by Diane Hoh
Good advice. But did she really want to sit here alone on the highway in this cold, disabled car if someone offered her a ride into town? No, she did not.
She rolled the window down.
“I’m not even going to comment on the fact that you’ve got a flat tire,” the boy in black from Vinnie’s said, leaning down to speak to her. “And I’m not going to make the politically incorrect assumption that you can’t change it because you’re female. I’m going to assume that you can, but I’m going to suggest that you don’t because it isn’t safe right here, okay? We’ll give you a ride into town to a garage. I’m Deacon Skye, and this is Mel Hayden,” gesturing toward the girl standing beside him. “We ride around all night rescuing stranded travelers, so don’t think we’re doing you any special favor.”
“Hi, Nicki,” the girl said, smiling. She was almost as tall as Deacon, and very thin, with long, wavy blonde hair. “Come on, we’ll take you to Rif’s. He does good work and he doesn’t charge college students their entire monthly allowance.”
The fact that the girl knew her name made Nicki feel less like she was dealing with strangers. And both of her rescuers were students at Salem, which gave them something in common.
“You know who I am?” she said as she climbed out of the car, rolling up the window and locking the door.
Melanie Hayden nodded. “Yeah. We asked. At Vinnie’s. We thought you looked interesting. And someone said you play tennis. I’ve never picked up a racket in my life. Neither has Deacon. But we go to the matches. They’re fun. Anyway, here you are, and here we are. Not off to a very good start at Salem, are you?”
At first, Nicki thought Mel meant her lousy showing at practice that day. She quickly realized the girl was referring to her mishap on the highway. “That tire is brand-new,” she said grimly.
Deacon bent to check it out. “Slashed,” he said without hesitation. “Someone did a real number on this baby.” He stood up. “Could be random. Or not.” He looked down at Nicki, whose head came only to the collar of his black leather jacket. “Could somebody be this unhappy about your arrival in our hallowed, ivy-covered halls?”
Nicki was reminded of Libby’s cold, green eyes. “Someone might be,” she answered, “but how would they know this car was mine? There’s nothing special about it. There must be dozens of light blue compact cars on campus.”
“Not with a State sticker on the rear windows,” Deacon said drily. “You might want to seriously consider removing that. On Salem’s campus, that’s like wearing a sign that says, ‘Kick me.’”
Chagrined, Nicki nodded and said, “You’re right. I forgot all about it. That’s probably the reason for the tire, don’t you think?”
“Seems a bit drastic to me,” Deacon said, “although I’ve noticed that a lot of people on campus use unfriendly terms when referring to State. Still, slashing a tire? I guess we won’t know if the sticker is the reason unless you remove the sticker and nothing worse happens to you.”
Nicki didn’t like the sound of that. There might be more of this kind of thing?
The sticker wouldn’t just peel off. She’d need hot water. “I’ll do it first thing in the morning,” she said.
“Maybe it wasn’t the sticker at all,” Mel suggested as they climbed into Deacon’s sporty black car. “Maybe someone knew it was your car because they saw you getting in or out of it. I don’t want to make you nervous or anything. I’m just saying, you might want to give some thought to who might want to make you miserable, that’s all.”
Nicki rode to town in the front seat between the two of them. The minute they were all seated, Deacon flicked a button and music filled the car at full volume. Conversation became impossible; Nicki was glad she didn’t need to talk. She needed to calm down and think.
First, the mousse message on her locker door … a juvenile stunt, it seemed to her, something that kids in high school would do. Not very original, even if they had used mousse instead of spray paint.
Ginnie had said it couldn’t have been done by Libby DeVoe herself, but Pat had pointed out that Libby could have assigned the task to one of her many followers.
And now the tire. But Libby had only left her seat in Vinnie’s once, as far as Nicki could remember, and then only to run to another table and gossip for a few minutes. She hadn’t left the restaurant.
