Eight

Shallow Pond seldom got rain in the winter, but it began raining sometime between second and third period and kept up all day. I hadn’t brought an umbrella with me, and I wasn’t looking forward to getting soaked walking home. Normally I would ask Jenelle, but she and Shawna and Dave and Frank were going to drive to the mall after school. I’d been invited, but declined. It would have been one of those weird fifth-wheel situations for me, and extra awkward as I’d have to share the back seat with Shawna and Frank. Last time that happened, I found myself with my face pressed against the window trying unsuccessfully to ignore the two of them sucking face and groping each other beside me.

I tried calling home, but I only got the voicemail. Where could Annie be? Was she asleep? Maybe she was vacuuming or watching television or doing something else that prevented her from hearing the phone. I tried two more times before giving up.

I pulled my jacket’s hood up before stepping outside into the miserable afternoon. I slipped on the sidewalk and nearly did a faceplant into the concrete. Apparently the rain had turned to sleet. It was going to take forever to get home, and I was going to look like an icicle when I got there. I trudged along, my hands in my pockets, my head down so that the ice pellets didn’t sting my face.

It had been a weird weekend at my house, and I’d been relieved that morning to go to school. Annie claimed that she was fine with Gracie dating Cameron, but she didn’t act fine. Instead she spent pretty much the entire weekend lost in daydreams, barely aware of what was going on around her, and trying to cover for this weird behavior by laughing at things that weren’t funny and saying things that she thought sounded bright and cheerful but just made her sound like she was trying too hard. Gracie acted like the cat who’d eaten the canary and kept making defensive comments like, “Well, it’s not like it was my idea,” or “Well, he’s going to date someone, right? I don’t see how it matters who he dates,” even though no one was criticizing her. It was almost like she was asking Annie to make some critical remark. I just tried to avoid both of them, but our house wasn’t that big.

I heard a car pull up beside me and assumed it was Jenelle, yet even as I thought that I realized the engine was too deep and rumbly for her car. I looked over and there he was, that smile turned up full blast. The car, even in this weather, glistened and shone the way no car that old had any right to.

“Need a lift?” Zach asked.

“I’m fine,” I said. I kept walking. Zach just rolled along beside me. The car looked warm and inviting and I wanted more than anything to get in there, but I knew that I shouldn’t.

“There’s ice raining from the sky,” Zach pointed out.

“It’s called winter,” I said. I tried to add a bit of chipper to my tone, but I feared I sounded creepy and slightly demented, like Annie and her forced happiness.

“Get in the car,” he said. “I really don’t want your death from pneumonia on my conscience.”

“It’s not that far,” I said.

“Good, then I won’t have to charge you for gas. Now would you get in already?”

At that a big gust of wind tore up the road and bit right through my jacket. Zach stopped and popped open the
passenger-side door. I sat down, relieved to be someplace dry and reasonably warm.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Are you always this stubborn?”

“I’d been planning on walking.”

The car looked as perfect inside as it did outside. Either the thing had spent the first thirty-some years of its life locked up in a museum somewhere or somebody had spent a lot of time and money meticulously restoring it to its former glory. I wondered how someone like Zach Faraday got his hands on it.

“Nice car,” I said.

“Thanks,” he said. “It was a gift.”

“Kind of puts the sweater I got for Christmas to shame.”

“It’s a long story,” he said.

“You need to make a right here,” I told him.

“I got a better idea. Let’s go to the diner. They have great pie and spectacularly awful coffee.”

“I’m not hungry,” I said.

“Well, you can at least keep me company then. I hate eating alone.”

I reasoned that it would be rude to demand that he take me home, but honestly? I wanted to go to the diner with him. I wanted to go anywhere and everywhere with him.

We got a booth in the back. Zach ordered a slice of apple pie à la mode for himself and a coffee. I tried to beg off from ordering anything, but Zach told me I should at least try a slice of pie. I relented and ordered the cherry pie and a glass of water.

“I don’t blame you,” he said when the waitress walked away. “The coffee’s atrocious.”

“Then why did you order it?”

“I’m a glutton for punishment,” he said.

“Speaking of which, what brought you to Shallow Pond?”

He laughed at this, then scratched at his temple as if deciding whether or not he felt like telling me, or maybe just figuring out which lie to spin.

“It’s a long story,” he said. Apparently he had a few of those.

