Shuffle: A Novel Part 4

"Yeah, that's what I thought too. What's my strategy?" I really wasn't sure how to approach him now. He was such a mystery. He seemed so cool and above it all, and then he goes out of his way to email me. In the middle of the night. Like a psychopath.

"Just be direct," said Ellen. "Tell him you don't appreciate his getting your address from someone else."

"Solid advice." But so hard to take. I frowned. "Ugh, I hate confrontations." I could already tell I was going to pretend that the message had been blocked by my spam filter. As far as Arbor was concerned, I hadn't seen it at all.

We got to school and I went to rummage through my locker before cla.s.s. Ellen's mirror made me smile. I got a head start on walking up to Latin this time, and Britta fell into step with me as I trudged up the stairs to the second story.

"Off to see your Latin lover?" Her voice was low and urgent.

"Huh?"

"Come on, Evi. Don't be such a prude. Shelby saw his car parked on the street outside your house last night when she was driving home from work. It's a Benz, super flashy. Everyone at school knows about it."

"Excuse me? Whose car?"

Britta grabbed my arm and pulled me to a stop, rolling her eyes dramatically. "You know who. Come on, what were you doing? Working on your project? Ten o'clock on a weeknight's pretty late to have a boy at your house..."

"Oh, him. He wasn't there. I don't know what you're talking about."

Britta frowned. "Um, super lame, Evi. I thought we were friends." Then the warning bell rang and she ran off, clomping back down the stairs to whatever her first cla.s.s was.

So much for avoiding confrontations, I guess. Wait, so Shelby had really seen his car parked outside my house? At ten o'clock? That was after I was in bed.

What the h.e.l.l was going on? It had to be a coincidence.

I realized as I slipped behind my desk that I'd been saying that a lot in the past few days about Arbor.

He was tardy again, but Quentin just smiled at him when he came in a couple minutes after the bell and took his seat behind me. I could have been imagining it, but I think his hand brushed my hair as he walked up the aisle past me. Coincidence, happenstance, accident... I could feel his eyes on me the entire period.

Afterward, I expected to talk to him, to confirm our "date" at the library after school. But he slipped out of the room just as cla.s.s was ending. He didn't even look my way, or acknowledge my existence in the slightest. I decided that since avoiding confrontation did not appear to be the order of the day, I might as well get it over with. So I sprinted after him down the hallway and practically barreled into him.

"Were you at my house last night?"

He stopped in his tracks and turned around. "Pardon?"

"Evangeline Wild," I said. "In case you forgot." My voice was a touch louder than I meant it to be, but I couldn't help it. People in the hallway began to take notice of our conversation.

"No," he said evenly. "I was not at your house last night."

"You're lying. Shelby Winters saw your car parked outside. Were you spying on me? Because that's perverted."

He turned up his lip in an expression of revulsion. "Why would I spy on you?" He practically spat the words; the edge of his voice was sharp, like a razor blade.

c.r.a.p. Why had I picked this fight again?

"You sent me an email at 3 a.m. You can't deny that."

"I don't. I thought I'd make a friendly overture after... the incident yesterday. For the sake of our project."

I nodded. "Sure. And your car?"

"Nowhere near your house. I don't even know where you live." He paused, as if he were considering his words carefully. Then he added, "I didn't expect this sort of high school drama from you, Evangeline."

He turned and walked off without a backwards glance. He'd displayed no emotion except for disdain, while I'd worked myself into a heated tizzy. People were whispering as I shook my head and retreated in the opposite direction. If I disliked Arbor Vitae Damo da Rosa before, now I truly hated him.

He didn't "expect" high school drama from me. What? Really? First of all, he doesn't know me. Second of all, I'm a high schooler. He can't use his own apparently lofty expectations of my character to make me feel bad for just being myself.

This is the logic I used at lunch when I huddled up with Ellen at the end of a long table. She agreed with me about everything, of course. It sucks that boys can make girls feel bad about themselves all the time with so little effort. But there was something unspoken, something that kept nagging me. The feeling that really, I hadn't been "just being myself" when I lashed out at him. Oh, I was totally within my rights to confront him on the rumor. But it really wasn't my style to do it publicly like that. What had provoked me? The conversation with Britta? During second period Math I confirmed with Shelby that she had seen his car at my house. She was 100% sure of it, even offered to point it out to me in the student parking lot after school so I could keep an eye out for it in the future.

Things weren't adding up.

Arbor wasn't in gym, thankfully. I don't know how well I could have handled another interaction with him. Instead of rehas.h.i.+ng the whole thing again, I channeled all of my energy into striking the volleyball with the most force I possibly could. I was all over the court, and my hands and forearms were pink and sore by the time the period was over and it was time to go shower and change.

