The Last Cheerleader. Meg O'Brien

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      It was not to be an easy night, however, and there was more than sweetness and light to come.

      I was dreaming about Craig and Arnold and crushed foreheads, Tony and my lost income, when my doorbell rang. I woke with a start and looked at my bedside clock: 1:25 a.m. Not very many people knew where I lived, and none of them would come here at this hour without calling first.

      Had the scruffy detective come back for more? Or had he come to arrest me this time?

      I drew my silk Chinese robe around me and walked to the front door, turning on a couple of lights along the way. Looking through the peephole I saw a woman blinking in the bright glare of the motion-sensitive light above my front door.

      She seemed disheveled and badly dressed, like women I’ve seen on the streets, sleeping in cardboard boxes. I shivered in the cold dampness that blew in from the ocean through a crack I’d left open in a window. I couldn’t imagine what this woman wanted with me, but was doubly cautious because I’d heard from a neighbor that someone had broken into her house recently, and she thought it was “one of the homeless.”

      The way she’d said the word homeless was so disparaging, though, I had tended to discount her story and wondered if she’d simply heard a dog in her trash that night. In her circle, a homeless person probably just made for a better story.

      “What do you want?” I asked through the closed door.

      “I just really need a place to sleep,” the woman said. “Can I come in?”

      There was something oddly familiar about her voice, but I couldn’t place it.

      “I’m sorry, I don’t have any extra room,” I said. It was all I could think of. “Have you tried the missions?”

      “Please, Mary Beth. Let me at least talk to you.”

      It startled me that she’d called me by name. “Who is it?” I called out. “Who are you?”

      The woman started to cry. “Mary Beth, it’s me, Lindy. Lindy Lou.”

      Lindy Lou? Lindy Lou Trent, from high school? Was it possible?

      I opened the door a crack but didn’t take off the chain. “Stand over here where I can see you,” I said.

      She did, and I had to admit there was a slight resemblance, maybe in the nose and eyes, but that’s where it ended. Lindy Louise Trent had been my best friend in high school—and at the same time my arch-rival. Lindy had the looks, the money, the personality, and all the boys. While I slaved away on the school paper, she became the most popular cheerleader, the homecoming queen, and the one who got the homecoming king—someone I’d had eyes for but was too shy to go after. Lindy just had to toss her long blond hair, stick out her chest, and boys would follow her anywhere.

      “Is that really you?” I asked now, though I could see with every passing moment that it was indeed her. I just couldn’t believe the change that had taken place. Several inches of the roots of her hair were dark, and the blond that was still left was dry and frizzled. Her eyes were wide and staring.

      My look must have spoken volumes.

      “Please let me come in and sit down, Mary Beth. I’ll tell you everything, but I really just need to sit down.”

      She started to sway back and forth alarmingly. I opened the door the rest of the way and reached for her. Putting an arm around her waist, I drew her into the living room and helped her to sit on the couch. She was light as a feather, and shaking so much I had to hold on tight for fear of dropping her.

      “Oh, God, that feels so good,” she said, groaning. “Just to sit. You can’t know, Mary Beth. I’ve been walking for miles.”

      She wore low-heeled, pointed-toe shoes from a good designer, but when she slipped them off I could see that she wore no stockings, and two of her toes were bleeding.

      “For God’s sake, Lindy, let me clean that up for you,” I said. I went to the kitchen and spoke to her from across the breakfast bar as I ran water to get it warm. “Where did you walk from?”

      “Downtown L.A.,” she said, her voice shaking. “I mean, I started out there, but then I got a ride to Hollywood. I walked down Sunset Boulevard till I got to the ocean, and then I turned on Pacific Coast Highway and came here.”

      I added soap to the bowl of warm water, and a soft dishcloth. “I don’t understand. How did you know where I live?”

      “I read a piece about you in the Sunday Los Angeles Times. They said you lived in Malibu, and then I ran into someone who knew you. He gave me your address.”

      Warning bells went off. Lindy shows up after all these years—fifteen, to be exact, since high school—and tells me that someone who knows me gave her my address? Who would do that?

      For that matter, what were the odds of her “running into someone” who even knew my address? I protect my personal information from almost everyone, as I don’t want agitated authors showing up at my door in the middle of the night. That had happened frequently when I had my office in front of the little adobe house in Hollywood. I didn’t want it to happen here.

      “Who was this person?” I asked.

      Lindy shook her head. “I can’t remember. I met him at a bar in Hollywood and we got to talking. I told him I’d been wanting to get in touch with you, especially after I read that piece in the paper. Just to tell you how happy I am for your success, you know.”

      I’ll bet, I thought suspiciously. Lindy had obviously met with bad times. How much was she here to hit me up for?

      I knelt down and began to wash her feet with the soapy water, then dried them carefully. “Leave the shoes off,” I said. “I’ll get a Band-Aid, and I’ve got a pair of socks and some tennies you can have.”

      “Thank you, Mary Beth.” Lindy looked around and added with an edge in her voice, “You’re doing very well now, aren’t you?”

      I looked up at her and she flushed. “I didn’t mean it to sound that way. It’s just that everything’s turned around for both of us. You were poor and now you’re not. I was…well, I guess you heard that I married Roger Van Court.”

      I looked back at her feet and then stood, taking the bowl back to the kitchen. “Yes, I think I must have heard that,” I said vaguely. “It’s been a while. Ten years or so, right? Since you were married?”

      “Since right after college,” she said, nodding. “I can’t believe I was that stupid.”

      I didn’t know what to say to that. The last thing I wanted to talk about was Roger Van Court. In fact, my pulse was racing and my hands had begun to shake at the sound of his name. I took a Band-Aid out of a drawer and tried to bring my focus back to Lindy and her plight.

      “What’s happened, Lindy Lou?” I asked softly. I applied the Band-Aid, then sat beside her on the couch, my legs crossed in tailor-fashion. It was the way we used to sit when we were teenagers, chatting till all hours of the night. A familiar scene—yet not familiar at all. Now that I could see Lindy more closely, I realized that though we were the same age, thirty-three, she looked closer to fifty. Her face was lined, and I could see now the gray in СКАЧАТЬ