Black Creek Crossing

a smile starting to spread across his face, but as he gazed at Angel, his smile faded.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

Her eyes darted nervously around the cafeteria. Zack Fletcher and Heather Dunne were sitting at the same table as yesterday. Angel hesitated about saying anything, then couldn’t keep it inside any longer, and words began tumbling from her mouth. She poured out every detail about what had happened — or what she thought had happened — and Seth listened to it all, not interrupting. He was so engrossed in what she was saying that he didn’t even notice Chad Jackson and Jared Woods ease themselves into two chairs at the table directly behind him, their backs to the table at which Angel and he were sitting.

“And the worst part of it is I don’t even know how much of it was a dream and how much of it was real! I mean, things don’t just fly off the dresser! And how could I have made a drawing on the mirror and not even remember it?”

When Angel at last fell silent, Seth sat quietly for a while, trying to sort it all out in his mind. But none of it made any more sense to him than it had to Angel. Unless…

“What if you didn’t draw on the mirror?” he finally suggested. “What if it all happened just like you remember it? And what if you don’t remember some of the stuff because you didn’t do it?”

Angel stared at him. “But if I didn’t do it, who did?”

Before Seth could respond, a sound erupted from the table behind him — the same loud, mock sucking and kissing sounds he’d heard yesterday afternoon as he passed Chad and Jared on his way home. His jaw clenching, Seth tried to shut the sounds out.

Then, while Jared kept making the kissing sounds, Chad stood up and turned around, his eyes glittering with malice. “Maybe it was Beth,” he said, his voice as scornful as the sneer on his lips. “Maybe Beth sneaked into your room last night to play with your lipstick!”

Angel gazed uncertainly at Chad. Beth? Who was Beth? What was he talking about? But a second later, as she saw Seth’s face paling, she understood.

Chad shifted his attack. “Except who would want to sneak into your room in the middle of the night?” he said to Angel. “Even Beth can’t be that hard-up!”

Jared Woods, bursting into laughter that was even uglier than the sounds he’d been making, stood up too. “Come on,” he told Chad. “Let’s get out of here before we catch whatever they’ve got!”

Picking up his tray, Chad shoved hard on Seth’s chair. Seth winced as the table dug deep into his stomach, but he managed to stifle the yelp of pain that rose in his throat. Neither he nor Angel said a word until they saw Chad and Jared drop into a couple of chairs at the table next to the one across the cafeteria where Zack and Heather were sitting.

“What was that all about?” Angel finally asked.

Seth shrugged and tried to look nonchalant. “They live down the street from me.” He picked up his fork and poked at the food on the plate in front of him.

“But how come they called you Beth?” Angel pressed.

Seth’s face flushed again. “How should I know?” he asked. “Maybe it’s just because I’m not very good at sports.”

Angel frowned. “That’s the name, isn’t it?” she asked. “The one you wouldn’t tell me yesterday.”

Seth nodded but said nothing.

“It isn’t any worse than ‘Mangy—’ ” Angel began, but Seth didn’t let her finish.

“Can we just talk about something else?”

“Like what?” Angel challenged.

“Like how that stuff got on your mirror last night,” Seth replied. “’Cause I know it wasn’t me.” He pulled a piece of paper from his notebook and pushed it across the table. “Draw what was on the mirror.”

Angel sat perfectly still, gazing at Seth, but when he said nothing else, and wouldn’t even meet her gaze, she finally fished around in her backpack, found a pen, and began to draw, doing her best to recreate the image she’d found on the mirror this morning. When she was done, she pushed it toward him.

Seth gazed at the drawing for a long time. “It looks like someone going down stairs,” he said at last. “But what’s that square under the stairs?”

Angel gazed at him in exasperation. “How should I know? I don’t even know if the jagged line is supposed to be stairs!”

“Well, what else could it be?” Seth argued.

“I don’t know! Maybe it’s supposed to be lightning or something?”

“That’s not what lightning looks like,” Seth shot back. Picking up the pen, he drew the kind of zigzag line that depicted lightning in every comic strip he’d ever seen. “Does that look like what was on your mirror?”

Angel shook her head. “But it doesn’t matter anyway, because it had to have been me that made the marks. I mean, the lipstick was all over my fingers, and my sheets and pillowcase, and everything.”

“Well, it won’t hurt for us to at least look, will it? And with all the stories about your house…” His voice trailed off. Then: “It just seems like we should try to find out, that’s all.”

There was a burst of laughter from Zack and Heather’s table, and a moment later Jared Woods was once again making the ugly sucking and kissing sounds. Then Chad Jackson joined in, and then Zack and the rest of the boys at his table took up the chorus. As the mocking sounds echoed through the cafeteria, Seth’s face turned crimson.

“Let’s just leave,” Angel said, putting the pen back in her backpack.

Seth shook his head. “That’s what they want.”

“So what are we supposed to do, just sit here and pretend it isn’t happening?”

Seth looked directly into her eyes. “Isn’t that what you did back in Eastbury?”

Angel wanted to shake her head but knew she couldn’t, because back in Eastbury it had been the same as it was here and there had never been anything she could do about it except pretend it wasn’t happening.

Just like Seth was pretending the laughter that was steadily building around them wasn’t directed at him.

“Why won’t they just leave us alone?” she finally asked. “What did we ever do to them?”

Seth said nothing, because he knew the answer as well as Angel did.

Neither of them had done anything at all.

They just had to deal with it.

Or figure out a way to make it stop.

Chapter 19

ELL? WAS I RIGHT? AREN’T YOU JUST LOVING YOUR house?” Joni Fletcher asked, fixing Myra Sullivan with a look of such utter triumph that Myra half wished she hadn’t agreed to have lunch with her sister. “I’m telling you,” Joni plunged on, “it was an absolute steal!”

The dining room of the Roundtree Country Club had barely begun to fill, and Joni’s final word seemed to bounce off the walls, echoing through the room like a gunshot. Three women at the next table — women Myra had never seen before — turned to look at them, and Myra felt her face flush with embarrassment. She’d known it was a mistake to come here; she’d never felt comfortable with Joni’s country club friends. And it wasn’t just because she had nothing to wear, though she was honest enough to admit that her wardrobe — or the lack of it — was at least a factor. Nor was it the fact that she knew there was no chance at all that she and Marty would ever be members here. For Myra Sullivan, the biggest problem was the people who were members here.

At the moment, that applied to the three women who had looked at her just long enough to make her uncomfortable, then pointedly looked away again without even acknowledging her presence when she nodded to them. They could have at least nodded back, she thought, but she rejected her own notion. “We must always be charitable to others,” Father Raphaello had always said, “even when others are uncharitable to us.”