31
HELL TO PAY
Jordan jabbed paint on the canvas in front of
her, distracted by the herd of emotions charging around her head.
She didn’t know why she bothered painting at all—sometimes the
futility of it overwhelmed her. She wasn’t going to San Francisco.
She wished now she hadn’t sent in her application to the program;
it would be sickening if they rejected her, and even worse if she
got accepted and couldn’t go.
It had been a bad week. First had come
Lily’s treachery and their dad telling her that she couldn’t go to
California this summer. Then, after she’d bricked her last algebra
test, she’d gone to talk to the teacher, Mr. Witt, ready to beg,
plead, bribe—anything to encourage him to nudge her test grade from
an F to a D. But after she’d blurted out her sob story—she was so
busy, was still having problems adjusting to all the changes in her
life, blah, blah, blah—Mr. Witt had frowned down at his desk for a
moment, his mouth tensing into a flat line so that his lips
disappeared.
“Part of my job as a teacher,
especially as a teacher of mathematics, is to emphasize logic. And
a large part of logic, unfortunately, is that actions have
consequences.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Actions have
consequences.”
As if she of all people didn’t know
that!
Mr. Witt wasn’t going to change her
grade. She was going to fail.
She looked at her painting, which
wasn’t coming out the way she wanted. She had found a silly little
collapsible wooden toy on the kitchen counter and had intended to
do a still life of it for an art project. But the little
black-and-white cow with its flat features and segmented legs was
proving to be a tougher subject than she’d expected.
There was a knock at the door and
Dominic poked his head in. “What are you doing?” he yelled over her
music.
She turned it down a hair.
He stepped in, nose wrinkling. “It
stinks in here.”
Jordan loved the smell of oils. If some
company were to bottle it, she’d buy it. But there was Buns to
consider, hunched in his cage in the corner. Buns was practically
her best friend now. She didn’t want the poor guy to asphyxiate.
She walked over to pry open a window.
Dominic gawped at the canvas. “Grace’s
cow!”
She was taken aback. “Grace’s? I found
it in the kitchen.”
He picked up the model. “Yeah . . . I
sort of took it. Grace has a whole lot of these. She calls them
push puppets.”
“What does she do with
them?”
He shrugged and put it back as it had
been. “I dunno. They just sit on her desk, mostly.”
What little enthusiasm she had for her
painting waned now that she knew where her model had come from. But
she had to keep going; she hated not finishing stuff.
Dominic crossed his arms. “Do you want
to go do something?”
“I’m sort of busy here, Nickel,” she
said, distracted. “What’s going on next door?”
“They’re not home,” he muttered,
trudging back toward the door. “They went to Houston.”
“Why?”
“So Professor Oliver can see a
specialist.”
“Is he sick?”
“Not really sick. He’s got Alzheimer’s.”
Jordan straightened and looked over at
him. “Seriously?”
He rattled the doorknob restlessly.
“That’s what Lily told me. Why?”
“Because that’s really
awful,” Jordan said.
Dominic frowned and kept on rattling
the doorknob. “Really? He seems okay to me.”
She turned back to look at her cow and
shook her head. “Now, maybe. But people with Alzheimer’s really
lose it. Their brains turn to mush. Maggie Burton’s grandmom had
Alzheimer’s and according to Maggie she basically just sat around
drooling in a nursing home until she died.”
“Yeah, but Professor Oliver’s not that
bad.”
“Not that bad yet, maybe,” Jordan said. “It’s like one of the worst
things that can happen to you.” Poor old geezer.
“Oh,” Dominic said.
“You didn’t hear the phone ring, did
you?” she asked him.
“No,” he said.
She was hoping Heather would want to go
out. But the truth was, the last couple of times Jordan had called
Heather, she’d sort of blown her off.
She turned to ask Dominic where Lily
was—it helped to keep track of her so she could avoid her
altogether—but Dominic was already gone. She went back to painting,
but the mere thought of Lily made her so hopping mad she couldn’t
concentrate. Lily, the life ruiner.
