I crept out from between the soda machines and went to unlock my bike. I tucked the bag with the Shake ’N Bake into my backpack, mounted the bike, and stood for a long moment trying to quiet the quakes rocking my body.
Through the windows of the supermarket, I saw Morgan in the check-out line. She couldn’t see me. Not still here. Not like this. I jumped onto the pedals and raced off across the parking lot.
I didn’t see the white car again for another three days.
Chapter Six
I spent the rest of Sunday at home, alone. My phone buzzed with calls and text messages, but my only response was a mass text I sent to everyone telling them I was okay, and that I’d be at school on Monday. Six missed calls from Zack. My chest tightened, but I didn’t relent. My mom gave me crap for forgetting her Cosmo, my dad burned every excuse he had to avoid me, and I spent more than a little time listening to my MP3 player and lying in bed. A little emo, certainly, but I think I earned it.
I didn’t eat anymore the rest of the day—I wasn’t hungry. I wasn’t unaware that that put me at two full days with nothing more in my system than three eggs and four pieces of bacon. And even that had been less hunger and more habit. I marked the breakfast on my wall calendar out of morbid curiosity.
The night brought me to the grey beach, somewhere I was beginning to fear less and less. I spent the night walking up and down the shore, picking up little grey rocks and little grey shells and hurling them into the waves. My fear of the man-thing made of light floated somewhere in the back of my mind, but it hadn’t been that hard to avoid the first time, and it had made a terrible racket when it arrived. I didn’t think it could sneak up on me any more than a train could. I left the beach every night with the rise of the sun since the first night, but my first excursion told me that leaping into the water would wake me up right away. It was an emergency exit.
When the sun came, I woke up and got ready for school. My first instinct was to dress down, to try to blend in and deflect what attention I could. But then I thought of the questions and the pitiful stares and the spinning gauntlet I was about to enter and decided I’d need all the self-esteem I could muster. I spent most of the morning curling my hair into a mane of black tresses, and I spent the rest of it digging through my clothes for my long black skirt and my witchy-poo boots. I completed the look with an eye-scorching pink top and a black cardigan. I made my eyes as startling and green as I could with my best eye-liner tricks, scooped up my backpack, and bounced downstairs.
“Luce! Luce, you missed breakfast.” My mom said from the kitchen.
“It’s okay,” I said, grabbing the books I needed and stuffing them into my pack. “I’ll eat a big lunch.”
I wanted to say “it’s cool, I’m a freak,” or “all the cool kids are anorexic now,” but I managed to spin the words before they came out. When she came out of the kitchen, her eyes bugged out. She scanned my appearance with more than a little disapproval.
“I see why you missed breakfast,” she said in a tiny, tight voice. “Is this really appropriate, Luce?”
I frowned and indicated my clothes with a sweep of my hand.
“I’m not dressed slutty.”
“I—” she said and stopped, clearly exasperated at my candor. “That’s not what I meant.”
I felt that stupid defensive pride grab the wheel again.
“What did you mean, Mom?” I asked. “Big puffy sweatshirt, ponytail?”
“Well,” she said, and her face twisted into one that probably mirrored mine more than a little. “What’s wrong with that? There’s nothing wrong with healing, Luce.”
“Healing from what, Mom?”
Her anger deflated immediately. Mine didn’t.
“I just meant if you want to lay low I understand—”
“Can we go?” I asked. My tone could slice steel.
She sighed, seeming to shrink a foot in height, and nodded. She grabbed her purse and blew past me out of the door. I followed her with tight-lipped crispness. I made sure to slam the heels of my witchy boots into the concrete as hard as I could. I sounded like a pissed-off woodpecker.
The ride went in the kind of awkward silence that deserved to be filmed. We picked up Morgan, who was dressed in typical Morgan fare and looking much more put together than at the grocery store. She caught the syrup-thick tension in the air immediately and said nothing more than a muted “Hey, Luce,” that faded away just after the “Lu.”
Mom told us the usual time she’d pick us up, a somewhat obvious piece of information, but I’m sure she was just trying to say something before we left. I grunted something that sounded like an affirmation and she drove off with a little chirp of the tires.
The school parking lot was already beginning to fill, and students flowed past us with increasing density. Morgan turned toward me, and she looked to be attempting diplomacy.
“You look great, Lucy. Really great, actually.”
I smiled and let out a sigh of relief, “You sure know how to say sorry.”
Morgan grinned and threw her arm over my shoulder, “What are friends for? How do I look?”
“Awful,” I said, shaking my mane of black curls. “Just awful.”
Morgan stuck her tongue out at me, and we walked off through the parking lot with the renewed vigor that can only follow intense weirdness. We didn’t talk about The Night, thankfully, on the way to class. She walked me right up to Journalism class and reached out to squeeze my hand. I tightened up.
“Morgan.”
“I know,” Morgan said, and smiled. “I’m really glad that I have you.”
I couldn’t stand up to that. I pulled her into a tight hug.
“Me, too.”
She didn’t say anything else, mercifully, before squeezing my hand again and walking off. I only just managed to get myself under control and not burst into big girly tears before heading into class. I floated to my computer, ignoring the looks I had been expecting. Twenty minutes into class, and thus, twenty minutes into a particularly frustrating game of Text Twist, Will slid into the chair of the empty computer next to mine.
I tried to hide my deep breath and turned to face him. I offered a pleasant smile.
“Hey, Will.”
“Hey, Luce,” Will said. He was a freshman to the bone. Nervous voice, rail-thin boyish body, the red skin tone of pre-acne. He sat at lunch with us, and Daphne had taken him in as some kind of apprentice/squire. Daphne used him as a valet, essentially.
I waited the appropriate five seconds before speaking again.
“What’s up?” I asked him.
He shook his head and laughed. “I’m sorry. Sorry. I just wanted to say hey.”
“Hey,” I said, and turned back to my computer.
After I shifted the words around in Text Twist a few times and still wasn’t able to come up with anything coherent, I turned back to him. He hadn’t budged.
“Can I…I mean, you look really good,” he said. His face went bone-white.
My eyebrow arched, “Uh, thanks?”
“I just meant. I’m glad you’re okay.”
Well, he wasn’t wearing the pity mask, I’ll give him that. His eyes were eager, and he was smiling. He meant it—he wasn’t fishing for anything. I let out a long breath and nodded.
“Thanks, Will.”
“You’re uh, you’re welcome. Luce.”
“Well, I should…” I indicated my game.
“T-totally. You, uh, you Twist yourself silly. I’m gonna…I have that article.”
