15
While I shower and get ready for bed, I try to explain away that old white pickup. The driver might have forgotten to turn on the lights. It definitely went the same direction Chase did, but there are only two choices at that corner-straight or a right turn. It might have been going anywhere.
I know I’m being paranoid because of the crank calls, but I can’t shake the idea that somebody was following Chase and T.J.
What if they didn’t make it home? I grab my cell and hit T.J.’s number. The call goes directly to voice mail, and I remember he said his phone was dead. So I return the call from T.J. on Chase’s phone. It goes straight to voice mail too.
This isn’t good. What if the pickup ran them off the road? Think. Think! Maybe Chase is home already, and he’s turned off his ringer because he doesn’t want to wake his dad. That makes sense. I could text him. As fast as I can, I type: R U OK? Not much of a message, but I send it and wait. My stomach’s cramping as I hold my cell in both hands and stare at it.
Finally, I hear the double beep. Fine. U?
I let out a big sigh. Now I feel stupid. He probably thinks I’m flirting with him… and that I’m really bad at it. I text: Good.
I have got to stop seeing bad guys everywhere.
By the time I climb into bed, I’m tired enough for sleep to come, but it doesn’t. Twice I think I hear somebody inside the house. I call out to Rita, but nobody answers, except the old house creaking, the refrigerator roaring, and the branches scratching my bedroom window.
After double-checking the front and back doors, I get back in bed and burrow under the sheets. I close my eyes, but I can’t stop imagining things. I picture someone sneaking in through Jeremy’s window, and I can’t remember if I locked that window. But I don’t want to go check. Outside, there’s a faint rattle of an engine creeping by, but not passing, the house. It could be the white pickup. I know it’s ridiculous to think like this, but I can’t help it.
For the first time in ages, I actually wish Rita would come home.
The second I wake up, I have the feeling someone is watching me. I stumble out of bed. My window faces west, but I can tell the sun is up.
I yawn, stretch, and check the clock. It’s late, and I’ve already missed Chase running by. I wish he wouldn’t run the same time on weekends that he does weekdays.
Thinking about Chase changes my mood. It shouldn’t, not with Jeremy still in jail. But as I gaze out the window at the deserted shack across the street, images of Chase from last night flash through my mind: Chase on the edge of the couch, legs outstretched; Chase in my kitchen, spreading grape jelly and laughing about something; Chase in the middle of Jeremy’s room, staring wide-eyed at Jer’s jar collection. But his expression isn’t just gawking. There’s awe on his face. He’s truly amazed.
I walk over to my closet and open the door. The wood is splintered, the latch never worked, and the closet isn’t deep enough for most hangers. Jeans, khakis, and shorts are folded on the top shelf, along with other junk. A few shirts and T-shirts hang on kid hangers. I haven’t been shopping since before Jeremy was arrested. If he were here, we’d be going to church, and I’d wear either the khaki pants or a long, funky, crocheted black skirt that’s not at all churchy.
But I’m not going. I’ve only gone to church once since Jeremy was arrested. It felt like everyone was staring at me, even if they weren’t. I do miss it, though, especially the songs. Jeremy says God sings everywhere, but it’s easier to hear in church.
I settle on denim capris I’ve only worn once and a sleeveless white shirt with big buttons and just a tiny spot that I didn’t see until I got it home from Goodwill.
About five in the morning, I heard Rita come in. You’d have had to be dead not to hear her. She was Happy-Singing-Drunk Rita. She pounded on my bedroom door until I got up to unhook her necklace for her. She was Rita in White-white feather collar rimming a white cardigan, the tiny buttons straining to hold her in. Rita the Chatterer: “Hope, Hope, Hope,” she said, taking my face in her hands. “You’re a pretty girl. Did you know that? Don’t ever let anybody say you’re not, hear? My girl. My own little girl.”
I’m hoping she sleeps until noon. I grab my bag and ease out of my room.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Rita’s standing in the middle of the hallway. Her slip is on inside out, and her bleached hair looks like something made a nest out of it. When she eyes me up and down, her mascara-clumped lashes make tiny window shades for her bloodshot eyes. “Is it Sunday?”
I nod, hoping she’ll think I’m off to church.
Rita groans, turns her back on me, and staggers to her bedroom.
Just when I think I’ll make a clean getaway, she glances over her shoulder. “Hey. What was that old truck doing last night?”
My blood stops running through my veins and turns to ice. “What truck, Rita?”
“A white pickup parked across the street. Somebody around here buy that old thing? I don’t want carbon monoxide polluting our air.” She coughs, like it’s the truck and not the thousands of cigarettes she’s smoked. “Some pervert was sitting in there too, watching me come home.”
“Who?” I demand. “What did he look like?”
Rita frowns. “How should I know? I’m the one who asked you, remember?”
It had to be the same truck I saw follow Chase’s car.
“What’s the matter with you?” Rita scratches her belly, and her slip makes a zip, zip sound.
“Rita, I saw that truck”-I almost say “following Chase and T.J.”-“last night, in front of our house.”
“Probably just some loser with no life watching people who have lives.” She yawns.
“And somebody kept calling here and then hanging up.”
Rita lets out a dry laugh. “Let me get this straight. You think somebody’s out to get us, right? That it? Somebody who murdered Coach and is so scared Detective Hopeless will uncover the truth that they’re… what? Parking across the street? Calling and hanging up?”
When she says it like that, it does sound pretty dumb.
She yawns again, so big that her face is nothing but an open mouth. Then she shuffles back to her bedroom.
I grab a cup of instant coffee and go outside to wait for T.J. I don’t want to think about the pickup or the phone calls. It’s August hot, and there’s no shade on the front step. I squint across the street at the empty lot, where they tore down a condemned house, leaving rubble and trash. Shards of glass catch the morning light and toss it into the air in glittering patterns of delicate color. It makes me think of Jeremy and the way he finds beauty everywhere-twigs floating in mud puddles, snowflake mountains on windowsills, crow’s-feet wrinkles at the eyes of old men, pudgy toes on babies, and dandelions, frail and feathered and ready to be blown bald.
Far off, I hear a couple of lost geese honking. Closer in, a woodpecker competes with the cry of a mourning dove. I want them to smother the breathing on the other end of the phone, to cover up the chug of the white pickup truck, and to drown out Rita’s voice in my head.
A horn honks. I stand up, expecting to see T.J.’s dad’s ’81 Chevy, but it’s the Stratus Chase drives. He gets out of the car and stands beside it. “T.J. couldn’t make it.”
I take a couple of steps toward him. “Why didn’t he call me?”
“He said your cell was off, and he was afraid to wake Rita. So he called me.”
Once again, Chase is dragged into the mixed-up life of Hope Long. I’m totally embarrassed-again-but I have to admit I don’t mind seeing Chase.
“T.J. shouldn’t have called you. I’m sorry, Chase. Thanks for letting me know, though.”