When Lightning Strikes Read online

  "Nice jeans," she said sarcastically, as I climbed into the passenger seat.

  "Just drive," I said.

  "Really," she said, shifting. "You don't look like Jennifer Reals, or anything. Hey, are you a welder by day and a stripper by night, by any chance?"

  "Yes," I said. "But I'm saving all my money to pay for ballet school."

  We were almost to school when Ruth asked, suddenly, "Hey, what's with you? You haven't been this quiet since Douglas tried to … you know."

  I shook myself. I hadn't been aware of vegging, but that's exactly what I'd done. The thing was, I couldn't get this picture of Sean Patrick O'Hanahan out of my head. He was older in my dream than in the picture on the milk carton. Maybe he was one of those kids who'd been kidnapped so long ago, he didn't remember his real family.

  Then again, maybe it had just been a dream.

  "Huh," I said. "I don't know. I was just thinking, is all."

  "That's a first," Ruth said. She pulled into the student parking lot. "Hey, do you want to walk home again tonight? I'll have Skip drop me off again at four, when you get out of detention. You know, I weighed myself this morning, and I already lost a pound."

  I think she probably lost the pound from not eating any dinner the night before, being way too busy staring dreamily at Mike to consume anything. But all I said was, "Sure, I guess. Except …"

  "Except what?"

  "Well, you know how I feel about motorcycles."

  Ruth looked heavenward. "Not Rob Wilkins again."

  "Yes, Rob Wilkins again. I can't help it, Ruth. He's got that really big—"

  "I don't want to hear it," Ruth said, holding up her hand.

  "—Indian," I finished. "What did you think I was going to say?"

  "I don't know." Ruth pushed a button, and the roof started going up. "Some of those Grits wear pretty tight jeans."

  "Gross," I said, as if this had never occurred to me. "Really, Ruth."

  She undid her seatbelt primly. "Well, it's not like I'm blind or anything."

  "Look," I said. "If he offers me a ride, I'm taking it."

  "It's your life," Ruth said. "But don't expect me to sit by the phone waiting for you to call if he doesn't ask."

  "If he doesn't ask," I said, "I'll just call my mom."

  "Fine," Ruth said. She sounded mad.

  "What?"

  "Nothing," she said.

  "No, not nothing. What's wrong?"

  "Nothing's wrong." Ruth got out of the car. "God, you're such a weirdo."

  Ruth is always calling me a weirdo, so I didn't take offense. I don't think she even means anything by it anymore. Anything much, anyway.

  I got out of the car, too. It was a beautiful day, the sky a robin's-egg blue overhead, the temperature hovering around sixty, and it was only eight in the morning. The afternoon would probably be roasting. Not the kind of day to spend indoors. The perfect kind of day for a ride in a convertible … or, even better, on the back of a bike.

  Which reminded me. Paoli was only about twenty miles from where I was standing. It was the next town over, actually. I couldn't help wondering how Ruth—or Rob Wilkins—would feel about taking a little trip over there after detention. You know, just to check it out. I wouldn't tell either of them about my dream or anything. But I was pretty sure I knew exactly where that little brick house was … even though I was equally sure I'd never been there before.

  Which was the main reason, actually, that I wanted to check it out. I mean, who goes around having dreams about kids on the back of milk cartons? Not that my ordinary dreams are all that exciting. Just the usual ones, about showing up to school naked, or sucking face with Brendan Eraser.

  "Hello?"

  I blinked. Ruth was standing in front of me, waving a hand in my face.

  "God," she said, putting her hand down. "What is the matter with you? Are you sure you're all right?"

  "Fine," I said automatically.

  And the funny thing was, I really thought I was fine.

  Then.

  C H A P T E R

  6

  Detention at Ernie Pyle High is traditionally run by the staff member with the least seniority. This year, it was Miss Clemmings, the new art teacher. Now, I don't mean to be sexist, but they had to be kidding. Miss Clemmings is barely as tall as me, and can't weigh more than I do, like a hundred pounds or so.

