The A-Word (16 page)

“You don’t cook,” Mom said.

“Sure I do.”

“He makes breakfast tacos,” I said. “Remember?”

I figured Mom would lecture us some more, but all she
said was, “No, but I guess we both need to have faith in your brother. Y’all call me when it’s ready. Close the door on your way out, please.”

We left her with the Housewife ladies hollering. They were an excitable bunch. I figured I’d let Casey put his money where his mouth was about the cooking and hole up in my room to call Ryan—but we hadn’t even made it to the kitchen when the front bell rang.

There was Amber Velasco in her EMT outfit, hands on hips.

“What the hell have you two been up to?” She pushed by me into the house, slamming the door behind her.

“Hello to you, too,” Casey said.

“You recover from that hangover?” I asked, and she gave me the stink eye. I supposed I deserved it. A little.

“Bo told you?” Casey asked, shaking his head.

Amber’s blue eyes flashed darker, a flush rising fast and deep in her cheeks. “You had no right,” she said.

“But—” I began.

“No.” Amber held up her hand. “What happened to me is my business. Not yours. I’m going to say this once, and I don’t want to say it again. I’m dead. I’m an angel. Nothing is going to change that. You’re wasting your time.”

“We’re just being proactive,” my brother whispered, glancing back toward my mother’s bedroom door. “Better than sitting around and—”

“Leave it be,” Amber said tightly. “Finding this out isn’t gonna make you a hero, if that’s what you two think. Leave. It. Be.”

The front door opened again.

Bo Shivers strode in. I almost smiled. I should have expected it.

He was wearing black slacks and a grey button-down. His
hair was ruffled just the right amount at the neck. His nails looked buffed and his wrist and hand scars looked faded, which was confusing because scars don’t change like that overnight. At least on regular people. He smelled manly—not like Axe, but something muskier.

“Looks like I almost missed the party,” he said.

Silence.

And what do you know? At this moment, Mom chose to leave reality TV, rise from her mental decline over my father’s potential and current abandonment, and join us. There we were: Mom, the angel brigade, and me.

Mom nodded at Amber. She’d long ago accepted that this EMT chick wandered in and out of our house like she lived here.
Was
Casey keeping Mom a tiny bit forgetful still, to ease the weirdness of our lives? Without asking or consulting me or in any way discussing whether this was fair or right? But Mom’s lips turned in a scowl at Bo.

“I’m Bo Shivers.” He held out his hand. “Jenna’s new history teacher at Spring Creek. My policy is to conduct home visits for my most promising students. I know it’s unconventional, but I find that meeting my students’ parents puts everyone on even ground. Those Open House nights are so rushed and impersonal, don’t you think?”

My mouth gaped. Casey frowned. Amber glared.

Mom smiled. She shook hands with Bo. “Well,” she said. “I only wish my son could have had you his freshman year.”

“I would have loved to teach Casey,” Bo announced, smiling broadly. “Perhaps I still can before he graduates. You never know. The public school system is a curious thing.” He handed her a bottle of red wine. Where had
that
come from?

“You shouldn’t have!” Mom exclaimed.

I turned to Casey and Amber. Casey was gaping now, too. But Amber was gazing down at the floor.

I eyeballed Casey, who frowned at Bo, who grinned at my mother, who smiled at Casey, who frowned more deeply, this time at Amber, who briefly gnawed her lower lip.

“So what’s for dinner?” I asked when none of us had said anything for a few long beats. “Chicken?”

CASEY BEGAN BANGING around in the kitchen. Bo offered to help cook the meal (somehow out of our limited pantry offerings, he whipped up some sort of tangy sauce), punctuated by a lot of smiling and inappropriately flirty talk with my mom. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw our patio fire pit light up in flames even though there were no logs or matches out there that I knew of.

Casey excused himself from the cooking process at which point Amber snapped, “I’ve got to work a shift tonight.” She gestured to her EMT outfit. “Sorry I’ll have to miss the chicken. And the wine.” She stomped out.