The waitress returned. She set down a gigantic slice of pie in front of each of us along with my water and Zach’s atrocious coffee. The pie was pretty good. The filling had just the right amount of sweetness. The crust was perfectly flaky.

“So,” I said, “you were going to tell me how the fates of the universe brought you here.”

His hair was already perfect, but he ran a hand through it and made it even more perfect.

“It’s almost absurd,” he said. “Very nineteenth-century.”

“You weren’t kidding about it being a long story,” I said.

“I mean, it has the feel of something from a nineteenth-century story or play or something. Like the Importance of Being Ernest, but not as funny and without the cucumber sandwiches.” He’d lost me on that one. “The play,” he clarified. “Oscar Wilde.” I shrugged, to let him know it was fine to continue. “Right, well, the thing is, I was raised by a bunch of nuns. I was left in a basket on their front step. There was a blanket wrapped around me with a note clipped to it. It told them my name and thanked them for taking care of me.”

I laughed. He sat back and waited patiently for me to finish laughing.

“You think it’s a joke. You think that what I know about my origins is a tale to amuse you.” I thought this might be more of the joke, but there was something about his look that told me I might have jumped to conclusions.

“Seriously?” I asked. “You were abandoned on the front step of a convent?” He nodded. “That almost makes my family look normal.”

“If it’s any consolation, mostly people have a hard time believing my story.”

I thought about this. It all did seem highly improbable, and then there was the matter of his nice clothes and nice car. Orphans raised by nuns did not drive cars like that.

“What about the Mustang?” I asked, “And all your clothes?”

“Ah, well, if the whole left-in-a-basket thing isn’t enough to strain your credulity … ” He shoveled another forkful of pie into his mouth and chewed it all before he continued. “I have a wealthy benefactor.”

“A wealthy benefactor?” I repeated.

“Yeah, I know. It’s very Dickensian, isn’t it?”

“Who is this benefactor?”

“Well, that’s the ten-thousand-dollar question. He or she has supported me over the years with gifts of money and material goods sent to the convent. Sometimes there are notes with the gifts, but they’re never signed.”

“And you’re not at all curious that you have this mysterious sponsor?” I asked. I wasn’t sure if I believed him or not. It all seemed a bit far-fetched. There was a good possibility that he wasn’t even an orphan at all, just some ordinary guy who was especially good at making up stories.

“I was pretty much obsessed with the idea of finding out when I was younger,” Zach said. “I would read my benefactor’s notes over and over, again hunting for clues. I would try and make sense of the different postmarks on things. The truth is, it’s probably either my mother or my father, who feels a terrific amount of guilt for abandoning me like that and thinks this is the way to pay their penance. Maybe I was some inconvenient love child, or maybe my parents were dirt poor and then through some twist of fate became suddenly wealthy after abandoning me or something. Anyway, I guess I’ve come to terms with the fact that whoever he or she is, they don’t really want to be found out, and I guess I can live with that.”

I shook my head. I didn’t feel there was anything I could say. The story was ridiculous. It couldn’t possibly be true, but the ho-hum way in which Zach told it made me wonder. If he was making up the whole thing in order to get attention or create an air of mystery or whatever, I would think he would work a bit on his delivery. I ate my pie, stealing glances at Zach while I did so. I waited for him to break, for a smile to creep over his face or for him to add one last completely ridiculous detail to the story that would push everything over the edge—an alien abduction, perhaps, or the curious fact that he had no reflection when he looked in mirrors.

“Okay,” I said. “What percentage of that story is true?”

“All of it,” Zach said. He scraped the remaining pie residue from his plate, avoiding looking in my direction while he did so. I kept staring at him, waiting for him to come clean. He didn’t. Then he looked back up and said, “I don’t normally tell people the whole story. I learned early on that it’s easier to just keep my mouth shut.”

“Then why did you tell me?”

“Because we’re friends.”

“Cut the crap,” I said.

“Okay, the truth is, because I thought of all people, you might be able to understand.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, but Zach didn’t get a chance to answer.

“Babie! Hey, how’s it going?”

I looked up to see Cameron Schaeffer standing there.

“Hi,” I said, because please leave me the hell alone and don’t call me Babie again unless you want to lose a testicle might have come out sounding kind of rude.

“This must be your cousin,” Cameron said, giving Zach a nod of hello. “Hey, sorry I can’t stay and chat, but I’ve got to go pick my mother up from the beauty parlor, and I’m running late.”

