On the other hand, I liked Mary Francesca.
Not that it mattered how funny or smart she was or that she smelled like strawberries. There was no way my parents would go for it. It went back to the bad old days when persecution was everywhere. You couldn't trust strangers, secret police were around every corner, and you never knew who might turn you in. It was a lesson no one in the family had forgotten. We were Orthodox all the way and we didn't date outsiders. Which was going to make finding a prom date pretty damn hard. There were lots of us in Russia, not too many here. But those were the rules.
I added that to Christmas and bullies in the whole sucking category.
"Sorry." I shifted my backpack from one side to another, and I really was sorry. "I have detention for two months. My parents won't let me go anywhere. I'm grounded, damn, forever."
She frowned in disappointment - real disappointment, which made me again think how rules sucked. "Well, okay, I get that." Sighing, she unhooked a pin from her sweater and pinned it on mine. "Maybe by Spring Fling then." She looked around quickly, then leaned in to give me the quickest of kisses.
I was wrong. It wasn't her hair that smelled like strawberries; it was her lip gloss. I was still tasting it as she disappeared down the hall and around the corner. Then I looked down at the pin. Santa grinned up at me, mittened hand waving automatically.
Ho frigging ho.
Every class dragged minute by minute. No one stared at me like I was going to die, so no one knew this was the day Jed was coming after me. It didn't matter. I knew. I passed him once in the hall and his eyes had never been paler. He didn't grin, he didn't smirk. He just stared, flecks of spit at the corner of his mouth. That was it. Jed had gone off the edge and there was no coming back for him. Did a teacher notice? No. Did big men in white coats come drag him off to a big looming building with the baby eaters and mailman killers? No. No one wanted to know.
No one ever wanted to know.
A Plan C would be good now. Really good.
Jed was a year older, but he'd been left behind. He tripped me in math class on my way up to the board, his almost white eyes daring me to say something about it. I went on, did the calculation, and circled back another way to sit down.
When I ate lunch, he ate at a table next to mine and watched me. Watched my every move, my every bite. Half-chewed food fell from his mouth as he kept his eyes on me, but he didn't notice. Or care. I'd thought he'd grow up to be a serial killer, but I was wrong. He was already there and he had me marked as victim numero uno.
What do you do then? Go out kicking and screaming? Not me. I so did not plan on that.
Next time I passed him in the hall, I murmured, "Tomorrow. Northeast edge of the woods. By the bridge." I didn't wait on an answer. For all I knew, he'd chewed his tongue off already and wasn't going to give me one anyway. Then I went straight to the nurse's office, faked a stomach cramp and a little dry heaving, and had my mom picking me up in twenty minutes. Today was taken care of. Jed wasn't going to jump me early. And tomorrow . . .
A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.
A guy on an old Western had said that once. He was right. I wasn't a man, but it still counted for me, too. I spent the night in my room thinking. I took off that silly Santa pin Mary Francesca had given me and almost tossed it, but at the last minute I laid it on my desk. The mitten continued to wave at me and I wondered how long until the battery ran out.
I went out once to the garage after the folks were asleep then came back and watched the stars and sliver of moon through my window. The cold air made them brighter, closer, until you could see the teeth in the moon's sly grin and the cold patience behind the stars' eyes.
After an hour of that, I went back in and stared at my closet. My last real Christmas was in there. It made me sad, proud, and had me pining all at the same time. Finally I put on my boxers and T-shirt and went to bed. I dreamed of cookies, presents, and a thousand lighted trees, and behind each tree was a Santa. He was laughing, cheeks red, stomach bouncing. A thousand Santas wherever you looked.
When I woke up in the morning, I had one of those things . . . oh shit, what is it? . . . an epiphany. A big word for a big idea. I knew what to do, how to do it, and if I did things just right, just so, it would turn out even better than I thought yesterday. It would be better than okay. It would.
It had to.
I ate lunch with Mom, Dad, and Tess. Let Jed freeze his ass off in the woods waiting for me. I was in no hurry. Afterward I grabbed my coat and backpack and said I'd be back. Grounding was grounding, but my dad thought that roaming in the woods was good for kids. Taught them things. Toughened them up.
I set off down our gravel road. The sky was white and gray and blue. Might be snow, might clear up. That was the fun thing about winter: it was always a surprise. I wore faded jeans and my rattiest sneakers. You never knew what was going to happen to them, not with someone like Jed. I liked the sneakers. We'd got them in San Antonio . . . they were orange with the black outline of a coyote howling at the moon. It was the same kind of moon we'd had last night. Narrow and hungry.
I hefted the backpack and tried not to think about that. I had to do what I had to do. Thinking about things like that - it wasn't good. It wasn't good for the plan or for Tess or for me. I kept on walking, new snow crunching under my rubber soles. We'd had lots of snow lately, at least a few feet of it. Blue Water Creek was the size of a small river now. You could toss a stick in that and it would be gone before your eyes could follow it.
Thirty minutes later I reached where I'd told Jed to meet me. He was there. Like he wouldn't be. If I was stupid enough to walk right up to him, he wasn't going to turn me down. He looked up from the struggling bundle of fur he had at his feet. The grin he gave me was colder than the snow under my feet. "Brought you a present, shithead."
Tied to a tree he had a dog. From the smell of the wet fur, it was soaked in paint thinner and Jed was trying to get a lighter to spark. He was trying to catch a dog on fire . . . on fire, just to piss me off before he finished me. That was the kind of sick ass**le he was.
"I like dogs a lot," I said flatly. "I don't like you at all."
Jed had parked his bike on the edge of the swollen Blue Water Creek. I turned and kicked it into the flood. The bike was carried away instantly. That was why the adults told us to stay away from the creek: it was over the banks, it was icy cold, and it could drown you in an instant.
"Whoops," I said cheerfully. "You should've listened when they said stay away from the water."
He growled, "You goddamn son of a bitch. You don't know who you're dealing with, ass**le. I'm going to make you wish you were dead. Hell, I'm going to make you dead." The pale eyes glowed with hatred as he shoved the lighter in his pocket. He picked up a baseball bat that had been hidden in the brush and rushed me, Louisville Slugger swinging. I caught it before it landed, ripped it out of his hands, whirled, and swung for the bleachers. He went down like Ms. Finkelstein on Principal Johnson.