Crash Page 6

  “He said, ‘Anthony, keep your riffraff out of my restaurant or I’ll slap a restraining order on your whole family.’ Or something like that.”

  “Wait. He said ‘riffraff’?”

  “It might have been another word.”

  “Oh.” I rub my sore elbow and shake my head, staring at the ancient carpet. “How’s Dad handling it?”

  Mom gives me a rueful smile and reaches for another stack of napkins. “I think you can probably guess.”

  I stand up and start pacing around the tables. “Crap,” I mutter. “What now?”

  “Why on earth did you go there, Julia?”

  I stop pacing and look at her. “I had to tell Sawyer something. He’s the one who knocked my pizza over earlier . . .” I don’t know what I’m saying anymore. All I know is that I should probably stop talking.

  “He knocked your pizza over? On purpose?”

  “No! Nothing like that. It was an accident.”

  “What kind of hooligan would do that? We should be the ones slapping a restraining order on him,” she says.

  Oh, hey, there’s a way to ruin my life even more. “Please, please don’t do that.”

  “We just might.”

  “Well, that’s great.” I get up and grab my gloves. “I’m going to bed.”

  I stomp into the kitchen just as Trey pulls a pizza out of the oven. “Is that the one I messed up on? They still want it, this late?”

  “Yep,” he says. He cuts it, grabs a box and slides it in, then maneuvers it into the bag.

  I’m so frustrated I want to punch the wall. “Okay, awesome,” I say. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes.” I reach for the bag.

  “I got it,” he says. “Go upstairs.”

  I bite my lip. He makes me want to cry. I know I should object, but I don’t. “You won’t believe what I did,” I say.

  “Probably not.” He smiles and grabs his coat and keys, then the pizza, and he’s out the door. “Wait up, we’ll talk. It’ll be fine,” he calls as it closes.

  “Thanks, Trey. I will,” I say, but he’s gone. All I can hear now is Dad slinging crap around upstairs. I head out of the restaurant as Trey’s taillights disappear, and start making my way upstairs to deal with Dad.

  Seventeen

  When I enter the apartment, Dad is fuming. At first, he just looks at me and shakes his head—it’s the Demarco way of exuding disappointment without a word, and it works. The irony here is that he’s standing in the middle of the dining room, next to where I think there might be a table and some chairs somewhere, but they’ve been loaded with piles and piles of his junk for the past nine years. Yet nobody ever calls him on that.

  His silence is thick. Finally I speak up. “I’m sorry I went to Angotti’s. I just had to tell—”

  “No!” His voice thunders, and he starts in. “You do not ‘just have to’ anything with the Angottis. Ever. Do you hear me? Do you want to ruin our business? You want the newspaper to find out that the Angottis have put a restraining order on the Demarcos? What does that say to the community?”

  “They haven’t done that—”

  He starts pointing at me. “Not yet. Not yet. Better be never. You stay away from that boy. Do I need to find a new school for you? Is that it?”

  My jaw drops. As much as I dislike my school, at least I have Trey and Rowan there. At least I can look at Sawyer once a day. “Dad, seriously! Are you really trying to ruin my life?”

  He gives me a suspicious look. “What are you doing with him?”

  “Nothing! I swear.”

  “Then why do you have to tell him something?”

  I take a breath and go with the first thing I can come up with. “School project. We’re on a team. The teacher assigned us.”

  He narrows his eyes, but I can tell he wants to believe me. “What class?”

  “Psych,” I say. It’s almost not a lie.

  “You stay away from that place,” he says once more.

  “I will, Dad. I’m sorry.”

  • • •

  When I wake up Monday morning after a terrible night’s sleep, I fight off all the thoughts about what could still happen to Sawyer. I can’t deal with that right now.

  All I can think about is that I did what I had to do. I warned him. And just because everything’s all turmoily, and my dad’s a messed-up freak, and the boy I L.O.V.E. probably thinks I belong in an asylum, doesn’t change the fact that I have now satisfied whatever weird business has been going on in my head, and I am now free. I yank open the curtains and look out at the windows across the street. None of them show me an explosion. I cross my fingers and hope it’s over.

