“What did he say?” Tommy asked, hand on the key, ready to turn. The other car had not yet left the parking lot. Maggie threw a furtive glance in the direction of the headlights and idling engine lurking behind them in the dark parking lot. Tommy looked in his rearview mirror, then back at her. She bit her lip.
“What did he say?” he repeated, concerned. He sat back, waiting. She did not know what to say. What had he said, really? A bunch of cryptic nonsense.
“Maggie?” He shifted in his seat to face her. She wasn’t sure what to say really, how much to tell. When you were new, it was hard to tell friend from foe, and Nice Guys had been wolves in sheep’s clothing before. What if Tommy thought she was nuts?
“It’s not so much what he said…it’s what he did.”
As soon as she finished, Tommy’s eyes widened and his head jerked towards Mark’s car just as the sports car peeled out of the parking lot with a growling engine and squealing tires.
“What did he do?” Tommy’s deep voice demanded. But his eyes were apologetic. Yep. Definitely apologetic. It wasn’t his fault. None of it was. She looked down at her shoes which she noticed were filthy. She felt even worse getting his car dirty.
“Maggie.” He was getting frustrated. He took her chin in his hands, likely thinking that she was avoiding looking him in the eye rather than gauging the state of her dirty shoes. She opened her mouth to say something about how she was not avoiding him, but whatever she was going to say disappeared. His eyes were inches from her own.
And now that she was close to those eyes, those obscenely fat lashes fanning out around them, she noticed something else too. His lips.
Do not kiss him, she told herself. Do not.
“He was just acting really… scary.” She swallowed hard.
He noticed, eyes on her throat. He seemed to take it to mean she was fearful. Truthfully, it had nothing to do with fear. That was long gone thanks to the warmth inside the truck cab. Her throat had gone completely dry.
He shook his head, confused. “He scared you?”
“Well, yeah.” Was this really so surprising? Had his friends never seen that side of Mark? Had they only see the confident and cool guy, not the conflicted, creepy one? Maybe none of them but Amanda. Had that been what it was like for her, some weird drive with Mark? And then…
“He didn’t say anything?” Tommy called her from her thoughts. He seemed to suspect or at least expect something. She could not feed him her suspicions, not without proof. He didn’t need that. And what if she was wrong?
“Not really. He was just creepy. Took me out in the middle of nowhere and held me down on a cliff, talking about people who—”
He cut her off angrily. “Held you down?” The engine growled, woken up at last.
“Yeah. Um, look, it’s not a big deal or anything. Really. More awkward than anything,” she was hurrying to explain. Tommy was speeding toward town, his headlights devouring the lonely strip of road. The same direction Mark had driven.
“I don’t understand; why would Mark ask you out and then…”
“I think he was trying to scare me. Or…”
“Or what?”
“The way he was talking about death and people jumping off of that thing, not knowing if it was an accident. The way he looked at me. It was dangerous.”
“Mark won’t hurt you,” Tommy reassured her.
“You weren’t there, Tommy. He didn’t come out and say it, but he was threatening me.”
“I really think you’re just overreacting.” He looked almost scared to say it. That was probably wise. “I’ll talk to Mark, see what his problem is.” That was the flaw of Nice Guys. Too nice.
She had no choice then. Tommy had to know why she suspected his friend, what exactly she suspected him of, so she plunged her hand into the pocket of her brown, hooded top even as the pained expression curled across her face.
The thick notecard paper emerged, but the note was gone. She searched again, scrunching down in her seat like a flailing moron. But it wasn’t there.
“What? What are you looking for?” Tommy asked.
Her eyes widened in horror as her fingers jabbed and scratched at nothing but pants pocket. She could not have dropped it. She better had not have dropped it. She prayed she had not dropped it.
“I think I dropped it,” she said.
“Dropped what?”
“The note!” She writhed in her seat, trying to check under her, on the floorboards, thinking of asking him to check the parking lot, maybe even drive back out to the woods.
“What note?”
