by Edie Claire
The figure that followed me was wearing a double-breasted tweed overcoat, pinstripe trousers, and a deerstalker hat. "Just point out the suspects, Madam," he said with a British accent, taking a drag on a curvy pipe that exuded a wisp of very real looking smoke. "And I’ll attend to the necessary inquiries."
Suppressing a giggle, I cast a glance out the doors and over the green space outside the gym. The girls in question were not hard to find; they had joined a group of several others hanging out under a tree about twenty yards away. I described them to Zane as succinctly as possible, being careful not to point—or move my lips too much. He nodded in understanding. My eyes caught his again, and I tried hard to make them convey the gratitude a hug could not. "Thank you, Zane," I whispered.
His returning gaze held a sparkle of pure pleasure, which would have warmed me had it not been for the unexpected flash of anguish I thought I glimpsed, ever so briefly, behind it.
He winked at me and disappeared.
Chapter 12
Matt’s friend Lacey was true to her word. She "found" me midway through the evening, appearing quite conveniently just as the DJ decided it was time to slow things down.
As the gal pal of Cheyenne, I was used to timing my rest breaks over slow dances, so heading off to "get some air" with Lacey seemed a natural enough move. Still, I couldn’t help feeling a little guilty when I saw disappointment written so largely on Matt’s previously cheerful baby face. "We’ll catch the next one then," he said charitably, turning to join some guy friends who were talking in a cluster in the far corner.
"Matt’s a sweetheart, isn’t he?" Lacey gushed, leading us to a door on the opposite side of the gym from where I had sent Zane. "I hope he’s been introducing you around—not keeping you all to himself."
"He’s been great," I answered, following her up a flight of stairs. She opened the door onto a balcony that attached to the classroom building, and we were hit with a welcome breath of brisk, misty Oahu wind. About six feet to my left, a couple of shadow teenagers lounged against the corner of the railing, making out.
"He seems to be a pretty popular guy around here," I said quickly, turning my back on the shadows before they did something embarrassing.
Lacey laughed. "Oh, everybody loves Matt," she confirmed.
I nodded, though it felt like a lie. In the last 24 hours I had met at least two people from whom Matt was definitely not feeling the love.
"He’s a hopeless flirt, of course," she added matter-of-factly, "but you’ve known him at least—what—a day? So I suppose I don’t have to tell you that!" She let out another of her merry laughs, but on catching my concerned expression, sobered instantly. "Oh, don’t get me wrong," she hastened to explain. "Matt’s no operator. In fact, he’s quite the gentleman, compared to most of the guys around here. It’s just that he’s not one to get attached, if you know what I mean. He’s dated practically every girl in school at one point or another, but it never turns into anything. At least, it never has before." She studied me, her eyes sparkling. "I keep telling him, though, one day he’s going to fall for somebody. And then he’s going to make a total fool out of himself."
I looked back at Lacey with a guarded smile. I liked her already, had liked her instinctively, but there was no way I was responding to that. "Have the two of you ever dated?" I asked, oddly certain that I already knew the answer.
"Oh, no," she said dismissively, confirming my impression of a longstanding friendship. "I have a boyfriend. Had the same once since eighth grade. Ty and Matt are buds, too, or at least they used to be, before Ty started working all the time. Like tonight, for instance," she finished bitterly, blowing a stray bang out of her eyes with a puff of air. "If Ty misses prom this year, I swear to God, I’ll kill him."
Rod’s going to kill him.
I pushed the ominous echo away from my brain. It was a common enough expression. Lacey obviously didn’t mean it. Who would?
"Do you know Sofia?" I blurted.
Lacey’s fetching blue eyes widened slightly. "Sofia Liang? A little bit. Why?"
I shrugged, attempting to conceal my interest. "I just thought it was a little weird, her breaking the date with Matt for tonight. Do you think she was really sick?"
