No Matter What

* * *

“TALK TO ME,” HIS father said. “Tell me what’s going on.”

The anger that filled Trevor 24/7 rose like a storm-driven wave ready to crash on the beach. Trevor didn’t know how to handle these violent impulses, this deep hunger to make everyone else hurt as much as he did. He couldn’t have formed all this hostility and sense of betrayal into words even if he’d wanted to, and he didn’t.

“Nothing’s going on.”

His father sighed. “Have you ever been in a fight before last week?”

He shrugged.

Dad had just slapped dinner on the table—a frozen lasagna nuked in the microwave, salad from a bag and presliced garlic bread, also nuked. He hadn’t said a word during the drive home. When they’d walked in the door, he’d said, “Go to your room and don’t come out until dinner,” and continued toward his home office without looking back. Trevor had hesitated, but Dad hadn’t looked or sounded like himself. There wasn’t anyplace he wanted to be, anyway, he’d told himself, and gone upstairs where he threw himself on the bed and discovered he had enough adrenaline still heating up his bloodstream that he wished Aaron Latter was on his feet again and coming at him.

Now Trevor only wanted his father to get the lecture over so he could sneak out and meet Cait. So far, she was the only good thing to come out of moving to this crappy little town. When he was with her, his anger settled. He felt more normal. Horny, but normal. He grinned. Yeah, okay, that was normal.

“You find this funny?” his father asked coldly.

He kept his head down. “I was thinking about something else.”

“I guess the first thing I need to figure out is how to keep your attention, then, isn’t it?”

His first thought was Oh, shit, and his second— Yeah, big scare, what can he do to me anyway?

Dad held out his hand. “Car keys.”

The legs of Trevor’s chair scraped on the floor as he recoiled. “What?”

“You heard me. Your driving privileges are suspended.”

Rage rose in him. Tide coming in. “That car’s a piece of crap, anyway.” He took pleasure in the slight flinch he detected beside his father’s grimly set mouth. Dad had bought the heap of junk before Trevor had even shown up. He’d been proud that he already had a car for his son.

Trevor dug in his jeans pocket, pulled out the keys and tossed them toward his father. He wasn’t real sorry when they landed on Dad’s lasagna.

Without a word, his father picked them up, took the car key off the ring and handed it back to Trevor. “You might want to wash that,” he commented, in the hard voice that didn’t sound like the dad Trevor knew and had thought he loved. Then he calmly wiped his fingers on his napkin and started to eat.

Trevor stared at his meal.

“The cell phone is next,” Dad remarked, as if he was commenting on something that happened at work that morning. “One more call from the school. You understand?”

“I’m not hungry.” Trevor pushed back from the table.

“Understand?”

“Yes! I understand! Are you happy?” He hated the tremor in his voice. The little boy in awe of his daddy. The wriggling, squirming need to piss on the floor because daddy was mad at him.

“Happy?” For a moment their eyes met, the same espresso color. “No, I wouldn’t say that.”

“May I be excused?” Trevor asked with mocking courtesy.

“Certainly,” his father said. “Check the refrigerator in the morning. Since you’ll be home, anyway, I’ll post a list of chores for you to do.”

Trevor didn’t say a word. He left the dining room and went upstairs. He’d already perfected the art of leaving the house via his bedroom window and swinging down from the arbor that covered the back patio. He and Cait were meeting at ten. Fortunately, he could walk anyplace in this nowhere town.

Tonight he’d get in her pants. She was dragging her feet. She hadn’t done it before, she said. She wasn’t sure she was ready. Furious, he turned on his music loud enough to shake the walls.

Well, screw that. Screw her. He was ready. Past ready. Desperate. He needed something, and she was it.

CHAPTER TWO

MOLLY DIDN’T DARE go so far as forbidding Cait to see Trevor. That was about the dumbest thing any parent could do, she had always believed. But oh, how she wanted to.

He did not appear chastened when he reappeared in school the following Monday. The black eye had already faded to mustard and lavender. All it succeeded in doing was making him look tougher. He seemed not to have shaved that morning, as if making a statement with the dark stubble. Molly noticed, as she noticed most things in her school. That was one of the mornings she greeted students arriving from the parking lot. His eyes met hers briefly, and she had to work to keep herself from taking a step back. The disquieting thing, she realized, was that there was no spark of rage. Instead, if she hadn’t imagined it, he’d smirked. As if he knew something she didn’t.

