Love Over Matter (21 page)

I give a quick prayer for Otto’s
safety and move on. There’s nothing I can do for him now. But maybe
there’s still something I can do for George. “You got anything
yet?” I try calling over my shoulder as I paw through a rolling
cart full of action figures and toy cars. The thought of George
playing with these brings a bittersweet smile to my lips and an
ache to my heart.

Aleks approaches while I’m distracted,
his muffled voice surprising me. “It’s too clean in here,” he says.
I’m not sure if he means clean as in free of dirt and clutter, or
clean as in lacking the proof we’re seeking. Either way, he’s
probably right. “You know of any hiding spots?” he asks. “Secret
chambers or trap doors or anything?”

What does he think this is, a game of
Clue? The temptation to wisecrack is too great. “Like a squeaky
floorboard, you mean?” But then . . . “Oh, wait,” I
say, suddenly remembering. “The closet.”

His shoulders pop into a shrug.
“Checked it already.”

I shake my head, the mask sticky with
breath as it rocks across my face. “The ceiling? You checked the
ceiling?” Once when George and I built a fort in that closet, he
accidentally rammed a broomstick through the ceiling, causing a
tile—and a mysterious wooden doll—to rain down upon us.

I imagine the same glimmer of
excitement in Aleks’s eyes that must be in mine. “C’mon,” he says,
waving me ahead. “I’ll give you a boost.”

The closet isn’t really big enough for
both of us, but we shimmy around George’s possessions anyway, first
our masks rubbing together, then our bodies. I don’t want to feel
the jolt of electricity when we touch, but I do.

Aleks cups his hands between us and
says, “Here.”

I climb the front of him like a cliff,
eventually getting a knee on his shoulder and a hand on his head,
which means that a certain below-the-equator body part of mine is
right in his face. “I don’t know,” I groan, trying to jimmy a
ceiling tile loose. “It doesn’t seem
to . . .”

“
Punch it,” he mutters into
my crotch.

My first jab is too weak and
off-kilter, so I try again. And . . . jackpot! The tile
pops out, allowing me to jam my arm into the ceiling and grope
around. “Um . . .” I say, not feeling anything. His
muscles start to quiver under my weight. “Are you okay?”

“
Fine,” he replies, strain
in his voice.

I sweep my hand back and forth, up and
down. Finally, my fingers hit something. I stretch for it—whatever
it is—rolling it into my grip. “All right,” I gasp, my muscles
turning squiggly too. “Coming down.”

My heel collides with a crate full of
books as I descend, toppling it. Once I’ve landed, Aleks grips my
waist and steadies me. I shoot a glance downward. “The doll,” I
say, dumbfounded. Even through these bug eyes, I recognize the
colorfully painted plaything.

He leans me against the doorframe and
takes the doll, turning it over in his hands. “You know what this
is?” he asks.

“
Uh-uh.”

He pokes a thumb at the doll’s
midsection, magically wiggling it (the doll, not his thumb!) in
half. Inside is another smaller doll, similar to the first.
“Nesting dolls,” he says. He passes the outer doll to me and pries
the inner doll apart, exposing a hollow cavity instead of a third
doll as I’ve come to expect. He tips the bottom half of the doll
toward his hand and out tumbles a wad of rubber-banded
documents.

“
Holy—” I start saying, but
a ruckus downstairs interrupts me. It’s Haley, calling for our
help. Screeching, actually.

Aleks stuffs the bundle back into the
doll and heads for the exit. When we reach the library—and Haley’s
ever-louder shrieking—we’re hit with a bizarre-yet-comical
scene.

From the settee where Aleks and I sat
only yesterday, Mrs. Brooks is struggling—bleary eyed and dopey
looking—to her feet, never quite making it upright before Haley
fogs her with the sleeping gas, my sister teetering on the edge of
a coffee table as if she’s in fear of a mouse. Or a spider. Right
now, though, Haley’s the one who resembles an insect; Mrs. Brooks
just looks drunk.

