The Wish (Nightmare Hall) (12 page)

She could swear, as she turned away, that The Wizard’s lips had curved upward another inch.

“Alex?” Marty turned her toward him and looked down into her face. “What’s going on? You’ve been acting really off the wall lately.”

“Look who’s talking,” she retorted. “You haven’t exactly been Mr. Congeniality.”

“You’re right. It’s that speech. For soc. Just can’t get it right. I know what I want to say, but I can’t put the words together right. You helped a lot with the early draft, but now I’m stuck on the last part, and it’s due Monday. I’ll be working on it all weekend.”

Any other time, she might have been sympathetic. But she couldn’t worry about Marty’s speech now. Besides, he’d ace it. He liked talking, especially in front of a crowd. He’d be fine.

“Good luck,” was all she said as she led him to the booth commandeered by Gabe and Bennett.

When Kiki arrived a few minutes later, Alex almost didn’t recognize her. She was wearing a bright orange blouse, tucked into her jeans, and the jeans hung on her hips. Her cheekbones jutted out sharply. But instead of looking beautiful, as Alex had anticipated, Kiki looked tired and haggard. There were dark circles around her eyes and a sullen look about her.

They found out why immediately. “I’ve been suspended from the soccer team,” she told them angrily. “Coach says I’m way under my weight.” Her upper lip curled disdainfully. “She says she’s afraid I’ll get hurt. Can you believe it? I’ve been playing soccer since I was ten and I’ve never had so much as a bruised knee cap. The woman is crazy!”

She slid into the booth. Alex couldn’t help noticing how little room she needed now.

“Well,” Bennett said calmly, “you
are
thinner. Maybe your coach is right. How come you lost so much? Thought you were just going to shed a few pounds.”

A look of bewilderment came over Kiki’s face. “Well, I meant to,” she said. “I guess it just felt so good to take off the excess, I got carried away. But I’m eating now.”

She ate more pizza than anyone else at the table.

When Kiki had first approached the table, Alex’s instinctive reaction had been, She’s sick. Kiki’s sick, and she doesn’t even know it. But now, watching her eat, she wondered if that could possibly be true. What kind of illness left a person with that kind of appetite? When
she
was sick, the last thing she felt like doing was eating.

“Too bad about soccer,” Marty told Kiki sympathetically. “I know what it feels like not to play a sport you love. It’s the worst. You’d do almost anything to get back in the game.”

Bennett and Gabe nodded vigorously.

Kiki nodded, too. But she didn’t stop eating. Alex tried to eat something, too. She hadn’t been eating enough lately. She didn’t want to end up looking like Kiki.

She couldn’t stop thinking about the fortune telling card: THE WHEELS ON THE BUS GO ROUND AND ROUND…The song began skittering around inside her head and refused to leave.

No one but the police knew about that terrifying bus ride. No one…

Well…there
was
one other person who knew.

She hadn’t paid for that card. She hadn’t deposited a coin. Someone could have put that card in the little cup earlier, before she got there. But…how would he have known that she was going to make a phone call? How could he have known that she’d be back there, by The Wizard?

Unless…her heart began to pound loudly in her chest…unless he was
there
! Watching her….

Alex shrank back against the seat. I really am crazy, she thought, breaking out in an icy sweat. Here I am, going to football games and eating at Vinnie’s, as if everything is normal, when I know…I
know
someone wants me dead. What’s wrong with me? I should be hiding in my room with the door locked, or hiring a bodyguard, or asking the police for protection.

“Alex,” Jenny was saying, “what’s the matter?”

“I have to go,” Alex said abruptly. “Marty, will you please take me home?”

“What’s wrong?” Kiki asked, wiping her mouth. “Are you sick? You look terrible.”

Look who’s talking, Alex thought but didn’t say. “Headache. Marty?” She could tell by the expression on his face that he wasn’t keen on leaving.

“If you don’t want to,” she told Marty, “I can take the shuttle.” But she knew she couldn’t. Could she ever take it again? Maybe, a thousand years from now. But not tonight.

“No, that’s okay. I’ll take you.” Marty slid out of the booth.

But when they got outside, Alex changed her mind about going back to campus. It was Saturday. No one would be in the dorm. It wasn’t a good idea to go back to an empty room in an empty dorm.

