Breaking Rules (10 page)

“I’ll have to admit that I’m guilty,” I said, breaking the short silence. “I’m coming into this interview a little unprepared, so please bear with me. I didn’t have much time for research before we met.”

“And why not?”
He let his head drop a little to the left. He studied me from the corner of his eye, and I felt an instant pang of guilt. I knew I probably shouldn’t have spent two days volunteering for a group I knew very little about, and I thought I sensed that exact same lecture making its way off the tip of his tongue. If he hadn’t smirked just then, I might’ve taken him seriously, but it was clear that he was only teasing.

“You know how it is—so much to do, so little time,” I said, gripping my pen. “So, Mr. Raddick
—”

“Stop right there,” he held his hand up. “It’s Gabe.
Always Gabe. Or Gabriel. Or hey you. Or what’s-your-name, but
never
Mr. Raddick. I’m only twenty-one, Mandy; don’t make me sound like such a stiff.”

“You’re only…
twenty-one?”

“Why does that surprise you?”

Oh, gee, I don’t know. The fact that you don’t quite look twenty-one, the fact that you have a two-year-old charity program, you’re in the military, you’ve been to war. I could probably come up with a hundred more! But then I remembered Jones saying that Gabe had been a senior during his sophomore year, and that would make Gabe two years older than him. Since Jones had graduated high school last year, it made perfect sense that Gabe was twenty-one.

But
how could he have done so much at such a young age?

“I
spent sixteen weeks in OSUT,” he said, answering my question before I had the time to ask it. I had no idea what he meant by that, but I assumed he was referring to his military training. “My unit shipped out to Iraq only two months after I completed my training. Six months out of high school I was already in combat.”

“Wow,” I said
. Then it hit me that Gabe was actually giving me some really good material, so I started scrawling.

“I was deployed for
two months before I returned back to the States,” he said. “My unit remained stationed, but I suffered an injury. I wasn’t in any position to stay.”

“What kind of injury?” I asked, knowing it must
have something to do with his limp.

“Is it imperative to the story?”

“Well, no, I suppose it’s not,” I said, and he nodded.

“
When I got home,” he said, brushing over the details of what happened at war, “I went in for surgery, rehabilitation, and then recovery. That made up for a good six months of my life. It was sometime during that recuperation period that I decided it was time to start focusing on RI. I was getting anxious and impatient. I wanted to get out, get moving again. I told you before that I always planned for the program eventually, but I never imagined I’d get it running so early. The time came, and it had to be done. So I teamed up with Lashell—”

“And how did you two meet?”

“I’ve known her my whole life,” he said, half-laughing. “She was…” He paused and his smile faded. I watched him closely as he searched for the right words, and finally he just shook his head. “She was a mother-figure of sorts.”

“Oh
, wow.” I wondered exactly what he meant by that. “I kinda figured you’d known each other for a while, but for a lifetime? That’s amazing. It’s apparent that she’s very protective of you.”

“She’s great
, huh? She’s always pushing me in the right direction,” he said, and then his smirk widened into a grin. “Anyway, we had the program going for a while, and we were making our mark in a lot of crucial ways. We were getting a lot of media attention, and the exposure was great for RI and the charities we work for. We wanted to keep doing as much as we could, so Lashell pitched the next big idea.”

“And what was that?”

“She wanted to bring the program into the schools. The competition we’re doing here, it’s the foundation’s first go at raising money for local charities through this kind of program. If it’s successful, we plan to keep doing it. If it works out, we’ll pack up and move elsewhere, keep spreading the goodness, you know?”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “You’re not planning to stay in the area?”

“We’ve been around here forever,” he said. “And RI has been here for almost two years. We’ve done just about everything we can in this region. We opened the soup kitchen in Desden, and that was huge. It was a much-needed change for their community, and it’s still going strong. We’ve built new parks and renovated the old ones. We’ve cleaned up the streets; we’ve started food and clothing drives. We’re in the schools now. That’s great because we hope that what we’re doing will make an impression on the students, and that you guys will try to continue the good work long after you’ve left the program.”

“So then what’s the plan?” I asked, no longer focused on writing. All of a sudden, all I could hear him saying was ‘we can’t wait to get out of
here.’

“
Ideally, what we’d like to do is uproot, move, and set up shop in a new community every quarter,” he said. “We’ll try to stay in the schools if we can, but we’ll have to have volunteers everywhere we go. That’s one of the big challenges we face.”

“Oh.”

“Most of the volunteers we have now are minors or putting themselves through college,” he continued. “So it’s just not practical to expect much more than a few months’ commitment. The staffers though, like Lashell and me, will move when the group moves. Of course, we’re primarily local right now, as I said; we’ve only done work in this region, but we’re scheduled for a stop upstate in the spring. And hopefully, in the fall, we can kick off another district competition with schools up there. We’ll see how it goes.”

It was wondrous to hear Gabe talk about the project the way he did
. It meant a lot to him, that much was clear. I really admired that he could speak so passionately about something that he’d given so much of his heart and soul to; knowing how special it was to him, it made it much more special to be a part of the whole program. No matter what our roles were, no matter how big or small, it just gave me this overwhelming feeling to know that I—and everyone I’d teamed up with at school— had been given the opportunity to be a part of it.

I knew it was a great idea for Gabe to uproot and move. He’d made his mark on our town and all of the towns around us. He’d done his part here, and it was only best that he
keep doing whatever he could to help other communities. He wanted to spread the love, and that was amazing. But that meant he had to leave, and for some reason, I had a hard time stomaching that.

Not wanting to give
that questionable feeling of mine another minute of thought, I shook my head and prepared for another question.

