“Oh, nothing,” I said with a shrug, my heartbeat pounding in my temples.
“Reed--”
“Josh,” I replied.
Suddenly, understanding lit his eyes. 'You can't tell me.“ He smirked, trying to make light. ”Or you could tell me, but then you'd have to kill me."
I lifted both trays awkwardly from the slide rails and balanced them on my palms. “Don't worry about it,” I told him.
33
“Well, if it's bad you could always spit in their coffee,” he said.
I looked down at the steaming mugs on one of the trays. Damn that would be nice. “Uh, no,” I said.
“Well, just ... be careful,” he said. “I mean, don't let them make you do anything, you know--”
Crazy? Dangerous? Stupid? Done, done, and done.
“I won't.” I paused as one of the coffee mugs teetered.
“Here. Let me help you,” Josh offered, reaching for the heavier of the trays.
“Thanks, but I--”
I glanced up at our table and instantly everything inside of me dropped. Walt Whittaker, big as a mountain on a clear day, sat at the end of the table. Flashes hit me like machine-?gun fire to the skull.
My hands on his chest. Warm brown eyes. A handkerchief. Thick arms. Rough lips. Tongue, tongue, tongue. And--ow. A twinge in my chest.
Holy crap. Had I let that person feel me up?
“Hey! Watch it!” Josh said.
He grabbed the tray seconds before it went over. One of the doughnuts slid off the tray and plopped, icing side down, onto the floor.
“I gotta go,” I told him. Then I dropped the second tray on the nearest table and was out of there for my second dry heave of the day.
34
JUDGMENT DAY
I arrived for morning services seconds before the doors closed. All over the chapel, people were engaged in intense, hushed, conversation, and I heard Thomas's name more than once. Dozens of eyes followed my progress up the aisle and the whispering intensified in my wake. Apparently, Thomas's disappearance had become the topic of the moment, and since he wasn't here to gawk at, it seemed I had been nominated for the job. The girlfriend. The one left behind. She who must be watched.
Suddenly I was glad that I'd had to heave and miss breakfast. If I'd stayed in the cafeteria, I might have been mobbed. At least here, no one could approach me. For the moment, I could regroup.
Ducking my head, I slid into a small space at the end of one of the sophomore pews, next to my least favorite person at Easton, Missy Thurber. Having spent the rest of the breakfast period sitting in the infirmary sipping apple juice, I was feeling just slightly more like myself. Then Missy started sniffing elaborately through her
35
tunnel-?like nostrils, sampling the air. She leaned toward me, sniffed again, and groaned.
“Ugh! Where did you sleep last night?” she asked, pinching her nose. “In the landscaper's shed?”
I flushed scarlet as she got up, stepped over my former roommate, Constance Talbot, and forced her to slide over next to me.
“Hey,” Constance whispered uncertainly. I hadn't seen much of her since I had deserted her for Billings two days earlier. Her curly red hair was twisted into two long braids. She already looked young for her age with her freckles and roundish face. Now she looked twelve. “How's everything?” she asked.
“Fine.”