Alex felt the sting of tears pressing against her eyelids. This wasn’t fair at all. She hadn’t done anything wrong. Why did she have to be afraid?

Immediately ashamed, remembering how much worse things were for Julie and Kyle, she knew suddenly where she wanted to go.

“Will you take me to the hospital?” she asked when they were in the car.

“I thought you wanted to go home. What about your headache?”

“Marty, could you practice being a human being tonight? Just for this one night? I haven’t seen Julie enough lately, and I’d also like to find out how
your
best friend is, if you don’t mind.”

“Sorry,” he muttered, and started the car.

She hadn’t meant to be so snotty. After all, Marty had no idea what was going on. Maybe she should tell him about seeing Kyle thrown off that deck. Marty had a right to know that his best friend hadn’t tried to commit suicide.

But then, he already knew that. She’d heard him say it a dozen times. “Not Leavitt, not in a million years, he wouldn’t jump off a tower.” He was already positive about that. No need to tell him.

And if she told him about the murderous bus ride, he’d freak. Would he even believe her? He’d already said she’d been acting weird.

Alex knew that she probably would have told him if they’d been getting along better. But lately he seemed so uptight, so annoyed. Besides, if he’d paid more attention to her at the frat party, she probably never would have left, never would have hopped the shuttle….

She didn’t say another word until they got to the hospital. He didn’t, either.

But when they left the car and headed for the hospital entrance, he took her hand and said, “Alex, you’re right. Sorry I’ve been such a jerk lately. It’ll pass, I promise. As soon as I get that speech over with.”

“Right. Forget it. Sorry I bit your head off.”

While Marty went to check out Kyle’s condition, Alex visited Julie.

Julie was hurt that Jenny hadn’t been around much. “I know my folks are here now, and that’s nice,” she said. “But Jenny tells me stuff about school, and my parents can’t do that. And they’re so worried about what my face is going to look like, it gets real tense in here sometimes.”

“I think she’s in love,” Alex said. “With Bennett.”

Julie nodded. “I know. When she calls me, that’s all she talks about.” Her voice softened. “It’s like she’s having all the fun she missed in high school. I had it, but Jenny never did. It’s kind of weird that I had to get hurt for Jenny to have fun, don’t you think?”

Alex hadn’t thought of it that way. But then she remembered Jenny twirling in front of the mirror in Julie’s clothes, her hair curled, makeup on…To hide the odd sensation that image suddenly created, she said hastily, “I’m sure Jenny would take away the accident if she could.”

But, remembering the look on Jenny’s face when Bennett threw that pass, Alex wondered
how
sure she was about that.

Julie brightened then, and said, “Gabe was in this morning, before the game. And he said he’d like me to wear his gold football. You know, those little ones the guys got when they made the team?” Julie smiled, and for just a second, in spite of the roadmap of tape on her face and the stitches and bruises, Alex saw the old Julie. “It’s kind of like being engaged to be engaged to be engaged, right? It comes on a chain. I’ll wear it around my neck.”

Even as Alex hugged Julie, she was thinking, But Gabe told me he’d
lost
his football. He must have found it. That was fast.

Maybe mentioning it to him at the dance had given him the idea to hunt for it and give it to Julie.

She was still thinking about Gabe’s gold football when she arrived at the intensive care unit to meet Marty. And she thought about it when she looked through the glass window and saw Kyle still lying there, motionless. Marty had gone to grab a Coke from the machine before leaving the hospital, and when Alex’s eyes caught sight of the familiar brown envelope lying on the counter behind the nurse’s station, she looked around to see if anyone was watching.

She loved Gabe Russo. Everyone loved Gabe Russo. But that little gold football she’d found in the plant on the deck was the only clue she had to who had pushed Kyle over that wall. Gabe had told her he’d lost his football. Now, suddenly, he’d found it? He’d been right here in the hospital for quite a while, and still came in for therapy. Gabe would have known that Kyle wore his football around his neck, and that it would be in the envelope with the rest of his belongings. All he had to do was open it, as she had, and reach inside…

Gabe? No, not possible…

But if he had Kyle’s football, no one could accuse him of having lost his own up on the tower.

Hardly able to bear what she was thinking, Alex knew she had no choice. She had seen for herself that Kyle’s football was safely inside that envelope. If it was still there, she would hate herself later for doubting Gabe.

