The Predicteds (22 page)

We spend the rest of the day hanging out by the pool, a peaceful silence enveloping the two of us like a big, broken-in beach towel.

I'm sorry.

—Email message from Daphne Wright to Jesse Kable

“Wri!” Call-Me-Vic barks at me. “If you're gonna sit there like a lump, why don't you make yourself useful, huh? Wanna head out to the library and do some tutoring? I still gotta get everybody ready for this test. Take Bassy with you. Her brain's half-empty.”

I look at Brooklyn Bass, who rolls her eyes at me. “I don't think so,” she says.

“Fine. Take Cammo. We got to get him ready for this thing.” Sam Cameron doesn't look directly at me, but he does stand up with his book in his hands.

“Don't come back till that kid can name every serial killer who terrorized the West Coast since 1950!” Call-Me-Vic yells after us.

Once we're out the door, I say to Sam, “You don't have to go to the library with me.”

“We're cool,” Sam says and gives me a tentative smile. “It's really none of my business who you date.”

“That's right,” I say, not that I'm dating anybody now. “But I'm sure Brooklyn won't like it.”

“First, I don't necessarily share the same views as my girlfriend. Second, it's not that she doesn't like you. She just doesn't get you.”

“Fair enough.” I wipe sweat trickling close to my eye. It's so hot, the hottest day of the year, and the air conditioning isn't on yet. It doesn't help that I am wearing crisp jeans and a white V-necked ribbed sweater. Somehow, I can't seem to pay close enough attention to the weather to dress appropriately. I should never take my cues from Melissa, who can be surprised by the presence of rain after five minutes of standing in it. Today, she left for work wearing a turtleneck and corduroy skirt with thick patterned tights. I'm so hot that I feel like I'm going to melt into a puddle of human goo.

“So you want to skip out of here?” Sam asks suddenly. “Get some cool air?”

“What did you have in mind?”

“Whataburger?”

Why not?

***

A burger, a mass of fries, a large Diet Coke, and a serious blast of air conditioning later, I'm patting my full stomach like a middle-aged fat guy while Sam runs outside to make a quick phone call. He checks in with Brooklyn like a dog on a short leash.

“Sucks, doesn't it?”

I turn around. It's Nate Gormley, carrying a damp rag and a bottle of blue cleaner. He's wearing a Whataburger uniform. “You live here, or what?”

“I like the atmosphere,” I say, pointing at the dead flies on the windowsill.

I see Sam, who is outside, spread out on the hood of his car, his phone attached to his ear. “So what do you do here?”

“Nuclear physics,” he says holding up the blue bottle. “What do you think? I'm predicted, you know.” He pretends to be outraged.

A man in a stained tank top standing at the front counter yells, “Better not be bugging my customer!”

Nate holds up his middle finger at the guy but keeps it below the table so he won't see it.

I stare at Nate for a second while he fiddles with the sprayer on the bottle—it appears to be stuck or clogged. He turns it to his face and examines it carefully. I wait for the inevitable squirt in the eye, but even he seems to figure out how to avoid that.

“You still tutoring crime?” he asks me.

“I wouldn't put it that way. But Vic is still trying to get everybody to pass his class.”

“Dumb class,” Nate mutters.

“I don't know. Maybe there's something to learning all about criminals. Helps you figure out who to avoid.” I clamp my jaw shut. I don't want Nate to think I'm talking about him. “Sorry.”

He slides into the booth across from me. I look out the window and see that Sam hasn't even moved. It looks like he's sunbathing. Nate pulls out a cigarette and then offers me one.

“You can't smoke in here,” I tell him.

He lights the cigarette anyway. He has greasy brown hair that looks in desperate need of a good cut. His acne-scarred face sports rivulets of sweat running from his forehead down his face. He swipes at them with his free hand. His fingernails are dirty. Grandma always used to tell me that nobody hires someone with dirty fingernails. Clearly, that doesn't apply at Whataburger.

“What?” he says when he sees me staring at him. “What the hell?”

“Nate, do you ever think about the future?”

He blows smoke away from me. “I'm probably going to Tulsa next weekend,” he tells me.

“No,” I correct him. “Like what you're going to do in the
future
future? When you're older?”

“I dunno,” he says, leaning out of the booth to look at the front counter. He's clearly checking to see if the guy at the counter has noticed what he's doing.

