Shuffle: A Novel Part 5

The man was happy to have a new person to complain to, but Callie stopped him in his tracks, ignoring him until she'd checked me out, made sure I was okay.

"I turned the corner and this... this juvenile was right in the middle of the street, stumbling around like a drunken idiot."

"My sister is not drunk, sir."

"Well, she certainly could have fooled me! So I tried to swerve out of the way and just look at my car..." He clutched his bald head and grimaced. Meanwhile Callie was threatening to book him for reckless driving and endangering the public.

"Do you know who I am?" the man demanded. "Circuit Court Judge Halley K. Shumacher. I'm a prominent citizen! A pillar of the community!"

Lieutenant Collier calmly stood by the squad car and called for back up, winking at me rea.s.suringly a now Judge Shumacher was demanding to be taken to a hospital to be checked for internal injuries, vowing to have my family pay for his medical bills.

"And I'm good friends with Dr. Lawrence, you mark my words! We play golf!" He actually shook his fist at us as he climbed into the back of a different cop car.

"Oh my G.o.d. I'm so sorry, Callie. I don't know what happened. Everything just went black!"

I told her about my brief loss of vision, but left out the part about being saved by a miraculous gust of wind. I don't know about you, but if someone told me that, I'd think they were either crazy or brain-damaged.

Callie gave me a hug, making sure not to touch any of my wounds. I breathed in sharply through my teeth. My knee was really smarting.

"We'll get you home and get you cleaned up."

"Oh hey, Arbor a " I just remembered that I hadn't introduced him to my sister. I glanced around the scene; people had gathered to look at the wreck and listen to the shouting. But he was nowhere to be found. Disappeared again.

"What?"

"Never mind..."

I eased myself into Callie's squad car and frowned as the crowd dispersed. Fat droplets of rain began to plop onto the windshield. The setting sun was now covered over by clouds that had seemingly conjured themselves out of nothing. My abridged night of sleep suddenly came back to me, and I was exhausted.

Chapter 4.

I fell asleep on the ride home and woke up in my own bed, hands and knee bandaged, tucked under the covers. My alarm clock glowed 9:30. It was my stomach that had woken me this time. No food since lunch.

I crept downstairs, limping a little on my knee, and found Callie sitting at the kitchen table, staring at a stack of reports and in the middle of a cup of tea.

"Any dinner left?" I asked.

"Hey, sleepyhead." Callie put away her work and swept by me to the refrigerator. She pulled it open and started brusquely removing Pyrex containers full of odds and ends.

"You don't have to do that. I can use the microwave." I held up my hand. "Still have a functioning pointer finger."

"Oh, it's no trouble. You sit down."

I lowered myself gingerly into a chair and waited while my sister a.s.sessed the leftovers.

"I guess it's either a macaroni-and-cheese-and-meatloaf sandwich or tunafish-strawberry-jello delight."

"Sandwich, please." I love weird leftover meals.

"I'll scramble you some eggs, too."

"'Kay." Callie started up the range and cracked some eggs while I tapped my fingers on the table top. "Anything interesting today, you know, besides saving ye olde damsel in distress?"

She sighed, sprinkling some cheddar cheese on the eggs. "Actually, I got called out to Oldtown. This poor man was up on his roof replacing shingles all by himself, and he ended up slipping off and breaking his neck. His neighbor found him. We had to make sure there was no foul play involved."

"Oh no, that's awful. When did that happen?"

"Early afternoon."

When Arbor was absent from gym. I had some business to attend to. Oh G.o.d, Evi's brain, shut up. He seemed genuinely concerned about the car accident earlier. He stood up to that guy for you.

Also, he might have been following you.

"And was there?" I asked, nonchalantly. "Any foul play?"

"No, just a terrible accident."

"Wow."

I gulped down my dinner, sighing with satisfaction as the hunger pangs quieted and I began to feel warm and full of food. Callie and I watched two episodes of CSI together after dinner, bundled up comfortably on the couch. We pegged the murderer before the reveal both times.