Lacey didn’t answer for a moment. Instead, she brought a hand to her mouth and began to nibble absently on a professionally polished nail. "To tell you the truth, Kali, I don’t know what the heck is up with that girl. She seems nice and all, but she hasn’t made a lot of friends here. I get the idea she hangs with an older crowd—as in dropouts, mainly. When she asked Matt to the dance, it was, like, totally out of the blue. He was happy and all—I mean, she’s really good looking—but then she just kind of disappeared again. I have a couple classes with her, and she’s not there half the time. She’s not involved in anything after school, either. It’s weird."
I was possessed suddenly by an odd wave of warmth, an all-consuming feeling of happiness, elation, and—particularly strange, given the conversation—a fierce, raw sort of hunger…
Oh, crap.
With a sudden flash of understanding, I cast a furtive look back at the shadow couple. They were now prone on the concrete; the girl had the guy’s shirt off.
"Let’s take a walk!" I suggested quickly, passing Lacey on the balcony and moving off… wherever. "Does this wrap all the way around to front of the building?"
She shot me a quizzical look, but kept up. "No, but there’s a staircase on the end. We can go down and around."
"Sounds good," I said lightly, trying to squelch the image of Zane in his favorite board shorts that had crept, unbidden, into my mind. "I love how all the buildings here have walkways outside, rather than hallways. The fresh air is so invigorating," I prattled on, trying desperately to shake the couple’s lingering, ever-so-beguiling feelings from my relatively innocent psyche. I could not help wondering, if I had stayed where I was, what else I might have seen…
"I used to live in Detroit," Lacey said, presumably responding to something I had already forgotten saying. "So I know what you mean. You get so used to the ocean breezes here, you forget how the rest of the world lives."
I reached the staircase and started down. The hijacked feelings—thank God—were finally fading. Then I gasped out loud. Zane was standing right in front of me on the stairs, not subconsciously in board shorts, but quite visibly (minus a few transparent streaks) in his dance outfit. In the next instant, he was gone again.
My heart thumped like a jackhammer.
"What?" Lacey asked, coming up beside me, "Did you see something?"
"Um… no," I said, thinking fast. "I just… realized I forgot something. But it’s no big deal." I turned at the bottom of the steps and faced her, attempting a carefree smile. "So, Matt keeps telling me how great Frederick is. Do you like it here?"
Lacey happily launched into an entertaining description of the pros and cons of Frederick High, and I tried my best to pay attention as we meandered across the grounds and back to the gymnasium, passing shadows right and left along the way. My head spun as they seemed to come out of nowhere… tons of them, their emotions all over the place… like a badly organized Halloween parade. It hadn’t been this bad when Matt and I arrived. Why now?
"So, you should definitely tell your parents you want to go here," Lacey finished, pausing at the corner by the smoking girls, who were, regrettably, back in place and as fearful as ever.
I moved as far away from them as I politely could.
"Sounds like a plan," I agreed.
"Besides," she added, a mischievous glint in her eye, "I’m thinking that Matt might really like you."
I threw her a skeptical look. "Oh, please. We only just met!"
"Yeah," she said thoughtfully. "Seems unlikely, I know, given his track record. But I was watching you earlier, when you were dancing. The way he was looking at you… You’re an awesome dancer, by the way."
"Oh. Thanks." My cheeks flushed at more than the compliment.
"The
re’s a certain spring to his step tonight that I can’t say I’ve seen before," she continued. "I noticed it as soon as the two of you walked up. Plus…" she reached into a pocket, hidden in the folds of her sundress, and pulled out a cell phone. "Unless I’m mistaken, he’s texted me, like, six times in the past twenty minutes—bugging me to bring you back inside."
She flipped open her phone and punched a few buttons, her grin broadening all the while. "Okay," she corrected, "only four times. But the last two had frowny faces."
She sighed. "All right. I’d better follow orders, or he’ll tell Ty about that ultimate Frisbee tournament in Waimanalo tomorrow. The guy has one day off in three weeks—he darn well better spend it with me!"
She turned the corner and began walking toward the side doors of the gym, and I held my breath as we walked past the cluster of girls, still sitting under the tree, to which I had directed Zane. He was there now, standing in the midst of them, his face an unreadable mask of concentration.