  I also hope Sawyer won’t tell the whole world what I said to him. But the chances of this? Zero.

  And Dad’s just going to have to get over it.

  • • •

  Five insanely overdramatic things I heard Dad muttering to himself last night as he paced the hallway outside my room:

  1. “You have betrayed the name of Demarco!” (Yo, Shakespeare, live in the now)

  2. “Why couldn’t you just deliver the pizza to my dear friends?” (So you and Mrs. Rodriguez are hanging out now?)

  3. “Now look what you’ve done. You’ve fired the first shot!” (WTF?)

  4. “No more deliveries for you. We’ll hire a boy.” (Oh, o-kay)

  5. “Why do you want to break my heart?” (big sigh)

  And now I’m grounded for two weeks, which is no big deal because I don’t go anywhere anyway. The worse punishment is that I’ve got to go to school and face the impending ridicule.

  I brush my teeth and touch some pink gloss to my lips as Trey hangs on the other side of the bathroom door, waiting to get in, and I realize I’m the one who should be furious. After all, I bet Sawyer could have stopped his dad from calling my dad.

  “He must think I’m a total nutball,” I murmur as I swipe a little raisin-colored eyeliner under my lower lashes.

  “I totally do,” Trey says through the crack in the door. “Can you move it along? My hair needs clay before it dries like this. I practically have a ’fro.”

  I open the door and he stumbles in over a new pile of magazines that surfaced since last night.

  “You okay?” he asks. He got home during the muttering portion of my fight with Dad, and I’d filled him in on the rest, except of course for the real reason why I had to go see Sawyer. And I get the feeling Trey thinks there’s something relational going on between Sawyer and me . . . which I’m happy to go along with.

  “Yeah, I’m okay,” I say in a low voice. “It’s just so stupid.” And the bigger part of me that can’t deal with the truth is crying out the thing I’m not quite ready to acknowledge. That even though I warned Sawyer, he could still die if he doesn’t do anything about what I told him.

  Trey sculpts his hair expertly and whispers, “What’s a girl in love supposed to do? In the movies, she has to defy Daddy someday. Yesterday was your day. The first of many, I suppose.” He sighs. “And we’re all in for more yelling. Great.”

  “No, I’m done with it. No more yelling.”

  He washes his hands and looks at me in the mirror. “Yeah, right.”

  “Really,” I say, putting my things in the drawer as Rowan bursts in and squeezes between us. “It’s not worth this. I’ll . . . just forget about him.”

  “Forget about who?” she asks. She slept through the fight last night.

  “Nobody,” Trey and I say together.

  Rowan shoves my shoulder. “You guys are so mean. Move it. It’s my turn in here.”

  Trey and I escape. He takes off to meet Carter for his ride to school, and I cautiously flip on the TV while I wait for Rowan to finish getting ready. I watch a full five-minute weather segment plus commercials, with no sign of any explosions anywhere. And a bonus—the forecast changed, like it tends to do around here. Now the weatherwoman is predicting clear skies for two days.

  “Big sigh,” I whisper, and I’m flooded with relie
f. I really think it’s over. Even if I’m about to be known at my high school as the weirdest freak on the planet, at least I’m not truly insane. And at the very least, if Sawyer dies, it won’t be my fault.

  Jeez. What kind of sick person thinks like that?

  Eighteen

  On the billboard, I see Jose Cuervo for the first time in weeks. It’s the most hopeful-looking thing I’ve ever seen in my life. “I love you, Jose,” I say as we pass it. Rowan doesn’t hear me. She’s got her earbuds in, listening to something while she layers on more makeup in the sun visor mirror.

  “Hey,” I say, poking her in the shoulder when we’re stopped at a light.

  She pulls an earbud out. “What? Don’t freaking bump me.” She wipes lip gloss off her chin and starts over.

  “Sorry. I just wondered how you’re doing.”

  Rowan turns her head and frowns. “What?”

