Adventures of a Graveyard Girl (8 page)

Now it was awkward. Noah was staring at me and I was staring at him. There was silence.

"Fine then. I'm going to my table," Noah said.

"Wait," I said. He totally did not mean that apology and both of us knew it, but I held my tongue. "You owe me."

"I owe you?" Noah looked at me. "For what? Crashing in to me twice today?"

"No. For this," I said pointing at my shirt "This cheese is not gonna be coming out anytime soon and I like this shirt. A lot."

It was true. I had picked out my shirt purposely as my back to school after being gone a whole week shirt. Plus, I had wanted to look cute for Ethan. Now I had cheese all over me. Maybe it was good that Ethan was sitting with his friends today. I didn't need him to see me like this.

Noah frowned, definitely wanting to get away from me, but probably not sure if I'd run after him and cause another scene. He looked torn. I needed to convince him.

"I just want to talk to you for five minutes," I said simply, trying to sound as rational and normal as I could, "Five minutes and then you can go."

Noah studied me with narrowed eyes for a moment and then said, "Fine."

I led Noah back to my lunch table. Ethan still hadn't showed up, I found myself thinking. I pushed the thought aside by reminding myself I was covered in cheese and probably did not look my best. I had to focus. What did I ask Noah? Did I just ask him about Madison up front? Hint? What was the best approach? Actually, the decision was easy. I was lucky if Noah would even give me five minutes to talk.

"How did you know Madison Brown?" I asked, seizing the day, and just going for it.

Noah almost dropped the soda he was about to sip, despite the fact that Madison's name was probably one of the most popular topics in school. If Noah had spilled his soda all over me too, I found myself thinking, I would have killed him on the spot and then we'd be talking about another murder. Overreaction? Yeah, probably, but I didn't need to add to the lunch mess on my shirt. It would really ruin my day.

Noah was sputtering, oddly terrified that I was asking him about Madison, "What? Why? Do you think I did it or something? That's insane. A guy can't go into a girl's bathroom. There were like teachers around watching out for that stuff."

It was so weird. One minute Noah was calm and the next he had totally flipped out and snapped into this strange freaked out mental state. That was something to note.

"Uh," I was surprised that Noah was flipping out. I didn't know what to say. My brain couldn't grasp onto any ideas about how to calm him down.

"You should talk to Sebastian Zane, that's who you should talk to. He freaking took Madison to the dance. He was totally messing around with her. He's probably the one that did it. Why the hell are you talking to me?" Noah was the one on a rant now.

It was kind of scary seeing it from the other side, I had to admit. Still, we were in a public place. It wasn't like Noah could attack me in the middle of the lunchroom, right? I got ready to bolt anyway, just in case he gave me a reason to run. Until then, this was a fascinating development.

I also made a mental note to check out Madison's date to the dance. That should have been an obvious one to put on my list. I just wanted to talk to Casey Hunt first, find out if she had seen anything when she found Madison. I guess the whole girl's bathroom thing, had me wanting to lean toward a female killer. I had to remind myself that a murderer might not care what it said on the door. Regardless, Noah, was rapidly becoming number one on my list with this potential toward a freak out by me just asking him a couple of questions about the murdered girl.

"Calm down," I said slowly and calmly, "I'm just talking to you."

"Well, I'm not talking about Madison! I don't care if you got cheese on your shirt!" Noah yelled and got up, stalking away from me.

Whoa. Now Noah was the one causing the scene and I was definitely the center of attention at lunch again if all of the eyes staring at me were any measurement to go by. That's when I saw him - Ethan. He must have gotten to lunch late because he was just walking out of the lunch line. Normally, Ethan ate pretty healthily or brought a lunch from home, but today he was carrying one of those pre-packaged cherry pies that I had told him I was craving in the hospital. I knew that tasty treat was meant for me. Ethan was the sweetest, most romantic guy ever. I felt my heart melt.

