My Kind of Crazy (2 page)

All I want to do is find that missing sparkler box, but I can't go now because the fire department will still be there. They'll probably have the road blocked off, and my snooping around would be totally obvious. I have to be at Shop 'n Save in an hour anyway. I'm picking up someone else's shift to do inventory because it pays double time, so I'll be there from 10:00 until 2:00 a.m. I decide to sneak by Amanda's on my way home. If it's not already too late, it's my best shot at saving my ass.

It's frickin' freezing at 2:00 a.m., especially when you're riding a bike. Not to mention that it's also dark as hell except for the occasional pools of light from the street lamps. I roll up in front of the Carlisle house, which still has police tape cordoning off the singed area of the lawn. Otherwise, it's pretty quiet.

I lay my bike gently on the pavement and tiptoe toward the spot I used as my staging area. I turn on the flashlight app on my phone and cast it in a low-lying arc, but there's no empty sparkler box. Which means I'm pretty much screwed because the police probably found it and took it for evidence. And if I'm incarcerated, I'm guessing there is no way in hell Amanda Carlisle will go with me to prom.

“Looking for something?”

I practically jump out of my skin. I straighten up and shine my phone into the eyes of a girl with the craziest hair I've ever seen, causing her to squint and angle away from me, holding her hand up as a shield.

“Can you quit that, please? What are you trying to do, blind me?”

“Sorry,” I say and click off the light.

She looks vaguely familiar, though I can't put a finger on why. And despite the fact that it's almost two thirty in the morning, she is not wearing pajamas. In fact, she has on a pair of jeans and an old Pink Floyd shirt that is about two sizes too big for her. In the moonlight I can make out the graffitied, white rubber tips of her Converse. Her long, curly brown hair sticks out at all sorts of defiant angles, and she peeks at me with the bluest eyes I've ever seen from underneath her unruly bangs.

“You're not going to find what you're looking for,” she tells me.

“How do you know what I'm looking for?” I ask. “And why are you walking around the neighborhood at two thirty in the morning?”

“Hmmm, I could ask you the same questions,” she says and puts a finger thoughtfully to her chin.

“I lost something. I think I might've left it here.” I shoot another glance around, trying to play it cool.

“What'd you lose? Maybe I can help you.”

She takes a step toward me, and I reflexively step away from her. “Why are you here?” I ask again.

“I was heading out for a jog.”

I look her over suspiciously. “At this hour? You're wearing jeans.”

“I didn't know there was a dress code. Look, do you want my help or not?”

“Not. I'm good. Enjoy your run. Thanks though.” I give her a little wave, hoping she will take the hint and be on her way, but instead she crosses her arms and stares at me.

“You're Hank Kirby, right?”

My back stiffens. “How do you know my name?”

“I know who you are. I've seen you around.” She smiles. “I've been waiting for you to come back.”

This girl is starting to creep me the hell out.

“What do you mean ‘come back'?” I ask nervously. What if she's a serial killer? What if she's about to chop me into bits, divide me into a bunch of garbage bags, and toss me in the county dump alongside a bunch of rotting produce and stained, saggy mattresses? I can't die a virgin.

She reaches behind her and I panic. This is it. She's going for her knife. I start to back away, but she's looking at me with this confused expression. When her hand comes around, she's not holding a knife at all.

She's holding a box of sparklers.

My box of sparklers.

She's seen me. She must know what happened, that I'm responsible. I'm totally screwed.
Oh God. Who has she told?

“Impressive,” she says as she places the box in my hand. I quickly shove it into my back pocket and pull my sweatshirt over it to make sure it's completely hidden from view. “Too bad it didn't burn the place down. That would have been beautiful. Lord knows I've thought about it a thousand times myself.”

Now I'm the one looking at her like she's whack-a-doodle. “What are you talking about? I didn't try to burn down her house. I was trying to ask her to prom. Jesus. You didn't tell anyone that, did you? Does anybody know you found this?”

“Prom? That's disappointing. And also slightly pathetic,” she says with a smirk and scoops that mane of hers up into a ponytail, twisting a hair band around so it looks as if a small poodle is hanging off the back of her head. “And no, I didn't tell anyone. Your secret is safe with me.”

I don't know who this chick is or what her deal is, but I do know that hanging around chitchatting in front of Amanda Carlisle's house at 2:30 a.m. with an empty box of sparklers in my back pocket is probably not a stellar idea. I dart past her, pick up my bike, and swing my leg over it, angling myself in the direction of home. “Well, thanks. I better get going. See ya.”

