I recognized one of the people, I realized. Officer Sykes, his shades tucked into his shirt pocket, gave me the granite non-expression I’d come to know so well.
The other person I’d seen around campus. She was a round lady with a cute face and what looked to be an impeccable black suit with an A-line skirt. Her very curly brown hair was half-up and half-down, the top part held up by an intricate silver comb. When she turned to me, she offered me a huge smile and got out of her chair. She held out a hand, and I gave it an awkward shake. Her firm grip crushed mine, and when I leaned back against the wall, I massaged my fingers back to life.
“I’m Marian Crane,” she said, returning to her seat.
“Uh, hello.”
“You’re Lucy Day?” She said, and though her tone remained light, she looked me up and down like she'd expected me to be taller or something.
“That’s me.”
Principal Ortiz spoke up finally.
“Sorry to pull you out of your class, Lucy, but we heard about Friday night and we just have a couple of hoops to jump through.”
I smiled at that. He seemed to pick up on it, and he went on with a light tone.
“How are you feeling?”
I shrugged, “Fine. My head’s a little sore. But I’m okay, if that’s what you mean.”
He nodded and leaned back in his chair.
“That’s great, Lucy. Well, we’re all happy to hear that you’re safe and well. Officer Sykes is here to have you fill out a full police report, if you don’t mind.”
“Nope,” I said, and that wasn’t a lie. Though I hadn’t thought about it much, I did wish those guys would get caught. The only part of me that didn’t was the part that still knew the truth. It was shrinking by the minute it seemed. “Don’t mind.”
“Good, good,” Principal Ortiz said. “And Ms. Crane is one of our guidance counselors.”
And there we are. I nodded and tried to teleport to another country. No luck.
“It’s part of our policy to counsel any of our students who have been assaulted, involved in, or witnessed crime, or violence,” Ms. Crane said, her crisp voice belying little emotion. “You’ll be seeing me for the next couple weeks. Just to be safe, of course.”
I nodded again. My lips tightened. They phrased it like
policy
and
if you don’t mind
and all that, but I knew that none of this was voluntary. When I expressed doubts about missing English so often, they assured me that my
daily
trips to the counseling office would fall on a different class period every day.
Every. Day.
How nice of them. As they talked, I inspected the floor for escape hatches.
“I know this may seem silly,” Principal Ortiz said. “But I think it’s best to make sure everything is fine. Just a check under the hood is all.”
Officer Sykes took me into a conference room and laid out the police report papers in a perfect little arc in front of me. He explained every line, every box, and what was required of me to fill them out. He didn’t look at me until I’d finished.
I filled out the reports in my neatest handwriting, which is sort of like a wolverine doing his best knitting. In that particular aspect, I was more Dad than Mom—typical, almost mannish serial killer loops with a maniacal slant. I was a talker, not a scribbler. At least, that’s how I explained eleven years’ worth of miserable penmanship grades.
My story hadn’t changed, and I wrote it down the same. When I handed it back to him, he shuffled the papers together and slipped them into a notebook tucked under his arm,
all business
. That’s why when he reached out and squeezed my shoulder, I nearly jumped out of my boots.
“Lucy?”
“Yeah?”
His face changed—it became briefly human. Here comes the pity.
“I’m not supposed to tell you this,” Sykes said. “But we found the gun.”
Sinking. Blackness swam at the edge of my eyes, and for one horrific moment I was sure I was going to faint. Not good. Not good. I took a few long, deep, hopefully clandestine breaths to steady myself.
“You did?”
Sykes nodded, “It wasn’t far from where you reported waking up. You didn’t see it?”
“I…I didn’t really look for it,” I said. “I felt pretty weird when I woke up.”
“I believe it,” he said, and took his hand off my shoulder. He even managed a tiny, efficient Sykes-like smile, “Have a good one, Lucy Day.”
“I’ll see you around, Sykes.”
“I hope not,” Sykes said.
I laughed and scooted out into the reception area. Right as I crossed the threshold I noticed plump little Ms. Crane sitting on one of the chairs just outside the conference room. My shoulders slumped.
“We start today, don’t we?” I breathed.
Ms. Crane smiled and stood up. I followed her to her office with all the Sykes-inspired goodwill leaking out of me. By the time I sat down in her oddly colorless office, it had hemorrhaged completely. She shuffled through a stack of papers on her desk before standing up, shutting her office door, and dropping back into her cushy-looking leather chair.
