Castles On The Sand Part 3

"Fair enough. You don't have to tell me."

"Elder Britton is legit, right? He's a real missionary?"

"Yeah. Far as I know."

"And do you recruit missionaries from, like, prisons or anything like that?"

"No." He laughs. "You have to meet certain standards before you can become a missionary, and if you've landed yourself in prison, you've got a ways to go. Listen, the thing is, we all call each other brothers and sisters in the Church. That's part of our belief, that we're all G.o.d's children, so was it that or did he say he's your actual brother?"

"My mom told me that he is my actual brother."

"Okay... so did they call my dad or... what did they do? The missionaries and your mom?"

Even though I didn't want to retell it, this story is getting tangled, so I do, explaining that Elder Britton and my mother never did actually talk to one another. "The missionaries said they were calling someone and... yeah." I shrug.

"Well, sheesh, okay. Anything I can do, let me know." Carson and I, like just about everyone else in our cla.s.s, have known each other since kindergarten, which doesn't mean that we actually know each other. I can't remember the last time I had a conversation with him, but somehow his phone number is in my cellphone. Now that I think about it, that was probably Kailie's doing.

"Thanks."

"You don't have to read the book or anything," he nods to the navy blue paperback. "It was just something I grabbed on my way out of the restaurant."

"You keep a stash of these at the restaurant?"

"Yeah, back in the office, and no, we don't usually give them out to customers, but every now and then someone asks." He shrugs.

"Hope Mr. Beale wasn't too rude to you."

"No ruder than he is to anyone else." Carson is completely unfazed. "You all right, though?"

"I guess. I don't know. Does this mean I'm Mormon?"

"No. You'd know if you were. You'd remember being baptized when you were eight."

"So what happens now with my brother?"

"I have no idea. My dad and the mission president will figure that out. They may even need to call Salt Lake, since this is an unusual situation. You happen to know how much longer he'll be on his mission?"

"A week?"

"Oh, then you'll get to the bottom of this soon enough. Sorry I can't be more help."

"Well if your dad tells you anything-"

"He won't. He's a priesthood leader. Clergy. He can't talk about other people's business to anyone else. It's confidential."

"Oh."

"But you can reach him at the restaurant if you ever feel like you need to talk to him."

"Thanks."

Carson and I say our goodbyes and I head back to work. He heads back to the Montrose Grille.

When I return to the library, Siraj doesn't bat an eye. There are only three people browsing the shelves and one on one of the computers. I sit down behind the circulation desk and tuck my purse down by my feet.

"Scan these in?" says Siraj, placing a stack of books by my elbow. He's got the phone pressed to his ear and a distracted look that tells me he's deep in conversation. "Mmm, right," he says. "Hang on, I'm going to transfer to the phone in the conference room."

I grab the scanner and run each book under it so that the computer records that they are here in the Pelican Bluffs branch of the library. Three of the books were requested by other borrowers, so I leave each of them a message to let them know that the book is now available to them.

The door opens and in strides Alex Katsumoto, jaw set, hands bunched into fists. He glares around and I fight the urge to duck under the circulation desk for cover. Instead I get to my feet. "Can I help you?"

His gaze jerks over to me and he looks me up and down as if to say, "Why are you talking to me?"

"O-kay." I sit down again. "If you want help with something, let me know."

He spies something on the desk that draws him over, like a metal to magnet. I look around to see what it could be. There's the stack of books I've just scanned in, the telephone, The Book of Mormon, and a phone book.

Alex rests his hands on the counter and looks at the phone book, then stares at me as if daring me to hand it over. He doesn't deign to talk and his whole body is tense. If someone came up behind him right now, I have no doubt he'd spin around and punch them, so it's probably not a good idea to give him something as heavy as a phone book, but since I wouldn't be able to defend myself from him if he decided to punch me, phone book or no, I heft the heavy volume onto the counter in front of him and say, "Just leave it there when you're done."

He continues to stare, as if unsure whether or not he can really have the phone book. Tension stretches so tight the very air rings with it.

"Um." I cast about and pull the little pa.s.s along card out of The Book of Mormon. "Here, you can have this too. See the pretty picture?"

He glances down at it, looks up at me, then with a lightning quick motion, s.n.a.t.c.hes a pair of scissors from the pencil cup and snips the smiling girl's head off. Then he slams the scissors down on the counter hard enough that I wonder if he made a dent.