Ellen called me the "volleyball team star." Ha. I'll put that one on my resume.

I managed to get through the rest of the afternoon somehow, and declined Ellen's offer to drive me to the library. It was a nice, zippy fall day. You know, when the air smells like burnt cork and you can sense behind it the hollowness of winter. I wrapped a teal knit scarf around my neck, enjoying how it played off my fuchsia blouse and checkerboard-patterned skirt. Yeah, I know, I looked like a fifties diner. It made me happy.

The library is only a fifteen minute walk from school, down the hill from the back of the cafeteria, cutting across the soccer and football fields and the County Market parking lot. From there I ambled down Union Street, looking at all the cute houses and wondering idly what I wanted do "when I grow up." Unlike seemingly everyone around me, I don't have a plan. I suppose the only thing I really want to study is language. Maybe a translator or something. For the CIA! That could be cool...

I turned onto Main Street, pa.s.sed the Supreme Bean coffee shop and stared up at the library. The building is so much older and fancier than the rest of the street; it really stands out. I took a moment to gaze at the swirling ironwork and the patterns in the brick. It seems like in the past, everyone wanted every single building to be beautiful. Even if it was just for getting on and off trains. I mean, look at airports nowadays. They're super ugly and gross, and no one cares that much, because they're so focused on getting from point A to point B. Look at the tenements in Oldtown.

I guess there were a lot of ugly buildings in the past too. But they got torn down instead of being renovated into libraries.

"Scared, Evangeline?"

I jumped. That voice! I whipped around and there he was, standing right behind me with that mouldering look in his eyes.

"Scared of the library? Or of you?"

This elicited the first smile I'd seen from him. It wasn't exactly attractive. Almost predatory, actually. A s.h.i.+ver ran down my spine. His eyes are so dark, I can't see the pupils in them. They're just two black pools of oblivion.

"You looked nervous. Chin up, soldier."

He pushed open the front doors and I could do nothing but follow him inside like Mary's little lamb.

I brushed up next to him and kept my voice low. "Why do you have to be such a sn.o.b?"

"I've always thought of myself as rather intelligent and charming. It's not often I find a girl I fail to charm."

I rolled my eyes and walked him up to the reference desk. At least we could solve one mystery.

"Hi, Mrs. Beasley."

She closed the book she was reading and took off her gla.s.ses. "Twice in two days! How wonderful." But I could see in her eyes that she was afraid of more police. I put her fears to rest immediately.

"We're working on a project for Latin. Could you help us find some information about Cicero? He was a Roman lawyer and politician."

"Indeed he was." She smiled brightly and pulled up some call numbers on the computer. I copied down half of them on a note card and gave them to Arbor, telling him to meet me at one of the work desks on the second floor when he had all the books.

As soon as he was out of earshot, I leaned in and whispered, "Is that him?"

"Who, dear?"

"The guy who came and emptied locker 112."

"Oh!" Mrs. Beasley squinted in the direction of his retreating figure. "No, I don't think so."

"Are you sure?"

I searched her face for any sign of doubt or ambivalence. But there was nothing. She seemed calm and collected. "Definitely not the the guy," she said.

So much for that. I thanked her and went off to search for the other Cicero books. They weren't hard to find, but I flipped through them on the way up the stairs and got totally bogged down in some heavy duty academic writing. This was going to be more difficult that it seemed.

When I sat down, Arbor was already deep in his studies, frowning over a page full of headache-inducingly small type and stopping every few seconds to take notes.

"So here's what I think," I said, rifling through my backpack to produce my Latin notebook, "We should go through his life in chronological order, highlighting the important cases of his law career and some of his other well-known writing, like his correspondence."

"I've just been reading some of that," Arbor said. His voice was softer now. Farther away. "Did you know that he had a daughter who died young?"

"No."

"Her name was Tullia. He built a shrine to her." He pointed with his finger to a pa.s.sage from one of the letters and read, "'I am trying to escape memories which make me eat out my heart.'"

I glanced sideways at him and was surprised at the expression on his face. It was sad, and almost tender. He flipped to a page he'd marked in another book.

"'Like apples, when they are unripe, are ripped with difficulty from the trees, but when ripe and mature fall down, so does violence take the lives of young people, and maturity, the old. Maturity which is indeed so delightful to me that as I come nearer to death, I feel as though I have sighted land, sailing into port at last after a long sea voyage.'" He read from the Latin easily, as if he were already fluent.

"That's beautiful."

"It's from an essay called de Senectute, which means 'On Old Age.'"

Arbor looked pensive. I couldn't quite read his expression. Grave and thoughtful, and almost wistful. He turned his eyes full on me, with all their fierce intensity. "She had hair like yours. Blazing with mortal fire."

"Who?"

