As I wove through the crowd, leading Tiffany, searching for John, I recognized a few people who used to go to my high school. If they'd worn their jeans too short before, they'd figured out the proper length when they came to college. If they'd teased their hair up to Jesus before, city living had taught them about straightening serum. At a party back in our town, they would have talked about deer hunting, or the half-price sale on eyeliner at Target. Now, between beats of the music, I caught snippets of conversation about Harper Lee, and Condoleezza Rice, who had grown up in Birmingham, and Alabama's ex-governor who was in and out of jail (it happened to the best of us). Philosophical college conversation.
It was so cool!
I hoped John didn't miss it.
Tiffany and I emerged into the kitchen. I braced myself for John to appear when the refrigerator door closed. But it was only Will, holding a pitcher.
"Tiffany Hart!" he hollered. ™ "Will Billingsley!" She tilted her head in that way I'd found so annoying when she did it to John. Now it was cute.
Will gestured with the pitcher. "I was pouring myself some iced tea. Would you like some tea?"
She wrinkled her nose. "Is there booze in it?"
He looked into the pitcher. "Just tea. No imbibing for me tonight. I have two papers due Monday. Homework over spring break. Can you believe that?"
"No!" she exclaimed, stepping closer to him. I do my homework clearly was the mating call for their species. "Yes, I would love some tea."
He turned to me. "And—I'm sorry—how about your frien—" As our eyes met, he started back. "Meg! I didn't recognize you." He frowned and held the pitcher away from me. "No tea for you. How could you do that to John? I got home from the beach at four this morning, and he shows up at my apartment at eight, distraught, fully armed, waving his nightstick!"
Tiffany put both hands over her mouth. She moved them away to say, "Oh my God," then put them back.
"I didn't know his brother got killed," I hissed, lowering my voice in case John was sneaking around. "Why the hell didn't you tell me?"
"You did know his brother got killed!" Will insisted. "You and I had a conversation about this at the beach. You compared John to Mulder searching for his lost sister. I know I remember. I wasn't that drunk."
"I was talking about The X-Files\ It was an analogy, a very loose analogy!"
"Oh," he said, and his shoulders relaxed. "Well, this morning, I convinced him otherwise. I also made him believe you're a manipulative bitch. Sorry."
I was gearing up to tell Will what I thought of him when I was attacked from behind. Eric picked me up, put me on the countertop, and pushed his h*ps between my legs. Which was all the more offensive because the skirt of my dress was short. Leering at me with red-rimmed eyes, he leaned in and whispered in my ear, "Is your ride-along with John over?"
He was going to ask me if I needed a new ride. If he asked me if I needed a new ride, I was going to slap him.
"Do you need a new—"
I raised my hand.
He caught both my wrists in his hands and squeezed. Hard.
I leaned around him. "Tiffany," I called, trying not to sound desperate. "Remember why I brought you here?"
"Unhand her, dumbass," Will yelled across the kitchen.
With a sidelong glance at Will, Eric let go of my wrists and backed up a pace.
"My ride-along with John is not necessarily over," I told him haughtily.
Eric made a face. "You mean you're f**king the fuzz?"
"Not yet. But check back with me." Since he was still practically between my thighs, I decided this might be a good time to ask a question that had been bothering me for the past few hours. If I was nice enough at first, and he was stoned enough, maybe I'd get a straight answer. "Did you know John's brother was the boy who died on the bridge?"
Eric shrugged. "Sure. Everybody knows that. It happened when we were in third, maybe fourth grade."
"And when you suggested that we go to the bridge, was that because you knew John would find us down there and freak out?"
"Not the first time," he said. "I didn't know then that he watches the place. But when you and I parked down there, yeah." He met my gaze, with absolutely no shame.
I went cold in the tiny kitchen, and the beat of music from the next room seemed to swell louder. I couldn't believe I'd ever thought Eric and I were a lot alike. "That's evil," I said.
