The A-Word (28 page)

Lanie Phelps had dumped my brother and Terry McClain had done worse to Amber. Bo had chosen angel-dom over love. My father had run off to Olivia-land. It was a long list of crappy, that much was for sure.

How did you ever figure out if a person you loved was the right person? One who would stick with you no matter what? Was Ryan that type? I decided to believe he was. But I knew there were no guarantees.

Still, we had gone undercover and solved at least some of the mystery.

“We’re like gonzo journalists,” I informed Bo. (I had looked up that Hunter Thompson fellow to make sure Bo wasn’t joking and referring to
The Muppets
.) “But without the LSD,” I added.

LATER, AS WE hiked to the Merc, which Amber was going to drive home for me, Amber scrolled the news on her phone. There was a breaking announcement that at least five heads of state had suddenly cancelled their appointments to come for checkups at the Houston Med Center. City Council was bemoaning the loss of income since that meant their entourages weren’t coming either.

I frowned. “Did someone tell them something fishy was going on?”

Bo looked at the sky and didn’t answer.

Then he trained his gaze, inky and inscrutable, on Amber. “You should have let me drop him,” he said. But there was no heat in his voice.

She didn’t respond and he didn’t push it—surely a first. But then Bo pulled me aside. Mags and Ryan were already climbing into the backseat. Amber slid into the driver’s seat, fit the key into the ignition. I followed Bo a few cars down, still half expecting Terry McClain to pop his head out of the smashed-up Texicon building.

“Jenna,” Bo said. His face was solemn, but his voice was gentle. “You need to understand. You prevented a terrible crime from being committed. And by doing that, you may have just staved off a Battle to Come. For now, anyway. I hope for a long time. But you’re in the show, Jenna. Whether you want to be or not.”

“I’m just fifteen,” I told him, pulse going erratic then steadying.

“In my day,” he said, “That was old enough.”

My sizeable and colorful vocabulary aside, I had no words. Was he telling the truth? Was it possible that I—the girl who didn’t even have a learner’s permit—had some fancy destiny in store? Like my brother becoming an angel so he could help me and the world, this seemed a rather cockeyed turn of events. And if I had a destiny, what did that say about free will and chaos theory and why Lanie Phelps was still alive and kicking? It made my head hurt.

There was only one person I could truly trust to tell me straight, even if he did it in his own crazy roundabout manner. But he was gone.

Was Casey watching me from
somewhere
, hoping for the best?

If he was, I still didn’t know how to respond to Bo’s predictions. I did not think I was particularly special.

So I said instead, “Why has Amber been so afraid of you? Does it have to do with why you didn’t want her to know what happened to her?”

He looked at me hard, in that way he had the first time we met, that way that felt like he was mining to my soul.

“Some things people have to come to on their own,” he said. “They have to be ready.” I reckoned he was very right about that.

Over in the Merc, one of them—Mags probably—honked the horn. A thought floated: Ryan was still my boyfriend. He had helped save me and I had helped save him. That was good.

Bo tilted his head, then looked at me straight on. “Sometimes I do things that make sense at the time. I told her if she didn’t stop your brother and you from meddling, that Management would pull her. She’s more fragile than you think. There are still things you don’t know. Not everyone is like you, Jenna. Not everyone has your strength.”

I gave him the stink eye. “You angels sure lie a lot,” I said.

“We’re an imperfect bunch. Like I told you, I think it lets us do our job. But the outcome of humanity? That we don’t manipulate. Not ever.”

Was that the truth? I had no idea.

We studied each other some more, Bo Shivers and I, and then he said, “I do believe you helped avert the apocalypse, Ms. Samuels. I think that’s enough for one day.”

He started to drop his gaze, but I had one more question.

“Could Casey come back still?” I asked.

He didn’t answer.

I took that as a maybe.

F
riday came and went. The coaches let Ryan play at the game, half of one quarter only, but Spring Creek ended up losing by a touchdown, which was a disappointment to everyone. But it was only one game. We still had a winning record. There was always next week.

