Should I risk setting him off again by pointing out that, even if the police had understood what they’d seen on the tape — which they hadn’t — there was obviously no way they could find him to question him? The Westport Police Department didn’t know where he lived. I wondered if anyone did, besides me.
I had a few questions for him, though. How had he known to show up that day with Mr. Mueller, right when I needed him most? Was it really because of the necklace, like he’d said, when he’d shaken it in my face? Was that how he’d known the time before, with the jeweler?
But why had he even bothered, since he evidently still hated my guts for what I’d done to him?
Now didn’t seem like the best time to bring that, or any of the rest of it, up.
“None of this is my fault, you know,” I said, as he pulled me along so fast I was afraid I was going to lose a flip-flop. Although this was hardly foremost among my fears.
“Oh, really?” he said, turning his head to glare at me. “How is none of this your fault?”
“All I did was die,” I said. “And then, when presented with an opportunity not to be dead anymore, I took it. It wasn’t personal. It had nothing to do with you.”
He turned to glare straight ahead. “Right,” he said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I demanded, stung by his tone. “I told you, I was scared. I didn’t mean to hurt you. That’s why I came here tonight, to apologize. I want to be friends, to help you. I gave you the necklace back. I don’t know what more I can do.”
“I’ll tell you what you can do,” he said, stopping abruptly. Now he did reach out to grip both my shoulders. But still not to kiss me. Only so he could wheel me around to glare at me some more. “You can leave me alone.”
Tears sprang once more into my eyes. That’s what he wanted from me? For me to stay away from him?
This had turned into a greater disaster than when I’d died. And I was still breathing, so that was saying something.
“I’d like to,” I said. All I could hear besides the deep, disapproving timbre of his voice was the drum of my heartbeat in my ears. Stupid girl. Stupid girl. Stupid girl, my heart seemed to be saying. “Except every time I try, you show back up, and act like such a…such a…”
“Such a what?” he demanded. He seemed to be practically daring me to say it.
Don’t, the voice of my mother warned inside my head. Don’t say it.
“Jerk.”
I knew, when the word was coming out of my mouth, it would be neither an adroit nor a sensitive thing to say. Especially since I’d been trying to do the right thing. Because we were going to have to be living on the same island together. And he had saved my life, after all, at least that day with Mr. Mueller.
Well, maybe not my life. But he’d saved something, anyway.
But somehow, in apologizing, I’d just ended up making everything worse.
As if that weren’t awful enough, after hurling out the word, I lifted a hand to that fresh new scar I’d seen on the inside of his right arm.
I couldn’t help it. I’d never been able to stay away from hurt things.
So there it was: my final mistake of the evening.
His mouth twisted into a very unpretty grimace, proving I’d been right about one thing:
He’d never be anyone’s handsome prince.
“Well, you don’t have to worry about that anymore,” he shot out, jerking his arm away as if my touch were poisonous. “Because you won’t be seeing me again after tonight.”
I realized several things then. The first was that his eyes weren’t dead anymore. They were as alive as electric wires, and just as dangerous.
The second realization came to me more slowly, as I looked down at the fingers he’d wrapped around my arm, fingers against which dark drifts of my hair, loosened from my clip, had tumbled.
And that was that his weren’t the soft, smooth hands of other people our age, most of whom had known no other labor than texting or moving a video game stick.
John’s were hands that had seen work — real, arduous work. The hands of a fighter.
But not just a fighter, I realized, as they gripped me. His were hands that had killed.
A part of me must have known this all along. But it hadn’t really sunk in until tonight.
And by then, of course, it was far, far too late.
Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.
DANTE ALIGHIERI, Inferno, Canto I
When I got home, Mom said, “Oh, hi, honey. I’m glad you made it back before the storm. It looks like it’s about to pour any minute. Did you have a nice ride?”
“Yeah,” I said. I turned around and locked the door. I used the dead bolt and the lock inside the doorknob.
Then I hit the STAY button on the alarm and entered our code. Our code is our initials, plus the years Mom’s alma mater won the NCAA championship. Mom’s handling the disappointment that I probably won’t be getting into any four-year colleges, let alone the one where she and Dad met, pretty well.
“Uh, honey,” Mom said, a funny look on her face. “What are you doing?”
“Safety,” I said. My heart was still ricocheting off the walls of my chest. As soon as I’d gotten back onto my bike, I’d ridden flat out for home. I hadn’t even stopped outside to lock up my bike or turn off its lights, I realized now as I lifted the curtain in one of the foyer windows to peek outside to see if he’d followed me. “Safety first.”