“I hate them,” the short one said. “Every stupid one of them.”
“How much?”
“What do you mean?”
“How much do you hate them?”
“I don’t know. A lot.”
“Enough to do something about it?”
The short one stopped chewing the pastry. “Like what? What are you thinking?”
“Do you really think you could stomach something more than a toaster pastry when it comes to doing something to them?”
The heavyset one turned red, embarrassed by the tone of derision in the other’s voice. “I told you I hate them just like you do.”
“Maybe I should think of something to get everyone talking.”
“I’m listening. What are you thinking of doing?”
“I don’t know. Yet.” The tall one smiled coldly.
“You’ll tell me when you think of it?”
“It’ll be better than fireworks, that’s a promise.”
“And we’ll do it together?”
“You’ll be the first to know. We’re friends, aren’t we?”
The short one felt relieved to be back in good graces. The thin one was mercurial, quick to verbally torture, just as quick to change direction and focus. Sometimes impossible to read.
Just then first bell rang and the groups began to spread out before the tardy bell rang. “Look at them. They’re like cockroaches.” The thin one shoved away from the wall. “See you after school. We’ll talk more.”
“About …?”
The thin one grinned. “Immortality.”
They sauntered to classes down separate halls.
“Why do you do that?”
“Do what?” Roth turned toward the girl who’d just walked up.
“Stare at that conceited Morgan.”
They were in the cafeteria on Monday. Roth was slouched in a metal chair, a palm-size electronic video game—strictly forbidden on school grounds—in his hands and the black hood of his sweatshirt pulled over his head. “Well, just say what you think, Liza,” he retorted.
Liza Sandiski sat down with a clunk in the chair next to his. “Well, it’s true,” she said huffily.
Roth and Liza had been friends for years. They were both outsiders. Her short, spiky hair was cut asymmetrically and dyed coal-black with purple tips. She wore studs in her nose and tongue and a line of small silver hoops the length of one ear. She sported a small star, inked by Roth’s uncle Max, on her right cheek, just under her eye. None of her other tats showed, but Roth knew where each one was located on her body because he had explored it thoroughly. “Bad weekend?” he asked.
She shot him a mean look. “Don’t change the subject. Why do you keep sneaking peeks at Morgan? Or is it her boyfriend who turns you on?”
Roth saw Mr. Champs casing the cafeteria for behavior problems and contraband, so he shoved his video game into the kangaroo pocket of his sweatshirt. “Now you’re just being snarky,” he told Liza. “Trent’s a total jerk. Morgan’s just pretty. Easy on the eyes, and I like her long legs.” He knew he was being hateful to Liza, who had body issues. She was short, heavier than she wanted to be, always railing against skinny models in magazines or movie and TV stars showing off bony arms and legs. He’d tried many times to make Liza feel better about herself, but it was a losing battle. He saw her stiffen, felt bad about his comment, put out his hand and held her wrist. “My bad.”
She glared at him.
“Truth is, I’m casing Morgan’s table for signs of them knowing anything about last Friday.”
Liza’s gaze shifted to the senior table filled with Edison elites—Morgan, Trent, Kelli, Mark, the cheerleading squad—all of the people she disliked by sight. “The pep rally?”
Roth grinned.
“The fireworks.” Liza’s eyes widened. “It was you!”
“You might not want to shout that out.”
“No way!”
“Way.”
Liza smiled, her whole face softening. “You turd.”
“Yeah … ain’t I a stinker.”
“When did you set it up?”
“Four in the morning. I figured no one would check a cardboard box painted with school colors lying on the field under the goalpost. And I was right.”
“But how—?”
“Secret’s all mine.” Roth thought she looked skeptical, as if she didn’t quite believe him and thought he was taking credit for someone else’s prank. “I did it,” he insisted.
“You should have told me. I would have helped.”
“This needed to be on me if I got caught.”
“Where’d you get the fireworks?” Still skeptical.
“Bought over July Fourth.”
“You’ve been planning it since July?”
Roth shrugged. “Not sure when the idea came to me. It just did.”
“Why?”
“Why not? Thought it would be fun to shake up the new student council administration, I guess.”
Liza’s eyes narrowed and she homed in on Roth’s face. “So it still comes back to Morgan, doesn’t it?” She stood, scooting back her chair, making it scrape the floor. “You need to get another hobby, Roth. She’d never be interested in a guy like you.”
Liza stalked off. Her words cut him like a knife, not because they were cold and hurled like stones, but because they were true.
• • •
“I don’t like the way that guy keeps looking at you,” Trent said into Morgan’s ear as he leaned down and kissed her neck.
“Don’t do that. Champs is on the prowl,” she said, embarrassed. “What guy?”
“That creep over there. Tattoo guy.” Trent nodded toward a corner of the room where only a few kids sat alone gobbling lunch or reading a book.
Her gaze darted up and instantly connected with Roth’s. Her cheeks burned because his look was raw, intense and unreadable. She quickly glanced away. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t seen him staring at her before. What was worse, her heart thudded and her pulse raced whenever she caught him watching her. There was a tingle that came with it, a thrill she was drawn to in spite of loving Trent. She felt like a traitor.