Also, Ryan brought me one of those fake mums. It was huge and gaudy and covered with little boxes of candy and trinkets and in the middle of the mum, he’d hot-glued a plastic angel.

“Seriously?” I asked him, blushing.

He grinned in that way that made my heart do handstands in my chest.

On Saturday, as planned, Ryan and I went to the Homecoming Dance. I wore my new blue-sequined high-low dress, which honestly, looked mighty fine. In a nice turn of events, Billy Compton the alto sax player and Maggie had mutually decided that they should go together. Maggie said she’d been sure he was waffling around it and she was waffling
around it, and finally Thursday night after being present for my near-death experience and learning that the universe had been cooking up some strange situations while most humans were looking the other way, she called Billy and said they should ask each other at the same time. Which they did. Billy Compton, it seemed, had boyfriend potential after all.

So we were going as a foursome and Maggie’s mom was driving because the Bolands had an SUV and could fit us all.

“You look awesome,” I told Mags as we got ready at her house.

My mother was stuck in bed again too much of the time and it wasn’t pretty, but what could I do? The best I could, was all I figured. Maybe Casey
would
come back. I couldn’t—I wouldn’t give up hoping. Maybe my dad would start acting like a dad again and move home. Maybe Bo Shivers—who had taken over guarding me along with Amber—would stop confusing the ever-loving shit out of me.

Anything could happen, right? I mean look at Houston. We were a port city even though we were miles from the water. But then some optimistic types had dug out Buffalo Bayou deep enough to make ships fit.

I could do that with my life, couldn’t I? Believe that I could make it anything I wanted. Even if there was hole in my heart the size of a semi.

So I did what a normal girl would do. I shared my Sephora kit with Maggie. We glittered ourselves up and even smeared the sparkly bronzing cream on our legs so they’d look tan and sexy. I tottered around in my new heeled sandals. We both did up our hair in fancy French braids. If some Big Bad wanted to take over humanity one memory at a time, and I was destined to somehow help stop them, well, I wasn’t going
to do it tonight. We were pretty dolled up by the time Maggie’s front doorbell rang.

Who was out there, but Amber Velasco.

It’s not like it took her angel powers to figure out where I’d be.

“You have a second?” she asked. I shrugged, then followed her outside, my too-high heels tapping against the walkway. I hadn’t had much use for angels the past day or so.

“Don’t use up all that glitter crap,” I hollered over my shoulder to Mags. “I wanted to do some more of it on my décolletage.” This was a new word I’d read in one of those fashion magazines. A fancy term for a woman’s cleavage. Classier than saying boobs.

“You okay?” Amber said as her conversation starter.

I wrinkled my nose. “You came over to ask
that
?”

“Seemed like a good plan at the time,” she said.

“
You
okay?” I tossed back at her. She had said very little—okay nothing, which is less than little—about Terry and Bo and the whole shebang of crazy. Amber Velasco was still not big on Personal Revelations. Not that I blamed her anymore.

She didn’t answer. An eternity ticked by. But I had a Homecoming Dance to go to with my boyfriend. I took the bull by the horns.

“I would have let Bo drop Terry,” I said, but I didn’t think I meant it. I only meant to let her know that she deserved better … more. We all did.

“Would you?” she asked, in the same even tone she’d used the other day when I understood what an idiot I’d been about angels and their power and about her. There was a lot more to Amber Velasco than met the eye.

Lot more to me, too. “Maybe,” I said. It was as close to being honest about this as I planned on getting. Would
Bo—an angel—have killed Terry McClain if Amber had told him to? Would he have wreaked angel vengeance like something out of ancient days? What would it have changed?

And me? Would I have applauded? If it was last year again, and Renfroe was leaping over that Galleria balcony, would I have just let him go?