“I—”
She was about to say, “I found a note in Amanda’s locker.”` But then she stopped.
On one hand, it was like she had sipped something too hot and needed to spew immediately. On the other, she was pretty sure his face was going to crumble if she told him his newly dead girlfriend was exchanging secret letters with Mark before her death. She would have to be able to show him that, for him to smell it and know it was Amanda’s.
“I need to go back and check the parking lot.” She tried not to sound frantic.
“Margaret, what on earth—”
“Please!” There went her calm. She jumped out, using her cellphone light to check the mud for scraps of white paper.
“Be here. Be here. Be here,” she pleaded, but everywhere between Mark’s tire tracks and Tommy’s truck, shoes smacking in the dark, there was only more flat, level earth.
A long, fat beam of light and footsteps appeared at her side. “What are we looking for?” he sighed, resigned.
“A note. On notebook paper.”
They must have been a strange sight, she thought, two people scouring the ugly ground of the parking lot as night deepened. She did not care. She searched the area. She searched around that area. Tommy looped behind her, being nice or curious or both.
“Dang!” She stamped her foot, giving up.
Tommy chortled, shaking his head. “Come on.”
“It’s in the woods. It’s got to be.”
“Well, we aren’t going to find it tonight. Come on. Let me take you home.” He was right. She gave up, feeling crummy and tired. She tried to kick the mud off her shoes as she climbed back inside the truck.
“Thanks.” She chewed her lip as they drove toward her place. “I didn’t really know who to call, but I trusted you.” She tried not to blush at the last part.
“No problem. You going to tell me what note we were searching for?”
“I can’t. Not yet, anyway.”
He frowned, appearing to be thinking hard. “Friends don’t really have secrets, Margaret.”
“It’s just something I need to show you. You have to see it, not just hear about it from me.”
“Well then,” he sighed. “I guess we’ll just have to go back up to the peak and look for this mysterious note.”
She smiled, tiredly laying her head against the headrest. “Of course we will. You’re Nice Guy.”
He cast her a skeptical look. “Why do you keep calling me that?”
“What?”
“Nice.”
“You are. You know, helping me with my locker, giving me a ride, searching a parking lot at night, helping me with my books. There’s always that one person who gets a kick out of helping the lost new kid.”
“I’m not that person.” He shook his head. “Not usually.”
She felt a little flutter in her stomach that she tried to smother right away; the poor guy had been through a lot that evening. “You’re not?” she asked.
“No,” he said, his voice low and smoky, his eyes taking in her face less than a foot from his, she realized. “That was Amanda.”
“Oh. Well, I just got mud in your truck and you haven’t kicked me out yet.” She offered a weak smile. She had tried to rub some off on the grass, but they really weren’t hiking shoes and there was clay soil caked on.
He looked at the floorboard, then at her face, and laughed. “Well, I was g
oing to, but those dimples are kind of killing me.” He looked straight ahead as he said it.
Her eyes widened. It was the first time he had directly commented on her appearance. She felt pathetic at how excited it made her. She didn’t dare speak again.
Mulberry Street. The little green and white house was waiting, silent and dark.
“You know,” he said, staring through the darkness to the cute bungalow, as if sensing her lack of comfort with the place. “If you ever get lonely or bored here alone, you can text me and come over. Since I’m Nice Guy and all.”
“Careful, I might have to take you up on that. Especially if your mom is cooking.”
“I’ll try to keep my brother off your lips,” he chuckled.
“Just keep Mark away from me.”
“I will. Don’t worry about him. It was probably just some misunderstanding.” She chewed her lip. He did seem sorry, but there weren’t a whole lot of ways to take facing down a precipice.
Maggie opened the car door, her head spinning with the events of the day.
She heard it shut behind her heavily, heard Tommy’s “see you tomorrow,” but she was numb, cold. She was exhausted. Like ears ringing after a too-loud noise, her whole body was ringing with the experiences.