Then I noticed the expression on Ethan's face. I registered hurt, then anger, and suddenly Ethan wasn't moving toward my table anymore.

I spent the first part of lunch gazing over toward Ethan's table as he talked to Mike and Dave and some of the other people at his table. Some of them were girls. I felt a pang of jealousy. Ethan had his back to me the whole time and didn't even look at me. He was totally mad and yet, I couldn't bring myself to walk the distance to his table and apologize for breaking my promise. I had known in my heart of hearts that Ethan was going to be angry about it all, but somehow I had convinced myself that it would be okay in the end. Now, I wasn't so sure that things were going to be okay. We had been on the maybe boyfriend/girlfriend track, but it was now looking like we might be on the maybe broken up track.

I couldn't even eat my cheese fries, I was so upset about the tension emanating across the lunchroom between Ethan and I. I knew he had to be talking about me to his friends too because I saw Mike try and sneak a glance at me. Then when I caught Mike's eye, he looked guiltily away. Dave was more stoic, but I'm sure he was dying to look too.

I knew I should just suck up my pride and walk over there and tell Ethan how I felt and how much he mattered to me and that I was sorry, but I just couldn't do it. Part of it was that all of the people sitting at Ethan's table intimidated me in some way. They were all popular and by default I felt inferior at the power they held at this school. Still, if that was all, I would have done it - gone and apologized. What was stopping me was that Ethan mattered to me so much that I just didn't know what to say. An apology didn't feel like nearly enough. What if he didn't hear me? What if he stalked off? Or worse, what if he yelled at me?

Ethan and I had gotten into disagreements before, of course. They mostly had to do with his half sister's murder case and at the time, our differences in opinion were on investigative styles and suspects. This was different, though. Back then, we had just been tentative friends and I didn't expect Ethan to stick around and actually be my friend for the long haul. When Ethan asked me to the Homecoming Dance, though, and spent those couple of days with me in the hospital, all of that changed. Ethan became a part of my life. I wanted him there for a good long while too, maybe even forever. The problem was, now it looked like I had ruined everything.

There was a question bothering me. Was it worth it? Who was right? Was I wrong to investigate the murder? Was he wrong to ask me not to? Sadly, I didn't think it mattered because I just kept coming back to the fact that I had, regardless of right or wrong on the issue, broken a promise to someone I cared about, someone who trusted that my promise was real. I had betrayed Ethan.

I knew I needed to stop staring at Ethan's table longingly, but I couldn't focus on anything else. I thought about jotting the latest in my crime notebook, but now case solving left me with a sick feeling. I had let Ethan down.

I still needed to go and clean off my shirt. It was pretty gross. I took one last long look at Ethan's table and went to ask a teacher for permission to use the bathroom.

After a few minutes of rubbing a wet paper towel on my shirt, the stain didn't want to completely come out. I gave up and dabbed at it a few more times. My shirt was now soaking wet. The day could only get better, right?

"You okay?" a girl asked from the doorway.

I looked over and watched the girl walk into the bathroom. I hoped she hadn't been there for too long watching me fight the stain on my shirt. It was not my best moment. Wait, should I be nervous that there was a stranger in the deserted bathroom with me? I thought of Madison and wondered if I was being silly, feeling suddenly on high alert.

I didn't know the girl. She had long blonde hair with dark brown and red highlights, so her hair looked sort of multicolored. I knew she wasn't in any of my classes, so I had no idea why she was suddenly next to me, peering at my face, looking concerned.

"Who are you?" I had to ask. I blurted it out too, but I hoped I didn't sound too rude. I just didn't have the energy to be polite and she was kind of creeping me out.

"Julia. Julia Morgan," Julia smiled and I saw that she still had braces.

I wasn't sure what to say. Julia had sought me out instead of the other way around. I hadn't even had a chance to find a picture of her yet so that I knew what she looked like and here she was standing in front of me. That was kind of weird. Cool, but weird.

