Noth­ing like a nice, long dry heave in­to the bowl to get the day start­ed just right.

28

* * *

By the time I ar­rived at the sun-?drenched cafe­te­ria, those girls who dared to risk their per­fect fig­ures were ready for sec­onds and it was my job to fill their or­ders. Al­though the last thing I want­ed to do was look at food, I found my­self pil­ing two trays high with toast, dough­nuts, fruit, and drinks.

“Eggs?” the man be­hind the counter of­fered, lift­ing a spoon­ful of yel­low scram­bled goo.

I winced. “No, thanks.”

I grabbed my­self a bagel and added it to the grow­ing pile, hop­ing I might be able to choke some of it down. Up ahead, a pair of fresh­man boys was chat­ting up a pret­ty fresh­man girl with dark, curly hair. She gig­gled and preened and I sneered. Oh, to be that care­free and awake. And clean.

“I heard that last year all the fresh­man girls who went came back with tat­toos,” one of the boys said. “The vir­gins got Vs and the non-?vir­gins got lip prints. Right on their left cheeks,” he said, check­ing out the girl's butt in her pleat­ed mi­ni.

29

“I thought no one came back from the Lega­cy a vir­gin,” she said, dip­ping her spoon in­to her yo­gurt then suck­ing on it teas­ing­ly as the line edged for­ward.

In­stant­ly my ears perked up. The Lega­cy. Hadn't Dash and those guys men­tioned that last night? My mem­ory of the pre­vi­ous evening was hazy, but I did re­mem­ber them say­ing some­thing about how Thomas would nev­er miss it. How he'd be there no mat­ter what. How did these kids know about it?

“Not that you have to wor­ry about that, right, Gwen?” the oth­er boy said, prac­ti­cal­ly lick­ing his lips.

“Maybe,” she said, lift­ing her tray and turn­ing to­ward them. “Maybe not.”

She traipsed off, leav­ing the boys gap­ing be­hind her. “Dude, I am so gonna hit that at the Lega­cy. Just wait,” one of them said.

“I will,” the oth­er said grumpi­ly.

“Oh! That's right! You won't be there, will you, Mills!?” the first kid taunt­ed. “Poor, poor frosh. Maybe your grand­kids will get to go.”

With that, the kid laughed and saun­tered to­ward his ta­ble, head thrown back all the way.

So the Lega­cy was an ex­clu­sive par­ty. One that Gwen and Boy Toy #1 could go to but Boy Toy #2 could not. I would have to file this in­for­ma­tion away for lat­er and try to pro­cess it when my brain was ac­tu­al­ly func­tion­ing again.

I took a deep breath and smelled the scent of fresh paint be­hind me an in­stant be­fore I felt the warmth of a body. I turned around to find a bright-?eyed Josh Hol­lis smil­ing down at me.

30

In­stant­ly my shoul­der mus­cles coiled with ten­sion. I couldn't look at Josh with­out think­ing of Thomas and won­der­ing whether or not Josh had heard from him.

“Ouch. You look like crudge,” Josh said.

“Crudge?”

“I make up words when no ex­ist­ing terms seem fit to rise to the oc­ca­sion,” Josh said. “There­fore, crudge.”

“Well, I'm hon­ored to have in­spired a new word,” I lied. Not that I could blame him. My dirty-?ass hair was back in a slick from-?grease pony­tail and I was sure there was a nice, green un­der­tone to my waxy skin.

“Are you okay?” Josh asked as we moved for­ward in line. “I was a lit­tle wor­ried about you last night.”

The dim mem­ory of a stone-?faced Josh flit­ted through my mind. One more thing I had for­got­ten about un­til now. Come to think of it, though, why would Josh be wor­ried about me? We bare­ly knew each oth­er. A hope­ful thought oc­curred to me in a rush.

“Did Thomas ask you to look out for me or some­thing?” I asked.

Josh blinked. “No. Thomas didn't say any­thing to me be­fore he left, ac­tu­al­ly.”

“Oh. So you re­al­ly have no idea where he is?” I asked.

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