Wraith (16 page)

"Matt’s a sweetheart, isn’t he?" Lacey
gushed, leading us to a door on the opposite side of the gym from where I had
sent Zane. "I hope he’s been introducing you around—not keeping you all to
himself." 

"He’s been great," I answered, following
her up a flight of stairs. She opened the door onto a balcony that attached to
the classroom building, and we were hit with a welcome breath of brisk, misty
Oahu wind. About six feet to my left, a couple of shadow teenagers lounged
against the corner of the railing, making out.

"He seems to be a pretty popular guy around
here," I said quickly, turning my back on the shadows before they did
something embarrassing.

Lacey laughed. "Oh, everybody loves Matt,"
she confirmed.

I nodded, though it felt like a lie. In the last 24
hours I had met at least two people from whom Matt was definitely
not
feeling the love.

"He’s a hopeless flirt, of course," she
added matter-of-factly, "but you’ve known him at least—what—a day? So I
suppose I don’t have to tell you that!" She let out another of her merry
laughs, but on catching my concerned expression, sobered instantly. "Oh,
don’t get me wrong," she hastened to explain. "Matt’s no operator. In
fact, he’s quite the gentleman, compared to most of the guys around here. It’s
just that he’s not one to get attached, if you know what I mean. He’s dated
practically every girl in school at one point or another, but it never turns
into anything. At least, it never has before." She studied me, her eyes
sparkling. "I keep telling him, though, one day he’s going to fall for
somebody. And then he’s going to make a total fool out of himself."

I looked back at Lacey with a guarded smile. I liked
her already, had liked her instinctively, but there was no way I was responding
to that. "Have the two of you ever dated?" I asked, oddly certain
that I already knew the answer.

"Oh, no," she said dismissively,
confirming my impression of a longstanding friendship. "I have a
boyfriend. Had the same once since eighth grade. Ty and Matt are buds, too, or
at least they used to be, before Ty started working all the time. Like tonight,
for instance," she finished bitterly, blowing a stray bang out of her eyes
with a puff of air. "If Ty misses prom this year, I swear to God, I’ll
kill him."

Rod’s going to kill him.

I pushed the ominous echo away from my brain. It was
a common enough expression. Lacey obviously didn’t mean it. Who would?

"Do you know Sofia?" I blurted.

Lacey’s fetching blue eyes widened slightly.
"Sofia Liang? A little bit. Why?"

I shrugged, attempting to conceal my interest.
"I just thought it was a little weird, her breaking the date with Matt for
tonight. Do you think she was really sick?"

Lacey didn’t answer for a moment. Instead, she
brought a hand to her mouth and began to nibble absently on a professionally
polished nail. "To tell you the truth, Kali, I don’t know what
the
heck is up with that girl. She seems nice and all, but she hasn’t made a lot of
friends here. I get the idea she hangs with an older crowd—as in dropouts,
mainly. When she asked Matt to the dance, it was, like, totally out of the
blue. He was happy and all—I mean, she’s
really
good looking—but then
she just kind of disappeared again. I have a couple classes with her, and she’s
not there half the time. She’s not involved in anything after school, either.
It’s weird."

I was possessed suddenly by an odd wave of warmth,
an all-consuming feeling of happiness, elation, and—particularly strange, given
the conversation—a fierce, raw sort of hunger…

Oh, crap.

With a sudden flash of understanding, I cast a
furtive look back at the shadow couple. They were now prone on the concrete;
the girl had the guy’s shirt off.

"Let’s take a walk!" I suggested quickly,
passing Lacey on the balcony and moving off… wherever. "Does this wrap all
the way around to front of the building?"

She shot me a quizzical look, but kept up. "No,
but there’s a staircase on the end. We can go down and around."

"Sounds good," I said lightly, trying to
squelch the image of Zane in his favorite board shorts that had crept,
unbidden, into my mind. "I love how all the buildings here have walkways
outside, rather than hallways. The fresh air is so invigorating," I
prattled on, trying desperately to shake the couple’s lingering,
ever-so-beguiling feelings from my relatively innocent psyche. I could not help
wondering, if I had stayed where I was, what else I might have seen…

"I used to live in Detroit," Lacey said,
presumably responding to something I had already forgotten saying. "So I
know what you mean. You get so used to the ocean breezes here, you forget how
the rest of the world lives."

