Damage Done (9 page)

I had a feeling his version of taking care of it was very different from mine. “Thank you, sir.”

He shot Michael an appraising look. “Well, then,” he said. Michael was staring into his sauce like there might be pirate treasure hidden in its depths. “What are we having?”

When Michael’s dad thumped down at the table and his mother, a stout, pink-faced woman with iron-gray curls tight against her head, followed suit shortly thereafter, my head began running through all the excuses I could think of to get out of there: I wasn’t feeling well. I just remembered I was deathly allergic to tomatoes. My dog got smashed by a bus and I needed to be there when my parents rushed it to the vet.

I kept delaying, though, and before I knew it, I was shoveling lasagna down my throat. I was content just to eat and watch them interact, almost as if I were watching animals in a zoo or subjects in a medical study. Look how the mother gently rubs her son on the upper arm when he accidentally lets a curse word slip, her grip firm but not hard enough to leave a bruise. Observe the father laughing at a joke his wife made, spraying little globules of tomato onto the table’s clean surface. See the son’s eyes glow as he looks at the researcher, and watch how the researcher reacts by suddenly becoming very intent upon her pasta. The way this family touched, the way they looked at each other, the way they poked fun—it was love, and I found love endlessly fascinating.

After the lasagna came ice cream, and after the ice cream came shocked exclamations of “Look how late it is!” from the mother. “You should get home, Lucy,” she said. “I’m sure your parents are worried sick.”

I didn’t say,
Sure, if by worried sick you mean having no idea I’m even gone.
“Yeah,” I said instead.

“Will you be okay driving home?” the mother asked.

“I don’t drive,” I said.

“Why not?”

I stood. “I just don’t. I can call my dad.”

“Don’t call your dad,” Michael said. He shot an annoyed look at his mom, and a wave of calm swept over me. So it wasn’t all love all the time. “I drove you here; I can drive you home.”

“Thanks.”

His parents kissed me—actually kissed me—good-night, and sent me on my way with a plastic container of lasagna. It sat in my lap, heavy and warm, and I knew I’d toss it as soon as I got home. It just wouldn’t taste the same in my kitchen.

“Well,” Michael said as we pulled up to my house. The ride had been quiet, again, but this one was a comfortable kind of quiet. Like the quiet after a thunderstorm, when the air is soft and everything still smells like rain. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“I guess. Thanks for the ride.” We stared at each other; the look in his eyes, soft as the air, made my stomach squirm.

“What do you think of the name Julia?” The words burst out of my mouth without any warning.

Michael cocked his head. “It’s a nice name,” he said. “Nowhere near as pretty as Lucy.”

He looked at me and I looked at him, and before I could stop myself, I leaned over and pressed my lips against his cheek. He stilled; I could feel his heart beating under his skin. His skin was smooth. He swallowed hard, and the reverberations traveled through his bones and his muscle and his smooth, smooth skin and straight into my own head. “Lucy…”

My fake name broke the spell, and I pulled away, feeling like an idiot. I sprang out of the car, afraid my traitorous mouth would say—or do—something else. “Good night!” I called, and fairly sprinted into the house. I made sure not to look back, not even once, but I didn’t hear him pull away until I’d stepped inside.

Tomorrow. I’d see him tomorrow. A happy glow spread outward from my stomach, but I squashed it before it could reach my heart. I had other things to think about.

Tomorrow, danger or not, I had to pay a visit to 477 Gates Avenue. And Mr. Joseph Goodman.

I spent the rest of the night on a hot date with my friend Google. It’s amazing—and a little bit spooky—how much you can turn up with a name, an address, and a phone number.

Okay, the name alone—not so much. It turns out there are a whole lot of Joseph Goodmans in the world, a positive plague of them. When I Googled his name, most of what came up were profiles and reviews of a cosmetic dentist to the stars. When I dug a bit further, a plethora of others came sprouting from the earth like mushrooms after a storm: a minor-league baseball player, a middle school teacher who had won a number of community-service awards, a police officer who had thrown himself in front of a bullet intended for a past mayor—the bullet had embedded itself in his lower leg, leaving him with a prosthetic limb and several commendations for bravery—and a local theater star with his own website and a clearly overinflated ego. My Joseph Goodman could’ve been any one of them, or none of them.

The address brought me more luck. Google Earth brought it onto my laptop screen in high-def: it was a small, humble ranch with brown streaks on the siding and a dry, patchy lawn. Though the Google Street View car had clearly trundled by during the daytime, all the windows were shut tight, and the pile of newspapers on the front stoop showed that nobody had been there in at least a week. Or at least that nobody had gone outside. It was an unassuming building that could’ve been located anywhere. This particular one was located an approximate twenty-eight-minute car ride away, according to the handy directions Google Maps pulled up.

