“Oh my gosh.” Kristy giggled nervously.
“You didn’t give out my name, did you?” asked Caitlin. “You didn’t say who lived here or anything, right?”
“Of course not,” said Martha. “I didn’t say anything to her. I’m not stupid.”
Leticia shook her head. “If that’s true you saw a stranger lurking around here,” she said, “you should have told the police. Not us.”
Martha breathed a patient sigh. “Obviously,” she said, “I already told the police. In private, while you all were watching the movie. And they said don’t tell the other girls because it’s confidential. Pluswise, they thought you-all might get scared. See, I was trying to protect you.” She turned to Zoë, cold-eyed and disdainful. “That’s why I think it’s funny that you conveniently decide to have ESP, but you unfortunately can’t recall that lady.” She yawned. “But whatever. Now you know. The real truth.”
In the silence that followed, Leticia could feel Zoë’s embarrassment.
“Yeah, Zoë. You were faking your ESP, weren’t you?” Caitlin sniffed. “Faker.”
“Yeah, faker,” whispered Kristy. “Faker faker, credit taker.”
“ESP is for real!” Zoë hissed. “It’s not something to wish for. The Sight is a curse.”
“A fake curse,” said Martha.
“Enough, you guys.” Leticia moved toward her sleeping bag. “If the police have a suspect, then they’re probably close to finding Gray. By the time we wake up tomorrow morning, she’ll be back with us. Anyhow, my cousin Bethany is psychic, and she can predict if it’s a girl or boy on any pregnant lady. So I believe you, Zoë. Since you always figure out a lot of stuff before anyone else.”
Leticia’s eyes held Zoë’s a moment.
“Thanks, Leticia,” said Zoë.
Alone, staring at the ceiling, listening to the others settle down around her, frustration surged in Leticia’s brain. Somehow, Martha had turned the séance to her own advantage. Somehow, she had pulled ahead of the rest of them and shown herself to be the leader again.
Was that story about the lady even true?
Martha’s a quick thinker, thought Leticia. But so am I. And Martha shouldn’t have been mean to Zoë, mocking her like that. Just because Gray isn’t around to pick on tonight doesn’t mean Martha should transfer her bullying to the next easiest target.
Leticia thought through her plan. Because it was a plan, yes, it was. She saw that now. She was making a plan to split apart from Martha, and to split up the Lucky Seven, permanently.
She also realized that no matter how she sliced the group, she needed Zoë. Although Zoë was not a leader, she was always a winner. Zoë would always be Fielding’s class president, Student Government president, swim team captain, and the girl most likely to win Fielding’s end-of-year Gold Blazer. Best Everything of Everything, that was Zoë on record.
Off record, Zoë pushed too hard, she was too know-it-all. But if Leticia and Zoë were a team, Leticia could guide her. They would be the right combination of finesse and brains, and everyone else would follow them into a new and improved, cooler Lucky Seven. Only it would be another lucky number.
What she needed to do was to talk to Zoë. She would say the right things. She would win Zoë over.
I can do this, Leticia reassured herself. I had what it took to get in this group. That means I have what it takes to become the leader of it. I can turn the Lucky Seven into whatever I want it to be.
She yawned. She was sleepy. Stressed-out, Celeste would say. But if anything good already had happened tonight, it was that Leticia had proven to the others that Martha Van Riet was not as strong as everyone thought she was. That in fact, Martha could be teased, ganged up on, made fun of, and ignored just like everybody else.
She, Leticia, had been the one to show the others. She had torn down some of Martha’s supposed strength. That had to count for something.
Didn’t it?
Martha
MARTHA WAS IN A fog, twitching inside thoughts that were almost like dreams. She knew she had to stay awake the longest so that she could sneak out and report her secret to the police for real. Dread constricted her stomach. She had held on to this stupid secret too long, and it had turned big and ugly and was squeezing her from the inside. Telling the others had been right for the moment, but had not shrunk it. In fact, now the secret was bigger. Now she had to let it go. Every minute she waited only made everything worse. She wished she had never seen that lady.
Why couldn’t the secret just disappear?
