Abandon - Meg Cabot [65]
“My mom’s brother,” I said.
Uncle Chris had stopped what he was doing and was just standing there staring at us, his mouth slightly ajar, the big wooden chair in his arms, bright blue and green striped cushions and all.
It’s true Seth’s truck was quite a sight. No one in my neighborhood back in Connecticut — let alone the Westport Academy for Girls — had driven one quite like it. Seth had jacked up the body so it sat a solid foot or so from the wheels, the rims of which gleamed bright silver. The windows had all been tinted the same color black as the paint job, so you couldn’t see who was sitting inside unless the doors were open. Seth had music on — a band that sounded mostly like yelling to me — and the volume was turned up so high, the whole truck seemed to be pulsating.
But I didn’t get the feeling that’s why Uncle Chris was staring.
“Is that Alex’s dad?” Farah asked.
“Yes,” I said. Of course she was curious. Who wouldn’t be curious about a guy who’d been in jail for nearly the same amount of time she’d been alive? “Thanks for the ride.”
“So you have my number,” Seth said. “Call me after you find out what your mom says.” I guess I must have looked at him a little blankly, since he added, “You know. About the thing,” throwing me a meaningful look.
“Oh, right,” I said, shaking myself. “The thing. Sure.”
I slammed the door. Intellectually, I knew they’d still be able to see me through the tinted windows.
But psychologically, since I couldn’t see them anymore, I felt like they couldn’t see me.
And somehow, that felt good.
“Hi, Uncle Chris,” I said, walking towards him with my heavy book bag. Behind me, I heard the truck’s enormous wheels crunching on some loose bits of gravel in the driveway. The pulse of the music was already getting softer. “What are you doing?”
Alex’s dad hadn’t moved. He was still watching the truck. “Who was that?” he asked.
“Just some people from school,” I said. “They gave me a ride home.”
“I thought Alex was going to drive you to and from school,” he said.
“Oh, he had some other things to do after school today,” I said. It wasn’t necessarily a lie. “So I got a ride with some other people. What are you doing with that chair?”
“Moving it into the garage,” he said. “They just announced on the Weather Channel that there’s a hurricane watch. We’re in the cone.”
“The what?” I hadn’t heard anything about a hurricane. Well, I guess I had, but I hadn’t paid any attention because they hadn’t said it was coming our way. The sun was going down, but there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.
“The cone is what they call the possible track of the hurricane, since storms can be very unpredictable,” Uncle Chris said. The weather was the interest with which Uncle Chris had chosen to become engaged upon his release from prison. “We’ll probably get hit with nothing but feeder bands — those are the thunderstorms that surround the outer eye of a storm. But they really don’t know yet with this one. We’re in the three-day cone of uncertainty.”
I stared at him, shocked that I’d been so wrapped up in my own concerns, I hadn’t figured this out for myself, especially considering the waves I’d just seen on the beach, not to mention the violence of last night’s storm. Hurricane season lasted from July until November, and it was only September. We were smack in the middle of it.
But in my case, storm season didn’t appear to be just literally but figuratively here, too, as I’d realized when I was following Farah and Seth to his truck after we’d finished at Island Queen, and my cell phone had begun to chirp. The number Richard Smith had scrawled on the flyers he’d given me showed up on my screen.
“Hello?” I’d said, answering it with a thumping heart.
“Miss Oliviera?” The gravelly voice sounded familiar.
“Oh, Mr. Smith,” I’d said. “Thank you so much for returning my call.”
No response.
“Um…” Seth and Farah, before climbing into Seth’s truck, had decided to have a private moment. Only it wasn’t so private, really, since everyone at the Island Queen could see them. They were completely making