“What’s wrong?” she said. “Tough guy can’t be good at math?”

“Hey.” He swung his head around, his jaw tight.

She didn’t back away, her eyes gleaming in the darkness.

“How can you sit there in class every day, pretending to follow along?”

“That’s the easy part.”

She stared back at him. “I don’t think it is.”

He looked back at the garage and didn’t say anything. She was right. It was killing him, but she was right.

Simon reached between the seats and tapped Layne on the shoulder. Gabriel didn’t need to understand sign language to figure out the message.

What’s going on?

Gabriel turned the key and yanked it out of the ignition, reaching over the center console to grab his backpack. “All right,”

he said with a sigh. “Let’s give it a shot.”

CHAPTER 9

Layne’s house looked like something that should have been featured in a decorating magazine. His own house wasn’t small they each had their own room, and no one had to fight for a bathroom or anything like that but this was crazy.

The front hall featured rich hardwood flooring, but just beyond that, every inch of carpeting he could see was white and it was a lot of inches. Dark wooden furniture, mahogany or something he didn’t know, sat against the walls in a forbidding way. Framed paintings that looked original hung on the walls.

The kinds of sofas adults kept for show, not for sitting, sat at angles to the walls. Everything was accented with white: throw pillows, coasters, even a vase of white roses on the hall table.

The place was dead silent.

Simon flashed a quick sign, flung his backpack on the floor, and bolted up the hardwood staircase.

Gabriel wanted to pick up Simon’s backpack and shove it in the front closet. The décor was that intimidating.

“He says he’ll be down in a while,” said Layne. “Come on, we can go in the kitchen.”

Gabriel hesitated at the juncture of hardwood and carpeting before following her. Should he take off his shoes? But she hadn’t.

“Does your mom work, too?” he said. The house had obviously been empty prior to their arrival.

“Well, work is a little strong.” Layne led him around a corner into a huge white kitchen with stainless-steel appliances. Even the granite countertop was white with flecks of silver.

The white was getting a little creepy.

“I know,” said Layne. “It looks like a serial killer should live here, right?”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” said Gabriel. But, really, he would.

“What do you mean, work is a little strong?”

“She volunteers. For everything. AIDS benefits, Children’s Hospital in DC, Johns Hopkins, that women’s center downtown ”

“You don’t sound impressed.” He gingerly set his backpack on one of the white chairs, but he wasn’t ready to sit down yet.

“It would be impressive if she actually volunteered in a way that helped people. She helps with benefit functions. She likes to throw big parties where she can look perfect.” Layne flicked an invisible speck of dust off the counter. “Get it?”

Not really. But he nodded.

She pulled the trig book out of her backpack.

Gabriel stared at it, hating that a rectangle of pages glued together could cause such stress. “You’re not going to give me the tour?”

She raised an eyebrow. “You want the tour?”

He shrugged and tried to look expectant.

She shrugged and pushed out of the chair.

The entire house looked like they’d broken into a museum exhibit. Doors whispered open against the carpeting. He only spotted one television, a huge big screen that took up half the wall of one room but even there, it wasn’t the kind of place where you’d want to kick back and watch the game. It felt like someone had put a TV in there according to a mansion instruction manual. Living room: bay window, white carpeting, white sofa, silver big screen. Even Layne’s dad’s “office” didn’t have a piece of paper out of place.

No photographs on the first floor. Anywhere.

Layne narrated the room titles like a bored tour guide, her voice dispassionate.

“You don’t like your house?” he finally said.

“I’m trying to figure out why you care.” She glanced over her shoulder at him as they started up the stairs. “Or are you just stalling?”

“Yes.”

She stopped halfway up, turning to look at him. “At least you admitted it.”

Gabriel was one step behind her, and it put them on eye level.

“I’m trying to figure out how a girl like you could come out of a house like this.”

He watched the fire spark in her eyes, and he held a hand up.

“That’s not an insult.”

It cut her anger off at the knees; he could tell. She shut her mouth and looked past him. “Maybe I don’t like perfect.”

“Yeah?” They were almost close enough to share breath.

“What do you like, Layne?”

She sure didn’t like being kept off balance; that was clear enough from the way she faltered and fought for words. He wondered if her cheeks would feel warm, if he could gather the nerve to touch her. She’d been so assertive in school when she’d told him off for fighting. If he touched her now, she’d probably push him down the stairs.

Then again, maybe not. Her expression was just vulnerable enough, her breathing soft and rapid. Gabriel shifted his weight, ever so slightly.

And she spun, striding up the steps. “Come on. If I let you stall too long, I’m no better than your brother.”

He’d been moving to follow her, but that made him stop on the staircase. “What does that mean?”

“It means he’s not doing you any favors by doing your homework.”

“I told you ”

“Yeah, yeah, he’s tried to help you. Screw it, turn to cheating.