“
Hey, hey,” Aleks says, his
voice struggling to overcome Haley’s panic as he gestures at the
door. She stops screaming and uses his shoulder as a crutch to
climb down. “We’re done,” he tells us. “Let’s get out of
here.”

And that’s exactly what we
do.

chapter 17

It was a stupid fight. If I’d known
what was going to happen only ninety minutes later, I would’ve
dropped the subject altogether and let him have his way. But, of
course, I couldn’t have predicted the rain-slicked roads, George’s
excessive speed (or so the police claimed, though he’d always
driven responsibly with me in the car), or that final law-breaking
text he’d been compelled to fire my way.

As impossible as it seems now, I was
only in the eighth grade. George was a sophomore in high school.
And he was popular—not in the stuck-up, arrogant way some people
are, but in the natural-center-of-attention way. People were drawn
to him like planets to the sun. The girls, in particular, were
smitten, giving me on more than one occasion fits of wild jealousy
I masked with cold, hard indifference.

On the morning of the accident,
though, I learned I wasn’t the only one pretending not to care.
Because for the first time ever, George had a rival for my
affections: a nice—if somewhat boring—hockey player named José, who
wanted to whisk me away for my first real date. A movie. Dinner. A
romantic stroll. The whole enchilada.

I’d been yammering about the offer for
days, vacillating over whether to accept or decline.

“
You like
him?
” George asked when I
brought up José for the umpteenth time, hoping to resolve the
matter before my hair started graying. We were in my living room,
watching old episodes of
Scooby-Doo
, each of us hogging an end
of the couch, our feet flung carelessly on the coffee table, our
legs intertwining.

I plucked a runaway rainbow
marshmallow from between two cushions and handed the box of Lucky
Charms to George. “He’s nice,” I said.

He thrust his arm into the box and
came out with a colorful mass of cereal. “I guess,” he replied,
popping the whole handful in his mouth at once. He chewed for what
seemed like forever, then cleared his throat. “But he’s
old.”

What a hypocrite. Unlike me, George
had dated plenty. And he’d done so on both ends of the age
spectrum. “Not really,” I said, taking the cereal from him. “He’s
like a few months younger than you, I think.”

“
What’s that got to do with
anything?”

I gave his foot a little kick. “Oh,
nothing. Obviously.”

“
Come on, Cass. Don’t be
like that.”

“
You want some of
this?
” I joked, waving in
the direction of my chest, though there wasn’t much to be had in
that vicinity.

He kicked me back. “Be
serious.”

Why not?
I wanted to ask.
Why not
me and you?
Instead, I said, “Well, I think
he’s cute.”

“
I wouldn’t
know.”

“
Yeah, right. You have no
idea if a boy is good looking?”

Again, the cereal went to him. “I can
tell if they’re ugly,” he admitted, shrugging.

I let out an involuntary groan.
“Please. So now José’s ugly? Just
because . . .”

He must’ve known what I was
about to say:
Because you’re too chicken
to make a move? Because you’re afraid that if you and I don’t work
out you’ll lose me?
“I don’t want you”—he
sighed in a sad, defeated way—“getting hurt.”

What a copout!
my brain squealed, whirling with anger.
You’re
hurting me right now.

The mature thing to do would’ve been
to tell the truth, confess my feelings in a calm, rational manner
and hope he reciprocated. Unfortunately, though, I took the low
road, because it promised to soothe my aching heart.

“
I bet he’d be good for my
first time,” I said lightly, as if I was deciding between sneakers
and high heels instead of contemplating losing my virginity. “He
seems gentle.” In reality, I had no intention of doing anything
sexy with José, regardless of his disposition. But if the idea gave
George the kick in the pants he needed, so be it.

He pulled his legs from
mine and sat up, rod straight. “You’re fourteen for Christ’s sake,”
he spat, rage flashing through his eyes. “Are you nuts? You’re
gonna let
this guy
 . . . ?”