She shakes her head and bites at her lip. “Don't you even want to know my name?”

I shoot a glance down the road. A pair of headlights appears in the distance. Time to go. “Uh…sure.”

“It's Peyton.”

“Yeah, well, I'll see ya 'round, Peyton,” I say and push off. I don't wait for her to say good-bye, and halfway home I start to feel like a jerk about that. I mean, the girl saved my ass. She could have handed that box over to the police, or even to Amanda Carlisle.

The more distance I put between us, the more questions I have. Who the hell is this girl and how does she know my name? Why did she save my box of sparklers? And how do I find her again? I have no idea what she wants from me.

It's like my entire life flipped upside down when she gave me that box. Suddenly, my fate is in this chick's hands. Why did she protect me like that? And what if she decides to stop?

For the third time in six hours, I flip my bike around and pedal furiously toward Amanda Carlisle's house. If I don't find Peyton, I'm gonna spend the foreseeable future worried that she might share what she knows.

Amanda's street is empty, with no sign that we were ever here. I know I didn't imagine Peyton because the corners of that box dig into my spine as I pedal, but there's not as much as a light on in a neighboring house, not a single jogger in sight. I'm pretty certain her jogging story was a load of crap, but just to be safe I pedal up and down a few streets on the chance that I'll see her.

Zip. Nada.

I better get my ass back before Dad wakes up for his shift and discovers I'm gone. I race home and stash the empty sparkler box with the others behind my bin of old comic books underneath my bed, then grab an Avengers T-shirt and faded pair of jeans that are lying on the floor. I sniff to see if they're tolerable, since I haven't done laundry in a while. Not too ripe.

I'm about to head downstairs when I realize that being up and ready might arouse suspicion, especially if I stumble in while Dad is nursing his morning coffee, adding the shot of whiskey that he thinks no one notices. Of course, if he'd seen me sneaking in, he probably would have assumed I was out somewhere getting laid. That would make him happy, no doubt. Then again, we'd lose half of our source of conversation: him asking me if I'm getting any, me telling him “not that I'm aware of,” him giving me the list of why I'm repellent to the opposite sex.

Better to crawl back under the covers and wait it out. I try to close my eyes, but my brain is racing, processing everything that's happened since last night.

As soon as the clock turns to seven, I'm out of bed like a shot, flying down the stairs two at a time and out the door, letting the screen door slam with a
fwap!
behind me. I have to find Peyton. I pedal to school like my life depends on it, and for all I know, it does.

The first thing I see as I lock my bike at school is a cop car parked out front. Although this is not a highly unusual occurrence at Kennedy High, I'd be lying if I didn't say a little bile is rising in my throat. No one's in the car, which means the cops must be inside talking to someone in the office.

Or searching a locker.

Or waiting for someone.

Or waiting for someone so that they can search their locker.

Beads of sweat sprout on my upper lip alongside the stubble. I mentally inventory my locker, trying to remember if I have as much as a wadded-up piece of paper with the name Amanda Carlisle written on it, let alone anything that would tie me to the events of the previous evening. But all I can come up with are a stinky pair of gym shorts and a Snickers bar so old it could chip a tooth.

I walk to my locker, whistling to show how totally relaxed and at ease I am with the world. I'm fiddling with my lock when I hear Amanda approach with her gaggle of girlfriends, who listen with rapt attention as she recounts how she defied death. I pretend to focus on my lock with all the concentration of a safecracker, careful not to look directly at her. In my peripheral vision, I can see her hair is loose and wavy today, her blond bangs swept to one side. Her lips are painted bubble-gum pink to match her cardigan. If her jeans were any tighter, she'd need a crowbar to get out of them.

She stops at her locker, which is in the next bank over. The girls fan out around her as she spins the dial and puts her books away. I hear her tell them, “The cops said whoever did it was trying to spell something, like a message. I swear to you, when I looked out, I saw someone standing there. These eyes looked up at me, but not in a creepy way, and then there was just this wall of flames.”

“Whoa.” Becca Henry's eyes widen and her mouth hangs open.

“The thing is, I don't think he was trying to hurt anybody. I believe that message was for me. I mean, right before it happened, I heard him
call my name
.”

“I've got chills,” Hannah Wolf says as she runs her fingers up and down her arms.

If I were a cartoon and Amanda looked over at me right now, she would see my heart practically beating out of my chest. I glance at her. She's smiling and eating up the attention, as several of her friends make swoony noises. I decide to reorganize my locker so that I can keep listening.