She should have wrung her scrawny neck
when she’d told Jordan that she was jealous of her and Nina.
Jealous, of Lily! What a pathetic delusion that was. Lily didn’t
know squat about Nina. Just because Nina talked to her about books,
and because Lily was willing to let her whack tennis balls at her
and talk her into doing goofy crafty stuff like making elaborate
costumes for character day at school—all the junk Nina did that had
seemed like a total waste of time to Jordan—Lily assumed they had
been best buds. But that was nothing compared to the bond Jordan
had had with Nina. Nina had meant everything to her, and then when
Lily got older she started butting in, and . . .
Jordan’s eyes started to water, and she
wrenched her cell phone from its charger on the floor by the bed to
check for messages. Nothing from Heather, or anybody. She felt all
alone in the world.
She flopped onto her bed and thought
about dyeing her hair pink.
But what did it matter? She had no
future to need pink hair for. She was either going to spend her
summer working at McDonald’s or repeating Algebra II in summer
school. And no one was ever going to call her again,
evidently.
She heard something from down below and
got up to look out the window. Her dad and Lily were dragging the
lawn furniture around. Oh, yeah. She’d heard Lily telling their dad
this morning that she’d love to help him
spray paint the lawn furniture. Little Miss Suck-up. Their dad had
turned manic recently. It was weird. He’d latched on to the idea of
having a big party in the backyard, and now he was always trying to
get them involved.
Jordan flipped off her music, grabbed
her bike messenger bag, and left the house.
At first she didn’t know where she was
going, but she found herself on the bus headed for Heather’s
apartment. She dug through her bag for her cell phone, but then she
remembered that she’d put it back in its charger. Damn. But it
wasn’t as if she hadn’t dropped in on Heather before. As long as
she brought a treat, Heather was always happy to see
her.
She got off the bus a stop early so she
could go to the 7-Eleven. In the store, she looked around for
something Heather would like. Chips were always good, but this day
cried out for super comfort food. She finally settled on a box of
Little Debbie Star Crunches and a giant bottle of Dr
Pepper.
Humidity hung thick in the air, and by
the time she made it to Heather’s she was hot, sticky, and tired.
She was just stepping into the complex’s driveway when the door to
Heather’s apartment opened and Heather walked out, followed by some
guy.
They both stopped in midstep when they
saw Jordan. Neither of them looked thrilled to see
her.
“Oh, hey,” Heather said, smiling but
without much enthusiasm. “Clint, this is Jordan. You know . . . the
kid I told you about.”
Kid?
The unspoken desire between them to get
rid of her was palpable. Clint’s hair, she noticed now, was sleeked
down and wet. Like he’d just taken a shower. Now that she thought
about it, Heather’s cornrows seemed sort of damp, too. Her hair was
usually so oily and skanky that water tended to roll right off her
head, so it was hard to tell. But clearly something of an intimate
nature had occurred.
Hoping she was hiding the flush in her
cheeks, Jordan said, “So y’all are going somewhere?”
“Yeah,” Clint said. “There’s a
thing.”
“I love things,” Jordan
said.
Heather rushed in. “It’s kind of an
adult thing.”
Jordan let out a humorless laugh.
“What—a porn party?”
Heather rolled her eyes. “No, but you
know. There’ll be lots of alcohol. And adults.”
“Oh, and I’ve never been around those
before,” Jordan said sarcastically.
Clint let out a nervous chuckle. “It’s
just . . .”
“Yeah, I get it.” It was just that they
didn’t want her there. She lifted her head. “Never mind. I just
came by to hang out.”
Heather looked down at the bag. “Oh—and
you brought stuff. Sweet! You can leave it here if you
want.”
“No, I think I’ll take it home. I need
a sugar rush now. I had a sort of crappy week.”