The smell of the makeshift ashtray—a cup lid—wafts over me. Nate's lit cigarette smells like Oklahoma at the end of a humid day—warmed over and old. Like broccoli in the microwave. “I wonder what everyone will do,” I muse, thinking about Jesse and all of the other predicteds.

Nate stamps out his cigarette, wipes the tip with his fingers, and then puts it in his front shirt pocket. He blows air in his cheeks and then uses his fingers to pop them. I've never heard one person make as much collateral noise as he does. “I guess I'll just stay here for awhile. I don't know.”

“Oh,” I say, checking my watch and then sliding out of the booth. “I should go.”

“I already done it,” Nate says to my back. I turn around to face him.

“Done what?”

“Done
it
. Done a crime. ”

My jaw drops. “Really?” I feel fearful immediately, as if I've turned around in the bank and spotted a ski-masked man standing behind me.

Nate stands up and stretches. “Nah, just screwing with you.” He punches at the air in front of me, a fake right hook followed by a left. He steps ahead of me and grabs my tray of trash from me. He tosses the whole thing—including the tray—into the garbage can and walks behind the counter.

I run into Sam at the door. “Was that Nate Gormley talking to you?” he asks suspiciously.

“We weren't really talking,” I lie.

“Good.” He puts a shielding arm around me. “I don't want you anywhere near him,” Sam says softly.

***

Dizzy calls me on Thursday night after ten, when I'm rattling around in the kitchen trying to find something to eat. Melissa's favorite dinner—grilled soy bologna on wheat bread with mustard and a slice of Velveeta—always leaves me feeling ravenous at precisely the time the house stops stinking of her culinary creation.

“So you're talking to me now?” I say to Dizzy.

“Come on, Daphne. Be fair. What was I supposed to do?”

“Ah, stand up for me when Brooklyn goes on her rampages. How about that?”

“I'm sorry about that. I should've said something.”

She sounds so sad that I soften. “I can understand.”

“So you forgive me?” she chirps.

“I said I can understand.”

“Well, I'm calling for a reason. Do you want to come to Josh's birthday party? I'm personally inviting you.”

“Does Josh want me there? Does anyone else want me there?”

“That's not the question we are discussing,” Dizzy says with great authority. “I would like to know if you would like to be my guest at Josh's birthday party. It's his seventeenth, and I'm throwing him a great party. Saturday night. Come at six. I know that's early, but you can help me with the food. It's a pool party. Bring your suit to change into later. It's kind of an end-of-the-school-year bash too.”

“And people want me there?”

She hesitates.

“Dizzy, does Josh know you are inviting me?”

“Leave that to me. I'm inviting you. You're my friend.”

“And what about being popular?”

“Oh, pish posh. We only have a few days of school left. They'll forget by the fall. Please? Will you come?”

“I won't make any promises—” I start to say.

Dizzy shrieks, “Great! I'm so excited. And Daph, I really owe you an apology about all that Jesse stuff. I'm sorry.”

“So you don't think he's a dangerous person?”

She takes a long breath and blows it through the phone. “I think there's a party on Saturday and you're my guest. That's it.”

I can live with that. For now. I take a bite out of something leftover in the fridge—something that seems too squishy to be food—and spit it out into the sink.

“Come to Josh's house. You know it, right? It's off Lakeview? At the top of the hill? The big three-story place—you know, Richard Kable's house.” Dizzy stops suddenly. “Jesse's old house,” she says quietly.

“I know the place,” I say, even though I've never been there. You can see it from the road when you drive around the lake. Quiet's very own mansion with its very own royalty. I wonder if there are any signs of Jesse there. Do I want there to be? Or would it be easier to know that everything about Jesse—including Jesse himself—disappeared into the sunny West, where I imagine the landscape is nothing but mountains and tall trees.

“Has Jesse called you?” Dizzy asks, as if reading my mind.

“No. Why?” My heart starts beating quickly.

“Just wondering. Josh said he was thinking of coming back to Quiet.”

“For good?”

“I hope not. Nobody wants him here.” I say nothing, which prompts a meek and relatively sincere, “Sorry,” from Dizzy.

“Why would he come back?” I ask casually. I can't help but wonder if—and hope—it's because of me.

“I don't know. Hey, are you going to wear your bathing suit with a wrap or something, or are you going to change at Josh's?”

“I hadn't contemplated that perplexing question.”

Dizzy misses the sarcasm. “Call me if you want to talk about it more,” she says ardently. “Anytime.”

