The Wish (Nightmare Hall) (9 page)

I was wrong, Alex thought, sitting down on the bed. There is at least one person on campus who doesn’t know that I saw it happen. So maybe lots of people don’t know.

Without waiting for Alex’s answer to her question, Jenny continued, “Where did you disappear to, anyway? Marty was really mad that you didn’t come to the hospital with us.”

But he hadn’t come into the tower looking for her,
had
he? Aloud, Alex said, “I had something I had to do. And it’s not like I could have helped Kyle. He
is
going to be okay, isn’t he?”

“Well, no one knows yet. He’s in a coma.”

“A coma?” Alex remembered her nightmare…Kyle lying still as death, his face as cold and smooth as wax. “Will he be okay?”

“No one knows.” Jenny emerged from the closet with a gold silk blouse of Julie’s and a pair of black velvet jeans. “And no one really knows what happened. Maybe we’ll never know if he jumped or not.”

“He wouldn’t do that!” Alex snapped. She wanted to tell Jenny the truth, but the cops had been very clear about that. She had to keep quiet about what she’d seen. For now, anyway.

Jenny shrugged. “Kyle was a big football hero in high school, just like Bennett and Marty and Gabe. You know how they talk about football, like it’s the most important thing in the world. So did Kyle. He was shattered at not being a hero anymore. Maybe he was more depressed than we realized.”

Alex had to bite her tongue to keep from shouting, “He didn’t jump! Someone threw him off that tower!” She said instead, “I’m going down to see Kyle. And Julie. You coming?”

“They won’t let you see Kyle. And I already told Julie I can’t come today. I’ve…I’ve got stuff I have to do. Research. At the library, with Bennett.”

Research? In a gold silk blouse and black velvet jeans?

“I thought you’d be going today. You’ve hardly seen Julie this week.”

“She doesn’t mind. She doesn’t like people seeing her the way she is now. They took her bandages off, and she’s just got these little pieces of tape, and you can see all the stitches…” Jenny shuddered. “I don’t blame her for not wanting people around. Anyway,” she added lightly, “my parents are coming tomorrow. They’ll keep her company. They dote on her, you know. Always did.”

Jenny began experimenting with hairstyles in front of the mirror, and Alex left to take a shower.

When she came back, Jenny was gone. Her books were lying on her unmade bed.

Research without books? The only research Jenny Pierce was probably going to get done today was an analysis of Bennett Stark, ex-jock.

That was probably why Jenny hadn’t seemed devastated over what had happened to Kyle…because she was suddenly so wrapped up in Bennett. Maybe falling in love made you forget other people, at least for a while. And it must be nice for Bennett, after not being able to play football and being dumped by that girl, Shelley. At least he had a girlfriend again, one who liked him for himself instead of his letter-man’s jacket.

Jenny was right about Julie’s face. Alex had to struggle to keep from letting a gasp of horror escape when she walked into Julie’s room. The swath of white bandages had been replaced by small strips of clear adhesive. Every ugly black stitch, every swollen lump of tissue, every patch of black and purple and yellow showed through.

“I know it looks horrible,” Julie said hastily as Alex entered with Kiki, Marty, and Gabe. “I’m sorry. You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to.”

The statement was so unlike her, it startled Alex, snapping her mind away from the damaged face. She sounds so…beaten, she thought, and hurried to Julie’s bedside. “Don’t be silly. We’re not going anywhere. We just got here.” She sat down on the bed, carefully. “You do look pretty awful, though,” she said breezily. “If I were you, I’d ditch whatever makeup you’re using. It’s not working.” And then she held her breath, because if Julie didn’t laugh…

Julie laughed. And even though she immediately put her hands to her face because the laughter hurt, Alex relaxed a little. As long as Julie could still laugh, she’d be okay.

“Kiki,” Julie said then, “are you really dieting this time? You look thinner.”

Alex was amazed to notice that Kiki did look thinner. Not thin, but thinner. Her cheekbones were clearly visible. Maybe she’d just found a new way to apply makeup. She’s going to be really beautiful if she keeps this up, Alex thought.

But there was no dieting that day. Kiki had something in her mouth every time Alex looked at her. Cookies, chips, nuts, candy…

She’s going to eat herself right out of those jeans, Alex thought. She noticed that Kiki’s leather belt was drooping around her waist, but at the rate she was going, Alex was sure it would be strangling her by mid-afternoon.

