Deceived (2 page)

Inside, we ordered coffees and a giant muffin to split. Pixie was right. There were a dozen girls to every boy in sight. The crowd parted for Pixie and then converged on us. Being the center of attention seemed to put her in her comfort zone.

“So, how was the trip?” A redhead I recognized as Aubrie noshed on an apple and smiled between bites.

“Yeah, Elle. How was the trip?” Pixie slid her eyes to me.

I promptly blushed.

“Oh?” Aubrie pulled us through the thick of the crowd to a table with her huge, green leather bag on top. “I sense a boy in this story.” She flopped into a chair and anchored her elbows to the tabletop, chin in hands. “Dish.”

The trip had been Pixie’s idea. She’d said a road trip was the perfect summer’s-end celebration because it wasn’t every day that a girl became a senior. In our case, two girls. I was all moved in with nowhere to be, so she’d pressed me to get out of town with her for the day.

“I took her to the flea market in Elton.” Pixie’s busted old car was another bonus of having her as my roommate. Cars weren’t a popular notion. Parents didn’t drop us off in the middle of nowhere and then leave getaway vehicles. Pixie drove a yellow Neon from the year I was born and called it Suzy Sunshine. Her addiction to old pewter trinkets led us to a flea market about an hour away. I couldn’t wait to scout out nearby towns. To my dismay, the towns were all remarkably similar, uninteresting and painfully quaint. “We were there all of five minutes before she went for coffee.” Pixie tossed a thumb in my direction.

I got a few sympathetic nods.

“Yeah. She went for coffee and came back towing Abercrombie.”

A round of gasps and giggles ensued.

Pixie had them eating from her palm. “He was freaking huge—black Ray-Bans, white tee, khaki cargos, flip-flops …” She ticked off her fingers as she went. “And he was at least nineteen or twenty. He was no high school boy.” She sipped her coffee, adding a dramatic pause for anyone in the shop who had stopped to listen. Even a girl seated at a small table, previously cooing at some guy, turned in our direction. “First he bought her coffee, and then he hung with her all day.”

“Details.” Aubrie turned to me. “What’d he say to you? How’d you meet?”

“How can we get him enrolled here?” A little freckled girl behind her joined in.

My throat thickened, and I cleared it. “He asked if I found anything I liked.”

Another round of giggles and some table slapping started.

A flea market was the last place I had expected to meet a guy. Actually, I wouldn’t have expected to meet this guy anywhere. Most of the boys I attracted weren’t very nice or had a third eye or something. One look at him and even the blind could see how far out of my league he was. Pixie was right. He looked like a college guy, but there weren’t any colleges in the area. He was probably home for the summer.

“So, he just asked if you found anything at the flea market, then bought you coffee?” Aubrie’s eyes grew wide and eager.

“He bought us both coffee.”

To Pixie, we had visited a flea market. To me, it had been a portal to someplace where a guy like him would talk to me.

“He saw you in a crowd and came to find you. That’s so romantic.” A brunette I hadn’t noticed before leaned in over Aubrie’s shoulder.

“Yeah. I thanked him for the coffees, but he wanted to walk me back.” All eyes on me, I started to fidget with the packets of sweetener on the table. Truthfully, his smile had hindered my concentration for the rest of our day together. Brilliant white teeth with red lips and a dimple. Swoon.

Pixie looked at my busy fingers and winked, saving me from social self-destruction. “I took one look at him and said, ‘Well, all I wanted was a coffee, but I’ll go for this.’”

I barked a laugh and jumped at the memory of how she’d looked at him like one of her Blow Pops. I’d laughed then, too, right before stumping my toe into the ground and splashing chai latte all over my hands. I smashed my eyes shut at the memory, hoping to keep out my immediate need to die.

He and Pixie had made introductions, shifting coffees into their left hands and shaking formally with their rights. The contrast between them had made me smile. He looked so … clean. She wore fishnet hose under scrubby cut-off jeans and a black, holey T-shirt for flea marketing.

One handshake and they were friends for life, to hear Pixie tell it. The world was full of potential friends for her.