She heard the clock chime and chime and chime. It must be midnight, she thought. She heard voices from the study, and the crackle of the police transistor radios, but Gray’s disappearance and all of its chaos seemed far away.
If only she could put off telling until tomorrow. Uneasily, she drifted.
Light cut Martha’s eyes and startled her. Had she dozed off? She shielded an arm.
“Ouch!” she hissed. “Turn that off!”
“Shh!”
Who was it? Martha propped up on her elbows, reached out, and knocked the hand that held the flashlight, jumping the light away.
“Whossat?” she whispered. She squinted. Leticia? Yes! A trickle of hope ran through her. Was this a friendly visit? She kept her voice neutral. “Teesh. What do you want?”
“I want to tell you what Celeste said.”
“Celeste?” Martha’s pulse jumped against reason. Was Leticia inviting her to come along on her visit to Celeste’s college this spring? Martha knew a trip had been planned. “What about Celeste? What did she say?”
“It’s a joke she told me.” Leticia aimed the light, vicious and bright, into Martha’s eyes again.
No, this was not a friendly visit.
“Well, it better be funny,” said Martha, shifting herself into shadow. “Funny enough to wake me up for.”
“Celeste said your freckles show up on the outside of you to let other people know how you’re rotten inside. Like spots on bad fruit, like on apples and bananas.”
Under the sleeping bag, Martha clamped her hands together, forcing herself not to touch her face. She could feel the sizzle of each freckle on her skin. She never should have told Leticia how much she hated her freckles. She never should have told Leticia a lot of things.
“Like worms ate through you!” Leticia was laughing softly, hee hee.
She’s trying to scare me, Martha thought, wide-awake now and fully alert. Like when we crank-called Ralph Dewey that time. “If this is really about the science test, Leticia, you need to get over it,” she said. “If you’d been smart enough to get an A plus, too, I bet you wouldn’t be so bent out of shape.”
In the pause that followed, Martha sensed that Leticia was considering this. “Cheating on tests is only one of the ways you don’t play fair,” said Leticia.
“Speaking of unfair.” Martha’s hand snapped out like a jackknife. It caught and wrenched the flashlight out of Leticia’s grip and turned it off. “I’ve got a joke for you. Maybe you won’t think it’s so funny, but here it is. I’m dropping you out of my group.” She laughed, too, hee hee, parroting Leticia. “I see what you’ve been doing tonight. But I’ve gone to Fielding since kindergarten and I know every single girl better than you do. Everyone has been way better and longer friends with me than they have with you.”
“Longer doesn’t mean better.”
“I could get anyone to go against you.”
“You can’t do anything. It’s not your group.”
Martha was silent. Was that true? She could hardly imagine the Lucky Seven without herself at its center.
“But you’re right about one thing,” said Leticia. “Which is that I don’t want to be part of any group that you’re in.”
No no no, thought Martha, confused. Leticia was joking, right? She didn’t really want out, did she? What kind of group would the Lucky Seven be without Leticia? Martha scrambled for the right words, the words to pull Leticia back on her side without actually having
to admit that she was worried or scared or sorry for what she had done. Which she was, but the only thing worse than the pain of these feelings would be to acknowledge them.
“Teesh, we used to be friends.” Martha despised herself for the yearning that curled up in her voice. “I wouldn’t mind going back to being friends with you if you admitted how much of a jerk you’ve been tonight.”
Please, Martha thought wildly in the silence that followed. Please stay friends with me. She’d never had a real best friend before Leticia, and she couldn’t believe it was already over. It had been so fun! As if parts of them had disintegrated and recombined into a single, perfect person. It was a better best-friendship than Caitlin and Kristy’s. It was a better best-friendship than anyone else’s. And now it was over. Now Leticia had knifed herself apart from Martha, and she had turned into somebody completely different, a stranger Martha hardly knew.
“Good night,” said Leticia. In the darkness, the quiet expanded between them, forcing their distance.
“You’re such a loser,” said Martha finally. “I was only joking. I’m bored of you, anyway, if you want to know the honest truth.”
“Good night,” said Leticia again.
