But I was too tired to talk about it just then. We snuck into the house, relieved that the only occupant who woke upon our entrance was Max, who wagged his tail and tried to lick us as we made our way to our rooms. Before I slipped into mine, I looked over at David just once, to see if he wanted – or needed – to say anything to me. But he didn't. He just went into his room and shut his door, a scared little boy. My heart swelled for him.
But only for a second. I was too tired to think of anything much but bed – not even Jesse. In the morning, I told myself, as I peeled off my dusty clothes. I'll talk to him in the morning.
I didn't, though. When I woke up, the light outside my windows looked funny. When I lifted my head and saw the clock, I realized why. It was two o'clock in the afternoon. All the morning fog had burned away, and the sun was beating down as hard as if it were July, and not January.
"Well, hey, there, sleepyhead."
I squinted in the direction of my bedroom door. Andy stood there, leaning against the doorframe with his arms folded across his chest. He was grinning, which meant I probably wasn't in trouble. What was I doing in bed at two o'clock in the afternoon on a school day, then?
"Feeling better?" Andy wanted to know.
I pushed the bedcovers down a little. Was I supposed to be sick? Well, that wouldn't be hard to fake. I felt as if someone had dropped a ton of bricks on my head.
Which, in a way, I suppose they had.
"Uh," I said. "Not really."
"I'll get you some aspirin. I guess it all caught up with you, huh? The jet lag, I mean. When we couldn't wake you up this morning, we decided just to let you sleep. Your mom said to tell you she's sorry, but she had to go to work. She put me in charge. Hope you don't mind."
I tried to sit up. It was really hard. Every muscle in my body felt as if it had been pounded on. I pushed some hair out of my eyes and blinked at him. "You didn't have to," I said. "Stay home on my account, I mean."
Andy shrugged. "It's no big deal. I've barely had a chance to talk to you since you got here, so I thought we could catch up. You want some lunch?"
The minute he said it, my stomach growled. I was starving.
He heard it, and grinned. "No problem. Get dressed and come on downstairs. We'll have lunch on the deck. It's really beautiful out today."
I dragged myself out of bed with an effort. I had my pj's on. I didn't feel very much like getting dressed. So I just pulled on some socks and a bathrobe, brushed my teeth, and stood for a minute by the bay windows, looking out as I tried to work the snarls out of my hair. The red dome of the Mission church glowed in the sunlight. I could see the ocean winking behind it. You couldn't tell from up here that it had been the scene last night of so much destruction.
It wasn't long before an extremely appetizing aroma rose up from the kitchen, and lured me down the stairs. Andy was making Reuben sandwiches. He waved me out of the kitchen, though, toward the huge deck he'd built onto the back of the house. The sun was pouring down there, and I stretched out on one of the padded chaise longues, and pretended like I was a movie star for a while. Then Andy came out with the sandwiches and a pitcher of lemonade, and I moved to the table with the big green umbrella over it, and dug in. For a non-New Yorker, Andy grilled a mean Reuben.
And that wasn't all he grilled. He spent a half hour grilling me pretty thoroughly…but not about what had happened the night before. To my astonishment, Sleepy and Doc had kept their mouths shut. Andy was perfectly in the dark about what had happened. All he wanted to know was whether I liked my new school, if I was happy, blah, blah, blah....
Except for one thing. He did say to me, as he was asking me how I liked California, and was it really so very different from New York – uh, duh – "So, I guess you slept straight through your first earthquake."
I nearly choked on a chip. "What?"
"Your first quake. There was one last night, around two in the morning. Not a big one, really – round about a four pointer – but it woke me up. No damage, except down at the Mission, evidently. Breezeway collapsed. But then, that should come as no surprise to them. I've been warning them for years about that timber. It's nearly as old as the Mission itself. Can't be expected to last forever."
I chewed more carefully. Wow. Heather's goodbye bang must have really packed a wallop if people all over the Valley, and even up in the hills, had felt it.
But that still didn't explain how David had known to look for me down at the school.
I'd moved upstairs, and was sitting on the window seat in my room flipping through a mindless fashion magazine, wondering where Jesse had gone off to, and how long I was going to have to wait before he showed up to give me another one of his lectures, and if there was any chance he might call me querida again, when the boys got home from school. Dopey stomped right past my room – he still blamed me for getting him grounded – but Sleepy poked his head in, looked at me, saw that I was all right, then went away, shaking his head. Only David knocked, and when I called for him to come in, did so, shyly.
"Um," he said. "I brought you your homework. Mr. Walden gave it to me to give to you. He said he hoped you were feeling better."
"Oh," I said. "Thanks, David. Just put it down there on the bed."
David did so, but he didn't go. He just stood there staring at the bedpost. I figured he needed to talk, so I decided to let him by not saying anything myself.
"Cee Cee says hi," he said. "And that other kid. Adam McTavish."
"That's nice of them," I said.
I waited. David did not disappoint.
"Everybody's talking about it, you know," he said.
"Talking about what?"
"You know. The quake. That the Mission must be over some fault no one ever knew about before, since the epicenter seemed to be … seemed to be right next to Mr. Walden's classroom."
I said, "Huh," and turned the page of my magazine.
"So," David said. "You're never going to tell me, are you?"
I didn't look at him. "Tell you what?"
"What's going on. Why you were down at the school in the middle of the night. How that breezeway came down. Any of it."
"It's better that you don't know," I said, flipping the page. "Trust me."
"But it doesn't have to do with…with what Jake said. With a gang. Does it?"
"No," I said.
I looked at him then. The sun, pouring through my windows, brought out the pink highlights in his skin. This boy – this red-headed boy with the sticky-outy ears – had saved my life. I owed him an explanation, at the very least.
"I saw it, you know," David said.
"Saw what?"
"It. The ghost."