by Diane Farr
Goodbye, I thought. Goodbye.
Which was really stupid, right? I was just going to a dance. But suddenly I was glad we had taken all those silly pictures. Life’s a fleeting thing, after all.
The Lincoln glided through the night like a ghost. I couldn’t help thinking it was a senior citizen’s car—you know, big and slow and boatlike. I barely felt the spellspinner shield when we floated through it and wondered if that was because the cabin was smotheringly comfortable.
I hoped that was it. Because the alternative was that the shield was weakening.
Which, of course, is exactly what I expected to happen once Lance stopped helping me.
I turned my head and stared into the darkness through the passenger window, hiding my expression from Tres. I didn’t want him to see that I was scared, and I sure didn’t want him to see that I was sad.
And then it hit me like a ton of bricks: I had to come up with some excuse to not let Tres drive me home!
I hadn’t even thought about that until this moment. What a dope! Even if the shield was weaker than it had been—and I couldn’t be sure that it was—it would mess me up if I hit it coming from the other direction.
After my fight with Lance, I perfected a shield-crossing technique to get me home from school: I ride my bike close to where I know the shield crosses the road, get off, walk the bike with one hand out until I feel the invisible wall, then give the bike a shove so it sails through on its own. The bike goes about ten feet and falls over. At which point I skatch past it, turn around, pick it up and move on.
This works beautifully as long as there is no one around to see me do it. But what excuse could I give Tres for having him drop me at the top of Chapman Road?!
Oh, well, I thought. Guess I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.
Now my palms were damp. I surreptitiously rubbed them on the plush seat cushion.
I don’t know why it was awkward to make conversation with Tres-in-a-suit, but it was. I kept sneaking little glances at him, marveling at how different he seemed. Sometimes my little glances caught him sneaking little glances at me. After the third time this happened, my nerves got the better of me and I giggled. So Tres grinned, and that broke the ice. Sort of.
“It’s like I don’t even know you,” I confessed. “I’m sitting here, like, who is that guy?”
“Same guy,” he said. “Maybe you never really looked at me before.”
I felt myself blushing. Because he was right; I’ve never looked at him—at least not the way he wants me to. And—sorry, Tres—I never will. But when he said that, my anxiety cranked into hyperdrive because I really, really don’t want to hurt my buddy Tres. And I was afraid my blush would give him the wrong idea. Plus I had just giggled, of all things.
So now I got all tongue-tied because I was embarrassed about the blushing and the giggling.
And then I had to really worry, because being tongue-tied and blushing and giggling was totally the wrong direction to take this scene.
I really suck at this boy/girl stuff.
“This means a lot to me, Zara.” Tres’s voice was so soft I could barely hear him. “Taking you to Homecoming.”
“Um,” I said. Miss Eloquence. My brain raced to try to think of something I could possibly say in reply to that. Came up empty. None of the obvious responses—like, Gosh, Tres, it means a lot to me too—were true. So I said nothing.
I have never been so glad to pull into the school parking lot.
The gym doors were open, spilling colored light onto the breezeway running alongside the building. We could hear the thump of bass all the way from the admin building. Tres took my hand and together we walked toward the action.
Again, I felt odd and uncomfortable about holding his hand—and again, I didn’t know what to do about it. Short of hurting his feelings, there didn’t seem to be much I could do. So I held his hand, inwardly cursing myself for not being better prepared. I should have realized what I was in for. I should have known what Tres would expect. I should have thought.
Next, of course, I would have to slow-dance with him. Repeatedly. It was going to be a long night.
Just as we approached the door, he surprised me by pulling me up against the wall and pinning me there with one hand on either side of my body. There was a light in his eyes that I’d sometimes seen before when he looks at me—a light that makes me feel anxious and guilty. I flattened myself against the brick and tensed, an instinctive defensive posture. But Tres laughed and shook his head.
“Zara,” he said. “I can read you like a book. I know you only want to be friends. Relax.”
I smiled warily. “Relax?”