Besides, Libby seemed too obvious. She’d been so open about her feelings toward Nicki, she’d have to be crazy or stupid to try anything nasty so soon.
Maybe she was crazy. Nicki had read about dedicated athletes who became totally obsessed with their sport and stopped thinking rationally, often driving themselves to a point that endangered their physical and mental health.
Maybe that had happened to Libby DeVoe.
They stopped at the garage Mel had mentioned and were told someone would go get the car and have the tire changed within the hour.
“So,” Deacon said as they left the garage, “where to now? What exactly was your destination when misfortune waylaid you?”
“The mall. I have to” … it sounded so silly … “I have to exchange some socks.”
“Socks.” Deacon smiled at her. “Ah, yes, those little white things you wear under your sneakers when you wow them on the courts. Very important, those little white socks. We shall take you to the mall and you shall have footwear. This is the least we can do for good old Salem U.”
He didn’t talk like anyone else she knew. But she decided she liked it. Interesting. Deacon Skye was interesting, and the fact that he didn’t play tennis, never had, intrigued her even more. She had, in the past, dated boys who didn’t play tennis. But because they knew she did, they had talked about it at length. She had hated that. There was more to her than tennis. A lot more.
Deacon had a different look, too, although she couldn’t really put her finger on what it was. It wasn’t just the black jacket, jeans, and boots. His features were sharp and, she suspected, could probably look cruel. Long, straight nose, dark eyebrows, and intelligent eyes that looked almost black. Not Mel Gibson, though. More like Christian Slater. She was positive those eyes never missed a thing, and wondered if anyone had ever tried to hide anything from him. If they had, they’d probably failed.
When the three walked into the sporting goods shop, John Silver, back at work and waiting on a customer, gave Nicki an inquisitive look. Two minutes later, he was at her side, as Deacon and Mel stopped to carry on a perfectly serious conversation with a male mannequin dressed in ski wear.
“What are you doing with them?” John asked. “They don’t play tennis.”
To a non-tennis player, it might have seemed like an odd comment, but Nicki knew exactly what he meant. We all stick together, she told herself. But that’s probably a mistake, because then we never meet anyone interesting, like Deacon, and Mel.
“Do you know them?” she asked John, handing him the package of socks she wanted exchanged.
“Everyone knows them,” he said with a tolerant smile. “They’re always in trouble.”
“Murder and mayhem?” she asked lightly, smiling at him.
He laughed. “No, nothing that dramatic. They’re just … well, they like breaking the rules, that’s all. I wouldn’t think you would have anything in common with those two.”
Exactly what she’d thought at Vinnie’s. “I was stranded on the highway, and they gave me a ride, that’s all.” And they were nicer to me than most of the tennis team, she thought.
“No qualms about getting into a car with them?” he asked as she searched the racks for exactly the right kind of sock. “I’m not sure I’d do it.”
“You didn’t have to. Nobody slashed your tire.”
He was clearly shocked. “Your tire was slashed? Are you sure?”
“Oh, I’m sure, all right. And judging by the reception I got at practice today, it could very well have been done by one of my oh-so-friendly teammates.” The thought stunned her. She hadn’t been aware that she’d been thinking such a thing,
except for Libby, of course.
John nodded at that. “They didn’t make you feel welcome? That was Libby’s doing, I’ll bet. I told you to watch out for her.”
“I know you did. She’s really something. Great player, though.”
John shook his head. “Tire-slashing doesn’t seem like Libby’s thing. But I guess you never know, do you? I repeat my earlier advice, Nicki. Watch your back. And,” nodding toward Deacon and Mel, who had taken up positions in an inflated rubber raft on the floor and were pretending to row, John added, “you might want to give a little more thought to who you choose to hang with at Salem. Maybe you should pick people you have more in common with than Bonnie and Clyde over there.”
“You mean, I should stick to tennis players like myself,” Nicki said with an impish grin. “Well, to tell you the truth, John, I’m a little sick of conversations revolving around serves and backhands. I might even take up a new sport. Something like, oh, say, river rafting.” And taking the package John handed her, she strode purposely over to the rubber raft and climbed in to sit beside Mel, who handed her an oar.