“Just sit here with me,” she told Trent. “Ignore him.”
“I want to knock his face in.”
“Why?”
“Principle.”
“Stop it,” she said with a smile. “Looking’s harmless.” From the corner of her eye, she saw Roth get up and leave the cafeteria by a side door. She felt relieved—not because Roth irritated Trent, but because his presence distracted her.
“Thought I’d come over after football practice,” Trent said. “Hang out. If that’s okay.”
“I have a council meeting until four-thirty. Then I’m supposed to meet Mom at the Sub Shop. Dinner,” she said. “Dad’s working late.”
Trent groaned. “I can’t come by after midnight all the time just to see you.”
Morgan saw heads lift all around them. She elbowed Trent in the side. “One time,” she corrected.
He grinned, waggled his eyebrows. “But it was a very good visit.”
Her friends made mocking tsk-tsk noises.
Morgan squared her chin, glanced around at the group. “All right, everyone. Show’s over. Get back to work.”
They laughed. Everyone except Kelli. She barely mustered a smile. Morgan thought Kelli hadn’t been very sociable on Saturday morning either. She’d chalked it up to the pain her friend was experiencing. Now she wasn’t so sure. Come to think of it, Mark wasn’t his usual jovial self either. A fight? Usually Kelli spilled her guts to Morgan whenever she and Mark had it out.
Morgan made a mental note to corner her best friend and make her tell what was going on. Then she remembered all the stuff she had to do—classes, meeting, dinner, homework. She’d text her, although she was sure Kelli wouldn’t confess anything in a return text message. Morgan sighed and picked up her tray. There were just too many things going on in her life right now. How was sh
e going to juggle it all and keep track of Kelli’s boyfriend problems too?
The bell rang, so Morgan hustled to class.
“She cut you? She can’t cut you! That’s just wrong. Who does Linda Holland think she is?” Kelli’s mom raged. They stood in their kitchen, where Kelli had just told Jane about her last class of the day and a meeting with her phys ed teacher.
“She’s the coach, Mom,” Kelli answered wearily. She’d hoped her mother wouldn’t explode when she told her the news about being cut from the squad, but obviously it had been wishful thinking. “And she didn’t cut me. She benched me. She needs someone who can perform and be tossed around. I can’t.” She held up her wrapped sprained wrist to make her point.
“Well, we’ll just see about that!” Jane fumbled for her cell.
“Mom, please! It’s all right. I’m not upset because I got benched.”
“Well, I am.”
Kelli wanted to shout, It’s not your life, but she didn’t. In truth, Jane had never embraced that almost twenty years had passed since she’d attended Edison High School and been voted most popular and been a queen bee, dating Brock Larson, the football team’s quarterback. Kelli snatched Jane’s cell phone away. “Don’t call her. Please!”
“What’s wrong with you? You love performing on that squad.”
“Not right now. Classes are hard this year. I don’t mind stepping back.”
Jane crossed her arms, fumed. “Who got your slot?”
“Elana Mendez.”
“That Mexican—”
“She’s good, Mom,” Kelli interrupted.
“You beat her out last spring for the position, so she wasn’t as good as you.”
“She deserves my place now.”
“What about when your wrist heals? Is Linda going to give you your spot again?”
“Football season will be all but over in six weeks. Doc said it would take—”
Jane scoffed. “And in January basketball starts. Then soccer. You don’t have to lose the entire year. You need assurances that this Mendez girl will be out once you heal. She’s a junior. She’ll have another year to be on the squad after you graduate in June.”
If I graduate, Kelli thought. She felt as if she were talking to a stone wall. Why didn’t her mother get it? Kelli didn’t want her place back on the squad. She was through with being a cheerleader. Finished with the acrobatics, the falls, the bruises, the constant weight watching. There was so much that her mother didn’t understand and that she couldn’t explain at this moment.
Jane’s features softened. “Believe me, honey. These are the best years of your life—”
“Give it up, Mom. You’ve told me this a thousand times.”
“Don’t raise your voice to me. It’s the truth. Before you know it you’ll be out here in the real world grubbing for a living.”
Like me … The unsaid but implied words hung in the air. Kelli put her hands over her ears. “Not now, Mom. Just give it a rest! I don’t care about cheerleading. I don’t care that Elana got my place. I. Don’t. Care.”
Kelli turned and ran from the room while her mother stood speechless.
Morgan sat with a sobbing Kelli in Kelli’s wrecked bedroom, trying to comfort her. “Do you really not care about losing your slot to Elana, or is that just something you told your mother?”
Kelli blew her nose. “I really don’t care.”
Morgan hadn’t expected that answer. The cheerleading and dance squad had meant everything to Kelli since ninth grade. “Then if it doesn’t matter, why are you crying?”
Kelli picked at the fringe on a pillow, stared down at her hands. “It’s just—it’s just everything.”
“You and Mark?” Morgan ventured her best guess. “You two have a fight?”
Kelli nodded, wiped her eyes. “I’m afraid he’s dumping me.”
“Impossible! You two are like spaghetti and meatballs. Ice cream and cake—”
“Oil and water,” Kelli interrupted.