I stepped closer, realizing I was taller than her in these heels, although not by much. “You pretend you don’t care about … what happened. But that’s a lie. You have a good heart,” I said. “I mean obviously you do or you wouldn’t be a ‘you-know-what.’ ” I air-quoted it and then did Maggie’s goofy Chicken Dance wing flap as a joke. “I would have kicked Terry McClain in the nuts, by the way. Let him remember
that
part.”

Amber pursed her lips.

A few more seconds, and she said, “I hear Mr. Gilroy is going to stick around for a while.”

I raised both brows, but I was glad to hear it.

“You know that angel grapevine,” Amber said, lips twitching in what I realized was a smile.

“That a joke?”

“Maybe.”

I hadn’t planned on hugging her, but that’s what I did. She hugged me back.

“We have some unfinished business,” she said then, face serious. My heart bumped hard. Was she going to tell me the other stuff that Bo had hinted at? Whatever she’d done those first couple years after she’d come back as an angel? “I’ll pick you up in the front of school on Monday after classes. Finally get you that learner’s permit.”

I hugged her again. It seemed only polite.

After that, I went to the dance with Ryan and Maggie and Billy—the only one in the group who did not know A-word
secrets. That made it easier to talk about other things, which was just fine with me. But I knew if something went wonky, I had my Twelfth Men, even if one of them was a girl. My brother might still be MIA, but at least there was that.

The weather had finally turned. Just as the wind had hinted while we stood on the Texicon roof. Cool and dry and full of promise. I breathed it in, deep as I could. Sometimes—all the times—you need to hang on to the good stuff.

For now I let Ryan Sloboda—wearing a suit and tie and looking ridiculously handsome—hold my hand as we walked into the school cafeteria, all decorated up like a Hollywood star party. We posed for pictures on the fake red carpet and then walked out to the dance floor, which was the cafeteria covered in fake Hollywood sidewalk stars. The yearbook geeks were snapping pictures like paparazzi.

Someone tapped my bare shoulder. I turned. Lanie Phelps stood there, looking very pretty, the tiniest of bruises purpling her cheek—I guess from where she fell and “no one” caught her.

I looked at her. She looked at me. Ryan squeezed my hand and cleared his throat. I thought: Casey Samuels loved you with all his heart and now he’s not here and you don’t even remember.

Lanie blinked. “Is Casey coming?” she asked, and my heart tightened hard and sharp in my chest.

“Nope,” I said, easing the word around my stony heart. Ryan squeezed my hand again. He really was something, Ryan Sloboda.

“Oh,” Lanie said. They had voted her Homecoming Queen last night. Donny Sneed—who would never be good enough for her—was King.

We’d have gone on like this for awhile, me and Lanie, but up front, the DJ got started.

“Got one I know y’all love,” he said into the mic.

And what do you know, “Copperhead Road” blared from the sound system.

I might have cried then, for Casey and all of it, but I was glittered up and there was Ryan. He leaned in and we kissed. Soft and sweet. A good, solid kiss that almost knocked me out of my high heels.

Then I kicked them off anyway, and Ryan and Maggie and Billy Compton and I joined the crowd, dancing and stomping to “Copperhead Road.” I thought about Amber and Casey and even Bo Shivers. About all the things lost and gained and still unknown. Tears welled at the corners of my eyes, but I told them to go to hell.

We kicked and stomped and turned and Ryan—who knew my secrets and was still willing to be my boyfriend—grabbed me up and even though it wasn’t part of the line dance, he swung me around and kissed me again, lips pressing against mine, light at first and then deeper. A slow, wet kiss that lasted a very long time.

Sparklers set off in my brain and other places.

“Things always going to be this crazy with you?” he whispered, his mouth warm and delicious against my ear.

“That a problem?” My heart stomped half a beat off.

Ryan smiled, big and dazzling and perfect. “Nope. Just checking.”

He pulled me back against him. He wasn’t wearing Axe tonight, just plain old Ryan smell, which was fine with me.