And the walls of the shop seemed to turn the color of blood before my eyes.
“Excuse me,” John said in his deep voice, which sounded completely out of place in such a small, upscale boutique. He looked completely out of place in it, already so menacing because of his size but even more so now because of the black leather jacket and jeans he was wearing.
I thought I was going to pass out. What was he doing there? Had he come to take me back because I’d broken the rules? Was that why the stone in my necklace had turned black, to warn me?
The jeweler glanced over at him, annoyed. “My assistant will be with you in a moment, sir,” he said.
“No, thank you,” John said, as if he were refusing an offer of peanuts on a plane. “Let go of her.”
The jeweler’s eyes widened slightly. But he didn’t let go of me.
“Excuse me,” the jeweler said, looking indignant. “But are you acquainted with this young lady? Because she —”
That’s when John — not looking angry, or annoyed, or anything at all, really — reached across the counter and took hold of the hand the jeweler was using to hold me captive in his shop, as if John were feeling for his pulse.
But John wasn’t feeling for the jeweler’s pulse. That wasn’t what he was doing at all.
The jeweler gave a little gasp. His mouth fell open. Some of the coldness went out of his eyes. Instead, they filled with fear.
I didn’t know — then — what John was doing. My mind was still reeling over the fact that he was there at all.
But I recognized, in a way the jeweler clearly hadn’t, the dangerous set of his jaw and the determined look in his eyes.
And the anxiety that washed over me had nothing to do anymore with my own safety.
“John,” I said. I’d pried the pendant from the older man’s clenched fingers and was already backing away from the counter. I couldn’t take my gaze from the jeweler’s face. It had drained of all color. “Please. Whatever you’re doing. Don’t. It’s all right. Really.”
It wasn’t all right. It was obvious that it wasn’t all right.
But this turned out to be the correct thing to say, since John — after throwing an agitated glance in my direction as if to gauge the truth of my statement — let go of the jeweler’s wrist.
As soon as he did this, the old man took another gasping breath and then staggered back, clutching at his heart.
He wasn’t the only one. I was clutching at my own heart after the look of stinging reproach John flung me a second later…just before the jeweler’s assistant appeared in the back doorway and said, “Okay, Mr. Curry, the police are on their way — oh, my God! ”
Then — coward that I am — I pivoted and ran blindly from the store, the bells on the door tinkling behind me.
But what else was I going to do? Stick around until the cops showed up?
I sprinted straight to my mom’s waiting car.
“Pierce,” Mom said, lowering her cell phone and looking surprised as I collapsed, shaking all over, into the passenger seat. “There you are. I was just trying to call you. Did you forget your phone again? You weren’t picking up. Where were —”
“Drive,” I panted. “Just drive.”
“What’s wrong? Didn’t you like that new doctor? Jennifer McNamara’s mother said he —”
“It’s not that. Let’s just go.”
The next few hours were agony as I waited for the police — or him — to show up at our door. Surely, someone had seen the car I’d jumped into and had written down Mom’s license number. What if there’d been security cameras in Mr. Curry’s shop?
But the police never came.
Neither did John.
And though I scanned the paper every day, even the obituaries, I never saw a single story pertaining to the jeweler.
I found out why the next time we were in the area. There was a For Rent sign in the jewelry store window. When I asked a salesclerk in the dress shop next door about it, she told me that she’d heard Mr. Curry was recovering from a heart attack and had moved…possibly to Florida. She thought he said he had grandchildren there.
And thank God, because everyone on the block had hated that cranky old man, and now maybe finally they’d get a decent shoe store on the block, and that dress would look so cute on me, did I want to try it on?
From what I was able to put together, by the time the police arrived, the jeweler’s assistant was too busy giving Mr. Curry CPR to remember the fact that he’d actually called them about some girl who might have been in possession of a stolen necklace.…Never mind some guy in a leather jacket who’d disappeared as mysteriously as she had.
Maybe that’s why I’d never shown my necklace to another person again.
It had been hard not to feel ever since as if…well, as if John were watching me. Maybe even protecting me. A little over-zealously.
Especially after what happened at school, with Hannah and Mr. Mueller.
What I’d never been able to understand is why. Why would he bother? I’d run away from him.
And now that he’d just hurled the necklace off into the maze of aboveground crypts that made up the Isla Huesos Cemetery, I knew that wasn’t because he’d wanted it back.
I should have gone to look for it. I should have, but I didn’t.
Because when he lifted his arm to fling the necklace, I saw — as might be expected of someone who’d been kicked out of the Westport Academy for Girls — that I’d gotten it all wrong.