“Lucy?” I jumped. My eyes burned as I turned to look at my mother. She was hovering in the doorway, her nails tapping nervously on the frame. She probably wanted to varnish it or something. “Are you still up?”

“No, I’m very clearly asleep,” I said.

“No need to be rude,” she said mildly. “It’s past midnight. You have school tomorrow.”

Before the band room, my mother would have told me to get my butt in bed. Now she just kept tapping her nails.

I wanted her to tell me to go to bed. “So?” I dared. “So I’ll be tired. I can stay up however late I want.”

Click. Click. Click.
“You’re only seventeen,” she said.

“And?”

The nails clattered harder, as if she were trying to poke holes in the wood. “Lucy…” She trailed off.

“Yeah?”

Footsteps thumped behind her, and I startled to my feet as my dad loomed in the hallway. “Lucy Black,” he said. “You heard your mother.”

“She talked, but she didn’t say anything,” I said. Tears jumped to my eyes, blurring my parents into an abstract painting.

He glared at me, then swung his arm around my mom’s shoulders. “Go to bed, Lucy,” he said, pulling her away. “We’ll talk about this tomorrow.”

I knew we wouldn’t.

I woke a painful half hour early the next morning to steal my dad’s gun. After I’d dragged myself out of bed, brushed my teeth, and rubbed the stickiness from the corners of my eyes, I remembered that we no longer had a gun. It was in the Elkton police station’s evidence room, sealed inside a plastic bag, marked with an evidence number, and abandoned inside a cardboard box stacked among hundreds of other cardboard boxes.

Maybe it was for the best. I didn’t have to rush in, guns blazing. Given what he knew of my brother, Spence probably wouldn’t take that well. He might be dangerous, but I remembered him as tall and weedy, stringy in the arms and legs. I could take him. I could certainly outrun him. All I wanted to do was fix him with my cold stare and ask him why he was following me. Really, if he wanted to hurt me or kill me, he’d had plenty of chances to do it already. Clearly he wanted something else.

I’d go by the example of Eddie Meyer, the third to die according to the gripping, Pulitzer-nominated narrative of the attack, pieced together by ace reporter Jennifer Rosenthal, aka Jenny, from the police reports, coroners’ reports, interviews with students, and one incredibly unhelpful talk with the sister of the shooter. Right after Evan and Liv were pierced by bullets and everybody else was either too shocked to move or scrambling to find an exit, Eddie grabbed his baseball bat (like Evan, he was not in band; if only I could remember what he’d been doing in that band room, I’d have the final piece for Jenny’s puzzle) and rushed my brother. My brother shot him five times in the chest. Poor Eddie—he was brave, but he wasn’t very smart.

When I said I’d go by Eddie’s example, I didn’t mean die. I meant I’d face the danger head-on.

So pepper spray it was. Just in case.

Alane picked me up promptly at seven-thirty-five, as she did every morning. She was so unfailingly punctual I sometimes wondered if she idled around the block, waiting for the perfect moment to pull in front of my house. “So?” she greeted me as I slid in. “How’d your date go?”

“It wasn’t a date.” I rummaged around in my purse, making absolutely sure the pepper spray was at the very bottom. It was, naturally, forbidden at school, but this wasn’t Elkton, where, I heard, kids now had to walk through metal detectors and endure bag searches just to get to class. Like that would have stopped my brother. “Hey, I need a favor.”

“Oh, come on,” she said. “It was so a date. He cooked you dinner at his house. If that’s not a date, I don’t know what is.”

“Fine. It was a date. It was fine,” I said. “His parents were there, so it was a little weird.”

Her mouth dropped open, and she blinked so many times, and in such rapid succession, I worried she couldn’t see the road in front of her. “You’ve already met the parents?” she said. “Lucy, how could you not tell me this?”

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. “It wasn’t like he was, like, ‘Hey, Lucy, meet my parents. We’re having dinner with them.’ It was more like they walked through the door and plopped themselves down at the table.”

“Still.” She sighed and fluttered a hand against her heart. “That’s got to be a good sign. As long as they liked you.”

People always liked me. “I think they did,” I said.

“Oh, good.” Her eyes fluttered this time, like she was dreaming. Seriously, was she watching the road? “It’s important for your boyfriend’s parents to like you.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” I said automatically. Okay, time to change the subject. “Soooo, I’ll love you forever if you give me a ride somewhere after school today.”

“You’ve already promised to love me forever,” she said. “Are you going back on your word?”

I raised my eyebrows and pursed my lips. “I might have to have Michael’s babies instead.”

“Never!” she said, scandalized. “But I have a dentist appointment after school, babes. Can we take that ride tomorrow?”

I made my shoulders sag, ducked my head so that my hair fell around my face in a curtain. “It’s really important,” I said, my voice low. “I mean, like, life-changing important. And I have to go today. Maybe I could ask Ella for a ride. Or Michael.”