I reached the staircase and started down. The
hijacked feelings—thank God—were finally fading. Then I gasped out loud. Zane
was standing right in front of me on the stairs, not subconsciously in board
shorts, but quite visibly (minus a few transparent streaks) in his dance
outfit. In the next instant, he was gone again.

My heart thumped like a jackhammer.

"What?" Lacey asked, coming up beside me,
"Did you see something?"

"Um… no," I said, thinking fast. "I
just… realized I forgot something. But it’s no big deal." I turned at the
bottom of the steps and faced her, attempting a carefree smile. "So, Matt
keeps telling me how great Frederick is. Do you like it here?"

Lacey happily launched into an entertaining
description of the pros and cons of Frederick High, and I tried my best to pay
attention as we meandered across the grounds and back to the gymnasium, passing
shadows right and left along the way. My head spun as they seemed to come out
of nowhere… tons of them, their emotions all over the place… like a badly organized
Halloween parade. It hadn’t been this bad when Matt and I arrived. Why now? 

"So, you should definitely tell your parents
you want to go here," Lacey finished, pausing at the corner by the smoking
girls, who were, regrettably, back in place and as fearful as ever.

I moved as far away from them as I politely could.

"Sounds like a plan," I agreed.

"Besides," she added, a mischievous glint
in her eye, "I’m thinking that Matt might really like you."

I threw her a skeptical look. "Oh, please. We
only just met!"

"Yeah," she said thoughtfully. "Seems
unlikely, I know, given his track record. But I was watching you earlier, when
you were dancing. The way he was looking at you… You’re an awesome dancer, by
the way."

"Oh. Thanks." My cheeks flushed at more
than the compliment.  

"There’s a certain spring to his step tonight
that I can’t say I’ve seen before," she continued. "I noticed it as
soon as the two of you walked up. Plus…" she reached into a pocket, hidden
in the folds of her sundress, and pulled out a cell phone. "Unless I’m
mistaken, he’s texted me, like, six times in the past twenty minutes—bugging me
to bring you back inside."

She flipped open her phone and punched a few
buttons, her grin broadening all the while. "Okay," she corrected,
"only four times. But the last two had frowny faces."

She sighed. "All right. I’d better follow
orders, or he’ll tell Ty about that ultimate Frisbee tournament in Waimanalo
tomorrow. The guy has one day off in three weeks—he darn well better spend it
with me!"

She turned the corner and began walking toward the
side doors of the gym, and I held my breath as we walked past the cluster of
girls, still sitting under the tree, to which I had directed Zane. He was there
now, standing in the midst of them, his face an unreadable mask of
concentration.

I felt a sudden sense of unease; one of the bathroom
girls had spotted me and was staring. I turned quickly back to Lacey.
"Those girls," I whispered, "are they friends of Sofia’s?"

She cast a glance over my shoulder. "Maybe,"
she said vaguely, as if not completely sure herself. "One of them is a
cousin of hers. Why?" But with another glance, she answered her own
question. "Oh. They’re looking at you, aren’t they? Hmm."

We moved out of earshot and slipped back into the
gym. "No idea what that was all about!" she mused out loud.
"They can’t possibly resent Matt’s asking another date. Sofia’s been a
total jerk to him. Well, Krystal was with them. She’s cool. I’ll ask her later.
Now, let’s get you—"

"Kali!" Matt’s arm appeared from nowhere
and wrapped around me like a tentacle. "We thought you’d never come back!
Ready to dance some more?"

Lacey threw me a knowing smirk and melted away.

"Whatever Lacey told you about me," he
said teasingly, "It’s a lie. The girl’s been out to get me ever since
ninth grade gym."

Despite the swirl of confused thoughts already in my
head, I had to ask. "What happened in ninth grade gym?"

He sighed. "I gave her a concussion."

My eyes widened. "Seriously?"

He nodded gravely. "We were playing badminton.
I kind of backed up over her."

"You didn’t!" I protested, stifling a
laugh. "In
badminton?
Really?"

