Every Wild Heart Page 14

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” If Jenny Long was back and she’d been following Roy’s car, then she knew not only my schedule, but Nic’s, too. She knew the location of our home, Nic’s school, Corcoran Stables.

  The words of the email I’d received in the hospital flashed through my mind.

  You mess with my life, I’ll mess with yours.

  Chapter 12

  It seemed to Nic that her mother’s knuckles gripped the wheel with increasing intensity on the Thursday morning drive to Kirke. Periodically, her mother would narrow her eyes and glance at the rearview mirror. She’d seemed out of sorts all morning—even her fight with the coffee machine had been louder and more profane than usual. And before they left the house, when Nic pointed out that her mother was still wearing pajamas, she’d distractedly thrown on her faux-leopard-fur jacket. Nic still remembered the afternoon several years earlier when her mother had found that jacket in a thrift store and had shrieked like someone who’d won the lottery. Her mother was probably richer than most, maybe all, of the Kirke moms, but with her vintage, tattered, rocker wardrobe, you’d never know it by looking at her. Right now, with that matted-fur jacket and her ever-present, never fully removed smudges of black eyeliner around her green eyes, she looked like a wild cat poised to strike its prey, all of her energy coiled into something small and tight and dangerous.

  “What’s going on?” Nic asked after her mother jerked the wheel and sped past a hefty black minivan.

  Her mother looked over at her. Nic had the sense that she’d forgotten she was in the car. “Sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “There’s just . . .” She trailed off, thinking, and then tried again. “There’s something going on at work right now.”

  “Aaand . . .” Nic prodded.

  Her mom gave a little shrug, but Nic could tell that she was just trying to downplay her mood. “Honestly, it’s a lot of stuff that you don’t need to worry about, okay?” she said. But then, when they pulled to a stop in Kirke’s circular drive, her mother leaned over and kissed her cheek and told her to be careful.

  “Mom, it’s been more than a week since the accident. I’m fine.” Nic meant this, too. Even the headaches had, at last, faded, just as Nic had always believed they would.

  “Right. Well. I don’t just mean at the barn. At school, too. Don’t wander off alone anywhere. Do a buddy system thing with Lila or someone.”

  Unlike her mother, Nic was in a good mood. She’d managed to sneak into Peach’s stall again the day before, and the horse had stood still long enough to let Nic pull the straw from her chestnut mane. Sure, she’d tried once to nip Nic, but a few words from Nic had put an end to that behavior. Nic felt sure that they were getting somewhere. If Denny gave her another window of unsupervised time that afternoon, she planned to attempt to give Peach a proper grooming. So she was willing to indulge her mother’s tendency to overprotect.

  “Sure,” she said. “If I slip into a coma in the computer lab, I’ll make sure my buddy notifies you immediately.”

  This was the kind of joke at which her mother would typically laugh. Today she just sighed. Nic slid back into the car and wrapped her mother in a hug.

  “Buck up,” she said. “You’ll figure out this work thing. You’ve been kicking ass your whole life; why stop now?”

  She kissed her mother’s cheek, nudged her chin upward with one finger so that her mother went from openmouthed surprise to closemouthed surprise, hopped out of the car, and strode toward Kirke’s front door.

  THAT AFTERNOON, NIC was washing her hands at a sink in the bathroom when she heard someone crying in one of the stalls. She hesitated, taking longer than usual to dry her hands. The crying continued.

  “Is everything okay?” Nic called out finally.

  After a few sniffles, a small voice answered. “No.”

  “What’s wrong?” When the girl didn’t respond, she asked, “Can I help?”

  The stall door opened and Nic recognized the red-haired girl who emerged as a junior. She didn’t know the girl’s name, but she remembered that during Kirke’s first monthly assembly of the year she had received a standing ovation for some achievement in swimming—the state championship, maybe?

  The red-haired girl in the bathroom wiped at her eyes. “It’s not a big deal.”

  Nic noticed that she was holding a phone. “Did you get bad news?” she asked.

  That was all it took. Something in the girl broke; she released a shuddering sob and handed her phone to Nic.