Martha listened to the rustling as Leticia crawled back to her sleeping bag.
Alone, she waited. Waited for Leticia to come back for the flashlight. Waited for Leticia to come back and tell her she was playing a game. She was so hot, burning up. Her breath sounded loud, as if she were alone in a tunnel. She smelled the scrubbed flower scent of her nightshirt and the soapy heat of her skin underneath. Everything seemed extra-real. She tried to pretend that she was made out of stone. Unmoving, unfeeling. But her eyes watered anyway, and when she closed them, she saw hot pink and yellow jagged lights.
Leticia was not coming back.
It felt bad now, but it wouldn’t tomorrow, Martha promised herself. Tomorrow, she would start to hatch some plans against Leticia. Good plans that would show once and for all who was the real leader. Only she wished she could do something mean against Leticia right this minute. Some kind of revenge that would get the others on her side by morning.
She had to go to the police now, she had to tell, and yet the weight of the secret kept her pinned in place, helpless.
How had this night slipped so far out of her grasp?
Gray
DREW’S HAND SMELLED BAD, like underneath a car, like gasoline. The hand had stopped her voice. Gray writhed and wriggled to get free.
“What are you doing?” With the force of his fingers, Drew squeezed and shook her head back and forth. “What’s the big idea, screaming your head off like that?”
“Mrrmmmp!” Gray swatted and pried at Drew’s fingers, sealed heavy as a guard bar in a carnival ride. Dizzying, sickening. Nothing budged. She jumped up and down.
“Look, kid, I’ll take my hand away if you promise not to scream again!”
She nodded her head yes, yes, yes. Drew took off his hand and Gray did not scream. She was finished with screaming, for now.
“Okay,” said Drew. He was too close, intimidating her with his chunky self. “You, Kat, me. We all gotta leave. My friends are coming back any minute, and they’ll want money for this stuff they’re delivering. But poof! The money magically turned into a coat, right?” His laugh was tight with displeasure. He seemed nervous. His feet shuffled back and forth like a boxer. “So, for my next trick, I will make myself disappear. And you’re coming with us.”
Gray quaked. “Can’t I stay here? In the house?”
“Yeah, right. Last thing I want is some blabbermouth little girl putting the whole state force on Kat’s tail.”
“I won’t talk. Promise, cross my heart.” Gray crossed her heart. Her teeth were chattering from the cold. It would be safer to be inside the house than in the car. She’d hide in the tub, or under the couch maybe. If she got too hungry, she would eat the moldy sandwich and wait for the sun to come up. In the daytime, the answers would come clear.
“Sorry, Gray Rosenfeld. I can’t take chances. Look,” Drew continued, “it’s not like I’ll drive you the whole way. I’ll drop you somewhere. But you can’t be here. I can’t risk it. Okay?”
Gray nodded.
“I’m going back inside to pull my stuff together. You jump in the car and wait. Kat’ll be out in a minute.”
“And you’ll drop me off at a gas station or something?”
“Yeah yeah yeah.”
She moved to the car slowly. Her arms wrapped around her shoulders. It was too cold to be outside with no coat. Was now when she should break for it? But break for where? She was too far away from everything.
Gray opened the car door and slid into the backseat. Of course Drew would drop her off somewhere safe. He had to.
Eventually, Katrina appeared. She was wearing her feather coat and her wig. She waved at Gray and settled into the front passenger seat.
“Katrina, do you remember where you picked me up?” Gray asked. “Do you think you could tell Drew to drop me off close to there?”
Katrina stared straight ahead as if under a hypnotist’s trance. “What I like best about cars is the radio. I close my eyes and I listen to the music and imagine I’m in these exotic places, like Fiji.”
Gray leaned back in the seat and fumbled with her seat belt. Katrina was so infuriating, like the Mad Hatter at the Wonderland tea party. Only, unlike Gray, Alice never turned into a crybaby. Alice treated the Mad Hatter as if he were a small, silly child. Katrina was like a silly child, too, but in real life, a grownup acting like a child was scary.
Gray wondered what the other girls were doing now. They were in their sleeping bags. Maybe playing truth or dare, or would you rather?