“That's so romantic. Who do you think it was?” Jenny O'Leary asks.

Amanda shrugs. “I don't know. But I'm dying to find out.”

Hannah grabs Amanda's arm and bounces on the balls of her feet as she says in a loud whisper, “O-M-G! Maybe it was Clay Kimball!”

Clay is a douche-bag jock on the baseball team who thinks that being able to hit a ball with a large stick entitles him to be a jerk. For reasons that remain a mystery, women seem to find this attractive.

“No, Clay's too tall and built. This guy was shorter and skinnier.”

“He was a midget?” Jenny crinkles her nose.

Jesus, I'm five foot ten. It's not like I'm a pygmy.

“No, not exactly. Just…not tall. And his eyes were sort of beady, but that could have been from the heat of the flames. He might have been squinting.”

They all nod in agreement. I cringe and bite down on my tongue to keep from responding. Then Amanda closes her locker and adds in an extra-dramatic voice, “What if he's totally hot and he's scared to talk to me now that my house nearly burned down and I almost died?”

More like part of her lawn and a tree caught fire—and the firemen were right on it—but the girl certainly knows how to tell a compelling story. Her power of exaggeration only adds to her charm, and I smile to myself, knowing she's talking about me, which is six kinds of crazy, even if she did just describe me as short and unathletic with beady eyes.

The girls collectively suck in their breath, and Hannah tells her, “If it's meant to be, he'll find you. He obviously went to a lot of trouble to get your attention, so he's not going to simply disappear, right? Not if he really loves you.”

Love? Who said anything about love?

“You think so?”

“Of course!” Jenny squeals with absolute authority. “But are you mad about what happened? I mean, like you said, he could have killed you.”

Amanda shakes her head, hugging her notebook to her chest. “No. I just want to know who he is and what he wanted to say last night.”

Becca nods and tilts her head, letting out a wistful sigh. “It's so totally romantic, like a Cinderella story. I wish stuff like that happened to me.”

Now
this
is the reaction I was hoping for when I started researching promposals online. It's the perfect opener. I get a blast of courage and I turn to Amanda. My mouth is open, ready to tell her everything and hoping we can both laugh about it, but the words hang there in my throat. This is a terrible idea.

Hannah glares at me, her eyes forming little slits. “Can we help you?” Now all of them are staring at me.

“Uh…” I panic and say the first thing that comes to mind. “Do you have a pen?”

Amanda smiles at me and extracts a blue pen that is wedged in the spiral of one of her notebooks. “You can keep it,” she says.

“Thanks,” I say. They're all looking at me, seemingly waiting for me to say something else since I'm still standing there. I clear my throat, which makes me cough. And once I start coughing, I can't stop. And then they're all laughing and walking away, weaving through the crowd to first period while I'm practically bringing up a lung.
Smooth, genius.

• • •

By noon, I realize that I flew out of the house without grabbing a lunch, and I haven't eaten since this time yesterday. All I have is fifty-two cents rattling around in my pocket. My stomach makes a deep, hollow, growly sound. I hover at the entrance to the cafeteria, hoping I will see someone I know to borrow a few bucks.

A moment or two after the bell, Nick Giuliani approaches, his black, greasy hair slicked back, loping along in his untied Dr. Martens. His red flannel shirt flaps open as he walks. His jeans hang just low enough on his hips that you can see the waistband of his black plaid boxers. Most kids are scared of him because, rumor has it, his dad has Mafia connections. It could also be because Nick has a lazy eye. When it's really bad, he wears an eye patch, which makes him look like a pirate of the frickin' Caribbean. They say that makes him a good lookout when his dad has business going down, because his eye's always moving around.

Nick doesn't scare me. In fact, he's pretty funny once you get him going, and he's always got great stories. For the most part, like me, he keeps to himself, but sometimes we hang out after school and grab a burger or go to the comic shop and look at the new issues. He's pretty cool, even if he does like DC better than Marvel.

“Yo, Hank. What's up, my man?” His right eye is looking at me, but his left eye wanders off to take in the quad.

I look him square in his good eye. “Hey, Nick. I forgot to bring a lunch today. You got an extra couple of bucks? I'll owe ya.”

“You're in luck. Today was payday, and my old man gave me a bonus.” He grins and smooths his slick hair back with one hand, then peels a couple of dollars off a wad from his back pocket and hands them to me.

“Thanks, Nick. I'll pay you back tomorrow. I promise.”

