CHAPTER NINE
THE GIRLS PAID MORE attention to Henry than they had before Liz died. It was strange. The girls who used to occasionally talk shyly to him, the nice girls, now went out of their way to avoid him. That wasn’t the strange part. It was all of the girls who hung around him now, talking and looking at him provocatively. Their eyes alight with curiosity and excitement. He had, as rumor had it, raped and murdered a girl, and instead of avoiding him, they seemed to feed off the danger of being around him. Their eyes sparkled at the risk. Groups of them quieted and eyed him speculatively when he walked past them in the hall. Whispers and giggles followed him as he left them behind.
One of them was Lana. She was a slim, sexy thing, who previously would not have given Henry a second look. Henry found her irresistible, he felt powerful when she would give him those half-bold, half-downcast glances that qualified as flirting. At first he was shy of her attention, not sure how to respond to the advances. That only seemed to encourage her more.
He didn’t know much about Lana’s history and background. He didn’t know what made her tick—or more importantly, what it was in her past that attracted her to a potentially dangerous offender.
She was hanging out with Henry at his locker after school. Henry looked at his watch.
“I gotta get home,” he told her. “I got a baby to look after.”
He expected her to be turned off by this. But her reaction was—what? Jealousy? Anger? Interest? He couldn’t read her expression, but the information hadn’t scared her off as he had expected.
“I’ll come with you,” she offered smoothly.
Henry hesitated, raising his eyebrows. Then he shrugged.
“If you want,” he agreed. “My mom or Clint might be around, though.”
“Just tell’em you’re tutoring me. You’re smart, right?”
“I get by,” Henry agreed, a chuckle rising up in his throat.
They headed for home. Henry had his hands in his pockets and she took his arm somewhat possessively after a couple of blocks, walking so closely stuck to his side that he had to slow down to avoid tripping over her.
There was no one at home. Henry went into his room and got Bobby out of the crib. Lana hung back while he changed Bobby’s diaper and put him down to toddle around.
“Is he your…” Lana trailed off.
“My brother,” Henry finished for her. “Half brother.”
“Oh. How come nobody’s looking after him?”
“I look after him.”
“Huh.” She looked around the house, “So what else do you do?”
Henry shrugged.
“I got plenty to do.”
Cooking, cleaning, studying. Nothing that she would be interested in.
“Since your folks aren’t around,” Lana said slyly. “You and me could spend some quality time together.”
Henry swallowed. Did she mean what he thought she meant? He’d never had a girl come onto him like that. Girls talked to him. Smiled at him occasionally. But they were never interested in him. They never came onto him. Until now. Henry pushed up his glasses, but they just slid back down his sweat-slick nose.
“Um, yeah, sounds good. But first I gotta start some dinner, in case someone gets home.”
“Okay.”
Lana wandered through the house, eventually flipping on the TV. She stood there instead of sitting down, moving around restlessly, glancing into the kitchen every couple minutes to see what Henry was doing. Eventually Henry went back to her.
“I can leave it for a while now.”
“Guess we’ll go in your bedroom, if your ma might get home.”
“Yeah.” Henry picked Bobby up and brought him into the room before shutting the door.
“Does he gotta be in the room?” Lana questioned, eying the baby as Henry put him down.
“I gotta keep an eye on him,” Henry pointed out.
“Well, this’ll be something new. I don’t usually perform for an audience.”
Lana was something else. There were other girls who were now unaccountably interested in him too, but Lana was at the forefront. She was the boldest, always ready to go with him to the mall, or home, or wherever Henry was going. She wasn’t happy if there was already another girl with Henry when she showed up. She said nothing, but her black expression said it all. She didn’t like him seeing other girls.
Then he started seeing her with another guy. She referred to Gus as her ex-boyfriend, but it was obvious to Henry that he was not so “ex”. He was disappointed at the loss, but he didn’t pursue her. He wasn’t the type. And there were other girls ready and willing to take her place. He just let her go.
That was a mistake.
When Lana saw that Henry wasn’t going to challenge Gus for her, she tried playing it the other direction. Suddenly she was fawning all over Henry in front of Gus. And Gus didn’t have Henry’s laid-back personality.
Henry ran into Gus in a quiet hallway during third period class. It was too late to retreat and go the other direction. Henry wasn’t fast, and Gus was athletic, on both the football team and the wrestling team.
“Henry Thomas, isn’t it?” Gus sneered.
“Yeah,” Henry agreed, trying to squeeze past him without getting delayed.
“You think you’re hot stuff with the girls now, don’t you?” Gus demanded, moving squarely in front of Henry and forcing him to stop.
“No,” Henry said firmly. The girls might think that, but he knew that he was the same nerdy, somewhat shy, but quick-talking kid that he’d always been. They’d known it then, and sooner or later they would lose interest in him and he would go back to being beneath their notice.
“I’m warning you, kid—keep away from Lana,” Gus growled.
“Why don’t you tell her to keep away from me?” Henry countered.
He looked taken aback for a moment, but then pressed on.
“I’m telling both of you—I’d better not see you together again,” he warned.
Henry shrugged.
“Fine with me.” He would miss Lana’s company, but it wasn’t worth confronting Gus over. There were other girls. “She’s all yours.”
Gus eyed him, suspicious of his response.
“What are you trying to pull? You’re going to stay away from her.”
“Yeah. But I can’t control where she decides to show up,” Henry warned.
“I’ll take care of that.”
They stood there for a moment, looking at each other. Henry raised an eyebrow, waiting. Gus shifted partly out of the way.
“You’d better not be messing with me,” he warned, just to get in the last word.
Henry slipped past him.
Henry didn’t see Lana for a while, and he assumed that Gus had taken care of things. But after a few days of not seeing her, one of Lana’s girlfriends passed him a note from her. She wanted to see him. Alone. At the specified time and place. Henry made sure the girl who had given him the note saw him flick it into the garbage. Henry turned back around and stared expressionlessly at the board. He didn’t show up at the rendezvous.
She didn’t take the hint. A few days later, she showed up at his house after school. Her makeup didn’t quite disguise her black eye. Henry scowled.
“What are you doing here?” he questioned.
“Didn’t Marcia give you my note?” she whined.
“Yeah, she did,” Henry said flatly.
“You didn’t come see me.”
“No.”
“How come?”
Henry looked her over in disbelief. Couldn’t she take a hint? Did he have to come out and tell her bluntly?
“I was seeing someone else,” he said.
“Someone else? What are you talking about?”
“I’m hanging with someone else now. A different girl.”
“I don’t care. See whoever you like. I don’t care about being exclusive.”
Henry shook his head.
“You don’t get it.”
“What’
s to get?” she said stubbornly.
“I don’t want to see you anymore.”
Lana stared at him in disbelief, a red flush rising from her neck.
“You don’t want me?”
“No,” Henry insisted. “I don’t.”
She took him by the hands, her gaze fiery and intense.
“It’s just Gus,” she insisted. “He told you to say that. You care for me. I know you do. He won’t do anything to you. He’s just talk.”
“It’s not just Gus.” That part was true. Henry didn’t like Lana’s scheming and jealousy. Girls like that were dangerous. He’d had enough experience with girls that caused trouble. “I’m just not interested in you.”
That part was a lie. Lana’s eyes teared up, and she turned away from him, shoulders shaking. Henry swallowed a lump swelling in his throat. It took all of his self-control to keep from calling her back. He watched her until she was out of sight. That would finally be the end of it.
But it wasn’t.