“I’m going down to see Kyle,” Alex announced. “If they’ll let me. I can at least find out how he’s doing. Anyone want to come?”

Marty came with her. He didn’t talk on the way down to the intensive care unit, and she found herself feeling very uncomfortable. She couldn’t remember now exactly why he was mad at her. For leaving the scene last night, that she knew…but hadn’t there been something before that? She couldn’t remember what it was. And she was more concerned about Kyle right now.

They were not allowed to see him. “Only immediate family members,” the nurse told them crisply when they arrived.

That sounds familiar, Alex thought, annoyed. “Well, can you at least tell us how he is?”

“The same. No change.” And the nurse disappeared into a storage closet.

Alex was about to turn away when she saw an envelope lying on the nurse’s desk behind the tall white counter. It was large and brown. Alex could see quite clearly Kyle’s name written across the front in black.

She found herself wondering if Kyle’s things, the things he’d had on him when he got to the hospital, were in there. Had to be. It was that kind of envelope. His watch, his wallet…Why hadn’t the police taken the envelope?

Because Kyle hadn’t
committed
a crime, he’d been the victim of one. The police had no reason to take his things.

But Alex did. She needed to see if there was something—
anything—
that might help her figure out who had attacked him—and why. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for, but she had to see.

“What are you doing?” Marty hissed as Alex darted around the side of the high white counter and stretched out an arm to snatch up the envelope.

“Never mind. Keep an eye out for unexpected company, okay? This’ll just take a minute.”

While he watched, disbelieving, Alex yanked open the clasp on the envelope and fumbled around inside. Her fingers closed around a small, oval metal object on a chain. She peered inside and saw it was just what she’d thought. A gold football charm.

That meant one thing. The charm she’d found in the plant on the observation deck wasn’t Kyle’s. He’d been wearing his, and was still wearing it when he was admitted to the hospital’s emergency ward the night before.

The one in the plant belonged to someone else.

The question was, Who? And how long, exactly, had that football been sitting in the potted plant on the sixth-floor observation deck of the tower?

Not long, Alex was positive. Not long at all.

Without withdrawing the ornament, she re-fastened the envelope flap, put the envelope back on the desk, and grabbed Marty’s hand. “C’mon, let’s go!”

“What was that all about?” he demanded as they ran back up the stairs to Julie’s room.

“Something I needed to check out. Tell you later.” Changing the subject, she said, “What do you want to bet there isn’t a crumb of food left in Julie’s room? Kiki seems to be making up for lost time. And I’m getting hungry.”

“We go straight to Vinnie’s from here,” Marty said curtly, and Alex nodded.

When they walked into the room, Gabe was sitting on Julie’s bed, giving her a play-by-play of the game the day before, and Kiki was crumpling an empty plastic bag, preparing to toss it into the wastebasket on the opposite side of Julie’s bed.

Kiki stood up to throw.

Alex noticed as Kiki left the chair that the brown leather belt seemed to be drooping even more than it had before. Kiki must have loosened it. Couldn’t blame her. Those jeans must be getting pretty snug around the waist after all that junk food.

Kiki lifted her arm to aim the crumpled ball of cellophane and stood on tiptoe to throw. Then suddenly, she said in a startled voice, “Oh, wow,” and collapsed. Her eyes rolled back in her head, her mouth fell open, her eyes fell shut, and she slid down, landing in a heap on the floor.

A
TERRIBLE SENSE OF
doom swept over Alex as she saw Kiki collapse. She watched with an odd sense of detachment as Kiki’s head hit the floor with a thunk, watched as her arms and legs flopped like the limbs on a rag doll.

Maybe she’s dead, she thought dispassionately, suddenly too weary to feel anything.

Alex realized then that she had made a mistake. She had thought that coming to the hospital to visit Julie, which was what you did if you happened to have a friend in the hospital, would make things seem at least a little…
normal
. And after everything that had happened lately, normal sounded pretty good.

But it hadn’t worked. Because here was Kiki, flopped on the floor with her eyes closed. Kiki might be a little bit different in some ways, but she didn’t usually go around fainting.

“You would think,” Alex said aloud in a strange, flat voice, “that a hospital room, of all places, would be
safe
. But I see that it isn’t. It just isn’t. Maybe no place is.”

