twenty

THE HOTTEST GARDENER EVER

Jase is carrying a big pair of shears, and his T-shirt sleeves are rolled up to the caps of his shoulders, making his upper arms look bulgy with muscle. His faded old blue jeans hang loose on his lean hips, and there’s the faint sheen of sweat on his cappuccino skin. His tight black curls are a little damp with exertion.

If my grandmother had just entered the center of the maze wearing a bikini and a tiara, she couldn’t have been more effective at getting our attention than Jase Barnes looking like the hottest gardener ever in his sweaty work clothes. We turn, stare at him and promptly freeze to the spot, as if we’re playing a game of Musical Statues.

“Scarlett?” he says. “Are you okay? I was pruning the hedge, and I heard someone crying. I thought they might be lost in here.”

His voice trails off as he takes in the scene. Suddenly I see the situation through Jase’s eyes. One girl, slumped on the bench, crying her eyes out. Two girls, standing over her menacingly. Taylor and I must look like a pair of really nasty bullies.

And I hate bullies. How did I get myself into this? Because, although my motives are good, what we’re doing is bullying Lizzie. No question about it.

I feel like a piece of dog poo.

Taylor and Lizzie flick their gaze in my direction, though they seem physically incapable of actually turning their heads away from Jase. I know exactly what they’re thinking: this hunk of gorgeous boyhood, this slightly sweaty essence of handsomeness, actually knows my name? Knows me well enough to talk to me this familiarly? How lucky am I?

“Um, Lizzie was upset,” I say weakly, “and we were trying to cheer her up.”

“Doesn’t seem to be working, does it?” Jase points out, and there’s an edge to his voice now. He puts down the shears and comes over to the bench, kneeling down in front of Lizzie.

“You all right, love?” he asks gently.

Lizzie’s ducked her head now and is rubbing at her face furiously. Finally, she lifts it to look at Jase, and Taylor and I involuntarily take a step back. Even Jase can’t help jerking his head back reflexively. Lizzie looks like she’s got hives. Her face is swollen and red and blotchy, and because of the rubbing, her eyeliner’s all smudged, giving an extra Goth-y touch to the horror of her facial swelling.

“Um, you don’t look good,” he says with concern. “Anyone got a tissue?”

“I do,” Lizzie whispers, and fumbles in the chartreuse abomination. She produces a pack of tissues and blows her nose. I’m amazed that she’s got any fluid left in there at all—it sounded as if she’d cried it all out by now.

“That better?” Jase says.

Lizzie nods, her eyes now fixed on his golden ones.

I realize that I am horrendously jealous of Lizzie once again. How dare she be monopolizing Jase’s attention like this? I’m the one he talks to, the one whose name he knows.

“Can you tell me what’s wrong?” Jase asks, and he reaches out his hands to take hers.

My envy is so acute now I have to curl my toes till they hurt to stop me leaning forward and dragging the two of them apart. I’m the one whose hands Jase holds! I am! Not Lizzie!

Lizzie parts her lips, staring at him, and I realize with horror that she’s about to talk. She’s going to tell him everything. And when she does, it will all come out. Lizzie may not know whether I’m the Kiss of Death girl, but I’ll have to explain it to him so he understands the whole picture, why Taylor and I were ganging up on her, and then he’ll realize who I am and never want to come near me again, in case he drops dead because of kissing me, too.

“She’s scared of doing trampoline!” Taylor blurts out.

Oh no, I think in panic, why did Taylor have to say that? It’s the explanation Lizzie gave her of why she was crying in the classroom, but Lizzie surely must have been crying about something to do with leaving me the note.  .  .  . Jase isn’t going to believe this for a moment!

Jase turns his head to stare at Taylor.

“You what?”

“Yeah! She has to do it in gym class, and she hates it, but she’s too scared to tell our coach she doesn’t want to do it!” Taylor rattles out at high pitch.

Jase looks disbelievingly back at Lizzie.

“Is that really true?” he asks.

There’s a long pause. Lizzie’s hands are still in his, and she’s showing no inclination of pulling them away. She gulps hard, still looking at him, and I know I need to get her attention now, or she’ll break down and tell him everything.

“I was suggesting I could talk to my grandmother about it,” I break in. “You know, she shouldn’t have to get on a trampoline if she doesn’t want to. People have accidents sometimes. On the springs. Um, it really does happen. So I thought, if I talked to my grandmother, she might change the rule that everyone has to do it.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Taylor nodding in appreciation of the way I’ve gone along with her flash of inspiration. The only thing that mattered in my little speech was emphasizing my close connection to the headmistress—i.e., reminding Lizzie of my threat to tell my grandmother about the note unless she came clean about it to us.

