Haunted tm-5 Page 12

  "What, exactly," I asked carefully, because I wanted to make sure that, before I got my hopes up, I got the story straight, "did Jesse tell you, Father Dom?"

  "That you kissed." Father Dominic said the word so uncomfortably, you'd have thought there were tacks on the seat of his chair. "And I must say, Susannah, that I am disturbed that you said nothing of this to me the other day when we spoke. I have never been so disappointed in you.

  It makes me wonder what else you are keeping from me - "

  "I didn't tell you," I said, "because it was just one lousy kiss. And it happened weeks ago. And since then, nothing. I mean it, Father D." I wondered if he could hear the frustration in my voice, and found that I didn't even care. "Not even nothing. A big fat nothing."

  "I thought you and I were close enough that you would share something of this magnitude with me," Father Dominic said all glumly.

  "Magnitude?" I echoed, smashing the Silly Putty in my fist. "Father D., what magnitude? Nothing happened, okay?" Much to my everlasting disappointment. "I mean, not what you're thinking, anyway."

  "I realize that," Father Dominic said gravely. "Jesse is far too honorable a young man to have taken advantage of the situation. However, you must know, Susannah, that I cannot in good conscience allow this to continue - "

  "Allow what to continue, Father D.?" I could not believe I was even having this conversation. It was almost as if I had woken up in Bizarro World. "I told you, nothing - "

  "I owe it to your parents," Father Dominic went on, as if I hadn't spoken, "to look out for your spiritual welfare as well as your physical well-being. And I have an obligation to Jesse, as well, as his confessor - "

  "As his what?" I yelled, feeling as if I might fall out of my chair.

  "There is no need to shout, Susannah. I believe that you heard me perfectly well." Father Dom looked about as miserable as I was just beginning to feel. "The fact is, that in light of ... well, the current situation, I have advised Jesse that he needs to move into the rectory."

  Now I did fall out of my chair. Well, I didn't fall out of it, exactly. I tumbled out of it. I tried to leap, but my feet were too sore for leaping. I settled for lunging at Father Dom. Except that there was this huge desk separating us, so I couldn't, as I wanted, grab big handfuls of his vestments and shriek why? Why? in his face. Instead, I had to grip the edge of his desk very tightly and go, in the kind of shrill, girl voice I hate but couldn't stop emitting at that point, "The rectory? The rectory?"

  "Yes, the rectory," Father Dominic said defensively. "He will be perfectly content there, Susannah. I know it will be difficult for him to adjust to spending his time somewhere other than - well, the place where he died. But we live very simply at the rectory. In many ways, it will be much like what Jesse was accustomed to when he was alive. ..."

  I was really having a lot of trouble processing what I was hearing.

  "And Jesse agreed to this?" I heard myself asking in that same shrill, girl's voice. Whose voice was that, anyway? Surely not my own. "Jesse said he'd do it?"

  Father Dominic looked at me in a manner I can only describe as pitying.

  "He did," he said. "And I am more sorry than I can say that you had to find out this way. But perhaps Jesse felt.. . and I must say, I agree with . .. that such a scene might . . . well, a girl of your temperament might . . . Well, you might have made it difficult. . . ."

  And then, from out of nowhere, the tears came. My only warning was a sharp tingle in my nose. The next thing I knew, I was fighting back sobs.

  Because I knew what Father Dom was trying to say. It was all there, in hideous black and white. Jesse didn't love me. Jesse had never loved me. That kiss - that kiss had been an experiment after all. Worse than an experiment. A mistake, even. A horrible, miserable mistake.

  And now Jesse knew that I'd lied to him about Paul - knew that I'd lied to him, and worse, probably guessed why I'd lied . . . that I love him, that I'd always loved him, and didn't want to lose him - he was moving out, rather than telling me the truth, that he didn't return my feelings. Moving out! He would rather have moved out than have spent another day with me! That's the kind of pathetic loser I am!

  I fell back into the chair in front of Father Dom's desk, weeping. I didn't even care what Father Dom thought - you know, about me crying over a guy. It wasn't like I could just stop loving Jesse now that I knew - for absolute sure, once and for all - that he didn't love me back.

