Between These Lines (A Young Adult Novel) Page 4

  There was silence for a moment, then the rise and fall of her breath, and I hung onto that rhythmic cadence and waited for her to speak.

  Evie cleared her throat. “I understand if you’re uncomfortable, but I’d really like it if you did.”

  “I don’t really know anyone.”

  “You know everyone there, Chase. It’s just the kids from school.”

  “I’m not friends with them.”

  “You’re friends with me.”

  As soon as she said it, I knew everything had changed. This was it, no turning back. What she said was simple, and could have meant any number of things, but, it was how she said it. It was the pause in her voice, the catch in her throat, that left me dumbstruck by the sincerity of it. I managed to swallow, even though I had absolutely no saliva in my mouth, and muttered, “I’ll be there.”

  Evie sighed, as if she had been holding her breath. “They’re not that bad, Chase, you just have to get to know them, I guess.”

  Only she didn’t know Shane like I knew him. Evie was still new to Whitley. She moved here less than a year ago. I supposed there had to be a tender side to the creep to make her want to stay with him, but if she had been around to see how vindictive he and his friends were; how manipulative and plotting they could be. Or maybe she was in too deep with them and did know them after all.

  “Chase? You still there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You really don’t like them, do you?”

  “How honest do you want me to be?” I was serious, though it earned a chuckle from her end, and, for a moment, it melted away the negative thoughts of the boy she was tied to—the very boy who hated me.

  “I guess we should start on this project of ours,” I blurted out with an intense urge to change the subject. “I have some Sylvia Plath books lying around. I don’t mind bringing them over to your house, or . . . we could study here if you want.”

  Her voice sprang to life with my offer, “Um, no . . . not here. I mean . . .”

  “Shane?”

  She hesitated, “No, it’s just that maybe the library would be better.”

  There was a long pause on the other end of the phone, and then, “Are you free tomorrow night instead of Friday?”

  Lingering on that thought, I pretended to check the empty calendar hanging on my wall.

  “Tomorrow’s fine. I’m free.”

  “Great.” Another pause filled in quickly after her words. “And, Chase, I’m glad you’ll be at the party.”

  I pressed the end call button and tossed my phone to the foot of the bed, allowing the big smile to spread across my flushed face. How this ever came to be was beyond my reasoning, but despite the thrill, there was a feeling I couldn’t shake—something to do with how quickly

  I’d been accepted today. Maybe I was wrong about resenting Shane and his friends all these years. Maybe they grew up, became nicer? Still, I wasn’t going to let my guard down, even if

  Evie was the only one who meant any of it. Even so, I could be absolutely wrong about everything.

  Chapter Eight

  Evie

  I stared at the clock and willed the bell to ring. It was last period, and all I could think about was the study date I planned with Chase tonight at the library. I kept the secret to myself all day, which wasn’t too hard to do. Tara had brushed me off for half of the day, and I put the usual cheery smile on my face whenever Shane was around. It seemed to make him happy.

  I couldn’t believe I had the nerve to do what I did yesterday; lunch with Chase, then giving Jake my number to pass along to him after school. That made me really nervous. I knew I could trust Jake. I wanted to trust Jake. But Shane had ways of making people do things against their will. He had ways of making people talk no matter how much they promised they wouldn’t.

  My foot twitched uncontrollably as I counted down the seconds.

  “Stop that, would you?” My lab partner, Ericka, whispered just as the bell chimed. I muttered a quick sorry and bolted out the door.

  An unfamiliar, gleaming black Audi made itself comfortable in my driveway. Confused, I stepped up onto the porch, carefully opened the back door, and let myself in while looking over my shoulder at the strange car.

  Immediately, my mother’s voice rang out. Being home two days in a row wasn’t like her, but even more puzzling was that she sounded as if she were entertaining.

  No one ever came to our house. Ever.