"You ain't seen evil yet."
I thought he was going to grab my crotch or something, and I jumped down from the counter to prevent such an unfortunate event. But he didn't try. He just walked out of the kitchen.
"Meg, when do you want to get our apartment?" Tiffany called. "I know you always say you're leaving town as soon as you can in June, on graduation night. But Will thinks it would be easier for us to get a lease starting on July first." They were standing very close together. The pitcher of tea sat on the countertop, forgotten.
I walked over to them, nodding. "That would be okay. I can stand to hang around town a few extra weeks. I may try to enjoy my last few months of high school. I might even go to the prom, if I had a date."
Tiffany's eyes sparkled at Will, like she knew who her prom date was, if she could argue a college boy into coming.
Will leaned back against the cabinets, grinning at her. "What's your major going to be?" "Either English or pre-med."
"English or pre-med," he mused. "That's quite a spread. Let me give you a hint. Next fall, don't go around telling people you're majoring in English or pre-med. You'll sound like a freshman."
"Oh, yeah?" I asked. "What are you majoring in?"
"Chemistry," he said defensively. "Or interpretive dance." He winked at Tiffany.
She beamed. "I was going to major in English," she explained. "But I've had a life-changing experience that makes me think I might want to go into medicine. I've been riding around in an ambulance all week."
Will leaned forward and asked conspiratorially, "Were you one of the naughty ones on the bridge?"
Tiffany smiled a secret smile.
"You don't look naughty," Will said. He gestured to me. "This one, I can understand, but you? What's your GPA?"
"It's 4.0," she said.
"You're the freaking valedictorian?" he exclaimed.
She just grinned. "What's jour GPA?"
"It's a 3.75 right now, and I'm trying to bring it up to a 3.85 this semester." He shook his head sadly. "The freshman flunk classes really did a number on me. I only made a B last semester in calculus—"
I interrupted, "Let me just stop the two of you right here and tell you that you disgust me. You're both so freaking well-adjusted. Why don't you skip over this part and get a joint retirement fund?"
They both turned to me with wide eyes. Then Tiffany told me she might not want to room with me after all, at the same time Will grumbled, "She's just upset about Johnafter." He put his arm around me and hugged my shoulders. "I wish I could tell you that it would work out between you two. But you did this yourself, before I was involved this morning. I'm afraid you got on the wrong side of his temper."
"What temper?" I asked before I thought. The John I'd ridden with for a week was very even-keeled, with a high threshold for suspects cussing at him, or blue-haired delinquents pushing his buttons. Then I remembered how he'd looked as he yelled at Brian and Eric at the bridge. I remembered how his knuckles had turned white on the grate in the cop car as he told me, If I had pulled Eric out of the car myself I'm afraid of what I would have done to him.
"Don't do it, John," Angie's shrill voice called from the next room. "Eric's just messing with you."
John was in the kitchen doorway. Funny, I half expected to see him in his cop uniform, but he was wearing faded jeans and a green T-shirt that hugged his chest. Maybe it was the reflection from the shirt, or his eyes really were more hazel than brown, and I hadn't noticed when he wore his dark blue uniform. But now his eyes looked green.
Angie clung to him from behind, making a helpless show of holding him back.
He saw me and did a double take. But he didn't bask in my newfound beauty nearly as long as he should have.
Almost immediately, his gaze flicked to Will and hardened into the dangerous, dead-eyed look. I saw myself through his eyes: dark hair, low-cut dress, with Will's arm around me.
"Oh, that temper," I said.
Will looked up at John, stepped away from Tiffany and me, and backed up a pace. "Rashad!" he called. He looked behind him, but he was against the wall. There was nowhere left to go.
John was across the room, on top of Will. Tiffany and T both put our hands between them before we were able to think through that unwise move. At least it temporarily kept John from hitting Will. John only gripped Will's shirt, pulled him upward, then whacked him down against the floor.
"Get off me, After," Will roared, red-faced. "You have completely lost it. Rashad!"
