Another bright and beautiful day here in California and Kevin hardly noticed. Regis might ask him a question at any moment, but the teenager wasn’t worried. Despite his excitement, he’d done his studying last night—more of a brushup really—and he felt fairly confident he could handle himself no matter what the science teacher threw at him. For most of the class he just sort of sat there, taking up space, doodling in his notebook, and thinking about the end of the day, when he could finally head over to the Museum of Natural History and spend some time with Daniel Addison. Tucked safely inside a shoe box in his locker was the Timimus egg, and if an inanimate object really could “burn a hole” in something—like money supposedly burned a hole in some people’s pockets—he was surprised that the prehistoric fossil wasn’t blasting through the metal door out in the hallway right now.
A quick glance at the clock—for maybe the hundredth time since class had started—and he was pleased to see there were only a few minutes left. Kevin made an effort to pay attention, following along on Regis’s quick review of the class and writing down the homework assignment for the next day. When the bell rang, he rose with the rest of the students and headed for the door, then heard his name called.
“Kevin, may I speak with you for a moment, please?”
Reluctantly, he paused at the sound of Mr. Regis’s voice. Much as he wanted to just keep going, he had to turn back. “Sure.”
Regis kept an extra chair at the side of his desk and he pushed it toward Kevin and motioned for him to sit. When Kevin did, the older man pulled his own chair out from behind his desk and sat where he could face the teenager. Kevin waited, trying to figure out what was going on and what he’d done to merit a heart-toheart from a teacher he barely knew.
“I’m sure you realize I went through your file from Lane Tech, which is how I discovered you have a serious interest in the paleontology field—and an excellent academic record, by the way.” Kevin nodded, but didn’t say anything. Regis glanced away for a moment, his expression unreadable. “Am I right in understanding that you’re going to be dealing with Daniel Addison?” he finally asked.
“Yes, sir,” Kevin answered. “I’m going over to the museum today after school.”
“I imagine you’ve got a lot of hope tied up in getting involved with the Natural History Museum here,” the science teacher said. “We don’t have the extensive programs that the University of Chicago has, of course, but don’t short-change us too soon. College brochures are starting to pile up, and you’ll find that the University of Sunnydale has—” He broke off, then smiled faintly. “But of course, you’ll probably end up heading back to the Midwest.”
Kevin shrugged. You bet he was, but he didn’t see any sense in crowing about it or putting Sunnydale down. It was . . . well, Sunnydale, and lots of people here probably lived happily ever after. It just seemed like that kind of place.
“Well, I guess what I wanted to get across to you,” Regis continued, “just between the two of us, is that I wouldn’t recommend you getting too involved with Daniel Addison.” When Kevin looked at Regis in surprise, the older man leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and clasped his hands, looking for all the world as if he were Kevin’s dad having a birds-and-the-bees conversation with him. “If this seems out of bounds, I’m sorry. But you’re a bright kid, Kevin—a lot brighter than Addison. I had that young man in my class for four straight years. I know him, and I know how he works. And how he thinks.” Regis hesitated, then plunged on. “When Addison looks at you, he sees a tool, Kevin. On the surface he’s all smiles and friendship, but he won’t ever think of you as a person. For him you’ll either be a thing he can use to further his own career here, as quickly and as easily as possible, or you won’t be worth his time. He’s willing to work, but not as hard as he should. He’d much rather have someone else do the hard stuff for him—that’s the way he’s always been.” Regis stared at the floor. “I think you’ve got an exceptional future ahead of you, and you might think the transfer to Sunnydale just stands in the way of that. The truth is it’s only a temporary delay. But even for a short time, it would be a shame to see you turned into a stepping stone for someone else. Get the picture?”
Kevin nodded. He didn’t know if he bought the story, but this entire conversation was sure making him uncomfortable. Daniel Addison was Kevin’s only way to get involved with the museum here in Sunnydale. Was Regis actually recommending that he not do that? “Absolutely, Mr. Regis,” he said out loud and stood. “I’ll definitely keep what you just told me in mind.”
