Avalon High Part 16

What I didn't know was...well, how I knew this.

"Maybe..." I said slowly, feeling my way. "Maybe you felt that way because you know, deep down, that they're meant for each other. That it's...right? Lance and Jen, I mean. Don't get me wrong-she really does love you, Will. Lance, too. More than anything. You can tell. But that also might be...well, why they belong together."

I glanced at him to see whether or not he agreed with this-or if he even understood it, because I wasn't sure I did.

"Not that you and Jen didn't make a good couple," I added, because he still hadn't said anything. I was probably babbling, but what else was I supposed to do? I mean, he had come to me. Of all the people in the world he knew, he'd come to me in his hour of need. I had to say something. "I mean, Jen's totally nice, and stuff. But-"

"I could never really talk to her," Will interrupted. "Not about stuff that mattered. It was like she didn't want to hear it. Gossip and clothes and stuff. That was fine. But when it came to talking about how I felt about things-things like...well, that stuff you and I talked about, my dad, and the woods, and the widow's walk...things outside of football and school and the mall, or whatever-she just...she just didn't understand."

He didn't add, the way you do, Elle.

But that was okay. He'd come to me, hadn't he? He was sitting here with me. In my backyard. Next to my pool. On Spider Rock.

And okay, maybe he was only here because I'm a virtual stranger, and it's easier sometimes to talk about stuff with strangers than it is with people you know.

And yeah, probably he only thinks of me as a friend-a friend who makes him laugh-and not the way I think of him-as the man with whom I want to spend the rest of my life someday.

But that's okay. That's totally okay. Because with Will, I was willing to take what I could get. And if friends.h.i.+p was all he had to offer, well, it was more than enough.

So when he asked what he did next-which was, "So what are you doing for dinner tonight?"-in a voice that was completely devoid of self-pity or anything, really, I said, "I don't know. I think my mom's ordering pizza," in a kind of stunned way.

To which he replied, "Do you think your parents would mind if I took you out? I know a place that makes a mean crab dip."

"Um," I said. "No, I don't think they'd mind." Not that I'd have cared if they did.

They didn't. Which was how I found myself dining with A. William Wagner once again. How I made him laugh over the plate of steaming hot crab dip we shared at Riordan's downtown, by doing what I considered a brilliant imitation of Ms. Schuler, the track coach. How I almost made him choke on his Moose Tracks ice cream at Storm Brothers while I told him the story of the time I stuck the red hot up my nose when I was four, just to hear him laugh again, and then about the time I decided to cut my own hair and ended up looking just like Russell Crowe in Gladiator.

Then, because I had trig homework, and he said he had physics, we went back to my house and sat down at the dining room table to work together, since he showed no signs of being ready to leave for home.

Not that I blamed him, really. I mean, what did he have to go home to, really? A father who wanted something for him that Will didn't want for himself, and a stepbrother who'd taken absolute glee in revealing something that, yeah, maybe had needed to be revealed...but not the way he'd done it.

My dad came in at one point while we were working and asked me if I could pull a staple out of his thumb, because Mom was in the shower. It was only one of those mini staples little kids use, because those are the only ones we keep around since everyone in my family is so accident p.r.o.ne, so there wasn't a lot of blood. I pulled the staple out, and my dad went away again. I started to go back to my homework, then realized Will had stopped writing. I looked up, and caught him staring at me.

"What?" I asked, lifting a hand to my nose. "Do I have something on my face?"

"No," Will said, with a smile. "It's just...the way you are with your parents. I've never had that with anyone, let alone my dad."

"Because your dad is probably capable of stapling something without getting his thumb in the way," I pointed out dryly.

"No," Will said. "It's not that. It's the way you talk to each other. Like you-I don't know. Actually care about what happens to the other person."

"Your dad cares what happens to you," I a.s.sured him, secretly feeling that I'd like to grab Admiral Wagner and shake him a few times. "Maybe not in the way you want him to. But, I mean, that's the whole reason behind his wanting you to go into the military. Because he cares about you and thinks that's what would be best for you."

"But he wouldn't think that," Will insisted, "if he'd ever bothered to get to know me. If he knew me at all-if he had ever bothered to stop and talk to me on the way out to one of his millions of meetings-he'd know that I think that...well, that bending an enemy's will through military force is the absolute last way a nation ought to go about solving their problems."

I couldn't help feeling a stronger rush of admiration than usual for Will at that moment. I mean, bending an enemy's will by force? Problem solving? The guy was discussing stuff I'd never heard anyone close to my own age talking about before. Geoff and his friends had always talked almost exclusively about Xbox and whatever girl in school was wearing the shortest skirt at the moment.