She did not turn the lights on when she went inside. She knew the open floor plan, the sparse furnishings from the mass furniture delivery catalogue. She set down her keys, clicked the lock into place, and walked blindly to her bed where she collapsed.
She wanted to sleep. Or rather, her mind wanted to sleep, but it was working as if trying to catch up with her.
“Shut up!” she told it, smothering her face with a pillow.
It kept going back to the drive. To the thought about Amanda. Why, she didn’t know, but she dreamed about riding in a car with Tommy who turned into Mark who turned into Mazy. They wouldn’t stop down a winding road, and when whoever was driving finally pulled over for her, they left her out there at night.
The next morning seemed to start slowly.
Maggie Brennan blinked as she woke and moved slowly getting ready. Because it was the only thing clean and unpacked, she pulled on a comfy plaid flannel dress and leggings with the fuzzy boots her mom had. She rarely borrowed anything, despite the open invitation to her mom’s collection, but she still had not washed her favorite sneakers. The coffee poured in a long, sluggish stream; even the sun rose reluctantly, making the grey morning gold as Maggie waited outside for Becca’s car to whip up to the curb and disturb the lethargic peace.
She tried to ready herself for her questions, Becca’s speech moving too quickly as she pulled out too fast and batted her over-mascaraed eyelashes too rapidly.
But a familiar chortling of another vehicle made its way down an otherwise deserted neighborhood street. Tommy’s truck. She walked over the early morning frost, which lay like silver gossamer over the green lawns, ending at the perfect sidewalks. She smiled with a big sigh. Fog clouded out of her mouth.
He had a faint smile as he opened to the door to the warm cab. “Morning.”
“Morning,” she said, arms wrapped around herself, hesitating at the door. “Won’t Becca be expecting me?”
“I told her I was picking you up. Said I was coming through town this way anyway.” That was all she needed. She climbed in gratefully.
“What’d you have to do over here so early?” she asked, snapping her seatbelt.
“I didn’t.” He smirked. They chuckled lightly at that.
“I don’t know,” he said, his voice still gravelly. He shook his head slowly and she watched the cute houses pass, the golden dawn reaching to touch everything. “I thought maybe you needed a break from everyone before explaining your night with Mark.”
“That was nice,” she teased, smirking.
He gave her a mock stern look. “I don’t know, Margaret,” he sighed. They finally encountered some other cars on the quiet streets as they neared the school. “I just feel better around you. I know that’s not fair. Maybe it’s because you don’t know her. Maybe it’s because you’re the one thing in this town that she hasn’t touched. You don’t remind me of her. You don’t look at me like I should be crying when I’m not and with pity when I do. Things feel normal with you.”
“You feel normal in a ditch during a tornado?” she joked, but inside, she was beaming. She wasn’t an Amanda copy that he could pretend with; he was refreshed she was a different person.
“Well, mostly normal anyway,” he played along, falling silent as they pulled into the parking lot.
“Thanks for the ride.”
“Hey, I like the company too, remember? See you this afternoon?”
“No. I’m helping Sarah get things ready.”
“Okay, well, if you want me to pick you up later, give me a call.”
“Thanks, Tommy.”
She hurried in and scrambled to get her math homework done. She wasn’t entirely prepared for chemistry either, but she doubted it would help even if she was. She didn’t want to piss off Mr. Garrett though, especially after their awkward encounter the previous day.
Once the first bell rang, time seemed to speed up. Math whizzed by in a blur of numbers she rushed to get down. Mr. Garrett gave her a few strange looks, but no one else seemed to notice.
Chemistry was mostly math, so it was like having math twice, except with a wicked witch for the second round. And not the musical material kind. Penderghast couldn’t really be pictured in a musical…except maybe Cats.
“No! No, no, no, no,” she tittered over Becca’s solution. “You can’t add sodium there. Look at your number of electrons.” Her long fingernail scraped the paper as she pointed out Becca’s mistake loud enough for all to hear. Becca sighed loudly, her rolling head Maggie could only see the back of implying eye rolling. Even though her friend was erasing furiously, Penderghast, still annoyed from the incident the day before, continued.