  She didn’t hear me come in and I strained to listen to the conversation that floated to me in pieces from the front room. Her voice echoed slightly, but dipped in tone just when I thought I could make out half a sentence. She was answered by a low resonance that was unmistakably male then a stream of her own pitchy laughter followed. I hadn’t heard my mother laugh in months and whoever seemed to be pulling it out of her now was most definitely not my father.

  As silently as I could will my feet to be, I crept around the dining room doorway and peered past the credenza. My mother was curled up on the loveseat, her legs tucked beneath her comfortably. Sharing the seat next to her was a handsome stranger, who tilted his head as he laughed and showed no qualms about placing his hand on her leg. They were so obliviously lost in conversation that they didn’t notice I had let myself in, and was now watching them with both confusion and curiosity.

  I leaned over a bit more to get a better look when, suddenly, I lost my balance, and a booklet of paint samples went tumbling to the floor. A shuffle quickly sounded, and in a blink, I looked up to find my mother’s ashen face hovering above me.

  “I didn’t hear you come in, Evie.” My mother, visibly rattled, helped me to my feet as she tried to keep her cheery smile fixed to her face. “Wow, is it two forty-five already? Where does the time go?”

  “Why are you home today?” I asked, straightening up. I tried to peek past my mom’s shoulder, but she seemed intent on standing directly in front of me. “Do you have company?”

  “Company? Oh, no, that’s Mr. Gracen. He’s a client.”

  “Client?” my head bobbed back and forth, straining to catch a better glimpse.

  Sighing deeply, she could no longer hide the situation she found herself in, so my mother took me by the hand and led me out into the room, reluctantly planting me in front of her guest.

  “Mr. Gracen is the client I told you about yesterday.” She was suddenly all smiles again. “I’m redecorating his entire house.”

  “Please, call me Marc. Mr. Gracen sounds awfully stuffy.” He extended his hand toward mine, and I shook it, noticing the sheen on his well-rounded finger nails.

  I cast a glance at my mother. Though statuesque, she looked very stiff, and I could see how quickly the mood must have changed since my arrival home from school. She wore a smile, but it was evident it was fabricated, and didn’t match the determined look in her eyes, which avoided my own. I turned my attention to Mr. Gracen.

  “You’re redoing the house in . . . Napoleon?” I asked, trying to take the edge off the mood surrounding me. This, however, garnered a chuckle from Mr. Gracen, and a look of remorse from my mother.

  “Neapolitan,” she corrected me. “17th Century France, paintings, vases . . .” her eyes were wide, as if this bit of hinting should somehow register and click in the back of my brain. I nodded, pretending the light bulb had gone off, though it was clear I was nothing more than a perfect display of stupidity.

  “Well, it was nice meeting you, Marc.”

  He smiled back as his eyes drank me in from head to toe. “Lovely daughter you have, Ellen. Just lovely.”

  My mother had already begun to busy herself with the contents of her portfolio, and I swallowed uncomfortably, feeling Mr. Gracen’s eyes still on me.

  “All set,” she chimed, standing up and straightening the front of her gray suit. “I’ll try not to be too late, sweetie. Must get back to work now, we have lots of ground to cover. Make sure you do your homework.” She leaned in for an air kiss against my cheek then disappeared into
the kitchen with Mr. Gracen following behind, his keys jingling in his hand.

  When the kitchen door closed and Mr. Gracen’s little black car finally purred its way down my driveway, I found myself absorbing the familiar, lonely silence that fell around me. I decided to check the voicemail for any messages that might be waiting. There were three—all from my dad.

  “Ellen, I’ll be late tonight. I’m bogged down with claims. I promise I’ll make it up to you and Evie. We’ll go out for dinner this week. Call me when you get in.”

  Beep.

  “It’s me again, still buried under papers. Miss you . . .”

  Beep.

  “Ellen, where are you? Evie should be coming home soon and you haven’t called.”

  I listened to the recorded voice that followed, detailing the time each call was left and what my options were. My mother had been here when my dad called. She was home for all of them and never bothered to answer, or call him back. I deleted all three messages and suppressed the sigh building inside my chest.

