The Taming (26 page)

T
here was one long, slow moment when the whole world didn’t breathe. It was like we were all waiting for that horror-movie climax, for the bloody rain or the scenery to explode. Instead, after forever, people got up on their feet. A standing ovation. The applause came at us in cascading and breaking waves. I waved back and tossed them my sincerest standing ovation smile.

I filled up. Was that what
that
felt like? It was just like I’d imagined, only better.

There was my mother, second row centre. She looked more surprised than anything—that is, until Joey turned to her before making his way to the edge of the stage. When Joey glanced at her, my mother instantly transformed into a woman who trembled with pride, overcome with emotion. Now
that
was a performance.

No wonder I was good. I
got
that. I
got
my mom. She stood and cheered like she was going to burst a kidney. And despite everything, despite knowing better, I hoped. She clapped and I was hopeful. What the hell, false hope was better than no hope at all, right? And I needed all the hope I could get.

I shivered and then smiled some more.

The audience went wild when Evan kissed me. Both times. First as Petruchio, growling,
Why, there’s a wench! Come on, and kiss me, Kate
, and they went even wilder when he tried to kiss me at our curtain call. So this was what a “golden couple” looked like.

He pulled me to him. More applause. Evan was proud of me. That, at least, was honest and true, and knowing it almost broke me. I pulled away. I could not veer off the plan. Not let Evan get me. Not let my love for him get me.

We were headed back to his place within the hour. I couldn’t take my eyes off of him in the car. Evan was so pumped and stoked and … beautiful.

“Man, you were good! I knew you would be. But still, Katie, wow, you were unbelievably good! You can never doubt it again.”

One arm lay on the armrest. The other was casually draped over the steering wheel, caressing it. In profile, Evan Campbell was arresting. Especially when he smiled and his dimples flared. The cut of his jaw, the warm, sweet crook of his neck. His dark-blond hair curled at the nape, unruly. He hated that. I loved it.

Evan turned to me, shaking his head. “Just so brilliant, baby.”

My heart tried to break free.

He bowed elaborately as he opened my car door when we got to his house. “My kingdom is your kingdom.”

I was struck yet again by the sheer whiteness of his home, by the purity and calm it seemed to represent. Even now that I knew better. I was beginning to clue in that his father was demented and that his mother was just plain weak. But it was still new to me, this whole concept of how could something look one way and yet, totally, be another. You looked at Mom and me, at where we lived, and you expected trailer trash drama, but Evan? In
that
house, with
those
parents?

“Are you sure they’re out for the night?”

“Yeah, I promise, they weren’t at the performance so they won’t be here now. You notice, no car.” He shrugged. “They’re still probably at a reception with one of my dad’s clients.”

Evan tossed my coat, my Value Village special, onto what I’d been told was an Eames bench in the foyer. It made my coat look like crap.

“They’ll be at closing tomorrow for sure. Maybe,” Evan said.

How could you not be at your son’s opening night? Evan’s hair fell into his eyes when he tried to smile it off. I saw a whole play in that smile. There was the little boy, the nine-year-old waiting for his parents to pick him up at boarding school, always the last ones to arrive. There he was trying to put on a brave and charming face in front of an increasingly annoyed staff member who was eager to leave, but had to wait because of “the Campbell boy.”

“Want something to drink?”

I shook my head. Even now, after all the times I had been there, I was too nervous to eat or drink anything in all that white.

Evan sauntered into the kitchen. I heard him open up the fridge and he came back in carrying a Heineken. He took a swig and threw his arm around me with such careless grace that it made me forget to breathe.

“Want to go to the family room? You like that better than the living room.”

Where would his laptop be?

“No!” I stopped, and he raised an eyebrow quizzically. “I’ve never seen your bedroom.”

“Hmmmm …” He growled and then nuzzled my ear. “That’s my girl.”

The stairs were a major work of art all on their own. They’d freaked me out from the first time I saw them. The actual steps were made of glass, fastened together with polished steel rods. There were no risers, only air separated one step from another. Every footfall was unnerving. I grabbed on to the chrome handrail like I was personally holding up the house. At some point, Evan turned around, frowned and loped back down. “It’s okay, I’ve got your back.” And with that he stood beside me placing his hand gently, but so protectively, at the small of my back. I swear I would have followed him anywhere.

No one had ever made me feel the way Evan made me feel. No one had made me believe in myself the way he did.

We walked into his room together. In this house of white, Evan’s room was saturated with rich colour. Sage greens, harvest gold and all that dark wood. It was very male, yet not oppressively so. There was an entire ebony bookcase filled with ribbons and trophies.

“Evan, so many trophies, so many awards! My God! Why didn’t you tell me? You’re like this superstar! Rugby, debating, soccer … is there anything you don’t excel at?”

Evan shrugged, clearly surprised by my reaction. “My mother’s decorator did that. It’s more for her than me. None of that stuff’s important.”

I fell in love with him all over again.

“This is.” Evan walked over to his desk, which was at the far end of the room in front of a massive floor-to-ceiling window. He picked up a silver-framed copy of the playbill Lisa had designed for our production of
The Taming of the Shrew
. The photo had been taken during dress rehearsals. Because Lisa had taken it, I was prominently featured, with Evan and the rest of the cast more in the background. “Now
this
is important!” he announced.

I threw myself into him and he caught me, he was that strong. It felt like I had the world in my arms. I loved touching him and inhaling the singular ocean smell of him. Evan pulled me into him even tighter. If we just didn’t let go … if we just stayed like that, maybe all that was bad and broken around us, and in us, wouldn’t matter. We’d make it.

And then I saw the laptop, his MacBook Air. I let go. “You know,” I reached up and kissed his dimple, “I would love, love, love a coffee from that fancy machine you guys have in your kitchen.”