“Yeah. Sure. Of course.” But the light in his eyes was still there. “Don’t you get it? This is my fantasy, taking you to a dance. I had to ask you. I might never get another chance.” His smile turned wistful, and I glimpsed sadness behind the light in his eyes. “I’ll live on this the rest of my life.”
And he kissed me.
I couldn’t believe it.
It never would have happened if he hadn’t caught me off guard like that, but he just sneaked it right in. Right past my defenses.
First thought: Well, that was weird.
Second thought: Excellent—now I have an excuse not to let him drive me home.
Third thought: Wait a minute. My first kiss was from Tres Palacios?!
It was the third thought that made me angry. I put my hands on his shoulders and pushed him away. “Not cool,” I said.
“Worth it,” he said.
His arms were still braced against the wall, on either side of my head. I ducked underneath one and started to walk away.
And that’s when I saw Lance.
My heart seemed to stutter at the sight of him.
He was wearing a suit, but not like Tres’s. It was a bad-boy suit, sleek and well-cut and expensive. It made him look like a rock god—or maybe a Mafioso. He was lounging against the breezeway post across from the open door of the gym, with the colored light pouring over him and his kryptonite eyes glittering with malice, staring me down.
He was heartbreakingly gorgeous. But his expression was that of a gunslinger at high noon. His eyes met mine as I walked toward him, and they might as well have been leveled at me across a pistol. He looked like he was ready to shoot me down in cold blood.
And I couldn’t read his mind at all. His thoughts were utterly closed to me.
Had he watched Tres kiss me? I couldn’t tell.
Did it matter? I couldn’t decide.
And then the door to the girls’ restroom opened and out spun Cheryl Sivic in a sky blue satin knockout of a dress. She walked right up to Lance and grabbed his arm, smiling up at him in a way that made me long to claw her eyes out. Lance gave me one last look as he straightened up, then he turned to Cheryl and smiled back at her.
My stomach twisted itself into a cold little knot.
I didn’t realize I had stopped dead in my tracks until Tres touched my arm. I blinked at him like I was waking from a nightmare. My personal nightmare—or it would have been, if it had ever crossed my mind that it was remotely possible. Lance dating Cheryl, my least favorite person on earth. Cheryl, who had done her best to make my life miserable since I was eight years old. Cruel, snobby, popular Cheryl, who had started everyone calling me “Spook” and who needled me every chance she got.
And Lance knew what she was and what she’d done to me. And how it had made me feel. Because he’d read it in my mind.
So he’d asked her out deliberately to hurt me. He’d chosen to go to Homecoming with the girl it would hurt me most to see him with.
Okay, scratch that. It might hurt worse to see him with Amber. But he’d probably be here with Amber, if she hadn’t been so obviously older than him.
Rage and humiliation swept through me in waves, turning me hot and cold and shaky. I felt sick. I wanted to go off somewhere and cry. I wanted to smash things. I wanted to be anywhere but here, watching Lance Don
ovan escorting Cheryl Sivic into the gym with his hand lightly touching the small of her back. But here I was, and the night was just beginning.
Tres took my hand again and squeezed it, whispering an apology for stealing that kiss, but I couldn’t even respond. I walked numbly beside him as we entered the gym. A teacher took our tickets at the door. The first thing I saw was a line of couples waiting to be photographed on a raised, floodlit platform with a glittery backdrop. And standing atop the platform was Meg, in a strapless yellow cocktail dress that made the most of what little she had in the boobs department, and behind her, Alvin, posed awkwardly with his hands on her waist.
This almost brought a smile to my face. Mission accomplished.
Meg seemed to be caught up in the moment, but Alvin’s eyes were wandering—and found me. His expression sharpened into a laser-like focus. I wondered briefly what silent message he was sending me. Then I remembered.
“Rats,” I muttered. And carefully looked away, anywhere but at Alvin—to whom I had promised the impossible.
He was here, with Megan, at Homecoming. Now I had to explain skatching to him.
