The Taming (20 page)

She didn’t answer, which was an admission of guilt. I took another turn quickly and the car practically tilted onto two wheels. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her gripping the seat with both hands.

“I wasn’t throwing myself at anybody!” Her voice was shaky. “Honestly, I would never do that to you, never!”

“There you go again, thinking that I’m an idiot and I don’t know what I saw.”

“No, you’re the smartest person I’ve ever met!”

“Smart enough to know when somebody is flirting, practically throwing herself at somebody, and doing it right in front of my eyes! How do you think that makes me feel?”

“I’m sorry … I didn’t know … I mean, I wasn’t trying to flirt … if I was I’m sorry … so sorry!”

“Sorry you were flirting or sorry you got caught?”

“Sorry for everything. I didn’t mean to flirt with anybody … I would never do that! I’ve never been to a party before. You have to believe me, please, you have to believe me!”

She reached over to take my arm and I brushed her hand away.

“I wasn’t doing anything,” she said again. I could tell she was close to tears. Lots of females could fake tears—big deal. “I wasn’t flirting with anybody … I was just trying to be friendly.”

“Is that what you call it?” I demanded. “Being
friendly
? In my world we have another word for a girl who throws herself at a guy like that, and the word isn’t
friendly
.”

“What are you saying?” she gasped.

“Are you telling me that you’ve never been with anybody except me?”

“I … you know that … I … don’t know what to say,” she sputtered.

“How many others? How many, Katie?”

She didn’t say anything.

“It’s probably better you don’t say anything than lie to me! I know when you’re lying. And from what you didn’t say I know the answer. How many have there been? So many that it’s taking you too long to count them all?”

She started crying. I felt a pull in my heart and then hardened it. I wasn’t going to be manipulated by her turning on the waterworks.

I pushed the car a little harder. We were passing other cars like they were practically standing still.

“You’re scaring me,” she sobbed. “Please, could you slow down … please?”

“You want me to slow down?” I asked in amazement.

“Please,” she said. “I’m feeling—”

I slammed on the brakes, squealed over to the side, cutting off a car that honked at me, and then pulled off to the shoulder and brought the car to a sudden stop.

I glared at her—she looked terrified.

“Get out,” I said.

“What?”

“Get out of the car.”

“You want me to … to get out?”

“Yeah, right now. Get out of my car!” I yelled.

“But, but …”

I unsnapped her seatbelt and then reached overtop of her to open the door.

“Get out! Now!” I screamed.

She hesitated, and I pushed her. She stumbled out, tripping and falling before regaining her feet, a stunned look on her face, staring back into the open door, back at me.

The tears practically exploded out of her. For a split second I felt sorry, sad for me, sorry that I’d just done what I’d done. And then I remembered what she’d done to
me
.

“But how will I get home?” she cried.

“You can walk home … or maybe walk back to the party and one of those guys can drive you home … or to wherever you want to go!”

“I’m sorry … I’m so sorry!” she cried.

“Too late!”

I reached over and grabbed the door, slamming it shut. I threw the car into drive and hit the gas pedal, racing away, leaving her standing on the side of the road. I caught a glance of her in my rear-view mirror before the darkness swallowed her up. A few drops of rain fell on the windshield, and then I saw Katie’s shoes on the floor of the car. She was alone on the side of the road, in stocking feet, in the rain, in the dark.

And she deserved it.

Chapter Thirty-One

“S
tupid! I am so, so stupid!”

I said that out loud to the soupy darkness as I watched Evan drive away. I didn’t move for at least ten minutes. I was rooted to the curb, barely breathing, waiting for him to turn around, to come back for me. My shoes—which I’d kicked off when I got in—and my purse were still in the car.

Finally, I got up and picked my way over to a street lamp on the corner of Walnut and Chester Ave. Now I could see that my beautiful stockings were ruined. And there was a messy gash at the side of my left knee from when he’d pushed me out of the car. Was that blood?

He wasn’t coming back. I had stopped crying the moment he drove away. I was too stunned to cry.

Stunned and stupid, so stupid I didn’t even know what I’d done wrong. Flirting? When? How? I wasn’t sure I even knew
how
to flirt. I mean, I knew when I saw it on TV or in the movies, but to actually, actively
flirt
? It would have taken more guts than I had. But did I, was I? If Evan said I was, I must have … and then it started to rain harder … less than a downpour, more than a drizzle, enough to get good and wet.

He really wasn’t coming back.

Okay, then.

I angled my watch under the light: 1:35 a.m. I could still get home and make my shift. If I could figure out how to get to there from here. If I could move.

“Come on now, Katie. One foot in front of the other.” My knee stung as the ripped stocking pattern bit into the drying blood. “Okay, okay, Chestnut should take me to that long street that also has a tree name, the one we turned onto just before Queen Street. Then if I stick to Queen the whole way, I should get home.” It was the super-long route, but one that would be guaranteed to work. I thought.

How
could
he?

