“No! I just don’t think—”
But Seth wasn’t listening to her. “You are too,” he shot back. His voice took on a mocking singsong tone, but he kept it low enough so no one but Angel could hear. “Angel is a scaredy cat, Angel is a scaredy cat—”
“Stop that!”
“Why?” Seth asked, putting on an expression of exaggerated innocence. “It’s true, isn’t it?”
“No! I’m not scared — I just don’t believe in that kind of stuff!”
“Then meet me at the library tonight!”
Angel glared at him. “Maybe I will, and maybe I won’t,” she finally said, but even as she spoke, she was pretty sure that she’d show up. After all, even though she didn’t believe in witchcraft, she still wanted to know what the leather-bound book was about.
“What’s going on over there?” Heather Dunne asked, nodding toward the table on the far side of the room where Seth was grinning maliciously at Angel, whose back was toward Heather and her friends, but whose shoulders were hunched over and her head bent down as if she were angry about something. “Looks like Beth and your cousin are having a fight!”
“They better not,” Zack Fletcher said. “If they get mad at each other, they won’t have any friends at all.”
“What I want to know is how come they’re sitting way over there?” Chad Jackson asked. “How come they’re not sitting at Beth’s table?”
“Maybe they want to be
“Why would two girls want to be alone?” Chad Jackson asked.
“Maybe Angel likes girls,” Heather Dunne said.
Chad Jackson elbowed Zack Fletcher, who was sitting next to him. “Is that it, Zack? Does your cousin like girls?”
Zack’s upper lip curled into a sneer. “Even if she did, so what? Even another girl wouldn’t go out with her!”
“So what are they up to?” Chad pressed. “I mean, they sit together at lunch, and they go off together after school every day.”
“So do you and Jared,” Sarah Harmon said. Sarah, whose hair was as dark as Heather Dunne’s was blond, usually sat quietly through the lunch hour, content to listen to her friends talk but rarely saying anything herself. Now everybody was looking at her, and she suddenly wished she hadn’t spoken at all. But it was too late. “What do you and Jared do every day after school?” she finally asked.
“What do you mean, ‘What do we do?’ ” Chad said. “We hang out!”
“Maybe that’s what they do,” Sarah Harmon said. “Maybe they aren’t up to anything at all!”
“Then how come they’re not sitting where they usually do?” Jared demanded.
Now Sarah found herself getting angry. “Maybe because of the way you and Chad act every time they sit anywhere near you.”
Heather Dunne stared at her best friend. “Sarah! What’s going on with you?”
For a second Sarah wondered if she shouldn’t just pick up her tray and go sit somewhere else. But even as the thought formed in her head, she knew she wouldn’t do it. She and Heather had been best friends ever since their first day in kindergarten, when they found out their birthdays were only two days apart. She’d known Chad and Jared and Zack just as long, and the half-dozen other kids in their crowd as well. They’d all gone to school together, and hung out at the country club in the summer together, and gone to movies together. They’d done everything together, and Sarah didn’t have to think for even a few seconds to know exactly what would happen if she picked up her lunch tray and went to sit somewhere else.
The conversation would switch immediately from Angel Sullivan and Seth Baker to Sarah Harmon.
And that afternoon, when she went to the drugstore, there wouldn’t be a seat for her at the table where she and Heather always sat with three or four other kids.
And tomorrow, someone else — probably Shauna Brett, who was sitting across from Sarah and seemed to be hanging on every word she said, just waiting for her to make a mistake — would be sitting next to Heather in the cafeteria.
Besides, who would she sit with? She was far too shy to just go over to another table where there was an empty chair, sit down, and start talking to whoever was there, like Heather Dunne always could. In fact, that was how she and Heather had become friends in the first place — Heather had just sat down next to her in kindergarten and started talking to her, and before her shyness could get in the way, they were already friends. It had been that way ever since — she was Heather’s best friend, and all she had to do was follow along and do whatever Heather wanted to do. Heather’s crowd was her crowd.
Heather’s friends were her friends.
And now Heather was looking at her as if she’d gone crazy, and Heather’s question was still hanging in the air:
And everyone was staring at her, waiting for her to answer.
“Nothing,” she said. “I’m fine.”
Then she lapsed back into the safety of silence as Zack, Chad, Jared, and the rest of her crowd talked about Angel and Seth.
Chapter 24
ARTY SULLIVAN’S FORK STOPPED MIDWAY BETWEEN his plate and his mouth, his eyes fixed on his daughter. The good mood brought on by the three shots of good Irish whiskey he’d chased down with three equally good pints of Irish beer before coming home that evening had faded rapidly in the face of Myra’s pursed lips and disapproving look. Did she think sitting around in a bar listening to Ed Fletcher brag about his country club had been all that great? Besides, he was only about an hour late, and what business was it of hers anyway? But it was Angel that his eyes — now as dark as his mood — were focused on right now. All through supper, which Marty had eaten just to please Myra, even though it wasn’t much good, Angel kept looking at the clock.
Like she had a date or something.
Fat chance that was going to happen. The way she was putting away the crappy dinner Myra had made, even that putz that he’d caught in her room with her the other day wouldn’t be sniffing around anymore. As she ate the last scrap of ham on her plate, glanced at the clock, and finished up the remains of her second helping of Myra’s scalloped potatoes with cheese, “just like her mother used to make”—as if her mother was any better in the kitchen than Myra herself — he put down his fork, leaned back, and crossed his arms over his chest. “What do you think you’re up to?” he demanded.
Startled, Angel dropped her fork, which clattered onto her empty plate.
“Jesus!” Marty snorted. “How’d you get to be so clumsy?”
“Marty!” Myra exclaimed, and for an instant Angel thought her mother was going to come to her defense. “Don’t take the name of the Lord in vain!”
Angel’s faint flicker of hope faded as quickly as it had flared. She stood up to start clearing that table, hoping to distract her father.
“You didn’t answer my question,” Marty said, his eyes narrowing.
“I–I’m just clearing the table,” Angel said, trying the tactic of avoiding the truth by saying something that wasn’t quite a lie, which had worked yesterday when she’d gotten back from finding the hidden cabin with Seth.
“You been lookin’ at the clock all through dinner,” Marty challenged. “And eatin’ even faster than usual. You got plans I don’t know about?”
Angel bit her lip and willed herself not to flush. Her father’s brow was knit into a deep scowl, and the look in