  Chapter Nine

  Chase

  “Eat a bit more, honey,” Aunt Claudie insisted, as she waved the basket of homemade rolls beneath my nose. If it were up to her she would pin me down and stuff each delectable morsel into my mouth for me. “Don’t you have an appetite tonight?”

  “Really, I’m full, Aunt Claudie. It was delicious.” On a normal night I could eat everything she made and then some, but my appetite was practically nonexistent. I was too anxious to eat, like a kid being forced to eat lunch five minutes before his birthday party.

  “Actually, I’m going to head over to the library,” I stood up and pushed my chair in. “I have a paper to start.”

  “Homework, homework, that’s all you do,” she muttered. “Weren’t you just working on a paper last week? I swear they overload you at that fancy school of yours.”

  Anxious, I cleared my plate and crumpled napkin from the table, and brought them to the sink. Last week’s paper just happened to be the Sylvia Plath piece I had already finished only I didn’t let on that I would be re-writing that very paper tonight, nor did I mention I would be sharing the grade.

  “This is extra credit.”

  With a sigh and a smile, Aunt Claudie seemed to buy it. “I still think they overwork you kids. You’re always up in your room typing and printing something off on that computer of yours. Well, I’m not complaining. I’m very proud of you.” She leaned over and pressed her soft lips to my cheek.

  With a winning smile, I returned the peck, “I must have inherited your brains.”

  “Oh, you butter me up!” Aunt Claudie turned a nice shade of pink. “Just don’t stay out too late. It’s a school night.”

  I sat in the parking lot a good fifteen minutes by the time I worked up enough nerve to walk in. The truth was I didn’t expect Evie to show up. I figured I would save myself the embarrassment by finding out in my car instead of at a table inside, and hopefully avoid the get-up-and-leave-because-she-ditched-you exit I mentally prepared myself for. But before long, she crossed the parking lot, holding true to her word, and my stomach somersaulted as I watched her wrestle with the heavy door and her books.

  She sat at one of the wooden tables by the back window that overlooked a deep field.

  Though there was nothing but black on the other side of the glass this time of day, Evie stared out onto a horizon she could barely make out. She picked at her nails, her hands resting atop some notebooks she had laid out across the table, and I wondered if she thought I’d be the one to pull a no-show. She looked up and smiled warmly the moment she noticed me, and all the anxiety stored up inside me vanished.

  “I only had one Sylvia Plath book,” she whispered apologetically, in respect of the others studying nearby, and held up her dog-eared tome, waving it a little.

  I chuckled, reached into my backpack and produced an identical copy.

  She smiled. “I see yours is just as worn.”

  “Not as worn as these,” and I proceeded to pull out five more, all bent and soft, and fanned them out onto the table in front of her.

  “Well, I see we have ample research material.” Evie surveyed the bounty. “I can’t imagine finding much more than this on the shelf.”

  “Nope, we won’t. I think I own more copies than the library.”

  “I didn’t quite figure you for a poetic kind of guy.” Her head tilted to the side gently, as if trying to understand the connection between a suicidal poet to a guy like me.

  I lowered myself onto the wooden chair opposite her and played with the cover of The Bell

  Jar. There was a feeling in the pit of my stomach that resembled what I had felt at lunch yesterday, only magnified—and without the agitation I felt in the presence of her friends.

  Maybe that’s why it was different now. There was no audience. I could put my nervousness aside and enjoy her company, without the sensation of inquisitive eyes dissecting me.

  “You didn’t think I would show up, did you?”

  “The thought crossed my mind.”

  “I wondered the same about you.”

  I shifted in my seat, finding myself unable to look away from her, and yet, unable to look anywhere else, then I leaned across the table. “But I’m here.”

  Her eyes brightened and held me in such a way that I nearly lost track of everything going on around us. Finally, she cleared her throat, and I realized she was blushing.

  “So I thought we might use a timeline for the paper,” I said as I dug my notebook out from under the pile. “We could begin with her earlier work, building up to the prose right before her death, and then analyze them. What do you think?”

