The Body Finder

house, probably telling his mom that he was leaving for school, and he pulled the door shut behind him.

It was the same thing every day. There was nothing different from yesterday and the day before that. Nothing different from every single day since they’d met.

Except that now her stomach climbed into her throat as he grinned his stupid sideways grin at her and slid into the car.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid!

She smiled back, willing her reckless pulse to slow down. “Ready?”

“No, but do we have a choice?” His voice, which had gotten deeper over the summer, was still so well-known to her, so comfortable, that she immediately relaxed.

“Not if you don’t want a tardy.” She backed out of the driveway, barely glancing in her rearview mirror to watch where she was going. His driveway was almost as familiar to her as her own.

She hated these new, unknown feelings that seemed to assault her whenever he was around, and sometimes even when he was only in her thoughts. She felt like she was no longer in control of her own body, and her traitorous reactions were only slightly more embarrassing than her treacherous thoughts.

She was starting to feel like he was toxic to her.

That, or she was seriously losing her mind, because that was the only way she could possibly explain the ridiculous butterflies she got whenever Jay was close to her. And what really irritated Violet was that he seemed to be completely oblivious of these new, and completely insane, reactions she was having to him. Obviously, whatever she had wasn’t contagious.

Except that it was. She wasn’t the only one that seemed to be noticing him. She almost dreaded the moment they’d step out from the relative peace of her noisy old Honda in the school’s overcrowded parking lot. Because that’s when the real games began.

Day three of school, but as of day one, girls had begun to wait for them to arrive in the morning.

No, not for them…for him.

His new fan club, Violet thought sourly. Girls who had known Jay since the first day of his first-grade year. Girls who had never paid him so much as a second glance before now. Girls who seemed to notice the not-so-subtle changes that had taken place over the last two and a half months they’d spent away from school.

Girls like her.

Stop it! she silently screamed at herself.

She slid a sideways glance in his direction, trying to figure out just what it was that was making her so…so painfully self-conscious all of a sudden.

He was looking right at her. Grinning. A big, stupid, self-satisfied grin, as if he had been eavesdropping on her all-too-embarrassing thoughts.

“What?” She tried to defend herself, wishing she’d never looked his way as she felt her cheeks burning with shame. “What?” she asked again when he just laughed at her.

“Were you planning to ditch school today, or should we turn around?”

She looked up and realized that she’d just driven past the road that led to the school. “Why didn’t you say something?” she accused as she pulled a quick, and probably illegal, U-turn. The tops of her ears felt like they were on fire now.

“I just wanted to see where you were heading.” He shrugged. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t skip school. You just have to ask me first.” His new grown-up voice seemed to fill all the space of the small car, and Violet found even that annoying.

“Shut up,” she insisted, even though she couldn’t help smiling now too. She couldn’t believe she’d passed the entrance to her own school. “Now we really are going to be late.”

By the time she found a parking spot in the student lot, there were only two die- hard “Jay fans” left waiting for them. Or rather, for him, Violet corrected herself again.

She couldn’t help but wonder how many others had already given up their watchful post in favor of not visiting the attendance office before school started today.

Violet decided not to wait around to watch the flirt-fest begin. She was already half running, with her backpack slung over her shoulder, as she bolted from her car. “See you in second period!” she yelled back to Jay, consciously deciding that this was better anyway. The last thing she wanted to do right now was to watch him with the two girls, who practically assaulted him as he got out of the car.

She dashed through the door to her first class just as the bell sounded.

Made it! she congratulated herself. Three days down and no tardy slips.

Just one hundred and seventy-seven to go.

By the time second period rolled around, Violet was already convincing herself that whatever it was she thought she’d been feeling, whatever plagued her ill-advised subconscious, was just an illusion of some sort. It was all smoke and mirrors. A trick of the mind.

And then he sauntered in and fell into the chair beside her, his new size making his desk look like something from a doll-house. Violet half expected the chair to buckle beneath him.

“Hey, Vi. Glad to see you decided to stay at school after all.” He punched her in the arm playfully.

Her heart somersaulted painfully.

Violet sighed. “Ha-ha,” she retorted without a trace of humor.

Jay’s brow furrowed, but before he could ask her what was wrong, he reached into his back pocket and pulled out a slip of paper. “I almost forgot. Check it out.” He held out the paper so she could grab it from him.

She unfolded it and tried to smooth it out a little so she could read it. As it turned out she didn’t need to bother; she would have been able to read the unmistakably feminine handwriting if the paper had been on fire.

It was a phone number. For Jay. From Elisabeth Adams, only the most popular girl in the school. She was the odds-on favorite to be Homecoming Queen this year, and most likely Prom Queen too. She was tan, blonde, pretty, and a senior. As if that wasn’t bad enough, she also had the shiny, straight hair that Violet could only dream of.

This sucked.

Violet tried not to look too deer-in-the-headlights when she glanced back at him. “Wow” was all she could think of.

“I know.” Jay seemed as surprised as she was but still managed to appear pretty impressed with himself all the same. “She must have slid it into my locker while I was in first period.”

“You gonna call her?” Violet was careful not to sound petulant, but she certainly felt that way. She just wanted to be his friend again, to not care about whether he called this girl or not. She wanted to listen to the gory details and ask him probing questions that would eventually have them off on some random tangent and laughing at their own stupid, private jokes. But somehow, she just couldn’t.

She felt deflated as she handed the note back to him.

The bell, and then the teacher, interrupted before Jay could answer her not-so- innocent question. Jay took the note and stuffed it into his binder as trig class got under way.

Violet tried to concentrate on sines and cosines as she took notes on everything the teacher wrote on the white-board in the front of the classroom, but she heard nothing. She couldn’t stop thinking about how she was going to get over this…this thing she had for her very best