Mom deflated like I didn’t expect. I’d hurt her. She sat still, shoulders slumped, a few tears suddenly running down her cheeks. Was she a wounded lamb or incensed tiger? I had no idea. I wanted to take back the words, even if they were partially true.
In the lingering, threatening silence, I braced myself for her response.
Even after she quietly got up and left the room, I held tight to the table for a while—just in case.
CHAPTER 20
For weeks I held on, waiting for my mom to lash out at me, punish me, forbid me to see Liam. Take away my credit card and shoe allowance. Surely, she’d come up with some retribution for my insubordination. But nothing happened.
I wondered if I’d really hurt her. My grandmother—my mom’s mom—died before I was born, but I knew she’d worked more than one job to help put my mom through college and then law school after my no-good grandfather left. My dad had explained to me that one of my mom’s biggest regrets in life was not having her mother there when she walked onstage to receive her law degree. Which was why she pushed me so hard. It was her way of honoring her mother and rising above the hardship she’d endured as a girl.
For days after our fight, she left early and came home late, which I liked to think wasn’t only because of me—Bill Brandon’s attack ads were picking up steam on every TV, radio, and Internet channel.
I went to school and to bed without seeing her. I reviewed the assassination of JFK (and Charlie LeMarq), the carnage of World War II (and Rick “The Stick” and his cohorts), and the dissection of frogs (and Father Michael). Everything reminded me of those horrible moments. Not even Liam’s kissing skills, or several pounds of my mom’s best imported chocolates, could make me forget. As if committing “legally justified murder” wasn’t already hard enough on my soul, it was also taking its toll on my thighs.
And to add insult to injury, I had absolutely no new evidence to lead me to the answers I needed.
Liam and I checked the California databases for any additional information on D. Silver, but there were over a thousand results. Even after we refined the search criteria to an adult male, there were over a hundred. Early one Saturday morning, before Liam’s football practice, we went back to Bayside Buccaneer Yacht Club. While Liam used his old scuba gear to search the shallow bottom of the boat dock for Father Michael’s body, I scoured the boat for clues. Big surprise—nothing.
We went back down the coast—to the cliff we’d woken up on—to search for answers, but that was a bust, too. We had no idea where to start to find the warehouse we’d been taken to the night of the beach party. Liam even asked a bunch of kids if they’d seen anyone suspicious that night, but since it was a high school party full of all kinds of shady behavior, that didn’t produce anything helpful, either. One of his friends, pleasantly nicknamed Johnson (and not because it was his last name), thought he “might” have seen Liam being carried down the back staircase over the shoulder of “some dude,” but he said he didn’t think twice about it because he thought Liam was probably wasted, too, and anyway he was a “little high,” and in the middle of making out with a Swedish exchange student named “Molly or Marin or something.”
It was like none of it had ever happened. Except that it had. Liam knew it, I knew it, Silver knew it, and Alana maybe knew it—she at least knew something, because she still wasn’t talking to me.
Thanksgiving and the holidays were upon us, but no one would have known it at Casa de Rose. Not like last year when Dad and I got out the decorative fall wreaths and the miniature stuffed pilgrim set and spent days baking chocolate-chip-pumpkin cookies.
This year, there was only the scent of silence.
That is, until a bouquet of colorful autumn flowers arrived at my door, smelling maybe a little of marijuana. The delivery guy was clearly stoned even though it was only 7:00 a.m.
“Are you Ruby Rose?” asked the weed guy. I noticed that his eyelids were barely doing their job.
“That’s me,” I responded, ascertaining that his threat level was a mellow-yellow. I knew Silver likely had inside men helping him, but this dude couldn’t be one of them. Just in case, though, I had a bedazzled butterfly blade Dad had once given me for Christmas hidden in The Cleave.
When he’d buzzed in from the video gate, I asked him to leave the flowers by the call box. He said he was given specific instructions not to do so. Out of curiosity and sheer desperation for any clues, I let him come to the door. But not without properly arming myself.
“Rad.” He bobbed his head. “I’ve seen your picture on TV. You’re way hotter in real life, though.”
Gross. Even though he wasn’t completely destitute in the looks department, slacker skater dudes in their twenties weren’t my type. Especially not ones who may or may not be working with psycho manipulator of the year D. Silver.
“Are you going to give me the flowers or not?” I asked, holding out my arms. “I have to get to school.”
“Oh yeah, totally.” He looked down like he’d forgotten he even had anything in his hands. As he gave them to me, he said, “You know, if you ever get sick of the guy who sent these, I’m single.”
“Good to know.” I threw him a you-may-leave-now smile and shut the door before I got high simply from being near his clothes.
I practically sprinted to the kitchen to read the card sitting on top of the scarlet, white, and ginger blooms. Inspecting the envelope for any initial clues, I gingerly opened the seal.
Roses are Ruby red
Autumn lilies are orange and white
Let’s do something normal for once
Will you go to the Sadie Hawkins dance with me tonight?
Oh—kay. Sure, in the back of my mind I’d considered the possibility that Liam had sent the bouquet. It probably made more sense than D. Silver, who was more likely to send me a cryptic piece of art or a creepy message.
So why couldn’t I decide if I was relieved or disappointed? Excited or terrified? Appreciative or angry?
Despite my growing catalog of concerns, Liam was relentless about the dance. Even after I explained my aversion to underage binge drinking, awkward group dates, and cheesy picture stances, he still insisted that we go. All day at school, he went out of his way to make me smile, laugh, and forget. My answer went from a firm no, to a definite maybe, and then after his speech about being normal and going on our first real date, my answer turned into a hesitant yes.
After all that he’d done for me, it was about time that I did something for him.
I caught a glimpse of my androgynous ensemble in the reflection of his shiny Jeep door as it slammed shut in his driveway. “Sadie Hawkins, eh!” I said contemptuously.
“Come on, they’re just T-shirts,” Liam said, batting eyes the same color as our matching baby-blue Billabong Ts.
“At least we didn’t have to go all matchy-matchy in footwear,” I said, concentrating on my more flattering shoes. Sure, Liam could pull off the vintage checkerboard Vans, but I needed something with a little more lift.
“Well, I thought about getting matching shoes, but I can’t rock the heels like you,” Liam joked.
“Ha-ha.” I couldn’t restrain my smile. “These aren’t heels by the way, these are my stripey blue-and-white wedge-pump Toms with a bow.”
“And I thought I had a shoe problem,” he said, grinning. I was already starting to feel more normal. “Come on, I promise this will only take five minutes. My family really wants to meet you and take a few pictures.”