  On the screen was an Instagram post by TheKirkeLurk7 showing a photograph of a girl swimming. The Lurk’s caption: Proof that chlorine pickles the brain. Nic peered closer at the screen.

  “That’s you?”

  The girl nodded. She took back her phone and stared at the photograph. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her long eyelashes damp with tears. “I should be a senior,” she said quietly. “I got held back.”

  “So you could swim?” Nic had heard they did this sometimes for guys who played football, but she’d never heard of swimmers taking an extra year.

  The girl chewed on her lip. “No. Because they didn’t think I was ready for senior year . . .” She hesitated. “Academically.”

  Proof that chlorine pickles the brain.

  “Oh.” Nic didn’t know quite what to say after that. She felt a pang of empathy so sharp that it made her ribs hurt. “What’s your name?”

  “Bridget.”

  “I’m Nic.”

  The girl’s eyes widened. “You’re the coma girl?”

  Nic started to say that it was really just a concussion, but changed her mind and instead nodded. Being known as the coma girl seemed a slight improvement over being known only as Gail Gideon’s daughter. She was proud of her mother and her show, but Nic thought that maybe it wasn’t so bad to be known for something she herself had done, even if it was that she had fallen off a horse and wound up in the hospital for a couple of days.

  “Wow. Are you feeling alright now?” Bridget asked.

  She seemed to truly want to know. This girl whose intelligence had just been publicly ridiculed was wondering how Nic was feeling. Bridget was sweet and sensitive and a champion athlete . . . what right did someone have to hide behind the internet and throw insults at her? She’d done nothing to deserve it.

  “I feel great. Better than ever.” Nic motioned toward the phone. “Listen, anyone who makes a comment like that obviously doesn’t know you at all. Try not to let it bug you.”

  Bridget sniffed and nodded. “I know. It’s just you wait and wait for the day that the Lurk says something about you, because you know that he will eventually . . . and then he does and you know everyone is out there in school reading it . . .” She pressed her lips together, unable to finish the thought.

  There was a ball of rage gathering heat in Nic’s stomach. “Not for much longer,” she said.

  “What do you mean? It’s been going on for years. It’s not going to stop.”

  “It will,” Nic said again.

  Bridget looked at her. “Maybe,” she said, with a small shrug. Then she turned to her own reflection in the mirror and took a deep breath and shook out her arms the way that swimmers always seemed to do before a race. She appeared, if not fully recovered, at least a little less upset than she’d been when she’d first emerged crying from the stall.

  As Nic followed Bridget out of the bathroom, she dug around in her bag until her hand closed around the Matchbox Jeep. She didn’t know quite what she was going to do about the Lurk yet, but there was one plan that she had figured out.

  NIC HAD BEEN keeping tabs on Angel Bully and knew that he never closed the lock on his locker (it seemed to Nic that that open lock was less a sign of a tight-knit community than a bully’s perpetual taunt). During lunch, when the hall was empty, she opened his locker and pulled out his backpack. Moving quickly, she unzipped the bag and reached inside. She felt a wave of disgust that hit like nausea, as though she were feeling around inside of Angel Bully himself
and not just his bag. The feeling disappeared the moment she found what she was looking for.

  “What are you doing?”

  Nic spun around. Lucas stood in front of her, his head cocked.

  “I—I dropped something.”

  Lucas squinted at her. The way he blinked, languidly, made Nic want to stroke the curl of his eyelashes with her thumb. “In Nolan’s backpack?”

  Nic shrugged. “Busted.” The truth was that she did not really care if Lucas knew what she was doing—as long as he didn’t try to stop her. She reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out the Matchbox car.

  Lucas took the toy from her, fingers grazing her palm. He turned the car over in his hand. “This was in Nolan’s bag?”

  “No.” Nic held up her other hand, the one that held Angel Bully’s car keys. “These were.” Angel Bully’s key chain held a small wooden charm with a turtle carved into it, the sort of thing you could pick up at the airport on the way home from a tropical vacation.

  Lucas grinned. “What do you have in mind?” he asked.