“Anything for my star. What would you like—a cappuccino, a latte?”

“You can do that, really? I’d be so happy with cappuccino, thanks so much!”

Evan shook his head.

“What?” I asked.

“No one makes me feel like you do. It’s like all I have to do is cross the street and you think I’m amazing,” he said.

I turned casually, to put the photograph back, so he couldn’t see me tensing up. “Because you
are
amazing,” I said under my breath.

“One skinny cappuccino coming up. I know that’s how you like it.” Evan bounced off.

As soon as I heard him on the stairs, I went to my purse and turned my iPhone recorder on. Then I put the phone back in my purse and placed it beside the computer.

“I’m opening up the laptop the way you taught me, Lisa.” He was far enough away that I was sure he couldn’t hear that distinctive Mac chime when it turned on. I scrolled to the bottom and found the Finder. We only had PCs at school, so Lisa had had to give me a super-intensive tutorial on it.

“Okay,” I whispered in the direction of my purse, “I’m scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. Hang on. I’m typing my name into the search field. Nothing! I was right, Lisa!”

But Lisa had said that was no guarantee, so I moved to iPhoto and kept scrolling. Then I found a huge stash of picture files. My heart pounded in my throat. I must have whipped through two million photos of kids in uniforms, rugby games, New York and what looked like places in Europe. Girls, lots of beautiful girls in fabulous tight dresses at what appeared to be fabulous clubs. I felt dirty and jealous at the same time.

But there was nothing, nada, zip, zilch, zero! No Katie photos! Evan
had
gotten rid of them! Just like he’d promised. I unfurled like a blossom opening to the sun. I loved him so much I thought my heart was going to implode.

Trash.

“Okay, okay,” I whispered to my purse. “I know you told me I have to check the Trash. It’s not really gone until it’s deleted from the Trash. Got it.” I dragged the little arrow down to the right and scrolled down to the trashcan icon. There were pictures. Only one file.
Katie
. I clicked.

And there I was.

The room swivelled. Posing. Dear God. I couldn’t have … how … I didn’t have … I didn’t remember that part. I didn’t, couldn’t, when? I was going to be sick. I put my hand over my mouth, gagged, and kept scrolling. They were sick. I stopped, hypnotized by the grotesqueness of one. The one where I …

“What are you doing?” Evan was at the door.

I was in such a rage that coherent words were impossible to pluck out and form. “Lisa said … she said, said you’d still have …”

He saw the screen and then he saw what was on it. There I was, in all my glory, on our cheap, threadbare carpet in front of our even cheaper plywood coffee table, surrounded by the tumblers from Wal-Mart and the throw cushions from Costco. And even with all that stellar competition, I managed to look like the cheapest thing there.

“Lisa is a jealous lesbo …”

“No! Stop! That’s a lie, and you lied. You still have the pictures. She said you would. They’re so ugly, Evan. They’re disgusting! You’re disgusting for keeping them!”

“No, see baby …” He put the coffee cup down and walked towards me. I moved back even farther into the desk, grabbing my purse. “I’ve been burned in the past. It’s why I’m at the school.”

I did not move. I did not blink.

“Tamara Nivens, at St. Anthony’s, stupid little …” Then he stopped himself. “We all got high. Her too. And sure, I was seeing someone else, but Tamara was all over me, couldn’t get enough.” He stopped and looked at me like I could see the movie that was playing in his head. “Yeah, sure, there was a bunch of us there and things got out of hand, ’cause we were stoned. She was after me all term.”

My mind ricocheted back to Nick Kormos.
You tell your mom and I’ll just say that you were asking for it. Begging for it
. My heart stopped beating.

“So sure, I did it, and maybe we had an audience, but she couldn’t prove it was me specifically. The only reason I got drummed out of the school was because her old man had bigger ones than my old man.”

His hand, Evan’s beautiful hand, clenched and unclenched.

“But you
did
do it?” I asked.

“Sure I did. You’re not listening. She
wanted
it. It was a performance and we were the stars. She just got jumpy about her reputation and took it out on me.”

His face clouded and I gripped my purse. I stepped towards the door and the boy I loved stepped towards me.

“You kept the photos, Evan,” I whispered.

“I had to!” he yelled. “I had to. What if you decided to run to someone, Cooper, someone at school? It would have been twice. That could be bad for me, see? I needed a guarantee.”

“No. No more!” Not one more guy was ever going to touch me wrong, or hurt me or mess with my head. Not Evan, not Nick Kormos, not anyone else again. “You don’t need a guarantee. You need help, Evan! You’re sick!”

“Shut up and stop whining, I said I had to!” His eyes flared, he was unrecognizable. “You’re all alike, manipulative tramps!” He glanced back to the computer screen. “There’s the proof, you’re a tramp!”

But this boy
had
hurt me, had taken photos I couldn’t begin to remember, and made me do things that I was not ready to do. This boy had thrown me out of a car like just so much garbage. And I
loved
this boy?

“And
you
, Evan, are a pig.”

He slapped me so hard I fell over.

We both heard the front door of the house open.

“Hi, Evan. Sweetie, we’re home. How did it go?”

I heard his father muttering darkly, “Evan?”

Evan turned to me, eyes wild with, what … fear, horror?

“Oh God, Katie, I’m so … oh God!” He dropped to his knees. “Katie …”

I reached over to the computer and hit the delete button and emptied the Trash. The pictures vanished. I got up and ran past him, dazed and dumb, but coherent enough to get down those stupid steps and past his very stunned parents. I had my purse and my iPhone but there was no use pretending, even now. God help me.

My coat was still in the house.

My heart was still in the house.

Chapter Forty-Five