I’d lost track of the
cereal, which explains how I whacked it off the couch when I sprang
to my feet. “Oh, like
you’re
so innocent?” I said, feeling a wave of mixed
emotions: hurt, anger, sadness, regret, wanting.

“
What’s
that
supposed to mean?”

I crossed my arms over my chest.
“Nothing. Whatever.” After a huff, I added, “Everybody knows about
you and Little Miss Goody Two-Shoes.”

“
Huh?” He squinted so
sincerely that I almost believed him.

The girl in question was Amanda Watts,
the daughter of two Milbridge High teachers and a self-styled
priss. I was shocked when George started dating her and blown away
when rumors of their trysts rolled through school like a taunting
thunderstorm. “Amanda,” is all I said, pulling a face that dared
him to argue.

“
What
about
Amanda?” he asked, taking the
bait. They’d broken up six months earlier, maybe more, but he was
still protective of her, the same way he was protective of me. I
hated that most of all, even more than what they’d done
together.

I gnawed at the inside of my cheek to
stop from crying. “Forget it.”

“
You brought it up,” he
countered.

I stood there collecting my thoughts
and steadying my breath. “I’m just saying that whatever I choose to
do in my private life is none of your business. You’ve had your
fun, and I can have mine too.”

“
You’re out of line,” he
told me. “Seriously.” He got on his feet, his jaw
twitching.

“
Well, if I’m so horrible,
why don’t you”—this is the part that stings, because I’m sure it’s
what pushed him over the edge—“why don’t you just leave.” I flailed
my arm through the air. “I mean, it’s not like we
have to
be
friends.”

He stepped backward and crunched the
Lucky Charms box underfoot. As he turned to go, he said, “Call me
when you get it together.”

“
Don’t count on it!” I
yelled after him. Without another word, he strode out of the living
room—and out of my life.

From the bay window, I watched him
disappear across the lawn and into his house. Then I swept up the
cereal, crawled into bed and hugged myself to sleep. A short while
later, the call from the hospital came in.

* * *

I pull back the living room curtains,
terror coursing through my veins. “I think they’re coming,” I tell
Haley and Aleks about the Brookses, although there’s no evidence
beyond my guilty conscience to support such a claim. “Did you get
rid of the masks?” Haley was supposed to schlep the incriminating
things around the block and stuff them in an unsuspecting
neighbor’s garbage can.

“
Check,” my sister says,
giving a peppy salute.

Aleks is lounging on the couch—the
same couch where my relationship with George imploded—the nesting
dolls huddled in a pile, the documents they’ve been protecting
spread across the cushion beside him like a poker hand. “Find
anything interesting?” I ask, having finally worked up the nerve to
abandon my lookout post.

“
Mmm . . .”
he murmurs, his lips absently twisting. He studies a series of
identification cards—driver’s licenses, passports, social security
cards—that appear to have been issued to the Brookses under
multiple aliases. He cherry picks the ones with Mr. Brooks’s image
and fans them out in front of me. “It’s gotta be one of these,” he
says, presumably referring to the identity Mr. Brooks used to
kidnap George—or, well, Anatoly, “unless they destroyed
it.”

Haley flops down on the couch, nearly
launching the nesting dolls for the carpet. She wrenches the cards
from Aleks, flips through them and then pawns them off on
me.

“
What if they call the
cops?” I ask, a New York driver’s license in the name of
Christopher Kent catching my eye. I draw it toward my face for a
closer look, my gaze freezing on Mr. Brooks’s vacant
stare.

Belatedly, Aleks replies, “They won’t
call anyone.”

An unexpected connection between
Christopher Kent and George leaps from the ID to my mind. “Oh my
God,” I say, astonished. “He was the doctor.”

Haley shoots me a confused scowl.
“Huh?”

I toss the other IDs into Aleks’s lap
and blurt, “I’ll be right back.”

It takes me all of thirty seconds to
zoom to my room, yank the memory box out from under my bed and nab
George’s birth certificate. I’m so sure of myself that I don’t even
bother double-checking my theory before racing back to the living
room.