Sacred (19 page)

As Connell grumblingly did her bidding, Mrs. B continued, “Now, this play pokes vicious fun of the social strata and sabotages that existed in Victorian England. There were the haves and the have-nots, and layers of rules—both spoken and unspoken—that dictated how everything was to be done. Not that different from modern-day high school, I’d wager.”

Some noises of assent from the class.

“Browse the cast of characters and see if any of them appeal to you. Casting will begin next week.”

As Connell slapped a playbook on my desk, he hissed at me, “You’d better talk to Andy. He’s a wreck.” Then he sneered at Will and said “Not cool” before he moved on.

Clearly, the circle of students around my desk heard him, and no one looked confused. I hated being the object of gossip, but even more, I hated the thought of letting these bullies and leeches have the upper hand—so I scooted my desk closer to Will’s and said, in my best stage voice, “I hear the relationship between Cecily and Algernon is pretty steamy. Want to read those parts with me?”

“Whatever you say.” Will’s voice was liquid.

I heard the papery whispering of the gossip vultures kick into high gear. Good.

I’d be like Oscar Wilde. Fabulously myself.

ELEVEN

B
y the end of November, Andy seemed to have given up. He’d tried flowers, endless phone calls, even sending various friends to plead his case on his behalf. (“Come on, Red Hot,” begged Connell. “What’s the Jew got that Andy doesn’t have, only better?”) The best thing to come of the whole situation was that Andy did end up paying Lily’s dry-cleaning bill—most likely as a peace offering to me.

But as the month wore on, his attempts waned slowly, finally ceasing for a good three days before I spied Kaitlyn Meyers perched like a milk-drunk kitten on his lap in the cafeteria.

Andy’s eyes followed me as if attempting to gauge how much this turn of events bothered me. The answer was not at all—though I did hope for Kaitlyn’s sake that Andy had learned his lesson the night of the Halloween party. I sent her a text that night, fairly certain how it would be received, suggesting that she might want to be careful with Andy.
She texted back almost instantly—
Mind your own business, Scarlett
.

And my business was plenty to keep me busy. Alice, impressed by my work with Traveler, had recruited me to help with his further training, and he and I had progressed to tentative work in the arena under saddle. Tryouts for
The Importance of Being Earnest
had just ended, and I’d been thrilled to see my name next to the part of Cecily Cardew, and Will’s just underneath, next to Algernon.

The day the casting list went up, a Wednesday, Will and I disappeared into the library as soon as we’d finished our lunch. Outside, the day was wet and gray, too chilly for lounging under our elm tree. We sat across from each other in our chairs by the window, thumbing through our playbooks and highlighting our lines.

“We’ve got a lot of scenes together,” Will said. “What do you think about a weekend rehearsal?”

I tried to maintain an air of casualness. “That should be okay.”

Will set aside his script and leaned across, running his fingers lightly across my knee. Even through the denim of my jeans, I felt the jolt that always accompanied his touch. He looked at me, his thick lashes framing his green eyes, and suggested, “You could come out to my house for an afternoon—are you busy on Saturday?”

Will’s house. I grinned. “I’m not busy,” I said. “I’d love to.”

He smiled back. “You can meet my dad. He’s been asking me to bring you by so he can get a good look at you—whatever that means.”

A shiver of anticipation went through me. Will wanted me to meet his dad. And his dad wanted to meet me!

“I’ve never met a rabbi before,” I confessed. “Should I wear something special?”

Will laughed out loud.

The librarian gave him a stern look, and Will flashed her his best contrite expression, which seemed to appease her.

“He’s not really that kind of a rabbi,” Will said, after the librarian had returned to whatever it is school librarians do. “We’re not Orthodox, and Dad hasn’t led a service in years, since before he began at Yale.”

“Oh. Why not?”

Will shrugged. “Maybe you can get him to tell you,” he suggested. “He’s never been very clear with me on the issue.”

“I don’t think I’ll be asking him any real intrusive questions the very first time we meet,” I said. “I’ll just stick with ‘How are you?’ ”

Will laughed again, more quietly this time, and removed his hand from my leg. I sighed. Without the slight pressure of his touch, my knee felt as if something was missing, as if I’d been altered, just from the brief stroke of his hand, and my knee would be yearning from this moment forward for the return of his touch.

More and more of me was starting to feel this way—my left hand, which he routinely held as we walked together across campus; my cheek, where his hand had brushed one afternoon under our tree, in a caress so gentle yet so searing that I’d forgotten to breathe.

But no kiss.

I wanted to ask him what the holdup was; it was going on three weeks that we’d been—what were we? A couple? Boyfriend and girlfriend?—and he hadn’t so much as tried to kiss me.

Andy had kissed me on our very first date. In fact, the whole date had felt like a lead-up to the moment when he practically lunged at me on the front porch, his mouth eager and pressing, his hands even then inching away from the relative safe zone of my back up toward my bra line.

So what was wrong with Will? Did he have something against kissing? Was it my breath? What was the deal?

But as comfortable as I was around Will, I wasn’t about to ask him any of these questions. I resolved to be patient and wait.

Meanwhile, I had a lot to occupy my mind. There was the test on
The Great Gatsby
, the French midterm, miles of trails to explore with Delilah … If Will didn’t want to kiss me, for whatever reason he might have, I certainly wasn’t going to live or die by it.

“So did he kiss you yet?” Lily hissed at me after school, as Will headed for the bus that would take him back across the hill to the Isthmus.

I shook my head miserably. “Nothing,” I complained. “Not even a peck.” He
had
kissed me once, that day by the beach … but that was before our relationship had shifted. And it wasn’t the kind of kiss I yearned for.