Gabe and Marty bent to help Kiki. Julie pressed frantically on her call button for a nurse, her bruised eyes regarding Alex with concern. “Alex, what’s the matter? She just fainted, I think. Why are you acting so strange?”

Alex turned to face her. “Why am I acting so strange? Why am I acting so
strange
! You’re in the hospital and so is Kyle, and Gabe is out of the hospital but he’s on crutches, and I…” She almost said, “And I saw one of my friends get thrown off a sixth-floor observation deck last night,” but she stopped herself in time. She wasn’t supposed to tell anyone, she remembered. “How should I act?” Tears gathered in her eyes. “And now here’s Kiki, lying on the floor and for all I know, she’s dead. I wouldn’t be at all surprised.”

Kiki wasn’t dead.

“She’s fainted, that’s all,” the nurse kneeling by Kiki’s side said, looking up at Alex, who was wringing her sweatshirt in her hands. “And I know why, too,” the nurse added crisply. “Look at how loose her clothes are.” Kiki began to stir. “This girl’s been crash-dieting, I guarantee it. I’ve got a teenaged daughter who doesn’t eat enough to keep a bird alive, and I know a starvation dieter when I see one.”

“But she’s been eating all afternoon!” Alex cried.

“I’m not surprised. And I wouldn’t be surprised to hear what she’s been eating contained enough sugar to create a vat of cotton candy, am I right? Cookies, candy, cake…”

Alex nodded.

Kiki’s eyes opened.

“Right,” the nurse said. “She’s been starving herself, and today she decided to overload her system with sugar. No wonder she hit the floor. When will you girls learn? If you really want to lose weight, you load up on fruits and veggies, some bread, a little chicken, a little fish, and you’ll lick the problem for life.”

“I hate fish,” Kiki murmured.

But she was able to leave the hospital in half an hour. She left accompanied by a stern last-minute lecture from the nurse about “proper eating habits.”

“Sorry, guys,” Kiki said when they were in the car. “I guess I scared you. Didn’t mean to. Especially you, Alex. You look terrible.
You’re
not going to faint, too, are you?”

“No. I’m just glad you’re okay. I couldn’t take one more person being in the hospital.”

At least, Kiki hadn’t been attacked. Alex was grateful for that much. Her “accident” had been of her own making. For just one second there, when Kiki first began to crumble, Alex had flashed back to last night and Kyle falling, falling…

But he hadn’t fallen. He’d been thrown. Big difference. And he’d been thrown, she remembered now, by someone who might have seen her watching. Alex was so thoroughly rattled that she couldn’t remember what she had planned to ask Marty. As they drove to Vinnie’s, where Kiki promised to order a healthy salad, Alex racked her brain. It had been something important, she remembered that much. Something to do with last night…

There were so many questions about last night. Which one had she planned to ask Marty?

Oh, yes. “Marty,” she said, turning toward him on the front seat, “when you first made the team, did you get one of those little gold footballs on a chain?”

“Yeah. How’d you know about those?”

Oops. She couldn’t tell him. “I saw one somewhere. Can’t remember who was wearing it. Anyway, I asked him about it, and he said all the freshman football players got them. So I just wondered. I’ve never seen, you wearing one.”

“I had it on my key chain,” he said.

Alex glanced at the keys hanging in the ignition. No tiny gold football hung there.

“Lost it,” Marty said, seeing her glance. “A while ago. It must have dropped off.”

“Where did you lose it?” she couldn’t help asking.

He laughed. “You know, Alex, I’ve always thought that was one of the dumber questions in this world. My mother used to throw that at me all the time. I’d be missing my glasses or my wallet or a book, and she’d always say, Well, where did you lose it?’ Think about that for a minute, Alex. If I knew where I’d lost it, it wouldn’t be lost, would it? I’d
know
where it was, right?”

“Okay, okay, don’t get testy. I just meant, do you have any idea where you were when you lost it. And that’s probably what your poor mother meant, too, but I suppose you bit her head off like you just did mine.” What I
really
meant, Alex thought, was were you by any chance on the sixth-floor observation deck of the tower when you noticed that your precious little memento was no longer fastened on your key chain?

The nasty thought shocked her. Marty? Marty would never hurt someone, not even someone he was really mad at. Certainly not Kyle, one of his best buddies and fellow athletes.