Page 67 of Jar of Hearts
“Well, I think that’s all we need,” Torrance said, standing up.Officer Vaughn followed. “If you think of anything else, give me a call.”
He left his card on the coffee table, shook hands with her father, and left.
Geo locked the door behind them, knowing she was about to get a lecture about the drinking. Which was fine, and she wasn’t planning to argue. She had no desire to be anywhere but home, anyway.
“So? How long am I grounded for?” she asked her father before he could say anything.
“Is that what I’m supposed to do?” Walt said wearily, dropping onto the sofa. “Have I ever grounded you before?”
“No.”
He rubbed his face with his hands. “You shouldn’t be drinking. And even more than that, you shouldn’t be walking home late at night. There are a lot of creeps out there.”
I know. I’m one of them.“The neighborhood is safe, Dad.”
“That’s not the point,” he said. “Ever since your mom died, it’s just been you and me. And I work a lot, which means you’re alone a lot.”
“It’s fine—”
“It’s not fine, goddammit,” he said. “You’re sixteen. You’re still supposed to need me for things, to be able to count on me, to be able to call me when you need a ride home. It’s not okay that you left a party drunk and felt you had no way to get home other than to walk ten blocks at close to midnight. Yes, we live in a safe neighborhood, but there’s still a lot of sickos out there. You should have called me. More important, you should feel like you can.”
“But you were working.” Geo could see that he was upset. God, if he only knew.
“The most important job I have is here, at home,” Walt said, standing up. “I have enough seniority at the hospital that I don’t have to do those overnights anymore. I agree to those shifts because they pay better. But it takes time away from you. It means I’m eating dinner in a cafeteria by myself and you’re eating at home by yourself, and that’s stupid. You’re the most important person in my life, and Iought to start acting like it. This is a wake-up call for both of us, do you understand?”
Her father misinterpreted the look on her face and offered her a smile. “Don’t worry, I don’t plan to smother you. We both need our space. But I should be able to pick you up from somewhere until we can get you a car of your own. I should be home for dinner most nights.” His body sagged. “What if it were you who was missing? What if one night you didn’t come home? You’re all I have, Georgina. Angela’s parents, I know how they don’t spend any time with her. And now look, nobody knows where she is. I can’t even imagine.”
“I’m sure she’ll be back.” The lie stuck in Geo’s throat. She almost choked on it.
The cops questioned everyone who was at the party, but Mike Bennett got the worst of it. The St. Martin’s High School quarterback was hauled down to the precinct and held for twenty-four hours. His parents had to hire a lawyer. Everybody who was at the party—at least a hundred kids over the course of the night—corroborated Geo’s statement that Angela had spent most of her time with Mike. He admitted that Angela left him at Chad’s at some point during the night, and that he had caught a ride home with his buddy Troy Sherman, the St. Martin’s Bulldogs wide receiver. Troy had crashed at Mike’s house after they’d had a couple more beers, both of them falling asleep after watching a video of their last football game. He hotly denied that they had a homosexual relationship, refusing to admit it even when the cops strongly suggested that he could avoid arrest if he were honest. Mike’s parents threatened to sue if the cops didn’t quit with that line of questioning, as their son was currently being scouted by several college teams. With no other proof, the police let him go.
Mike Bennett, so deep in the closet he was practically in Narnia, was overheard telling a couple of the guys in the locker room on Monday morning that he wouldn’t be surprised if Angela had run off to become a porn star. “Never knew a girl who loved sex as much as she did. That cheerleader thing? It’s all an act,” he said. “She was into some kinky stuff.”
Of course he’d refused to elaborate on what kind of kinky stuff, but of all the rumors that would sprout in the coming weeks, this was the one that upset Geo the most. Sure, Angela had done some stuff with Mike, but not that much, because,hello, Mike was gay. He was lying to cover his own ass. On more than one occasion, Geo had been tempted to confront him.
But she couldn’t. And the hypocrisy of calling Mike Bennett a liar wasn’t lost on her.
Angela Wong’s disappearance was both big news and big gossip. People who didn’t know anything about what happened were suddenly sure they had seen her places she’d never been, with people she didn’t even know. The conversation was ongoing, happening in every classroom, every period, across St. Martin’s High School, whether the kids knew her or not. And the more the kids talked, the more the stories grew, growing so ridiculous that Geo would have laughed had she not known the truth.
“I heard she was last seen near the 7-Eleven,” Tess DeMarco said to Geo during their fourth-period calculus class. “And that she boarded a bus to San Francisco and is staying with some older guy. I bet she’s back within a week. She just wants to freak her parents out and cause drama.”
“Oh, so you’re talking to me now?” Geo snapped, recalling the other girl’s eagerness to get her kicked off the squad. Had that only been last week?
“What? We’ve always been friends.” Tess blinked, feigning ignorance. For a girl who’d wanted to be Angela’s best friend, she hadn’t wasted any time cozying up to Mike Bennett in the cafeteria during lunch. And he was only too happy to have another girl on his arm to play the role Angela used to.
Lauren Benedict, also on the cheer team, piped up. “Seriously, guys, what if something bad happened to her? What if she found out Mike was gay, and he killed her? She could be buried in a ditch somewhere.”
“Mike Bennett isnotgay,” Tess said, her cheeks flushing. “Don’t talk about shit you don’t know, Lauren.”
Geo shook her head and buried herself in her calculus textbook. She only wanted to go home. It had taken every ounce of energy she had to get herself to school that morning. “Shut up, both of you. For real.”
It had only been three days, but the weight of the lies was taking its toll. Geo couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat. Angela’s mother had called half a dozen times, wanting to know if Geo had heard anything new from her friends at school. The phone calls were torture, and after every one, she felt even worse. After the last call, she ran to the bathroom and threw up the chicken pot pie her father nuked for dinner. Walt chalked it up to anxiety over her missing best friend. And of course it was, but not in the way he or anyone else thought.
Geo kept expecting the cops to barge in and arrest her. She couldn’t imagine how she’d get through another day at school pretending to be just as confused and concerned as everybody else. Exhaustion overtook her on the fourth night, and she finally fell asleep, only to wake up from a nightmare, her hair plastered to her sweaty face.
“You,” the older cop had shouted in her dream. She was in the cafeteria and everybody was staring at her as the two police officers entered, pointing their guns and waving their badges. “You’re the reason she’s covered in dirt, rotting. You.You.”
She cried into her pillow, a full body sob that racked her from head to toe. She had to say something. She couldn’t live like this, and it sure as hell wasn’t fair to Angela’s family. At the very least, Geo knew she had to tell her father. He would know what to do, but the thought tied her stomach in knots. She hated to disappoint her dad, and yet she knew his disappointment would be the least of what he felt once he found out what she’d helped do.
