Be Strong & Curvaceous (12 page)

I got off the bus and crossed the playing field as the last of the sunset faded to purple over the skyline and lights began to wink on all over the city.

I should have been paying more attention. That’s what they tell you in self-defense classes: “Be aware of your surroundings.” If I hadn’t been so deep in my own thoughts, I’d have had a few seconds to prepare myself when a shape wearing a hoodie loomed up on my right.

“Hey, Carly,” Brett Loyola said.

My heart seized up and I froze.

“It’s just me,” he said. “Brett. Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Scare me? Two of my dreams had just come true, right there in the middle of the plushy grass field. One, Brett Loyola had remembered my name, and two, he’d spoken to me of his own volition, without chemistry notes or his entourage around him. What was he doing without Callum or Todd or one of the innumerable girls who always followed them around?

“Carly? You okay?” He leaned in to try to see my face.

“Yes,” I squeaked, then cleared my throat and tried again. “Sure. I didn’t realize anyone was there, that’s all.”

“You did look kind of preoccupied, all right. Mind if I walk with you?”

Mind? Was he crazy? This was probably a hallucination or a dream, but I was going to enjoy it for all it was worth.

“No, not at all. Are you heading back to school?” I asked. “Aren’t you a day student?”

“Yeah, I am, but some of the guys are going out, so I said I’d meet them in the common room.”

Oh. “Sounds like fun.”

“Want to come with us?”

“I’d be taking my life in my hands,” I said, trying for a joke to give myself a second to recover.

“Nah. We’re just going downtown to hang out, maybe have a drink. I want to apologize, by the way.”

My mind went blank. To the best of my knowledge, we hadn’t been together enough for him to be sorry for anything. “Why?”

“The other night, when I ordered that drink for you without asking what you wanted. That was pretty ignorant.”

“You were being thoughtful.”

“By getting you a Cosmo when you don’t drink? I don’t think so.”

A glow began to spread all over me. Yep, definitely a dream. I’d fallen asleep on the bus and had probably ridden all the way downtown to the terminus, but I didn’t care.
Please, nobody wake me up.

“Well, thanks for the apology, anyway, even if it wasn’t necessary.”

We’d nearly reached the trees at the side of the main building. If this was a dream, surely I should be able to say something witty and brilliant, something I’d never say in real life. Something daring that would get his attention, once and for all.

“So Vanessa says you’re a Christian.” I couldn’t really be sure in the dark under the trees, but I thought he’d turned his head to look at me as we walked. “And that’s why you didn’t want it.”

Was that good or bad in his mind? “Yes,” I said a little cautiously. “I’m kind of a noob though.”

“A newbie Christian?” He chuckled, as if that was an odd concept.

“I mean, I just made the decision really recently. I don’t know very much yet.”

“What’s to know?”

“That’s the thing. I don’t even know that. How much there is to know, I mean. I’m kind of feeling my way along, and my friends are helping me a lot. My family is Catholic, so at least I learned something when I was a kid.”

“Yeah, mine, too. But I stopped going to mass a long time ago. Saturday nights aren’t exactly conducive to matins or whatever the next morning, you know?”

I laughed because he did, and because here was proof this had to be a dream. There was no way I’d be talking about my faith with Brett Loyola in real life. No way.

“Gillian organized the prayer circle, and she and Lissa talk with me about whatever I want to know,” I went on. “We go to church together on Sundays.”

“I came to that prayer circle thing once,” he said. “Kinda bizarre.”

“It got better,” I said quickly. I remembered that night. Boy, did I. “A bunch of kids come now. There was one tonight, in fact.”

“Is that where you were?”

“No, I was”—I stopped myself just in time—“out.”

“Skiving off, huh?” In the lights from the front windows, I could see he was smiling at me.

“Oh, no. I just had something I had to do tonight.” I paused. “What does that mean? Skiving off?”

His grin widened. “That’s something your roomie taught me. It means skipping out. Cutting.”

The glow from the lights flattened into a glare as I hurried up the front steps. With his long stride, though, he beat me to the door and opened it for me.

“Thank you.” We walked into the main entry hall together.

“Anytime. Nice talking to you.” He paused in the doorway to the common room. “Let Lindsay know we’re meeting in here, okay?” he added. “She said she might come.”

“Oh?” I hardly knew what I was saying. I was too busy waking up from the dream and realizing it was a nightmare. “She did?”

“Sure you won’t change your mind?”

I smiled vaguely at him. “I have about eight hours of homework ahead of me.” Which was the truth. And it shows you just how uncool I was. What woman in her right mind would do homework instead of going downtown with Brett Loyola, especially when he’d asked her twice in the space of five minutes?

I’ll tell you who was in her right mind.

Lady Lindsay MacPhail.

MAC LAY ON HER BED, intent on her laptop. She glanced up as I came in. “You had your phone turned off.”

That was one of the first things Philip had made crystal-clear. No personal calls during work hours. “I know. Were you trying to call me?”