Personally, I called them all the opposite until proven otherwise. I’d had my share of treacherous friendships. As a general rule, people weren’t as nice as they should be. My eyes flitted over the faces closing in on us. Many were familiar, though names escaped me. The itchy feeling of being watched crept into the crowded shop, and I took another look around. There were too many eyes on me, most of them unfamiliar. I swallowed the growing lump in my throat. I’d moved a hundred times. This move was no different, just one more step toward freedom.

Something buried deep inside called me a liar.

A blond squeezed in beside Aubrie, and I blinked. I turned in the direction of the table where she had been sitting a few moments prior. A new couple sat there. The guy she’d been sitting with a few minutes before came into view two blinks later. He lounged against the counter, paying his bill and looking into my face. His expression was less than friendly. Had the crowd we drew in ruined his breakfast date? Was it his stare that had made me want to slide under the table?

“It was the strangest birthday I ever had.” I gasped, faking a smile and pulling my eyes from the blond’s boyfriend. “I spent an hour watching him and Pixie discuss blown glass and beer steins sold from the tailgate of a rusty pickup truck.” The scene had played out like a storybook. My closest friend, a handsome stranger, tiny rural town … In the distance behind them a panoramic view of grass, mingled with tree-lined hills and valleys brimming with wildflowers. For one day, I had seen a life full of sleep-filled nights, a mom at home wondering who this young man was, and a dad who’d be home in time for dinner. No wonder Brian had made such an impression on me. He’d unwittingly become part of my fantasy that day. Sad evidence that I needed to get a life this year. Make senior year memorable and all that.

“He wasn’t just hot. He knew all about art deco. I love to find old pieces of milk glass, jade green, not white, and anything reminiscent of Rockwell or the 1940s. It was an awesome time for emerging artists. Art deco is also a huge thrill for me. Sometimes I can hit the jackpot there.”

The artists nodded in understanding. The rest looked to me. I didn’t know what else to say. Being raised by an insurance man had made me cynical. My dreams had made me paranoid. Brian was cute, but Pixie had covered that already. Besides, I had a hard time making sense of his appearance, his interest in me, and then his complete disappearance. If he had liked me enough to hang all day, why just say goodbye? It didn’t add up.

Another thing I’d run plenty of miles on the treadmill thinking about was the way Brian’s unfathomably green eyes had roamed continually. I was impressed before he removed the shades. Once he pulled them off and hooked them into the collar of his shirt, I was done. Sunlight glistened over them, highlighting the flecks of brown and gold. As much as I wanted to marvel, my mind was distracted. What was he looking for? Did he feel he was being watched, too? All day I’d looked for something wrong in the smiling faces that greeted us at the flea market. Every shoulder nudge sent tingles down my spine. So far, Ohio had done weird things to my already-overworked imagination.

Brian also seemed to listen to all the conversations nearby. My dad did that, too. Dad called it a protective instinct. I called it nosy. He urged me to know who was nearby and what was going on around me as often as possible. The lesson had never really stuck. My mind invited distraction, which was probably why I noticed that Brian was able to carry on intricate conversations with Pixie while scanning the larger scene. Was that normal for a kid our age?

Then there was the moment when he asked what brought me to the flea market because I wasn’t shopping.

“I just came for the coffee.”

“It’s a long way to go for coffee.”

Intuition threw out red flags all over the place. A long way from where? We never said where we were from. Still, Elton was a long way from most places. I let it go, begging myself to be normal for just one day, which was, of course, impossible. My paranoia got the best of me too often, sneaking into play more and more since I had arrived on campus a few weeks back.

Dad had something going on all month, and we had managed to slip in my move a couple of weeks ahead of most everyone else’s. Lucky for me, Pixie stayed year-round. She had introduced me to a few seniors in our row of dormitories as they moved back to school the previous week.

“They sat on a bench like half the day making smoosh eyes and smiling.” Pixie’s voice caught my attention. “He was so enormous. Even sitting he towered over her, and his shoulders … ” She moved her arms as wide as the crowd would allow. Her eyes went glassy. I called it her artist face. “She looked like a child seated next to the Hulk. I wanted to paint them so bad.” She wanted to paint everything.

“Where’s he from?” the brunette asked.

“She doesn’t know.” Pixie tipped her coffee back. “He had nice legs, too, like a runner’s.”