"Fine," I say to him. "If you want to be a jerk, go ahead. I was just trying to be funny." I shove the phone book at him. "And you're welcome."

He grabs it with one hand, pulls it towards himself and flips it open.

I grab the cart with all the books that need to be reshelved and escape with it across the room. The cart is only a quarter of the way full, but it's the first excuse I can think of to get away.

Reshelving doesn't take as long as I'd hoped, even doing it the hard way, chasing down every slot for each book in the order they sit on the cart, as opposed to finding the books for each section as I work systematically across the library. But when I peer back at the circulation desk, I can see that I've taken long enough. Alex is gone.

"Something wrong?" Siraj asks when I return to my seat. "With Alex, I mean?"

"His mom got picked up by Officer Li."

"I was afraid of that." He frowns at the exit where Alex would have left. "I'd have tried to help him but I was busy arguing with a City Councilor about an initiative to keep this library open."

"Was it Mrs. Beale, by any chance?"

"Yeah. Talked her into it in the end. If you can convince the Beales, you can convince the Council. Last time I had to do this was to get your salary approved. Much easier that time." The Beales have two of the five Munic.i.p.al Council seats, and another of the Councilors is Megan Romero, who runs the art gallery they own. This means they have a voting bloc that can pa.s.s or push aside just about anything. "Being Kailie's friend has its perks, you know?" he says.

"I did not know-"

"Of course you didn't. I'm not saying you did or should care." He wipes away my concerns with a dismissive gesture.

"But I guess I should stay her friend then, huh?"

His mouth twitches at the corner and he doesn't answer that.

I sit down and return my attention to scanning books.

That evening, Mom is still out in the shed at eight-thirty, when Mr. Montrose comes by. "I tried to call her," he says. The porch light makes his skin look sallow and his eyes bruised with exhaustion. "How late does she usually work?"

"She usually comes in as soon as the sun goes down." Mom's a real stickler for working in natural sunlight whenever possible.

"Does she let people interrupt her?"

"Not really."

"Fine, I'll do it. You can pretend to put up a fight if you need to. May I come in?"

I show him the way through the kitchen and point to the shed, visible because of the orange, incandescent light spilling out between the cracks in the boards. "Sharon," he calls out.

Now that I'm in the backyard, I realize her wheel isn't running. She never does painting or glazing of any kind under artificial light. For a moment, I wonder if she's okay.

But she pushes the door open and stands, a silhouette in the doorway. "Michael? What is it?"

"I was wondering if you'd like to meet with John. I could arrange it. You've missed two Mother's Days when he could have called you."

Because her face is in such deep shadow, I can't read her expression. Her stance is rigid, almost wooden. "Thank you, but no." There's no life in her voice. It's as if her mind is elsewhere and it's clear that she's deep into one of her bigger projects. If the past is anything to go by, she'll be like this for days as she figures out every detail of a new paint technique or the st.i.tching of a new wall hanging.

"Is this anything I can help with?" he asks.

Mom presses the back of her hand to her forehead, and I sense her mind coming back to us, leaving behind its creative calculations for a moment. "Listen, my ex-husband knows I wanted to be an artist. His son has already seen where I live. I'd like to keep any ridicule by him and his father to a minimum. It'd be just like James to call me up and laugh about how poor I am and what I gave up to have this life."

"James is your ex-husband?"

"Yes."

"And you have no contact with him? At all?"

"I don't. No."

"Not even for child support for Madison?"

Mom shakes her head. "Madison is a Lukas, not a Britton."

"Ah, right. Of course. Well, the mission president and I have already agreed that Elder Britton is not to visit Pelican Bluffs for the rest of his mission, but I should also point out, he won't be a missionary much longer, and once he's finished, we haven't got the authority to tell him not to contact you. I can tell him you would prefer he not contact you, if you like?"

"Please. Yes."

"What reason would you like me to give?"

But Mom is gone again, back in that place she goes to when she makes her art. "I'm sure you can think of something."

"Is it that you remain on the outs with is father?"

"I need to get some work done. I'm sorry." This is the Mom I know well, the one who cannot stand to be interrupted. Next comes visceral anger, if we keep distracting her.

"Okay," I cut in. "Mom, I'll see you tomorrow, I guess."

Mr. Montrose takes the hint and I show him out the front door.

That night, I begin to wonder if I should try to get Jean-Pierre's phone number from Kailie, but I don't have the guts to tell her why I'd want it. She's a merciless tease about this kind of thing. I also wouldn't have the courage to use it, and I can't think of any way to get him my number, offhand. I remind myself that I'll see him at school the day after tomorrow and try to be content with that.

