Meg Cabot - Big Boned

“Yeah, but he’d have liked that,” Jamie reminds me.

“True.”

“When he figured out I wasn’t buying it, he started going on about how my lodging a complaint was going to ruin his career, and that he would promise to do better if I just wouldn’t go to Dr. Veatch. That’s when I told him it was too late—that Dr. Veatch already knew, and that soon the whole college would. After that, Reverend Mark got really quiet, and said I could go. So then when I got to your office the next morning and Dr. Veatch was dead—”

“You assumed Reverend Mark had silenced him forever,” I say. “And that you were destined to be his next victim.”

“Exactly,” Jamie says, thoughtfully scraping the sides of the dish with her spoon so there’ll be no crust to have to scour before loading into the dishwasher. I join her. I can see it’s going to take our combined, united efforts to finish this crumble. I mean, bring down Reverend Mark.

“I want you to come back to the city with me, and tell everything you just told me to a detective friend of mine,” I say. “You don’t have to worry about Reverend Mark going after you—if he’s the real killer, I mean. Detective Canavan won’t let that happen.I won’t let that happen.”

“How are you going to do that?” Jamie wants to know.

“Easy,” I say, “I’ll make him persona non grata in Fischer Hall. So you’ll be safe there.”

“I don’t know,” Jamie says, chewing crystallized bits of sugary crust.

“Jamie, seriously. What alternative do you have? You’re going to stay here in Rock Ridge for the rest of your life, with your mom and dad? Gavin’s going back to the city with us. Don’t you want to hang out with him?”

One of Jamie’s eyebrows goes up, as do the corners of her now cherry-stained mouth.

“Well. Yeah,” she admits, slowly. “I guess. He’s sweet. And so understanding. There aren’t a lot of guys who’d sit and listen to a girl carry on like a crazy person the way I was doing last night… Well, I guess that makes sense, on account of his mom being a gynecologist, and all.”

I try not to say anything. I mean, it’s none of my business, really.

“Do you… ” Jamie looks at me with her blue eyes very wide. “Do you think… do you think he wants to hang out with me?”

I can’t help rolling my own blue eyes. “Uh, yeah, Jamie, I do. Besides, when your mom gets home and finds out what we did to her crumble,she ’s going to kill you for sure. So you’re safer back in the city anyway.”

Jamie’s grin broadens. “Okay. Let me take a shower and grab my stuff.”

“Deal,” I say, and lean back in my chair.

When she’s gone, I surreptitiously undo the top button to my jeans. Because the truth is, even though I matched her spoonful for spoonful, I can’t keep up with these kids the way I used to. I really can’t.

It’s depressing, but true.

The snarling inflatable rat is gone from the front of Fisher Hall by the time we pull up after our visit to the Sixth Precinct. The protesters have moved themselves (and their rat) to the library, where they can probably get more attention anyway, since that’s where President Allington’s offices are.

Fortunately, the news vans have moved along with them, so Cooper easily finds a place to pull over and let us all out.

Still, even though Gavin’s the one who caused all the trouble by spending the night in jail, my arm is the one Cooper snags as I’m getting out of his car.

“Hold on a minute,” he says, as the kids tumble out onto the sidewalk. He waits until they’re safely inside the building and out of earshot before asking, “So you’re gonna PNG Halstead. Then what are you going do?”

It seems to me that my making Mark Halstead persona non grata in Fischer Hall is about the only wrist slapping the good reverend is going to receive. Detective Canavan had seemed less than impressed by Jamie’s story, but said he’d “look into Halstead’s whereabouts” the morning of Dr. Veatch’s murder. This had seemed to satisfy Jamie…

But not me. I could tell Detective Canavan felt as if they already had their killer and was going to do about as much looking into Halstead’s whereabouts the morning of Dr. Veatch’s murder as the college had done looking into Mark Halstead’s previous employment record. Which, I knew, was nil.

“I don’t know,” I say to Cooper. I am slightly distracted by the size of the hand around my wrist. Cooper’s a big guy. Bigger than Tad. His fingers are warm against my skin. “My job, I guess? Payroll’s due soon. I gotta send a reminder to the kids to fill out their time sheets.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Cooper says. “And you know it.”