He did not answer. Just stared at me for a long moment and then turned back to his book. "If you take care of Cicero up through his law career, I'll be responsible for presenting everything after."

"Deal." He was actually making me nervous now. I wanted to get us firmly off the topic of death, so I asked, "Where were you in gym, by the way? You missed a serious volleyball battle."

"I had some business to attend to."

That was all he would say. We worked silently from then on; the only sounds were the soft flap of pages being turned and the quiet rhythms of our breathing. Before I knew it, a couple of hours had pa.s.sed and I was hungry. I closed my books and got up to stretch.

"Dinnertime," I said. "I'm gonna head home."

Arbor didn't seem to notice. He was totally wrapped up in his own thoughts. I waited for him to acknowledge that I was packing up my books, but he never lifted his head.

"Okay, bye." I threw my backpack over one shoulder and flew down the steps, glad to be moving my limbs again after sitting for such a long time.

Arbor's behavior was so confusing, and the study session so grueling, my brain felt like cottage cheese. I was glad of the fresh air. I heard the bells in the steeple of Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church striking the hour. 6 o'clock. It was still summer enough to be light out, though the September days were getting noticeably shorter. The western sun was settling onto the mountain like a golden crown, craggy rock face like the cracked cheeks of an old man with a s.h.a.ggy, pine tree beard. I laughed at myself for that weird thought, feeling almost giddy after concentrating so hard on our research.

Home was only a few blocks away, but I took my time, enjoying my freedom and the chill of the coming night. I breathed in deeply, closed my eyes and lifted my head to the wide sky. And then, out of the blue, one of Arbor's statements wormed its way back into my brain.

It's not often I find a girl I fail to charm...

I remembered that look on Mrs. Beasley's face as she watched him walk away from the desk. She was sure of something. Sure that it was not him who had emptied the locker?

Or sure that lying to me was the right thing to do?

I opened my eyes. The street was pitch black. All the lamps were out. The sun had been extinguished. I was lost in the darkness.

I drew in a sharp breath and stumbled, suddenly unsure of my feet. I was falling slowly, like a shriveled helium balloon. Then time sped up again and I crashed, knee twisted, jerking on the gravel. Both my palms were skinned, my left knee a rash of grit and pooling blood.

I tore at my face with my aching hands, raked hair off my brow until I could press the pads of my fingers to my eyelids, searching for signs of damage. They seemed normal, but I felt no relief. My vision was totally undone. Instead of churchbells, I heard howling. Far-off wails, like perversions of everyday sounds. It was 6 o'clock and the sun was supposed to be over the mountain. Where had it gone?

Car horn honking, tires squealing. A force shoved me. It felt like a rush of air. I flew out of the road and landed in someone's front yard, as though I'd been picked up bodily and carried by the wind. I heard the sound of breaking gla.s.s. I blinked.

It was light again. Sunset and dim shadows, streetlamps blazing as if they'd never gone out.

"Oh my G.o.d," I breathed.

"Evangeline! Are you hurt?" Something brushed my cheek and caressed my hair.

I opened my eyes and saw Arbor's face. He was kneeling over me, staring at me as though I were a ghost. With a shock, I realized that the warm thing I'd felt on my cheek was his hand. Slowly, he helped to gather me into a sitting position.

"I'm..." I looked down at my knee and my palms. They were pretty sc.r.a.ped up, but nothing major. "I guess I need some Band-Aids. I think I'm all right. What happened?"

The expression on his face was terrified and raw. He pointed to the road and said, "You were walking in the street. Didn't you see the car coming?"

"I closed my eyes for a second. I didn't hear anything... I..."

A car had run into a streetlamp, and steam was rising from its engine. A man stood nearby on his cellphone, a.s.sessing the damage. When I caught his eye, he snapped his phone shut and came charging up the sidewalk at me.

"Do you know how much this is going to cost me to repair, young lady?"

Arbor stood and faced him. "It wasn't her fault."

"She was walking in the middle of the road, not paying attention! You teenagers are getting more stupid and irresponsible every year."

"I'm sorry," I squeaked. Tears sprang into my eyes. "I'm really sorry, but while I was walking... It was like everything just went black. Like I lost my eyesight for a minute."

He nodded, unconvinced. "Right. Tell that to the insurance people."

Arbor looked really mad now. He raised himself to his full height and got up in the man's face, voice soft but aggressive. "You were the one who almost hit her. You should be thankful she wasn't killed."

"Get off me." The man pushed Arbor away, wiping off his suit as though it were contaminated. Just then I heard a familiar boo-wop and turned to see my sister stepping out of her squad car. Lieutenant Collier was riding shotgun. By the time he'd wrangled his b.u.m knee out of the car, Callie was already at my side.

"What happened here?" she demanded.