Breaking Beautiful (26 page)

And I couldn’t afford to make him mad by telling him his truck was leaking oil.

I lean forward to look for the other shoe, but it isn’t in the bushes. I stand up and look around the woods, forcing myself to remember again.

Running, breath coming in gasps, claws grabbing my legs, tearing at my skirt.

I walk farther down the path that leads away from where I parked. I find a snag of red fabric on one of the vines. The claws were blackberry vines, roots, low bushes. I know who I was running from. What was I running to?

A white shirt, coated in blood. Too big to be mine, too small to be Trip’s.

Blake’s face floods my mind again. Was he here?

The rumble of a truck coming closer startles me. There are a million trails in these woods. That truck could be going anywhere, but I don’t want to risk being caught here. I start back to the clearing. The sound fades and then cuts out.

A big boulder on the edge of the path stops me. I run my finger over the sharp edge, then trace the scar on the back of my head. Did I fall against a rock like this? Did Trip make me fall against it? If he did, how did I end up in the truck?

A branch cracks, then footsteps. I stop, but all I hear is my own breathing. I look around. A clearing in the clouds, something white on the path ahead of me. My stomach lurches.

I blink and realize two things: the spot ahead of me is real, not in my mind, and it’s gray, not white. Tall, dark-haired, thin. Even with his back to me, I know who it is. He’s blocking the path back to Dad’s truck, and it’s too late to run from James.

In a quick motion I throw the shoe into the woods. The sound of crackling branches when it lands causes James to turn around. I walk toward him, quick but casual, like I don’t care if he sees me here.

“What are you doing here, Allie?” he demands. He’s wearing his football jersey, gray with white numbers on the front.

“I could ask you the same thing.” I try to keep my voice even.

“I asked first.” He crosses his arms and moves so he takes up the entire pathway.

I decide to go for the widow-in-mourning approach. “I came here to think. I was missing Trip. He used to bring me here.”

He shakes his head. “Don’t give me that bull. I saw you in the parking lot with Juvie this morning, attached to his face. You came here looking for something.”

I make my face blank. “What would I be looking for?”

“It’s not here. I already looked.”

“What’s not here?” For the first time I think that James might know something about Trip’s accident that I don’t.

“The present he was going to give you for your birthday. He bragged about it all night. He didn’t tell me what it was, but it must have been worth a lot. Enough for you to kill him for it.” His eyes narrow at me. “I know you sold all of his other stuff at that pawnshop in Hoquiam. You only wanted him for his money.”

“You’ve been following me!” The pieces click into place—the guy standing in the shadows, the guy who followed me to the pawnshop, it was James. “Why?”

“Mr. Phillips made it worth my while.” He leans back against a tree, bold, bragging, like Trip. “But I would have done it anyway. I’ve been waiting for you to slip up so I can see justice done.”

I think about the way James turned his back when Trip hit me. The way he wouldn’t look me in the eye after that. I glare at him. “Since when do you care about justice? You didn’t try to stop Trip when he—” I bite my tongue to keep from finishing that sentence.

“Go ahead, Allie. Say it. Tell everyone what Trip did to you. It just makes you look more guilty. It’s on the news all the time. Women who kill the guys who beat them up.”

I push past him and head toward Dad’s truck.

“Keep running, Allie. Keep pretending everything is fine. It doesn’t make any difference. Sooner or later you’ll screw up and then we’ll all know how Trip died. I’m watching you.”

Chapter
36

“Where do you want this set up?” I jump as Kasey’s voice brings me back to the clipboard in my hand. She sets down the box of tablecloths for the refreshment table. She’s been unbelievably nice about the whole thing with Blake. She asked Marshall Yates to the dance after Blake turned her down.

I force myself back to the map that’s page three of my notes. “Left corner. The long tables need to be set up at right angles, with the little round ones in front.”

“Got it, boss.” She picks up the tablecloths again and heads for the corner.

I can’t believe I’m here directing traffic as we set up for the dance. After what happened with James, I prefer to be in a crowd, safe from his prying eyes. But being here feels surreal, like everyone’s reality is disconnected from my reality, like I’m watching myself stumble around with everyone else, playing normal, while inside my mind everything is falling apart.