I sort of do know it. But I’m having trouble meeting his gaze—which is very blue, and very intent—with my own. My mouth has suddenly gone very dry, and my heart appears to be having some sort of attack—palpitations or simply a stoppage, it’s hard to say. My chest feels tight. I’m glad I showed my student workers Punky Brewster CPR training videos for fun during my annual Final Exam Holiday Cookie Decorating Study Break. I’m the one who’s probably going to end up needing it, when I go staggering inside in a few minutes.

“Don’t worry,” I say, keeping my gaze on his fingernails. They are not exactly manicured, unlike his brother’s. “I’m not going to start investigating Dr. Veatch’s murder on my own. I totally got the message yesterday, with the whole Mafioso thing.”

“That’s not what I mean, either.”

“Well, if you mean am I going to go over to the college chapel and pretend I have a soul that needs unburdening, and request Reverend Mark as the only guy to whom I can unburden it, in the hopes that he’ll try to feel me up so I can report him to the board of trustees myself,” I say, “I’m not going to do that, either, because I have to have at least a little face time in my office today, or risk losing my job.”

“I’m not talking about that, either,” Cooper says, in an uncharacteristically frustrated voice.

I take a chance on glancing up then, and am surprised to see that he isn’t even looking at me, but at some distant point somewhere over my left shoulder. But when I turn my head to see what’s so fascinating over there, the only thing I see is a Ryder rental truck parked in front of the building Owen lived in, right down the street from Fischer Hall. Which is weird, because it isn’t even the end or middle of the month. So who would be moving in or out? A couple must be divorcing, or something.

When I look back at Cooper again, he’s let go of my wrist, and turned to face the steering wheel once more.

“You better go,” he says, in his normal, slightly sardonic tone. “Payroll’s waiting.”

“Um.” Wait. What had he been going to say? Stupid Ryder truck! Stupid people, splitting up! “Yeah. I guess I better. Thanks for driving me up to Rock Ridge and for all your help with Gavin and Jamie and everything… ”

Cooper does something that astonishes me then. He actually smiles at the mention of Gavin’s name.

Now I’m definitely going to need CPR. Because that smile causes a blockage in all of my major arteries.

“I guess you were right all along,” he says. “He’s not such a bad kid, after all.”

Okay.What is going on with him?

But before I have time to figure it out, someone calls my name, and I look up and see Sarah standing on the sidewalk, staring at me, a nervous expression on her face.

At least I think it’s Sarah.

“Uh… see you at home, Heather,” Cooper says, taking in Sarah’s outfit with a raised eyebrow. It doesn’t take a trained detective to see that Sarah has undergone a radical makeover—she’s in lipstick and high heels, contact lenses instead of glasses, her hair blown and smooth, her legs bare and actually shaved. What’s more, she’s wearing a skirt — her skirt from her interview suit, maybe, with a white blouse that appears to have an actual Peter Pan collar (I didn’t know they even make those anymore).

But it’s a skirt, just the same.

She looks good. More than good. She looks hot. In a naughty librarian kind of way.

“Um… bye,” I say to Cooper, as I get slowly out of the car, and shut the door behind me.

Cooper shakes his head and drives away, leaving me alone with Sarah on the sidewalk. I realize I’ll just have to deal with him—and that heart-attack-inducing smile of his—later.

Although to be truthful, the fact that tonight will be the first night that my dad will be fully moved out—the first night in months that Cooper and I will actually be alone together in the brownstone—does cause my heart actually to skip a beat.

Stop it, Heather. You are engaged—well, practically—to another man. A man with whom you should be spending the night tonight.

Funny how the thought of spending the night with Tad does nothing whatsoever to my heartstrings.

Even though they’re a quarter of a mile away, I can hear the protesting GSCers chanting in front of the library.What they’re chanting, exactly, I can’t tell. But I can hear their strident voices, off in the distance, as clearly as I can hear the traffic on Sixth Avenue a block away.

“Hi, Heather,” Sarah says, fidgeting with her skirt. “I… I wanted to talk to you, but you… you were gone.”

“I had to run an errand,” I say, lamely. “Why aren’t you over there protesting? Why are you so dressed up?”

Sarah’s pretty face—yes! She actually looks pretty, for once—twists.