I felt a sudden sense of unease; one of the bathroom girls had spotted me and was staring. I turned quickly back to Lacey. "Those girls," I whispered, "are they friends of Sofia’s?"
She cast a glance over my shoulder. "Maybe," she said vaguely, as if not completely sure herself. "One of them is a cousin of hers. Why?" But with another glance, she answered her own question. "Oh. They’re looking at you, aren’t they? Hmm."
We moved out of earshot and slipped back into the gym. "No idea what that was all about!" she mused out loud. "They can’t possibly resent Matt’s asking another date. Sofia’s been a total jerk to him. Well, Krystal was with them. She’s cool. I’ll ask her later. Now, let’s get you—"
"Kali!" Matt’s arm appeared from nowhere and wrapped around me like a tentacle. "We thought you’d never come back! Ready to dance some more?"
Lacey threw me a knowing smirk and melted away.
"Whatever Lacey told you about me," he said teasingly, "It’s a lie. The girl’s been out to get me ever since ninth grade gym."
Despite the swirl of confused thoughts already in my head, I had to ask. "What happened in ninth grade gym?"
He sighed. "I gave her a concussion."
My eyes widened. "Seriously?"
He nodded gravely. "We were playing badminton. I kind of backed up over her."
"You didn’t!" I protested, stifling a laugh. "In badminton? Really?"
"It wasn’t funny at the time," he insisted, though he began to grin himself as he led me back onto the dance floor. "I thought I’d killed her. Never left my position again, I can tell you that. I hate playing sports with girls—makes me nervous. Took a C in gym that semester trying to get out of it. Shall we dance?"
I felt a sudden desire to withdraw my toes out of his range.
I took a deep breath instead. "Sure. Let’s do it."
***
We had been dancing for quite a while when I realized that, at some point, Zane had come back inside. He had been keeping tabs on me all evening, presumably, but now he stayed visible, hanging out by the refreshment area. I got the idea he was waiting to talk to me, but he did not pop over beside me to say so, or even try to get my attention.
He didn’t really have to. Even as David showed off some of the most bizarre hip action I’d ever seen, and Julia and Madison graciously took the time to teach me some funky local dance called the limu, my eyes continued to stray in Zane’s direction. He had changed, inexplicably, into worn looking jeans, sneakers, and a plain gray tee shirt, and he appeared wholly preoccupied—though with what, I wasn’t sure. Other than one brief glance at the start of the next slow dance, he did not even look my way.
There was no escaping Matt’s embrace this time, nor was I entirely sure I wanted to. I was a little apprehensive at first, given the way David and Ryan both crunched their dates against them like ragdolls; but, just as Lacey had led me to believe, Matt was neither pushy nor clingy, and I found myself surprisingly comfortable in his arms. I just wasn't comfortable otherwise.
I knew that Zane had something to tell me—something he had overheard. But it must not be emergency worthy, or he would have told me already. So why was he lurking just out of reach?
I could not help feeling awkward dancing with Matt in front of him, illogical as I knew that to be. Whether Zane cared or not, I couldn’t tell. He was too far away for me to read his face, and I never had been able to sense his feelings like the other shadows.
Shortly after the slow dance ended, however, I did sense hostility coming from somewhere. It took me a moment to locate her, but I knew who I was looking for: she was short and bronze-skinned with close-cropped black hair, Chinese, or perhaps Hawaiian—very likely a little of both. She watched my date from a distance, eyes narrowed, mouth drawn into a singularly unattractive scowl. As I stepped in between her and Matt, the heat of her glare hit my bare shoulders like a sunburn.
"I need a drink," I announced brusquely, taking Matt’s hand and leading him away from her and back toward his friends in the corner. "You hang here a minute; I’ll be right back."
I gave him no chance to argue, but slipped away toward the refreshments without looking back. Zane had seen; he was there, waiting for me.
"I have a lot to tell you," he said simply.
"I know," I responded, breathing heavily. "And we can’t wait any longer. That girl is out for blood."
"He’s coming after you."
"What?" I spun around to see that Matt had not, after all, been so easy to shake.
