Jamie’s face fell. “You don’t want to do a card with all of us?”
“Well,” she said, glancing at me, “I just . . . I guess it’s just not something we’re used to. Me and Ruby, I mean. Things were different at our house. You know.”
This, of course, was the understatement of the century. I had a few memories of Christmas when my parents were still together, but when my dad left, he pretty much took my mom’s yuletide spirit with him. After that, I’d learned to dread the holidays. There was always too much drinking, not enough money, and with school out I was stuck with my mom, and only my mom, for weeks on end. No one was happier to see the New Year come than I was.
“But,” Jamie said now, looking down at Roscoe, who had completely spit-soaked the bow tie and had now moved on to chewing the shirt’s sleeve, “that’s one reason I really wanted to do this.”
“What is?”
“You,” he said. “For you. I mean, and Ruby, too, of course. Because, you know, you missed out all those years.”
I turned to Cora again, waiting for her to go to bat for us once more. Instead, she was just looking at her husband, and I could have sworn she was tearing up. Shit.
“You know what?” she said as Roscoe coughed up some bow tie. “You’re absolutely right.”
“What?” I said.
“It’ll be fun,” she told me. “And you look good in blue.”
This was little comfort, though, a week later, when I found myself posing by the pond, Roscoe perched in my lap, as Jamie fiddled with his tripod and self-timer. Cora, beside me in her shirt, kept shooting me apologetic looks, which I was studiously ignoring. “You have to understand,” she said under her breath as Roscoe tried to lick my face. “He’s just like this. The house, and the security, this whole life. . . . He’s always wanted to give me what I didn’t have. It’s really sweet, actually.”
“Here we go!” Jamie said, running over to take his place on Cora’s other side. “Get ready. One, two . . .”
At three, the camera clicked, then clicked again. Never in a million years I thought, when I saw the pictures later, stacked up next to their blank envelopes on the island. HAPPY HOLIDAYS FROM THE HUNTERS! it said, and looking at the shot, you could almost think I was one of them. Blue shirt and all.
I wasn’t the only one being forced out of my comfort zone. About a week later, I was at my locker before first bell when I felt someone step up beside me. I turned, assuming it was Nate—the only person I ever really talked to at school on a regular basis—but was surprised to see Olivia Davis standing there instead.
“You were right,” she said. No hello or how are you. Then again, she didn’t have her phone to her ear, either, so maybe this was progress.
“About what?”
She bit her lip, looking off to the side for a moment as a couple of soccer players blew past, talking loudly. “Her name is Melissa. The girl my boyfriend was cheating with.”
“Oh,” I said. I shut my locker door slowly. “Right.”
“It’s been going on for weeks, and nobody told me,” she continued, sounding disgusted. “All the friends I have there, and everyone I talk to regularly . . . yet somehow, it just doesn’t come up. I mean, come on.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to this. “I’m sorry,” I told her. “That sucks.”
Olivia shrugged, still looking across the hallway. “It’s fine. Better I know than not, right?”
“Definitely,” I agreed.
“Anyway,” she said, her tone suddenly brisk, all business, “I just wanted to say, you know, thanks. For the tip.”
“No problem.”
Her phone rang, the sound already familiar to me, trilling from her pocket. She pulled it out, glancing at it, but didn’t open it. “I don’t like owing people things,” she told me. “So you just let me know how we get even here, all right? ”
“You don’t owe me anything,” I said as her phone rang again. “I just gave you a name.”
“Still. It counts.” Her phone rang once more, and now she did flip it open, putting it to her ear. “One sec,” she said, then covered the receiver. “Anyway, keep it in mind.”
I nodded, and then she was turning, walking away, already into her next conversation. So Olivia didn’t like owing people. Neither did I. In fact, I didn’t like people period, unless they gave me a reason to think otherwise. Or at least, that was the way I had been, not so long ago. But lately, I was beginning to think it was not just my setting that had changed.
Later that week, Nate and I were getting out of the car before school, Gervais having already taken off at his usual breakneck pace. By this point, we weren’t attracting as much attention—there was another Rachel Webster, I supposed, providing grist for the gossip mill—although we still got a few looks. “So anyway,” he was telling me, “then I said that I thought maybe, just maybe, she could hire me and my dad to get her house in order. I mean, you should see it. There’s stuff piled up all over the place—mail and newspapers and laundry. God. Piles of laundry.”
“Harriet?” I said. “Really? She’s so organized at work.”
“That’s work, though,” he replied. “I mean—”
“Nate!”
He stopped walking and turned to look over at a nearby red truck, a guy in a leather jacket and sunglasses standing next to it. “Robbie,” he said. “What’s up?”