  "I d-don't understand," I said, into my hands. "What.. . what did I do wrong?"

  Father Dominic's voice sounded gently harassed. "Nothing, Susannah. You did nothing wrong. It's just better this way. Surely you can see that."

  Father Dominic really isn't very good at dealing with love affairs. Ghosts, yes. Girls who've had their hearts stomped on? Not so much.

  Still, he did his best. He actually got up from behind the desk, came around it, and laid one of his hands over my shoulder and patted it kind of awkwardly.

  I was surprised. Father D. wasn't a real touchy-feely guy.

  "There, there, Susannah," he said. "There, there. It will be all right."

  Except that it wouldn't. It would never be all right.

  But Father Dom wasn't finished.

  "You two cannot go on as you have been. Jesse's got to leave. It's the only way."

  I couldn't help letting out a humorless laugh at that one.

  "The only way? To make him leave home?" I asked, angrily reaching up to wipe my eyes with the sleeve of my suede jacket. And you know what salt water does to suede. That's how far gone I was. "I don't think so."

  "It isn't his home, Susannah," Father D. said kindly. "It's your home. It was never Jesse's home. It was the boardinghouse where he was murdered."

  Hearing the word murdered, I am sorry to say, only made me cry harder. Father D. responded by patting my shoulder some more.

  "Come now," he said. "You've got to be adult about this, Susannah."

  I said something unintelligible. Even I didn't know what it was.

  "I have no doubt that you will handle this situation, Susannah," Father Dom said, "as you've handled all the others in your life, with . . . well, if not grace, then aplomb. And now you had better go. First period is nearly over."

  But I didn't go. I just sat there, occasionally letting out a pathetic sniffle as the tears continued to stream down my face. I was glad I'd worn waterproof mascara that morning.

  But Father D., instead of taking pity on me, the way a man of the cloth is supposed to do, only looked at me a little suspiciously. "Susannah," he said, "I hope ... I don't believe I have to ... well, I feel obligated to warn you. . . . You are a very headstrong girl, and I do hope you will remember what I spoke to you about once before. You are not to use your, er, feminine wiles on Jesse. I meant it then, and I mean it now. If you must cry about this, get it over with here in my office. But do not cry to Jesse. Don't make this harder on him than it already is. Do you understand?"

  I stamped a foot, then, but as pain shot up my leg, instantly regretted the action.

  "God," I said not very graciously. "What do you take me for? You think I'm going to beg him to stay or something? If he wants to go, that's fine by me. More than fine. I'm glad he's going." Then my voice caught on another traitorous sob. "But I just want you to know, it's not fair."

  "Very little in life is fair, Susannah," Father Dominic said sympathetically. "But I shouldn't have to remind you that you have far, far more blessings in your life than many people. You are one very lucky girl."

  "Lucky," I said with a bitter laugh. "Yeah, right."

  Father Dominic looked at me. "You seem better now, Susannah," he said. "So perhaps you won't mind running along now. I have a lot of work to do concerning the feast tomorrow. . . ."

  I thought about how much I hadn't told him. I mean, about Craig and Neil Jankow, not to mention Paul and Dr. Slaski and the shifters.

  I should have told him about Paul. At the very least, I should have told him his whole fresh
-start theory. Then again, maybe not. Paul was definitely up to no good, as my aching feet could attest.

  But I was, 111 admit, a little bit peeved with Father Dominic. You would have thought he'd have shown me a little bit more compassion. I mean, he'd basically just broken my heart. Worse, he'd done it on Jesses order. Jesse didn't even have the guts to tell me to my face that he didn't love me. No, he had to make his "confessor" do it. Nice one. Really made me sorry I'd missed out on life in the eighteen fifties. Must have been sweet - everyone going around, making priests do their dirty work.

  I couldn't, of course, run along, as Father Dom had suggested. I couldn't technically run anywhere. But I hobbled out of his office, feeling extremely sorry for myself. I was still crying - enough so that when Father D.'s secretary saw me, she went, with motherly concern, "Oh, hon. You all right? Here, have a tissue," which was a lot more comforting than anything Father D. had done for me in the past half hour.

