CHAPTER ONE #2
“Stop thinking of it that way. This is a job. We need someone to provide for us. Pay for your fancy school—and Barron’s loans.
Especially now that Philip can’t be sure how long he’s going to stay employed.
” She cuts me a dark look, like I somehow forgot that I’m the one that got him in trouble with the boss of a crime family.
Like I am going to start caring. They’ve done much worse to me.
“So long as you don’t work Clyde,” I say quietly. “You don’t need to. You’re plenty charming on your own.”
She laughs and pours her Prosecco into a water glass. It fizzes like the peroxide. “Like mother, like son. We’re both charming when we want something. Right, Cassel?”
“So I want you to stay out of jail,” I say. “So what? Is that supposed to be a secret?”
The doorbell of her room buzzes. “What did you order?” I ask her, and head over to open it.
Mom makes a sound of alarm, but she’s too late.
Clyde Austin is standing in the hallway, a bottle of Jack Daniel’s swinging from one hand. “Oh,” he says, embarrassed. “I must have the wrong room. I thought—”
Then he gets a good look at me—at the blood on my jeans, the scrape on my bare hand. And he sees my mother sitting on the bed. And he knows. His face goes ugly.
“You set me up,” he says. “You and her.” The way he says “her” tells me everything he’s thinking about us.
I start to explain, when he swings the bottle at my head. I see it moving, but I am too clumsy, too slow. It makes a hollow, horrible thunk against my temple.
I hit the carpet, dizzy. Dull pain makes me nauseous. That’s what I get for underestimating the guy. I roll onto my back just in time to see him over me, raising the Jack Daniel’s to strike again.
With a shriek Mom rakes her nails against his neck.
He whirls around, wild, swinging. His elbow connects. She flies back against the desk. Her magnifying mirror cracks against the wall, the shards falling like glittering confetti.
I reach up my bare hand. I could stop him with a single touch.
I could change him into a cockroach.
I could transform him into a puddle of grease.
I really want to.
Clyde has gone still, though, looking around like he suddenly doesn’t know where he is. “Shandra?” he says gently, reaching for my mother. “I’m so sorry. Did I hurt you?”
“That’s okay,” Mom says in a soothing voice, getting up slowly. She winces. There’s blood on her lip. “You just came by to bring me a little liquor, didn’t you? And you saw my son. Maybe you mistook him for someone else.”
“I guess,” he says. “We got along so well that I figured why wait until tomorrow night? And then . . . He does look like the mugger, you have to admit.”
Mom’s an emotion worker. She can’t change his memories; my brother Barron could do that, but he’s not here. What Mom can do with a single bare-handed touch is make Clyde Austin like her so much that he’s willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. About anything. Everything. Even this.
A wave of dizziness overwhelms me.
“That’s true, baby,” she says. “He does look a little like the mugger. It was an honest mistake. I’m just going to walk you to the door now.” Her fingers go to his neck, which should make anybody flinch—bare fingers, no glove—but it doesn’t bother him at all. He lets himself be steered.
“I’m really sorry for what happened,” he says. “I don’t know what came over me.”
“I understand,” Mom tells him. “And I forgive you, but I don’t think that we can see each other tomorrow night. You get that, right?”
Shame heats his face. “Of course.”
My vision blurs. She says something else soothing, but not to me.
We check out in the morning. Sunlight makes my brain feel like it’s throbbing inside my skull.
Sweat slicks my skin—the kind of unnatural sweat that comes along with injury.
Each movement makes me as dizzy as riding a thousand roller coasters all at once.
While we wait for the valet to get my car, I fumble through my backpack for sunglasses and try to avoid looking at the dark bruise on Mom’s shoulder.
She’s been totally silent since she told me we were leaving— all through packing and even the ride down in the elevator. I can tell she’s seething.
I feel too sick to know what to do about it.
Finally my ancient and rusted Benz drives up to the front of the hotel. Mom hands something to the driver and gets the keys while I slide in on the other side. The seat is hot on the backs of my legs, even through jeans.
“How could you answer the door like that?” she shouts as soon as we pull away from the curb. “Not looking through the peephole. Not calling out to ask who was there?”
I flinch at her voice.
“Are you stupid, Cassel? Didn’t I teach you better than that?”
She’s right. It was thoughtless. Stupid.
Private school has made me careless. It’s exactly the kind of dumb mistake that separates a decent con man from an amateur.
Plus the blowback from the emotion work makes her unstable.
Not that she isn’t normally pretty unstable.
But working magnifies it. So does anger.
There’s nothing for me to do but ride it out.
I was used to her being like this when I was a kid. But she’s been in jail long enough for me to forget how bad she can get.
“Are you stupid?” she screeches. “Answer me!”
“Stop,” I say, and lean my head against the window, shutting my eyes. “Please stop. I’m sorry, okay?”
“No,” she says, her voice vicious and certain. “No one’s that pathetic. You did it on purpose! You wanted to ruin things for me.”
“Oh, come on,” I say. “I wasn’t thinking. I said I was sorry. Look, I’m the one with the goose egg to show for it. So we have to leave Atlantic City? We’d have to leave in a week anyway when I went back to school.”
“You did this to me because of Lila.” Her gaze is on the road, but her eyes glitter with fury. “Because you’re still angry.”
Lila. My best friend, who I thought I killed.
“I’m not talking about her,” I snap. “Not with you.”
I think about Lila’s wide, expressive mouth turning up at the corners. I think about her spread out on my bed, reaching for me.
With one touch of her hand, Mom made Lila love me. And made sure I could never, ever have her.
“Hit a nerve?” Mom says, gleefully cruel. “It’s amazing you actually thought you were good enough for Zacharov’s daughter.”
“Shut up,” I say.
“She was using you, you stupid little moron. When everything was said and done, she wouldn’t have given you the time of day, Cassel. You would have been a reminder of Barron and misery and nothing more.”
“I don’t care,” I say. My hands are shaking. “It would still have been better than—” Better than having to avoid her until the curse fades. Better than the way she’ll look at me once it does.
Lila’s desire for me is a perversion of love. A mockery.
And I almost didn’t care, I wanted her so much.
“I did you a favor,” my mother says. “You should be grateful. You should be thanking me. I got you Lila on a silver platter—something you could have never in your life had otherwise.”
I laugh abruptly. “I should be thanking you? How about you hold your breath until I do?”
“Don’t talk that way to me,” Mom roars, and slaps me, hard.
Hard enough that my battered head hits the window. I see stars. Little explosions of light behind the dark glasses. Behind my eyelids.
“Pull over,” I say. Nausea overwhelms me.
“I’m sorry,” she says, her voice seesawing back to sweet. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. Are you okay?”
The world is starting to tilt. “You have to pull over.”
“Maybe right now you’d rather walk than deal with me, but if you’re really hurt, then you better—”
“Pull over!” I shout, and something about the urgency of my tone finally convinces her. She steers the car abruptly onto the shoulder of the road and brakes hard. I stumble out while we’re still moving.
Just in time to heave my guts up in the grass.
I really hope no one at Wallingford wants me to write an essay on how I spent my summer vacation.