"I’ll get us some drinks," he insisted with a smile, wrapping an arm around my waist again. "What would you like?"
I tried hard not to show my frustration. "Punch is fine," I offered. "I’ll just run to the restroom first."
There was no place else to go. I could not get back to the alcove without Matt seeing me. My phone was in my purse on the table; the very place he would take our drinks. If I stepped outside alone, he would undoubtedly follow.
"We’ll have to talk in the bathroom," I muttered to Zane as I weaved through the crowd.
"I’m allowed in the women’s room? Wow."
"Good point," I quipped. "Maybe we should go in the men's instead."
"I’ll avert my eyes," he suggested dryly.
As luck would have it, the women’s room was empty.
"All right," I said, steeling myself. "Tell me everything. What’s going on?"
Zane settled himself on the hard countertop, balanced over the sink holes, looking perfectly comfortable in a pose no live person could possibly be comfortable in. His countenance, however, was grave.
"I’m afraid it’s pretty bad, Kali."
My breathing quickened. "Just tell me!"
"This girl, Sofia. She didn’t cancel the date because she got sick. She cancelled the date because she was in the hospital getting ready for surgery, after spending most of last night in the ER."
I shook my head in confusion. "But why would she—"
"She didn’t want Matt to know what had happened to her. She didn’t want anyone to know. But the girl in the black dress—the one you overheard in the bathroom—that’s her cousin. She heard her mother talking about it to her aunt, trying to figure out who was responsible."
A sick feeling stirred in my stomach.
"Sofia was beat up, Kali," Zane continued, his voice sober. "And badly. Somebody punched her in the face so hard they broke the bone above her eye. That’s what the surgery was for. To wire it back into place."
A wave of nausea rolled through my middle, so intense I felt like clutching my stomach. But as the bigger reality of the situation hit me, the nausea was replaced with a white heat of indignation. "But they can’t possibly think—"
"That Matt did it?" Zane finished for me, quietly. "Of course they do. Sofia’s family, anyway. None of them know him, and he’s apparently the only guy she’s mentioned lately."
"But that’s insane!" I protested, unable to picture Matt striking another guy in the face, much less a girl. He was big, but
he was a total teddy bear—surely anyone who knew him even a little bit could see that.
Zane hopped off the counter and stood beside me. "I agree with you. I don’t think Matt had anything to do with it. In fact, I don’t think he has a clue what’s going on."
"But he needs to know!" I insisted. "He could be in trouble!"
Zane hesitated a moment. "He is in trouble, Kali. You were right about Rod. Apparently he and Sofia have this on-again, off-again undying love/possession thing that’s been going on since they were in middle school. Whether they’re dating now or not, Rod thinks of her as his personal property."
My eyes widened. "Then maybe he—"
"I don’t think so. Sofia’s family does know Rod very well, and he's above suspicion. But they must have told him what happened—asked his opinion about who might have assaulted her. Because he definitely knows about it."
Anger. Hatred. Rage…
"But Rod should know better than to suspect Matt!" I argued helplessly. "They know each other!"
Zane let out an exhale. "Rod's a guy, Kali," he said patiently. "He’s bound to be furious over what happened, his own pride is hurt because he didn’t stop it, couldn’t protect her—he’s probably just desperate to find a scapegoat."
I closed my eyes with frustration.
"Not everyone believes it," Zane continued. "Sofia’s cousin—her name is Morgan—she’s been whispering about it to her girlfriends, trying to convince them, but none of the Frederick girls who know Matt believe he had anything to do with it. Even Sofia’s family isn’t sure enough to bring in the police, not when she’s refusing to cooperate."
"What is Sofia saying?" I asked.
"She’s not saying anything. She told the ER staff she fell down some stairs, but they knew she was lying." He caught my eyes. "Here’s the thing, Kali. What I’ve been thinking about ever since I heard all this. You saw Rod glaring at Matt yesterday, while it was still light out. But there’s no way he could have known about Sofia’s injuries then, because it didn’t happen until late last night. That means Rod was already suspicious of Matt, even before this assault."