MICHAEL SHUDDERED.
A chill climbed up his spine every time he listened to the voice mail. It was Jana’s voice. There was no mistaking it. And the call was from her cell phone.
“Michael. It’s me.”
Marilyn Webster was his concern now and that gave him the creeps, as well. She smelled strongly of stale wine and had breathed with her mouth open through the entire funeral. She’d practically ruined his best dress shirt with makeup and tears.
“I can’t be alone,” Jana’s mother said. She had one elbow stuck in the air with her hand bent behind her neck, trying to start the zipper on the back of her black dress.
“Turn around,” he said.
She nearly fell onto the bed when she did. Michael unzipped her dress. Somehow she managed to pull her dress over her head without falling down. The material lifted her hair and it didn’t quite fall back into place.
Jana’s mother sat on the edge of the bed and kicked away her shoes.
“Stay with me, Michael.”
No. She would be asleep in two seconds. She’d taken a handful of pills on their way to the bedroom. Michael had seen it all before. Jana’s mother reached for pills as often as a smoker reached for cigarettes. She was a walking pharmacy, when she could walk at all. And that was on top of the wine.
“Be a good girl,” Michael said. “Go to bed.”
“Good girl,” Marilyn said, mimicking him.
“That’s right, go to sleep now.”
She lay back on the bed, her eyes closed. Michael opened the drawer of her bedside stand, took something from the back that Jana had never known was there, and slipped it into the side pocket of his suit jacket.
He looked at Marilyn carefully before leaving the room. She had been a model when she was young. A supermodel. At sixteen, she’d made the covers of magazines. She’d dated NFL football players and movie stars. She did TV commercials for shampoo. Michael didn’t see it when he looked at her. She just looked thin.
Jana was twice as pretty as her mother. Everyone knew that but Jana. She’d been the perfect girl for him to be seen with.
“I’m still here. I’m always here.”
But, he thought, pretty didn’t matter anymore.
Standing on the porch, holding up his hand for Nathan and Sherry to wait to say anything, Michael called the lady next door. She took care of Jana’s mother when Jana wasn’t there.
“Fine,” he said when she asked how he was. “But Marilyn isn’t. Can you come over after a while and check on things? Spend the night if you want to. There’s plenty of food in the fridge. And the money is where it usually is if you need to buy anything.”
“Call me.”
Did he dare?
• • •
Jana considered her options. She didn’t have all day.
She left her shoes and socks on the wooden bench in the girls’ locker room and looked through the swimsuits that were stacked in rows on an open shelf. They were bright red one-piece suits with wide shoulder straps. She held one up. The bottom half was huge compared to the top. When the whole thing got wet, the bottom would bag to her knees.
Jana struggled to work the buttons on her skirt through the double-sewn buttonholes. She took off her skirt and blouse.
She couldn’t wear her bra into the pool. It wouldn’t be dry in time for fifth period. Same thing if she put her blouse on without her bra and got into the pool. And she couldn’t wear the school’s famous granny panties into the pool either. They’d weigh five pounds wet and be around her ankles in no time.
Jana ran out of options.
She took off everything, bra and panties too. She placed Michael’s class ring inside her shoe on the bench. Jana wrapped herself in one of the towels from the rack by the door and slipped out of the locker room. She’d seen where Mars had turned on the pool lights. She walked quickly to the switches and flipped them, one after the other, until the lights inside the pool went out.
Jana heard a motor whir. She’d accidentally turned on the pumps that sucked water from the drain at the bottom of the pool and sent it through jet sprays to agitate the surface of the water for the high dives. Jana wasn’t sure what it was, but she could hear the water moving. It sounded something like a whirlpool.
The spill of light from the locker rooms was enough to get into the pool by. Three or four feet from this end of the pool, she would be in darkness. She’d be safe.
Jana couldn’t see Mars, but he was in there somewhere. She used the exit ladder to climb backwards into the pool, removing the towel as her knees submerged. She tossed the towel on the concrete, and with a quick push backwards, Jana was in the water altogether.
It was wonderful. The water was as warm as a bath. If they’d let her sleep here, she would.
Jana dog-paddled with her head above water to the edge of the light, then she dropped under the surface with her legs stretched tight, her feet together. Chlorine stung her eyes. Jana held her breath until her toes gently touched bottom, then she came back up to the surface by waving her hands like wings.
With her head above the water, she pushed her hands through her wet hair. Even her hair felt warm. She swam back to the edge of the pool. Jana made circles with her feet, lazily keeping her chin just above the surface of the pool.
“I thought you couldn’t swim.” Mars’s voice reached out to her from the darkness.
“I’m not as bad as I thought,” Jana said. “Where are you?”
She turned around. Jana placed one hand back over her shoulder to grip the edge of the pool. She kicked slowly to stay in place.
“Here,” he said, splashing her.
Mars appeared from the darkness. Moving toward her. He stopped where she could see the outline of his face. But his warmth didn’t stop. It moved toward her and touched her. An underwater wave of heat bathed her body. It was impossible, she thought, that he was only one or two degrees warmer than she was.
Jana was surprised how comfortable she felt being naked in the water and so close to Mars. He wasn’t the flirty, pushy type. Other than flipping Jana the bird her first day on the bus, he’d never misbehaved. Jana wasn’t afraid of Mars. She was afraid of herself.
“I was sitting on the bottom,” he said. “I felt the water surge when you turned on the pumps. It causes a current toward the drain. You’re not supposed to go near the drain when the pumps are on. If you put your hand on the drain, and you aren’t strong enough, it can hold you there.”
“Oh, I never go to the bottom, except my toes,” Jana said. “Too buoyant to sink, remember? I think it’s my ears. They’re like water wings.”
