Deadly Little Secret (2 page)

It’s been three months since the accident, and while my burns, blisters, and bruises have all healed, there’s a piece that still feels broken. And, no, it’s not my heart or anything sentimental like that. I’m not one of those overly emotional damsels in distress, eagerly awaiting her prince to come and save her. A little closure, please, is all I ask—the opportunity to see that boy just one more time—to tell him “thank you,” to ask him what he was doing there in the first place.

And to find out why he touched me like that.

“A little frustrated, are we?” Kimmie asks, noticing the oomph with which I wedge out my clay.

It’s C-Block pottery class, and I’m working the air pockets from my mound of sticky redness by thwacking, plopping, and kneading it against the table.

“Personally, I’m surprised you haven’t cracked completely,” she continues.

“Don’t you have some clay to wedge?” I ask her.

“Don’t you have some life to get?”

I ignore her comment and proceed to remind her that unwedged clay means a sculpture that’s bound to be blown to bits in the kiln.

“Maybe I like bits.”

“Do you like slime? Because that’s what your piece is starting to look like.” I pass her a sponge for the excess water.

“Honestly, Camelia, your control-freakish ways are starting to get a little old. You really
should
get out more.”

Kimmie and I have been friends since kindergarten— through who-can-blow-the-bigger-Hubba-Bubba-bubblegum contests to the time in the eighth grade when Jim Konarski spun the bottle and I had to kiss him. For the record, I still get crap about missing his lips entirely and accidentally tonguing his left nostril.

“I’m fine,” I assure her.

She takes a moment to look me over—from my unruly dirty-blond locks and giraffe-like neck to my self-declared lack of style. Today: a long-sleeved T, dark-washed jeans, and a pair of black ballet flats—exactly what the mannequin at the Gap was wearing.

“Fine?”
she says, working her mound of clay into what appears to be an anatomically correct man: pecs, package, and all. “Miss I Spend My Saturday Nights Playing Makeover with My Nine-Year-Old Neighbor?”

“For your information, that only happened once, and her mom was having a Mary Kay party.”

“Whatever,” she says, lowering her voice.

Pottery may well be a fairly laid-back class, rulewise, but Ms. Mazur still insists on our speaking in hushed tones, for the sake of artistic concentration.

“Quick, one to ten, John Kenneally,” she whispers.

“I refuse to play this game with you.”

“Come on,” she prods. “It’s a brand-new year, we’re juniors now, and word is he’s available. Personally, I’d give him at least an eight-point-five for style, a seven for looks, and a nine for personality. The boy’s a freakin’ riot.”

“Sorry to break this to you, but I’m not interested in John Kenneally.”

“Then who, Snow White?”

I shake my head, still thinking about the boy from the parking lot—that sugary smell, those dark gray eyes.

And the way he touched me.

After the accident, after Gloria Beckham’s full recovery—turns out she went into diabetic shock (hence her confusing the accelerator for the brake and whipping through the parking lot at a speed high enough to score her jail time in some states)—I scoured the school yearbooks, searching for the boy’s identity.

Without any luck.

I pause a moment in my clay-wedging and reach down to touch the area below my navel, somehow still able to feel his fingers there.

“Okay, that’s it!” Kimmie declares. “You really need to get yourself a man.”

“Oh, please,” I say, pretending just to be straightening out the front of my apron. I run my fingers over a seam. “I wasn’t doing anything scandalous.”

“That’s probably more hand action than you’ve gotten all year, isn’t it? Forget it; I don’t want to know. Here,” she says, thrusting her verging-on-obscene clay man in front of me. “Say hello to Seymour. He’s not perfect, but it’s the best I can do on such short notice.”

4

At lunch, Kimmie and I claim a much coveted spot on the upperclassmen side of the cafeteria—only two tables from the soda machines and just a sandwich crust’s throw from the exit doors. A total score for midlisters like us—and one we intend to keep for the entire year.

Sitting with us is our friend Wes. We kind of adopted him during our freshman year, when the poor boy showed up at a Halloween dance dressed as a six-foot-long wiener. A couple of the lacrosse players thought it’d be funny to swipe his bun, making him look borderline offensive. Wes squawked to the chaperones. The lacrosse players got detentions. And that was how our good friend Wes earned the nickname of Wesley, the Oscar Mayer Whiner.

“Nice hair,” Wes smirks, eyeing Kimmie’s new pixie cut. She recently dyed it jet black and had more than sixteen inches hacked off for Locks of Love.

“For your information, it goes with my style.”

“Oh, yeah, and what’s that? Goth girl gone wrong?”

