Kiss Me If You Dare (10 page)

“How do they expect to finish on time?” I asked. “They’re behind us already—and we’ll barely make it at the rate we’re going.” Thank goodness Portia’s schedule and determination kept Team B on track.

“I wonder what’s up with Gwen. She carries a 4.0 GPA. This isn’t like her.” Portia moved to the next window for a peek inside. “Sure takes the fun out of winning if there isn’t anyone hot on your heels.”

I followed. “The professor did a pretty poor job of putting the teams together. All the best workers are on our team.”

Portia dropped her hands. “You changed your tune since that first day. What happened to ‘half of us don’t have legs and the other half don’t have arms’?”

I looked to the boards that covered the porch. Mold grew between the splitting seams. “I guess I learned my lesson about judging everybody by operational body parts.”

Portia pointed to her temple. “We’ve got it where it counts . . . up here. We’re going to win because we’re working smarter.”

I peered through the window. “I’d say it’s probably more that we’re working harder. At least we’re working.”

A squeak of the porch steps sounded behind us.

“Can I help you ladies with something?”

We whirled. I gave a startled scream. Portia landed in a defensive karate pose.

“Simon,” I exclaimed, relaxing and laughing it off. “You scared us.”

His birthmark was a faded purple along one side of his face. Dark plum last week, lavender today. Was it my imagination, or had it changed color like a mood ring?

“Now who’s spying?” he asked.

Portia stepped toward him. “We’re worried about you guys. It looks like you haven’t even started. What’s going on?”

He put a foot on the porch rail, leaning into it. “Everything’s under control.”

“Whatever you’re doing, keep it up.” Portia smiled in my direction. “Looks like Team B has the Covenant Award clinched.”

Simon shrugged. “It’s all yours. Don’t expect anything out of Team A. Bunch of whiners.” He flicked his hand. “What’s her name, Gwen, she’s having a panic attack. Things weren’t going perfect so she quit showing up. Some leader, huh? And Maize. There’s a doozy. She can’t stay on task for more than ten minutes, then she’s off starting something else. And that Dagger kid.” He shook his head. “Who enrolled him? He’s a hard enough worker, but I’m not sure he knows the time of day.”

Portia’s jaw twitched back and forth. “Well? What about you? I don’t see you in there making progress.”

“I’m a professional student. I’m just here so I don’t have to face life out there.” His head jerked toward Del Gloria proper.

“If you were professional, you’d do a better job faking that you wanted to be here,” Portia said. “How’d you get into DGC, anyway?”

A happy-go-lucky smile. “I’m doing the professor a favor.” Simon looked me straight in the eye, his crooked grin full of hidden meaning.

I drew in a sharp breath.

Simon’s gaze traveled to Portia. “The prof needed another person to round out the class and make even teams.”

I sighed in relief.

A quick goodbye, and we cut across the grass at a brisk pace, hoping to catch the bus.

“I don’t trust that guy,” Portia commented as we turned the corner. “Gwen’s apartment is only one building down from mine. I’ll go over tonight and see what’s going on.” I huffed to keep up. “I’ll see Denton tonight and make sure he’s got the scoop.”

The bus pulled around the far corner, heading toward the bus stop.

“Hurry!” I ran ahead of Portia.

Celia was already loaded when we sprinted up the steps and swiped our transit passes through the scanner.

Still laughing from our race, Portia and I piled into seats next to Koby.

“I didn’t think we’d make it.” I gasped for air.

“No problem,” Portia said. “I love running to catch a bus. It beats the old days, when I was running to dodge a bullet.”

I looked at her, shocked. “You’re kidding, right?”

She shook her head. “Dead serious.”

“Who was shooting at you?”

“Which time?” she asked.

I gulped. “Oh, my. Where were you before you came here?”

“Can’t tell you where I was.” She looked off toward the horizon. “Too many people would love to see me dead.” She glanced at me. “But I can tell you what I was.”

I nodded, silent.

She stared up at the ceiling, her body rocking with the motion of the bus. “Started out as a prostitute.” She held up her tiny fingers. “Got a lot of the weirdos. Then I got recruited by the cops for a sting operation. The whole thing flopped. Nothing like running naked through the streets while getting shot at by the cops, your pimp, and your john.”