  And yet, unlike me, Miss Clemmings is hardly an expert kickboxer—or even a mediocre one. But there she was, supposed to keep these giant football players from fighting with one another. I mean, it was ridiculous. Coach Albright I could see. Coach Albright would be able to establish some control. But all Miss Clemmings could do was threaten to report these guys when they acted up. And all that happened when they got reported was that they got longer detentions. Miss Clemmings had to keep them from fighting that much longer. It was kind of retarded.

  So I wasn't super-surprised when Miss Clemmings, at the start of detention at the end of the day, called me up to the front of the auditorium and said, in her wispy little-girl voice, "Jessica, I need to talk to you."

  I couldn't imagine what Miss Clemmings wanted. Oh, all right, I'll admit it: a part of me thought she was going to let me off for the rest of the semester, on account of my good behavior. Because I really am a little angel … during detention, anyway. That was more than could be said for any of my fellow detainees.

  Which was, in a way, what she wanted to talk to me about.

  "It's the Ws," she whispered.

  I looked at her uncomprehendingly. "The Ws, Miss Clemmings?"

  She went, "Yes, in the back row?" And then she pointed at the auditorium seats.

  It was only then that I caught on. Of course. The Ws. We're seated alphabetically for detention, and the guys in the last row—the Ws—have a tendency to get a little rambunctious. They'd been restless during rehearsals for West Side Story, rowdy during Romeo and Juliet, and downright rude during Our Town. Now the drama club was putting on Endgame, and Miss Clemmings was afraid a riot might break out.

  "I hate to ask this of you, Jessica," she said, looking at me with her big blue eyes, "but you are the only girl here, and I've often found that placing a strong female influence in amongst a predominantly testosterone-driven group has a tendency to diffuse some of the—"

  "Okay," I said, real fast.

  Miss Clemmings looked surprised. Then she looked relieved. "Really? Really, Jessica? You wouldn't mind?"

  Was she kidding? "No," I said. "I wouldn't mind. Not at all."

  "Oh," she said, placing a hand to her heart. "Oh, I'm so glad. If you could, then, just sit between Robert Wilkins and the Wendell boy—"

  I couldn't believe it. Some days, you know, you wake up, and okay, maybe you had some wacked-out dreams, but then, suddenly, things just start going your way. Just like that.

  I went back to my seat in the Ms, picked up my backpack and my flute, and shoved my way down the W row until I'd gotten to the seat between Rob and Hank. There were a lot of catcalls while I did this—enough so that the drama coach turned around and shushed us—and a few of the guys wouldn't pick up their stupid feet and let me by. I got them back, however, by kicking them really hard in the shins. That got them moving, all right.

  We have to sit one seat apart from one another, so that necessitated everyone from Rob Wilkins down moving one seat over. Only Rob didn't seem to mind. He picked up his leather jacket—he had nothing else, no books, no bag, nothing, except a paperback spy novel he kept in the back pocket of his jeans—and sat down again, his blue eyes on me as I arranged my stuff under my seat.

  "Welcome to hell," he said to me when I straightened up.

  I flashed him my best smile. The guy on the other side of him saw it, and grabbed his crotch. Rob noticed, looked at him, and said, "You're dead, Wylie."

  "Shhh," Miss Clemmings hissed, clapping her hands at us. "If I hear another word back there, you're all getting an extra week."

  We shut up. I took out my geometry boo
k and started doing the homework we'd been assigned for the weekend. I tried not to notice that Rob wasn't doing anything. He was just sitting there, watching the play rehearsal. The guy to my left, Hank Wendell, was making one of those paper footballs. He was using spit instead of tape to hold the paper together.

  None of the guys in the Ws seemed particularly impressed—or cowed—by my presence.

  Then suddenly Rob leaned over and grabbed my notebook and pen out of my hands. He looked at my homework, nodded, and turned the page. Then he wrote something down, and passed the notebook and the pen back to me. I looked at what he had written. It was:

  So did you get caught in the rain yesterday?

  I looked down at Miss Clemmings. I'm not sure whether or not you're allowed to pass notes in detention. I'd never heard of anybody trying it before.

  But Miss Clemmings wasn't even paying attention. She was watching Claire Lippman perform this really boring monologue from inside a big Rubbermaid trash can.