“So, you grew up out in Desden, right? Graduated from Desden High School?”
I faked just enough confidence to make it seem like I really knew for sure.

“I did,” he said,
his lower lip quivered slightly with his response. I couldn’t tell if it was the sudden change of subject or the topic of choice, but something had taken him by surprise. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and then tilted his head. “How did you—?”

“I may not know a lot, but I know some things.”

“I thought you said you hadn’t had time to prepare for this interview.” He tried to disguise his discomfort with a forced smile, but I could tell that my simple mention of his high school days put him on edge. “All right, so tell me. How many bad yearbook pictures did you dig up?”

“None,” I assured him, and he actually seemed relieved by that bit of information. “You can relax, Gabe. I’m not sitting on a pile of blackmail over here. I really
didn’t
have time to properly prepare for the interview. I just got to talking about the program the other day with my sister and her boyfriend, and it turns out that he knew you from school; he said you graduated a couple of years ahead of him.”

“Oh yeah?” he asked. “And who is your sister’s boyfriend?”

“Jones Smith,” I said, hoping the name wouldn’t bring back a flood of terrible memories. If Gabe really had been an über-recluse back in the day, Jones—and all of the other people like Jones who thought Gabe was just a loser and a freak—may not have left him with the most pleasant memories. The last thing I wanted was to dredge up anything bad or pour salt in any open wounds.

Gabe seemed to search his memory for a minute, but nothing in his expression changed.
“I vaguely remember the name, but the face isn’t coming to me.”

I nodded once
. I was ready to let it go, but I’d piqued his curiosity. He turned in his chair and watched me a little closer.

“Is that all he said?” he asked. “Just that he knew me?”

“Yeah, for the most part.”

His
lip twitched, and I sensed that he didn’t believe my lie. Still, he let it go.

“So your sister
—”

“What about her?”

I was eager to move past the awkward subject and into safer and more comfortable territory, but I wasn’t so sure how safe the subject of Bailey was for me. Gabe already knew how much her friendship and support meant to me, and I didn’t want to shed any more light on my insecurities with my relationship with her.

“She didn’t want to do the program?”

“Oh, Bailey’s not really the type,” I said. “Which is why I wanted her to do it in the first place.”

“And she’s… how old?”

“Oh, she’s my twin— identical twin, actually. People can rarely tell us apart.”

“That’s cool.”

“And
that
might be a stretch,” I said, stopping him before he got ahead of himself. “I love my sister, I do, please don’t misunderstand. But Bailey and I are the perfect example of why the term
identical
only refers to our physical similarities.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” I assured him. “We both grew up with the same parents, same values, same
everything
, but we couldn’t be less alike. She was never treated any better or any worse than I was, so it’s fair to say that our upbringing was identical, sure. Yet we grew into two, completely different people.”

“How so?”

“Okay, don’t think me immodest, but I like to think I’m a little more grounded and morally sound than she is.” I heard just how self-righteous the words sounded. “Again, let me just say that I love her, I do. But she’s a bit self-absorbed, and she loves men. Loves them. Well, she basically loves anyone who’ll pay attention to her. She thrives off attention. Nothing means more to her than her friends and her schedule, and that couldn’t be further from who I am. And I don’t know, I find it all a little strange. I just think it’s weird how two people who’ve lived the exact same life could turn out so differently.”

“
You know differences aren’t always a bad thing, Mandy.”

“But like I told you
at lunch, we used to be close,” I said. “Naturally, we were inseparable. But things changed, and I don’t know…
Bailey
changed. We just grew apart. Sometimes I think it would’ve been easier if she was older or younger or… maybe even my brother; I don’t know. But she’s my twin sister. We’re supposed to have this undeniable connection, this unbreakable bond, and we just don’t have it.”

Silence got the better of us for a few
, long seconds.

I
’d already said too much. In the past eight hours, I’d let Gabe too close; I’d let him see more than I ever wanted anyone to see. Now he wasn’t saying anything. If I sat there and kept talking, I knew I’d only keep digging that hole deeper, and I’d be lucky if I was ever able to climb out.

“I’m really sorry,” I said, stealing a glance at my watch. “I don’t want to talk about this.” I reached over and flipped the power on the voice recorder. “I should probably get home before it gets any later. It’s …” I let a breath pass slowly through my lips. “It’s a school night, and I have a lot to get done still.”

Though I managed to give him that lame excuse with a straight face, I wasn’t entirely convinced that he’d believed me. Still, he played along.

“Okay, sure,” he said, nodding at my plate. “
Do you want to take that to go?”

“I’m not sure it’s worth saving at this point,” I said, looking down at the sandwich.

Though I’d tried to be persistent and pay my own half of the bill, Gabe insisted on picking up the tab for both of us; I hated that I caved in and let him have his way, especially considering that he was paying for food that I hadn’t even eaten.

When we reached the parking lot, Gabe opened the pass
enger door of his black Corolla and nodded for me to take a seat. Doing my best to get in the car without making any unwanted contact, I settled into the seat and fastened my belt. Just like when he’d taken me home and picked me up earlier, the car was cozy, warm, and it carried the faintest scent of coffee. It smelled like him. He always smelled like coffee. I took a deep breath and grinned.

We rode in silence for a few minutes
, neither of us throwing a glance in the other’s direction. When we pulled up to the driveway, Gabe hustled around to the side to let me out. It was very gentlemanly of him, and I was surprised at how much that gesture impressed me. I always thought of myself as the kind of girl who would hate something cheesy and corny like that, but something about the smile on Gabe’s face as he did those small things seemed so sincere. I think it was the sincerity that I liked more than anything. The gesture itself was only secondary.