"Have you ever told your dad that?" I asked him. "I mean, that you feel that way? Because he might surprise you, you know."

Will just shook his head. "You don't know him," he said flatly.

"What about your stepmom?" I asked. "Do you two get along?"

"Jean?" Will shrugged. "Yeah."

"Well, why don't you tell her," I suggested, "what you told me? Then maybe, if you can get her on your side, she can work on softening up your dad. He may not want to listen to you, but he'd probably listen to his wife, right?"

Will's eyes seemed to glint an even stronger blue than ever as he gazed at me.

"That's a good idea," he said...and don't think I didn't blush at his praise, although I ducked my head, hoping my hair would hide my cheeks. "I can't believe I never thought of that."

"Well, you aren't used to having two parents," I said. "When you've grown up with both a mom and a dad, you learn how to play one against the other. It's something of an art."

"I can't imagine," Will said, with a grin, "your dad ever saying no to you about anything."

"He doesn't, really," I agreed. "But my mom...she's a lot tougher."

Then I felt something warm and heavy fall across my fingers. When I looked up, I was surprised to see that Will had laid one of his hands over mine.

"Like you," he said.

"I'm not tough," I said, thinking that if he knew how his mere touch had made my heartbeat stagger, he'd realize how not tough I really am.

Will's fingers didn't loosen their hold.

"It's not a bad thing," he said. "It's one of the things I like best about you, in fact. I wouldn't want to get on your bad side, though."

As if you ever could, was what I wanted to say. Only I couldn't, because I was too stunned. Not just by what he'd said about liking me-he said he likes me!-but by what I'd felt, the moment his fingers touched mine, which was the exact opposite of the coldness I'd felt at Marco's touch-a sudden jolt of white-hot electricity that had raced up and down my arm....

I didn't know what kind of connection the two of us had, if any-why he'd thought he'd known me, when we'd never met before, and why he felt he could tell me things he couldn't tell anyone else...or why I loved him so fiercely, I was ready to protect him from anything, even himself.

But I wasn't about to question it. Especially not now that he was free. True, I'm no cheerleader. I'm not blond or perky, and the only reason I turn heads when I walk into a room is because I'm generally the tallest girl there.

But out of everyone he knew, Will had come to me. Whether he'd felt the jolt when he touched my hand or not-whether he thought of me as just a friend or maybe something more-nothing would ever change the fact that I was the one he'd come to when he'd needed someone most.

He let go of my hand after that, and said, holding his pencil like it was a cigar, and doing a very, very bad imitation of Humphrey Bogart from Casablanca, "Elle, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful thing."

"Friends.h.i.+p," I corrected him, trying not to let him see how deeply his words had thrilled me. "The line is-"

"Whatever," Will said, in the same bad Humphrey Bogart imitation. "Get to work." And he tapped my homework with his pencil/cigar.

Grinning, I bent over my logarithms. I don't think I'd ever been happier in my life.

What I didn't know then was that what he'd said about this being the beginning of a beautiful thing? Yeah. Not true.

It was actually the middle of something that had been going on for a long time...something that most definitely wasn't beautiful. Something that was about as ugly as can be.

And something that was about to s...o...b..ll beyond anyone's control.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

Out flew the web and floated wide;

The mirror crack'd from side to side;

"The curse is come upon me!" cried

The Lady of Shalott.

I was the first one into Mr. Morton's cla.s.sroom the next morning. Not even Mr. Morton himself was there yet. I sat down in a seat in the front row, glancing at the clock on the wall. It was seven forty. First period started in twenty minutes.

So where was Lance?

When Mr. Morton rolled in, at seven forty-five, Lance still hadn't shown up. Mr. Morton, neat in his bow tie and herringbone jacket-too warm, I thought, for Annapolis, this time of year-put down his steaming mug of coffee, his newspaper, and his briefcase, and pulled the chair out from behind his desk.

He sat, but didn't open the paper or sip his coffee. Instead, like me, he stared at the clock.

Though I doubt Mr. Morton was thinking the same thoughts I was. I was having a not unpleasant time remembering the evening before...the way Will, done with his own homework, had leaned over and swiped mine and started doing logarithms for me. The way he'd smiled when my dad had finally come downstairs and said, "Kid. It's eleven o'clock. Go home already, will ya?" The way Will had said, "See you tomorrow, sir," to my dad...which could only have meant he was planning on coming over again.