The science teacher rose at the same time, pushing the chairs back into place. “You probably think I’m crazy,” he said. He smiled briefly, then the expression was lost behind a frown. “I’m really just recommending that you be cautious. I know you’d never consider scrapping the idea of being friends with Daniel, so I won’t even suggest that. But sometimes in a small town, in Sunnydale, people aren’t always . . .” He hesitated. “Well, they aren’t always what they seem. So all I’m saying is, watch your back. All right?”
Kevin nodded again. Man, he couldn’t wait to get out of here. “Sure.”
Regis’s eyes searched his and Kevin felt vaguely guilty when he thought he saw defeat flash across the older man’s gaze. “Well,” Regis said, “good luck.” The teacher turned his back, dismissing him.
More than ready to amscray, Kevin hurried to his locker to switch books. Watch your back? What the hell did that mean? But only a child or an idiot would completely ignore a warning like that, especially when they didn’t truly know what they were getting into. For all Kevin knew, Daniel Addison could be a serial killer, some pervert who collected the bones of kids in a subbasement vault at the museum. Of course, he didn’t know much about Mr. Regis either, but as much as kids tended to rebel at advice tossed at them by adults, if you took the time to think about what was being said, it was usually because they didn’t want you to screw something up. It wasn’t always the greatest advice, but most of the time the intentions were honorable. At best, they knew something and they were desperate for you to know it, too; at worst, it was easier to listen and get it over with than fight.
Regis and Daniel Addison. Kevin thought about this. Could there be some connection beyond the student/teacher one that Regis had brought up? Four years was a long time to deal with someone on a nearly daily basis; you got to know a person and how they thought. But could Regis be jealous of Daniel over something about which Kevin knew nothing? There was an old saying about how the truth was somewhere in the middle dle of what two people would tell you, and Kevin was the new person here, the odd man out who had to learn everything from scratch and build from it. Even if he found nothing at all to fault about Daniel Addison, it wouldn’t hurt him to watch his step.
“Hi,” Willow said.
Her boyfriend turned at the sound of her voice and smiled at her. “Hey.” Without saying anything else, he fell into step beside her as she headed toward the Quad.
“So, what’s on the lunch menu for today?” She pointed at the paper bag he had crumpled between one arm and his books. “Anything yummy?”
Oz pulled it out and opened it one-handed. “Apple,” he said, peering inside. “A sandwich of some indeterminate type of processed lunch meat, probably low fat. No candy bar or chips.” He scrunched the bag shut again and shrugged. “Health kick.”
Willow nodded in understanding and patted her backpack. “My mom’s on one, too. Cucumber and sprout sandwich on wheat bread with Thousand Island dressing—there wasn’t a piece of turkey to be found in the house.”
“It’s like a disease,” Oz said ominously. “Healthitis.” She grinned and he stayed next to her as they made their way to their favorite table beneath the shade of a tree on the Quad’s far side, where Xander was already slouching over a mass of rumpled plastic wrappings. On the other side, Buffy brightened considerably when she saw Willow and Oz coming. “Hi guys,” she said. “Please tell me what’s new and exciting. Sunnydale is h
aving a serious lack.”
“What, you haven’t had your daily quota of bloodsuckers?” Oz asked dryly.
“I’m not complaining,” Buffy said quickly. “Just making an . . . observation that since Sunday night, absolutely el-zippo’s been happening around here.”
“Ah, another serious absence of toothy pals on your midnight stroll last night.” Xander nodded and crammed a huge cakelike wad of dark chocolate into his mouth. He tried to say something else and white filling began to ooze out the corners of his lips.
Willow groaned. “Xander, that’s disgusting.”
“Oink,” he mumbled around the food.
Buffy giggled. “Look out, it’s the chocolate vampire!”
“Actually,” Willow noted as she and Oz sat and began to unwrap their lunches, “it kind of looks more like foam. You know, like in a dog—” Oz glanced at her and her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh! Not a wolftype dog or anything, or . . . one with rabies, just one that’s . . .” Her words stuttered away.
“Hot,” Buffy said, jumping in with a neat save. “You know, like they get in the summer.”
