I feel terrible. Not because Tamra’s on a date and I’m not, but because I didn’t know she’d even been asked out. I didn’t know she liked anyone. I can’t say anything to ruin this for her. At least not tonight. Maybe tomorrow…
She’s right. It’s always about me. That realization leads to another. One that makes tears spring to my eyes.
Soon it will only ever be about me.
When I leave this place, I have to go alone. Be alone. Maybe forever.
I’m awake when Tamra leaves for school on Monday morning, but I don’t get up. I pretend to be asleep as she dresses. When she and Mom are gone, I rise and make a cheese omelet like Dad used to make and eat it in front of a morning talk show with dull awareness.
In the afternoon, I’ve had enough of the tomblike stillness of the house. Enough worrying over what Will will or won’t do. I take a walk. Within five minutes, I’m plucking at my tank clinging to my sweating body. When I reach the golf course, I pause to feast my eyes on the verdant expanse so out of place in the midst of dry, cracked earth. I park myself on the edge of the green and run my fingers through the grass until I earn curious stares from silver-haired retirees in bad pants. Vowing to try another flight this week, I head for home, plotting my next move—breaking into Will’s house and getting another look at that map.
When I arrive, Mrs. Hennessey is outside watering her plants. “So you’re the one.”
I stop. “Excuse me?”
“Your mother told me one of you got suspended from school.”
Great. I’ve fulfilled her every suspicion that she let a family of miscreants rent her pool house.
“I guessed it was you,” she adds with a certain amount of relish.
Nice, I think, slinking toward the pool house.
“I made goulash,” she calls out.
I pause. “What’s that?”
“Beef, onions, paprika. Little sour cream on top.” She shrugs. “In case you’re hungry. I made plenty. Never did get used to cooking for one.”
I stare at her for a moment, reevaluating my opinion of her. Maybe she’s not nosy so much as lonely. Especially stuck all day and night alone in a quiet house. Lonely, I get.
“Sure,” I reply. “When?”
“It’s hot now.” She shuffles inside.
After a moment, I follow.
The next day, I don’t wait for an invitation. I head over to Mrs. Hennessey’s soon after Mom and Tamra leave.
Mrs. Hennessey doesn’t talk much. She cooks. And bakes. A lot. She wasn’t kidding about always making too much food. She feeds me like I’m an invalid who needs fattening up. It’s kind of nice.
The company helps keep my mind off Will.
Over a breakfast of French toast sprinkled liberally with powdered sugar and dripping syrup, I hear a sound. Knocking. I lower my fork to my plate.
Mrs. Hennessey hears it, too. “That your door?”
I shake my head, rising and moving to her living room window. “I don’t know who it could be,” I say as I peer through the blinds.
Will stands at the pool house door.
I freeze, weighing my options. Can I drop to the floor and hide without him catching the movement? I’m not ready for this. For him.
“Is that your boyfriend?”
I angle my head. “No…yes…no.”
Mrs. Hennessey laughs, the sound rusty. “Well, he’s something to look at, that’s for sure.
Why don’t you go talk to him?”
I swing her a glance.
“What? Bad idea?” she asks. “What’re you afraid of?”
I shake my head a little too fiercely. “Nothing.”
But it’s a lie. Yes, I’m afraid. Afraid of what he’ll say. Afraid of the words that he failed to say in the girls’ bathroom but were there, in his eyes. And now, he would have them solidified, ready to fling at me like barbed arrows.
I scoot to the side of the window, peering out. Watching him knock again.
He calls my name through the door. “Jacinda?”
Mrs. Hennessey squints through the open blinds. “If you’re not afraid, why are you hiding? He’s not abusive, is he?”
“No. He wouldn’t hurt me.” At least I don’t think he would. He didn’t the first time we met. But now…I snort. Bury shaking hands in my shirt.
My skin tightens. I scan the backyard as if I expect to see his cousins hiding in the bushes, waiting to pounce. I glance upward through the blinds. No buzzard-circling choppers.
I remember him in that bathroom. Looking over the stall at me. I haven’t been able to shake off the expression on his face. The wide-eyed horror. The shock as he looked down at me—a girl he liked—transformed into the very creature he’d been raised to hunt. Such a contrast from the last time he saw me in draki form. That difference is what makes my stomach twist into knots.
“Well, then what are you waiting for?” Mrs. Hennessey asks.
For it to get easier. For life to stop being so hard.
Since that’s not going to happen, I send Mrs. Hennessey a shaky smile and step outside.
“Hi, Will,” I say softly.
He spins around. Looks me over like he’s checking for something. What? Does he expect me to stand before him in full manifest? Wings, fiery skin, and all?
His gaze shifts over my shoulder and I know he sees Mrs. Hennessey in the window.
“Let’s go inside.” I quickly walk past him into the pool house, into the blast of icy air that acts like a salve to my steaming skin. I turned the thermostat lower when Mom and Tamra left, craving the coolness, the frigid air on my skin.
I’m especially glad for it now. With him here.