That was not going to happen, obviously. I would find a way out somehow. I had to. But what was wrong with me?! I was losing my edge. This was the second or third situation inside of ten minutes that I totally should have anticipated, and hadn’t.
Tres started to drag me toward the end of the photo line. “What are you doing?” I asked, vaguely alarmed.
“Getting our picture taken.”
“We don’t need our picture taken. Nonny took a bunch, remember?”
Tres shook his head. “This is different. Don’t you want a professional one?”
“No. Not really.”
“Come on, I’m buying. It’ll give us something to remember tonight by.”
I had the distinct impression that this was going to be a night I wouldn’t want to remember. But while I was trying to figure out how to say that politely, Meg and Alvin stepped off the platform and Meg rushed over to grab my arms. We exchanged you-look-greats and introduced the boys, and then she insisted that we find a restroom. I could tell by the look she gave me that she had something important to say, and we had to find a safe place where she could say it.
The door to the girls’ bathroom had barely swung shut before Meg seized my elbow in a death grip and dragged me into the corner, away from the chattering mob jockeying for position in front of the mirrors. “Thank you,” she said. “I haven’t thanked you.”
“For what?”
“For making Alvin ask me to Homecoming.”
“Oh.” I laughed and shook her off. “It wasn’t hard.”
Meg’s eyes were huge and serious behind her glasses. “Maybe not, for you. But I owe you. Big time.” She took a deep breath. “And I’m going to owe you more.”
Uh-oh.
“What do you mean?”
She bit her lip. “You know how, um, when you do that thing you do…”
I nodded. She meant use the Power. I appreciated her not saying it out loud in the crowded girls’ room.
“… how it, like, doesn’t really last very long? Remember the Volvo?”
“Sure, I remember the Volvo.”
Nonny used to have an ancient Volvo. She loved that car, but even a Volvo doesn’t live forever. It bit the dust a few years ago, just when Nonny had finished expanding the nursery—so she was experiencing, I believe the euphemism is, a ‘cash flow crisis.’ In other words, we were poor. Temporarily, but completely. We were eating a lot of macaroni and cheese, as I recall, and skipping things like movies and new shoes. The car breaking down was a major disaster. So I fixed it. Only I had to keep re-fixing it, because although I could use the Power to make the car run, broken engine or no, the magic wore off at unpredictable intervals. Nonny must have wondered what the heck was going on, but she never asked…and once our finances improved, I stopped putting the whammy on the Volvo and let it break for good.
“Well…” Meg looked like she was on the verge of tears. “Zara, I really like Alvin. I mean I really like him.”
I nodded, mystified. “And?”
“I just…I just need your help. Because I couldn’t stand it if he stopped liking me. I know you don’t want to do this, but if you could just, you know, boost him a little bit. Even just this once. Just for tonight. Just to make sure he doesn’t stop liking me in the middle of Homecoming. Because that would be really awful.”
I blinked at her. “I don’t get it. Why on earth would he stop liking you in the middle of Homecoming?”
“Because. You know.” She shoved her glasses higher on her nose. “Because what you did might stop working. It might wear off. Suddenly. Like the Volvo kept doing.”
Okay, now I got it.
I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and sighed. “Oh, Meggie.” I shook my head, but I was smiling. “Come here.” I took her firmly by the shoulders and steered her toward the long mirror lining the wall over the row of sinks. I shoved her to the front of the line. Her eyes met mine in the mirror, confused. “Look at yourself.”
She obeyed, studying her reflection carefully. “What?”
“You’re adorable. What boy in his right mind is going to stop liking you tonight? Heck, Megan—several more may start.”
She gave a snort of disbelieving laughter, but I think she was pleased. I was totally sincere. The red hair was a definite improvement, and looked smashing with the yellow dress. Plus the strapless top showed off her shoulders and arms, making her look unexpectedly curvy and creamy and feminine. And she was wearing Bridget’s makeup, which now looked fabulous on her.
“But what about the you-know-what?” she asked.
