Jessica didn’t come to school that day. Not the next day, or the day after that. It was Thursday before she made it. Granted, she was absent a lot, and everyone knew why—her parents, her brother. But Connor couldn’t help feeling like this time it was because of him. The bandage on his face came off the night before; the swelling had gone down, though there was still a good bit of bruising.
Jessica played it cool. She didn’t talk much; she never did, except to Levi and Tiffy Ames, her best friends, and she managed to spend all day without making eye contact with him, despite the fact that their school was so small.
Finally, after school when he was supposed to go to Chess Club, he saw her walking down the school driveway. He bolted down the hall and out the door. Her pants were just a little too short—highwaters, the snotty girls had said at lunch—and the sole of one of her cheap canvas shoes flopped, half-off. “Jess! Hey, Jess.”
She stopped. He noticed that her backpack was too small, and grubby, and pink. A little girl’s backpack, not like the one Colleen and her friends had, cheery plaid backpacks with their initials sewn on, extra padding on the shoulder straps.
Then she turned around. “What do you want?” she said. Her eyes were cold.
“I...I just wanted to see how your brother was doing.”
She didn’t answer. The wind gusted off Keuka, smelling of rain.
“I guess he’s still pretty sad,” Connor said.
“Uh...yeah,” she said, like he was the stupidest person on earth. He did feel that way. “He loved that dog.”
“I could tell.”
“And Chico never bit anyone before.”
Connor had no answer for that.
Jessica stared at a spot past Connor’s left ear. “My father said that in most cases, Chico would get another chance, but since Pete O’Rourke told the mayor what to do, our dog is dead now.” She cut her eyes to his. “Davey hasn’t stopped crying. He’s too upset to go to school, and he’s wet the bed every night this week. So that’s how he’s doing, Connor.”
She made his name sound like a curse word.
“I’m really sorry,” he whispered.
“Who cares what you think, O’Rourke?” She turned and trudged away, her footsteps scratching in the gravel, the sole of her shoe flopping.
He should let her go. Instead, he ran up and put his hand on her shoulder. “Jessica. I’m—”
She whirled around, her eyes filled with tears, fist raised to hit him. Jess got into fights all the time, usually with the oafs on the football team, and she could hold her own. But she paused, and in that second, he saw the past week written on her face, the sadness and anger and fear and helplessness. The...the shame. He saw that she was tired. That there was a spot of dirt behind her left ear.
“You can hit me,” he said. “It’s okay.”
“I’ll pop your stitches.”
“Punch me in the stomach, then,” he said.
Her fist dropped. “Leave me alone, Connor. Don’t talk to me ever again.”
Then she turned and walked off, her head bent, her blond hair fluttering in the breeze, and it felt like someone was ramming a broom handle through the middle of Connor’s chest.
She was so beautiful.
A lot of girls were pretty—Faith Holland and her red hair, Theresa DeFilio and her big brown eyes, Miss Cummings in the library, who didn’t seem old enough to be a grown-up. Even Colleen was pretty, sort of, when she wasn’t annoying him.
But Jessica Dunn was beautiful.
Connor felt as though he’d just stepped on a bluebird, crushing its fragile, hollow bones.
CHAPTER THREE
Eleven years before the proposal...
WHEN JESS WAS very little, before Davey, her parents had taken her camping once. Real camping, in a tent patched with duct tape, blankets making a nest on the ground. She had loved it, the coziness of the tent, the smell of nylon and smoke, her parents drinking beers and cooking over the fire. Had it been Vermont? Michigan, maybe? It didn’t matter. There’d been a path down to a lake, and the stars were a heavy swipe of glitter across the inky sky. She got seventeen mosquito bites, but she didn’t even care.
That was it for vacations.
When the senior class trip to Philadelphia was announced, everyone had gone wild with excitement. They’d be staying overnight, seeing the sights, then given four precious hours of freedom to wander. Jeremy Lyon, the newest, hottest addition to their class, had an uncle who wanted to take Jer and all of his friends out for dinner. There was talk of going to the Reading Terminal Market, which was filled with places to eat. The Museum of Art, so everyone could run the stairs like Rocky. Everyone wanted to get a cheesesteak sandwich.
The trip cost $229.
Jessica had been to New York City on the sixth-grade class trip, but it was just for the day. She was pretty sure her teacher had paid her fee so Jess could go.
But in Philly, they’d be staying in the city, and the thought of it made her heart bounce like a rubber ball. Based on those five hours in Manhattan, she was pretty sure she loved cities.
Her parents didn’t have $229 for field trips, though they might have it for booze. Asking them didn’t even cross her mind; she had her own money saved, squirreled away in a hole in the wall behind her bed, secured in a little tin box she’d found by the creek that ran behind the trailer park. At eighteen, Jess wasn’t naive; she knew her mom was a helpless alcoholic. Powerless was the word used at Al-Anon. Her father was less extreme, but he was cunning and sneaky. Either parent would use her money for themselves, no matter how you cut it.
So she hid her savings. She’d wait until the house was empty then sneak her tip money and pay into the red tin. Her parents generally didn’t go into her room, and they sure didn’t move the bed away from the wall to clean or anything.
She’d go on the trip. She’d room with Tiffy and Angela Mitchum, maybe sneak out with Levi...maybe for a walk, maybe for sex, though she often felt like that was habit more than anything for the both of them.
Growing up in the trailer park with Tiffy and Levi and Asswipe Jones—born Ashwick, and really, did his mother hate children?—it bonded people. They were the have-nots, some having less than others. You recognized each other, knew the strategies of eating a big lunch at school, because school lunches were free if you were poor enough. You knew how to glue the soles of your shoes when they started to come off, how to keep an eye on the Salvation Army thrift shop. You might even know how to shoplift.
Things like ski trips or island vacations, dinners out and hotel stays...that was foreign territory for the Dunns. Bad enough that Jess’s father couldn’t keep a job, and Mom had four prescriptions for Vicodin from four different doctors. Add to basic poverty Davey’s special programs and doctor’s appointments and new meds that might help with his outbursts but were never covered by Medicaid...there was always less than nothing.
But Jess had almost a thousand dollars saved. Her job at Hugo’s earned her more than her father made, and when Davey needed a helmet so he wouldn’t hurt himself during a head-banging rage, she was the one who’d paid for it. The private summer program that gave him something to do—away from their parents—ditto. His clothes, bought new, also funded by her, because while she’d been able to handle the middle school mean kids who’d make fun of her wearing Faith Holland’s hand-me-downs, Davey deserved better. He already had a big strike against him; he wasn’t going to wear used clothes, too. She bought groceries and special vitamins that one doctor thought might help raise his IQ. She paid the gas bill last March when the cold just wouldn’t let go and they had no heat, and she’d paid for the repair on the crappy old Toyota that got her to and from work.