Lucky for me, this dorm party was only one floor down. I hopped in for a quick shower and when I stepped out of the bathroom, the sickly sweet smells of hairspray and perfume hovered in the air. How was my roomie almost all primped up and ready to go?
I dragged the brush through my hair as I blow-dried, then flat-ironed a cute flip on the ends. Not a huge departure from my usual straight style, but a definite improvement. More casual, and it brought out the copper highlights in my walnut hair.
I dabbed on my last coat of lip gloss. Mid-lip, I flinched at a creaking sound to my left as the door slammed shut. Did Shanda leave without me? I tiptoed to the door and peeked down the hall. She was long gone.
“Someone’s overeager to hang out with boys.” Probably a certain surfer boy.
“Not me.” Julia popped out of her room, yanking Brooke down the hall. She gave a meek little wave. “See you down there.”
“See ya.” I couldn’t look at Julia right now in the aftermath of that strange vision of James and even stranger meeting last night.
So, I glanced at Brooke instead. Bryan’s sister couldn’t be more unlike him, a mousy dishwater-blond girl with thick bangs but seriously cute glasses. If anyone could get that girl to open up, it’d be Julia. My heart still ached for Julia’s loss, in spite of her obviously misplaced anger issues.
Tonight I couldn’t focus on what she’d said to me or what the Watcher Corps would do next. I needed to shove it deep into the furthest corners of my mind if I wanted to a much-needed night of teenage normalcy.
I padded back to the mirror for a quick double check. My blue jersey skirt flared with a hint of flirty, like the purple shadow on my eyelids. Not half bad.
“Time to blow off a little steam.” I raced down the hall, almost crashing into the lobby door. “Great. Exactly what I need, the imprint of a door on my face.” I flung it open and scurried down the stairs.
When I reached the lobby, a silver balloon bonked my forehead. Miss Sherry had rearranged the room into clumps of couches and chairs with board games on every coffee table. There wasn’t an empty seat in the crowded lobby. Guess we were kind of starved for entertainment on campus.
“Lucy,” Shanda called out from her spot on the couch between Bryan and Kevin. “There you are. Get over here.”
“Hi, Lucy.” Bryan stood, motioning to a spot on the couch next to him. “I saw you in the library. You been researching for class?”
“Sort of.” I wriggled in next to Bryan. Good thing I spent extra time primping. Might’ve given it another five minutes if I’d known I’d be crammed so close to one of my McDreamies. “I’m not really sure what I’m looking for though.”
“I could help you sometime, if you want.” His gaze burned into me. I shrugged and kept my mouth shut.
“These twins from the Midwest taught us a great game.” Shanda pointed at Laura and Lenny as they organized homemade cards on the coffee table. Julia and Brooke sat on the opposite couch with them.
“Everywhere’s the Midwest to you.” I laughed. “It’s like there’s the East coast, then the West coast, and everything in between is the Midwest.”
“Good one.” A familiar voice filtered down from above my head as a hand pounded into the back of the couch behind me. I whirled around, coming face to face with Will’s gray eyes. “Nice to see you, Lucy.”
“Hi, Will.” My face was inches from his half-smiling, half dare-you-to-move expression. It never wavered, that grin and those eyes almost laughing at me. Was this a game to him? Probably. I couldn’t stand it any more and turned around. “You win.”
“Fine, you got me. They’re from Kansas, okay?” Shanda huffed on Bryan’s other side. “Will, why don’t you join us?”
He pulled up a chair close to my side of the couch. “So what are we playing?”
I felt Bryan bristle next to me. When I stole a glance at him, a muscle in his jawline twitched. How cute was that? On a whim, I reached over and patted his shoulder. The twitch stopped.
“Mafia.” Shanda handed me two cards, and I passed one to Will. “We’re starting a new game.”
Not at all like McAllen family game night. It was a piece of cardstock with a drawing of a red-headed kid labeled townsperson.
“We made the cards ourselves.” Laura’s little-girl face beamed with pride and she fanned them out on the table with her tiny hands. “Cute, huh?”
My head bobbed. “I don’t get it.”
Bryan came close. Like that wouldn’t distract me. “A few cards say Mafia, everyone else is a townsperson.”
“There’s also a sheriff and a doctor,” Lenny chimed in. I still had to swallow a laugh at his deep voice, especially right after Laura’s high pitch.
“The point is to figure out who the Mafia are and vote them out. Make sense?”
I lost the rest of Bryan’s explanation in those blue wonders. If eyes really were a window into someone’s soul, I would never need to worry about this guy.
All of a sudden he paused.
Right, my turn to say something, anything. “I’ll pick it up once we start.”
“Everyone, close your eyes and wait for my instructions,” Laura announced.
“Really?” I closed my eyes only because everyone else did. How stupid, until I caught a faint whiff of Bryan’s woodsy aftershave, so yummy my toes curled. I opened my eyes a crack to see Bryan’s