She hadn’t even seen Heather since
learning she wasn’t going to get to go to San Francisco. She had
left her a message, but Heather hadn’t called back. Hadn’t even
texted. Which was perfect—her life had been ruined because she’d
gone to some stupid club with Heather, and now Heather was making
her feel like a pariah.
“Aw, suck-ass,” Clint said
sympathetically.
“But that’s what being in high school
is all about, isn’t it, kiddo?” Heather asked. “Learning to deal
with crap.”
Kiddo?
Heather glanced at her watch. “You need
us to drop you at the bus?”
She didn’t even rate a ride home
anymore, apparently.
“No, thanks.” Face blazing with
embarrassment, Jordan walked back to the corner and didn’t even
acknowledge them when they cruised by in Clint’s truck. While she
was on the bus she realized she was dying of thirst. She opened up
the two-liter plastic jug of Dr Pepper and started swigging it. The
woman sitting next to her changed seats.
Screw Heather, Jordan fumed. She didn’t
care if she never saw her again. Only, she wasn’t going to give her
Buns back. Heather had been talking about giving Buns to the Humane
Society anyway.
Forsake your rabbit,
forsake your friends. Why hadn’t she seen it
coming?
After she’d made her way back to the
house, she realized that barely an hour had passed. Sixty minutes
that had resulted in her life getting even worse. Lily and their
dad were still in the backyard, and Dominic was in the living room,
laid out on the couch like something half dead.
“What’s the matter?” she asked
him.
He groaned. “I ate five bowls of
cereal. One right after the other.”
“Why did you do that?”
“I was worried about what you’d said
about Professor Oliver.”
“That’s no reason!”
But she felt a stab of guilt as she
wedged herself between his feet and the edge of the couch. She’d
said that about Maggie’s grandmom without thinking.
He looked at the plastic carrier bag in
her hand. “What did you get?”
She remembered that she was wagging
around a dose of sugar solace too. “Little Debbies.”
He sat up. “Can I have
one?”
“No! You’ll hurl, Nickel.”
“Star Crunches are my
favorite.”
She remembered what he and Lily had
said about her—that she treated Dominic like a puppy. It would be
easy to give him a treat and walk away, to go upstairs and wallow
some more in her own woe. But she couldn’t. She was so depressed,
but when she looked into Dominic’s round eyes, she felt a weird
jolt. Like maybe she wasn’t totally alone
after all. And hadn’t been, ever.
“Let’s go a movie,” she
said.
He tilted his head. “You can’t
drive.”
“So?”
“Nina used to say that when she learned
to drive, she’d take me to the movies.”
Yeah, Jordan remembered that. It was
Nina’s leverage with their mom for taking driver’s ed and getting
her learner’s permit as soon as she legally could. She’d promised
she would help hauling the kids around. She probably would have,
too.
Now for a whole year, no one had hauled
Dominic and Lily anywhere.
“Well, we’ll take a bus,” she said.
“There are a couple of theaters we can get to that way, easy. I’ll
go check the Internet.”
Dominic hopped up, then stopped.
“Shouldn’t we ask Dad first?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah—I guess so. Except maybe
you should do it. And tell him it’s Pixar.”
“What is?”
“The movie we’re going to
see.”
“What are we
going to see?”
“I don’t know. Just tell him it’s a
cartoon thing. That way he won’t think I’m going to drag you off to
watch Deep Throat.”
His eyes widened. “Is that a slasher
movie?”
“Just say Pixar,” Jordan
repeated.
Dominic ran out the back and Jordan was
heading upstairs when she glimpsed something out of the corner of
her eye. Lily’s journal was sitting on the sideboard in the dining
room, next to a filthy pair of gardening gloves.
She hesitated, then hurried over to it.
Without allowing herself to ponder the pros and cons of what she
was doing, she grabbed the book and shoved it into her plastic bag
next to the Star Crunches.
Lily thought she’d already won the war,
but she was so wrong. Jordan hadn’t even begun to
fight.