Avalon high, p.9
Avalon High, page 9
Figuring if I couldn’t hear him because of the music, he probably couldn’t hear my knocking, I opened the door—just a crack—to see if Lance really was in there.
He was in there, all right.
In there making out with Jennifer on the bed. Jennifer, his best friend’s girlfriend.
They were so wrapped up in each other, they didn’t even notice the door opening. I quickly closed it, then hurried to lean against the wall across from it, my heart feeling as if it were about to leap out of my chest.
But before I even had time to register what I’d just seen—let alone wonder what it meant—I saw something even more horrifying.
And that was Will coming up the stairs, and heading for the very door I’d just closed.
CHAPTER TEN
As often thro’ the purple night,
Below the starry clusters bright,
Some bearded meteor, trailing light,
Moves over still Shalott.
“Oh, hey, Elle,” Will said, when he saw me.
It was a sign of how freaked I truly was by what I’d just seen that my heartstrings didn’t so much as quiver at hearing him call me Elle.
“Hi,” I said faintly.
“Have you seen Jen?” Will wanted to know. “Someone said they saw her come up here.”
“Jen?” I echoed. My gaze, though I tried not to let it, strayed toward the closed door to the spare bedroom. “Um…”
What was I supposed to say? I mean, really? Was I supposed to go, “Sure, I’ve seen her, she’s right in there,” and let him walk through that door and find Jennifer and Lance in there, going at it?
Or was I supposed to lie and go, “Jen? Nope. Haven’t seen her,” and let him continue to live in total ignorance of the fact that his girlfriend and best friend were a couple of lying skanks?
Who could make a decision like that? Why did I have to be the one who’d walked in on them? I mean, I wanted Will to break up with Jennifer so he could be free to hook up with me—you know, if hell happened to freeze over, or something, and he asked me out.
But I didn’t want to be the person who, however indirectly, caused that breakup by revealing his girlfriend’s true nature to him! Because whenever this happens to girls on soap operas or the WB or whatever, they never end up getting the guy….
But before I could decide what to do, Will looked more closely at me and went, “Are you all right, Elle? You look sort of…pale.”
I felt pale. In fact, I felt a little like I might throw up all that guacamole I’d scarfed down earlier.
“I’m fine,” I said, though it sounded like a lie even to my own ears.
“You’re not fine,” Will said firmly. “Come on. Fresh air time.”
Then something amazing happened. He took my hand—grabbed it like it was the most natural thing to do in the world—and steered me toward a door I hadn’t noticed before. Then he pulled me up a narrow, steep stairway that opened out onto this kind of deck all along the roof of the house.
In spite of the party below, which was in full swing, it was quiet out on the narrow little deck. Quiet and dark, with a fantastic view of the stars overhead, and the bay stretched out below us, the moon reflected like a bright ribbon of light across it. A cool breeze lifted my hair from my face, and immediately, I started to feel a little better.
I leaned against the ornately carved railing that ran the length of the deck and gazed out at the bay, at the bridge that arched across it, and the occasional glow of a car’s headlights as someone drove over it.
“Better?” Will asked.
I nodded, feeling a little ashamed of myself, and wanting to distract him from looking at me too closely—I sensed that I was still slightly green around the gills—I asked brightly, “So what is this thing, anyway?” meaning the narrow parapet Will and I were standing on.
“You really aren’t from around here, are you?” Will asked, with a grin. Then he joined me at the railing and said, “They call it a widow’s walk. All the old houses around here have them. People like to say they were built for the wives of sailors so they could come out and watch for their husbands’ ships to return.”
“Nice,” I said sarcastically. Because, of course, if the husband didn’t return, it meant that his ship had gone down and the wife was now a widow, thus making her pretty little lookout post a widow’s walk.
“Well,” Will said, with a laugh. “yeah. But that’s not really what they were for. They were built so people could climb up here and put out the flames if their roof caught fire, back when they had to use their chimneys for heat and cooking and everything.”
“Nice!” I said again, this time with even more sarcasm.
Will smiled. “Yeah. I guess they should change the name.” He shrugged. “The view’s the same, no matter what they call it.”
I nodded, admiring the shimmering band of light the moon cast across the water. “It’s nice,” I said. “Soothing.” Soothing enough to make a girl forget why she’d had to come out there in the first place. What was I going to do about Lance and Jennifer, anyway?
“Yeah,” Will said, totally oblivious to my inner turmoil. “I never get tired of it. It’s the one thing that always seems to stay the same. The water, I mean. The color changes. Sometimes it’s flat. Sometimes there’s chop. But it’s always there. You can depend on it.”
Not like his girlfriend and best friend.
But I didn’t say this out loud, of course.
I couldn’t help wondering if the new Mrs. Wagner came out here much, maybe with her morning cup of coffee. Had the irony of his house’s widow’s walk occurred to Will? You know, her being a widow, and all?
“Do you miss her?” I asked Will suddenly. Too suddenly, I realized, when he looked at me like he had no idea what I was talking about.
“Who?” he asked.
