“I could use a Butterfinger,” Claire said.
“I’m good,” Tabby said. “I ate some of your cake on the way here.”
“Damn it, Tab, that wasn’t for you!” Claire said, punching her in the arm.
“Ow! Sorry, I was hungry. Besides, it wasn’t all me.” Tabby looked down at Sherlock, who wagged his tail faster than the windmill had spun on the previous hole. “Sherlock here helped me a bit.”
“Ewww, you shared with the dog,” Claire said.
Maria grinned. “So, a Butterfinger; anything else?”
Claire shook her head.
“Okay, I’ll be back.”
Maria opened the door to the snack bar. A blast of air conditioning washed over her. Sherlock tried to follow her. “No, buddy. Dogs are definitely not allowed around the food. Doesn’t matter if Edgar and Gramps are old friends.”
Sherlock whined and lay down on the concrete.
A voice came from behind Maria. “If dogs aren’t allowed, then you definitely should turn around and go back to the kennel.”
Maria’s skin prickled. She knew that voice. She hated that voice. It was Kaylee Wilson, her arch-nemesis from high school.
She turned around and saw Kaylee standing there with a gang of her bitchy friends: Amanda Haggerty, Alicia Foreman, and a gay guy named Vince Lorenzo. They stood there tensed, like Maria was about to fight them. She didn’t plan on it, but anything could happen. Maria frowned, disappointed to see that in the two years since they’d graduated high school, Kaylee hadn’t put on any weight or gotten pregnant or drafted by the military or experienced any number of the other things that would get her the hell out of town.
“Clever,” Maria finally replied, staring at Kaylee. Her grandfather taught her to never back down from bullies, which was the reason most of high school had sucked. Maria didn’t back down, but neither did Kaylee. The pranks and jokes had ramped up in intensity over those four years. Maria remembered seeing Carrie and wishing she’d been able to do that at her high school prom. Just rough ‘em up a bit, that’s all. Minus the pig’s blood, of course.
This time Kaylee flinched under Maria’s gaze. The others hadn’t even looked in Maria’s direction. That was satisfying. She smiled and went inside the snack bar.
The owner sat on a stool smoking a cigarette. You weren’t supposed to smoke inside, and the stuff Edgar smoked always smelled funny—not like the stuff the skaters outside smoked. Edgar’s pot was out of this world, for lack of a better term. Maria often wondered who sold it to him. My grandfather, maybe? She wouldn’t be surprised.
“Maria! Good to see you again!”
“I just saw you like half an hour ago,” Maria replied.
“I know, I know. It’s just so good to see you, Maria! How’s your old gramps doing? Haven’t seen Ignatius in a while.”
“No? I figured you saw him every night,” Maria said. “On account of you guys always meeting at that new ice cream shop on South Avenue.”
Edgar chuckled. “No, no, I haven’t been down there since I blew up—” He stopped, his face suddenly deadly serious. “I’ve said too much.”
“Okaaaay.” Maria was used to that kind of oddness from Edgar; she didn’t even think to ask what he might’ve blown up. Seemed like he was always blowing something up. “Well, you got any buckeye ice cream left?”
Edgar looked over his shoulder, and then forward at the empty tub of buckeye ice cream next to the birthday cake and chocolate banana. “For you, Maria, anything. Gimme a minute; gotta go open tomorrow’s tub.” He made a motion like he was zipping up his lips. “Don’t tell no one, kay?”
“My lips are sealed.”
Edgar left through the back door, leaving behind a cloud of smoke. Kaylee and her gang were messing with the golfing equipment in the far corner, where the snack bar doubled as a place to check out golf clubs and different colored golf balls. Their reflections were visible in the glass sneeze guard. A tick-tick-tick filled the air as Kaylee bounced a ball on the edge of a golf club.
Maria was trying her best to ignore them when a flare of pain filled her head—a great burst of red, white, and blue, almost a month after Independence Day.
A clunk came from the corner of the room, a whistle sounded through the air, and Maria turned. A great big fireball sliced toward her. Except it wasn’t a fireball—it was a red golf ball.
“Think fast,” Kaylee said. Her voice came out in slow motion. All of it was in slow motion. Should I step aside and let the ball shatter the glass partition, or should I—
She caught the ball.
Kaylee’s mouth dropped open into a perfect ‘O’.
Then Maria’s arms glowed a faint blue beneath her pale skin, and the ball in her hand fizzled, the plastic melting.
She was angry, but she was scared shitless, too.
“What the hell?” Kaylee whispered.
“She’s a fucking alien!” Alicia Foreman said.
“Kill her!” Vince suggested, only half-joking.
Kaylee grabbed another handful of golf balls and began chucking them at Maria. Maria dropped the smoking one from her hand and easily caught the others, her skin glowing more noticeably.
When Kaylee ran out of balls, she stared at Maria, not believing what she was seeing.
I always knew Maria Apple was weird, but what the fuck? Kaylee thought.
Then Maria raised her arm and cocked it back like she was about to beam the balls back toward Kaylee and her friends. To Kaylee, Maria looked like she could throw some heat…literally.
“Fuck this. Freak!” Kaylee shouted and ran for the doors.
But Maria wasn’t going to throw the golf balls back. She was above that. Gramps would’ve been disappointed if she had. He had told her to stand up to bullies, and that’s exactly what she had done. If she threw the balls back, she would’ve been stooping as low as Kaylee, and that was pretty low.
So she just watched them run out the door with a smile on her face. Sherlock barked