No one else feels it. Andrew is in the corner with Marshall, programming lighting sequences in his computer to go with the music. Randall and Blake are hanging Blake’s paintings over the frames. Angie is draping fishnets and lights over the basketball hoops.

Even Hannah is here with her own clipboard in the corner of the room, pretending to supervise. Except for the missing scrapbook, the police didn’t find any evidence that Hannah’s room was broken into. Ever since then I’ve seen Hannah alone more and more. In the girls’ bathroom yesterday I actually heard Megan say that she thought Hannah had put the notes in my locker just to be mean.

“You okay?” Blake whispers, and kisses me on the cheek.

“Fine.” I look down at my notes and grip the clipboard harder. “Just trying to keep everything straight.”

“You’re doing great.” He crosses the room to help Randall with another frame.

“This is really coming together.” Ms. Flores steps beside me. “This could be
the
best dance this town has ever seen.” She glances at Hannah and leans closer to me. “Better even than cotillion.” She leans over and gives me a sideways hug. “You’ve done a great job.”

I shake my head. “Not me, I just—”

“No, you really worked your butt off. Organized everything. Kept everyone on budget.” She looks down at me and smiles. “Don’t belittle what you’ve done, Allie.”

I glance down at the papers in front of me, the map and a spreadsheet/check-off list for everything. Something that Andrew made for me on the computer, but with notes and information I gave him. Did I really do all of this?

Blake and Randall carry the last frame through the doors, sweating and grunting. “That will teach you to use metal,” Angie calls from her perch below the basketball hoop.

“Watch it or I’ll take your ladder,” Randall says. She makes a face at him.

“So has Blake told you the good news?” Ms. Flores asks.

“No.” I shake my head. “What good news?”

“You haven’t told her,” she yells across the room to Blake.

“Yeah, Blake,” Angie yells, “why haven’t you told her?”

Blake turns red and drops his end of the metal frame. It almost lands on Randall’s foot. Randall swears but tries to cover it with a cough when Ms. Flores shoots him a look.

“Now is as good a time as any for the announcement.” Ms. Flores crosses the room. She has a smudge of blue paint across the back of her skirt. She takes the microphone from Marshall. “Is this on?” She taps the end while Marshall turns up the volume. Blake is inching back behind the pole he was holding on to. “Thank you all for your hard work. I knew you guys could pull this dance together and make it the best in the school’s history.” She pauses while Randall and Marshall start whooping. “I’d like to take a minute to thank Blake and Allie.” Everyone applauds. I reach for the stone in my pocket as my face burns. “I would also like to recognize Blake for the beautiful artwork he has spent so many hours creating just for this dance.” She pauses and looks fondly at Blake. “I couldn’t bear to have his paintings just rolled up and stored away after tomorrow night, so I showed them to members of the city council. The city is going to buy them. They’ll be displayed in various public buildings around town.”

The gym erupts in cheering. I walk over and wrap Blake up in a hug. Randall is shouting “Wo, wo, wo, wo,” and beating his fist in the air. Andrew sends crowd-cheering sound effects over the sound board. Angie nearly falls off the ladder because she stands up and screams. Only Hannah stays still, hugging her clipboard to her chest and looking all alone.

.........

Everyone else has cleared out. Only me, Blake, and a janitor are left in the building, and the janitor is nowhere to be seen. I slide onto the floor beside the stage, exhausted. Blake finishes plugging in a couple of cords and slides onto the floor next to me.

“You missed one.” I point to one canvas sail that’s still tied up at the top of the frame.

“That’s my surprise.” His voice is full of anticipation; my stomach flip-flops, a mixture of excitement and dread. What if I don’t have the reaction he’s expecting? “You wanna see how everything looks?” He walks over and dims the lights, flips on the wind machine, and then pushes a couple of buttons on Andrew’s computer. Blue and green lights play across Blake’s paintings and they billow like sails in the breeze.

