by Megan Crewe
“Okay. So, you know she’s been going with Paul for, like, forever now. Well, I was watching the boys’ track practice this morning, and Paul’s on the team. This girl—she had crazy highlights, and she was wearing those super-tight jeans and a baby-doll top. . . .” She paused, crinkling her forehead. “Sharry! That’s what he called her. She came over to the fence to watch—she’s a sophomore, I think.”
“Sharon Lietzer,” I murmured. How could any guy resist a girl best known for the things she could do with her tongue? Paul had been hanging around with her last year before Danielle had set her sights on him.
“Anyway,” Bitzy said, “she came and waved at him, and after the coach dismissed them, Paul went over to talk to her. Acting all hip, flexing and stuff, trying to impress her. In, like, five seconds they’re hiding in the equipment shed behind the bleachers, making out all over the place, and after a bit she says, ‘What about Danielle?’ and he laughs and says, ‘I won’t tell her if you don’t.’ And then they almost did it.”
“Did it?” I said. “You mean he was going to have sex with her?”
“Well. . . .” Bitzy blushed and looked at her feet. For someone who adored this kind of gossip, she could be a bit of a prude about it. “All the clothes stayed on. So they didn’t actually . . . do it. But I think they might have if the warning bell hadn’t rung. They were really going at it.”
“Wow.” My skin felt cool and clammy, like I had been swimming in the ocean, but inside I was burning up. This was like a gift, just handed to me. A free pass to rip the sneer off Danielle’s face.
I’d heard her in the halls, so loud I didn’t need Norris or Bitzy to tell me about it, bragging to Jordana and the rest of her girlfriends about Paul. “He’s such a gentleman, you know,” she’d gush. “I mean, he never pressures me at all. Totally cool with waiting. And he’s always telling me how lucky he is that he’s got me.”
Every now and then, someone might ask, “Didn’t he used to date Sharon Lietzer?”
Danielle would smile. “He took one look at me and never looked back. She can have all the other guys she wants—I’ve got the sweetest one in the school.”
Sure. So sweet that by tomorrow morning Sharon might have eaten him up.
A memory flashed through my mind: sixth grade, the Christmas dance. Danielle’s face red from bawling, after her crush spent the entire dance arm in arm with another girl. Back then I had comforted her.
Back then she would have comforted me.
I swallowed the lump in my throat. Poor Danielle. Looks like you don’t get to have everything after all. You steal a guy from someone, why shouldn’t she try to steal him back? Guess your gentleman’s more interested in getting his hands in a girl’s pants than waiting for that perfect moment. He duped you as easily as you duped me.
In the end, she’d done it to herself. I was just speeding up the process.
I nibbled at my chapped lips. Not that I was going to dump it all in her lap just yet. Danielle deserved some squirming time. She’d drawn my torture out for ages. Why should I go easy on her?
“What are you going to do?” Bitzy whispered.
“Right away? Just bat them around a bit.” I hung up the phone. “I think I’ll start now.”
Bitzy squeezed herself and spun around on one foot. “Oh, I can’t wait. I’m coming, too.”
I’d walked the distance from the phone alcove to the cafeteria so many times I knew the steps by heart. Twenty to the corner, fifteen more to the doors. With each step, anticipation turned into exhilaration, making my feet light. My hands smudged the glass doors as I pushed inside. Bitzy lingered in the doorway.
“You coming?” I murmured. “Come on, Bitzy, you can walk through walls. Being around a little junk food isn’t going to weigh you down.”
She frowned. “I know,” she said. “I know I can’t eat it. But I still want to. And wanting to makes me feel like a tub of lard.”
“Okay,” I said. “But there’s never going to be another one like this.”
As I left her, a desperate voice called from a stand near the doors. “Prom ticket? They’re fifty percent off!”
That was how much school spirit sucked at Frazer; they couldn’t even sell table spots at the prom. The seniors wanted to jet down to Cancún instead. I glanced at the poor kid they had peddling tickets and, in my good mood, shot him a smile of sympathy. He looked at me blankly for a second, then became very busy studying his pile of unsold tickets. I dropped my gaze.
