After the Rains (2 page)

One

Bristol, Kansas, one year earlier

T
he halls of Bristol High School were almost empty. Natalie Camfield was frantically trying to remember the combination to her locker when she heard Sara Dever’s voice behind her.

“Having a little trouble here?” There was mischief in Sara’s tone.

“Oh, Sara,” Natalie wailed, “I’m going to be late for English. I can’t get my stupid locker open, and if I don’t have my book, I’ll get detention!” She was near tears.

Sara put a consoling hand on her arm. “Hey, it’ll be okay. How come it’s locked anyway? You never lock this thing.”

“I didn’t. Somebody must’ve been messing with it.”

“Here,” Sara moved Natalie aside and picked up the clunky lock. “Okay, what’s the combination?”

“I can’t remember!”

“Didn’t you write it down somewhere?”

“Sure.” Natalie dipped her head and hid a wry smile. “It’s on my notebook—in my locker.”

Shaking her head and chirping like a solicitous mother, Sara pulled her backpack off her shoulder and unzipped it. She pulled out the needed English textbook and thrust it into Natalie’s hands. “Here, you can use mine. Just be sure I get it back tonight. Hart gave us homework.”

Natalie groaned. The first bell sounded, and she and Sara exchanged gasps and took off in different directions down the hall. “You’re an angel, Sara,” Natalie called over her shoulder. “I mean it. I owe you big time.”

Still running, Sara formed her hands into a circle and held the resulting “halo” over her head. Natalie couldn’t help but think that, with her strawberry-blond cascade of curls bouncing behind her, her friend did,
indeed, look like an angel. Natalie was still smiling when she slipped into an empty seat in the back of the classroom.

“Nice of you to join us, Ms. Camfield,” Dr. Hart said without looking up, inserting his chiding words smoothly into his lecture on proper use of the thesaurus.

The whole class snickered, and Natalie felt her face grow warm. She would have taken it in good humor in any of her other classes, but in this advanced English composition class, she was one of only three juniors among a throng of seniors. Worse yet, this was the one class she had with Jon Dever, who, she noticed, was laughing loudest of all.

She busied herself with getting a pen and notebook from her bag, but she felt very much like the dumb little twit Jon always accused her of being.

She swallowed back a sigh. For as long as she’d known him, Sara Dever’s older brother had made her heart beat in a strange and wonderful rhythm.

Class ended and Jon walked past her with two of his senior friends. She watched him from the corner of her eye as she pretended to be busy with a stubborn zipper on her backpack. But to her surprise, he waited till his buddies were out in the hall, then plopped down in the desk beside her. “Hey, Natalie. What’s up?”

Though she felt like her cheeks were on fire, she tried for an air of indifference. “Hey, Jon. Not much. What are you up to?”

“Oh, the usual … no good.”

The ornery glint that had made her crazy when they were kids still did so, but it was a whole new brand of “crazy” now.

Natalie gave him her most charming smile and slid out of her desk. Students for the next class were just coming into the room. She glanced pointedly at the clock on the back wall. “You’re going to miss the bell.”

“You’ll be late too.”

“I aide for Kroger next hour,” she explained. “She doesn’t care if we show up or not.”

“Must be nice.”

She watched his Adam’s apple slide up and down in his throat, and it struck her that Jon Dever actually seemed nervous.
What can he possibly be nervous about?

The bell blared in the hallway. “Oh, man! I gotta run,” he said. “But hey”—he put his head down and rubbed his thumb hard along the spine of his English book—“um, are you going to the homecoming dance with anybody?”

Natalie shook her head. “No, why?”
Camfield, you idiot. He’s asking you out!

“Just … wondered. I … I might call you tonight.” He looked at his watch. “Oh, shoot! I am so dead!” Without another word, he raced down the hall.

She stared after him.

There was a God in heaven! Jon Dever was actually going to call her—tonight!