He climbs up the ladder, slices through the rope that’s holding it up with his pocketknife, and the last sail unfurls. I stand up and walk over to get a better look. It’s a woman, standing at the edge of the cliff, watching the waves. She’s wearing an old-fashioned dress and her hair is almost covered by a gray scarf. The locks that aren’t trapped are gold blond and blow in the wind. She’s clutching a cross at her chest and the bright spot in
the picture is a ship on the horizon. The woman is smiling—joy and relief written in her eyes.

She has my face.

“I call it
Hope
.” He climbs down the ladder and wraps his arm around my waist. “I looked at so many pictures from Pacific Cliffs where the people looked hopeless—widows waiting for their husbands to come home from the sea, the loggers after the mill closed, the dock workers when the port moved south. I wanted to show that Pacific Cliffs was more than businesses shutting down and people dying in storms. I wanted to show hope.” I turn around to face him. He traces the scar over my eye. “When I started to paint her, I knew she had to have your face.”

I look away, beyond the painting, and think about what everyone at school will say when they see it at the dance. A painting like that will give them more ammunition to use against me and Blake, probably forever. I can see Hannah George rolling her eyes. “
Hope
? With her? Can you imagine anything more stupid?” And what is James going to say? What is James going to do?

“It’s cheesy. I know”—the breathless excitement is gone from his voice, like his sails have lost their wind—“but it will be dark at the dance, and no will be able to—”

“I love it.” I wrap my arms around his neck. None of those people matter, not Hannah George, not James. Not even Trip. Only Blake. Only us.

He smiles and blue-green light dances across his eyes and makes them bluer and greener. “Well, since we’re being cheesy anyway, would you like to have one dance with just us, before everyone else comes tomorrow?”

I smile and nod. He walks over and types something into Andrew’s computer. A slow, sappy love song floats through the speakers, not one of the songs Trip put on the iPod, not even the one about a summer love. Something new, just for us.

I lean into his arms and snuggle into the place between his neck and shoulder where my head fits so well. I breathe him in—paint and dust and sandalwood and almonds—all the smells that remind me of his grandma’s attic, and him.

We’re barely moving, leaning into each other, breathing together, my forehead against his cheek, his hand tracing little circles on my back. After a few minutes he pulls back and looks into my eyes, clears his throat, swallows, clears it again. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to”—he breathes in—“something I’ve been meaning to tell you.”

My heart beats wildly, afraid of what he’s going to say. Afraid of what he might confess. I want to tell him to stop, but I can’t speak.

He breathes again. “Allie, I—”

“Are you kids still here?” I jump back as the janitor flips on the lights. We both turn red. “I’m not getting overtime tonight, especially not to babysit a couple of hormone-crazed teenagers. You two get on home, or up to the cliff—somewhere I don’t have to be in charge of you.” He waves us away.

“Sorry,” Blake whispers. I have to stifle a nervous laugh.

We’re almost to his car when Blake checks his pockets and swears. “I left my knife and Andrew’s computer in the gym.” He hands me the keys to his car. “I’ll be right back.”

I don’t want him to leave me alone, but I nod. As soon as he walks away, the wind goes cold. Icy chills circle the scar on the
back of my head. It’s more exposed because of my short hair. I glance around the parking lot and clutch my arms around my chest. My sweatshirt is gone. It feels so good to wear short sleeves again, that even though it’s February, I’m not wearing a jacket. I get into Blake’s car and lock the doors. It takes a couple of tries to get the engine started. The blast of air that comes from the dash is as cold as the wind outside, so I turn the heater off.

I glance around me and see someone standing between the school and the Dumpster. His face is in shadow, but I’m sure it’s James. I should go say something to him, tell him to leave me alone, but I’m afraid. He makes sure I see him before he steps back behind the building.

I reach for my tigereye, but it’s gone. My fingers dig through my pocket, desperately searching, but it isn’t there. I search the seat and the floor of the car, but the stone is gone. I must have dropped it in the gym when we were setting everything up.

I have to find it.

I open the door and start to get out with one eye on the Dumpster. “Whoa, where are you going?” Blake blocks the door with his hand so it doesn’t hit him.

“I left something inside, I have to—”

“It’s locked and I didn’t see the janitor’s truck. I couldn’t get in to get Andrew’s computer or my knife. Is it something you need for the dance?”