Did you ever ask a teacher to help you? You know, they have special classes ”

“Are you for real?” Special classes. As if.

“Was it all about sports? Did he start helping you just so you could play on a stupid team?”

“No. It wasn’t ” He gritted his teeth and looked at the wall.

“You don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

“I know it would be easier to do everything for Simon, but sometimes I have to let him figure out how to handle things on his own.”

Now he snapped his head around to look up at her. “Like getting beat up in the hallway?”

“Oh, so I should tell him to fight? Just what do you think would happen to a kid like Simon if he took a swing at someone?”

Gabriel took the last few steps until he was on equal ground, looking down at her. “Right now? He’d get his ass kicked.”

“Great.” She turned away, the sarcasm thick. “That’s totally the goal we should be shooting for.”

Gabriel caught her arm. “He’d figure out how to fight back.

They’d figure out he was willing to fight back. Then they’d leave him alone.”

“Is that what worked for you?”

“That’s what works for everyone, Layne.” He gave her a pretty clear up-and-down, hearing his voice turn cruel before he could stop it. “And I might be wrong, but I think you’ve learned that particular life lesson already.”

Her face went pale. She jerked her arm free and spun away from him.

Then she opened one of the hall doors, went through, and slammed it shut.

Shit.

God, he didn’t need this. He should grab his stuff from the kitchen and go.

But he stopped in front of the door. He put his hand against the white wood.

She saw him as a cheater. A jock thug who picked fights in the hallway.

Maybe that’s all there was to see.

He inhaled, to call her name, to apologize, to try to figure out how she’d managed to wedge herself into his thoughts until he couldn’t work her loose.

But she flung the door open, and he was left there with his hand in the air. Her eyes held the remnants of anger.

She glanced at his hand. “I’m sorry.”

She was sorry? He pulled his hand back.

She looked at the molding around the doorway, rubbing at an invisible spot with her finger. “I shouldn’t have come off like that. Sometimes you just you cut right to the quick, you know?”

“You too,” he said.

“I shouldn’t have slammed the door in your face.”

“I much prefer it to getting hit.” He looked up, past her, at the bedroom. Finally, a break to the white but this wasn’t much better. Pink carpeting, princess border along the ceiling, white walls, and a gold canopy bed.

“What,” he said, “no Barbie dream castle?”

Layne flushed. “Shut up.”

She moved to push past him and shut the door, but he slid into her room instead. She had a bookcase, white trimmed with pink, packed double and triple with paperbacks. No shocker there. It looked like she still had every book she’d ever read. Her bedspread wasn’t childish, though, just a simple pink, white, and yellow checked quilt. More books threatened to fall from a pile on the nightstand.

He’d been kidding about the Barbie dolls, but a row of model horses marched across the top of the bookcase, with a framed picture of a girl on a horse at the corner.

He touched a gray horse on the nose, and she was beside him immediately.

“Horses, Layne?” he said.

“Isn’t that what rich little girls do?” she said, her voice vaguely mocking. “Ride horses?”

The girl in the photo wore a helmet, so he couldn’t be sure who it was. “Is that you?”

“Yeah. Last year.” She hesitated, and something about it felt personal.

He withdrew his hand and made his own voice vaguely mocking. “I didn’t mean to make you talk about it.”

She bit at her lip. “No one knows I do it anymore.” Then she blushed and rubbed the gray horse on the nose where he’d touched it. “I mean, my parents know. They pay the bills and all. Just . . . no one at school.”

“What a crazy thing to keep secret.” He leaned closer to the picture. The horse was clearing a jump, with Layne crouched close to the animal’s neck. “That’s a big jump.”

“Nah. Only three and a half feet.”

He glanced back at her. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll fall?”

A little shrug. “Sometimes. I think that’s why I like it. No matter how good you are, you’re never completely in control.

The horse has a mind of its own. You can’t force it.”

“So how good are you?”

She met his eyes, and he liked the spark of challenge he found there. “Good enough.” She paused. “When I was younger, I used to compete all the time. We went to New York, Devon, Washington, all the big ones. My mother loved it. She couldn’t wait to have another blue ribbon to hang on the wall, to brag about at the next benefit. Her perfect daughter.”

Like flipping a switch, Layne’s voice went from tentative to furious. “I hated the competition, I hated the pressure, I hated how something I loved had turned into something else my mother could use against me.”

She reminded him of the fire in the woods, under control one minute, then blazing.

“But still you do it,” he said.

“I don’t compete,” she said. “I just ride. Horses don’t care that I have ” Her voice broke off suddenly, and he studied her, waiting. But she didn’t say anything else, and she was staring at that picture, her shoulders tense.

The horses didn’t care that she had what?

She didn’t want him to ask that much was clear from her posture. “You ride after school?”