I hang up the phone and decide to give up on real food. I take M&Ms and a glass of iced tea to my room, flopping on my bed and narrowly missing my open laptop. I set my food and drink down and pull the computer to my lap, arranging myself against the headboard with two old pillows.

My fingers take on a life of their own. I don't even think—I just let them move across the keyboard. It reminds me of the time that my childhood friend Sarah and I found a Ouija board in her basement. We delicately touched the plastic planchette, asking the board to tell us the names of our future husbands. One second, I was fully aware of moving that piece to spell out the letters of Sarah's current crush,
T-A-Y-L
, and in the next, I felt like my fingers were moving of their own accord. There was nothing I could do to control them. And the board ended up telling Sarah that her future husband would be named Taylwart.

The message is short.

I was wrong about you. I don't know how to tell you I'm sorry.

I stare at the screen until I fully realize what I've written. I go back to the top of the email window and type his address. I hit send before I have the chance to change my mind.

It might be weird for you to get this message from me. Honestly, it's kind of weird for me writing it. I'm Jesse's ex-girlfriend. I got your email address from my brother. I'm sorry if this makes you feel awkward or whatever. You're probably a really nice person, and I have no reason to lie to you, so trust me when I say that you are getting in over your head. He has two sides. You've only seen the good side. And I, of all people, know how easy it is to get sucked into the bad side. Be careful.

—Email message from Brit Gormley to Daphne Wright

Like a pathetic loser, I get up at five o'clock on Friday morning just to check my email. No answer from Jesse. But there are a fair number of people who want to enlarge my penis, sell me porn, or introduce me to hot singles in my area. No wonder old people think the Internet is a cesspool. I check my email about three hundred more times before I leave for school.

During French, Madame Ada sends me to the main office to pick up a stack of handouts. Or maybe she's sent me to Paris for a loaf of bread. I can never tell because my French is so bad. I take the long way, walking just to the entrance of the Zoo.

“Sightseeing?” Nate asks me, his face almost obscured by the hood of his sweatshirt tied tightly around his face.

“Phone home,” I say, a dumb reference to
E.T.
It just confuses Nate.

He follows me through the cafeteria as I head to the office. “What are you doing?” he asks.

“Errands,” I respond, giving it a thick French accent. “Aren't you supposed to be back there?” I point to the Zoo.

“The cages were left unattended,” he tells me, matching my stride.

Just before we get to the glass doors of the main office, he asks, “So you going to Josh's thing?”

I stop.

“You are?”

“Yeah.”

“I thought after the gun incident—”

“There was no gun,” Nate grunts at me. “You're turning into one of them.” He holds his hands up. “Want to send me back to the internment camp?” Nate's reference to World War II surprises me. I guess I assume his knowledge begins and ends with pot and
Star Wars
.

“You were invited to Josh's party?” I ask skeptically.

“An invitation is optional.” He pulls his hair back into a slippery, girl-like ponytail. “I'll see you there. Unless you want to drive together?”

I can't tell if he's serious or not, so I don't answer.

That's just what I need: to pull up to a party that I'm only sort of invited to with Nate Gormley. That would do wonders for my already tenuous social status.

“No, thanks,” I say. “I'm good.”

***

Josh's house is up a winding road behind the Walmart. (That's what the locals say here:
the
Walmart, never just Walmart.) The road leads past a large group of new luxury townhouses and single-family homes. No Christmas lights or old toilets left to rot outside these doors. Definitely not college housing. These homes are too expensive for the college professors in town—this is Quiet's top-of-the-money heap.

At the crest of the hill sits a stately house that can only be described as a mansion. It's white and dignified, with green-painted plantation shutters. A delicate picket fence (green, not white) hems the giant house in. Without the fence, it seems like the house would probably spill its guts all over the circular driveway.

Dizzy has pulled in directly in front of me. She rolls her window down and motions for me to pull up next to her. “Just leave your car,” she says. “Somebody will be here to park.”

I raise my eyebrows. There's a valet?

I follow Dizzy to the front door, but at the last minute she changes course and we go around the house to a gated courtyard where she uses a key fob to open a shining, white wrought-iron gate. The pool is aqua-green and the size of a lake, practically. Nobody is in the pool yet, but two women in matching shorts and aprons are setting up food on a buffet table. “There's a pig!” Dizzy says. “They're roasting a pig.” She points to the giant red smoker, placed in the great expanse of a backyard that looks more like a football field than someone's lawn.

