“Oh, noth­ing,” I said with a shrug, my heart­beat pound­ing in my tem­ples.

“Reed--”

“Josh,” I replied.

Sud­den­ly, un­der­stand­ing lit his eyes. 'You can't tell me.“ He smirked, try­ing to make light. ”Or you could tell me, but then you'd have to kill me."

I lift­ed both trays awk­ward­ly from the slide rails and bal­anced them on my palms. “Don't wor­ry about it,” I told him.

33

“Well, if it's bad you could al­ways spit in their cof­fee,” he said.

I looked down at the steam­ing mugs on one of the trays. Damn that would be nice. “Uh, no,” I said.

“Well, just ... be care­ful,” he said. “I mean, don't let them make you do any­thing, you know--”

Crazy? Dan­ger­ous? Stupid? Done, done, and done.

“I won't.” I paused as one of the cof­fee mugs teetered.

“Here. Let me help you,” Josh of­fered, reach­ing for the heav­ier of the trays.

“Thanks, but I--”

I glanced up at our ta­ble and in­stant­ly ev­ery­thing in­side of me dropped. Walt Whit­tak­er, big as a moun­tain on a clear day, sat at the end of the ta­ble. Flash­es hit me like ma­chine-?gun fire to the skull.

My hands on his chest. Warm brown eyes. A hand­ker­chief. Thick arms. Rough lips. Tongue, tongue, tongue. And--ow. A twinge in my chest.

Holy crap. Had I let that per­son feel me up?

“Hey! Watch it!” Josh said.

He grabbed the tray sec­onds be­fore it went over. One of the dough­nuts slid off the tray and plopped, ic­ing side down, on­to the floor.

“I got­ta go,” I told him. Then I dropped the sec­ond tray on the near­est ta­ble and was out of there for my sec­ond dry heave of the day.

34

JUDG­MENT DAY

I ar­rived for morn­ing ser­vices sec­onds be­fore the doors closed. All over the chapel, peo­ple were en­gaged in in­tense, hushed, con­ver­sa­tion, and I heard Thomas's name more than once. Dozens of eyes fol­lowed my progress up the aisle and the whis­per­ing in­ten­si­fied in my wake. Ap­par­ent­ly, Thomas's dis­ap­pear­ance had be­come the top­ic of the mo­ment, and since he wasn't here to gawk at, it seemed I had been nom­inat­ed for the job. The girl­friend. The one left be­hind. She who must be watched.

Sud­den­ly I was glad that I'd had to heave and miss break­fast. If I'd stayed in the cafe­te­ria, I might have been mobbed. At least here, no one could ap­proach me. For the mo­ment, I could re­group.

Duck­ing my head, I slid in­to a small space at the end of one of the sopho­more pews, next to my least fa­vorite per­son at Eas­ton, Mis­sy Thurber. Hav­ing spent the rest of the break­fast pe­ri­od sit­ting in the in­fir­mary sip­ping ap­ple juice, I was feel­ing just slight­ly more like my­self. Then Mis­sy start­ed sniff­ing elab­orate­ly through her

35

tun­nel-?like nos­trils, sam­pling the air. She leaned to­ward me, sniffed again, and groaned.

“Ugh! Where did you sleep last night?” she asked, pinch­ing her nose. “In the land­sca­per's shed?”

I flushed scar­let as she got up, stepped over my for­mer room­mate, Con­stance Tal­bot, and forced her to slide over next to me.

“Hey,” Con­stance whis­pered un­cer­tain­ly. I hadn't seen much of her since I had de­sert­ed her for Billings two days ear­li­er. Her curly red hair was twist­ed in­to two long braids. She al­ready looked young for her age with her freck­les and roundish face. Now she looked twelve. “How's ev­ery­thing?” she asked.

“Fine.”

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