On Fire (11 page)

That was the first visit. It turned out they had to go again, so Jackson could talk to Dr. Taggert alone. At first Jackson thought that was a dirty trick, but then he wondered if he’d said or done something wrong during the
session with his mom present that had triggered the request for a private chat. It pissed him off because the appointment was scheduled during a scrimmage he and his best friend, Danny, had set up.

His mom drove him again but this time she stayed in the waiting room, head bowed over her e-reader. Dr. Taggert just chitchatted with him forever, about his hobbies, his interests, his life, which made him even more freaked out, and then the dude started talking about being adopted.

He told Jackson that different adopted kids felt differently about being adopted. For some, it was a heart-wrenching loss, a wound that never healed. For others, it was no big deal. They were philosophical about it and just moved on with their lives.

Jackson figured that philosophical was the way to go. Only wimps sat around and cried about their lot in life.

Others kicked ass on the field.

“So how do you feel about being adopted, Jackson?” Dr. Taggert had asked him.

“I’ve got nothing,” Jackson had replied. “I don’t think about it.”

Dr. Taggert unwrapped a peppermint and popped it into his mouth. He had an amazing amount of candy in his office. Not an apple or a banana in sight.

“Everybody thinks about it at least a little bit. How about you, Jackson? What are you thinking right now?”

Jackson had looked blankly at Dr. Taggert, then glanced at his wall of diplomas.

I’m thinking that I’m not telling some guy who went to a
bunch of state schools anything,
Jackson had silently replied. Even though it completely weirded him out that his parents had decided to send him to a psychologist, he was insulted that they’d gone so low rent. That was not the Whittemore way. It was the best for the best.

“I’m fine. I’m good,” Jackson had said aloud.

“That’s really great,” Dr. Taggert had replied. “That’s great to hear, Jackson. Because . . . sometimes little questions or small concerns that we have about issues in our lives can start to grow. Like weeds. They can manifest in different ways, affecting our grades, athletic performance . . .” He’d looked at Jackson. “You’re on your way to high school, and we want to start out on a level playing field, yes?”

And in that moment, Jackson realized the reason he was there. His parents wanted to make sure he did well in high school. “Excellence” was the Whittemore family motto, and this was their insurance policy to keep things excellent. What, hadn’t he been performing at capacity? Was there something he’d messed up on? He tried to think through everything he’d done in the last year. Middle school was history, and he’d gotten straight A’s. Captained his youth division summer lacrosse team, hung out, read
To Kill a Mockingbird
for freshman English, stuff like that.

He felt a tightening in his stomach, the same way he felt when someone scored a point off him. Or he missed some really obvious answers on a test.

He was here because his parents didn’t want him to screw up. Which meant that they thought he
might
screw up. He stared at Dr. Taggert’s big glass bowl of peppermints like
it was a crystal ball and he could see his future. There was no way he was going to screw up
anything
. He had everything under total control.

He grabbed a peppermint to have something to do. Fill the silence. But he didn’t unwrap it. He just held it in his palm.

“Jackson?” Dr. Taggert had queried. “Is there something you’d like to say?”

Why don’t my parents just set three hundred dollars on fire and be done with it?
Jackson had thought.
If that’s what this is about, it’s a total waste.

“It’s all good,” he’d told the shrink.

•  •  •

But now, in the woods, he was turned around. The marks on the back of his neck were bugging him and he put his hand over them as he stopped and looked up at the treetops. Who could tell one tree from another?

Where the hell am I?
he thought. He looked down at his superexpensive smartphone and swore at it. All that money and he still had crappy reception. They really needed to get more cell towers in Beacon Hills. Maybe his text hadn’t gone through. If she’d texted back, he hadn’t gotten it.

Maybe she’s punishing me for not showing last night,
he thought. It wasn’t as if it was their first night alone in his house or anything. His parents traveled a lot. And
she
had done the same thing more than once—found something to pout about and stayed home. It wasn’t as if they had to seize the moment on those few and far occasions when there
were moments to be had. They had lots of moments. Great ones, if he did say so himself.

And I could be home right now having another one, if I hadn’t fallen for this total scam.

Still, the guy in the picture looked like they could be related. Maybe like father and son.

Maybe Gramm had had something to sell. Maybe Jackson’s alarm bells had gone off because there was some predator in the forest. Where there was one mountain lion, there could be two.

Or something else altogether.

“Hey?” Jackson called. “Gramm?”

He ran his flashlight over the trees as he waited for an answer. He didn’t know how far he’d run. It felt as if he’d been going in a circle.

The beam of his light landed on something poking out of a tree trunk. It looked too straight to be a branch.

He walked up and squinted at it. Long, straight, wood. It was an arrow. Curious, he tried to pull it out. By the looks of the wood around the hole it had made, it was fresh.

Is someone doing archery around here?
he wondered. Then a feeling of icy dread squeezed his heart.
Are they shooting at me?

He heard a funny little screech, like something that should be scary, only wasn’t because it was too soft and high pitched. It was definitely an animal, and it sounded like it was on the ground.

Giving the arrow another anxious glance, he ran his flashlight beam over the ground. There was still a little daylight out, but the trees grew so closely together that
they blocked out the setting sun. He kept thinking about Gramm, wondering if he’d made a mistake to walk away.

Yeah, right. First he makes me spend the night in a trashy motel and then he meets me in the middle of a forest. If he’s really got something for me, he knows how to find me. And I’m setting the terms of when and where we meet.