“Your mom, I mean,” I said. “Your, um, real mom.” I didn’t figure there was any point in pretending like I didn’t know the story of what had happened with his dad.
“My mom?” He squinted out across the water. “No, not at all. I never knew her. She died when I was born.”
“Oh,” I said. Because I didn’t know what else to say.
“It’s okay,” Will said with a grin, I guess sensing my sadness for him, and wanting to reassure me. “You can’t miss what you never had.”
“I guess,” I said. “Do you like—” I paused, not sure what I should call his stepmom. “—Marco’s mom?” was what I ended up settling for.
“Jean?” Will nodded. “Yeah. I like her a lot.”
“Well,” I said, “that’s good. And Marco?”
“Yeah,” Will said. His grin broadened. “How’d you know about Marco and Jean? Have you been asking around about me, or something?”
“Maybe,” I said, feeling myself start to flush, and hoping he wouldn’t notice in the relative darkness.
If he did, he didn’t let on.
“Marco’s cool,” Will said, with a shrug. “He…” He paused, seeming to struggle with how to put what he said next. “He didn’t have a lot, growing up. He’s been in some trouble. But I think he’s starting to chill a little.”
“He and your dad get along?” I asked casually, but I was really curious. Would I get along with the man who’d ordered my dad to his death, then married my mom? I was thinking probably not.
Will looked thoughtful. Not sad, or anything. Just like he was thinking hard about what I’d asked.
“You know, I think they do,” he said finally. “It’s different for Marco. I mean, he’s not related to my dad. So there isn’t the same…pressure between him and Marco as there is between him and me.”
“So I guess that’s what you meant when you were talking about things being weird,” I said. “About Marco and your dad and stepmom and…what happened with them, and everything?”
I guess it was wishful thinking. You know, that the thing with Will’s parents was really what was bothering him, and not…well, the thing with his girlfriend. I mean, did Will suspect? About Lance and Jennifer? He had to. What had happened at tonight’s game, with Lance not having been there for him because he was over by the sidelines talking to Jen…and now the two of them having disappeared together….
That had to be what he meant about things being weird lately. That had to be the explanation for the dark shadow I sometimes saw fall across his face. Didn’t it? I mean…didn’t it?
“I guess that’s part of it,” he said, looking out into the water. “But it doesn’t explain everything. It doesn’t explain….” He tore his gaze from the bay and looked down at me instead.
And I knew—just knew—what was coming. I even closed my eyes, anticipating the blow.
He’s going to ask me, I thought. He’s going to ask me about Lance and Jennifer. What should I say? I can’t be the one to tell him. I just can’t. They should have to tell him. Lance and Jennifer! It’s their fault, not mine. They should be the ones to have to break the news. It’s not fair that it has to be me!
But then, to my utter astonishment, what Will ended up saying to me instead was, “It doesn’t explain what’s going on between me and you.”
If that meteorite I’d been fantasizing about earlier had suddenly streaked down out of the sky and taken out the Avalon High cheerleading team, I doubt I’d have been as surprised as I was by what Will had just said to me. I was stunned, in fact, into speechlessness and, my eyes flying open, could only stare at him, my mind sluggishly repeating those last three words over and over again…. Me and you. Me and you. Me and you.
Except that—there was no me and you. To me, maybe. But not to Will.
Was there?
But before I could even begin to formulate a reply to his extraordinary statement, he tore his gaze from mine and, looking out across the water again, asked, “Do you ever get the feeling that this can’t be it?”
My brain staggered around, trying to figure out what was happening. I’m afraid it was all too much for me, and I ended up going, “Um…what?” because it was the only thing I could think of to say.
“You know,” Will said, a note of urgency in his deep voice as he looked me in the eye again. “Don’t you ever wonder if there’s something…more? That we’re supposed to be doing?”
“Um.” Okay. Okay, apparently this is heading somewhere, hopefully back to what he’d said before, about me and you. In the meantime, I’ll humor him. “Sure. Isn’t that how we’re supposed to feel? Otherwise we’d never move out. We’d all just live with our parents until we died.”
He laughed a little at that. I loved the sound of his laugh. It almost made me forget about…well, what I’d seen earlier.
“That’s not what I meant, exactly,” he said. “Do you ever think”—his blue eyes were very bright in the moonlight—“that this isn’t the first time you’ve been alive? Like that you might have done all this—only as someone else—before?”
“Um.” I looked up into his face, wondering what he’d do if I reached out and grabbed it, dragged it down to mine, and kissed him. “Not really.”
“Never?” He ran a hand through his thick dark hair, a gesture I was starting to realize was habitual for him when he was feeling frustrated. “You’ve never had a feeling that you’ve been somewhere before—somewhere you know you’ve never been? Or read something that you know you’d never seen before that moment, but that felt familiar anyway? Heard a piece of music you could swear you’d heard sometime in the past, but that you know you couldn’t have?”
“Well,” I said. It would be wrong to kiss him. He might freak. Guys don’t like it when girls make the first move. At least according to Nancy. But how would she even know? It’s not like she ever had a boyfriend. “Sure. But there’s a name for that. It’s called déjà vu. It’s a totally common—”
“I’m not talking about déjà vu,” he interrupted. “I’m talking about knowing you’ve met someone before—the way I feel I’ve met you before—even though there’s no possible way we could have met before. That kind of thing. You don’t feel it? That there’s…there’s something…something between us?”
