I TOLD MOM THAT I HAD TO WORK ON A HISTORY PROJECT with a friend. If I told her where I was really going, she'd ask a hundred questions that I couldn't begin to answer.
"But it's five thirty, Charlotte! You haven't had dinner yet."
"I grabbed a snack."
"Can't it wait until tomorrow?"
"No," I told her. "I'm not even hungry."
She paused, my words sinking in. "You have a new friend?"
"Not really. It's just a girl. The teacher put us together."
"Could this person become a friend?"
I groaned, rolling my eyes for emphasis. She backed off. "There's salad in the fridge. Take some," she said.
I shook my head, my ponytail swatting the air like a horse trying to get a fly off its tail. "OK, fine." I opened the fridge, stuck my hand in, and plucked out a tomato.
"Charlotte!"
I looked at her innocently. "I have to go."
She heaved a dramatic mother sigh. "So what's this assignment about, anyway?"
"Um, it's a debate. I'm on the side that thinks Senator McCarthy was an ass."
"Watch that mouth," she warned.
I snatched my coat and was halfway out the door when she called out, "He was, actually."
I looked over my shoulder.
"An ass," she clarified. "Be home by nine."
I gave her a big, rewarding grin and stepped out into the startling cold night.
Kade stretched his lanky frame across a king-size bed smack in the center of the studio apartment. "You have no idea how happy I am to see you all."
The other members sat cross-legged on the floor, looking up at him like toddlers on the first day of preschool. The only thing missing were carpet squares. I glanced at the sole chair in the room, stationed by a window. Zoe patted the space next to her and shifted over to make room for me.
"Welcome to the League of Strays," Kade said.
Nora gawked at him like he was the Messiah. I couldn't really blame her. I'd found myself staring at him once or twice or twenty times. Kade was good-looking, which was as much of an understatement as saying that Joshua Bell can play violin. His eyes were the same shade of blue as the waters of the Virgin Islands, framed with dark eyebrows that made his gaze seem even more potent.
"This group is a puzzle. If a piece was missing, it wouldn't work." Kade spoke with a confidence that was impossible to ignore. He could probably be friends with anyone he chose, if only he wasn't so … intense. Yep, that was it, from the statement-making hair to the way he commanded the room without saying a word. I bet some people couldn't deal with his intensity. I liked to think I wasn't one of them.
I stole looks around Kade's tiny apartment whenever I had the chance. There were almost no cabinets. Everything from cooking pans to shampoo was lined up neatly, in plain view. Kade's shower was a part of the kitchen, as visible as the refrigerator. Only a chipped white toilet in the closet-size bathroom offered any privacy.
My eyes stopped at the mahogany desk in the corner. Kade owned every imaginable device known to man. An homage to Apple, I thought, as I took in the MacBook Pro with an enormous monitor, iPad on a stand, and an iPod touch resting in the docking station of a bullet-shaped speaker.
"What happened to your parents?" Nora jumped right to the point. She was either refreshingly direct or hopelessly tactless, I hadn't made my mind up yet. I just hoped Kade wouldn't feel forced to delve into some horrifically painful story.
"Just your typical nasty divorce," Kade said, reaching for a bag of potato chips. "You know, spiteful custody battle. Lawyers who pay off their law school debt with my future inheritance. That sort of thing."
"His uncle owns the building. He lives upstairs," Richie said.
"It was ludicrous, all the time my parents spent arguing over who wouldn't get me," Kade told us. "But my uncle said as long as I didn't throw any loud parties or burn the place down, I could crash here."
I was so stunned, I had to tell myself to close my mouth.
"He's the perfect guardian because he leaves me alone," he added, popping a chip into his mouth. "Uncle Ron has a very demanding dating schedule."
"You mean you live by yourself, like all the time?" I asked incredulously.
In a million years, I couldn't imagine my parents letting me have such freedom. But then it occurred to me that in a few months, they wouldn't have a choice. I'd be off to Barrymore, I hoped. For some reason, the thought made my shoulders seize up. I reached up to massage my trapezius muscle, a tip I'd learned in the performance-anxiety elective I took over the summer at Walden Park Conservatory Camp.
"We have dinner together every Sunday. I give him what he needs for the 'parental report,' and everyone's happy." Kade edged toward the foot of his mattress. Closer to me.
"How long have you lived like this?" Nora asked.
"A year."
"If I were your parents, I wouldn't let you out of my sight," Zoe piped in.
"Why do you say that?" He looked sincerely interested. Not the least bit offended by Zoe's remark.
She squinted as if she was trying to see him clearly. "I don't know. You look like the rebellious type."
Kade laughed heartily. "I have a list of therapists who'd agree with you."
Personally, I didn't get Zoe's attitude. She acted like she didn't want to be here, but here she was, parked beside the rest of us.
I guess Kade was thinking the same thing. "You came here tonight, Zoe. Why?"
Nora answered. "You piqued our curiosity."
Kade reached for a can of Coke on his bedside table and gave it to her. She hadn't asked for it, but she took it, anyway.
"I'll assume by your presence that you're all interested in joining the League," he said. "I hope so. The thing is, I know you a little better than you know me, and I don't think that's fair. It's important we're on equal ground."
I, for one, was eager to learn more about Kade Harlin. He was like a good mystery novel; you couldn't turn the pages fast enough.
