Brooks let out a light laugh. “It’s okay.”
I could tell she didn’t know what else to say. Was it okay? How could she stand there looking so casual, like she was used to this sort of chaos? And, more important, why was she standing there? How the heck had she found me?
“We’re going to talk outside,” I finally said to Mom.
She shook her head and smiled again, and I knew behind that plastered grin was a big fat lecture about my getting detention. So the school had already called her. Crap! “Another day,” she said to me. Then to Brooks: “Zane has a few chores. I’m sure you understand. Maybe you can come back some other time?”
“Mom…” I started to argue, but then her gaze hardened. The conversation was over.
I walked Brooks out to say good-bye. That’s when I noticed she didn’t have a bike parked outside. The mesa was a few miles from town, so how’d she get to my house?
“Meet me here tomorrow,” Brooks said. “After school. Time’s running out.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “And oh, before you go, tell me… why did you draw that demon on your folder?”
“Just be here,” she said. Then she started running down the bumpy dirt road. I stayed on the porch, watching her long brown hair bounce on her back as she pounded the earth with those combat boots. I didn’t take my eyes off her, and as the darkness swallowed the last of the light, she vanished like she’d never been there at all.
Mom let Hondo have it. The guys left. Hondo sulked, and I got dish duty for the rest of my life. But Mom never stayed mad, no matter what I did, so later that night she came into my room and asked about the kid I’d nailed with my cane.
“Why’d you do it?”
I rubbed Rosie behind the ears, wishing I could just forget the whole thing. “He tripped me.”
“And you threw your cane at him.”
“Pretty much.”
Mom nodded thoughtfully, as if she totally understood that I had to take a stand or end up with a fat lip like last time. “And the girl?”
“Just met her today. At school.”
“I’m so happy to see you making friends,” Mom said. “She seems nice, and she’s very pretty.”
My cheeks got hot.
Mom patted Rosie on the head. “No more breaking the rules, Zane. You could lose your scholarship.”
Maybe that would be a good thing, I thought. Except that Mom had worked so hard to get me into that school, and I didn’t want to disappoint her.
She held her hand out. “Deal?”
We shook on it. “Deal.”
By the next day, the story about the plane crash had made the front page of the local paper. They even printed my name as the eyewitness. Kids on the bus asked me if it was another alien invasion like at Roswell, or if there were any blood or guts. I just shook my head, trying not to think about it. But you know what? I liked getting attention for something other than my limp.
At school I looked for Brooks everywhere—in the halls, the lunchroom, the gym. I even poked my head into the girls’ bathroom and called her name. That earned me a wad of wet TP in the face. She was nowhere to be found. So I went into the front office and asked the secretary what had happened to the girl who was in there yesterday.
She looked up from her computer and blinked, annoyed that I’d interrupted her. “Girl?”
“Her name’s Brooks. She was here to see Baumgarten.”
“Father Baumgarten.” The secretary pressed her skinny lips together and focused back on her computer screen. “We don’t have a Brooks at this school.”
I leaned over the counter, sure she was wrong. If she’d just give me her attention…
“Can you please double-check?” I asked as nicely as I could. I even smiled. I remembered my promise to my mom. No breaking the rules. No getting into trouble. Did pestering the school staff count?
“Look, I know every student in this school,” the lady said, “and there is no one here named Brooks.”