Oh, I felt there was something between us, all right. It just wasn’t, I was pretty sure, what Will was feeling. I mean, I didn’t feel like I’d met him before. Because if I had, I for sure would have remembered.
Although there was that…my feelings for him, and the strength of them. The way I wanted him to be mine, but at the same time, I also wanted to protect him from the hurt I knew he was going to feel when he found out—and he would find out—about Lance and Jennifer. These weren’t the kinds of feelings that stem simply from a guy being nice to you, and buying you a cup of lemonade, and giving you a rose.
These were far, far more than that.
Could there be something to what Will was saying? Could we have met before? If not in this lifetime, then…in another?
But before I could admit that I knew where he was coming from, Will sagged a little against the railing of the widow’s walk, and shook his head.
“Listen to me. Maybe Lance and Jen are right,” he said, in a self-mocking voice, “and I really am going nuts.”
Just hearing that Lance and Jennifer had said something like that made me jump to take the opposite stance. Maybe Lance cared about what happened to Will—despite the fact that he was carrying on an illicit love affair with his girlfriend behind his back. I mean, he’d kind of proven that he cared by concussing that guy who’d tackled Will. That showed that he at least felt a little bad about what was going on.
But I had seen no such signs of remorse from Jennifer. In fact, just the opposite, given the way she’d grilled me at my locker about Will’s dinner at my house. It was clear that she’d just been pumping me to see if Will suspected anything about her and Lance.
“You’re not going nuts,” I said emphatically. “Things…things have been weird for me, too, lately. But I just thought—I mean, I just figured it’s a normal part of being a teenager, or whatever.”
“I don’t know.” Will looked dubious. “I thought teenagers are supposed to think they know everything. And I’ve never been more sure in my life that I don’t know anything at all.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, that’s probably just a symptom of the massive brain tumor you’ve got growing inside your head, the one no one’s told you about yet.”
Then I wanted to kick myself. What is wrong with me? Why do I have to go and make jokes whenever things look like they’re about to get serious? Nancy is right. I’m never going to get a boyfriend at this rate.
But Will, instead of going—as he probably should have—” Whatever you say, weirdo,” just looked at me for a minute. Then he threw back his head and laughed.
And laughed some more.
And really, what choice did I have but to laugh along with him? At least until a sudden breeze sent a strand of my moussed-up hair flying across my eyes. Then, to my surprise, before I had a chance to push it aside, Will reached up and brushed it back for me with his fingers.
And I froze. Because he was touching me. He was touching me. He was touching me.
“You’re all right, Ellie Harrison,” he said softly, his gaze on mine, his voice unsteady. “And, you know, I think I’d like you even if I wasn’t sure I’d already met you in a past life, and liked you then.”
There’s really no telling what might have happened next. Not that I imagined he might have suddenly wrapped his arms around me and kissed me, the way I’d seen Lance kissing Jennifer in the spare room below us.
But you never know. He might have.
If it hadn’t been for two things….
CHAPTER ELEVEN
But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror’s magic sights,
For often thro’ the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights
And music, went to Camelot:
The first thing that happened was that a cloud went skittering across the moon, blocking out the only light we’d had to see by.
The second was that the door to the widow’s walk suddenly burst open, and then Cavalier came rushing up toward us, closely followed by someone else of the human variety. I wouldn’t have known who it was if it wasn’t for the light from the stairs spilling out behind him from the open doorway.
“There you are,” Marco said, when he saw Will. He could not have missed the way Will jerked his hand from my hair and moved it to pat his panting dog, instead. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere. I wouldn’t have found you, if it hadn’t been for that damned dog. Didn’t you hear her barking?”
Will gave Cavalier a final pat, then straightened up. “No,” he said. His voice, which had been unsteady with emotion just seconds before, now sounded totally normal. It was impossible to tell if he, like me, resented his stepbrother’s intrusion. “Why? What’s up?”
“I need to find Jen,” Marco said. “Her car is blocking one of the neighbors’ driveways.”
Will shook his head the way someone who’s just come up from a dive into very deep water does when he breaks the surface. I tried not to think what that meant vis-à-vis…well, me.
“What?” Will blinked a few times. “Jen?”
“Yeah.” Marco looked at me. Not accusingly. Just speculatively, like he was wondering who I was and what I’d done to make his stepbrother act so dopey all of a sudden.
I could have told him in three words. No one and nothing.
Or is that four words?
“I thought Jen’d be with you,” Marco said. Now he was starting to sound accusing.
“I haven’t seen Jen since she went to go put lipstick on half an hour ago,” Will said. But not like it bothered him.
“Well, she’s got to move her car,” Marco said. “Mrs. Hewlitt’s blocked in and is threatening to call the cops.”
Will said something under his breath that sounded like a swear word. Then, to me, he said, “Sorry, Elle. I have to go find her.”