She darted around the corner, yanked open the envelope flap for the second time, and thrust her hand inside.

And although her fingers searched and probed as long as she dared, and although they met the soft leather of a wallet and the hard metal of jangling keys and the round smoothness of coins, they never touched anything even faintly resembling the oval shape of a tiny gold football.

It was gone.

A
LEX WAS JUST ABOUT
to replace the envelope when a voice cried from behind her, “Just exactly what do you think you’re doing?”

Cringing guiltily, Alex yanked her hand free and dropped the envelope. And whirled to face an angry nurse.

“I…I just…” Thinking quickly, Alex took a deep breath and said, “Kyle Leavitt is my boyfriend. I was wearing his little gold football and then we had a fight and I gave it back to him, but now that he’s sick, I want it back. I thought it would be in here, with his things. But it isn’t.”

The nurse regarded her with suspicion. “Listen, I don’t know what you’re up to, Miss, but you’re wrong about the football. It
is
in there. Put it in there myself, the night he was brought in.”

“It’s not there now.”

“Let me see.” The nurse dumped the envelope’s contents onto the desk. There was no tiny gold ornament. Frowning, she looked up at Alex. “You sure you didn’t already take it out of here?”

“No. If I had, I’d be wearing it around my neck.”

“Well, I don’t know then. Like I said, it was here. Should have locked this envelope in the cupboard in back, but I never got around to it. I’ll do it now.” And the envelope was whisked away.

Alex spent the rest of the weekend wondering what had happened to Kyle’s charm. She had felt it, inside that envelope, with her own fingers. It had
been
there. Now, it wasn’t. Why would someone take it?

The answer came several times: to replace one that was missing. Each time, she rejected that answer. Because Marty had lost
his
. So had Gabe. And Bennett didn’t seem to know where his was, either. If any one of them had lost their own golden football up on that sixth-floor observation deck, they wouldn’t want anyone to know it. So they would want it replaced, wouldn’t they? And they would know that Kyle had been wearing his when he went over that wall, and where to look for it. Gabe had been right here in the hospital. So had Marty. And Bennett came here for his therapy.

But every single one of them was a good friend of Kyle’s. Why would they have done something so terrible to him?

They wouldn’t have.

Reminding herself that there were other guys who owned those football charms, Alex pushed the nasty thoughts out of her mind, and called the police to see if they’d made any progress.

They hadn’t. No fingerprints on the bus, no trace of anyone in the woods…no luck at all.

They wanted, she was told, to put a guard on her, but they couldn’t spare the manpower right now, in the middle of a big investigation like this. The police department in the town of Twin Falls was not a large one. “Best that you not go out alone,” the desk sergeant told her sternly, and she promised that she wouldn’t.

He promised to let her know the minute something solid “came up.”

At lunch in the dining hall on Sunday, Alex was sitting with Jill and Amber when Kiki walked in. The change in her was shocking. Her hair hung lank and oily around her ears, her face was pale and wan, her eyes shadowed. And her clothes hung on her.

“What
is
it with that girl?” Jill said, watching as Kiki loaded a tray with food. “She eats like a horse, but she looks like a twig. I don’t get it. If I ate like that, I’d look like the Goodyear blimp.”

“I think there’s something wrong with her,” Alex said, her eyes on Kiki as she moved lethargically toward a seat in the corner and sat down. “I think she’s sick. She really should see a doctor.”

The words were barely out of her mouth when Kiki’s eyes rolled back in her head and she slid out of her chair onto the floor, landing in a soft, limp heap.

When she had been taken to the infirmary, Alex said quietly, “Well, at least she’ll get help. They’ll find out what’s wrong with her now.”

It wasn’t until later that night as she was teetering on the edge of sleep that she remembered Kiki’s wish at Vinnie’s the first night they’d seen The Wizard, the night of that wild lightning strike. Kiki had wished she would lose weight, just as Julie had wished for a different face and Gabe had wished he didn’t have to walk so much.

Alex turned restlessly in her bed. If it wasn’t the most idiotic thing in the world to think, she would think The Wizard had been listening when they spoke that night.
Wishes Granted
….said the sign on the front of the red booth. And what had her grandmother always told her? “Be careful what you wish for, Alexandria. You just might
get
it!”