If he wasn’t avoiding you, he’d be laughing at you, I reminded myself. Take your pick.
I weaved around the clumps of chairs, deeper into the cafeteria. The ceiling was so low a pro basketball player would have had to hunch, and it made the whole place look dark, even with the fluorescent panels overhead. At one of the side pillars, I paused, considering the best approach. A couple of girls glanced over at me, and the babble of voices at their tables hushed. As if I was listening to them. All I could hear was my heartbeat.
Dead ahead was the central pillar, ringed by a wide, legless tabletop. The center table belonged to Very Important People, a group that at any given time might include student councillors, newspaper staff, sports stars and their most devoted fans. They weren’t half so important to the rest of the school as they were to themselves, and it wasn’t like anyone else wanted that table, anyway The way it was built around the pillar, they couldn’t see half the people sitting there without straining their necks.
None of them looked up as I edged closer—too fascinated with themselves. I knew the faces of the center table regulars so well I barely needed to touch my mental files.
1. Tim, student council vice president. Very popular with the girls, even more so now that he was mourning the death of his mom. Never seemed to have an actual girlfriend, though. Probably a player.
2. Flo, head editor for the school paper. Maintained a well-earned reputation for sticking her nose where it didn’t belong. Had a thing for Leon.
3. Leon, student council secretary. Flirted with Flo constantly but had said he’d sooner date a dog.
4. Jordana, junior class rep. Backstabber of supposed friends. Chatted up other guys to make her boyfriend jealous, then got offended when he was pissed.
5. Matti, Jordana’s boyfriend, head of the student athletic association and all-around creep. Nabbed by yours truly for selling fake exam copies back when I first got started. Also a backstabber.
6. Paul, Danielle’s boyfriend, track star, captain of the basketball team, and supposed gentleman. Fondler of Sharon Lietzer.
7. The permed and polished Danielle Perry, all-around popular girl and the biggest backstabber of them all.
All present and accounted for.
My pulse was really pounding by then, but it wasn’t hard to guess what they were saying. Every lunch hour, they had the same conversation.
Flo: “The Frazer Gazette needs more juice. Give me some business to stick my nose into.”
Leon: “Student council affairs are confidential, but because it’s you, here’s a tidbit and a wink.”
Jordana, fluttering her eyelashes: “Uh-oh, what if I tattle on you?”
Matti: “How dare you flutter your eyelashes at someone else! Don’t you know ten girls tried to take me home last night?”
Danielle: “You guys should break up already. Can’t you see Paul and I are the ones in tru luv?”
Paul: “That’s right, babe. Let’s prove it by sucking each other’s tongues off.”
Tim, with his patented pained-but-brave smile: “My mom died. Doesn’t brooding look good on me?”
Everyone else: “Poor Tim!”
Flo: “But I already used that story.”
Danielle: “I’m bored. Where’s that tongue, lover boy?”
For Danielle lunch consisted almost entirely of saliva du Paul. Must have been how she stayed so skinny. Either that, or she did her puking at home where Bitzy couldn’t catch her, unlike half the other girls at Frazer. I hated to admi
t it, but she was smarter than most. Even with Norris and Bitzy sicced on her, the best they’d dug up until now was a little catfighting. She always seemed to clean up her trash before I stumbled on it. Even though she’d spent the entire time since we’d entered high school pretending I didn’t exist, she must have noticed that not much escaped me these days.
I hung back behind the nearest table, waiting for her to stop swapping spit long enough for me to get a word in. As I watched, this shrimpy freshman girl with barrettes and bubble-gum pink lipstick crept up to the other side of the table. She had a wrapped chocolate bar clutched tight against her chest.
“Tim,” she said in a wispy voice, bowing her head like she was addressing a god, “the machine gave me two bars by mistake. I thought, maybe, you might want one.”