  I took the tissue and blew my nose, then took a few more for the road. I had a feeling I was going to be bawling my eyes out until at least third period.

  Stepping out into the breezeway along the courtyard, I tried to get a hold of myself. Okay. So the guy didn't like me. Lots of guys hadn't liked me in the past, and I'd never lost it like this. And, okay, this was Jesse, the person I loved best in all the world. But, hey, if he didn't want me back, that was just fine. You know what it was? Yeah, it was his loss, that's what it was.

  So why couldn't I stop crying?

  What was I going to do without him? I mean, I had totally gotten used to having Jesse around all the time. And what about his cat? Was Spike going to go live at the rectory, too? I guess he would have to. I mean, that ugly cat loved Jesse as much as I did. Lucky cat, getting to go live with Jesse.

  I wandered along the length of the breezeway, looking out at the sun-soaked courtyard without really seeing it. Maybe, I thought, Father D. was right. Maybe it was better this way. I mean, let's say, just for a minute, that Jesse liked me back. Better than liked me. Loved me, even. Where was it going to go? It was like Paul had said. What were we going to do? Date? Go to the movies together? I would have to pay, and it would just be for one ticket. And if anyone saw me, to all appearances sitting by myself, I would look like the biggest dork in the world. How lame.

  What I needed, I realized, was a real boyfriend. Not just a guy people besides me could see, either, but a guy I liked, who actually liked me back. That was what I needed. That was exactly what I needed.

  Because when Jesse found out about it, it might make him realize what a colossal mistake he had just made.

  It's kind of funny that as I was thinking this, Paul Slater suddenly leaped out at me from behind a column, and went, "Hey."

  14

  "Go away," I said.

  Because the truth was, I was still sort of crying, and Paul Slater was just about the last person in the world I wanted to see me doing so. I was totally hoping he wouldn't notice.

  No such luck. Paul went, "What's with the waterworks?"

  "Nothing," I said, wiping my eyes with my jacket sleeve. I'd used up all the tissues Father Dom's secretary had given me. "Just allergies."

  Paul reached out and jerked my hand away. "Here, use this."

  And he passed me, of all things, a white handkerchief he'd pulled from his pocket.

  Funny how, with everything else that was going on, all I could focus on was that white square of material. "You carry a handkerchief?" I asked in a voice that cracked.

  Paul shrugged. "You never know when you might need to gag someone."

  This was so not the answer I expected that I couldn't help laughing a little. I mean, Paul creeped me out a little . . . okay, a lot. But he could still be funny sometimes.

  I mopped up my tears with the handkerchief, more conscious than I wanted to be of the proximity of its owner. Paul was looking particularly delectable that morning in a charcoal cashmere sweater and a chocolate-brown leather coat. I couldn't help looking at his mouth and remembering how it felt on mine. Which was good. More than good.

  Then my gaze drifted toward his eye, the one I'd jabbed. No mark. The guy didn't bruise easily.

  I wished the same could be said of me. Or of my heart, anyway.

  I don't know if Paul noticed the direction of my gaze - I suppose it had been pretty obvious I'd been staring at his mouth. But all of a sudden, he lifted his arms and placed both hands against the three-foot-wide column I'd been leaning against - one of the columns that hold the roof of the breezeway up - sort of pinioning me in between them.

  "So, Suze," he said in a friendly way. "What did Father Dominic want to see you about?"

  Even though I was definitely in the market for a boyfriend, I wasn't so sure Paul was the guy for me. I mean, yeah, he was hot and all, and there was the whole mediator thing.

  But there was also that whole thing where he'd tried to kill me. It's kind of hard just to let something like that go.

  So I was sort of torn as I stood there, imprisoned between his arms. On the one hand, I wouldn't have minded reaching up and dragging his head down and laying a big fat one on his mouth.

  On the other hand, giving him a good swift kick in the groin seemed equally appealing, given what he'd put me through the other day, what with the hot pavement and the Hell's Angel and all.

  I didn't end up doing either. I just stood there, my heart beating kind of hard inside my chest. This was, after all, the guy about whom I'd been having nightmares for the past few weeks. That kind of thing doesn't go away just because the guy put his tongue in your mouth and you sort of liked it.