  They walked together to Angel Bully’s car. It was parked, as always, in the first spot of the parking lot, the one marked with a big white number 1. They were within view of several classrooms; all any teacher had to do was look outside and they would see Nic and Lucas next to the Jeep.

  “Do you want me to drive?” Lucas asked. It was a reasonable question. He had his license; Nic did not. She’d never driven before. Also, Lucas was ostensibly Angel Bully’s friend; if they were caught, Lucas could say he had permission to drive the car.

  Nic shook her head. She unlocked the car and slid into the driver’s seat.

  Lucas climbed into the passenger seat. They exchanged a half-giddy, half-nervous glance as they buckled their seat belts. “Have you ever driven before?” he asked.

  “No, but how hard could it be? Angel Bully does it every day.”

  Lucas raised his eyebrows. “‘Angel Bully’?”

  Nic flushed, running her hand over her eyes. “Oh. Yeah. That’s what I call Hunter. He looks like an angel, but . . .”

  “. . . he acts like a bully.” Lucas laughed. The darkness that she sometimes saw in his gaze, weighing on his thoughts, melted away. It was the first time that Nic had heard actual joy in his laughter. “It’s catchy. I like it.”

  Nic tapped the canvas roof with her fingers. “Should we take the top down?”

  Lucas shot a nervous glance toward the school building. “That could take a while.”

  She smiled. “I’m kidding.” She slid the key into the ignition, then hesitated, her hand frozen on the key chain’s wooden turtle charm. For the first time since she’d devised this plan, she felt her confidence falter. She really had no idea what she was doing.

  You’ll be fine, said the voice in her head—her own voice. She realized she had not heard more than a peep from this voice in nearly a week.

  She felt Lucas’s hand on her shoulder. He pointed at the pedals at her feet. “Brake is on the left. Gas is on the right.”

  Nic swallowed. “Okay.”

  “Put your foot on the brake while you turn the key.”

  Nic followed his instructions, feeling her heart jump as a Taylor Swift song suddenly blared over the sound of the engine. Lucas turned the volume down but left the music on.

  “Keep your foot on the brake and shift this gear into reverse,” he said, patting the gearshift. “Then lift your foot off the break and slowly press the gas pedal.”

  Nic put the car in reverse, looked over her shoulder, lightly pressed the gas pedal, and inched the car out of the parking spot. She realized that driving didn’t feel entirely unfamiliar—the halting movement reminded her of backing up a horse.

  “Okay,” she told Lucas, putting her foot on the brake. “I need to get out for a second.”

  After he showed her how to shift the gear back to park, she opened the door and hopped out. In the now-empty parking space, right on top of the big white number 1, she placed the Matchbox car. When she got back in the Jeep, Lucas was smiling. She drove with increasing confidence down the school’s long driveway. Driving felt very adult. She looked for the turn signal, couldn’t find it, and turned anyway, out onto the road.

  “You’re a natural,” Lucas said. Out of the corner of her eye, Nic could see that he gripped the door.

  At the next intersection, she turned right for no other reason than that it seemed easier than turning left. It was a quiet road and she pulled onto the dirt shoulder, stopping the car alongside a thick green line of hedge. She turned off the ignition. Outside, glinting clouds of dust rose from the tires. She and Lucas looked at each other and grinned.

  “Do you do this kind of thing a lot?” he asked.

  She shook her head and laughed. “No.”

  “I don’t believe you. That seems like an easy lie for a vigilante.”

  Vigilante. He had not asked why she was doing this, but he clearly understood. He approved. Perhaps she should have known this when he’d fallen into step beside her at school, but it was only now in the car with him that she felt he was participating not just for the fun of it, but for the reason behind the act, too.

  He leaned his head against the seat and looked up at the soft roof of the car. “Nobody should get away with doing that much damage on a daily basis,” he said, as though reading her thoughts.

  “Right,” Nic said. “And some other kids should have a shot at that prime parking spot.”

  Lucas rolled his head to the side to look at her. “Is there more up your sleeve?”

  “Maybe. It depends how much it takes for Angel Bully to change his ways.”