In the mirror, I saw my smile turn smug. “I never did it.”
Total shock slackened Meg’s jaw. “What?” she shrieked. She spun around and punched my arm. “Get out! You must have.”
I grinned. “Nope. Never did. Didn’t need to.”
Meg was reduced to spluttering incoherence. A tall brunette tapped my shoulder. “Do you mind? You guys are hogging the mirror.”
“Sorry,” I said, and dragged my dazed and blithering friend back to the corner near the door. By the time we got there Meg was hugging herself with rapture.
“Do you mean he liked me anyway? Without your help? That’s what you mean, isn’t it? Isn’t it?”
I nodded. “That’s about the size of it.” Then my grin faltered as I remembered. “Except that I also promised I’d tell him all my deep dark secrets, which, excuse me, I’m totally not going to do. Once he realizes that, he may not like me much. But you? You’re safe.”
I don’t think she even heard me. She was too busy freaking out about Alvin asking her to Homecoming without any magical push making him do it. But that was just as well. I didn’t want Meg caught in the middle of any Alvin-Zara showdown, so the less she knew about it, the better.
Finally I said, “Let’s go. The boys will think we fell in.”
I didn’t even tell her about my first kiss. I figured it could wait.
If anyone had told me that my first kiss would seem this unimportant when it finally happened, I wouldn’t have believed them. I’ve been obsessing about it for at least the past year and a half.
I guess all things are relative. Nothing Tres did could affect me half as much as seeing Lance and Cheryl together had done. And when Meg and I pushed through the swinging door of the girls’ room, back out to the wide, crowded hall where the boys waited, I saw Lance again—leaning in to hear something Cheryl was saying, with his hand still on the small of her back—and a fresh jolt of pain hit me.
This time, Meg saw them too. Her fingers closed convulsively on my arm. “Holy cow, Zara—look at that!”
“I know,” I said unhappily. “Try not to leave a mark, okay?”
“Sorry.” She removed her hand. But her eyes were still huge behind her ugly glasses. “I thought you and Lance were—well, never mind what I thought. I guess I was wrong.”
>
I took a deep breath and tried to smile. “Happens to the best of us. Come on.” I shoved my way through the crowd to Tres’s side. Meg’s gaze was still on me, filled with doubt and concern, but when she reached Alvin her focus shifted. Her cheeks turned a becoming shade of pink and her eyes started to sparkle.
I tried not to mind. It’s only natural, after all. Once a boy enters the picture, the best friend is no longer the be-all and end-all of existence, right?
It probably wouldn’t have hurt a bit, if I hadn’t already been hurting.
I reached for Lance’s mind, trying to pick up a whisper of thought or, at the very least, sense what he was feeling. I got back nothing but silence. He was as opaque to me as the sticks that surrounded us.
I’ve never felt so alone in my life.
Chapter 13
After we got our picture taken, we entered the Cherry Glen High gymnasium through a decorated arch like we were walking into a real ballroom. If I hadn’t been so miserable, I might have said “wow.”
The homely old gym was almost unrecognizable. It’s amazing what colored lights, loud music and streams of crepe paper can do to a room you’ve seen practically every day for years. The same might be said for my classmates. I mean, they weren’t wearing crepe paper (as far as I could tell), but none of them were wearing their everyday clothes—and most had their hair done differently. Also, of course, I had never seen any of them dance. If you shine some colored lights on a person with a new hairdo and put them in motion, they become unrecognizable. Almost.
Which may be why it took a while for me to realize there were a lot of people in the room I’d never seen before.
Tres pulled me toward a knot of young men I didn’t know. They seemed to be friends of his from church, or maybe last year’s graduates. They entered into one of those “guy” rituals of chin jerks, arm punches and high-pitched laughter. Tres’s body language was all possessive and protective as he pulled me in to introduce me; he was clearly showing me off. I wasn’t sure whether I should feel annoyed, embarrassed or flattered. It didn’t matter; I had other things on my mind. Lots of other things.