Xander studied Oz. “He doesn’t drool, doesn’t he?” he asked around a mouthful of cake.
Willow looked shocked all over again, but before she could respond Xander started coughing violently— a little too violently. Buffy pounded him on the back until it seemed like he could breathe again. When he found some air, he gave her a grin filled with enough chocolate cake to rival the teeth inside a rotting corpse’s smile. “Thanks,” he wheezed.
“Chew. Swallow.” Oz looked at him over his own sandwich. “Simplicity itself.”
“I guess you would know,” Xander shot back. “Eating is pretty much required of all life forms,” Oz said in an even voice.
“Yeah,” Xander said. He started to reach for another plastic-wrapped snack cake, then stopped. “In fact, some things consider us humans nothing but items on the Sunnydale Restaurant menu.” He looked up when no one said anything. “Uh, that was a joke?”
“Ha ha,” Willow muttered crankily. She took a small bite of her lunch, then decided to change the subject. “So,” she said to Xander, “did you hear the latest? Dingoes might have a band manager.”
Xander’s eyes widened. “No kidding? Are we talking stardom here? Rock ’n’ roll and babes—”
“Careful, Xander,” Willow grinned. “You’re starting to hyperventilate.”
“They say the cure for that is to shove a paper bag over the person’s mouth,” Buffy said. She sounded way too gleeful, and Willow chuckled.
“You can use mine,” Oz commented, and this time Willow just laughed out loud.
“Play your little word games if you must, but seriously inquiring minds need to know,” Xander said with a sniff.
“There’s nothing to talk about yet,” Oz told him.
“But—” Xander began.
“Friday night,” Oz promised. “From her mouth to ours to yours.”
“Now that’s sharing,” Xander marveled. Then he realized what Oz had said. “‘Her’?”
“The opposite of ‘him,’ ” Oz affirmed.
For once Xander seemed out of comments. “Oh.”
“We’re all scooping on this,” Buffy told him. “And it looks like we’ll all just have to wait it out.”
“Maybe she could use an assistant,” Xander said suddenly. “I can type.”
“In what universe?” Willow asked without thinking.
“I have fingers.” Xander shoved away the mess of used wrappers. “I can use two of them. Maybe I don’t have the lightning fingers of you, Little Miss Computer Brain, but I can hold my own.”
Willow snorted. “Hold thi—”
“I hate to break up a good fight as much as the next Slayer,” Buffy interrupted smoothly, “but we’ve got like two minutes before the bell to finish our food and for Xander to clean up the nuclear waste dump he’s made of this portion of the school grounds.”
They all groaned, remembering how Snyder had come down on them last week because he’d imagined they were the cause of a stray plastic bag he’d found jammed beneath the leg of the table they’d used during lunch. The decrepit grocery sack had obviously been stuck there for weeks, but that hadn’t stopped His Rattiness from instantly envisioning the foursome as Mother Earth’s new Number One Mortal Enemy. There had been a lot of words flying around that day; interestingly enough, most of them sounded a lot like “detention.”
“I’m on it,” Xander said. “Got it covered, it’s copacetic, under control—” He reached for a fistful of plastic and it went flying, lifted neatly out of his reach by a breeze that was obviously put there to torment him.
Or, Willow saw with dread, to bring down doom upon all of their pathetic heads. “Here comes Principal Snyder,” she announced. But bless Buffy, who with a quick lean to the left and a swoop of her hand, saved the day. Or at least the trash.
“I see you kids have taken my previous warning to heart,” said the principal as he stepped up to the table and saw Buffy deftly tuck the last of Xander’s lunch debris back into his bag. Willow fought a giggle as she saw her friend glance at her fingers—smeared with chocolate—and make a eeeew face before hiding her hand under the table.
“Right to the heart, yes, sir,” Buffy said with false brightness.
Snyder, his beady-brown eyes hard, glared at each of them. “Environmental criminals spend entire lifetimes in prison,” he said in a rigid voice. His gaze cut to Willow’s and she felt herself wince. “Aren’t you going to finish your lunch, Miss Rosenberg?”
“N–no, sir,” she said, and shoved her half-eaten veggie conglomerate back into the paper sack. “I . . . guess I’ve lost my appetite.”
