Bad Hair Day (8 page)

Aaron shrugged uncomfortably. “Not so much. Kate’s the genius. She’s much more impressive than me. Smart. Sweet. I’m lucky to have her.”

I guess I didn’t need to kick him after all. Our eyes met over the table, and I felt all warm and fuzzy. It would have been a really nice moment if Elle had shut her stupid yap.

“Yeah, I wish I had a smart sister,” she said. “I mean, it would be so cool, because we could study together and I could borrow her notes and things like that. And it would be so much fun to have a twin. Have you guys ever pretended to be each other?”

I really hoped she was kidding, but somehow I was sure she wasn’t. I wanted to laugh, or maybe shake her head really hard to see if it rattled. But I contented myself with smirking in Rocky’s direction. Unfortunately, she was way too engrossed in her iPhone to notice. Texting Bryan, probably.

The amusement faded pretty fast, mostly because Elle put her head on Aaron’s shoulder. He looked at me with a panicked expression, and I was so done. I understood his ambition. Heck, I shared it. And if that meant he felt like his hands were tied with regard to putting Elle in her place, I’d just have to be the bad guy.

“I don’t think you get it.” I crossed my arms and glared at her. “Aaron is my boyfriend.”

“Yeah, right.” She laughed so hard she snorted.

This got Rocky’s attention; she slammed her hand on the table so hard that the silverware rattled. “Not a joke!”

Our waitress picked that moment to return with those stupid shorts barely covering her butt, a tray full of food, and a concerned look on her face. Elle stalked off toward the bathrooms and boy, was I going to miss her. I asked the waitress to box up her stupid salad plate.

“Is she okay?” asked the waitress.

“Oh yeah.” I nodded reassuringly. “She’s got cephaloproctitis and she forgot her medicine. That’s all.”

Her eyes widened as she placed my plate of greasy-spoon goodness on the table. After she left, Rocky said, “Cephaloprowhatsis?”

“
Cephalo
means ‘head’ and proctitis means ‘up the butt.’ Essentially.”

Aaron laughed so hard that he choked. And the world was right again.

I’d like to say everything went smoothly after that, but it didn’t. Elle returned to the table more obnoxious than ever. Throughout
the rest of dinner, she went so overboard with the hair tossing and back arching that I would have said she had Tourette’s if I didn’t know better. After she threw a fit about the to-go box, she kept trying to feed Aaron bits from it despite the fact that cottage cheese made him break out in hives. And she let out this hyena laugh every time he said something, even if it wasn’t remotely funny.

The check couldn’t come quickly enough. I stood up about a half second after the waitress took our money. I couldn’t wait to get rid of Elle so I could tell Rocky and Aaron all about the murder. In all the relationship-related excitement, I was embarrassed to admit that I’d totally forgotten.

But Elle wasn’t as eager to go home as I was. “Hey, handsome?” she cooed to Aaron. “Can you give me a ride home?”

E
lle yapped all the way out to the Legs and Eggs parking lot, and my earmuffs did nothing to stifle the noise. The walk outside only took two minutes, but it felt like an eternity.

“My parents will flip if I don’t get home soon,” she said, sticking her lower lip out so far that I wanted to get a stapler and fasten that puppy back in place. “And my car is in the shop. I mean, how hard is it to fix a tire rim? So annoying.”

“No prob,” Aaron said. “Friends don’t abandon each other in parking lots. I’ll take you home. Kate, do you want to come?”

“Where do you live?” I asked Elle.

She looked down her nose at me. “Ottawa Pointe.”

Crap. Ottawa Pointe was almost a half hour away. I couldn’t handle thirty minutes more of Elle. Not without earplugs. Or tranquilizers. And I was determined not to let her get to me. She
wasn’t going to make me into the jealous girlfriend, no matter how hard she tried.

“Nah. I think I’ll go with Rocky.”

“Are you sure?” he asked. “I was hoping we could hang out later.”

“You could drop her off and come over afterward. If you want?”