“Vintage vamp,” she explains, gesturing to her outfit: a polka-dot dress circa 1960, combat boots, and a frilly red scarf. Thick black rings of Maybelline outline her pale blue eyes. “Laugh now, but it won’t be so funny when I’m a rich and famous fashion designer with my own makeover show.”

“Wait, will that makeover be for you?” Wes asks, pushing his glasses up on the bridge of his nose.

“Back off,” I say, threatening him with a forkful of mac ’n’ cheese, aimed and ready to launch at his mousse-infested brown hair.

“You’ll never do it,” he dares. “Just think about the mess that could leave on the table.”

“The big, fat,
hairy
mess,” Kimmie says, stifling a laugh.

“Especially when I retaliate with my meat loaf surprise.” He smiles.

I drop my fork to my plate, avoiding a possible food fight.

“I take it we’re feeling a little hostile today, Camelia Chameleon?” he asks.

“Very funny,” I say, hating the sound of my name—and his incessant need to attach a reptile to it.

“And speaking of hostile,” he continues, “did either of you hear about the new kid? Word is he’s a killer.”

“Killer hottie, I hope,” Kimmie says, slipping a spoonful of peanut butter into her mouth.

“Killer as in
one who kills
,” he explains. “Rumor has it, he nixed his girlfriend . . . pushed her off a cliff. The girl ended up landing against a rock and splattering to her bloody death.”

“Sounds like someone’s been watching too much
CSI
,” Kimmie says.

“It’s never too much,” he snaps in his own defense.

“Wait,” I say, pushing my mac ’n’ cheese nastiness to the side. “What makes you think this rumor is true?”

“Oh, that’s right.” Kimmie grins. “Camelia doesn’t believe in rumors . . . ever since they made that one up about her.”

Wes laughs, knowing just what she’s talking about. Freshman year, Jessica Peet, all pissy because I wouldn’t let her cheat off my history test, decided to get me back by saying I made a habit out of peeing in the locker room shower rather than making the trip to the bathroom. For one whole quarter, I had people avoiding whatever shower stall I used.

Before I can defend myself, Matt comes and drops his books at the end of our table. “Hey, ladies,” he says. “And Whiner.” He nods at Wes.

“Who’s laughing now?” I shoot Wes an evil smirk.

Matt and I used to date, but now we’re just friends. People (like Kimmie) insist that he and I should give it another whirl, but honestly, we probably never should have
whirled
in the first place. It totally punctured a hole in our otherwise perfectly platonic friendship. And ever since, things haven’t quite been the same between us.

“Aren’t
we
looking spiffy this year?” Kimmie takes an oh-so-seductive bite of her peanut butter, slowly stripping Matt of the layers of Abercrombie he’s sporting today.

Not so surprisingly, Matt doesn’t take her visual molestation as a compliment. Instead, he ignores her and zeroes in on me. “Are we still on for study group this year? I could use some help in French.”

“I guess,” I say. “Let me check my schedule and see when I’m free.”

Matt nods and leaves, and Kimmie gives me a kick under the table. “Have you gone mad?” she asks. “That boy’s been working out. He’s a total nine on a one-to-ten scale.”

“If you like tall, blond, and chiseled, maybe,” Wes says, nonchalantly pinching his itty-bitty bicep. “Personally, I think some girls prefer charm and personality.”

“Too bad you fall short there, too, huh?” Kimmie says, giving Wes a wink.

“Matt and I are just friends,” I remind her.

“Friends, schmends,” she says. “What you need is a man.”

I look up at the clock, suddenly eager for the bell to ring. And that’s when I see him.

The boy from the parking lot.

I feel myself stand. I feel my heart jump up into my throat.

He sees me, too. I know he does.

“Um, Camelia, are you okay?” Kimmie asks, following my gaze.

“Check it out,” Wes pipes up. “That’s
him
—the guy who nixed his girlfriend.”

The boy pauses, looking at me for just a second before turning away and walking out the door.

5

His name is Ben Carter.

I know because everybody at school is all abuzz about him. By fifth block of the day, not even three full hours after I first spotted him in the cafeteria, the story has grown into something you might see on a made-for-TV movie. People are saying Ben strangled his girlfriend before he pushed her over the cliff that day; that when the police searched his backpack they discovered a roll of duct tape, a ten-inch knife, and a list of other girls he’d wanted to attack.

It’s last block of the day, a free block for Kimmie and me, and having snuck out of the library a few minutes early, we’re standing just two classrooms away from Ben’s locker, waiting for the bell to ring.

And waiting to see him again.

It’s not that I’m some masochistic loony in love with the idea of hooking up with a former felon. It’s just that I need to thank him—to look him in the eye, tell him that I appreciate the fact that he saved my life, and then walk away.