  A car drove by and, as if they’d choreographed it, Nic and Lucas slid down in their seats. Maybe they would be like Bonnie and Clyde mixed with Robin Hood, Nic thought. It seemed more fun to do this kind of thing with a partner. Lila wouldn’t have had the stomach for it (she was already worrying about her college applications), but Lucas, clearly, did.

  They were still low in their seats when Lucas said, “So is your mom letting you ride yet? You sure seem of sound mind to me. Not crazy at all.”

  Nic smiled. “No. Not yet.”

  “If you want to ride, I’m sure you’ll find a way.” Lucas stared through the windshield. “I think sometimes adults forget how much it sucks to have someone else making all of the decisions about your life for you.”

  “She just wants me to be safe.” It did suck, of course, but Nic knew that her mother did not take any pleasure in telling her what to do. On the contrary, making parental decrees always seemed to chip away at something inherent to her mother’s character, lessening her. Nic hated to be the one to do this to her. Lately, even before Nic’s accident, it had seemed to Nic that her mother’s spirits were a little low. Nic preferred her mother bold and brash, the brightest flame for miles; she liked to think of her as having all the answers. In that way, at least, she supposed she was just like her mother’s listeners.

  Lucas shifted in his seat. “Sometimes,” he said, “I feel like I’m walking through life with these invisible strings attached to my feet and there is an adult at the other end pulling the strings, making me go wherever she wants me to go.”

  “Where would you go if you got to decide?”

  “Back to New York.”

  “To live with your dad?”

  Lucas’s dark eyes moved over Nic’s face. She sensed his thoughts roiling. He gave a sort of half-shrug. “I don’t care who I live with,” he said unconvincingly. “But my school there had an art program just for seniors. I was supposed to go this year. I submitted my portfolio. My parents didn’t know. My dad was busy with . . . his life.” He said this as though his father’s life had nothing to do with his own. “My mom was busy . . .” He trailed off, his eyes searching Nic’s face again. She could feel the anger simmering in his gaze. “She was busy figuring out her next move: how to get us out of there and ‘find herself’ again. By the time I told them I was accepted to the prog
ram, it was too late. They told me they were separating and I had to move to California with my mom and my sisters. Everything had already been decided. And ever since we got here, it’s like my mom can’t figure out what to do with herself. She turned all of our lives inside out and I don’t think she really knows why. She can’t decide if she’s really happy or really angry about how everything turned out. Her mood changes by the hour.”

  Nic was quiet for a moment. “What was in your portfolio?”

  He looked at her. “Drawings, mostly. Photos of some mixed-media stuff I’ve done.”

  “I’d love to . . . I mean, could I see some of it sometime?”

  Lucas shrugged. “Sure. How about now?” He twisted in the seat, took stock of the debris in the backseat of the car, and reached for a crumpled paper. Once smoothed against his knee, they saw that it was an essay written in Spanish, every other word circled in red ink, a large red D at the top along with an invitation in English to rewrite the essay and attempt to improve the grade.

  “Tsk, tsk, Angel Bully,” Lucas said.

  Nic felt her first thrum of compassion for Hunter Nolan.

  Lucas found a pen in the glove compartment. He turned the paper to its blank side and, just before he touched pen to paper, glanced at Nic. She thought he seemed nervous; she smiled to reassure him. He looked back at the paper and began to draw. He moved the pen in fast, short strokes. It was hard to imagine how anything could grow from those repetitive little lines. Lucas’s lips were pressed tight together and his face seemed hard, like something chiseled from stone. Nic looked back to the page and there, magically, a horse was taking shape, a dark burst of beauty and speed. Nic sucked in her breath. A horse and a rider now, too, her hair a long stream behind her, rippling across the page. The pair leapt upward into a sky, a magical sky, a sky churning, now, with fireworks.

  Nic felt dizzy.

  She remembered this: the beauty of the sky. The burst of color and light that surrounded her. The roar of the earth. She remembered, now, as she had not before, how it felt to ride Tru through the woods on that day, feeling that strange mix of fear and determination. She remembered the fire in her stomach, the burn of humiliation. How gentle the fall had seemed, how forgiving the ground.