brought tempers and tears almost to the breaking point.
Without thinking, Jayne glanced at Chris Hammond, standing at the door observing the chaos. He nodded once, then gave another of those shouts, which again created instant silence. With a hand motion, he turned the room back over to her.
She cleared her throat. “Okay. If you can all settle down, get your bed made, such as it is, and sit on it, I will make hot chocolate for everybody. But you have to be calm. Cooking on the fire isn’t easy.”
“You can cook on the fire?” Beth looked skeptical.
“As long as people aren’t wrestling and throwing things nearby.”
“Then what?” Taryn always managed to ask the hardest questions.
Yolanda threw her pillow on the floor. “Yeah, how are we gonna get to sleep without TV or music?”
“As I said, there are books—” Jayne began.
“Or,” Chris Hammond offered, “I could tell you a story.”
“A STORY?” Yolanda, the tall girl with a boyish haircut and espresso skin, glared at him. “You think we look like little kids?”
Selena from L.A. snorted. “I hate those stupid fairy tales.”
But the blonde, Sarah, asked, “What kind of story?”
He settled into the chair near the fire. “It’s not a fairy tale, by any means. Not even fiction. This is a true story.”
“About who?”
He lifted his eyebrow. “What about Ms. Thomas’s instructions?” In the scurry to get their bedding straightened out, the girls didn’t notice his sarcastic emphasis on her name.
The headmistress did, but chose to ignore him as she carried a stockpot of milk to the fireplace and set it on a three-legged iron stand above a small pile of coals she’d raked forward, out of the blaze.
Then she sat on the hearth, too, legs curled underneath her, to stir the milk as it heated. Gradually, the girls quieted down on top of their blankets and turned their attention back to Chris.
“So?” Monique, the troublemaker from dinner, glared at him with a skeptical curl to her lips. “What’s this story about?”
“A boy,” Chris Hammond told them. “And a girl.”
A raspberry sound effect greeted his announcement. “Hansel and Gretel?” That was one of the quieter girls whose name he didn’t know, a redhead with green eyes.
“I don’t like fairy tales.” Selena began rubbing lotion into her hands and arms.
“Are they vampires?” The one with pigtails clutched a pink stuffed rabbit. “I like vampire stories.”
“No, not vampires.” He rolled his eyes. “And not zombies, either. Or demons or whatever other unnatural, unreal creatures you pretend stalk the earth.” Bloodsucking sounded tame compared to some of the horrors he’d seen humans perpetrate on their own kind. “Just a boy and a girl.”
“So what’s the big deal?”
He hadn’t expected this to be such a hard sell. “Well, they grew up together. Had lots of adventures. Fell in love.” More derisive sound effects. “Then he killed her.”
The girls gasped. Chris glanced at the headmistress, saw her sitting upright, motionless, staring at him. Good. He’d gotten her attention.
The redhead broke the silence. “Why’d he do that? How?”
“That’s part of the story. If you want to hear it, you have to settle down.”
Mumbling and grumbling ensued, as the seven girls tucked and rolled themselves into their makeshift beds on the plush Persian carpet near the fire. Chris shifted a little in his chair, trying to get comfortable; between bruises and scrapes and a pulled shoulder, every inch of his body hurt in one way or another. He could hardly wait to lie down, even on a bare floor.
First, though, he would tell his story. Their story. The Juliet he knew couldn’t hold out against the truth spoken aloud. This Jayne mask she was wearing would crack at some point as she relived their time together. Then he would corner her, in front of seven witnesses, if necessary, and get the answers he needed.
“So,” he began, “they met the first time when they were thirteen years old.”
The pink rabbit person popped her head up. “What were their names?”
“Juliet,” he said. The headmistress narrowed her eyes, and he thought for a second she would stop him from telling the story.
When she didn’t say anything, he looked at the girls again.
“Juliet and…” Yolanda prompted.
“And…” What name could he use for himself? What would impress these girls?
“Romeo?” Monique snorted. “That’s so lame.”
“Nobody’s named Romeo these days,” Selena added. “Except dogs.”
“Chase,” Chris decided. “Juliet and Chase.” He thought it sounded like a soap opera couple. But when no protest greeted the announcement, he continued. “It was three days before Christmas….”
His grandfather had sent him to the general store for nails to fix a fence. Chase thought he’d get a bag of chips and a soda with the change from the ten dollar bill Granddad had given him.
Juliet was just wasting time, prowling the store aisles because she was tired of sitting around at her grandmother’s house, pretending to read.
It was just her bad luck that Chase glanced over as she dropped the candy bar in her coat pocket. Juliet didn’t even realize she’d been caught until he spoke into her ear from behind, “Gotcha!”
She jumped and looked around to see if anybody had heard him. “Shut up!” she hissed. “Keep your mouth closed and I’ll give you half.”
He shook his head. “Shoplifting’s a crime.”
“Like he’ll even notice it’s gone.” She nodded toward the man at the counter, who just happened to be a good friend of Chase’s granddad.
“Why don’t you just buy it?” She was pretty, which accounted for what he said next. “I’ll buy it for you.”
“That’s no fun.” She turned and started walking toward the door, pretending to look at the dish towels and pots on the shelves.
Chase watched her go, arguing with himself even while he noticed her long reddish hair shine in the light coming through the high windows. On the one hand, he should tell the store manager. That was the right thing to do. Only problem was, he’d look like a wuss and she’d hate him forever. At thirteen, he wasn’t sure which was worse.
While