  I wrote, Yes, and passed the notebook back to him.

  Not exactly scintillating, or anything. But what else was I supposed to say?

  He wrote something down and passed the notebook back. He'd written: Told you so. Why don't you ditch the fat girl and come for a ride with me after this?

  Jesus Christ. He was asking me out. Sort of.

  And he was also dissing my best friend.

  Are you mentally impaired or something? I wrote. That fat girl happens to be my best friend.

  He seemed to like that. He wrote for a long time. When I got the notebook back, this is what he'd put down: Jesus, sorry. I had no idea you were so sensitive. Let me rephrase. Why don't you tell your gravitationally challenged friend to take a hike, and come for a ride with me after this?

  I wrote: It's Friday night, you loser. What do you think, I don't already have plans? I happen to have a boyfriend, you know.

  I thought the boyfriend part might be stretching it a little, but he seemed to eat it up. He wrote: Yeah? Well, I bet your boyfriend isn't rebuilding a '64 Harley in his barn.

  A '64 Harley? My fingers were trembling so hard I could barely write. My boyfriend doesn't have a barn. His dad—as long as I was making up a boyfriend, I figured I'd give him an impressive lineage—is a lawyer.

  Rob wrote: So? Dump him. Come for a ride.

  It was right then that Hank Wendell leaned over and went, "Wylie. Wylie?"

  On the other side of Rob, Greg Wylie leaned over and went, "Suck on this, Wendell."

  "Both of you," I hissed through gritted teeth, "shut the hell up before Clemmings looks over here."

  Hank sent his paper football flying in Wylie's direction. But Rob stuck out his hand and caught it before it got to where it was supposed to.

  "You heard the lady," he said, in this dangerous voice. "Knock it off."

  Both Wylie and Wendell simmered down. Boy. Miss Clemmings had been right. It was amazing what a little estrogen could do.

  Okay, I wrote. On one condition.

  He wrote, No conditions and underlined it heavily.

  I wrote, in big block letters, Then I can't go.

  He'd seen what I was writing before I finished it. He snatched the notebook from me, looking annoyed, and wrote, All right. What?

  Which was how, an hour later, we were headed for Paoli.

  C H A P T E R

  7

  Okay. Okay, so I'll admit it. Right here, on paper, in my official statement. You want a confession? You want me to tell the truth?

  Okay. Here it is:

  I like to go fast.

  I mean, really fast.

  I don't know what it is. I've just never been scared of speed. On road trips, like when we'd drive up to Chicago to see Grandma, and my dad would go eighty or so, trying to pass a semi, everyone in the car would be like, "Slow down! Slow down!"

  Not me. I was always, "Faster! Faster!"

  It's been that way ever since I was a little girl. I remember back when we used go to the county fair (before it was determined to be too "Gritty"), I always had to go on all the fast rides—the Whip, the Super Himalaya—by myself, because everyone else in my family was too scared of them. Just me, by myself, going sixty, seventy, eighty miles an hour.

  And that still wasn't fast enough. Not for me.

  But here's the thing I found out that day I went for a ride with Rob: Rob liked going fast, too.

  He was safe about it and everything. Like he made me wear a spare helmet he had in the storage container on the back of the bike. And he obeyed all traffic laws, while we were still within city limits. But as soon as we were out of them …

  I have to tell you, I was in heaven. I mean it.

  Of course, part of it might have been because I had my arms wrapped around this totally buff guy. I mean, Rob had abs that were hard as rock. I know, because I was holding on pretty tight, and all he was wearing beneath that leather jacket was a T-shirt.

  Rob was my kind of guy. He liked taking risks.

  It wasn't like there were any other cars on the road. I mean, we're talking country lanes here, surrounded by corn fields. I don't think we passed another car all night, except when we finally made the turn into Paoli.

  Paoli.

  What can I tell you about Paoli? What do you want to know? You want to know how it started? I guess you do. Okay, I'll tell you. It started in Paoli.

  Paoli, Indiana, Paoli's just like any other small town in Southern Indiana. There was a town square with a courthouse on it, one movie theater, a bridal shop, a library. I guess there was probably an elementary school, too, and a high school, and a rubber tire factory, though I didn't see them.

