Oh . . . man. Nine . . . ten . . . eleven. Gulp.

I plunked the basket down on the top of the ladder, gripped the top rung with both hands, and took a deep breath. It didn’t help. It was getting harder and harder to breathe as I imagined myself toppling backward, breaking my neck when my body connected with the hard ground. In my mind’s eye, I saw the unnatural bend of my limbs and my blood splattered on the dust—tiny spots of crimson dwarfed by the red apples scattered around my broken body.

I was about to cry uncle and scurry back down the ladder when Mitch started up behind me.

“Fine, I’m not going to let you out-manly me,” he said, an edge in his voice, though he was obviously joking around. “But if we die, I’m going to say I told you so a hundred zillion times.”

“That’s fine. Jews and Catholics don’t go to the same heaven, right? So I won’t be able to hear you anyway,” I said, feeling a marked loosening in my chest when Mitch’s hands grabbed the ladder just below mine. His body surrounded me on every side. He wouldn’t let me fall. And even if we did, he was in prime impact-softening position.

“So you believe in heaven? In the white-wings-and-fluffy-clouds kind of way?” he asked, his tone light, but with an undercurrent of seriousness I couldn’t ignore.