"It wasn’t funny at the time," he
insisted, though he began to grin himself as he led me back onto the dance
floor. "I thought I’d killed her. Never left my position again, I can tell
you that. I hate playing sports with girls—makes me nervous. Took a C in gym
that semester trying to get out of it. Shall we dance?"

I felt a sudden desire to withdraw my toes out of
his range.

I took a deep breath instead. "Sure. Let’s do
it."

We had been dancing for quite a while when I
realized that, at some point, Zane had come back inside. He had been keeping
tabs on me all evening, presumably, but now he stayed visible, hanging out by
the refreshment area. I got the idea he was waiting to talk to me, but he did
not pop over beside me to say so, or even try to get my attention.

He didn’t really have to. Even as David showed off
some of the most bizarre hip action I’d ever seen, and Julia and Madison
graciously took the time to teach me some funky local dance called the
limu
,
my eyes continued to stray in Zane’s direction. He had changed, inexplicably,
into worn looking jeans, sneakers, and a plain gray tee shirt, and he appeared
wholly preoccupied—though with what, I wasn’t sure. Other than one brief glance
at the start of the next slow dance, he did not even look my way.

There was no escaping Matt’s embrace this time, nor
was I entirely sure I wanted to. I was a little apprehensive at first, given
the way David and Ryan both crunched their dates against them like ragdolls;
but, just as Lacey had led me to believe, Matt was neither pushy nor clingy,
and I found myself surprisingly comfortable in his arms. I just wasn't
comfortable otherwise.

I knew that Zane had something to tell me—something
he had overheard. But it must not be emergency worthy, or he would have told me
already. So why was he lurking just out of reach?

I could not help feeling awkward dancing with Matt
in front of him, illogical as I knew that to be. Whether Zane cared or not, I
couldn’t tell. He was too far away for me to read his face, and I never had
been able to sense his feelings like the other shadows.

Shortly after the slow dance ended, however, I did
sense hostility coming from somewhere. It took me a moment to locate her, but I
knew who I was looking for: she was short and bronze-skinned with close-cropped
black hair, Chinese, or perhaps Hawaiian—very likely a little of both. She
watched my date from a distance, eyes narrowed, mouth drawn into a singularly
unattractive scowl. As I stepped in between her and Matt, the heat of her glare
hit my bare shoulders like a sunburn.

"I need a drink," I announced brusquely,
taking Matt’s hand and leading him away from her and back toward his friends in
the corner. "You hang here a minute; I’ll be right back."

I gave him no chance to argue, but slipped away
toward the refreshments without looking back. Zane had seen; he was there,
waiting for me.

"I have a lot to tell you," he said
simply.

"I know," I responded, breathing heavily.
"And we can’t wait any longer. That girl is out for blood."

"He’s coming after you."

"What?" I spun around to see that Matt had
not, after all, been so easy to shake.

"I’ll get us some drinks," he insisted
with a smile, wrapping an arm around my waist again. "What would you
like?"

I tried hard not to show my frustration. "Punch
is fine," I offered. "I’ll just run to the restroom first."

There was no place else to go. I could not get back
to the alcove without Matt seeing me. My phone was in my purse on the table;
the very place he would take our drinks. If I stepped outside alone, he would
undoubtedly follow.

"We’ll have to talk in the bathroom," I
muttered to Zane as I weaved through the crowd.

"I’m allowed in the women’s room? Wow."

"Good point," I quipped. "Maybe we
should go in the men's instead."

"I’ll avert my eyes," he suggested dryly.

As luck would have it, the women’s room was empty.

"All right," I said, steeling myself.
"Tell me everything. What’s going on?"

Zane settled himself on the hard countertop,
balanced over the sink holes, looking perfectly comfortable in a pose no live
person could possibly be comfortable in. His countenance, however, was grave.

"I’m afraid it’s pretty bad, Kali."

My breathing quickened. "Just tell me!"

"This girl, Sofia. She didn’t cancel the date
because she got sick. She cancelled the date because she was in the hospital
getting ready for surgery, after spending most of last night in the ER."

I shook my head in confusion. "But why would
she—"

"She didn’t want Matt to know what had happened
to her. She didn’t want anyone to know. But the girl in the black dress—the one
you overheard in the bathroom—that’s her cousin. She heard her mother talking
about it to her aunt, trying to figure out who was responsible."