  I do know there were about ten churches. I made Rob turn left at one of the churches—don't even ask me how I knew it was the right one—and suddenly we were on the same tree-lined street from my dream. Two blocks later, and we were in front of this very familiar-looking little brick house. I tapped Rob on the shoulder, and he pulled over to the curb and cut the engine off.

  Then we sat there, and I looked.

  It was the house from my dream. The exact same house. It had the same crabgrassy lawn, the same black mailbox with just numbers, no name on it, the same windows with all the blinds down. The more I looked at it, the more I suspected that, in the backyard, there'd be a rusty old swing set, and one of those kiddie wading pools, cracked and dirty from having sat outside all winter.

  It was a nice house. Small, but nice. In a modest but nice neighborhood. Someone who lived nearby had gotten out the barbecue and was grilling burgers for dinner. In the distance, I could hear the voices of children shouting as they played.

  "Well," Rob said, after a minute. "This the boyfriend's place, then?"

  "Shhh," I said to him. That's because someone was coming toward us on the sidewalk. Someone short, dragging a jean jacket behind him. Someone who, when he got close enough, suddenly veered off the sidewalk and onto the lawn of the little brick house I was staring at.

  I pulled off the helmet Rob had lent me.

  No, my eyes weren't playing tricks on me. It was Sean Patrick O'Hanahan, all right. Older than he'd been in the picture on the back of the milk carton by about five or six years. But it was him. I just knew it.

  I don't know what made me do it. I'd never done anything like it before. But I got down from Rob's bike, crossed the street, and said, "Sean."

  Just like that. I didn't yell it or anything. I just said his name.

  He turned. Then he went pale. Before he even saw me, he went pale. I swear it.

  He was probably about twelve. Small for his age, but still only a few inches shorter than me. Red hair beneath a Yankees cap. Freckles stood out starkly against his nose, now that he'd gone so pale.

  His eyes were blue. They narrowed as his gaze flicked first over me, then behind me, toward Rob.

  "I don't know what you're talking about," he said. He didn't shout it, any more than I'd shouted his name. Still, I heard the undercurrent of fear in his little-boy vo
ice.

  I got as far as the sidewalk before I thought I'd better stop. He looked ready to bolt.

  "Oh, yeah?" I said. "Your name's not Sean?"

  "No," the kid said, in that snotty way kids talk when they're scared, only they don't want it to show. "My name's Sam."

  I shook my head slowly. "No, it isn't," I said. "Your name's Sean. Sean Patrick O'Hanahan. It's okay, Sean. You can trust me. I'm here to help you. I'm here to help get you home."

  What happened next was this:

  The kid went, if such a thing is possible, even whiter. At the same time, his body seemed to turn into Jell-O, or something. He dropped the jean jacket as if it weighed too much for him to hold on to anymore, and I could see his fingers shaking.

  Then he rushed me.

  I don't know what I thought he was going to do. Hug me, I guess. I thought maybe he was so happy and grateful at being found, he was going to throw himself into my arms and give me a great big kiss for having come to his rescue.

  That was so not what he did.

  What he did instead was reach out and grab me by the wrist—quite painfully, I might add—and hiss, "Don't you tell anyone. Don't you ever tell anyone you saw me, understand?"

  This was not exactly the kind of reaction I'd been expecting. I mean, it would have been one thing if we'd gotten to Paoli and I had found out the house I'd dreamed about didn't exist. But it did exist. And what's more, in front of that house was the kid from the milk carton. I'd have staked my life on it.

  Only, for some reason, the kid was claiming he was someone else.

  "I am not Sean Patrick O'Hanahan," he whispered in a voice that was as filled with anger as it was with fear. "So you can just go away, do you hear? You can just go away. And don't ever come back."

  It was at this point that the front door to the little house opened, and a woman's voice called, sharply, "Sam!"

  The kid let go of me at once.

  "Coming," he said, his voice shaking as badly as his fingers were.

  He threw me just one more furious, frightened look as he stooped to pick his jean jacket up off the lawn. Then he ran inside and slammed the door behind him without glancing in my direction again.