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been one of them. We'd been best friends for about thirty seconds, about a million years ago, and it had gone all
to hell over a boy. I scraped a few brain cells together and managed, eventually, to produce a witty response no
doubt years in the making:
"Hi, Sara."
CHAPTER NINETEEN
"What are you doing here, Joanne? Where'd you send my men?"
"Your m what'm I what're you doing here? I live in Seattle. Don't tell me you live in Seattle. Your men?
Really?" I turned to look after the duo beating feet down the road. "You brought them in?"
"No, they were here when I arrived, but I've got rank. What're you "
I pulled out my SPD badge again and earned a credible sneer from the woman who'd once been my best friend.
I said, "Oh come on now," sort of vaguely. "Don't tell me you're going to play that whole federal/state
jurisdiction superiority thing."
"Not as long as you stay out of my way."
That had a peculiarly school-yard ring to it. I stood there watching snow melt in Sara's hair and reeling at the
idea that we hadn't moved past that. I mean, I was no great shakes in terms of emotional maturity, but dwelling
on rivalries that had exploded almost fifteen years earlier seemed a little much. It didn't mean I wanted to be
bosom buddies again, but I could hardly fathom getting in jurisdictional fights because I'd nailed the boy she'd
wanted in high school.
Coyote, a bit diffidently and from a safe distance, said, "You two know each other?"
I said, "Yes," and Sara said, "No," at the same time, and Coyote looked like he wished he hadn't asked. I said,
"Yes," again more firmly. "We went to high school together. This is Sara Buch "
"Isaac."
I wasn't moving, but my feet slipped anyway. I lurched upright again, clutching the air for support, and turned
goggly eyes on Sara. "You're kidding. The same ?"
She drew herself up, all but hissing. She was taller than she'd been in school, though still quite a lot shorter than
I was. I'd thought she was beautiful, back then. She'd grown up just as pretty, except for the pinch of anger
between her eyebrows. She'd been buckwheat blonde in school, but the dark honey tones suited her better,
playing up her cheekbones and skin tones. "Yes, the same Isaac. Just because you got everything you wanted in
high school doesn't mean you "
I lost the rest of what she said to gales of laughter. Her cheeks flushed and her eyes went bright, making her
even prettier, but I couldn't stop laughing. I doubled over, still whooping, and finally braced my hands on my
thighs so I could peer up at her. "I'm sorry. Are you serious? You really think I wanted to get pregnant and have
twins at fifteen? I just wanted him to like me, Sara, and I was a moron. You said you didn't like him. I swear to
God, I had no idea you were just playing it cool. I wasn't that good at reading people. I'd never had a real
girlfriend before, with Dad moving us around all the time. I swear I didn't get it. I tried telling you this back
then. I'm really sorry. I had no idea." I straightened up and offered a hand in peace. Handshakes were formal
gestures, but I'd never felt like I was participating in ritual before when I initiated one. I'd been wanting to say
that for a long time.
Sara didn't look like she'd been waiting to hear it a long time. "Oh, I'm not just talking about Lucas. It was you
and that stupid drum you were so proud of, you and all your stories from all over the place, like you were some
kind of hot shit because you'd traveled "
I had never previously experienced the phrase my head was spinning in a literal sense, but I began to feel as if
someone had taken a stick and was liberally stirring my brains. The world went zipping to the left and I
clutched my skull with both hands, trying to steady it. "Wow. You're serious. That's& really not how I meant to
come across."
If I'd meant anything, it had been to keep people from picking on me. I recognized now that I'd had a massive
chip on my shoulder. I could see how it could've come across as arrogance, but the idea was to me, anyway
laughable. "Sorry. I didn't mean to be a prick."
"Like it matters now."
Apparently it did, but I was smart enough not to say that. The smart part of me, in fact, thought I should maybe
focus on the dead person a couple dozen feet away so that we could sort out what could be sorted, and then go
inside and have Irish coffees to ward off the cold. The teenage girl inside me, though, said, "But he went back to
Canada. How'd you guys get back in touch?"
Sara's pretty face went shifty. "We never lost touch. We wrote letters after he went home."
All the air whooshed out of me like I'd taken a solid gut-punch to the diaphragm. It wouldn't unknot enough for
me to inhale again, even when I hunched over, trying to find a little more room to exhale so I could convince
the whole breathing process to restart properly.
I hadn't really blamed Lucas for leaving. I'd never been sure that he wasn't supposed to be in North Carolina for
just the one semester anyway, since he'd left at Christmas, which was a perfectly reasonable time to go back
home. It also meant he was gone weeks before I'd started to visibly show, and because teenagers frequently
aren't too smart, very few people had bandied his name around as the possible partner to my predicament.
Nobody counted backward to figure out when the deed was done; they just gossiped and suggested names of
boys I had no interest in. Sara and Lucas were the only two who actually knew. The idea that he'd just walked
away, disappeared entirely, was one I was okay with. My mother had done more or less the same thing with me.
Somehow him walking away from me and keeping in touch with Sara was a whole lot less okay. I wasn't sure if
I wanted to cry or throw up. So much for emotional maturity.
I don't know what Sara saw in my face, but it apparently fed whatever jealous beast she'd been keeping in her
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