Lily, always a friend, immersed herself wholeheartedly in the problem. “Maybe it has something to do with his
religion,” she suggested. “Maybe he’s, like, saving kissing for marriage.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. But if he doesn’t kiss me by Saturday, I’m getting in the driver’s seat.”

The rest of the week came and went, and though Will leaned in close to murmur “See you tomorrow” before he climbed on the bus after school on Friday, there was no kiss.

I had arranged for Alice to give me a lift over to the Isthmus after the stable on Saturday afternoon, so I packed heavily for the day, knowing I wouldn’t make it home before dark. I took a change of clothes for after my work with the horses, my script, some snacks, and my silver water canister.

I was shoving it all into my backpack at the kitchen table when I heard my mother pad into the room behind me.

“Hey, Mom,” I said, tugging on the backpack’s zipper. “I’m heading out, okay?”

She didn’t answer. I blew my hair out of my face and turned to see if she had heard me. She was looking out the kitchen window, over the sink, her glance somewhere very far away. Her light brown hair was lank, unbrushed. She was wearing a white cotton nightgown and these ridiculous fuzzy pink slippers that Ronny had given her a few Christmases ago. They had little bunny faces on the toes.

Her skin was an unearthly pale; it occurred to me that I didn’t know how long it had been since the last time she’d stepped outside.

“Mom?” I asked. She blinked.

Abandoning my backpack on the table, I walked across the kitchen toward her. “Are you okay?”

She turned her head toward me and looked in my direction, but I don’t know what she saw—if she saw me at all, or if she didn’t focus enough to know that I was even in the same room.

Two things happened then: Alice pulled into the driveway, honking her usual double blast to let me know she had arrived, and Daddy thumped up the stairs and into the kitchen.

“Olivia!” he said, his voice full of forced cheer. “You’re up!” He walked over to her and pressed his cheek against hers.

I looked away. The moment seemed personal, intimate in a way that made me feel like an intruder.

I grabbed my backpack from the table. “I’ll be home late,” I called over my shoulder as I headed out. “I’m running lines this afternoon with a friend from Drama.”

There was no answer, and as I rounded the corner into the hallway, I couldn’t stop myself from looking back at them. My father had his arms wrapped around my mother’s waist, though her arms hung at her sides, and they were rocking, slowly, from side to side, as if to a tune only they could hear.

It was a good day with the horses. I ran Delilah hard, the pounding of her hooves on the trail matching my quickened heartbeat. I wasn’t one of those super-shy teenagers who didn’t know how to talk to adults, so there was no reason meeting Rabbi Cohen should have made me nervous.

But it did.

Alice let me use her office to change my clothes, and she smiled at me when I emerged. I’d changed into my only
non-jean pants, a pair of dark green cords, and I wore a soft gray cashmere V-neck over a white tank. I’d thrown in the tank at the last moment, not wanting to expose too much skin in front of a holy man.

“You look awfully nice,” Alice said, turning over the engine of her truck.

“Thanks.”

“This Cohen boy … is he someone special?”

I remembered what Will had confided in me—the strange hooklike pull he felt toward locations where violent crimes were about to be committed, his compulsion to step in and stop them from happening.

“You could say that,” I demurred.

“Well, is he special to
you
?”

Alice did her best to sound casual, but she didn’t fool me, not for a minute.

“Yes, Alice,” I said. “He’s special to me. I like him a lot.”

She was practically humming now. “Is that why you’re wearing lip gloss?”

“Is it too much?” I flipped down the visor and examined my face.

“No, Scarlett, it’s nice. Not too much. Relax!”

“It’s just that I’m meeting his dad today,” I confessed.

Alice whistled. “Meeting the parents.”

“Just the dad,” I corrected. “Will’s mom is … she died.”

“I see.” Alice was quiet for a moment before she continued. “Well, maybe you and Will can help each other with that … with your losses. I’ll bet he understands how you must be feeling better than almost anyone else.”

I nodded, staring out the window. “We haven’t talked about it much,” I told her. “But I think Will understands my problems.”

We pulled into the village and Alice slowed her truck to a crawl. Turning onto one of the few neighborhood streets, we looked together for the right house: 38 Olive Lane.

There it was. Plain brown shingles covered the face of it, and a climbing shrub of some kind laced through the brown picket fence.

When we pulled to a stop in front of the house, the door opened and Will stepped out.

Alice laughed. “That boy’s got it bad,” she said. “He was waiting for you.”

My stomach was doing that thing again. “Thanks for the lift, Alice.”

“How are you getting home?” she asked me as I climbed down from the cab.

“Lily’s mom is going to be over on this side of the island having dinner with some friends,” I said. “She’s going to swing by and pick me up around eight.”

“Okay. Have fun!” With a wave, Alice stepped on the gas and disappeared up the street.

Will came through the little gate and greeted me on the sidewalk with a smile. “You’re here.” He took my backpack from my shoulder and slung it over his own. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll give you the tour.”

Inside, their little house reminded me of a storybook cottage. It was kind of a mess, but in a nice way. There were books everywhere—filling bookshelves that lined every wall
in the small front room, piled on the coffee table and the end tables, strewn over the brown leather ottoman, even one perched atop a lamp.

This was definitely a man’s house. Both the couch and the oversized chair were made of the same leather as the ottoman, and all looked well used. There were candles here and there, but they looked sturdy and practical, not of the scented variety.

Atop the fireplace mantel, more books were piled precariously. There was a framed picture there too, of three people, all with wide smiles. The one in the center was Will, a slightly younger Will. The woman had to be his mother: her eyes were his same shocking shade of green. Her hair fell to her shoulders in dark brown waves, and her wide smile was warm and lovely. The man standing on Will’s other side had his arm thrown across Will’s shoulder. He was grinning through an impossibly unruly dark brown beard, and all three of them looked incredibly happy.