Read Online Wild Roses by Deb Caletti - Free Book Online Page B

afraid it had
made me. This craziness happening in my family, for God's sake. People might
think it was catching.
    Zebe twirled her finger by her head. "Oh, my
God, what a freak! My dad got real paranoid when my parents got divorced. He
climbed in a window of my mom's to steal her journals. He was sure she was going
to post nasty stuff about him on the Web. She was even going to press charges,
but decided it wasn't worth the hassle."
    Zebe and I ate Cheetos. I thought about what
she said. Really thought about what it must have meant to her. A ladder against
a window. Your parent rooting around like an intruder. A police car in front of
your house as the neighbors looked on. Maybe I was wrong when I thought no one
at my school would believe what had happened to me. I looked around the
cafeteria, the rows of tables jammed with people, scattered lunches, noise, crap
on the floor. John Jorgenson grabbed some sophomore's baseball cap and threw it
to his friend, and Danielle Rhone was trying to find something she dropped under
a table, and three freshmen were huddled together over open books, doing their
homework. Reese Lin shoved what looked like a full lunch bag in the garbage, and
Todd Fleming brought three small pizza boxes to his table. Angela Aris and
James
    what's-his-name leaned against the wall, making
out. I
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    wondered what went on behind the closed doors
of these people's houses. A mother that drank too much, a father that hit.
Parents that fought, or tried unsuccessfully to hide an affair, or who couldn't
leave the house out of fear. Maybe we all had our secrets.
    I walked home alone from school that day, no
Siang or Courtney. Zach and I had apparently had a successful operation to
separate Siamese twins, at least for the moment. I was coming down our road,
trying to ignore the fact that it was Tuesday, the day of Ian Waters's next
lesson, and so of course was consumed by thoughts of nothing else. Please let
Dino act normal, I said over and over in my head. Please, please. I had decided
under no uncertain terms not to fall for lan Waters, but I still didn't want him
to think I lived in a nuthouse. Here was the thing--Ian was going to go away to
school, and that was that. Letting myself fall for him was only going to lead to
pain. I, for one, didn't need to jump headfirst into some overwhelming feeling
that would lead to disaster. I could make a rational decision about where I was
going to put my heart, or if I was going to put my heart anywhere at
all.
    I was what you would call Steeled with Resolve
when this old Datsun, a horrible shade of banana yellow, drove up behind me on
our road. It stopped in front of our house as I walked up, and this beefy,
motorcycle type got out of the passenger's side, flipping up the seat to let Ian
Waters and his violin out of the back. Rocket leaped out after him.
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    "Hey," Ian said when he saw me.
    God, he had beautiful eyes. Gentle brown. Like
deer fur, or those elbow patches on the jackets of college professors. A soft,
comforting brown. I'd forgotten what effect the sight of him had on me. Goddamn
it.
    "Hey," I said eloquently.
    "You've got to meet my brother and his best
friend. Chuck, this is Cassie. Dino's daughter." I didn't bother to correct him
with the real version of our twisted family tree right then, as huge Chuck was
holding out this bear paw for me to shake, and the driver of the Datsun, a twin
of the other guy, was turning around to see me. "And that's my brother,
Bunny."
    "Howdy," Bunny gave a wave.
    Either Ian or his brother must have been
conceived in a petri dish, because they were the unlikeliest brother combo you'd
ever seen. Bunny was outfitted in a motorcyclist's black leather pants and a
vest with a T-shirt underneath. He was older than Ian, by maybe seven or eight
years. He had a wild bunch of dark brown hair, and was solid as the side of a
mountain. You wouldn't dare point out the fact that he had the name