Tim forced a smile again. It didn’t quite reach the edges of his lips. He always smiled the exact same way, as if he rehearsed it every night for maximum sympathy production.
I’m sure he really was torn up about his mom. Having someone die on you—no one needed to tell me how much that sucked. But no matter how sad he was, it didn’t excuse his using it to work the ladies. Or keeping the company he did.
He inclined his head so his blond hair drifted over his forehead and half closed his eyes. “Thanks,” he said, “really,” and took the chocolate bar.
The girl bobbed on her feet and scurried away.
“Pathetic,” Danielle said, flouncing her hair. The bronze highlights shimmered, and my fingers curled. I shoved my hands into my pockets so she wouldn’t see them shaking, and exhaled in a slow stream. My heart was thundering in my head like a crazed bull, but my voice—my voice was steady.
“Hey, Paul,” I said, stepping up to the table.
He swiveled in his chair, his eyebrows cocked, his lips parting to make some snappy remark. Then his eyes hit mine. His expression stuttered. Panic flashed across his face.
“What?” he said as he re-created his look of casual indifference. His hand on the back of his chair was still clenched, the knuckles going white. I had him, and he knew it. And Danielle was going to know it, too.
They were all staring at me now. My mouth had gone dry. But I had to do it this way, so everyone would hear, so everyone would be whispering about her, this time.
I pushed my lips into a smile. “How’s it going?”
“Fine,” he said.
His hand slipped down to grasp Danielle’s. She glared at me, her mouth tight. “Piss off, Cassie.” So angry and scared that her voice came out scratchy.
The tables had turned. She had asked for this from the moment she’d whispered the first bad words about me around the school, from the moment she’d turned up her nose at me like I was suddenly the lowest scum on the planet, because someone had dared to give me one little thing she’d wanted.
“So,” I said to Paul, dragging in a breath, “I hear you’ve really been enjoying track practice lately.”
“I guess. What’s it to you?”
He must have thought it was brave, pushing the issue. It was just stupid.
“Well . . . the field belongs to everybody. So anything that happens out there, it’s as much my business as yours.”
Blood rushed into Paul’s face, splotching his cheeks. Danielle’s pearly nails dug into his arm.
“Yeah?” he said.
I cocked my head. The trembling in my hands, the pounding of my heart, none of it mattered now.
“So be careful you haven’t been enjoying the equipment shed too much. You know what I mean.”
The moment was brilliantly clear. Danielle shifting, her mouth opening. Paul gaping, speechless. Frozen. Perfect.
“See you later,” I said, and he blinked. The cafeteria crowd swallowed me up before any of them could say a word.
CHAPTER
4
I coasted through the day, the anticipation of victory dissolving in my mouth like a butterscotch candy. This had all started with Danielle. Maybe if she fell, deflated and disgraced, I could finally forget about her and everything she’d done.
During my last-period study hall, I stopped by my locker to see Norris before taking off. He wasn’t there. My mind started replaying the shock on Danielle’s face as I jiggled open the lock, which was why I didn’t notice right away what fluttered out of the ventilation slats in the locker door. It wisped as it hit the floor. I glanced down. A piece of notepaper, folded, lay beside the toe of my boot. The outer fold said Cass in narrow, jagged handwriting.
Dread soured my mouth.
No, this wasn’t junior high. These days, Cass McKenna could handle a little note. Maybe I had a secret admirer. Ha.
I picked it up and unfolded it. The scrawl got narrower.
I know how you know. Meet me at the basketball courts, final bell, this afternoon.
“What’s that?”
Norris drifted out of the wall and peered over my shoulder. Before he could read it, I crumpled the note into a ball and stuffed it into my pocket.
“Just the vaguest message in the history of the universe,” I said, tossing a couple books into the bottom of my locker. Someone was trying to intimidate me, obviously. Maybe Brenda wanting to get back at me for this morning?
“Oh. Well, he did look like a vague kind of guy,” Norris said.
I stopped in midtoss, a binder dangling between my fingers. “You saw who put it there?”