She gave me a tight little smile.
“Tell me about yourself, Lucy.”
I slumped in my chair and started in.
I’d been all crossed-arms and pinched face when she started, like I was waiting for a wave to crash me into. For the hammer to fall. Crane kept it light, though. Asked about my parents, what they did, how often I saw them. Was she trying to pin it on them? Runaway, product of a broken home? She was too damn pleasant and mild and unassuming to be mad at, though. It was like being interviewed by Mundane-Crap Magazine.
The session passed faster than I thought it would. The intro with the principal and the time with Sykes had taken a chunk already, and I just began describing my home situation when the bell rang. She shook my hand and wished me a good day. I left the office in a slightly better mood—I hadn’t expected everyone to be so nice. Going to the principal’s office rarely foreshadowed a good day. I mean, so I’d read in books.
I didn’t think of myself as a goody two-shoes—I’d managed plenty of mischief in my day. I guess the only difference between me and the problem kids was that I knew how to avoid getting caught.
Art passed by in a blur—both Wanda and I were way too behind in our fruit bowl projects to be distracted by any talk. I was grateful, honestly—I wanted, more than anything, for everything to go back to normal. I was tired of being congratulated or pitied or fawned over or hugged.
Wanda and I headed toward our lunch spot after class, chatting about our art projects and the weather. I spotted Zack sitting on a stone table at the edge of the quad, surrounded by his usual friends. His hair wasn’t done, I realized—his deep chestnut hair, normally bed-head mussed, lay rounded and out-of-the-shower frizzy across his skull. He wore a brown t-shirt and a pair of washed out jeans. He wasn’t participating in whatever group conversation was making Benny rave.
His eyes were locked on the table in front of him—he fiddled with a bag of Cheetos without opening them.
I touched Wanda’s elbow and nodded toward Zack. She gave me a knowing look and veered off toward our usual group. I sucked in a deep breath. Why was I so nervous about seeing him again after our amazing-turned-catastrophic-turned-manhunt date?
As soon as I was in earshot, Zack’s entire table dropped into unrelenting silence. Another deep breath.
Calm down, Lucy.
Zack looked up at me last. When he did, I gestured toward the ring of grass just outside the quad. He gave me his Zack poker face and stepped over the low stone wall.
I slid over the tiny wall after him, making sure to put my back to his friends—I didn’t need the worry of having to read his friends’ expressions, too. Zack looked down at me with those intense blue eyes.
“Zack,” I said. “I don’t know what to say.”
Zack stuck his hands into his pockets, “You didn’t answer my calls.”
My heart leaped into my throat. He was angry. The set of his shoulders, his tensed arms. He stood evenly between both feet, motionless. A statue.
I recoiled. Of everything, I hadn’t expected anger.
“I’m sorry,” I said again. “I didn’t really talk to anyone.”
“Mmmhmm,” Zack said.
“What?”
“You didn’t talk to Morgan? Wanda?”
“No,” I said.
“Why?”
“I just… I didn’t.” I shrugged. “I didn’t know what to say. I texted you.”
Zack blew out a stream of air. “You sent everyone that text.”
I bounced a tight fist in my other hand. I followed every movement, every tremor, and turn of Zack’s body. He kept turning away from me, I noticed, offering me only one side of him.
“What is it?”
“I…we looked everywhere for you.”
“I know,” I said. My cheeks burned. “I’m sorry. I mean, thank you. I don’t know. This is new for me.”
“Me too,” Zack said. He crossed his arms over his chest, “I just… Why didn’t you call me?”
“I didn’t call any—”
“Forget it,” Zack said, trying to offer a wan smile. It was fake, grotesque even.
“Stop it,” I said. “I’m sorry, okay. This is new for me. Being on Unsolved Mysteries isn’t my idea of a great weekend.”
Zack offered a genuine smile this time, even if it just barely escaped his lips.
“Can we start over?”
My heart sank when he said it. What did that mean? All over? My eyes burned, and I growled silently in the dark reaches of my mind—I couldn’t cry.
Stop it. Just stop it, you stupid girl
. My fists balled into little white fists, but my voice stumbled over the hitch in my breath.
Please stop. Just don’t cry.