"I'm going to ask you to do something very difficult," he said. "Zoe, if it makes you uncomfortable, I totally understand. No hard feelings. You can walk out of here right now. But I hope you won't, because I really like your fire. I haven't met anyone like you before, and I think that's pretty amazing."
Zoe's fire expressed itself in a blush. "OK, I'll stay. Just remember, I don't get naked for anyone."
I laughed. One thing about Zoe, she was impressive under pressure. As for me, I could barely form sentences when Kade talked to me.
He swung his feet to the floor and offered her a hand. She hesitated a moment, then reached out to slap it. "You've got my attention," she said. "Continue."
"I want us all—me and Richie, too—to share the worst thing that anyone's ever done to us. I'm asking you to be honest. To take a risk. We can trust each other, I promise."
Nora looked doubtful.
"Tell them the terms," Richie chirped.
"Right, thanks." Kade rolled up the sleeves of his sweater, revealing an impressive pair of forearms. He moved to the floor, beside me. "Whatever we say in this room stays here. If a single word gets out, then the guilty party has to leave the group."
"Dramatic," Zoe mumbled under her breath.
"This is way more interesting than studying for trig," Nora said.
Kade had a single dimple on the left side of his face that seemed out of place among his resolved features. He caught me looking and winked. A jolt of electricity zipped through my veins. "Charlotte, you with me?"
If only, I thought. "Oh, um, OK."
Zoe was silent. When she exhaled, I realized I'd been holding my breath, too.
"I know it's hard to trust a bunch of strangers when so many people have let us down," Kade told her. "But that won't happen here."
"Be honest, huh?" She pretended to think about it. "I guess I could try something new."
Kade's laugh was deep and throaty. "You want me to go first?" He looked at us until I nodded. "OK, it happened in the ninth grade. I was in love with this girl in my art class."
In love?
"Who?" Nora asked.
"You wouldn't know her. It was a different school."
"What school?" Zoe said.
I knew somehow that Kade wouldn't answer her, like he had rules for us that didn't apply to him. "The school I went to before Kennedy," he said. "Anyway, she was beautiful—tall, thin, with wavy brown hair." He tapped me on the wrist and shivers rippled up my arm. "She looked a little like you, Charlotte."
Without realizing it, my hand drifted to my hair. Beautiful, like me? I mean, it's not that I thought I was ugly. Funny-looking, maybe. Too tall. Too thin. I let go of my hair, and a curl snapped back like a spring.
"Oh. Um, thanks," I said. For what, Charlotte, thanks for what? He hadn't exactly said I was beautiful. I cursed my automatic impulse to be polite.
"I wrote poems about her and left them in her art locker. Every day, I checked to see if she'd written back, but she never did." His gaze drifted to a spider spinning a web over the heating vent. "I memorized her schedule so I could learn everything there was to know about her. She liked egg-salad sandwiches, and her favorite perfume was a five-dollar bottle of Forever Yours that she stole from Walmart. She'd had six boyfriends in the past two years. I even knew the shortcut she took to get home."
Kade sure liked to research people. I rubbed the goose bumps on my arms, but since it wasn't cold in the room, it didn't help. Fear and fascination played tug-of-war inside me.
"I sent her four poems." A look of enchantment, then agony, flashed across his face, and his eyes fluttered shut. "'My hands, like water, flow down your sides, pouring into places unexplored.'"
My face heated up like bad sunburn. Places unexplored? A few seconds passed before I realized I was imagining his hands on my body, going exactly where they wanted to.
Kade opened his eyes, but they were lost in the past. "'I seek the inner, the warmth, the soul of you … a mingling of spirits. A dance of bodies. A reflection of desire.'"
Desire.
His eyes slid toward me, slow as spilled syrup. "'Mirrored images, unifying into a flame that licks the walls of my chest. Hot with passion promised.'"
I pulled back as if I'd been literally singed by his words.
"Wow," Nora whispered. "Um, that was …"
She didn't finish, but Richie nodded like he agreed. Zoe, I noticed, made a point of folding her arms across her chest as if she'd heard better.
"You really liked her," I said in an attempt to show sympathy. I felt like an idiot as soon as it came out. What I really wanted to ask him was, Could you ever like me that way?
"I waited a long time for her to respond. Almost a week." His fingers pressed into his knuckles until they popped. "And then one day, she did. Bitch."
His anger was sudden and unexpected, causing my breath to hitch in my throat. We all bent forward, waiting to hear more.
"What happened?" Nora asked breathlessly. She reached into her purse and pulled out a pack of tissues. That's when I noticed the lone tear traveling down Kade's cheek.
"I'm so sorry," he said, his voice cracking. "It still hurts, after all this time. Anyway, she made copies and taped them to classroom doors, the cafeteria wall, school-bus windows. At the top of each one, she wrote, 'By Kade Harlin' in her fat bubble writing."
"What a jerk," I whispered.
"That's the truth," Richie said.
"She moved away a month later," Kade said, staring hard at the wall over my head.
"Good riddance," Zoe offered.
"She left because of me," Kade said.
I wanted to know why, but I didn't ask. Kade had laid his heart at this girl's feet, and she'd stomped all over it. If it had been me, I would've loved to get a poem like that, to have someone care enough to write it.
I guessed that was the end of his story, because he reached for a square pillow on the bed and tossed it to Nora.