Gramm had caught Jackson in a weak moment. He hadn’t thought about being adopted in, like, forever. Until Scott McCall started showing some skills on the field and Jackson got to wondering about his own physicality. Did he run as fast as he did because of his father? Was there anything he should know about himself, like did people in his family have trick ankles, or—

This is a bunch of crap,
he thought. Things like that would
never
have occurred to him, except that his parents took him to see that fraud, Dr. Taggert, back when he was younger and more impressionable.

He heard the screech again and looked back down at the ground. Bushes ahead and to the right shifted and jittered, and Jackson slowly crept up on them. The screech sounded again.

“It’s just some stupid animal,” he said aloud, but when he reached the bushes, he cautiously pushed them this way and that, inspecting them.

Two black eyes peered up at him. Startled, he jumped back slightly, then crept back toward it to have another look. It was a baby bird, a hawk, by its look. It gazed directly up at him and screeched again.

Jackson studied it. Maybe it had hurt itself and couldn’t fly
away. Or it had fallen out of its nest and was too young to fly. Had the mama bird abandoned it?

Then it opened its wings as far as it could, hemmed in as it was by the bushes. Jackson reached in and broke off some of the branches on the right. The bird made a terrible racket and fluttered its wings.

“Hold on. I’m helping you,” he said.

Maybe he should leave it. Maybe this way nature’s way. If there was something wrong with it, somebody higher on the food chain should have a crack at it, right?

Pursing his lips, he broke off some branches on the left side of the bird. The bird tried to peck him and he chuckled at its ferocity.

“You want me just to leave you?” he asked it.

“Hey,” said a voice behind him. Jackson turned.

S
tanding behind Jackson was a striking girl with blond hair about his age, wearing a lot of kohl around her golden brown eyes. She wore a silver jacket with a fuzzy hood and a pair of jeans. He didn’t recognize her, which meant that if she went to his school, she was beneath his notice.

“Hey,” he replied. He gestured with his head toward the tree. “Is that your arrow?”

She jerked, probably looking as startled as he had when he’d seen it. She moved away from the tree, toward him.

“No. Is someone doing archery?” She swiveled around. “Are we going to get, like, shot?”

“I don’t know. Hey, do you know how to get out of here?” he asked. “I’m in the parking lot.”

“Yeah, sure,” she said. “What are you doing?”

“Come look,” he invited.

She minced toward him. He caught himself touching the wounds on the back of his neck with his right hand as he held back the branches with his left. The bird started going completely psycho. “I think it’s trapped.”

She was wearing the same Vera Wang perfume Lydia wore. Pricey. “Oh, it’s a hawk,” she said. “A predator.”

It sounded like a strange thing to say. She took a couple of steps back, and the bird seemed to calm down the merest little bit. Jackson was about to leave it so he could get back to the parking lot and find Lydia, when the bird screeched again and he looked down at it.

“It thinks you’re its daddy,” she said, grinning at him.

“Well, I’m not.” He watched the bird bobbing its head up and down, up and down, like some kind of cartoon. Squatting down, he broke away more branches, half expecting it to take off. It kept bobbing and screeching, and the girl looked upward.

“Mama’s not coming,” she said. “It’s probably hungry.”

“Do you go to Beacon Hills?” Jackson asked her.

Her lips curved upward in a little grin. She shook her head. “But I’m here with some people. I can take you to the lot and then I should get back. I’ll be missed.”

Jackson looked down at the hawk. Stupidly, he was concerned about it.

“You said it might be hungry,” he ventured. “These things eat meat, right?”

“Yes, so unless you have a dead mouse on you, there’s not much you can do for it.” She shifted her weight. “I kind of have to make this quick.”

“What’s your name?” he asked her.

“Cassie. You?”

“Jackson.” He realized he was waiting to see if she recognized his name. But she’d already said she didn’t go to Beacon Hills.

“Hold on a sec,” he said.

Jackson yanked out more of the undergrowth on either side of the excited bird, really going for it. The bird flapped its wings and took off, aiming straight for Jackson’s head. Jackson cried out and flopped onto his back, and the bird curved upward, soaring into the trees. Cassie burst out laughing and Jackson did, too. It was just so crazy after a horrible, crazy twenty-four hours.

“Here, let me help you up,” she said, reaching out a hand. He took it. Her grip was amazingly strong. He pushed himself to his feet and suddenly he was standing facing her. She was tall, but not as tall as he was.

She had a funny look on her face, like she was about to say something but wasn’t sure if she should. He couldn’t read it and he surreptitiously checked his nose for souvenirs by pretending to cough and ran his tongue along his teeth. Everything was fine. But he didn’t need to be so careful. She hadn’t even noticed. She was looking at the ground, and Jackson looked down, too, half expecting to find another baby bird or something at her feet. But there was nothing.

“I don’t want to keep you,” he said, hinting. She was pretty, but he had a life to get back to.

She went very still, almost not moving. Something was up with her, but he didn’t know what it was. And he didn’t have time to find out. He’d already done his good deed for the day.

“You said you were in a hurry,” he reminded her.

She inhaled a deep breath and held it. Then she let it out slowly. “Yeah. Come on.”

“Oh. Do you have a phone?” he asked. “Mine isn’t
working. Which is ironic, because it’s a very expensive phone.”

“I’m sure it is,” she replied. That confused him. He had no idea what she meant by that, so he just waited for her answer. “I don’t have a phone, actually,” she said. But her face went red, and he knew she was lying. Maybe it was a cheap one, and she was embarrassed to let him use it.