Deacon broke into a chorus of “Row, Row, Row, Your Boat,” and Mel and Nicki joined in.
John watched for a while and then, shaking his head, left to search the storeroom for a pair of size thirteen Nikes needed by a customer.
Nicki was having so much fun, she didn’t even notice that he’d gone.
Chapter 5
WHEN THEY LEFT THE sporting-goods store, Deacon led them to a bookstore. “His father writes travel books,” Mel told Nicki as they walked. “Every time we come here, we go into the bookstore and turn all of his father’s books face front so they’ll sell better. It’s fun.”
“Your father travels a lot?” Nicki asked Deacon.
“Not just my father. We all did. When he went, we went, too, all six of us. My dad has itchy feet. Can’t stand to live in one place for more than a year. I went to twelve schools in twelve years.”
“That beats my record,” Nicki said drily. He was the first person she’d ever met who had the same background she did. So they did have something in common.
“Don’t tell me your father writes travel books, too,” Mel said with a grin.
“No. Military. Eight schools in twelve years. I hated it.”
“Yeah?” Deacon looked surprised. “Man, I loved it. By the time I was ten, I couldn’t wait for the next place. I’m going into civil engineering, building bridges, that kind of stuff, so I can move around all the time and get paid for it.”
Nicki decided they didn’t have that much in common, after all. When she had her own place, she was going to stay there forever. She’d had enough of moving.
“The thing about moving,” Deacon said then, “is, no one ever finds out who you really are, and you leave your mistakes behind. You don’t have to live with them.”
Startled, Nicki glanced over at him. What a weird thing to say. Why would it be a good thing that no one ever found out who you really were? That was one of the things she’d hated about moving. Never really getting to know people. Deacon sounded like he had found that a positive thing. But if you were always running away from your mistakes, when did you learn not to make the same ones?
Well, whatever Deacon Skye’s mistakes were, it wasn’t any of her business how he handled them.
When they had finished putting Arthur Skye’s travel books face forward, they left the bookstore for the food court where they talked about moving while they ate, and where Mel went into the smoking section to collect all of the ashtrays and toss them into a trash container. “I’m saving lives,” she responded calmly when Nicki pointed out that the mall management had paid for those ashtrays.
When they had eaten, Deacon moved to the piano sitting just inside the entrance and pounded out two rock melodies before a security officer came along and told him to “Beat it, kid. You want to play piano here, you go to the mall employment office and fill out an application.”
The security officer followed them as they left the food court and window-shopped their way out of the mall. It seemed to Nicki that Deacon deliberately walked very slowly, pausing to scrutinize every single window as they passed each shop, his voice unnaturally loud as he made critical comments about the displayed merchandise.
Deacon is daring that officer to throw us out of here, she realized. Maybe getting tossed out of malls was one of the “mistakes” Deacon had referred to earlier.
Nicki breathed a sigh of relief when they finally arrived at the main entrance. Watching them warily, the security guard didn’t turn away until they had actually gone through the glass double doors and were standing outside.
They were almost to the parking lot when Mel pulled a keychain from her pocket and held it up in the air. “Cute, isn’t it?” she said triumphantly. “I love the little teddy bear.”
“I didn’t see you buying anything,” Nicki said, puzzled.
“Buying?” Mel laughed. “I didn’t buy it, Nicki. It was hanging right there on the counter on a little rack in the bookstore, just begging to be given a good home. So I obliged.”
“You stole it?”
“Oh, ‘stole’ is such a harsh word. This little teddy bear was lonesome. I took pity on him, that’s all. He’ll be much happier with me than he was hanging on that rack.”
Nicki waited for Deacon to say something. But he remained silent, striding along nonchalantly as if the conversation between the two girls had nothing to do with him.