"Yup," said Callie, stretching and yawning. "Still got it. Haven't let real-world police experience cloud my sense of TV logic."

I dragged myself to bed at midnight, still tired despite my nap. I couldn't believe it was only Wednesday. This week seemed to be stretching on and on, every minute packed with either excruciatingly dull c.r.a.p (like homework) or terrifying episodes (like weird emails and near-fatal car wrecks). But nothing disturbed my sleep that night, and when I woke to my alarm, my injuries felt much better.

"Time to have a normal day," I told myself.

And for once, I did.

Not only was Arbor nowhere to be found, but Ellen was having some issues and in supporting her, I totally forgot about my own troubles. It seems there was a boy.

"I didn't want to tell you," she said, as we waited in the lunch line. "Not until I was sure we were actually dating and not just hooking up. But then this happened."

My mouth dropped open. "Hooking up?" I lowered my voice. "How far did you go?"

"Not that far."

We steered clear of Britta and company when we got our food, and instead snuck it out of the cafeteria so we could sit on the floor and eat by our lockers. I had so many questions I could barely choke down my bagel.

"So are you going to tell me who it is?"

She sighed dramatically, daintily unwrapping her ham sandwich and taking a bite, chewing and swallowing before she would answer. When she finally did tell me, it came out all at once in a long string of unbroken words.

"Okay, it's Jim Holness. Don't hate me."

"What?" I sprayed milk all over and Ellen scrunched up her face, pretending to wipe herself off with a napkin.

"Ew, Evi."

"You're hooking up with the captain of the football team? Jim 'I'm in the newspaper every other week' Holness? Jim 'I'm not a whole person without a bare-midriffed cheerleader hanging off me' Holness?"

"Yup."

I crossed my arms in thought and regarded my friend. "Well, you don't look very happy about it."

"Thank you for that evaluation, Counselor Troi. It's because I'm not."

"What's wrong? Does he not want to be seen with you or something? Are you his secret hook-up girl that he can't take out in public?"

"No, I don't think so. Anyway, it's not like I want to be seen in public with him, either."

"What, then?"

She hemmed and hawed for a bit. Ellen's a super private person, even with me. It tends to take her a while to feel comfortable letting me in on certain aspects of her life. Of course, she always spills the beans eventually.

"Last night we were making out in his car..."

"Wait, rewind. How did this love train even start a-chuggin'?"

She smiled and laughed. "We both volunteer at the Pear Creek nursing home. He's so sweet with the residents; all the ladies adore him." There was a light in her eyes for a minute, but then her face sobered and she continued. "Anyway, we started talking to each other on breaks. About school and whatnot. Then his car broke down this summer and I started giving him rides home. One day we just... kissed. You know how it is."

I did not. But I nodded, not wanting to break her train of thought.

"So it's been pretty casual since then. We see each other every now and again, go out for ice cream. Very quiet; no one knows. And then, like I said, last night we were making out in his car. All we've ever done is kiss. He hasn't even tried to touch me or anything, not even over clothes. Well, last night I wanted to go further."

"Ellen Wilson, you dirty wh.o.r.e."

She blew a raspberry at me. I giggled. "Sorry. Please continue with your extremely fascinating story."

"I kind of leaned over further and brushed my b.o.o.bs up on his chest." She bit her lip, and I could see that she was a little flushed. "And I put my hand on his crotch."

"Did he...?

"Have a b.o.n.e.r? Nope." She laughed again quietly, rolling her eyes up to the ceiling. "Actually I'm a little relieved. I was sort of scared. Excited, but scared too. Anyway, he stopped kissing me and kind of gently shoved me away. And he said we should slow down."

"Really?"

There were perpetual rumors about the vast number of chicks Jim Holness was supposedly banging. If all of them were true, it was a miracle that friction hadn't caused his p.e.n.i.s to fall off. All the guys in school thought he was a super stud.

"I know. I have no idea what to make of it. I mean, I do think he likes me. We always have fun conversations. But... am I not attractive?"

I scoffed. "Of course you are! You're the most beautiful person I know."