My hands did a nervous twiddle in my lap. I cleared my throat. “So how did you end up at Del Gloria?”

“I ran into a church, buck naked. Hid out behind some curtains until the coast was clear, but the cleaning woman spotted me.” Portia’s eyes misted. “Instead of screaming at me and condemning me and calling the cops, she wrapped me in a towel from her supply cart and drove me to the pastor’s house. They gave me food and clothes, then talked to me and prayed with me. By the time I left, I knew Jesus. It’s like he’d been waiting for me to run into that church that day. Later, the pastor gave me a referral to the college, and here I am.” Her voice dropped off as she stared at some point in space.

Then she held my gaze, conscious again. “The truth will set you free. I believe that, Alisha.”

She reached out and touched me. I pulled away.

“Hey,” she said in a gentle voice. “We’re your team. Why don’t you tell us what you’ve got going on in your life? Level with us. You’ll feel better.”

Koby stared with seeming disinterest out the window. Celia watched me with curious eyes.

I gave a big sigh. Level with them. I couldn’t do that. Too much was at stake. My identity had to be kept secret until the man responsible for my mother’s death and my father’s exile was behind bars. I planned to be alive when it came time to marry Brad. And that meant the lie had to continue for now.

The bus jerked as it took the corner.

I looked my teammates square in the eyes and got ready to tell a whopper. “I got in a fight with my, ummm . . .” Parents? Boyfriend? Husband? I opted for “. . . landlord, and he kicked me out. Uncle Denton is letting me live with him until things die down.”

The three of them stayed quiet as if waiting for more details.

I shrugged. “That’s all there is to it. End of story.”

The bus slowed and pulled up to the main stop on campus.

“See you tomorrow,” I said with a smile and wave as I escaped to my next class. My heart pounded in my ears. That had been too close. Farther down the sidewalk, I thumped the heel of my hand to my forehead. As if anyone believed that lame story.

I wasn’t cut out for a double life.

12

That night I made my way to the parlor to corner Denton like I’d promised. I lingered at the threshold a moment, my book tucked under one arm, hesitant to interrupt his ritual quiet time.

The professor relaxed on the settee. Blue cotton jammy bottoms poked out beneath a fastidious white terry robe. The man seemed so content with life. There he sat, reading the evening news, sipping a cup of steaming tea, surrounded by fine possessions in a beautifully renovated home.

I sighed with envy. How could he maintain such order on a daily basis when my life was one perpetual tailspin? He looked up. “Alisha.” His voice smiled though his face remained passive. “Make yourself at home.”

“Thanks.” I took a velvet-upholstered chair across from him.

“What’s on your mind tonight?” He closed his paper, rolling it and placing it on the sofa.

“I know you said there was no changing your mind about the teams in the Revamp Program. But,” I put out a hand to keep him from interrupting me, “something has gone really wrong with Team A and I want you to be aware of it.”

At his blank look, I told him the results of our spy mission.

“. . . so I really think you need to reconsider the whole competition thing, or at least get some teamwork going over there.”

I thought I saw a gleam in his eye, like he was laughing at the situation.

“It’s out of my hands,” he said. “This is a senior level program. I will not hand-feed adults who have the capacity to solve their own problems. This is part of the test, Alisha. If they don’t pass here, they’ll probably fail in the real world too. Let’s hope they figure out how to put pride behind them and get to work.”

His answer was a little too coldhearted for me. I had to speak up. “I’m not sure you really understand the scope of the project or what has to go into each of these renovations. It’s hard labor and requires forethought, planning, and teamwork. Lots and lots of teamwork.” My finger pointed in emphasis.

“Look around you.” He glanced at the coved ceiling, the curved staircase, the moldings, the fireplace, the sparkling hardwood floor. “Don’t tell me I don’t know the scope of the project. I did this work myself.”

Before my eyes, the professor morphed from a spoiled only child to a contributing member of society. “Wow. I’m impressed. How long did it take?”

His eyes followed the arch of the ceiling. “I’ve been at it on and off for about thirty-five years.”

I straightened. “What about the exterior? Everything’s done but that. Maybe once we’ve finished on Rios Buena Suerta, we can come here and get that done—”

“No.”

The sharp word cut me off.