  I laugh and shake my head. “Why are you suddenly so into makeup? Do you have a boyfriend?”

  Her mouth opens like she’s going to say something, then she closes it and says, “No,” in a voice that doesn’t want to be questioned further. She puts her earbud back in.

  “Okay.” I feel a little twinge in my heart for her. And then I picture us as spinsters living together forever, her being all sweet one minute and grouchy the next, her face perfectly made up just in case, and me leaving myself notes with sliced-vegetable lettering on the cutting board.

  • • •

  As usual, I ditch Rowan once we get to school—not that she minds—and keep my head down, avoiding eyes. Avoiding anyone talking with anyone else, because I’m pretty sure they’re talking about me. I don’t even dare take my usual glance to where Sawyer should be standing. Instead, I just stare into my locker and wait for the first whispers to reach my ears.

  I grab the books I need and give myself a little pep talk, then slam the locker door and head to first hour. I keep my eyes on the floor, shoulders curved inward, and travel through the crowded hallway like a lithe bumblebee, zigging and zagging and curving around people, one purpose in mind—getting through the morning, one period at a time. Then the dreaded lunch hour, and finally the afternoon.

  And I make it through okay, only once narrowly avoiding Sawyer when I see him coming toward me after school. I duck into Mr. Polselli’s psych classroom until he passes.

  “Hi,” Mr. Polselli says. He’s grading papers at his desk.

  “Oh, hi,” I say.

  “How’s your paper coming along?”

  I totally haven’t started it. “Fine.”

  “What’s your topic?”

  “Um, I think, maybe, I’m not quite ready to tell you yet,” I say with a guilty grin.

  He laughs. “I see.”

  “But I do have a question. About a . . . possible topic. If a person, like, sees visions or whatever, does that mean they’re, you know, insane, or crazy or anything?”

  “Depends.”

  “Oh.”

  “It could mean that. But it might not.”

  “Oh. Well, do you know if . . . if people who see visions, do those visions ever, like, happen?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like can people see something in the future and know something’s going to happen, and then it actually happens?”

  He tilts his head and looks at me over his reading glasses. “Where are you headed with this? You mean like fortune-tellers? Psychics?”

  I look at the floor, which has black scuff marks all over it. “I guess.”

  “There’s a lot of debate about that. You could probably do some research on it and find out, you know.”

  I nod. “Okay. Yeah, I know. I will. Thanks.”

  “Anytime.”

  “See you tomorrow.”

  Mr. Polselli smiles and pushes his glasses up, resuming his grading. I check the hallway to be sure Sawyer is gone and make my way to the parking lot.

  When I round the corner of the building, I run into him. Not literally, thank dog. But now that I think of it, I owe him a crash.

  He’s standing next to his car, his door open and his arm draped over it, talking to two of the girls—Roxie and Sarah—who were in my family’s restaurant the night Angotti’s was closed for the wedding reception. He’s giving them that charming smile.

  I stop short, then divert my path to get to my giant meatball truck, which is so inconspicuous I’m sure no one will notice me driving it out of here. I glance at him and he’s looking at me, frowning, talking to the girls. They turn my way, and I barrel down a row of cars to the back of the parking lot, my face burning.

  Rowan is standing—no, hopping—outside the truck, waiting for me. “Finally!” she says. Then she narrows her eyes and looks past me. “What does he want?”

  I turn around, and Sawyer’s jogging toward me. Alone. My eyes pop open and I get this twisty thing in my gut. I look at Rowan. “Get in the truck,” I say, unlocking her door. “Now.”

  “Sheesh,” she says, but she gets in and closes the door, then stares at us. I turn my back to her as Sawyer slows to a walk a few feet away.

  I shift my weight to one hip and lean against the door. “What.”

  He stops and flips his car keys around his finger a few times. His breath comes out in a cloud. “Yeah, um, sorry my dad freaked out and called your dad. I couldn’t stop him.”

  I just look at him and hug my books to my chest. “My dad flipped out.”

  “I figured.”

  “I shouldn’t have gone to your place.”