“Excuse me,” I said to Bo and Mom. “I’ll be right back. And maybe you should go easy on that wine.”

Bo raised a brow, eyes watching darkly.

I ran down the driveway past what I assumed was Bo’s vehicle—a beat-up white Ford 210 pickup that both did and didn’t surprise me as his choice of transportation—and caught up with Amber just as the Camaro’s engine caught and revved.

“Wait,” I said.

“Gotta go, Jenna. I have to work.”

I spit it right out there. “Are you afraid of Bo?”

Amber’s hand was on the gear shift. “I’m late,” she said.

“They’ll be short one if I don’t show up.”

“Y’all are keeping stuff from me.” All of a sudden, I wasn’t letting any of it go. “Y’all are scared.”

She shoved the car in gear, told me to back up, and started moving—not fast, but still covering ground.

“I dreamt about you and Bo!” I shouted.

This made her press the brake and look at me more closely, but her hands stayed on the wheel. “Dreams are just dreams, Jenna.”

I wanted to think she was right.

“What’s wrong with knowing what happened to you?” I asked her. “Wouldn’t it better?”

“No,” Amber said.

She breathed in, pressing a finger to the hollow of her throat like she was checking her pulse. I saw then that she was no longer wearing Terry’s necklace. This time when she told me to back up, I didn’t argue. I just stood in the middle of the street, shining unnaturally in the light from the Gilroys’ fake graveyard, and let her drive away.

When I heard the sound of an engine, I figured it was Amber coming back.

Instead, a dark-colored sedan careened around the corner, tires screeching. It didn’t slow down. I sidestepped back up the driveway, but the car angled onto our lawn, hitting the grass so hard that the earth shook. It was coming right toward me. I stumbled, tripping over my feet, my arms pin-wheeling as I tried to run, tried to right myself, tried to do something other than get squashed like a bug in front of my own house.

The last clear thought I had was this: Ryan Sloboda had asked me to Homecoming and the Bonfire, and I had picked out a dress. But that was all I’d get. The universe had no plans for me to actually enjoy these things.

Bo Shivers reached me even before Casey. It was Bo’s arms around me and Bo who lifted and tossed me like I weighed nothing. I landed somehow gentle as a feather on our lawn. My entire body felt warm and calm, blissful. The sedan careened away, trenching the grass and knocking over the
SULLY ANDERSON
fake tombstone, then sped off down the street.

My breath froze, my insides no longer euphoric. My brother threw himself at me.

“Jennajennajenna,” he said over and over, his hands checking me for injury, but I knew I was fine.

“Get off me,” I grunted. “I can’t breathe.”

“Get off her, Casey,” Bo commanded.

He did.

Mom appeared in the doorway.

“Go on back inside, Mrs. Samuels,” Bo called.

She did.

When I heard the roar of an engine again, my heart went crazy. But it was Amber, screeching up and running toward me without even shutting off the car.

“Jenna!” she shouted, her voice panicky-sounding, making me think of my dream.

“Did you see the car?” my brother asked sharply.

She hadn’t.

Then why was she here again? Welcome back, Spidey sense.

“She’s your responsibility,” Amber snapped at my brother.

“I’m fine,” I said, trying not to panic.

Had someone tried to run me down? Was it a prank? Dr. Renfroe? For the first time ever, my brain admitted that I worried about him like that.

And then they were all arguing at once, their glows on a
permanent simmer—about what was significant and if this was something to worry about and were they keeping secrets from each other? Bo was looking into the air like he was scouting for fighter drones or birds and eventually I left them to it because it had been about me, but it wasn’t now. I wasn’t squashed. I was alive, like Mom. Hell, I was even hungry.

That sounds small and selfish and maybe it was. But once again, NOTHING was happening, not even after something HUGE. It was like when my teachers all gave me ridiculous amounts of homework, and I hauled it all home in my backpack and then let it sit and hauled it back to school mostly not done. Sometimes things are so big that it’s hard to break them down.

