“Residence hall,” I correct her.
“What?”
“It’s a residence hall,” I remind her. “You said dorm. But it’s actually a—”
“Go to hell,” Mrs. Allington says, and she slams the door in my face again.
Wow. Talk about hostile. Instead of psychoanalyzing me all day, Sarah should maybe turn her attention to the Allingtons. They have way more problems.
Sighing, I turn around and press the down button for the elevator. I can’t be sure, but I think Mrs. Allington has maybe already been at the bottle… and it isn’t even ten o’clock in the morning yet! I wonder if she’s always soused this early, or if this is a special occasion. Like to celebrate Rachel’s Pansy Award, maybe.
When I get back downstairs, I nearly ram into this skinny girl in the hallway. She’s headed into Rachel’s office, so I start to ask if I can help her, but when she turns around, I see that it’s Amber.
That’s right.
Chris Allington’s Amber, from Idaho. The one I just woke up.
“Oh,” she says, recognizing me. “Hi.” Herhi is less than enthusiastic. That’s on account of her still being half asleep. She’s even in her pajamas. “You’re not—you’re not the hall director, are you?”
“No,” I say. “I’m her assistant. Why?”
“ ’Cause I just got a call saying I have to come down here this mornin’ for a mandatory meeting with Rachel Walcott—”
At that moment, Rachel comes click-clacking out of our office, clutching a file folder to her chest.
“Oh, Heather, there you are,” she says, brightly. “Cooper’s here.”
I think I must have made some sort of disbelieving noise, because Rachel peers at me curiously and says, “Yes, he is.” Then her attention turns to the girl next to me. “Amber?” Rachel asks.
“Yes, ma’am.” Amber sounds subdued. Well, and what eighteen-year-old freshman who’d been forced to wake up at ten o’clock in the morning for a meeting with the residence hall director wouldn’t sound subdued?
“This way, Amber,” Rachel says, laying hold of Amber’s elbow. “Heather, if you could just hold all my calls for a few minutes—“
“Sure,” I say, and go into our office. Where, sure enough, I find Cooper shaking his head at the jar of condoms on my desk.
“Hi, Cooper,” I say, a little warily. Which I think is understandable, given, you know, that the last time he’d shown up in my office, it had been to tell me that my ex-boyfriend was engaged to someone else. What could have happened now?
Then I feel a stab of panic, remembering Marian Braithwaite. Oh God. She and Cooper have made up. They’ve made up, and are getting married, and Cooper is here to tell me he needs the apartment back because they’re going to put the nanny in there—
“Hi, Heather,” Cooper says, looking much more like his normal self in jeans and his leather jacket than he had in that tux. “Got a minute?”
Hi, Heather, got a minute? Hi, Heather, got a minute?What kind of way is THAT to start a conversation? Could there be three other words in the English language more effective at striking terror deep within the heart than Got a minute? No. No, I do NOT have a minute! Not if you’re going to tell me what I think you’re going to tell me. Why her? WHY? Just because she’s smart and accomplished and pretty and thin—
“Sure,” I say, in what I hope sounds like a cool, assured voice, but which I’m pretty sure comes out sounding more like a bleat. I gesture for Cooper to sit down, and curl up in my desk chair, wishing I could have a bottle of whatever it was Mrs. Allington had been nipping at all morning.
“Listen, Heather,” Cooper says. “About last night… ”
No! Because if there are three words in the English language worse than Got a minute? they can only be About last night…
And now I’ve had all six of them, one right after the other. It isn’t fair!
And what had even happened last night? Nothing! I’d gotten out of the cab Cooper had put me in and gone straight inside to bed.
Okay, maybe I’d stayed up for an hour or so working on a new song.
And maybe that song had been about him.
But he couldn’t have heard it. I played super softly. And I never even heard him come in.
Oh, why me? WHY ME???
“I think I owe you an explanation” is the next unexpected thing out of his mouth.
But wait.I owe you an explanation? That doesn’t sound like a prelude to asking me to move out. In fact, it almost sounds like an apology. But what on earth does Cooper have to apologize for?
“I met with a friend from the coroner’s office last night after we left the ball,” he begins. “And she said —”
Wait a minute.She said? Cooper ditched me for another girl?
“That’s where you went?” I blurt out, before I can stop myself. “To meet a girl?”
Oh… my… God. What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I be cool and self-assured like… well, like Rachel? Why do I have to be such a complete spaz all the time?
Fortunately Cooper, being completely ignorant of my plans for him (you know, the fact that he’s going to marry me and be the father of my three as yet unborn children and the inspiration for my Nobel Prize—winning medical career), doesn’t catch on that I’m jealous. He seems to think I’m still angry because he made me leave the party early.
“I didn’t want to say anything to you before,” he says. “You know, in case she didn’t have anything to tell me. But the fact is, therewas something a little strange about those girls’ bodies.”
I just stare at him. Because I can’t believe it. Not that his “friend” in the coroner’s office had found something strange about Elizabeth’s and Roberta’s bodies. But that he’d bothered to consult with her on my behalf in the first place.
“B-but,” I stammer. “But I thought… you thought… I was just making the whole thing up. Because of missing the thrill of performing… ”
“I do,” Cooper says, with a shrug. “I mean, I did. But I figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask.”
“And?” I lean forward eagerly. “What is it? Drugs? Were they drugged? Because I thought Detective Canavan said no drugs were detected in their systems.”
“None were,” Cooper says. “It wasn’t drugs. It’s burns.”
I stare at him. “Burns? What kind of burns? Like… cigarette burns?”
“No,” Cooper says. “Angie isn’t sure.” Angie? Cooper knows someone in the coroner’s office named Angie? Just how had he and Angie met, anyway? Angie didn’t sound like the kind of name a medical examiner would have. An exotic dancer, maybe. But not a doctor…
“And you have to take into account that those bodies,” Cooper goes on. “Well, they’re kind of a mess. But Angie says they did find burn marks on both girls’s backs, marks they can’t explain. It’s not enough for them to change the coroner’s ruling—you know, that the deaths weren’t accidental. But it is… strange.”
“Strange,” I repeat.
“Yeah,” Cooper says. “Strange.”
“So… ” I can’t look him in the eye. Because I can’t believe he’s actually taking me seriously.Me, Heather Wells, of “Sugar Rush” fame!
And all it had taken were a couple of murders…
“So maybe I’m not just making it all up out of displaced aggression toward my mother?” I ask.
Cooped looks taken aback. “I never said you were.”
Oh, right. That had been Sarah.
“But you believe me now?” I prod him. “I’m not just your little brother’s crazy ex-girlfriend? But maybe, like, a rational human being?”
“I’ve never thought of you as anything but,” Cooper says, a flash of annoyance in his blue eyes. Then, seeing my expression, he says, “Well, crazy, maybe. But I never thought of you as irrational. Honest, Heather, I don’t know where you get this stuff. I’ve always thought of you as one of the—”
Most beautiful, ravishing creatures you’ve ever met? Most intelligent, stunningly gorgeous women of your acquaintance?