"Maybe he just feels guilty because he likes me as a friend but he's not attracted to me." She rested her head on one of her hands and sighed. "And then there's the Amanda situation."

Amanda Petrov is a pathetic excuse for a human being. She's also the head of the cheerleading squad, and Jim's on-again off-again girlfriend.

"The rumor mill hasn't tagged her much this year," I said.

"They've been off-again since, like, June. 'For reals off,' Jim said. And you know all that stuff about him having a different girl over every night is a bunch of c.r.a.p. I've seen his room, and believe me, no girl would want to spend five minutes in there, let alone long enough to..." She made a ridiculous face which caused me to die laughing.

"So what's Amanda's beef?" I asked.

"She's been trying to get back together with him, of course. I think she likes the attention when they're together. It's always dramatic fights and swearing and unreasonable demands. And stuff flying through the air; did you know she once threw a jelly doughnut at him? It stained his football uniform."

"Oh my G.o.d Ellen, you sound like one of them. 'Oh nooo my boyfriend's football uniform is staaained, how will he score fifteen touchdowns for meeeee?'"

"Shut up!" She stuck her tongue out and pinched me on the thigh. "But seriously, lately she's been getting pretty aggressive. He thinks she's stalking him."

"Hmm. I know a little something about that." I hadn't gotten a chance to tell her about Arbor's part in the accident from yesterday. I described how he'd been there when my vision returned and helped me with the angry car man, Shumacher or whatever his name was.

"That actually sounds nice of him," she said. "Maybe Arbor is a decent guy. You know, when he's not being a total a.s.s."

"But the thing is, why was he there? He didn't even say goodbye to me at the library. It didn't look like he was in any hurry to go home. It's almost like he followed me, but didn't want me to know about it."

"If we wanted to spend more time with you, why not just offer you a ride or something?"

I shook my head. "I have absolutely no idea. Did you know he's already learned Latin? I guess they teach it a lot more in England."

"Maybe he's taking it again to get an easy A."

"Then I guess I picked the right partner."

We sat in silence for a while, chewing. The bell rang, bringing us both out of our heads. "Hey," I said as we gathered up our books and walked to the fieldhouse, "I bet Jim just really cares about you. He doesn't want to go too fast. For your sake."

Ellen smiled. "I hope so. I super hope so."

The rest of the week was smooth sailing. Arbor was back in school on Thursday, but he didn't speak to me and I didn't speak to him. He seemed to be in one of his moods, silent, glaring at anyone who happened to cross his path. Quentin read us a section of the Aeneid, cinematically narrating Dido's suicide: "Then Juno Almighty, taking pity on Dido's protracted suffering, sent Iris down from Olympus to free her struggling soul from its prison of flesh. For Dido still lay there, dying a this was by no means a deserved fate, simply an effect of her sudden frenzy and untimely death a and Proserpine had not yet taken away a lock of her yellow hair, had not yet pledged her soul to Styx. Down came Iris, on saffron wings, trailing a thousand colors through the sky to face the sun, and stood above Dido's head. 'I shall take this lock of hair, as I have been bidden, and bear it away as an offering to Pluto. You are now free from your body.' She reached out for the lock and cut it. At once all warmth left the corpse, and life pa.s.sed into air."

I was entranced. I glanced back at Arbor and saw his usual bored expression. He was staring at me again... But it was like when he looked at me that first day in cla.s.s. As though he were seeing through me somehow, focusing his gaze on a point slightly above and to the right of my head. Later, I crushed him in volleyball. He was barely playing; I don't think he wanted to jeopardize his lily-white skin.

On Friday he was more cheerful. I was having a conversation with Vi after school, waiting for Ellen to bring the car around from the student lot.

"I'm serious, the Math is killing me. I'm literally dying." She had just come out of eighth period Calculus, a ball-buster of a cla.s.s if there ever was one.

"Don't talk to me about it; I'm still in Trig and I have no idea what's going on."

I felt a hand on my waist and yelped.

"Hi, ladies."