“I’d like that,” he said.

He cupped my cheek in one hand and kissed me. It was a relatively chaste, public kind of kiss, but my knees still went a little shaky. Aaron had that effect on me, even after all this time.

And as an added bonus, it made Elle all red-faced and furious.

They left. It took two steps before Elle plastered herself to Aaron’s side. He tried to dodge her, but she was persistent. By the time they’d made it to his car, they were practically sharing his jeans. If this kept up much longer, she would have to start paying rent. If I didn’t kill her first.

Rocky elbowed me in the side. “You should have gone with them.”

I watched them drive off, Elle babbling like an idiot while Aaron stared stone-faced at the road.

“Believe me, it was tempting. But if I can’t trust my boyfriend, we shouldn’t be dating, right?”

“You’re a much better person than me,” she said. “I spent most of that meal trying to figure out where to kick Bryan first. I was going to go with the testicles, but that’s so cliché, don’t you think?”

I was about to reply when a long, drawn-out howl split the air. My head turned to follow the sound; it had come from somewhere behind the building.

“What was that?” Rocky huddled close to me like I might offer some protection.

“A dog or a wolf, maybe?” I rubbed my arms; they’d erupted into gooseflesh. “The only way I can tell for sure is if I get close enough to start sneezing. Unless it’s one of those hypoallergenic dogs like Armstrong, in which case I’m no help whatsoever.”

“Funny. So you want to get going?”

“Sure.”

But I found myself dragging my feet on the way to her car. Something seemed off, a niggling feeling that I couldn’t shake. The parking lot was overflowing with minivans and sedans. Somebody had parked an SUV illegally in the handicapped spot, but I was pretty sure that wasn’t what was bothering me. I couldn’t see anybody, and when I smelled the air, all I got was the cold tang of impending snow.

“What’s up?” asked Rocky.

“I dunno,” I whispered. “Shhh.”

I stuffed my freezing hands in the pockets of my coat and wandered out into the middle of the parking lot, trying to figure out what had me so spooked. It felt like my whole body was one big goose bump now, and my hands were shaking with adrenaline. I’d learned to trust those instincts before. The worst thing that could happen was that I’d look dumb, right?

Then I saw a dark splatter on the ground near a white SUV
parked at the back end of the lot near the Dumpsters. Normally, random muck didn’t exactly command my attention, but this did. The dark liquid glinted in the dim light.

I didn’t need to touch it to figure out what it was. As soon as I got close, I could smell the blood. There was another smear on the back of a pickup. Apparently, my poor eyesight didn’t apply to bloodstains, or maybe the adrenaline rush had enhanced my visual acuity.

Something in the overgrown lot behind the restaurant clanged loudly.

“Meet me around back!” I yelled, pointing to the right. “We’ll cut it off.”

Rocky took off like this was an Olympic trial. I hiked my backpack more securely onto my shoulders and circled the building to the left. We’d catch whatever was back there. And do something constructive with it that I hadn’t thought of yet.

Being a total med geek had its advantages. My pack was stuffed with medical paraphernalia just in case I happened to run across a random emergency.

“Is someone hurt?” I yelled. It came out as more of a gasp than a yell—I wasn’t exactly a track star. It didn’t surprise me when no one answered. I knew from the amount of blood on the ground that this was a serious injury. The victim most likely was unconscious. You don’t spot bloodstains from a skinned knee at a hundred meters. If you do, you’re a freak. I was a geek; that was totally different.

I stopped at the chain-link fence bordering the back of the
lot. The lot was crammed with junk—snow-speckled boxes and empty pallets competed for space with beer cans and random bits of broken furniture. To make matters worse, it was much more difficult to see back here. The roof of the restaurant blocked all the lights, and we were in that gray borderland between dusk and full night.

The pavement crunched beneath my shoes as I twisted on the balls of my feet, searching for some sound or smell that would lead me to the person—or thing—that was bleeding. Nothing.

