Abandon - Meg Cabot [95]
“Look,” Alex said, raising his voice to be heard above the wind. “I appreciate it, Pierce. But I think your dad’s done enough damage around here. Don’t you?”
Kayla inhaled sharply. I felt my eyes sting, then realized it was because they were tearing…although it wasn’t anything I hadn’t heard before, and from my own mother.
“We’re late to class,” Alex said, and pushed past us both. “I’ll meet you at the car at two o’clock if you want a lift home.”
He hurried down the breezeway towards D-Wing, his head ducked, his shoulders hunched in on themselves. He looked smaller than I’d ever seen him. And Alex had grown two whole inches over the summer. Uncle Chris had proudly shown me the marks on the kitchen doorway.
“He didn’t mean it,” Kayla turned to me to say.
“Yeah,” I said, shaking my head. “He did.”
“Well,” Kayla said. “Maybe he did. But you know. He’s upset. Hey.” She was staring at something over my shoulder. “Isn’t your grandma the lady from Knuts for Knitting?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Why?”
“Because she’s here.”
I spun around. Kayla was right. My grandmother was coming down the breezeway towards us, wearing one of her usual artsy outfits of beige gauchos, white peasant blouse, and laceless white Keds.
Around her neck was one of the many colorful scarves she always wore, all knitted by her own hand. At each end of the scarf dangled a set of tassels.
Grandma was semi-famous around the island for these. Some people used them as pulls for their ceiling fans.
“Pierce!” Grandma lifted a hand to wave. Even as far off as she was — two whole locker banks away — I could hear her loud breathing. Grandma wasn’t very athletic. She didn’t like to walk places, preferring to take her car. “Thank God I found you. Did you hear the news about Christopher? It’s just awful.”
“She must be here to sign you guys out of school,” Kayla whispered to me. “Except for lunch, they won’t let you go off-campus unless it’s a family emergency and someone over eighteen signs you out.”
“Oh,” I said. “Except didn’t Alex just say her car got impounded?”
Kayla shrugged. “She must have driven your mom’s car.”
“Then why didn’t my mom tell Alex she was on her way over?”
Kayla looked at me. “Chickie,” she said. “What are you saying? You think your grandma’s here to kidnap you or something?”
Did you like him?
I don’t know.
You will.
I put my book bag down on the ground, still staring at Grandma, who had almost made it to the end of the last bank of lockers. The tassels at the end of her scarf swayed.
Just like the ones at the end of the scarf I’d worn the day I died had swayed in the water above my head.
It had been there all along, right in front of me, and it had taken this long for me to figure it out.
I’d been such a fool.
“Just how dysfunctional is your family, anyway?” Kayla was going on.
“Kayla,” I said, rolling up my sleeves. “Do me a favor, okay? Go to class.”
“Uh,” Kayla said with a little laugh, “okay. So I guess I won’t be seeing you at Alex’s car at two?”
“If I’m not there,” I said, “call the cops.”
Kayla laughed some more. She obviously thought this whole thing was a hilarious joke.
“Don’t worry, chickie,” she said, and headed off to D-Wing. “I will. The cops and I go way back.”
What Kayla didn’t know — and I did — was that the diamond tucked inside my shirt, which had been the cheerful purple it usually turned whenever Kayla was around, had gone onyx the minute my grandmother showed up.
It always turned this color when my grandmother was around. I’d figured this was because her disapproval of me made me nervous.
Now I knew the real reason why.
“Why,” Grandma panted, when she finally got up to me, “didn’t you come over when you saw me? I’m dying here.”
“It might help,” I muttered, “if you ditched the scarf.”
“What was that?” Grandma had blue eyes. She was the only one in our family who did. Because she wasn’t an Oliviera. Or a Cabrero. What she was instead, I was only just beginning to figure out.
“Why are you here, Grandma?