“With interest,” he says as he folds a bill in half and starts using it to pick between his two front teeth. I freeze. He cracks up and gives me a slap on the back as his left eye rotates back into position. “I'm just jokin'.”

The lunch lady gives me an extra scoop of mac and cheese. It's my favorite, even though it's the industrial version of that bright-orange crap that comes from a box and probably makes your intestines glow in the dark. I settle in with Nick at a table in the corner of the cafeteria, off the radar from where the jocks and popular kids hold court. I'm popping open my container of chocolate milk and sliding in the straw when I see her.

Actually, the first thing I see is her hair. It's a wild mane of curls like early this morning, but now she's added a red bow on the side. It looks as if it's hanging on to that nest for dear life. The Pink Floyd shirt is gone, replaced by a black vintage Stones T-shirt and a pair of faded jeans with holes in the knees. She's drawn a happy face on both exposed kneecaps, which is ironic because her mouth is turned down in an Eeyore frown. She's holding her tray and scanning the room, and the second she locks eyes with mine, she pivots and starts walking toward our table.

Wordlessly, she sits down next to me as if she's been invited, which causes Nick to raise an eyebrow at me. I shrug. She busies herself buttering her roll by tearing it in half, wiping the patty across the center, then crushing the two halves together and smearing them back and forth to spread the butter out evenly. Next she turns her attention to her fruit cocktail. She picks out every single grape with her spoon and lays them in a neat arc on the side of her tray.

She rakes her fork through the mac and cheese, breaking up the congealed layer of cheese on the top, which in my opinion is the best part. She shakes her milk back and forth vigorously, then peels open the top and sticks in her straw. Bending the tip to meet her lips, she takes a sip and then looks up at us.

“What do you have against grapes?” Nick asks, fascinated.

“They're disgusting. I don't eat anything that has skin of any kind.” She stabs her fork into a wedge of cantaloupe and pops the melon into her mouth.

“That cantaloupe had skin,” Nick shoots back and openly stares at her.

“Yes, but the skin is removed to get to the fruit. When you eat a fruit with its skin, it's been touched, peed on by rodents and insects, stored in dirty trucks and warehouses. I can't possibly expect it to have been washed properly before it lands on my plate.”

Nick presses her further. “What about strawberries?”

She shakes her head. “Nope.”

“Awwww, c'mon. Most people like strawberries,” he says and glances at me for support. “You like strawberries, Hank?”

“I do.” I take a bite of my mac and cheese and chase it with a swig of chocolate milk.

“I guess I'm not most people,” she says.

That seems to satisfy Nick. He looks amused. “I've seen you before.”

“That would stand to reason. I go to school here.”

Nick takes a bite of his roll and says with his mouth full of food, “What's your name?”

“Peyton.” She stabs another piece of fruit and then dips it in the mac and cheese. I guess it could be gross, but in a way it makes sense. It's like fondue or something.

“You got a last name, Peyton?”

She points her fork at him and says, “Breedlove. Why, are you taking attendance later?”

Nick raises both hands in surrender. “Do you know this girl, Hank?”

“Of course he does,” she answers before I can even open my mouth.

I'm scared she'll tell Nick how we know each other so I quickly say, “Yeah. This is Peyton. She's cool.”

She puts her fork down, turns to me as if Nick isn't even there, and says, “I was wondering if you wanted to hang out after school today, Hank.”

She seems serious. I honestly don't know what to say. Until this morning, I'd never seen Peyton Breedlove, and now here she is again, sitting next to me with some serious blackmail material, and I'm wondering what would happen if I said no. I'm too scared to find out. “Sure.”

“Perfect. I'll meet you at my house.”

Nick is full-on staring at me now because he's never seen me with a girl before, and naturally the one he sees now bears a strong resemblance to a walking Chia head. He wiggles his eyebrows. It looks like two fuzzy black caterpillars are doing push-ups.

“Um…I don't know where you live,” I say with a nervous laugh, then shrug at Nick, as if to say, “This girl is mad as a hatter.” His eyes shift to her like he's watching a tennis match.

“I can't eat this.” She drops her fork and sighs, then stands up holding her tray, stepping over the sides of the metal lunch-table seats and angling toward the trash can to dump the contents. “I'll see you around three thirtyish.” Her mouth curls into a smile, and her ice-blue eyes lock with mine. “I have faith in you.”

Nick watches her walk off, shaking his head and muttering, “Interesting, interesting.”

He doesn't know the half of it.