“O-okay,” I said, and nodded. When I dipped my head down on the nod, I made sure my curly mane of black hair curtained around my face. Hiding it as best as I could, hunkering back into it like a hood, “Just. Okay. All right.”
I knew I shouldn’t have let Zack back into my thoughts. Shouldn’t have hoped that the smartest, cutest, most perfect guy would want someone like me. I was the weird girl who disappears during a date and shows up on a milk carton. I was Lucy Day, Damsel-in-Distress. Victim. Loser.
My shoulders bowed, and I nodded at a question unasked. I turned to go.
“W-wait!” He said, and grabbed my shoulder. I snapped back toward him.
“Zack…”
“I meant another date. Start over another date.”
My ears went deaf. The hollow rush of blood wooshed through my head. My lips felt numb. It sounded like I said “What?” but I couldn’t be sure behind the mile of cotton jammed so suddenly into my head.
“Another date?” he asked. “One preferably without a rescue team.”
Somehow, my lips remembered how to smile. I’d gone drunk at the wheel, but someone on board still had a hand on the rudder.
“U-unless that’s what you’re into,” Zack said. “Because I have a cousin who’s a lifeguard. We can go to the beach, pick fights with sharks, slap around the whales. It might be fun.”
I laughed, and the grin he flashed made my brain melt. I found myself dangerously close to a swoon again—I couldn’t believe it. Two swoons within the same week. One more and I had to pack it in and become a full-time romance novel cliché.
“Well?”
“Yes!” I said. “I mean. Well, uh. Sure. That’s cool.”
I went to stick my hands nonchalantly in my pockets before I realized I was wearing a skirt. I went for the cardigan, but it was too high up, and I ended up look like an old man trying to pull up his incredibly high pants. Zack laughed.
“Did I mention how good you look today?”
I beamed. I couldn’t help it.
“Nope,” I said. “I don’t remember anything like that.”
“I’ll tell you in Spanish, then,” Zack said.
“Cool,” I said, and backed away slowly. “Start working on a date idea.”
He frowned, “What about the shark thing?”
“Shark date is the third date,” I said. “I’m waiting.”
Zack nodded and his mouth turned into his crooked grin. I turned and fled back to my group with as little speed as I could manage. I didn’t quite get the lazy stroll I was gunning for, but I accomplished something slightly under power-walk.
When I get back to the group, the girls were filled with dynamite. All of them bounced on their seats, pained faces screaming for details. I told them what happened, and they erupted in an atom bomb of girlish glee. Frankly, I found the whole thing disgusting. Or, I would have, if I hadn’t been jumping up and down like an idiot along with them.
After pocketing the cash my mom loaned me for lunch, only marginally aware that not eating for three days was a strange thing, I headed to Spanish. I was packed with tightened springs—I was made of light. I thought of Zack, who liked me. No maybes, no faint hopes. No dreaded freshman
Weirdness
. He liked me. He didn’t want to be with Morgan, he didn’t want to go on a date with a cheerleader, or even Becca Darling, the brainy-but-sexy phenomenon in all of Zack’s honors classes.
Me
. My heart felt like a hot coal in my chest.
Not everywhere else though, I noted as I made my way to Spanish. I hadn’t noticed it until then, but I was freezing. My legs felt like they had been dunked in ice. I blamed it on the skirt—I’d worn it as a universal go-to-hell to my own fear, but it was thin and the air was turning chilly. This wasn’t even California cold, the wussy cold that gripped me often. I felt like I’d eaten a bucket of ice cream and been dumped into a meat locker with the Abominable Snowman.
I pulled my cardigan around me, which did next to nothing against the chill.
The incredible fluffy lightness caused by thoughts of Zack made Spanish zip by. He sat behind me, as usual, but today we didn’t sit and pretend like the other didn’t exist. We’d taken Spanish One together freshman year, and had spent most of those days flirting, passing notes, and engaged in the standard
Weirdness
sports. This year had been awful. Awful until today, anyway.
We spoke quietly to each other during lulls in the class. Mr. Halloway—
Seńor
Halloway, as he insisted we call him—even yelled at me at one point to quiet down. Both of us disappeared back into our verb conjugation worksheet, and I didn’t look up until a tiny square of ripped-off notebook paper floated onto my desk. I turned it over to see the small neat blue handwriting I knew to be Zack’s.