The Jodi Picoult Collection #3 Read online

  Drew scrutinized Peter and Derek. “He makes $2,283 watching a rerun of Friends,” Peter said.

  “If he wanted to save up for a new Maserati, it would take him a whole twenty-one hours,” Derek said. “Damn, I wish I could play basketball.”

  “Derek,” Drew picked.

  Derek started to stand up. “Yeah,” Peter said, “but even if Michael Jordan saved a hundred percent of his income for the next four hundred and fifty years, he still wouldn’t have as much as Bill Gates has right this second.”

  “All right,” Matt said, “I’ll take the homo.”

  Peter shuffled toward the back of Matt’s team. “You ought to be good at this game, Peter,” Matt said, loud enough so that everyone else could hear. “Just keep your hands on the balls.”

  Peter leaned against a floor mat that had been strung on the wall, like the inside of an insane asylum. A rubber room, where all hell could break loose.

  He sort of wished he was as sure of who he was as everyone else seemed to be.

  “All right,” Coach Spears said. “Let’s play.”

  * * *

  The first ice storm of the season arrived before Thanksgiving. It started after midnight, wind rattling the old bones of the house and pellets drumming the windows. The power went out, but Alex had been expecting that. She woke up with a start at the absolute silence that came with a loss of technology, and reached for the flashlight that she’d put next to her bed.

  There were candles, too. Alex lit two candles and watched her shadow, larger than life, creep along the wall. She could remember nights like this when Josie was little, when they’d crawl into bed together and Josie would fall asleep crossing her fingers that there would not be school in the morning.

  How come grown-ups never got that kind of holiday? Even if there wasn’t school tomorrow—which there wouldn’t be, if Alex was guessing correctly—even if the wind was still howling as if the earth were in pain and the ice was caked on her windshield wipers, Alex would be expected to show up in court. Yoga classes and basketball games and theater performances would be postponed, but no one ever canceled real life.

  The door to the bedroom flew open. Josie stood there in a wifebeater tank and a pair of boy’s boxers—Alex had no idea where she’d gotten them, and prayed they didn’t belong to Matt Royston. For a moment, Alex could barely reconcile this young woman with her curves and long hair with the daughter she still expected, a little girl with an unraveling braid, wearing Wonder Woman pajamas. She tossed back the covers on one side of the bed, an invitation.

  Josie dove underneath them, yanking the blankets up to her chin. “It’s freaky out there,” she said. “It’s like the sky’s falling down.”

  “I’d be more worried about the roads.”

  “Do you think we’ll have a snow day tomorrow?”

  Alex smiled in the dark. Josie may have been older, but her priorities were still the same. “Most likely.”

  With a contented sigh, Josie flopped down on her pillow. “I wonder if Matt and I could go skiing somewhere.”

  “You’re not leaving this house if the roads are bad.”

  “You will.”

  “I don’t have a choice,” Alex said.

  Josie turned to her, her eyes reflecting the candlelight. “Everyone has a choice,” she said. She came up on an elbow. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “Why didn’t you marry Logan Rourke?”

  Alex felt as if she’d been thrust out into the storm, naked; she was that unprepared for Josie’s question. “Where did this come from?”

  “What was it about him that wasn’t good enough? You told me he was handsome and smart. And you had to love him, at least at one point . . .”

  “Josie, this is ancient history—and it’s stuff you shouldn’t worry about, because it has nothing to do with you.”

  “It has everything to do with me,” Josie said. “I’m half him.”

  Alex stared up at the ceiling. Maybe the sky was falling down; maybe that’s what happened when you thought your smoke and mirrors would create a lasting illusion. “He was all of those things,” Alex said quietly. “It wasn’t him at all. It was me.”

  “And then there was the whole married part.”

  She sat up in bed. “How did you find out?”

  “It’s all over the papers, now that he’s running for office. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist.”

  “Did you call him?”

  Josie looked her in the eye. “No.”

  There was a part of Alex that wished Josie had talked to him—to see whether he’d followed Alex’s career, if he’d even asked about her. The act of leaving Logan, which had seemed so righteous on behalf of her unborn baby, now seemed selfish. Why hadn’t she talked to Josie about this before?

  Because she’d been protecting Logan. Josie may have grown up without knowing her father, but wasn’t that better than learning he’d wanted you to be aborted? One more lie, Alex thought, just a little one. Just to keep Josie from being hurt. “He wouldn’t leave his wife.” Alex glanced sideways at Josie. “I couldn’t make myself small enough to fit into the space he wanted me to fit into, in order to be part of his life. Does that make sense?”

  “I guess.”

  Beneath the covers, Alex reached for Josie’s hand. It was the kind of action that would have seemed forced, had it been in visible sight—something too openly emotional for either of them to lay claim to—but here, in the dark, with the world tunneling in around them, it seemed perfectly natural. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “For what?”

  “For not giving you the choice of having him around when you were growing up.”

  Josie shrugged and pulled her hand away. “You did the right thing.”

  “I don’t know,” Alex sighed. “The right thing sets you up to be incredibly lonely, sometimes.” Suddenly she turned to Josie, stretching a bright smile on her face. “Why are we even talking about this? Unlike me, you’re lucky in love, right?”

  Just then, the power came back on. Downstairs, the microwave beeped to be reset; the light in the bathroom spilled yellow down the hallway. “I guess I’ll go back to my own bed,” Josie said.

  “Oh. All right,” Alex answered, when what she meant to say was that Josie was welcome to stay right where she was.

  As Josie padded down the hallway, Alex reached over to reset her alarm clock. It blinked 12:00 12:00 12:00 in panicked LED, like Cinderella’s redflag reminder that fairy-tale endings are hard to come by.

  * * *

  To Peter’s surprise, the bouncer at the Front Runner didn’t even glance at his fake ID, so before he had time to think twice about the fact that he was actually, finally here, he was pushed inside.

  He was hit in the face with a blast of smoke, and it took him a minute to adjust to the dim light. Music filled in all the spaces between people, techno-dance stuff that was so loud it made Peter’s eardrums pulse. Two tall women were flanking the front door, checking out the new entrants. It took Peter a second glance to realize that one had the shadow of a beard on her face. His face. The other one looked more like a girl than most girls he’d ever seen, but then again, Peter had never seen a transvestite up close. Maybe they were perfectionists.

  Men were standing in groups of two or three, except for the ones that perched like hawks on a balcony overlooking the dance floor. There were men in leather chaps, men kissing other men in the corners, men passing joints. Mirrors on every wall made the club look huge, its rooms endless.

  It hadn’t been hard to find out about the Front Runner, thanks to Internet chat rooms. Since Peter was still taking driver’s ed, he had to take a bus to Manchester and then a taxi to the club’s front door. He still wasn’t sure why he was there—it was like an anthropology experiment, in his mind. See if he fit in with this society, instead of his own.

  It wasn’t that he wanted to fool around with a guy—not yet, anyway. He just wanted to know what it was like