They were nice legs. When he stretched them out in front of him, I took notice. The hair had worn thin on his calves, same as my father’s. Dad blamed his military boots. He’d served for years before I was born. Maybe Brian liked to ski. All I knew for sure was that he and Dad shared too many similarities. Maybe I was more homesick than crazy. I preferred this explanation.

“He said you bartered like a master.” I shifted my gaze from Pixie to Aubrie. “She always got what she wanted, and she extended her hand to seal the deal every time. Very professional.”

Pixie nodded once, sharply.

Women adored her, and she caused a reaction in men, too. Even in Ohio, her gothic garb wasn’t much of a turnoff. Her personality shoved everything else into the background. She could’ve worn anything.

“So, what happened at the end of the day?” Aubrie asked the question I had hoped would never come.

“We left.” Pixie’s eyes rolled, adding flair.

The blond stood and walked to the door. My story wasn’t enough to keep her from her guy any longer.

I was okay with saying goodbye to Brian. It wasn’t right to want more. He was a perfect memory, just the way he was. Since that day, whenever I felt really crappy about myself, I remembered the drop-dead gorgeous guy in the white T-shirt who bought me coffee. Granted, there were few other girls there under forty-five for him to talk with, but still, he didn’t have to want my company either.

“Do you color your hair? It’s amazing.” The little freckled girl pulled it between her fingertips. My one redeeming quality. I’d inherited Dad’s paranoia, but I had Mom’s hair. I let it grow the way she had and only cut it when I had to for practicality.

“No.” I returned her easy smile.

“Do you wash it with something special? A color rinse, maybe? I love it.”

“Thank you.”

Emptiness kicked in my chest, and I wiggled free from the crowd. I told Pixie I had forgotten something at the apartment, and she moved on to making plans for after school. I worked my way back to the now-empty counter and grabbed a Smartwater. I couldn’t live on coffee alone. On that note, I slid out. I walked down the stairs and around the corner before sprinting the last four blocks to the pharmacy.

Adjusting my oversized shades, I shoved open the glass door and headed to the cashier, ignoring the clanging bell over the door that drew eyes my way. A small metal frame with energy supplements stood on the counter waiting for me. I grabbed a handful and paid quickly without making eye contact. I stuffed them into my bag and left before anyone could get in line behind me.

An engine roared to life as I stepped into the parking lot, and my heart stopped. Lots of cars sounded the same.
No reason to think it’s the same car from outside our apartment. Squealing belts happen all the time, and it makes sense if it’s the same car. This is the smallest town in the world.
I scanned the street before taking another step. The sixth sense returned, coaxing me to run back to the crowded coffee shop. A bright blue motorcycle parked on the sidewalk caught my attention mid-panic. It looked like the motorcycle Brian had rested against when we’d said goodbye in Elton. Ugh! Love struck and paranoid. A deadly combination of stupid.

Being on my own had amped up my crazy. I ground my teeth against the building internal tirade and concentrated on breathing. It was a different bike. Cute guys didn’t follow me around. This town wasn’t a creepy freak show. I was, and I needed to get a life.

Pulling in another full breath, I turned on my toes for Buzz Cup. I needed to really move it to fool Pixie. Our apartment was a block closer to the coffee shop than the pharmacy.

When Buzz Cup came back into view, I stopped to let my heart rate settle. Then I walked to the building. Pixie sat inside the window laughing with her mouth wide open and her head thrown back. She hadn’t even noticed that I took too long. She stood the moment I walked in and linked her elbow with mine.

“Let’s go!” She tossed up one arm with gusto.

I followed less enthusiastically.

In the distance, a small blue motorcycle zipped through traffic. I took a deep breath.

Chapter Three

Francine Frances Academy was beautiful. The lawns and landscaping were immaculate. Groundskeepers were plentiful. I’d scouted out a spot near a short stone wall soon after I arrived in Ohio. The wall was more aesthetic than intended for seating. That meant it was frequently vacant. Solitude was another thing I valued. In a city with a couple million people, I blended. Small-town life was too much like living under a microscope.

“I saw you looking at Davis.” Pixie kept her eyes forward and bumped into me with one hip and shoulder as we walked.

Microscope.