“What kind of chauffeur would I be to make you do that?” she said, though she was frowning. “I guess I can make my mom cancel my appointment. I hate the dentist anyway. Where are we going?”

I wondered if she was going to see Joseph Goodman, self-proclaimed dentist to the stars. Maybe she’d get to see him after all. What an unpleasant surprise that would be. “I’ll tell you later.”

“A surprise!” she exclaimed, perking up. “How exciting!”

This was why I loved Alane. It wasn’t the same kind of love I observed yesterday, the glowing looks and admonishing touches to the shoulder, but it was love regardless. I think, anyway. I’ve always found it hard to tell.

School was a shooting star; before I could even make a wish, it was gone, and I was meeting Alane outside the chorus room. Alane bounced into the hallway, hair twisted back off her shiny face. “So, where are we going?” she asked as she followed me out into the parking lot.

“To Gates Avenue,” I said. “Outside Sunny Vale. On the border of Madison.”

“All the way out there?” she said. “Why?”

I might as well stick to the same story I told Michael. Keep things consistent. That was one of the rules for lying well: don’t confuse yourself unnecessarily. Always choose the easiest path, and the easiest path was usually the most consistent one. “Did I ever tell you about my ex-boyfriend?” I said. I picked a name, ripe for the plucking, from the air. “Andrew?”

“I don’t think so,” she said, climbing into the truck. I followed, doing my usual scan of the pavement under the hole. No change today. Too bad. I could’ve used a lucky penny just then. “Did I ever meet him?”

The truck roared to life. “No,” I said. “He was from before I moved.”

“Andrew, Andrew, Andrew,” she said. The waves of kids passing by, their cheerful chatter, washed over us. “No, I don’t think you ever did. But you might have. You know my memory.”

“Like a sieve,” I agreed. “In one ear and out the other.”

“Well, you don’t have to sound so damn cheerful about it.” She flung an arm around the back of my seat and turned her head to back out. The waves of kids parted, scattering to the sides. “What about this Andrew?”

“He was…” Strategic pause. Lowered eyes. Pause held long enough so that she’d glance over and take note of my lowered eyes. “Not a nice person. The total opposite of that, in fact. He…” I stopped. Another lesson in lying well: sometimes your silences can say more than words without actually saying anything at all.

“I understand,” she said kindly. “You don’t have to say any more. I’m sorry.”

I shrugged and did that thing where I touched a phantom bruise, this time on my cheek. “It built character,” I said. “It made me who I am today.”

“That’s a good way to look at it.”

“Thanks,” I said. “But…” I waited for her to look over again. I wanted to make sure she saw me touching my cheek. It was one of my best strategies. “I think he’s here. I think he found me, and that he’s following me.”

She went rigid in her seat, nearly rear-ending the car in front of us. “That guy after show choir…the old one.”

“That was him,” I said. “And he’s not
that
old. I’m almost positive it was him. And he was at Crazy Elliot’s, too. That’s why I freaked out.”

“Oh my God,” she said, and her lips moved again, saying the words silently. As if she were praying. “So…”

“I want to talk to him,” I said. “I don’t want to call the police. It could be nothing.”

“Are we going to his house?” She slammed to a violent stop. I opened my mouth to protest before realizing we’d just hit a red light. “Lucy, that could be really dangerous. If he’s following you…”

“You’ll wait in the car and watch,” I said. “I’m not going to go into his house. I just want to confront him and tell him to leave me alone. That I’m not the weak little girl I used to be.”

“But still, Lucy…”

“You have my permission to dial nine-one-one if he tries anything,” I said. “But he won’t. I know he won’t…hurt me.” She looked skeptical. “Not in front of people, anyway.”

A storm passed over her face, shadowing her eyes, but she sighed. “I don’t approve, but you’re going to do it anyway, aren’t you?”

I nodded. She sighed again. “So it’s safer if I’m there with you.”

“Exactly,” I said.

“Seriously, though—”

“I need to do this,” I said.

She didn’t say anything else.

I could tell when we left Sunny Vale and entered Madison—and not just by the big sign announcing just that; the land beside the road turned from charming homes with manicured lawns and cheery shopping complexes to dirt and trees. I could barely make out the small, shabby houses nestled far back from the road. Even the road got bumpier; though, really, everything was bumpy in Alane’s truck.

We finally turned onto Gates Avenue, which was so rutted and rocky it might as well have been packed dirt rather than asphalt. It was lined by houses, but sparsely, so each resident could just barely see their neighbor; it would take real effort to ask to borrow a cup of sugar on this street. A mile or so up the road, we pulled over in front of number 477.

Alane regarded it uneasily. “It’s not too late to turn around and call the cops.”

I clapped her on the shoulder. “You wait here, okay? With your phone?” I asked. She nodded, her lips pressed so tightly together they turned pale around the edges, like a sore. “I’m going to talk with him on the stoop. If I go inside, call the cops.”