“Sure,” Norris said, taking a swipe at his hair. As if he was ever going to smooth down that ducktail now. “It was that Tim guy. You know him—tall, thin, kind of gloomy looking. One of the student council guys.”
“Yeah, I know him,” I said, staring up at Norris. “What the hell happened?”
“Well, first he comes wandering over here, all casual, right around the end of lunch.” Norris strutted down the hall in imitation. “When the bell rings and everybody scrams, he seems to think it’s safe to slip the thing in your locker. Little did he know,” Norris concluded, jerking up his jacket collar, “nothing escapes the great and powerful Norris.”
Nothing except a sane reason for Tim Reed to be sticking notes in my locker. The ladies’ man VP secretly corresponding with the terror of Frazer Collegiate? Any second, the ceiling was going to crash down on our heads. I threw the binder into my locker, frowning.
“He’s the one whose mom died, right?” Norris said.
“Yeah,” I replied. “That’s him.” There had been such a fuss over it that even Norris remembered. The male teachers patting Tim on the back and offering him extensions on his assignments; the female teachers enveloping him in awkward hugs. Every girl, freshman through senior, throwing him glossy-eyed looks of sympathy and a chance at their virginity (or lack thereof). I was sorry that anyone ever had to lose their mom, him included. But, really, who needed their grief made public in a weeklong school fund-raiser/mournfest, complete with cheerleaders shouting “Noooo to cancer!”?
It didn’t help that the whole time I couldn’t stop thinking about Paige. How, when she’d died, it’d been all over the news, so everyone at Washington Junior High should have known I’d lost my sister. And not one of my classmates had said a word.
“I don’t get it. He’s got the whole school wrapped around his finger. Why’s he bugging me?”
“Maybe he did something and he’s trying to get to you before you out him,” Norris suggested.
“You see anything?”
“Nope. Whatever he does with all those girls who chase him, he doesn’t do it here.”
I ran through my mental files. Bitzy had seen Tim dent another guy’s car in the school parking lot a while back, but he’d played the good guy and written a check.
Then it hit me. “Of course.”
“What?” Norris said. “You got something on him?”
“Not exactly,” I said. “He’s friends with a guy I had a little chat with this morning. Probably thinks he can talk me out of telling the whole thing.” Maybe he figured all he’d have to do was make his pained smile
at me and say a few solemn words, and I’d fall over to please him like every other girl.
Not likely. I had front-row seats to watching Danielle find out what it was like to be betrayed, and I wasn’t giving them up for anything.
“Thanks for keeping an eye on things, Norris,” I said, closing the locker door.
“Not a problem. I do what I can.”
“You know, there’s something else you could do, if you don’t mind.”
“Hey, anything,” he said, sinking lower.
“I’ve told you to keep an eye on Danielle before, right? And her boyfriend?”
“Yeah, I remember. Danielle and Paul. And those other losers, their friends—”
“Don’t worry about the friends right now,” I said, looking him straight in the eyes so he’d know how important this was. “Can you keep an extra-close eye on Paul, especially around track practice?”
Norris hesitated. “Bitzy likes to hang out around the field in the morning.”
“Yeah, well, maybe you’ll have to grovel a little. I think she’d appreciate it.” I raised my eyebrows at him. “Don’t be one of the jerks. This is really important, and two sets of eyes are better than one.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll handle it.”
“Thanks. I’m going to jet—we’ll talk more tomorrow, all right? And we’re on for Saturday?”
“Definitely,” Norris said, giving me a thumbs-up. I tipped my head to him and headed down the hall. Sorry, Tim, but I’m not available for any pleading sessions for Paul at present. Let him make his own case, if he cares.
Outside, I dragged in a breath. I didn’t feel like sticking around to see what Tim had to say, but I wasn’t in much of a mood to go home to Paige’s makeup tips or Dad’s wordless concern either. For a little while, it’d be nice to have a place where there was no one but me.
The breeze lifted over me, carrying the scent of the lake all the way up from the bay. Without thinking, I followed it.