“You’ll have a bad reaction!”
“Your face is a bad reaction,” Maggie mumbled under her breath. Naturally, the room had fallen unusually silent in that exact moment. Becca turned slowly in her chair.
For a moment, Mags hoped no one had heard. Becca’s stricken expression of disbelief dashed that hope.
Penderghast, too, had turned her head almost all the way around like an owl and her eyes were getting narrower and narrower until they basically disappeared. The sound of a page rustling suddenly seemed loud.
“What did you say?” Penderghast asked.
Maggie felt the bottom fall out of her stomach. Trying to keep her face calm and innocent, Maggie shrugged. “What?” It wasn’t lying, really, so she didn’t blush.
Penderghast’s small head shook, a little at first, but faster and faster. It seemed to pull closer and closer to her shoulders. It looked like it might shoot off like a bottle rocket. For a moment, Maggie felt a cold stab of actual fear. It was that fight-or-flight response triggered by those not used to getting in trouble getting deep into it.
The class waited for what was going to happen, half expecting her to flip and slap Maggie. Or at least scream.
“Detention. Monday,” she said instead. Maggie just returned to her work as if unbothered. She was bothered. Her eyes were warm and the chemical equations swam before her from embarrassment. Everyone was looking at her like she was crazy.
When the bell rang a few minutes after, the exit was unusually quiet. Becca didn’t say anything until they were safely away from the classroom, coming upon Sarah near the cafeteria entrance.
“I. Cannot. Believe. You said that.” Becca said to Maggie.
“Said what?” Sarah asked.
Becca made a sound somewhere between a laugh and noise of disbelief. “She told Penderghast her face was a bad reaction.”
Sarah shook her head, confused. “What?”
“It’s a face joke. You know, like ‘that’s what she said.’ You just reply ‘your face.’” Every school had its own inside jokes, so it was hard to tel
l which were a product of the current generation’s new lingo and which were unique to that group.
“Like,” she attempted to explain as Mazy joined them, looking more cheerful and childish than normal. “If someone says, ‘That’s a dumb idea.’ You say, ‘Your face is dumb idea.’ Or if they say, ‘That’s gross.’ Then, you say, ‘Your face is gross.’ So when Penderghast was harassing Becca for standing up for me the other day and she screeched at her, ‘That’s a bad reaction,’ I just said, ‘Your face is a bad reaction.’” She shrugged.
While Sarah gave a good-mannered chuckle, Mazy dissolved into shrill giggles. “Oh, Maggie, that is excellent.”
They sat. Mazy pounced the moment their bottoms hit their hard plastic seats. “So, tell us all about the date!”
Sarah did not seem any more interested in the date than in her orange cup. Becca perked up though, listening intently.
“Well,” she struggled. Since she couldn’t tell them everything, how would the story make any sense at all? “It was a total train wreck.”
“Why?” Becca surprised her by asking first.
Maggie fought the desire to look over at Tommy’s table, as if he might help explain.
“Well, it was... awkward.” Their eyes were on her, brown and blue unblinking circles watching her face. She wanted the conversation to end. Immediately. She should have come up with something to say beforehand.
“Awkward how?” Mazy pretended to be befuddled, but she didn’t bother pretending not to be nosy.
“Well, obviously, it was me that was awkward,” she lied, trying to be good-humored towards Mazy. Mazy smiled and laughed lightly. It wasn’t her usual cruel laugh. It was genuine. She shook her head, looking a little less pinched and a little more attractive than her face typically did.
“I’m sure you weren’t that awkward,” she reassured Maggie, who supposed that when the girl wasn’t feeling threatened, she might be nicer. “Where did you go?”
What was she supposed to say? Well first, we had a normal date at a laid-back place. Then, we went out to make-out point where he may or may not have tried to kill me, but it was definitely weird.
No. That was not going to work.
Keep Your Friends Close Page 9