I watched him walk away. I hated to admit it, but he was sort of a good-looking guy. I mean, don’t get me wrong, he was a complete jerk, but I could understand what my sisters saw in him, sort of.

“Cousin?” Zach asked. I shrugged.

“I have no idea. Probably some sort of weird Cameron Schaeffer version of a joke,” I said.

“And Cameron Schaeffer is?”

“My one sister’s old flame and my other sister’s new flame.”

“Well, that is seriously fucked up.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “It is.”

The thing was, if Zach, a complete stranger, could see how seriously wrong it was, how could Cameron Schaeffer not have known how weird it all was? Basically, he’d traded in Annie for a newer model. Hey, if I was unfortunate enough to get stuck in Shallow Pond for the rest of my natural-born days, I could be Cameron Schaeffer’s next girlfriend. Well, as if I didn’t have enough incentives, there was one more reason to get the hell out of this town as soon as I possibly could.

“Well, at least I know it isn’t me,” Zach said.

“What?”

“I’m guessing for a Bunting girl to show any interest in me, I’d have to be named Cameron Schaeffer.”

“I’m not interested in Cameron Schaeffer,” I said, and even as I said it I could feel myself blushing. What was wrong with me? “I’m not my sisters.”

My pie plate was empty. So was my glass of water. I had nothing to distract me. I looked out the window, only to find myself staring at Cameron walking across the parking lot. I quickly looked away and found myself looking at Zach. He smiled at me, and I forgot about Cameron.

“So, then, you aren’t a coven of witches?” he said, still smiling. “Or let’s see, what were some of the other rumors I heard? Oh, right, that the three of you were vampires or succubi or something.”

“Shut up,” I said.

“I’m just saying the Buntings have quite the reputation.”

“Shallow Pond’s the sort of town where they like you to fit in and not do anything to rock the boat.”

“So I gather,” Zach said.

He wasn’t so bad. I mean, with his good looks and excessive confidence I thought he’d be kind of a stuck-up jerk, but he wasn’t. He was a nice guy and super attractive, which didn’t really seem fair, or possible, for that matter. Like his life story, it was just a little bit too much to believe. There had to be something wrong with this guy. Nobody was perfect, unless maybe he was a robot.

“Why are you here?” I asked.

“Because I like pie, and I saw it as an opportunity to spend some time with the prettiest girl at Shallow Pond High.”

I rolled my eyes and shook my head. “I meant, why are you in Shallow Pond?”

“Oh,” he said. “That would be because of my benefactor.”

“You tracked your benefactor down?” Already I was coming up with possible suspects from Shallow Pond’s residents.

“No, nothing like that,” Zach said. “I received a letter. There was an apartment waiting for me here, and arrangements had been made for me to finish my senior year of high school here.”

“Why?”

“Couldn’t tell you.” Zach glanced out the window, and it was the first time I’d seen him look anything but supremely confident. For the briefest second he looked a little bit like the lost boy he must still have been inside.

He turned back to face me, and he was all cool and confident again. “I wasn’t going to come here, but then I decided it was time to get on with my life, see the world, that sort of thing.”

“I’m going to assume that’s nothing but a lame joke,” I said. “No one gets on with their life here, and no one comes to Shallow Pond to see the world.”

“I’m not disappointed I came,” he said. His icy blue eyes met mine, and I felt them burrowing into me, weakening my resolve. I looked away.

“We should get home,” I said. I felt hot, like I was blushing again. “The roads are going to get bad.”

There was a thin layer of ice on Zach’s windshield. Some of the other cars had been sitting there longer and had a thicker coating. It was going to start sticking to the roads. I’d walked out of the diner ahead of Zach when he’d insisted on paying for my pie; I was annoyed or confused or a little bit of both.

“Friends let friends buy pie for each other,” he said as he came down the steps. He wobbled a bit on a slick spot on the last step. Well, look at that, Zach Faraday was human after all. He quickly recovered and, in that confident swagger of his, walked over to unlock the passenger-side door.

A car pulling into the parking lot did a little bit of a fishtail, and I looked up and saw a familiar-looking Honda. Jenelle must have decided the weather was too iffy to drive all the way to the mall. I hoped she was totally focused on controlling her car in the slick parking lot, but no such luck. She’d seen us, and she pulled into the handicapped space beside us.

“Babie?” she asked, like maybe I might be someone else.

“Don’t call me that,” I corrected. It was pure reflex. “You can’t park here,” I said, pointing at the handicapped sign.