“Geez, Nicki,” Mel said, laughing, “we’re talking less than two bucks here. Chill out. You think the store is going to go broke over two bucks?”
“Forget it,” Nicki said brusquely. She wasn’t about to deliver a lecture on honesty to someone she hardly knew. But she found herself increasingly uncomfortable with the pair. Maybe John Silver had been right. If she got into any trouble with these two, her scholarship would be in jeopardy. “If you’ll just take me back to the garage now, I’m sure my car is ready.”
As they reached Deacon’s car, Nicki felt his eyes on her. For one nervous moment, she thought he was going to refuse to take her back to the garage; thought that he had sensed her disapproval of Mel’s stunt, and was going to leave her stranded in the mall parking lot late at night.
But he merely shrugged and said, “Sure. No problem.”
During the drive to the garage, Mel hummed to herself and swung the keychain in the air, as if she were deliberately taunting Nicki with it.
The car wasn’t quite ready, but Nicki insisted Deacon and Mel go on to school without her. “It’ll be done soon,” she told them, gazing up at her car suspended on a rack, instead of looking at Deacon. “I don’t mind waiting. Thanks for the ride.”
“Any time. See you around.” Something about his tone of voice told Nicki he didn’t really expect to see her around. He thinks I’m a drag, she thought, and couldn’t be sure if that was annoying, because she didn’t think of herself that way, or disappointing, because she didn’t want him to think of her that way.
Smiling, keychain in hand, Mel waved out the window as they pulled away.
When her car was finally ready, Nicki drove back to campus in a mood that matched the night’s darkness. If she had hit it off with Deacon and Mel, it wouldn’t have mattered as much that the tennis team, for the most part, hadn’t welcomed her with open arms. Now, all she had to look forward to was going back to her empty, lonely little room.
She should have stayed at State. At least there, she’d had friends. No one there had snubbed her or left nasty messages on her locker or slashed her tires.
But State had only offered her a partial scholarship.
To her complete astonishment, Deacon was waiting at her door when she arrived. Black baseball cap pulled down over his eyes, he was leaning against the wall, hands in the pockets of his black jeans.
“What are you doing here?” she asked bluntly, reaching for her room key. More surprising than the sight of him was the fact that she was glad
to see him.
He pushed the cap backward and stood up straight. “Meaning, the last person in the world you expected to see waiting for you was me. Is there someone else you’d rather have standing sentinel at your door?”
She shook her head no.
He nodded. “Good. I just thought you might like to know that Mel likes to give the impression that she’s a rebel, but the fact is, she’s an amateur. The most rebellious thing she’s ever done is probably palming that key chain. She was showing off. For you. I saw the look on your face. I decided to set the record straight.”
“Well, it’s not like I thought she was a hardened criminal,” Nicki said, opening her door.
Deacon laughed. “A hardened criminal to you is probably someone who’s never played tennis, am I right? And by the way, Mel was wrong about me. She said I’d never picked up a racket. Actually, I did play once, when I was too young to know better. Liked the game. Disliked intensely the people who played it.”
Nicki felt her cheeks flushing. “Everyone? How can you lump together in one big bunch everyone who’s ever played tennis?”
He shrugged. “I played at a country club. Everyone there was filthy rich. Even though I liked the game, I wasn’t about to spend time with a bunch of spoiled brats.”
“I play,” Nicki said. “And I’m not rich.” If I were, she thought to herself, I could have stayed at State. And I would have.
“So I was wrong. Not for the first time, nor the last. Are we square about Mel’s temporarily sticky fingers? You willing to give us another chance if I promise we won’t all end up in the penitentiary?”
Nicki laughed. “Well, you’ll have to promise, because I already moved once this year and I’m not going to pack my bags again any time soon.”
He gave her a mock salute. “You have my word on it. Invite me in and we’ll seal the deal.”
“No, I …” She had moved through the doorway and would have turned then to tell him no, she wasn’t inviting him in, she was too tired, but something stopped her.