Xander perked up immediately. “Can I have it?”
Before she could respond, Snyder yanked the bag from her hand and thrust it at Xander. “Wastefulness is just as bad, you know,” he snapped into her face, then jerked his finger at Xander. “And you, young man. See you don’t leave the remains lying around.”
“We never do,” Oz said, with absolutely no inflection in his voice. Snyder glowered at all of them a final time, then stalked off. For a few seconds, they all simply stood by the table, too fatigued by the encounter to comment.
“Wasn’t that fun?” Xander said, then without warning he stuffed the entire second half of Willow’s sandwich into his mouth. “Sthee? Nuyo waphsft,” he said in a garbled voice as bits of greenery sprayed in all directions. He chewed a few token times, swallowed, then made a face. “Hey—where’s the meat?”
“Roll call,” Buffy said. Right on cue, the bell rang and the Quad broke into a frenzy of students heading in all directions. The four of them snagged the rest of their trash and after a short detour to the trash bins, made for the building.
“How do you do that?” Willow demanded of Buffy. “You don’t even wear a watch!”
“Raw talent.” Her friend slung her bag over one shoulder, then stopped and gave her a sly grin. “ Actually, it’s an evolutionary thing that us non-bookheads are developing. It gives us advance warning of when we should run.”
Willow laughed as Buffy gave her a high sign, then hurried off in the other direction. Xander had already zipped away and now Oz touched her arm. “Tuesday afternoon means sociology,” she said, knowing what he was going to ask before he bothered.
He nodded. “Then I’ll catch you later. Chemistry awaits.”
“Oh!” She always seemed to forget about Oz’s chemistry class. Maybe it was a form of self-denial, a safety stop. “Don’t . . . you know. Blow up anything.”
“How about any one?”
“Well,” she said. The way he looked at her—like now—sometimes made her a little breathless. “I guess that depends on . . . who.”
Oz gave her a little grin, then shook his head. A quick kiss—too quick—and he was strolling away. She watched him for a few seconds, then cut across the sidewalk and toward her classroom. Why couldn’t she be more like that—c
alm and cool? Absolutely nothing—well, except for the werewolf-thing—seemed to get to him. Maybe that was why Oz was so calm: whatever anger he built up during the month or how deeply someone got under his skin, he kind of had this monthly built-in valve that allowed him to let it all out. Even though he had to be locked up in the library for those three nights, he just seemed so lucky to be able to cut loose like that.
Willow caught a glimpse of Xander at the far end of the walkway. Was she really annoyed at him? No more than usual, she supposed. It was the whole band manager suggestion making her sort of edgy or something. She ought to be as happy for Oz on the inside as she acted on the outside, but she couldn’t quite pull it off. What if . . . what if this unknown woman really did have enough connections to get Dingoes signed to a label, or send them on some kind of music tour or something?
And what if they . . . well, kind of flubbed out?
Willow shook her head and wrapped her arms around her books, then realized a couple of geekylooking kids had caught her movements. Jeez, she must look like a spaz or something. She stepped up her pace and left the gapers behind, her thoughts spinning around—again—the concept of a manager/agent for Dingoes. Someone who could line up places to play for them, who knew people in the music business and might get them noticed. This was supposed to be a good thing, right?
Then why, every time Willow thought about it, did whatever food was in her stomach want to claw its way up and out?
Sunnydale’s Museum of Natural History didn’t have the grandeur and imposing presence of the gigantic Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, but it was still better than Kevin had expected. In fact, it looked pretty good. Three stories high, the roof consisted of three domes—a huge middle one flanked by two that were only a third the size of the main one. The entrance was in the center of three fifteen-foot high arches, and the whole thing was surrounded by an expanse of lawn that was lush and green, even in very early spring. A strip of scarlet petunias already blossomed down the center of the lawn, while marigolds and sculpted bushes followed the fence and trees that bordered the grounds and parking lot, flora that the Chicago area wouldn’t see bloom for another three or four months. Below the brilliant blue of the California afternoon sky, it looked quite lovely.
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