Lock and Key by Sarah Dessen

Author:Sarah Dessen [Dessen, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance, Contemporary, Young Adult
ISBN: 9780142414729
Publisher: Speak
Published: 2008-04-22T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

When I came down the next morning, Jamie was out by the pond. From the kitchen, I could see his breath coming out in puffs as he crouched by its edge, his coffee mug on the ground by his feet. It was what he did every morning, rain or shine, even when it was freezing, the grass still shiny with frost all around him. Just a few minutes spent checking on the state of the small world he’d created, making sure it had all made it through to another day.

It was getting colder now, and the fish were staying low. Pretty soon, they’d disappear entirely beneath the leaves and rocks on the bottom to endure the long winter. “You don’t take them in?” I’d asked him, when he’d first mentioned this.

Jamie shook his head. “It’s more natural this way,” he explained. “When the water freezes, they go deep, and stay there until the spring.”

“They don’t die?”

“Hope not,” he said, adjusting a clump of lilies. “Ideally, they just kind of . . . go dormant. They can’t handle the cold, so they don’t try. And then when it warms up, they’ll get active again.”

At the time, this had seemed so strange to me, as well as yet another reason not to get attached to my fish. Now, though, I could see the appeal of just disappearing, then laying low and waiting until the environment was more friendly to emerge. If only that was an option for me.

“He’s not going to come to you,” Cora said now from where she was sitting at the island, flipping through a magazine. The clothes I’d been wearing the night before were already washed and folded on the island beside her, one thing easily fixed. “If you want to talk to him, you have to take the first step.”

“I can’t,” I said, remembering how angry he’d been the night before. “He hates me.”

“No,” she said, turning a page. “He’s just disappointed in you.”

I looked back out at Jamie, who was now leaning over the waterfall, examining the rocks. “With him, that seems even worse.”

She looked up, giving me a sympathetic smile. “I know.”

The first thing I’d done when I woke up that morning—after acknowledging my pounding, relentless headache—was try to piece together the events from the day before. My argument with Cora I remembered, as well as my ride to school and to Jackson. Once I got to the clearing, though, it got fuzzy.

Certain things, however, were crystal clear. Like how strange it was not only to see Jamie angry, but to see him angry at me. Or catching that glimpse of my mother’s face, distorted with mine, staring back from the mirror. And finally how, after I took her hand, Cora led me silently up the stairs to my room, where she’d stripped off my clothes and stood outside the shower while I numbly washed my hair and myself, before helping me into my pajamas and my bed. I’d wanted to say something to her, but every time I tried she just shook her head.

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