  “A timeline sounds good. I like the angle. We can track her deterioration through her work.”

  I pulled the paper I had finished last week from its plastic sheath and set it in front of her.

  I was beginning to feel excited about this. I had never worked on a paper with anyone before and could already see the advantage of brainstorming with a partner. “I actually started a bit so we can use what I already have . . .”

  Her eyebrows cinched toward each other as she gingerly picked up the paper.

  “This hardly looks like ‘a bit’, Chase. How long have you been working on this?”

  I bit the inside of my cheek and debated. “It’s nothing. It took no time at all, given I’m a diehard fan, well, you know.”

  She shook her head at the typed page. “You’ve covered a lot of ground. At least let me do my share of the research. It wouldn’t be right to use what you already have as my own.”

  Evie began leafing through the copies I had brought. Each paper, each line she read to herself entranced her. “I’ve never read April 18th before. It’s so sad.”

  My breath caught in my lungs.

  “Why did you come to lunch with me?” she asked quietly.

  “Because you asked.”

  I watched her swallow a couple times.

  “Was there another reason?”

  I set the book I had been holding down onto the table and looked into her eyes. “I wanted to.”

  A tiny smile formed at the corner of her mouth. But the moment was interrupted by a gentle peal of music from her purse. With quick reflexes she grabbed the phone and placed it in her lap, trying to silence it.

  “Aren’t you going to get that?” I motioned with my head at the stifled ringtone beneath the table.

  She looked at me and shook her head. “I’ll let it go to voicemail.”

  A huge sigh from across the room forced us to look up, where a boy from school bent over a large table strewn with books. With a shift of his arm, a pile of papers cascaded to the floor in a jumbled avalanche.

  Still busy with her phone, Evie looked back at me. “I better get this after all, sorry,” and she quietly excused herself, and headed for the vestibule. Cell phone usage was discouraged at the library since it interfered with the computer system, and I couldn’t help notice the late shift volunte
er follow Evie with a hard stare.

  My palms were slick with perspiration. I really needed to talk myself out of feeling nervous around her, so I got up and wandered toward the stacks in pursuit of anything Plath, though I knew better than to think I’d discover more than what was already waiting at our table.

  The boy at the next cubicle was bent over his work, engulfed in furious scribbles and note taking. His scattered mess caught my eye, and I leaned down to pick up a paper he had missed beneath his chair. He wiped the hair out of his face before looking up at me, and when he did, I recognized him immediately. His name escaped me for the moment, but I knew he was one of the smart kids. Quiet. A loner like me, but often regarded by the group Evie hung out with.

  Well, used rather. He was known for whipping up A-worthy papers in a flash for a reasonable price.

  “Thanks,” he said, and took the paper I held out to him.

  “Quite a project there,” I remarked, showing off my powerful observation skills.

  “You have no idea.”

  The name on the paper suddenly burned itself into my brain. Shane Whitley. As my eyes crept to the boy’s face, I found myself furious to see he was doing Shane’s paper for him.

  Headmaster’s nephew or not, Shane allowed himself to sink as low as anyone else bent on cheating the system. What killed me was Evie and I could be alone at the library, but Shane was still very much present.

  “Well, good luck.” I said tersely, “Must really be worth all the hassle.”

  “Oh, it’ll be worth it,” he stretched his arms high above his head and wiggled his fingers.

  The nonfiction aisle was two rows away and I was feeling antsy for wasting time. I should have left that paper on the floor and let Shane fail.

  With overt annoyance, I seethed through gritted teeth, “Pays well, huh?”

  “You could say that,” he grinned, bragging a bit.

  Recollection whacked itself over my head as his name came to mind. Ty Dunhammer. He was known for supplying on campus, but no one could pinpoint where he was getting it from. I took notice of his annoying post nasal drip and watched in disgust as he swiped his nose with the back of a shaky hand. I assumed the red-rimmed eyes he turned toward me were from working so hard on a paper to an undeserving jerk who should be earning his own grade, but it hit me.