In the corner, an older man with glasses is lining up fireworks. I recognize him from the news—it's Jesse's dad. He says something under his breath as he tries to line up bottle rockets. A woman stands over him and pats his shoulder. She turns around to look at Dizzy and me. Her hair is thin and dirt-reddish, the color of dirty Oklahoma windows, parted in the middle and held securely back in a tidy bun, pioneer-woman style. She's wearing plaid shorts and a brown shirt with a big stain in the front. She doesn't look like she belongs with the house.

“Joanna, I'd like you to meet Daphne Wright.”

Joanna looks over my head and says hi.

“Joanna is Josh's mom,” Dizzy tells me. Then she clears her throat and says, “Richard, this is Daphne.”

Jesse's dad looks at me through thick, round glasses. No sign of recognition appears anywhere on his face. Did Jesse never talk about me? “How many knots do you know how to make?” he asks me.

“I'm not sure. At least one,” I estimate generously.

“Oh, Rich, not now,” Joanna says. To me, “He wrote a book about knot-tying, and he wants to tell you about it.”

“That's interesting,” I lie.

“There are at least thirty kinds of knots, and I'm always on the lookout for more.” Jesse's dad names a few and uses the air as makeshift rope to demonstrate one or two of them.

I stare at him intently, trying to find any evidence of Jesse in this odd man. At last I see it—the way he shrugs his shoulders when he loses his confidence. I give him a big smile. “That's sounds really…useful.” He smiles back.

“Dizzy,” Joanna says, “help me get the food out. You,” she says, looking at me, “Daphne, right? Can you help carry ice?”

I should've known I'd get put to work—like a paid employee—at Josh's party. “Sure,” I say, and then I go hide out in the garden for a while.

***

The guests all arrive between six thirty and seven. By seven thirty, the food tables have been eviscerated. Joanna and Rich are nowhere to be seen, and most of the guests are splashing around in that giant pool. I hide out in the corner, by a changing room, sipping Diet Coke and holding a plate of roasted pig and coleslaw in my lap. Nobody says a word to me, although that's progress. Nobody has thrown food at me or tossed me into the pool either.

Brooklyn sashays past me three times wearing the same swimsuit Dizzy bought at the mall. Standing next to Dizzy, she looks like first runner-up, for sure. She screams when someone accidentally pushes her into the pool. Then she has to be led inside to find a place where she can heat up her hot rollers.

Sam wanders by and sits with me for a few minutes. “This place will be out of control when Heller breaks out the booze. It's pretty tame right now.” We watch the floundering bodies splashing around in the pool, the smell of charred pig delicately enveloping all of us.

“Sounds dangerous,” I say.

“Nah,” Sam says. “This is a nonpredicted-only party.”

“Keeping out the riffraff,” I say sarcastically.

“Do you believe Jesse did it?” Sam asks me.

I shake my head while I keep my eyes on a game of Marco Polo. “January doesn't think so either.”

“How do you know that?”

“She told me.”

Sam sits up in his lounge chair. “Since when are you friends with January?”

I shrug. “I don't know. Since I went over to her house.”

“What did she tell you?”

“What makes you so interested?”

“Everybody is interested.”

“Change of subject,” I announce. “Let's not talk about PROFILE for five minutes.”

We are silent, the sounds of the party filling in around us. “So,” Sam finally says, “there
is
something I wanted to ask you.”

I look at him expectantly.

“Do you want to hang out sometime? With me? Just the two of us, I mean.”

“What about Brooklyn?”

He scratches his head. “It's over. We weren't good together. She's just so—”

He can't find the right word. I can. But I don't say it.

“So what do you think? About you and me?”

I'm silent for too long, which is pretty much the same as a rejection, only worse. It means I recognize that I'm humiliating him. “Never mind,” he says, getting up so quickly that he knocks over his chair. “Have a good time tonight.” He leaves to join a game of volleyball. I throw my plate away and return to my seat in the corner.

A few minutes, later Nate appears from behind me. “Hey,” he says. “Think anyone will notice I'm here?” He's wearing jean shorts and no shirt. I can't help but stare at his prominent ribs. He's short, hairy, and mean-looking like a catfish. He's drinking something red from a glass pitcher, which he sets by the edge of the pool.

“Wait here,” he tells me, and he disappears into the small changing room near the garage. When he comes out, he's wearing long tan swim trunks with white stripes on the sides—the kind that dads wear when they take you swimming at the Holiday Inn. Or at least, I assume that's what they wear. On him, the swim trunks reach almost to his ankles.