There was another thunderous clatter from the far end of the lot. It sounded like someone skydiving onto a trash can. But I still couldn’t see anything. The lot was so overgrown that you could have hidden a freaking tank in there and no one would have noticed.

To go around the fence would waste precious seconds. I sprinted right up the back of a pickup truck parked next to it, setting off the alarm. The monotonous wah-wah noise made my teeth vibrate. Good; maybe it would attract some assistance. Something told me I was going to need it.

I climbed onto the cab and vaulted the fence before I had a chance to rethink. The fence wasn’t particularly high, but anything requiring physical skill made me nervous by default. My ankle twisted a little on the landing, but otherwise, the Jumping Off Random Objects fairies were looking out for me. I started puffing like an asthmatic in a balloon factory, but I ran on, my head whipping from side to side, looking for blood spatter in the piles of cast-off bottles and half-rotten pallets.

Finally, I saw it. All the way at the back of the lot was a slowly rolling trash can, and then I could make out a crumpled form against the chain-link fence. The ground shimmered; someone lay sprawled there in a big black pool of goop. It could only be blood, and my heart sank when I saw how much there was.

That was nothing compared to how I felt when I saw that the victim was Rocky’s boyfriend, Bryan.

Rocky ran through the gate with my backpack slung over her shoulder. She’d be here in seconds. I didn’t want her to see him like this, but I couldn’t save him alone.

“I need you to stay calm,” I called over to her. She stopped a few feet away, a look of horror on her face. Even in the dim light, even with his face turned away, she knew. “You deserve to fall apart right now, but I need you to help me. Can you do it?”

The gravel piffed as she flung the backpack in my direction. “I’ll call 911.” Her voice wobbled, but she whipped out her cell and started dialing. I’d just have to trust that she could tell them what they needed to know.

I turned back to Bryan. There was just enough light left for me to see. I needed to staunch the blood flow, although by the size of this pool, I knew it was probably too late. He’d be lucky if he escaped this without brain damage. Heck, he’d be lucky if he didn’t die.

There was so much blood. I tore open a thick gauze pad to staunch the wound. But I couldn’t find one.

I sat back on my heels for a second; that was how shocked I
was. Maybe the blood wasn’t his? But if that was true, why was he unconscious?

Idiot. I smacked myself on the forehead; I couldn’t afford to sit here theorizing while there could be internal damage. I leaned over to check his respiration. His chest shuddered in a pained, almost convulsive movement.

Something wasn’t right. I flipped my hair over my shoulder and put my ear to his mouth but didn’t hear any air going in. And now that I knew what to look for, I could see the red splotches slowly surfacing on his neck under the streaks of blood. Purpura. Normally, the opportunity to see some purpura up close and personal would make me go all geeky, but right now it just made me want to throw up, because I knew what it meant.

His windpipe was smashed.

I fumbled for the backpack. He didn’t have much time before he suffocated; I needed gloves and I needed them now. But my hands were shaking so hard that I couldn’t open the zipper. Too bad Elle wasn’t here. I bet she was an expert at unzipping things.

Screw it. I put my bare hands on his gore-smeared face, even though I knew I was exposing myself to a big pool of potential infection. I refused to let Bryan die because I was too busy worrying about myself. Then I gently levered his jaw forward even though I knew, I just knew it wasn’t going to open the airway. But I needed to try everything before I cut him.

Rocky fell to her knees beside me. “The ambulance will be here in a few,” she said. “Oh my god, Bryan?” She shook his shoulder, tears dripping off the end of her nose. “Baby, can you hear me?”

“He’s suffocating,” I said. “Open my bag.”

Tactless, I knew, but I was focused on the fact that I was about to perform minor surgery on one of my friends in the middle of a dimly lit, junk-strewn gravel lot. It didn’t even register that I’d stuck my foot in it until I realized she wasn’t moving. She just sat there with her mouth hanging open, staring at Bryan like he might miraculously heal himself.

So I shook her, just hard enough to get her attention. My hands left bloody prints on her shoulders, and she peeped indignantly. Literally peeped.