A mother’s panic struck her. Cait. That son of a bitch. If he was planning to get to her through her daughter, she’d… Her stomach clenched. Do what? She couldn’t even prevent whatever it was he had in mind, not without locking Caitlyn in her room for the foreseeable future. Sending her off to boarding school. And that was assuming she wasn’t already too late.

I’ll keep the channels of communication open, she told herself, tamping down the fear. Cait and she had always talked, often and easily. Her daughter’s recent behavior was an anomaly. She’d get over it.

But that same panic had Molly wondering, When?

She had spoken at length to Aaron and his mother—his father was apparently too busy to take time to discuss his son’s behavior with school officials. The mother talked about pressing charges. Aaron’s eyes got shifty and he insisted that was ridiculous, he could take care of himself. Molly pushed; he got shiftier. It would appear Cait was right; something had been going on that he didn’t want his mother or anyone else to know about. He was not the complete innocent he had initially seemed.

“My daughter has mentioned you,” Molly made a point of saying, and Aaron looked alarmed.

“Cait?”

“Yes.” Molly had studied him unblinkingly. “Did you know she and Trevor are friends?”

The mother’s head had been swiveling as she tried to figure out what this digression had to do with anything. Neither Aaron nor Molly enlightened her, but Molly was satisfied she’d made her point.

She still didn’t like Trevor Ward—although I do not hate him—but she’d decided she didn’t like Aaron Latter, either. Practically stalking, huh? Let him try that again.

Over the course of the next few weeks, Trevor managed to avoid getting into a fight. He still walked the halls of West Fork High School looking like an escapee gunfighter from the O.K. Corral, minus the black duster and—so far—the gun. Oh, God, horrendous thought—he wasn’t that angry, was he?

Molly still caught glimpses of her daughter’s shining strawberry-blond head at his side, barely topping his broad shoulder. Caitlin was going to the library to study a lot these days, after school and evenings. Or hanging out with friends, often unnamed.

“Does it matter?” she asked with apparent indignation. “Like there’s anywhere in town to go.”

There was Trevor’s house afternoons when his father was at work. That was one place Molly would hugely prefer Cait not go. Or Terrace Park, the peculiar one-acre piece of old-growth forest somehow saved as a city park. The vast, tall, dark trees offered too many hiding places, especially at night. A teenage girl had been raped in the park only last year.

In her professional role, Molly had no reason to speak to Richard Ward, although she knew several of the teachers had called him. Trevor was not performing to ability in his classes. In other words, he was obliterating his chances of getting into Harvard or Stanford or possibly even the local community college. Coach Bowman had also called Trevor’s father to ask why Trevor was refusing to go out for the basketball team. Coach Loomis had been sulking since school began because Trevor had refused to play football. West Fork had come within one win last year of taking the league championships. This kid who’d led his team to all-state in California could have taken West Fork to the Promised Land. It was killing Chuck Loomis that Trevor had refused. Gene Bowman was refusing to lose hope.

Molly wished him all the luck in the world. She’d love to see Trevor tied up every afternoon in basketball practice. Friday or Saturday nights at games. Whole weekends at tournaments! He could take some of his aggression out on the court in a healthy, culturally approved manner. He could be frequently unavailable to spend time with her daughter. Despite the many pluses, however, she was staying out of the campaign to win Trevor over. She had had to assure Gene several times that her intervention would hurt more than it helped.

One day the first week of October Molly overheard Caitlyn whining on the phone to someone—probably Trevor—that Mom hadn’t let her take driver’s ed this semester, so now she couldn’t get her license until next summer even though she would turn sixteen in April.

To the best of Molly’s recollection, they’d both agreed it didn’t make sense for her to take the class until spring since it would be almost summer before she’d be able to drive, anyway.

Of course there was no mystery about Cait’s new passion for getting her driver’s license. When he couldn’t hitch a ride to school with one of his new friends, Trevor had become a walker. Knowing Richard Ward had taken the kid’s car away from him after the last fight did soften Molly’s feelings toward Ward senior, if only slightly. Smart to hit a teenager the hardest where the privileges he or she took for granted were concerned. For a boy, the car had to be number one.