On Monday, Kailie meets me at the corner of my street, as she always does so we can walk to school together. We greet with a hug, then she pulls her iPod headphones out of her ears and winds the cord around the case.

The morning is bitter cold and I nuzzle down into the collar of my coat, grateful for the warmth of my breath against my cheeks. My hat makes my ears itchy and my gloves feel like they do nothing against the icy air. We walk down the side of the street with houses, but on the far side there is just forest, looking darker and more mysterious in the dim, morning light.

"So... I still don't have a phone," Kailie says.

"Yeah, I texted you some stuff, but the basic thing is, Mom didn't purposely hide anything from me. And Carson gave me a Book of Mormon."

As if on cue, the MAV shoots past. Carson makes a complete stop, turn signal flashing, before he turns into the school parking lot. Never mind that the road dead ends in a guardrail and there's nowhere else to go. He does the same stop and signal for every turn around the parking lot, including the one into a parking s.p.a.ce.

While I watch this, Kailie pauses at the corner of one of the side streets and turns to look at a house, three lots in. It's the same floorplan as mine, with a stucco exterior that's cracking at the corners and has a big gray splotch by the front door, where someone did some kind of repair work, but didn't bother to restore the finish to match the rest of the house. Her gaze is wistful. This is where her sister, Kirsten, lives now.

"You talk to her?" I ask.

"No. My parents would lock me in my room and throw away the key if I did. Just saying her name gets me a lecture."

"Seriously?"

"You know how they are. They want to control my whole life. At least Kirsten got out."

I look at my friend in her warm coat, designer jeans, and genuine leather boots. I'm certain Kirsten doesn't have anything like that to wear. "Look," I say, "she rebelled. You really think she'd tell on you if you went to talk to her? You admit she doesn't talk to your parents."

She turns away. "My parents would find out. They always do, you know. They've got eyes everywhere."

We walk on towards campus and there, at the end of the road, leaning against the guardrail with all of the other screwups is Alex. Despite the crowd around him, he looks as if he's all alone. Isolated. Aloof. For once he isn't smoking, but he plays with his lighter, snapping it open and shut, pausing now and then to watch the flame burn. Typical. I always wonder when Pelican Bluffs High School will catch up with the times and not let people bring lighters to school. I'd gladly walk through a metal detector and surrender my nail files if it meant Alex had to leave that stupid lighter at home.

One moment he's staring at the fire, the next he's returning my gaze. He lifts an eyebrow, as if to challenge me to keep staring.

I obligingly look away and follow Kailie across the parking lot, but I have the uneasy sense that he's still staring at me.

I don't see Jean-Pierre until lunch, and he looks past me as if we don't even know each other. It couldn't hurt worse if he walked up and slapped me across the face. He and the football jocks have their own table and they sit and talk and give each other fist b.u.mps as the rest of the school flows around them, watching their antics with a swish of heads turning. We don't have a great athletics program at Pelican Bluffs High, but we do have an amazing football team. It helps that Justin Kreig's dad used to play for the NFL. Jean-Pierre doesn't do any athletics, but I guess the other orchestra and chess club people aren't cool enough for him.

His gaze wanders my direction and I freeze, wondering if I'll get a wink or a smile. But his gaze sweeps right over me. I'm just another face in the crowd. At least I didn't ask Kailie if she knew his phone number. She'd be mocking me right now if she knew. The problem is, I can't just pretend not to notice him, his dark, expressive eyes and infectious laugh. I've liked him for ages, but after kissing him, my attraction's stepped up several notches. I had let myself believe that I might get to kiss him regularly. That's how this usually works, isn't it?

I turn away and try to distract myself with other thoughts. Our cafeteria is a beautiful room. One whole wall is gla.s.s, but it's done in little tiny panes, like stained gla.s.s without the color. The ceiling is high and punctuated at regular intervals with skylights. The place always smells like grease, regardless of what they're serving. Even when it's pasta, somehow it ends up smelling like grease.

Kailie brings her tray of food over and slides it onto the table. "This food is beyond gross. I know, I know, I should just pack a lunch. Augh."

I offer her half my sandwich, which she takes and gives me her tater tots in return. They're already getting cold and disgusting, but I munch on them anyway.

Jean-Pierre's laughter cuts across the rest of the cafeteria chatter and I look at my friend.