“Hey guys,” Zach said. “How are the roads?”

“The highway was a mess,” Dave said. “We turned around and headed back.”

“What are you two doing here?” Jenelle asked.

“Zach was just giving me a ride home,” I said.

“We stopped to get some pie,” Zach said.

“Do they have cherry pie?” Shawna asked from the back seat.

“Yeah,” Zach said, “but the apple’s the best.”

“I just didn’t know you two were … “ Jenelle didn’t finish her sentence. She probably considered herself some master of subtlety.

“We’re not,” I said. “And we’ve really got to go. The ice.”

I opened the passenger door of Zach’s Mustang and quickly slid in, pulling the door closed after me. Zach waved goodbye to everyone, then got in on the other side. He started the car and the big loud engine roared to life. He cranked up the defroster to melt the ice on the windshield. I could feel Jenelle staring at me from her car but I didn’t look over, and after a few seconds she pulled out of the handicapped spot to find another parking space.

“So, what was that about?” he asked.

“What was what about?” I asked.

“I thought you two were friends. You’re having some kind of fight again?”

“We’re not having a fight,” I said. We weren’t having a fight, at the moment anyway. It was just that I could already see how this was going to play out. Jenelle and her big mouth would turn me and Zach eating pie at the diner into some sort of whirlwind romance or something. Within a week, people would be convinced I was carrying his love child. A part of me was thrilled at the prospect of a Barbara-and-Zach rumor making the rounds at school, and that part of me scared the hell out of me.

Zach ran the wipers to clear the ice from the windshield, then backed out of the spot. He pulled out of the lot a little too quickly and we skidded slightly on the ice. My hand tightened on the door handle, but he quickly righted the car. He drove slowly and cautiously toward my house.

“How come people call you Babie?” he asked.

“It’s just some stupid nickname,” I said. “If you use it, I’ll probably have to kill you.”

He nodded, as if he took this pronouncement very seriously. I was impressed.

“I agree,” he said. “It’s a stupid name. I mean, it’s like people are calling you a little kid or something.”

“It’s why I have to leave Shallow Pond,” I said. “Around here, I’ll always be the littlest of the Buntings, the Babie of the family.”

When I stepped through the front door, Gracie nearly tackled me.

“Who was that?” she asked. She’d seen me get out of Zach’s car. It was possible she’d been lying in wait by the window, but probably she had heard the Mustang a half mile away. Unless Cameron had tipped her off. I didn’t know if they were at the I’m-calling-you-because-I-saw-your-sister-
eating-pie-with-some-teenage-hearthrob stage of the relationship yet.

“Just someone from school,” I said. I decided it would be best to be as vague as possible.

“A boy from school?”

“Yeah, a boy, and he only gave me a ride home because it was nasty out.” I left out the part about the diner, hoping she hadn’t been in communication with Cameron.

“It’s that new guy, isn’t it? Chip in produce was saying he had some fancy car.”

“If you already know all this, why are you asking me so many questions?”

“He’s sweet on you, isn’t he?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care,” I said. “Where’s Annie?”

“She wasn’t feeling well, so she turned in early. Is he cute? I heard he’s really cute.”

“What do you mean, turned in early? It’s four in the afternoon.” I started up the stairs. I still had my coat on and my wet shoes, and I was sure I was leaving a trail behind me, but I didn’t care.

“Just let her rest,” Gracie called.

I peeked in on Annie. She was sound asleep beneath her blankets, snoring lightly. She’d been feeling so good lately, it was hard to believe she was sick again. Maybe she was faking it to avoid having to spend time with Gracie. I listened carefully, but the snores sounded real.

My phone rang, shattering the silence, and I ran down the hall hoping it hadn’t woken Annie.

I didn’t pull the phone out until I was in my room with the door closed. I looked down at the screen. I already knew who it would be. Jenelle. She was going to want details. She was going to want an explanation. I debated answering. On the one hand, it would feel better to get this all over with, to get everything out in the open. On the other hand, I didn’t know exactly what to say to Jenelle. I mean, there wasn’t anything to say. All that happened was that Zach had given me a lift home and we had stopped along the way for pie. That was it. End of story.

So why did I feel like I was hiding something from Jenelle? Why did telling Jenelle that Zach and I were just friends feel like a half truth at best, and at worst a bald-faced lie? I didn’t answer the phone. I wasn’t sure what would come out of my mouth if I started talking to Jenelle.