And it seems to have worked. Lizzie gulps again, and says to Jase in such a small voice it’s almost a whisper:

“I am scared of the trampoline. I always think I’m going to fall. It’s really  .  .  . bouncy.”

Taylor does her best to stifle a snort of laughter, but Jase catches it.

“Hey, she’s scared!” he says angrily to Taylor. “You should respect that. Everyone’s scared of something.” And then to Lizzie he adds dubiously, “Is that really it? Is that really why you were crying so hard you sounded like you were going to burst a blood vessel?”

Jase is no fool. He can tell there’s more to this than meets the eye. I hold my breath, but Lizzie nods her head, her eyes widening.

“There are these springs! On the edge of the trampoline!” she says. “I’m always scared I’m going to land on them and hurt myself! They look really dangerous, I can’t believe they actually make us jump near them! I told my dad but he said he was sure the school knew best, and he’s so busy all the time anyway, but I really hate doing it and I’m sure Miss Carter makes me do it on purpose because she’s mean like that.”

My God, it’s true. Lizzie really is scared of the trampoline. Taylor and I exchange glances of disbelief. And Jase has realized by now that once Lizzie gets started babbling, she won’t stop of her own accord. He lets her hands go (about time, too!) and stands up.

“And you two were teasing her about it, were you?” he says to me and Taylor.

“We were trying to help,” I lie. “We just weren’t doing a very good job of it.”

“You can say that again,” he says dryly, and when his eyes meet mine there’s none of the warmth I’ve come to expect from him. “I’ll get going, then. That hedge isn’t going to clip itself, more’s the pity.”

He picks up his shears from the grass beside the bench.

“You sure you’re going to be okay?” he asks Lizzie. “Do you want me to walk you out?”

He doesn’t trust us. Me and Taylor. He doesn’t trust us to take care of a sobbing, upset girl. And the worst part is that he’s absolutely right.

Lizzie looks up, and her face illuminates for a moment with hope, hope that she’ll be able to leave the maze now, with Jase as her protector, save herself from any more blackmail by me and Taylor. And then she catches sight of me, and I shake my head, the tiniest of motions—I hope to God Jase didn’t see it—but enough to convey to her that there’s no easy escape for her, no flight with Prince Charming. She has to stay here and face the music, that’s what the shake of my head says, or I’ll go straight to my grandmother.

“No, I’m fine,” she mutters. “Thanks. I’ll stay here.”

Jase shrugs, a big circling of his muscular shoulders that comprehensively conveys his wish to put this whole messy scene behind him and get on with his work. He looks straight at me for a second as he turns to exit through the gap in the hedge, but it’s a cold, direct stare, nothing friendly about it at all. And then he’s gone.

I want to burst into tears. I want to run after him and throw myself into his arms and confess everything. But that would be ridiculous. I barely know him. And telling him wouldn’t solve anything. I had to make a choice, and that’s what I did: look good in front of Jase, or push forward on finding out what happened to Dan. And I chose the latter. What I need to focus on is right here in front of me: Lizzie, who has a piece of the puzzle in her fluffy little brain. Lizzie, whose information will get me one step closer to solving the mystery of Dan’s death.

I tell myself it’s better this way. It’s better that Jase thinks I’m a bully and a bitch. Because if he does, he’ll stay away from me, and I won’t have to deal with my attraction for him while Dan’s death is unresolved. I won’t be tempted to kiss him and have to push him away, afraid that my weird curse will somehow transmit itself to him.

I tell myself all that, but it doesn’t help at all. Jase’s eyes, always so warm and glowing and golden when they look at me, were like frozen metal just now, icy and hard. I hate that he looked at me like that. Hate it.

I gulp. Taylor’s looking at me, frowning, her straight dark brows drawn together over her slanting green eyes. It’s as if she screamed, “Pull yourself together, Scarlett!”

I nod at her. Then Taylor and I both look at Lizzie. We don’t even need to speak. Lizzie is broken by now, broken by having cried so hard, having had several opportunities to tell Jase the truth and taken none of them, having been offered passage to safety through the maze by him and rejected it. I know that one good hard menacing stare from both of us will be more than enough to make her give up her secret.

And so it proves.