  He shrugs. “You’re pro’ly right.”

  “I told my dad it was for an assignment for psych class.”

  He drops his gaze and gets that half grin on his face. “I’m not actually taking psych.”

  “Great.” I’m such an idiot. I squint at the snow-covered pavement, which is brighter than white today because the sun’s actually out. It’s cold enough that it hasn’t melted. But heat climbs up my neck to my cheeks when I think about how mad my father was.

  Sawyer kicks a hunk of dirty snow from under my truck and says nothing.

  “So, okay, then,” I say. Every second that passes, I feel more and more stupid, and I don’t like the lump that’s forming in my throat. I try to clear it, but I can’t control it. It’s getting bigger. “I guess I don’t really need the drama,” I say, “of a . . . a restraining order, y’know, against my whole family.” The words are getting louder as an anger I didn’t know I had builds up inside me.

  He looks at me with alarm, neither one of us expecting this, but I can’t stop. “So I guess after all those years of secret friendship, which you totally threw in the trash after I, like, was so scary that I smiled at you in public, in front of your dad, and then had the audacity to enter your restaurant almost four years later and throw everybody into a wild fit . . . well, I guess I’ll just see you, you know, never. Oh, and thanks for telling everybody I’m insane.” I reach blindly for the truck door and open it.

  “Jesus, Jules.” His arm shoots out and he pushes the door shut. “I said I’m sorry. And . . . holy shit, I don’t really know what to say about all of that in the middle there . . . I—I didn’t know you ever thought about that anymore.” He blinks his long stupid lashes at me. “But I promise I didn’t tell anybody you’re insane.” He steps back and straightens his jacket collar. “I figured it was, I don’t know. Just weird.”

  Angry tears burn at the corners of my eyes, and I will them with all my might not to fall. I glance through the window at Rowan, who’s sitting up, looking like she’s ready to jump out of the vehicle and attack. I shake my head at her, trying to reassure her with a shaky smile. “Okay, fine,” is all I can think of to say. He thinks I’m weird. “I need to go.”

  “And I—don’t know what to say about the rest.”

  “Yeah. You said that.” I reach for the door handle again.

  “So, you know, are you?” He shoves his dangly keys into his coat pocket suddenly and coughs.

  I lo
ok at him. “Am I . . . what?”

  His face is red and he can’t look at me. “Never mind. I’m an idiot. See you.” He turns to go.

  And then I get it. “Am I insane? Is that what you mean?”

  “Forget it, Jules. It was a stupid thing to say,” he says over his shoulder as he starts walking.

  “Oh my God!”

  He walks faster to his car. And I stand here like a total loser, watching him go.

  I don’t blame him. He doesn’t believe me. I never expected him to believe me.

  And he’s obviously right in thinking that.

  • • •

  From that moment, I’m bombarded with the vision once again—my peace didn’t even last twenty-four hours. I drive home and every stop sign, every store window, and the billboard are covered in the scene of the crash. Rowan tries to find out what’s going on, but I drive in stony silence. Eventually she’s smart enough to shut up.

  When we pull in the alley where we park the beast, Trey is standing there waiting where he always is so we can keep up our “all going to school in the giant truck of balls” ruse. I turn off the engine and look hard at Rowan. “Don’t you ever tell Mom and Dad that I was anywhere near Sawyer Angotti, you hear me?”

  Her eyes widen and she shrinks away from me. “Okay. Gosh, I never know what’s happening around here.”

  “I mean it.”

  “Okay,” she says again.

  “Good.” The three of us get out of the truck and walk in the back door, where Tony is whistling, Mom is adding fresh herbs to a giant pot of sauce, and Dad is nowhere to be found.

  Nineteen

  All afternoon and evening, the vision beats me over the head every chance they get, and it’s exhausting. It’s clear to me now that telling Sawyer was a good thing, but it wasn’t enough. Apparently I have to get him to actually believe me too. And I’m guessing I have to get him to do something about it, which will be absolutely impossible. This is an evil game that is impossible to win.