Would you rather eat five live caterpillars or would you rather ride the school bus naked? Would you rather live in a sewer or would you rather be blind in one eye? Would you rather have warts or pimples? Would you rather have one missing finger or two missing toes?
The Lucky Seven would play this game until their stomachs were sore from laughing. But it was so funny to imagine even a single terrible thing actually happening to them. As if anybody would really go blind! Or get warts! Ridiculous!
Would you rather be kidnapped by strangers, or would you rather have your mother die from cancer?
But Gray wasn’t really being kidnapped. Her mother wasn’t dying, either. She was in remission. And in real life, there was no choice about what bad luck or what mistake you would rather have happen to you. It just happened, and then you would survive it or you would not.
“I think it’s really unfair,” said Gray, speaking up to Katrina in her most authentic adult voice, “that you picked me up from the Donnelleys’ house and you didn’t even have a plan to get me back.”
“I think it’s really unfair that you came along,” said Katrina, Mad Hatterishly.
It was no use talking to her. Gray slumped back in her seat and waited.
After another ten minutes, or maybe longer, Drew emerged from the house. He was holding a fresh beer and a paper bag that he tossed in the backseat next to Gray. She peered into it. It was full of clothes.
“Ready for our road trip?” he asked.
Neither of them answered. Drew put the key in the ignition. The car leaped to life.
Gray hooked her thumbs beneath her fastened seat belt and looked out the window, trying to memorize the house, the road, and the trees. As soon as she was dropped off, or got away, or something, she would be able to give good descriptions to her parents and to Mrs. Donnelley.
Poor Mrs. Donnelley. She might be mad at Gray for a long time, for ruining her daughter’s party. Maybe Gray could take Mrs. Donnelley one of her mother’s “get well soon” gifts as an apology. Some soap or a scented candle or slippers. Mrs. Donnelley would probably appreciate a thoughtful present.
Katrina was asleep. Her seat was cranked back all the way and her seat belt was unfastened. Gray waited for Drew to tell Katrina to buckle up, but he didn’t. He switc
hed to his high beams. The lights shone onto a wall of woods.
Katrina yawned and turned her cheek. Reflected light caught the sparkle in her face. With her arm thrown in a long arc over her head, she looked like one of Caitlin’s fairy paintings.
Maybe that’s why I followed Katrina in the first place that’s how bad I want something magical—something better to believe in?
Watching Katrina sleep, Gray remembered how she used to watch her mother as she slept in her hospital bed. The veins of her mother’s eyelids were webbed dark in her pale skin, like the mold swirls in blue cheese. Gray would stare at her mother and wonder if she would ever wake up.
Drew belched, interrupting her thoughts. Gray leaned up toward the driver’s side. “Drew? Drew? You’re not supposed to drink and drive.” Her voice was just above a whisper.
“Stuff it, Gray Rosenfeld. It’s only a beer.”
Gray sat back.
“A beer is hardly even alcohol,” said Drew after another slurp.
Gray knew that was not true. She was too nervous to argue more.
Tears flooded her eyes again.
She should argue more. Here was the place where she should draw on any strength that might be buried inside her. Here was the place where the brave girl escaped from the car, got on the bike, the plane, the train, put out the fire, saved the school, the town, the dog, the land, yelled at the Bad Person, pointed to the Good Person, explained why the rules were wrong, and forced the tiny change that always made Gray wonder, Could I do that? Is there enough bravery inside me to do this one small strong thing that makes a difference?
And always Gray wanted to believe Yes! Yes! Yes!
Even though she doubted it.
Zoë
BEFORE SHE FELL ASLEEP, Zoë said a prayer, since Mrs. Donnelley had told them to.
She prayed: Please, God, let me fall into a psychic sleep and in my dream I will be the one to see where Gray is and then I can rescue her.
Maybe it was God who was supposed to help her win. Zoë figured God was on her side for most things. Like today, He helped her spell ancillary right on the English test, and yesterday He helped her find her green notebook. God granted Zoë plenty of luck when she asked for it, although He helped Shelton more.
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