Going Too Far(49)
Author: Jennifer Echols

"Oh, that temper," I said.

Will looked up at John, stepped away from Tiffany and me, and backed up a pace. "Rashad!" he called. He looked behind him, but he was against the wall. There was nowhere left to go.

John was across the room, on top of Will. Tiffany and T both put our hands between them before we were able to think through that unwise move. At least it temporarily kept John from hitting Will. John only gripped Will’s shirt, pulled him upward, then whacked him down against the floor.

"Get off me, After," Will roared, red-faced. "You have completely lost it. Rashad!"

There was not enough room in the tiny kitchen for all these enormous boys, but somehow Rashad squeezed in and said, "Easy, big guy," as he pulled one of John’s arms. Skip gripped John’s other elbow and said in the Schwarzenegger voice, "You’re terminated."

John seemed to be easing up, letting them drag him backward. Then he shook them off and went for Will again. They dove after him in a sprawl of boy on the kitchen floor.

Finally Tiffany stamped her foot and squealed, "John, he wasn’t even hitting on Meg. He was hitting on me! Right, Will?"

"Right!" Will’s agonized voice came from the bottom of the pile.

"But Eric said—" John’s muffled voice trailed off. He erupted from the pile. With the briefest glance at me, he stalked out of the kitchen, brushing against Eric behind Angie in the doorway.

"Still looking for a fight?" Eric called after him. "You’re pretty chicken without the entire police force behind you."

"Shut up, Eric," John’s voice echoed. The door slammed louder than the beat of Kanye West.

I pushed past everyone, not even noticing who I was pushing past, but I heard Will breathing hard right behind me. "What are we going to do?" Tiffany panted as we dashed through the door of Rashad’s apartment and down the stairs outside, into the cool night. "Are we going to chase him in my car?"

"We’ll never catch him if he doesn’t want to be caught." Will stopped dead at the bottom of the stairs. "His truck’s still here."

"Where would he have gone?" I cried, looking up and down the empty street.

"He likes the fountain down at Five Points," Will said. We all ran down to the corner and stopped again.

The fountain was straight ahead. Behind a low circular wall, rabbits and frogs listened to the ram reading evil stories to them. I couldn’t see John’s face across the intersection, but I recognized his green T-shirt. He was up in the center of the fountain, sitting on the lap of the Devil.

"He really likes the fountain," Will said.

Even Tiffany asked, "What the hell?"

"Great," I said. "I’m finally acting sane, and John goes crazy." I turned to Will. "He’s not one of those big-headed cops who carries cuffs hidden on him when he’s off duty, is he? I didn’t feel any cuffs on him Thursday night."

"No," Will said. "But I’ll go with you if you’re scared of him."

I turned back to study John, sitting motionless in the fountain. "No thanks." Crossing the street, I called over my shoulder, "I’m no more scared of him than he is of me."

John watched me coming. I stopped at the wall around the fountain. He glowered down at me from the ram’s lap, arms folded. The legs of his jeans were wet from the frog statues spitting at him. An unlit cigarette hung from his lips.

I cupped my hands around my mouth like a megaphone. "Move off the Devil, toward my voice."

His expression didn’t change. The cigarette quivered in the corner of his mouth as he said, ‘I’m trying to think like you."

I laughed. "If you were trying to think like me, you’d be turned around, straddling the Devil."

"Or Will," he said. "Or Eric."

My stomach knotted again at the thought of me and Eric. Surely John didn’t believe by now that I had the hots for Eric, or Will, either. But he obviously believed Eric and I were alike. Just as I’d told him in the first place.

I said, "I had no idea about your brother."

He winced. I hated to hurt him. Again. But at least his glower was gone.

He took the cigarette out of his mouth and leaned forward with his fists on his knees. "Even if you didn’t, Meg, how could you do that to me?"

It was my turn to wince. I stepped back from the wall of the fountain with the force of the blow. I said lamely, "I can’t stay in that town, John. But I love you, and I can’t leave you there." I stepped forward to the wall again. "I swear I didn’t know about your brother, though. If I’d known, I would have come up with something else. Dynamited the bridge."

"Mmph," he said. "I know you didn’t. Will told me you did—"

"He was wrong," I said quickly. "He is very sorry, and also his ass is grass."

"—but then I had dinner with Leroy," John went on, "and he told me you didn’t know. So I went to Rashad’s hoping to see you, and I’ve spent the past few hours making all these great plans for you and me. And then Eri told me you were with Will." He shook his head. "He tried for years. Eric finally got me."

I walked to the side of the fountain nearest the rabbit, where I was as close as I could get to John without crossing the moat between us. "What kind of plans?"

He squeezed his eyes shut, then shook his head and opened those dark eyes again, watching me. They weren’t green anymore. They were back to the familiar, beautiful brown. "I’m glad it happened. I mean, I wish it hadn’t happened in exactly that way. But something had to happen to make me see. I thought I was protecting people. When I handcuffed you, I realized I’ve let the bridge turn me into a monster. It might be good for me to get out of that town."

I gaped at him for a few seconds, honestly not believing at first that I’d heard him say this. Then I laughed. Really laughed. "No!" I said sarcastically.

He grinned. "I plan to ask Will if I can move in with him this summer. And I’m joining the university track team. I was thinking you might want to, too."

I gasped in horror. "Join? A team?"

"You’re running five miles a day anyway," he said. "You might as well join the track team and get more scholarship money."

"That actually sounds like"—I swallowed—"fun."

"I know we need money for rent and stuff. But if we can save enough, this summer or next summer, maybe you and I could go to Europe. I could show you what I’ve done, and we could discover some new places together."

"I do hope you mean that in the dirtiest sense possible." I’d had enough crying for one day, so I shut my eyes and willed the tears away.