“It’s your lungs,” Mars said. “It’s because you hold your breath. If you let all the air out of your lungs as you slip underwater, you’ll drift down. It’s like being suspended in air.”
He moved a little closer, then his shoulders lifted from the water. Mars raised his hand in front of his face and pointed downward.
“Come on,” he said. “Drop down. When your head is under, Webster, let all the air out of your chest.”
Air bubbles rose above her as Jana submerged into darkness. Mars was right. She sank.
It felt like she was floating in air, a fallen leaf caught on the breeze. With the slightest motion of her hands she could rise a little, or drop farther. It was pitch black. When her feet touched bottom, she let her knees bend. Soon her fingers touched the bottom of the pool.
Then she stretched out backwards and stayed still, an inch from the bottom, maybe two. Jana felt the current created by the pumps slide under her. The drain was in the dark end of the pool. When she needed to breathe, Jana folded her arms over her chest and leaned forward and up until her legs where under her again. She pushed her feet hard against the bottom and shot to the surface like a rocket.
Michael drove.
Sherry was in the passenger seat, her feet on the dashboard. In the backseat, Nathan played the mystery voice mail message over and over again.
Nathan couldn’t shut up about it. “It’s the guy from the bowling alley, the one who tried to save her life. We have to find him before he finds us. We have to protect ourselves.”
“Give it a rest,” Michael said. “It was an accident. Nobody killed her on purpose or anything.”
“I don’t care,” Sherry said. “I don’t care at all. You wanted to be rid of her, Michael, and you are. So what if she died? People do, you know. It’s the same as breaking up with her. She just did it for you.”
“With a little help,” Nathan said. He punched the code to play the voice mail again.
Michael worried that it would keep him out of college if anyone found out. He didn’t know whether or not what they had done was a crime. Technically it probably was, he thought. And he’d done it to her. If it was against the law, he was the one the cops would come for.
“You ever watch old movies?” Jana asked.
“Not really.”
“I watch them all the time. Some of them over and over again. However old you are in a movie is how old you’ll be forever. For actors, that’s how old you are when someone watches the movie—even if it’s a hundred years from now.”
“Guess it’s the same with characters in books,” Mars said. “Tom Sawyer is the same age every time you read it.”
They were in the water, near the edge of light, dog paddling.
“Here’s one,” Jana said. “All these actors were just kids. Jeff Bridges, Timothy Bottoms, Ellen Burstyn, Randy Quaid. They’re all in high school and they go skinny-dipping in a swimming pool.”
Jana waited. It was one of her all-time favorites. “And Cybill Shepherd. It was her first movie. Got it?”
“Not yet.”
“The Last Picture Show,” Jana finally said. “I’m sure you’ve seen it.”
“I don’t think so.”
Jana bobbed below the surface and came up with her mouth full of water. She spit it out like a fountain. It left the taste of strawberries in her mouth.
“Okay, how many demerits do I have to get to become a Slider?”
“Don’t joke about that, Webster.”
“I’m not joking. How many? Ten, fifteen, twenty-five?”
“Probably a couple hundred. It’s a major change of status here. And Risers are the good kids. You could do all sorts of stuff wrong and it wouldn’t hurt you in the end. And since you’re Risers to begin with, you don’t do much rule breaking anyway.”
“Maybe it’s time to start,” Jana said. “How many? No kidding. I need to know.”
“Well,” Mars said, “I think killing someone on the Planet would just about take care of it.”
“Now you’re joking,” Jana said spitefully. “You know I can’t do anything on the Planet without becoming a Slider first. I want to be like you. I want one foot on Earth, Mars. Is that so much to ask?”
“Give it a day, Webster. To think it through.”
“I want Michael to see me! Can’t you understand that? Before it’s too late. Before . . . you know, things change.”
“I understand,” Mars said softly. “You’re in love with him.”
“Let’s go back,” Jana urged. “If you hold my hand like you did before, he’ll be able to hear me. Let’s go back.”
“Maybe,” Mars said. “You’ll definitely get a few demerits for going off campus.”
“Okay, then. That’s settled. We’ll do it tonight. What time?”
He didn’t say anything. Jana felt alone despite the increasing warmth of the water when Mars was near.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I want to save a life, Webster. And you want to kill someone. You might say we have a conflict of interests.”
“I’ll help you if you help me,” Jana said. “Conflict resolved.”
Mars didn’t say anything again.
“Well,” Jana said loudly, “that’s why you brought me here, isn’t it? To ask me to do something.”
“Maybe,” Mars said.
“Listen.” Jana spoke more softly. “I’m not stupid, Mars. I know you want or need something and it’s important to you. And I know it has something to do with me. With where I died or how I died or something. You’ve been staring at me since the minute I was on the bus the first day. So just tell me. What are you afraid of telling me?”
Jana waited.
“Have you done the mazes yet?” he eventually asked.
“What?”
“The mazes in second hour. I saw you copying them down. Mr. Skinner’s sharp, Webster. Try those mazes, do them all in order, and then we’ll talk.”
She might be on the plain side compared to her mother, but Jana’s body was just what most boys wanted. She was naked. She was only two feet away from him. And he was telling her to do her homework. Unbelievable.
“Are you kidding me?”
“No,” Mars said pleasantly.
Jana wanted to call him a name. Mars was the most frustrating guy she’d ever met, the most frustrating guy on or off the Planet. Jana didn’t have time for mazes. She wasn’t Arva, afraid to do anything. And she wasn’t her mother, who let everyone else do things for her, including raising Jana, because she was beautiful.
If there was something to do about the situation, Jana wanted to get it done. Now. Lights, camera, action!
“Look,” she finally said. “Whatever you want me to do, I’ll do it. So, let’s go save a life and let’s go kill Michael.”