  "Don't worry; I said in a voice that didn't sound at all like my own, it was so hoarse from all the crying. I cleared my throat, then said, "I didn't tell Father Dom anything about you, if that's what you're worried about."

  Paul visibly relaxed as my words soaked in. He even lifted one of his hands away from the wall and fingered a coil of my hair that had been curled against my shoulder.

  "I like your hair better down," he said approvingly. "You should always wear it down."

  I rolled my eyes in order to hide the fact that my heart rate, when he touched me, sped up considerably, and I started to duck beneath the one arm he still had caging me in.

  "Where do you think you're going?" he asked, moving to corner me once more, this time by taking a step closer, so that our faces were only about three inches apart. His breath, I was close enough to note, still smelled of whatever toothpaste he'd used that morning.

  Jesse's breath never smells like anything, because, of course, he's not alive.

  "Paul," I said in what I hoped was an even, completely toneless voice. "Really. Not here, okay?"

  "Fine." He didn't move away, though. "Where, then?"

  "Oh, God, Paul." I lifted a hand to my forehead. It felt hot. But I knew I didn't have a fever. Why was I so hot? It was cool in the breezeway. Was it Paul? Was it Paul who was making me feel this way? "I don't know, okay? Look, I have ... I have a lot of stuff I have to figure out right now. Could you just . . . could you just leave me alone for a while, so I can think?"

  "Sure," he said. "Did you get the flowers?"

  "I got the flowers," I said. Whatever it was that was making me feel so feverish also forced me to add, even though I didn't want to, since all I wanted to do was run away and hide in the girls' room until it was time for classes to change, "But if you think I'm going to forget about what you did to me, just because you sent me a bunch of dumb flowers - "

  "I said I was sorry, Suze," Paul said. "And I'm more sorry about your feet than I can say. You should have let me drive you home. I wouldn't have tried anything, I swear."

  "Oh, yeah?" I looked up at him. He was a head taller than me, but his lips were still only inches from mine. I could meet them with my own without much of a problem. Not that I was going to. I didn't think. "What do you call what you're doing now?"

  "Suze," he said, playing with my hair again. His breath tickled my cheek.
"How else am I going to get you to talk to me? You've got this totally mistaken impression of me. You think I'm some kind of bad guy. And I'm not. I'm really not. I'm . . . well, I'm a lot like you, actually."

  "Somehow, I seriously doubt that," I said. His proximity was making it difficult to talk. And not because he was scaring me. He still scared me, but in a different way now.

  "It's true," he said. "I mean, we actually have a lot in common. Not just the mediator thing, either. I think our philosophy of life is the same. Well, except for the whole part where you want to help people. But that's just guilt. In every other way, you and I are identical. I mean, we're both cynical and mistrustful of others. Almost to the point of being misanthropic, I would go so far to say. We're old souls, Suze. We've both been around the block before. Nothing surprises us, and nothing impresses us. At least - " his ice-blue gaze bore into mine " - nothing until now. In my case, anyway."

  "That may very well be, Paul," I said, as patronizingly as I was able - which wasn't very, I'm afraid, because his closeness was making it very difficult to breathe. "The only problem is, the person I mistrust most in the world? That'd be you."

  "I don't know why," Paul said. "When we're clearly meant for each other. I mean, just because you met Jesse first - "

  "Don't." The word burst from me like an explosion. I couldn't stand it. I couldn't stand hearing his name... not from those lips. "Paul, I'm warning you - "

  Paul laid a single finger over my mouth.

  "Shhh," he said. "Don't say things you'll only regret later."

  "I am not going to regret saying this," I said, my lips moving against his finger. "You - "

  "You don't mean it," Paul said confidently, sliding his finger from my mouth, over the curve of my chin, and down the side of my neck. "You're just scared. Scared to admit your true feelings. Scared to admit that I might know a few things you and wise old Gandalf, aka Father Dominic, might not. Scared to admit I might be right, and that you aren't as completely committed to your precious Jesse as you'd like to think. Come on, 'fess up. You felt something when I kissed you the other day. Don't deny it."