It must have sucked to have braces as a senior. Most people had them off by sophomore year. I wondered if the braces had been what hurt her chances for the position of Pep Club president. It didn't matter to me, but the sad fact of it was that it was a high school reality. People were that judgmental about things like that. Braces really could have meant the difference between her and Madison for president.

"Uh, why are you here?" I asked awkwardly. I didn't know how else to ask it or what else I might say to be less blunt and besides, as Anne Shirley from
Anne of Green Gables
would say - I was in the depths of despair about Ethan and I would have preferred to be left alone to wallow if I had the option, that and to continue getting the stain out of my shirt.

"I heard that you're looking into Madison's murder," Julia said. "Is it true?"

I felt my stomach sink. People knew. Wait. How did they know? Although Noah's outburst had been a great hint at that, most people other than Ethan wouldn't actually assume I was investigating Madison's murder. Even me talking to Noah about the murder, regardless of the fact that he had gotten so upset, wasn't that out of the ordinary. Everyone was talking about the murder. Ethan definitely would not have publicized the fact that I was playing teen sleuth, except maybe to Dave and Mike in the form of complaints, and only in the last five minutes when he figured out what I was doing. I groaned inwardly. This was Ariel's doing. Ariel had gone and gossiped about my investigative plans to who knows who. Now, the school was going to think I was a funeral crashing, witchcraft practicing, drug dealing, pet cemetery caretaking graveyard girl female sleuth. And, no, ninety-nine percent of that sentence was not true, but according to the rumors I seemed to have quite the amazing reputation for being a girl that in reality, mostly just went to classes, work, and every once in awhile, funerals.

So much for thinking that maybe Ariel and I had bonded the night before. Although, I would admit, I didn't exactly tell Ariel not to tell anyone that I was looking into Madison's death. I had hoped she wouldn't, but I hadn't actually said anything to her about it. I didn't really want to give her any ideas, you know? Still, you'd think she'd have some common sense that I didn't much like being the butt of her gossip and might pass on some gossip of my own, like that we had hung out at her house and had pizza.

I had to admit, though, that in this case it seemed like Ariel had actually helped me. Julia might not have talked to me on her own and I definitely saw what a disaster talking to Noah out of the blue had been. So, I took a shot and was honest.

"Yeah, I'm looking into it," I said.

"Have you found anything out?" Julia asked.

I wondered if Ariel was paying me compliments because Julia actually sounded like she thought I might be doing a good job as an amateur detective, "Still in the beginning stages. You were Madsion's best friend right?"

Julia hesitated, "Used to be one of them. I mean, I wish we had made things up before she died, but it wasn't meant to be."

"What happened?" I asked, even though I already knew. I just wanted to see how Julia would interpret it.

"Well, she became the biggest bitch," Julia said simply and then rushed on as if she had been holding the whole thing in for too long, "She stole the Pep Club presidency from me. We've been best friends since we were eleven and she gets the opportunity to be president of a club we're both in and she totally backstabs me. I told her I wanted to do it, be the president. Then, she put her name in the hat too."

"So, you guys just broke off a friendship because you both wanted to be Pep Club president?" I asked.

There was definitely more to my and Ariel's friendship ripping apart than some stupid club presidency. This was high school, though, and that sort of thing could really, really matter here. And, okay, maybe mine and Ariel's breakup had to do with the popularity issue, which was also way high school or maybe it was just time that we parted ways. Maybe it was the same for Madison and Julia too.

"No," Julia shook her head, "It was the way Madison treated it. Like suddenly she was so much better than I was. I knew Madison could be like that, all hoity-toity and stuff, but she had never turned that on me. Suddenly, Madison started acting like I was the dirt underneath her shoes or something. I mean, I knew all her dirty little secrets, we were friends since we were kids after all, and believe me, no matter what I've done, hers weren't pretty either, but Madison badmouthed me to all my friends in the club anyway."