It was Elizabeth! The Elizabeth No Last Name kid who was supposed to be dead. When she saw me her eyes, which were a weird, glowing red, widened and then she made an odd shrieking sound before whirling around and disappearing with inhuman speed into the night.
At the same instant, Nala arched her back and hissed with such ferocity that her little body shook.
'It's okay! It's okay!' I said over and over, trying to calm the cat and me. Both of us were shaking and Nala was still growling low in her throat. 'It couldn't have been a ghost. It couldn't have been. It was just…just…a weird kid. I probably scared her and she—'
'Zoey! Zoey! Is that you?'
I jumped and almost fell off the wall. It was too much for Nala. She gave another tremendous hiss and leaped neatly from my lap to the ground. Completely and utterly freaked out, I grabbed the branch for balance and squinted out into the night.
'Who—who is it?' I called over the pounding of my heart. Then I was blinded by the beams of two flashlights aimed directly at me.
'Of course it's her! Like I couldn't recognize my own best friend's voice? Jeesh, she hasn't been gone that long!'
'Kayla?' I said, trying to shield my eyes from the glare of the flashlights with my hand, which was shaking like crazy.
'Well, I told you we'd find her,' a guy's voice said. 'You always want to give up too soon.'
'Heath?' Maybe I was dreaming.
'Yep! Whoo-hoo! We found ya, baby!' Heath yelled, and even in the awful flashlight glare I could see him hurl himself at the wall and then start to scramble up like a tall, blond, football-playing monkey.
Incredibly relieved it was him and not a boogie monster, I called down to him, 'Heath! Be careful. If you fall you're going to break something.' Well, unless he landed on his head—then he'd probably be okay.
'Not me!' he said, pulling himself up and over so that he was sitting beside me, straddling the wall. 'Hey, Zoey, check it out—look at me; I'm king of the world!' He yelled, throwing out his arms, grinning like a total fool, and breathing alcohol-scented air all over me.
No wonder I'd refused to go out with him.
'Okay, there's no need to forever make fun of my unfortunate ex-infatuation with Leonardo!' I glared at him, feeling more like myself than I had in hours. 'Actually, it's kinda like my unfortunate ex-infatuation with you. Only it didn't last as long, and you didn't make a bunch of cheesy but cool movies.'
'Hey, you're not still mad about Dustin and Drew are you? Forget them! They're retards.' Heath said, giving me his puppy-dog look, which used to be really cute when he was in eighth grade. Too bad the cuteness had stopped working for him about two years ago. 'And, anyway, we came all the way over here to bust you out.'
'What?' I shook my head and squinted at him. 'Wait. Turn those flashlights off. They're killing my eyes.'
'If we turn them off we can't see,' Heath said.
'Fine. Then turn them away. Uh, point them out there or something,' I gestured out away from the school (and me). Heath turned the beam of the one he'd been clutching out into the night, and so did Kayla. I was able to drop my hand, which I was pleased to see had quit shaking, and stop squinting. Heath's eyes widened when he saw my Mark.
'Check it out! It's colored in now. Wow! It's like…like…on TV or something.'
Well, it was nice to see that some things never change. Heath was still Heath—cute, but not the brightest Crayola in the pack.
'Hey! What about me? I'm here too, ya know!' Kayla called. 'Someone help me get up there, but be careful. Let me put my new purse down. Oh, and I better take off these shoes. Zoey, you would not believe the sale you missed yesterday at Bakers. All of their summer shoes totally on closeout. I mean, serious closeout. Seventy percent off. I got five pairs for….'
'Help her up,' I told Heath. 'Now. It's the only way she'll stop talking.'
Yep. Some things just didn't change.
Heath scooted around till he was on his belly, and then leaned down to offer his hands to Kayla. Giggling, she grabbed them and let him haul her up on top of the wall with us. And it was while she was giggling and he was hauling that I saw it—the unmistakable way Kayla grinned and giggled and blushed at Heath. I knew it as well as I knew I would never be a mathematician. Kayla liked Heath. Okay, not liked. She liked Heath.
Suddenly Heath's guilty comment about messing around on me at the party I'd missed made perfect sense.
'So how's Jared?' I asked abruptly, totally stopping K-babble's giggles.
'Okay, I guess,' she said without meeting my eyes.
'You guess?'
She moved her shoulders and I saw that under her very cute leather jacket she was wearing the tiny little cream lace cami we used to call the Boob Shirt, because not only did it show a lot of cleavage, but it was the color of skin, so it looked like it was showing even more than it actually was.
'I dunno. We haven't really talked much the past couple days or so.'
She still wouldn't look at me, but she did glance at Heath, who looked clueless—but that was really his only look. So my best friend was going after my boyfriend. Now that pissed me off, and for a second I wished it wasn't such a nice warm night. I wished it was cold and Kayla would freeze her over-developed boobies right off.
From the north the wind whipped around us suddenly, viciously, bringing an almost frightening chill.
Trying not to look obvious, Kayla pulled her jacket closed and giggled again, this time nervously instead of flirtatiously, and I got another big whiff of beer, and something else. Something that had been so recently imprinted into my senses that I was surprised I hadn't smelled it right away.
'Kayla you've been drinking and smoking?'
She shivered and blinked at me like a very slow rabbit. 'Just a couple. Beers, I mean. And, well, um, Heath had one little bitty joint and I was really, really scared to come here, so I just had a couple tiny hits off it.'
'She needed some fortification,' Heath said, but he's never been good with words over two syllables, so it sounded like fort-fi-ka-shun.
'Since when have you started smoking pot?' I asked Heath.
He grinned. 'It's no big deal, Zo. I just have a joint once in a while. They're safer than cigarettes.'
I really hated it when he called me Zo.
'Heath,' I tried to sound patient. 'They are not safer than cigarettes, and even if they are that's not saying much. Cigarettes are disgusting and they kill you. And, seriously, the biggest losers at school smoke pot. Besides the fact that you really can not afford to kill any more brain cells.' I almost added 'or sperms,' but I didn't want to go there. Heath would definitely get the wrong idea if I made a reference to his man parts.
'Nu uh,' Kayla said.
'What Kayla?'
She was still clutching her jacket against the chill. Her eyes had changed from pitiful rabbit to sly, tail-twitchy cat. I recognized the change. She did it constantly with people she didn't consider part of her girlfriend group. It used to drive me crazy and I would yell at her and tell her she shouldn't be so mean. Now she was turning that crap on me?
'I said nu uh because not just losers smoke—at least not just once in a while. You know those two really hot running backs who play for Union, Chris Ford and Brad Higeons? I saw them at Katie's party the other night. They smoke.'
'Hey, they're not that hot,' Heath said.
Kayla ignored him and kept talking. 'And Morgan smokes sometimes.'
'Morgan, as in Morgie who's a Tigette?' Yes, I was pissed at K, but good gossip is good gossip.
'Yeah. She also just got her tongue and her'—K broke off and mouthed the word 'clit'—'pierced. Can you imagine how much that must have hurt?'
'What? What did she get pierced?' Heath said.
'Nothing,' K and I said together, for a moment sounding eerily like the best friends we used to be.
'Kayla, you're not staying on subject. Again. The Union football players have always been drug-happy. Hello! Please recall their steroid use, which is why it took sixteen years for us to beat them.'
'Go, Tigers! Yeah, we kicked Union's ass!' Heath said. I rolled my eyes at him.