The professor leaned back and sighed. “Each aspect of this home is done as a reward for accomplishing a goal in some other area of my life. I haven’t yet succeeded in the particular facet that would allow for an exterior restoration.”

“Oh. What would you have to do for that?” I asked.

“It’s personal.” His tone put an end to the line of questioning. Denton seemed more touchy than usual tonight. I ignored his attitude. “Hmmm. I wonder why Brad never mentioned you renovated homes?”

He picked up his newspaper and snapped it straight. “I’m not sure Brad knew.”

Following his example, I flipped my legs up on my chair and opened my book. “Hope you don’t mind. I borrowed your copy of
The Count of Monte Cristo
.” “Not at all. Excellent story,” he said, “if you don’t mind witnessing mankind at his lowest.”

The next morning, I woke up feeling like a bag of cement had been dropped on my head. No sleep last night, just crazy dreams interspersed with tossing and turning. When I first arrived in Del Gloria, I’d had my prescription painkillers to help me rest. But now, with only the over-the-counter variety, I barely got a wink.

The alarm hadn’t gone off yet, but I got up anyway, showered, and dressed. Then I did what Dr. Vandenberg suggested: I wrote down everything I’d done since the day of the accident. I tried to be as complete as possible, challenging myself to remember all I’d experienced.

I scanned my work. Memory loss, phooey. I recalled every detail since the moment I impacted the back end of that minivan.

In the lonely stretch between Salt Lake City and Sacramento, Denton had elaborated on the stress-induced memory loss theory the doctor in Minneapolis had proposed. “Tell me about your childhood. What things do you remember?” Professor Braddock’s voice blended with the soothing hum of the tires.

I glanced at him. His comic Einstein-wear had me wondering how Brad could think so highly of him. “I had a great childhood. Right up until my mom died.”

“What great things do you remember?”

I kept it vague. “Oh, I don’t know. We’d visit my grandparents on weekends and in the summer. That was always nice.”

“Always?”

I scrunched my brows together, picking up a memory of a picnic here, a trip to the beach there. “Yeah. Pretty much.”

“What bad things do you remember?”

I gave a shrug to hide the emotion crashing over me. “I remember my mom dying. I remember her funeral.”

“Before that?”

“Nothing. It was all good.”

The professor kept his eyes on the road. “It’s never all good, Patricia.”

“It was for me.”

He cleared his throat. “Sometimes, in cases of child abuse, sexual molestation, or other traumatic situations, people lose the ability to recall specific events. If the circumstances are bad enough, people can forget entire years of their lives.” He looked at me.

“That’s awful.”

“Actually, it’s merciful.” He pointed to the front of his head. “Our memories are kept up here, in the hippocampus. During times of stress, our bodies produce a hormone called
cortisol
. God designed the chemical to help us deal with danger—the fight-or-flight response. But when too much cortisol is present in our brains, it damages the connection between our memories and their recall buttons. The memory is still available, we just can’t access it.”

At that point, we’d been in the car too many hours. I could barely follow his logic.

He kept talking. “Sometimes it’s good that we can’t recall something too horrible to deal with at the time. But the problem occurs when stress becomes our normal state of mind. The hormone is released inappropriately. After a while, our thinking becomes muddled. We forget the simplest things, like where we parked our car and what item we’d gone into a room to retrieve. We forget useful and happy memories along with the bad ones.”

Now, perched on the edge of the bed, I tapped my pen against the journal. Professor Braddock had gotten my attention with the muddled-thinking comment. Maybe my brain was overproducing cortisol. And that’s why I would sometimes forget stuff from day to day. Like Brad sharing his most intimate thoughts with me. Five minutes later I’d wonder if he even cared I was alive. Or when I’d make up my mind to be grateful in any circumstance. Five minutes later I’d wonder if God even cared I was alive. If living like that annoyed me so much, I could only imagine how Brad and God felt about living with me.

My pen retraced some words on the page. Denton implied that I’d been reacting to life by continually pressing some internal panic button that kept the cortisol flowing. It became my body’s defense mechanism to cope with situations my mind couldn’t handle, basically a selfinduced memory block that allowed me to get through a rough stretch without having to deal with the actual events, because in essence, I’d forgotten them. But at the same time, I’d forgotten a lot of the good stuff too.