But oh how they all liked to hear themselves talk. Maybe if you’re trapped being good because you’re an angel, it wears on you. It sure was wearing on me.

M
om went back to bed before she even had a chance to eat dinner. Her cheeks bright red and a silly grin on her lips, she blamed it on the wine Bo had plied her with.

Maybe it was the wine. It didn’t really matter. Bo Shivers did not want my Mom around for our little discussion about the mysterious hit-and-run attempt. And Bo Shivers tended to get his way.

Here is what Casey and Amber pondered: Was it a random drunk? Was it someone we knew? Was I in danger?

Maybe that was the real reason Bo was teaching at Spring Creek High. To keep an eye me. Given what had just almost happened to me, he was doing a shit job of it.

The only thing I knew for sure? Bo was a good cook. He had not lied about that.

Amber did leave again then—insisting she really did have to work her shift, which I decided to believe since why else
walk around in public wearing that butt ugly EMT getup? We were no more in the know than we had been when she’d stormed out earlier.

“Stick by Bo and your brother,” she told me before she went.

“ ’Cause that’s helping.”

“Things are what they are,” she said. Which I guess was her way of reminding me to stay out of her business.

I watched from the window as she walked to the Camaro, stopping first to pick up and reposition the
SULLY ANDERSON
tombstone on the Gilroys’ lawn. Then I stormed up to my own bedroom. When I turned the corner, Bo was waiting for me at the top of the stairs.

“Jesus!” I said, heart clattering.

“Hardly.”

I narrowed my eyes.

“Your mom’s TV’s on loud,” he said, as though that explained his stalker ways.

He rubbed a thumb over his chin. “Guarded a French chef once upon a time,” he said, eyebrows waggling.

It took me a few seconds. “Like
guardian angel
guard?” I made a cheesy halo over my head with my fingers.

“Just like.”

“You telling me the truth?”

“Would I lie to you, Jenna?” To his credit, he smiled. I didn’t respond—obviously—and then he added, “Guarded a poet once. He drank more than I did, and the women …” he drifted off there, probably because my eyes got wide. “Then there was that famous inventor’s wife. Really, she was the brains. But history doesn’t always get it right now, does it?”

I frowned. “What inventor?”

Bo’s lips pursed. “Guy named Gutenberg. Arrogant
bastard. History’s filled with arrogant bastards, actually.” He grinned again, teeth white and sparkly.

Was he kidding me? The printing press guy? I let it hang there because how could I tell if any of it had happened?

I started to walk around him then, because I could make up my own stories.

Out of the blue, he said, “You’re a good daughter,” which was possibly true but didn’t make me any less pissed off at him. “It’s a good thing to be. Most people do things only because they expect something in return. Another favor. Riches. The reward of Heaven.” He raised his eyes to the low ceiling, pressing his hands together like he was praying.

I rolled my eyes.

“Even for people they love,” he went on. “But that’s not you, Jenna Samuels. I think you’d do whatever it takes. No matter what.”

I could have told him he was full of shit.

Instead I asked for the second time, “You lost someone, didn’t you?” I felt it rolling off him somehow, this unbearable sadness. I thought of that lady in the painting I glimpsed on the wall near his bed. Was this the reason he liked to leap off balconies? Not that he wanted to move on so much as nothing mattered, because there was no one who cared if he was reckless.

My question hovered between us.

“Be careful what you wish for, little girl,” Bo said. “Secrets are secrets for a reason.”

Maybe it was his tone. “Screw you,” I told him, turning back down the stairs. “You’re not my friend and you sure as hell aren’t my history teacher. I’m gonna check on my mom.”

“I thought you might,” Bo called after me.

When I burst into Mom’s room, fists clenched at my sides,
she was watching the local news. A reporter lady was standing outside the Med Center talking about how the Prime Minister of Jordan and some other heads of state—from places like Luxembourg and Bulgaria—were all coming here now for their annual physicals. And some sheik from Dubai was at MD Anderson getting cancer treatments he couldn’t get back home. Doing wonders for the Houston economy.