There was not enough room in the tiny kitchen for all these enormous boys, but somehow Rashad squeezed in and said, "Easy, big guy," as he pulled one of John's arms. Skip gripped John's other elbow and said in the Schwarzenegger voice, "You're terminated."
John seemed to be easing up, letting them drag him backward. Then he shook them off and went for Will again. They dove after him in a sprawl of boy on the kitchen floor.
Finally Tiffany stamped her foot and squealed, "John, he wasn't even hitting on Meg. He was hitting on me! Right, Will?"
"Right!" Will's agonized voice came from the bottom of the pile.
"But Eric said—" John's muffled voice trailed off. He erupted from the pile. With the briefest glance at me, he stalked out of the kitchen, brushing against Eric behind Angie in the doorway.
"Still looking for a fight?" Eric called after him. "You're pretty chicken without the entire police force behind you."
"Shut up, Eric," John's voice echoed. The door slammed louder than the beat of Kanye West.
I pushed past everyone, not even noticing who I was pushing past, but I heard Will breathing hard right behind me. "What are we going to do?" Tiffany panted as we dashed through the door of Rashad's apartment and down the stairs outside, into the cool night. "Are we going to chase him in my car?"
"We'll never catch him if he doesn't want to be caught." Will stopped dead at the bottom of the stairs. "His truck's still here."
"Where would he have gone?" I cried, looking up and down the empty street.
"He likes the fountain down at Five Points," Will said. We all ran down to the corner and stopped again.
The fountain was straight ahead. Behind a low circular wall, rabbits and frogs listened to the ram reading evil stories to them. I couldn't see John's face across the intersection, but I recognized his green T-shirt. He was up in the center of the fountain, sitting on the lap of the Devil.
"He really likes the fountain," Will said.
Even Tiffany asked, "What the hell?"
"Great," I said. "I'm finally acting sane, and John goes crazy." I turned to Will. "He's not one of those big-headed cops who carries cuffs hidden on him when he's off duty, is he? I didn't feel any cuffs on him Thursday night."
"No," Will said. "But I'll go with you if you're scared of him."
I turned back to study John, sitting motionless in the fountain. "No thanks." Crossing the street, I called over my shoulder, "I'm no more scared of him than he is of me."
John watched me coming. I stopped at the wall around the fountain. He glowered down at me from the ram's lap, arms folded. The legs of his jeans were wet from the frog statues spitting at him. An unlit cigarette hung from his lips.
I cupped my hands around my mouth like a megaphone. "Move off the Devil, toward my voice."
His expression didn't change. The cigarette quivered in the corner of his mouth as he said, 'I'm trying to think like you."
I laughed. "If you were trying to think like me, you'd be turned around, straddling the Devil."
"Or Will," he said. "Or Eric."
My stomach knotted again at the thought of me and Eric. Surely John didn't believe by now that I had the hots for Eric, or Will, either. But he obviously believed Eric and I were alike. Just as I'd told him in the first place.
I said, "I had no idea about your brother."
He winced. I hated to hurt him. Again. But at least his glower was gone.
He took the cigarette out of his mouth and leaned forward with his fists on his knees. "Even if you didn't, Meg, how could you do that to me?"
It was my turn to wince. I stepped back from the wall of the fountain with the force of the blow. I said lamely, "I can't stay in that town, John. But I love you, and I can't leave you there." I stepped forward to the wall again. "I swear I didn't know about your brother, though. If I'd known, I would have come up with something else. Dynamited the bridge."
"Mmph," he said. "I know you didn't. Will told me you did—"
"He was wrong," I said quickly. "He is very sorry, and also his ass is grass."
"—but then I had dinner with Leroy," John went on, "and he told me you didn't know. So I went to Rashad's hoping to see you, and I've spent the past few hours making all these great plans for you and me. And then Eri told me you were with Will." He shook his head. "He tried for years. Eric finally got me."