Seven fifty.

"You told him, didn't you?" Mr. Morton wanted to know. "Mr. Reynolds?"

"Of course I did," I said. "He'll be here."

Except that I was beginning to think that maybe he wouldn't. Maybe he'd forgotten. So much had happened since the day before...not just to me, but to Lance, as well. After all, he may have gained a girlfriend, but he'd also lost his best friend...or so he probably thought, anyway, since I a.s.sumed Will hadn't called him up and said, No hard feelings, buddy.

At least, as of eleven o'clock last night, he hadn't.

Not that Will wasn't going to. He'd talked about it the night before, between logarithms. He didn't feel he could exactly hold a grudge against Lance and Jennifer if all he'd felt, upon hearing that the two of them were involved, was relief. I'd commented that this would be a grave disappointment to the rumor-mongers of the school-Liz, in particular, though I didn't mention her by name-who would be expecting some dramatic snubbing in the cafeteria.

Will had just laughed and said that he would never do anything that might deprive the student population of Avalon High of their right to be entertained, so maybe he'd wait a day or two before publicly forgiving the pair.

But Lance, of course, didn't know this. I knew he cared about Will, and that the guilt over what he'd done to him had to be eating him up inside.

Considering what had to be going on inside his head at the moment, it wasn't likely Lance was going to remember a meeting with a teacher.

"Maybe I should have called to remind him," I said apologetically to Mr. Morton. "He's, um, got a lot on his mind right now."

"What he's going to have," Mr. Morton said severely, "is another flunking grade in this cla.s.s, to match the one he got in it last year."

"Oh, don't do that," I couldn't help crying out. "He's having a really hard time right now."

"I'm not interested in hearing about the trials and tribulations of Avalon High's star guard," Mr. Morton said, in a tired voice. "I'm sure he's very sorry for what he let happen to Mr. Wagner during Sat.u.r.day night's game, but that isn't any of my affair."

"I'm not talking about that," I said. "I mean, there was this whole blowup with his best friend and his girlfriend, and-"

"I would imagine any blowup between Mr. Reynolds's best friend and his girlfriend would hardly be any of Mr. Reynolds's concern." Mr. Morton raised one gray eyebrow. "And certainly would not excuse his absence here."

"That's just it." I felt stupid telling a teacher stuff that really wasn't any of his business. On the other hand, I really did feel Lance had a legitimate reason to have forgotten our meeting. "He caused the blowup. Lance did. I mean, it's not really his fault-well, I guess it sort of is. But I don't think he could help it any more than Jen could." Then, seeing that Mr. Morton was staring at me sort of incredulously, I realized I was babbling, and said, "Look, the whole thing's this huge mess, and he probably just forgot. Is there any chance we could reschedule for tomorrow? I swear I'll-"

I broke off, because Mr. Morton's face had suddenly gone as gray as his beard.

He looked like he was going to be sick.

"Mr. Morton?" I rose from my desk in some alarm. "Are you all right? Do you want me to get you some water or something?"

Mr. Morton had risen from his chair. Now he stood clutching the edge of his desk like it was the only thing keeping him upright, murmuring something. When I hurried up to him and leaned closer to hear what it was-I thought maybe he was whispering for me to call nine-one-one-I was surprised to hear him saying, "Too late. Started...so soon. I had no idea. We're too late. Entirely too late."

I glanced at the clock.

"We're not too late, Mr. Morton," I said confusedly. "There are still five more minutes until the bell-"

Then he looked up.

And I stumbled back a step. Because I had never seen as much despair-coupled with a strong dose of fear-in anyone's eyes as I saw in Mr. Morton's at that moment.

"It's happened already, hasn't it?" he rasped. "She's with him? With Reynolds?"

I swallowed. I'd expected there to be some gossiping about what had happened between Will and Jennifer and Lance. When I'd climbed onto the bus that morning, I'd heard a few people murmuring that Avalon High's It Couple had broken up, although no one-at least if Liz's very direct questioning of me was any indication-appeared to know why.

But for a teacher to take such an interest in his students' love lives? It seemed a little bizarre. Mr. Morton looked positively suicidal. His pale gray eyes, peering out from beneath slightly craggy brows, had a beaten look to them, as if they'd seen something almost too heartbreaking to bear.

"Um," I said. "Do you mean Jennifer Gold? Because she and Lance are...well, they're together now." And then, because it was what I'd told Will he should say to everyone, if he wanted to prove he really was relieved, like he'd said, about the two of them being together, I added, "And Will is really happy for them."