The rest of the afternoon dragged like a dull movie played in slow motion. Natalie was quiet at supper that night, her stomach in knots. At the other end of the big oak table in the kitchen, her sisters were singing and laughing at their own pitiful rendition of a new TV commercial. While she kept one ear tuned to the telephone, her parents were trying, over the clamor, to discuss the schedule at her father’s veterinary clinic.

Finally Cole Hunter had apparently had enough. “Girls! Nicole, Noelle, please! That is just plain rude,” he chided. “We can’t even think with all the racket you’re making, let alone hear one another speak.”

“Sorry, Daddy,” Nicole said.

He smiled his acceptance of her apology. “You guys can sing all you want while you do the dishes, but your mom and I are trying to carry on an intelligent conversation over here, and you’re cramping our style.”

Nicole and Noelle groaned at the reminder that it was their turn to do the dishes.

“Hey, speaking of intelligent conversations,” Nicole announced, “I’m
expecting an important phone call tonight, so everybody stay off the phone.”

“No way,” Natalie broke in. “I’m expecting a call too.”

“Well, okay, but be sure and answer call waiting if it goes off.”

Natalie affected a courtly bow. “Yes, Your Majesty. Who’s calling you that’s so important anyway?”

“My date for homecoming.”

“Oh?” Mom jumped into the conversation now. “I didn’t know you’d been invited? Who is it?”

“Well, I haven’t actually been invited yet. But he’s supposed to call tonight.”

“And who is this mysterious ‘he’ anyway?” Daddy asked.

“Jon,” she replied.

Natalie jerked her head up, and her heart started pounding.

“Jon Dever? Really? How nice,” Mom said, clasping her hands in front of her. “I’m surprised Maribeth didn’t say something about it.” Maribeth Dever, Jon’s mother, was Daria Hunter’s best friend.

“It’s not like it’s that big of a deal, Mom. It’s just a school dance,” Nicole said.

“It’s homecoming, Nikki,” Mom said. “That’s a pretty big deal. And I think it’s great that you’re going with Jon. He’s such a nice guy. Who are you doubling with?”

Nicole looked at Natalie. “Um …”

Daddy cleared his throat. “You know the rule, Nikki. Only group dates until you’re sixteen.”

“Daddy! C’mon! It’s only Jon. You guys have known him forever. He’s a saint.”

“Sorry.” He was unmoved.

Nicole rolled her eyes and grumbled under her breath, but it was obvious she knew better than to argue. “Just don’t worry about it,” she finally told them. “We’re working something out.”

Natalie pushed her chair back from the table. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Maybe Nicole was mistaken.

The shrill ring of the telephone added to her confusion.

Nicole pounced on the phone as if it were the last cookie in the jar. She checked the caller ID display, then, smiling, picked up the cordless phone from the desk in the kitchen.

“Hello,” she purred, taking the phone into the living room. Natalie excused herself from the table and went to the desk. She picked up the newspaper and pretended to be engrossed in “Dear Abby,” while she strained to hear Nicole’s end of the conversation.

Relief washed over Natalie when her sister came back into the kitchen holding the telephone out to her. She took it. “Hello,” Natalie said, suddenly a bundle of nerves. She carried the phone into the living room, and when Nicole followed her she waved her away and went into the bathroom, locking the door behind her.

“Hi, Nattie,” Jon said. “Did Nikki tell you why I called?”

“No-o-o-o.” It suddenly hit her that maybe Jon had actually been afraid to ask her out. Maybe he had tried to find out from Nicole what his chances were. Her hopes soared.

“She didn’t tell you?” Jon asked again. Then without waiting for a reply he said, “Well, here’s the deal. I asked Nikki to go to the homecoming dance with me, but she said your dad has some stupid rule that it has to be a double date. So what we were wondering is if you’d go with Evan Greenway and we could double. Evan really wants to go with you …” His voice had lost its steam.

Natalie felt as though someone had just punched her in the stomach.

“Evan—” She couldn’t get another word to form over the lump in her throat.

“He’s in our English class. You know, the kid that sits—”

“I know who Evan Greenway is. What? He couldn’t call me himself?” She prayed Jon wouldn’t hear the tremor in her voice.