“I'm going for it,” he says, carefully putting on goggles as if they are part of a complicated disguise. When he's a few feet from the pool, he takes a running jump and cannonballs into the water, splashing to the outer edges of the pool. His foot nicks the pitcher, and it breaks into three pieces. He ignores it and motions for me to get in.

I'm hot and tired of sitting. It affects my judgment. “Hang on,” I say. I go into the changing room, pull the tags off the new bikini I grabbed at Maurice's on my way over, and then undress. The suit is the color of green coral and chocolate bars—pretty in the store. When I put it on, though, I realize that the bottom is too tight and the top is too roomy; I should've tried it on in the store. I try to pull the high-cut bottom across as much of my butt as I can, and I cinch the tie on the bikini top as tight as it will go. Without a mirror, I can't tell if I look hideous or not. There's a row of stiff towels on a shelf, and I pull one out to wrap around me. The frayed and shrunken piece of cotton doesn't do much good, but it does make me feel braver.

I walk out of the changing room. Nobody notices me, except for Nate, begoggled and treading water at the edge of the pool near the diving board. I marvel at the fact that nobody seems to notice him or care that he's there. I take the towel off and tiptoe toward the ladder. “Wow,” he says. “Daphne, you should wear a bikini all the time. I had absolutely no idea that you were so hot.”

“Gee, thanks,” I say sarcastically, knowing that I'm ridiculously stupid to be socializing with—let alone swimming with—a gate-crashing predicted. But somehow, being nice to Nate helps me feel like I'm making up for treating Jesse poorly. I sidestep the glass—let the uniformed help clean it up—and submerge myself. I swim away from Nate, who is still under the diving board. The pool feels like bathwater, and the lights at the bottom cast a peaceful, bluish tinge everywhere. Nate follows me and dunks me just long enough to make me nervous.

“Come on,” he says when I come up, sputtering water out of my noise. “Let's swim.” I watch him swim low and fast around bodies and through legs. Nobody seems to notice that the hairy fish is Nate.

I float on my back, looking at the stars just beginning to light up above us.

“I could live like this,” I say to nobody in particular.

The pool roils underneath me as everyone fights for room to spread out, but I keep hold onto my little corner.

“I do live like this,” Josh replies, water dripping down his freckled face.

I sit up quickly and start treading water. “Hey,” I say, “thanks for inviting me—er, letting Dizzy invite me.” I decide to be nice to him. I'm enjoying his pool, after all. Maybe I've misjudged him. Dizzy loves him, right? Certainly that must count for something.

“You like it here, huh?” His eyes seem focused on me, but at the same time, I sense that he is looking through me, not at me. He's not drunk—I know, because he doesn't have the same slobbery, obnoxious air he had that night at the diner. His eyes are warm and conciliatory. I feel cozy in the warm pool. “Hey, Daphne?” he says suddenly.

“Yes?” I tread water slowly, watching the waves spread out around me.

“I wanted to talk about—everything. You're Dizzy's friend, and I don't think I've been totally fair to you.”

I look at him skeptically. “Are you drunk again? Is my head injury acting up?” I pat my skull. “Are you actually trying to apologize? To
moi?
”

“Come on, I'm trying to be serious here. I've been a jerk, and I'm man enough to admit it. Friends?” He reaches out a dripping hand.

I grab on to the edge of the pool so I can wipe water from my eyes.

“Tentative friends?” he amends.

We shake on it. “To starting over,” he says, holding up an imaginary glass.

“To pool parties,” I respond.

“Is that Nate Gormley?” Josh asks me suddenly, forgetting about our mock toast. “Is that little bastard actually at my party? At my house? In my pool?” I follow his gaze to Nate, who is now bouncing on the diving board, preparing for a soaring splash into the crowded water.

In one fluid movement, Josh heaves himself up the side of the pool. “Hey, Gormley!” he shouts. Nate stops jumping, the still-vibrating diving board causing him to lose his balance a bit. He rights himself and looks out at the pool through his goggles.

Josh walks toward the board with his arms half-flexed, held out away from his body. Dizzy told me that he once said he walked that way—half man, half monkey—because his muscles were too big. Josh yanks Nate by the arm and pulls him off the board, scraping Nate's skinny legs against the cement and the broken glass from the pitcher Nate broke earlier. “I don't think so, Gormley,” he says. “It's time for you to leave.” The backyard has grown so quiet now that I can hear the crickets in the background. Everyone in the pool, including me, stands still.