“Not me. Lissa and Gillian both called on the room phone around seven, as did a person called Alana.”

“That’s my sister. She lives in Texas. She does sound design for a recording studio in Austin.”

“Does she?” Mac looked interested. “Do you ever notice the number of things that need to be designed? Sound design. Hair design. Interior design. What is with that?”

I was so not interested in a philosophical discussion of semantics when I was still trying to recover from massive disappointment. “Brett says to tell you that they’re meeting in the common room, if you want to join them.”

She pushed the laptop away. “Oh. Is that tonight?”

“I guess.” I took my math textbook out of my bag and tried to calculate how many of the assigned exercises I could get through before dawn.

“Do you mind?”

What had we been talking about? “Mind what?”

“Mind that Brett asked me to go with them.”

“Why should I? He asked me, too.”

“Did he?” She smiled and pushed up the pillow behind her back, as if she were settling in for a girl-to-girl talk. “And of course you said yes.”

“No, I didn’t.” I glanced up. “Look, if you’re going to go, you should. I have about five tons of homework to do.”

“You turned down Brett Loyola to do homework?”

Basically what I’d been asking myself—and kicking myself over—all the way upstairs. “Don’t rub it in.”

“Why didn’t you do your homework earlier? You really need to learn some time management skills.”

Okay, that did it. My emotions had been batted all over the place today, and I did not need this. “There’s nothing wrong with my time management skills. I had something to do this afternoon, all right? And it took until eight. Why is everybody giving me such a hard time about it?”

She gazed at me for a few seconds. “You do mind.”

“I told you, I don’t. All I’m trying to do is get a dress into this fashion show and everyone is giving me grief about it.” Okay, so I’d left out a couple steps—like getting a job so I could get some fabric—but my lips had to stay sealed about that part. Especially with Mac. I still wasn’t a hundred percent sure she’d understand what being a scholarship kid meant, and why I had to keep it under the radar.

She opened her mouth to say something else, but her laptop pinged to announce a new e-mail message. When she glanced down at the screen, the color drained from her face.

“Mac.” My irritation seeped away, too. “What’s wrong?”

She lifted her gaze to mine as if it took a lot of effort. “It’s him.”

I dropped my math book and sat on the bed next to her, all thoughts of Brett and my impossible social life evaporating. There in the colorful list of her e-mail was a new message from Drifter. “Are you going to open it?”

“I’m afraid to.”

It was hard for me to imagine her being afraid of anyone. Vanessa Talbot was about the scariest thing I’d ever met, and Mac had faced her down without even breaking a nail.

“Go on,” I said. “Maybe he’ll let something slip that will help us figure out who he is.”

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Date: April 28, 2009

Re: California girls

I heard the Beach Boys playing in the café tonight and had to laugh. I wish they all could be, etc. Do you think of yourself as a California girl now? Never mind. The point is, you’re here and I’m here and soon everyone will . . . but I can’t tell.

Drifter

“Soon everyone will what?” I asked.

Mac just shook her head, staring at the e-mail as though it might refresh itself and offer a clue.

“Why is he so creepy? Is he trying to scare you?”

“I don’t know what he’s thinking.” At least anger was beginning to beat back the fear in her voice. “I don’t know why he’s picked me to vent on. Or how he found me in the first place.”

“How long did you say he’s been writing to you?”

She shrugged. “Months.”

“I can’t believe you haven’t told anyone.”

“Told them what? The first messages were just chatty little one-liners. I thought it was one of my mates from school, but I soon found out it wasn’t. Then I thought maybe it was some weirdo off MySpace, so I took down my page.” She glanced at me and pressed Print, and in a second the wireless laser printer spat out the e-mail. “I don’t answer them, but they don’t stop coming. They just get longer and more pathetic. With pictures. And now they’re in my school mailbox, which only my parents and Carrie have.”

“Could it be someone Carrie knows?”

“We know all the same people. If she knew, I’d know. And I don’t even remember seeing anyone the night he took that picture. Look, we’ve been over all this before and we’re no further ahead. I’m sick of it.” She shut the laptop down and slid it into her bag.

“Okay. So. Are you going to go with Brett and those guys?” Not the best topic to switch to, but I couldn’t think of anything else.

She shrugged. “I may as well. And leave you with your prep.”

I did the mental translation: homework. “Thanks.”

She changed out of her uniform into a pair of jeans, with a tank and a silk babydoll top over it that tied in the back with a black silk ribbon.

“That’s adorable,” I said. “Where’d you get it?”

“London. Topshop, I think. Do you suppose Brett will notice?”

“He’s a guy.” I hoped my attempt at sarcasm hid the sinking feeling in my middle. “Of course he will.”

I thought that might cheer her up a little, but she didn’t smile. She just grabbed an equally adorable Mulberry handbag and flitted out of the room as if she’d completely forgotten her fright over the e-mail, leaving me with fifty word problems and an urge to seek and consume the biggest chocolate bar in the vending machine.