Abandon - Meg Cabot [97]
“That’s why you asked if I liked him that day, and why when I told you I didn’t know, you said I would. Admit it.” I shook my head. I had put it all together at last. But I was still having trouble believing it. Because it was just so awful. ”You’re the one who knitted me that scarf, the one with the red tassels. You sent it to me for Christmas. I remember it all now. What did you do to it to make sure it tangled up around my legs and tripped me? How did you know for sure I’d wear it outside by the pool, and fall in and drown? Did you hurt the birds, too? The one on the pool cover in Westport, and the one on the path, here in Isla Huesos? What kind of person are you? Who would murder her own granddaughter?”
That’s when she finally let me go. And stood in front of me, panting.
But not because she was old and weak. She was far from that.
Because she was a Fury. And she was finally showing her true face.
And it was more hideous and frightening than anything I could ever have imagined.
“You’re the one,” she said, her eyes blazing. “You’re the one who ruined it. You were supposed to stay dead. But you’re so stupid, you couldn’t even do that right, could you?”
I blinked at her, horrified. It had taken me forever to put it all together. Now I couldn’t believe I’d been right.
“I tried to tell them,” Grandma went on, breathing hard. Her tongue darted out like a snake’s as she licked her dry pink lips. “I tried to warn them about you. When Deborah was born, and she was so beautiful, and smart, and perfect, it seemed like fate. I was sure our family would be the ones to finally destroy him. I was positive he’d fall in love with her the minute he saw her. But he didn’t. I tried everything. I must have spent a thousand hours in that cemetery with her, roaming up and down between those crypts, trying to get his attention. But did he ever give her so much as a glance?” Grandma gave a snort, her gaze flicking back towards me.
“But you?” She sneered. “I leave you alone in the cemetery for five minutes, and what happens? I could hardly believe it.” Her face crinkled into something that, had she any bit of humanity left in her, might have been a smile. “If I’d known he liked them stupid and ugly, I wouldn’t have wasted so much time making sure your mother did all her homework and got those weekly manicures.”
Tears stung my eyes. I knew intellectually of course that she wasn’t really my grandmother anymore.
But being called stupid and ugly by her hurt more than it should have.
“Killing you was the easy part,” she went on. “The problem is that you won’t stay dead. You have far more of your father in you than any of us ever anticipated.”
“You know what?” I said, raising my chin. “I’m going to take that as a compliment.” Although I knew she didn’t mean it as one.
“I told them because of that, it was never going to work,” she hissed, as if I hadn’t even spoken. “But would they listen? Of course not. And now look what’s happened. If you’re not dead and at John Hayden’s side, he’ll never know true happiness. And if John Hayden isn’t happy, then we can’t take that happiness away from him, can we? But that’s a situation I can easily rectify—”
That’s when she lunged…directly into the fist I’d thrust in front of me, exactly the way Dad’s driver had taught me to, in case I were ever in a situation where I had to defend myself.
She staggered and fell back, letting out a scream like nothing I’d ever heard before in my life. It was so shrill, it shattered the red haze that had fallen over my eyes.
That’s when John showed up.
Just appeared out of nowhere, in his black jeans and T-shirt, like materializing in the Quad of Isla Huesos High School in the middle of a downpour and a fistfight between his girlfriend and her Fury grandma was something he did on a daily basis.
“Let’s go,” he said to me in a calm voice, wrapping an arm around my waist and lifting me off the ground to cart me away.
No Hello.
No Hi, Pierce. Nice right hook you have there.
No It’s lovely to see you. Sorry about your counselor being killed last night. Yes, I