“It’s not that. C’mon, Natalie. He’ll call you. He just—well, he wanted me to feel you out first. He was afraid you’d turn him down—”

“I’ll have to think about it, Jon.” She pushed the button to end the call and sank down to the floor with her back against the bathtub. She put her head on her knees, and the tears that had been threatening spilled over now.

There was a soft knock at the door. “Natalie, are you off the phone yet?” Nicole’s voice was all sweetness.

Natalie swallowed hard. “Hang on,” she shouted through the bathroom door, struggling to keep her tone from betraying her emotions.

That traitor. How could she do this to me? She knows that I have a crush on Jon
. Natalie had let it slip once last summer during a rare heart-to-heart. She and Nicole had never really been close. It was always Nikki and Noelle. Noelle and Nikki. Her sisters were only a year apart in age, and until recently everywhere they went they’d been mistaken for twins. But over the last year Nicole had blossomed into a striking beauty, while Noelle, an eighth grader, was still in that awkward, gangly stage of adolescence. Now that Natalie and Nicole were in high school together, it could have been a time when they grew closer. Instead, having Nicole in the same school had created a whole new set of problems. Suddenly it seemed she was in furious competition with her sister—both at home and at school—over everything from clothes, to the use of the car, to grades.

But Nicole had hit a new low this time.

Natalie pulled herself up from the bathroom floor and looked at her face in the mirror. Her eyes and nose were red and ugly, her usually clear skin was puffy and mottled. Rubbing the tears from her cheeks, she turned on the faucet and splashed cold water on her face. She pulled a rumpled towel from the bar and scrubbed her face dry. Taking a deep breath, she opened the door.

Nicole was standing in the hallway, waiting for her with a desperately hopeful grin plastered on her face. She looked at Natalie and did a double take. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Good grief! Can’t a person have a minute of privacy in this house?” Natalie lashed out. “What do you want?”

Nicole took a step back, searching her face. Then she said in a syrupy voice, “Will you do it, Nattie? Please. Evan really likes you.”

Natalie stared at her. “I can’t believe you’re asking this.”

Nicole stared back “What? What are you talking about?”

“Oh, please. You know exactly what I’m talking about.” She turned her back on her sister and started for her room.

Nicole grabbed her arm. “What? I don’t know what you mean.”

“You knew I liked Jon.”

Nicole had the audacity to look shocked. “Nattie, you still like him? But that was … so long ago. Honest, I had no idea you still had a crush on him.”

“Yeah, right.”

“I didn’t. I promise you. That was way back last summer, and you’ve never said another word—”

“Whatever.”

“Nattie, please! I didn’t know. Honest.” She suddenly became preoccupied with a loose button on her blouse. “But … well, the truth is, I like him too. And he likes me back.” Nicole looked up at her, pleading now. “C’mon, Nattie, I’m begging you. You know Dad won’t let me go if you don’t go with us.”

“It doesn’t have to be me. Can’t you get one of your little freshman friends to go with you?”

“Natalie. Come on. I promise, I’ll do anything. You can wear my K-State sweatshirt anytime you want. You don’t even have to wash it. I’ll take your turn at dishes for a week—two weeks. Please. You’ve got to do this. I’ve been wanting Jon to ask me out half my life. You can’t blow this for me.”

The thoughts that assaulted Natalie’s mind were definitely not ones she would be sharing in Sunday school class next Sunday morning. It was news to her that Nicole had wanted Jon to ask her out for “half her life.” If that was true, why hadn’t she said anything when Natalie made her confession last summer?

Turning her back on her sister, she mumbled, “I’ll have to think about it.” She went upstairs to her room and slammed the door behind her.

Two

T
he sun reflected off the asphalt in the church parking lot. Twelve-year-old Natalie listened as Daddy invited the new family to have lunch with them
.

Sara, the new girl, eyed Natalie cautiously, while her brother leaned against the family’s car with an air of indifference. Jon Dever was cute, no doubt about it, but Natalie had no intention of letting him know she thought so
.