I started walking. It hurt less when I walked, so I kept going. The sidewalk was smoother than I’d have thought on my almost-bare feet, maybe because it was slicked with drizzle. It was a surprising kind of thing. Oh sure, I’d step on a pebble here or there, or on lost clumps of oak leaves huddled together for warmth, but overall the sidewalk was very smooth and very, very cold. Each step pierced me with a shot of shivering. It would be the cold that stopped me.

Flirting? I absolutely for sure had not been flirting. I’d just been so happy to be there with Evan, looking pretty. I hadn’t even danced with Josh, no matter how many times he asked, and he asked a lot, or even with Danny, just with Travis and Lisa. And just for that one dance at midnight. The three of us had never been at a party together, let alone one like that. We couldn’t get over ourselves, and we certainly didn’t need anything extra to feel higher than we already did. But I
must
have been flirting. I was so bad at seeing and sorting these things out. Stupid.

It was like with Nick Kormos all over again. I should have known about him. Shouldn’t have done whatever I must have been doing. Should have seen it coming. Should have, but didn’t. Mr. Kormos was very handsome, with that heroic
you’re in safe hands now
handsomeness that all TV doctors have. Mom lived for his every breath, and maybe I did too, a little. No one had even pretended to want to be my father before. For my twelfth birthday Nick Kormos had bought me a pair of pink Ugg boots, $168.29. I knew the price because he showed me the bill. I still had them. And the bill. A week later he touched me.

“She won’t believe you.” That’s what Nick Kormos said that first time. “So don’t bother running to Mommy.” He gulped down the rest of his Chivas. “I’ll say you were asking for it. I’ll say you were
begging
for it.”

Begging for it? Begging for what? That? Like I said, stupid.

Mr. Kormos was right and I knew it, so I didn’t say anything after that first time, or the second. I didn’t know what to say exactly. It was wrong and bad, but so was I. Or it wouldn’t have happened.

And we were both right. My mother did not believe me, even when she walked in with him on top of me while I was fighting with everything I had. And she blamed me. Just like he’d said. They were the adults. So it must have been my fault. And … I must have been flirting at the party.

A symphony of construction noises in my head joined a chorus of shame just as I was coming up to Queen. I was tired of lugging around all that noise, and all those pictures in my head. I was tired, period. There was still such a long way to go.

A car approached from the opposite side of the street, its lights tunnelling through the ink of the night. The lights were bluish—Audi lights, Evan’s lights. The car slowed. Evan? He’d come back for me. He pulled up across the street. The window slid down and a smile slid up. Not Evan. It was a man in his thirties.

“Hi, honey, need a lift?”

Chapter Thirty-Two

I
pushed the button to roll down the passenger-side window. Rain fell into the car, but I needed it open so I could see better. My father would have something to say about me ruining the leather if he noticed it—who was I kidding, he noticed everything.

But between the rain on the windshield and the darkness it was hard to see, and I had to have the window open so I could scan the side of the road … I should have seen her by now. Where
had
she gotten to? I hadn’t been gone for more than fifteen or twenty minutes. That was how long it had taken for my blood to stop boiling and for my brain to take over. I’d spun the car around and raced back to look for her, to where I thought she could have walked to. But she wasn’t there. She wasn’t anywhere. Had she walked back to the party, or had she just made a phone call, maybe to Josh or somebody else, and they’d come and picked her up? If that was what had happened there’d be a price to pay, for him and for her and … Stop, just stop.

Calm down. I should have been
hoping
that someone else had come to her rescue, because if not, a whole lot of worse things could have happened. It was dark, and the streets were deserted.

What if somebody had been driving along and saw her on the side of the road and pulled over and picked her up? Even she wouldn’t be naive or stupid enough to get in the car with a stranger … even if it was raining and she had no shoes. Would she? I looked over at her shoes. She loved those black shoes. If I’d known, I never would have driven away with her shoes, but by the time I noticed them it was too late to turn back. Too late to not act like a total douche bag.

She had to be smart enough not to get into the car with a stranger. Unless somebody forced her. There were all sorts of twisted people in the world. My father had told me, time and time again, that you could never really trust anybody, that people could be kind to your face but turn away for a second and they’d slip a knife in your back. I’d seen enough to know that he was right—at least about that. People weren’t to be trusted … but Katie wasn’t like people. I
did
trust her. I never should have said those things. I never should have made her get out of the car. I never should have driven away.

If only I could find her and we could talk and … wait a second. The phone. I could call and ask where she was.

I pushed the speed dial I’d programmed for her. “Come on, come on, start ringing.”

Her phone did start ringing—from the floor in front of the passenger seat. And as it rang I saw in the light that it was beside her purse. Bad enough that she didn’t have shoes, but she didn’t have her phone or her purse either. Her phone kept ringing—that stupid Eminem song, “Not Afraid.” We’d argued about it. I hated that song, it was crude and the opposite of everything I knew about Katie—even if she didn’t know it herself. I threw my phone onto the floor.
Katie, where are you?

What if something had happened to her? Lots of people had seen us leave together, and some had probably seen us drive away, and anybody with half a brain would have noticed that I was mad at her. If something happened to her, they’d all blame me, maybe even think that I did it. And if anybody investigated, the truth about my past would come out and then they’d think I did it for sure.