Usually Kelli ran to Morgan with details of every word that passed between her and Mark, but she had been pretty withdrawn lately. “Why do you think that?”
“He never calls anymore.”
“Well, with football practice and classes—”
“Last year he texted me five times a day. All summer we went places together.”
“I know. Trent and I were with you.”
“Now I have to practically trip him in the hall to get his attention.”
Morgan was baffled. How could she have not noticed? “So you think he’s into another girl?”
“Girls flirt with him all the time.”
“But you don’t know that for sure.”
“I don’t know anything for sure.”
“Well, then—”
“Don’t.” Kelli held up her hand. “I don’t want to talk about it right now.”
Morgan sat, still puzzling over her friend’s behavior. “You have been kind of moody lately. Guys don’t like moody, you know.” Trent liked Morgan happy and honestly didn’t know how to handle the days when she felt controlled by her hormones. She didn’t know how to handle such days either, so she kept to herself when they happened.
Kelli sprang off the bed. “Don’t you start on me!”
“I’m not.” Morgan glanced around the bedroom heaped with clothes and old food wrappers, unwashed plates and glasses hardened with milk stains. “I’ve—uh—never seen you let your space get so trashed before.”
“Well, thanks, Mom,” Kelli snapped. She scooted off the bed and started picking up the mess on the floor.
“Hey, I didn’t mean—”
“Just go,” Kelli said, a sharp edge to her voice.
Offended, Morgan recoiled.
Kelli marched to her closet, dropped a pile of wadded clothes onto the floor and hung her head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be ugly to you. I’m just trying to figure out some things. Forgive me?”
Morgan stood up. “Of course. I—I hate to see you so unhappy. We’re friends. We should be able to talk about what’s bothering you.”
Kelli clutched a jacket to her chest, a jacket Morgan recognized as one of Mark’s. “I will,” she said. “I just need some space right now.”
“I can live with that,” Morgan said, not certain she could, but knowing she shouldn’t pressure Kelli. Nobody liked to be nagged. Kelli would talk to her when she was ready. She walked to the door, paused. “You’re my best friend in the whole world, Kelli Larson. I don’t think it’s right to let Mark make you crazy. I know he loves you.”
“Right,” Kelli mumbled without conviction. “He just doesn’t love me enough.”
Baffled and confused, Morgan left Kelli alone in the ruins of her bedroom.
“Carla, you here?” Roth called out as he walked through Uncle Max’s house. He heaved his book bag onto the counter and looked at the kitchen clock. It was after five.
“You by yourself?” Carla’s voice answered from the back porch.
Roth opened the door and stepped onto the weathered wood deck. Carla sat in an old lawn chair. She was wrapped in a quilt, one hand hidden from sight. Roth winked. “Just me.”
She blew out a mouthful of smoke and eased her hand forward to reveal a cigarette. “Good,” she said. “I just lit up and would have hated to toss it.”
Max didn’t like her smoking and she’d tried to quit many times, but every now and then she slipped up and just had to have one. Roth was the only person who knew. She slid a lawn chair toward him with her foot. “Sit.”
Roth flopped.
“He called to say he was running late, so I took a chance. Don’t ever start smoking, then you’ll never have to stop.” She took a long drag. “How was your day?”
“Before or after Trent Caparella and his jock buddies got in my face?”
“Why’d they go after you?”
“Trent doesn’t like me looking at his girl.”
“Is she pretty?”
Roth flashed a
devilish grin. “Best-looking girl in the school.”
Carla laughed. “You touch her?”
“Not yet.”
“She worth getting beat up for?”
Roth shrugged. “Haven’t decided.”
Carla searched him with her eyes. “Sure you have.”
“Never could fool you,” he said with a laugh.
Carla was more a mother to Roth than his real one had been so many years ago. His memory of both his parents was sketchy; the thing most vivid, most haunting in his memory was the ball of fire that had taken them away. He kept a wedding photo of them in the drawer beside his bed. Max had given it to him. “You should remember them when they were happy,” Max had said. “Not what they became after meth took them over.” Roth had been angry at his parents for years, all the time he had spent in foster care, before Max had come along, war-wounded but determined to raise his brother’s kid. Why had his parents loved meth more than him? He was their flesh and blood. Meth was just in their blood. And yet meth had won the war for their minds and bodies. Roth was collateral damage.
“Just be careful,” Carla said, snuffing out her cigarette and standing. “Don’t let some jealous boyfriend work you over.”
Roth knew that was how Carla had come into Max’s life. A jealous boyfriend had been beating her up when Max stepped in and evened the odds. Six months later, she’d moved in with Max, and two months after that, they married.
“I’ll be careful,” Roth said, knowing full well that he wouldn’t. If he decided he wanted Morgan, he’d go after her full throttle. This was his last chance. They’d be graduating—well, she would. He’d never see her again. To hell with the consequences.
Morgan was called to the principal’s office the next morning. Her nerves tingled. Being called into Mr. Simmons’s office was usually not a good thing. She smoothed her hair, sucked up her courage and marched down the hall. When she arrived, Principal Simmons introduced her to two detectives from the Grandville Police Department. “Detective Wolcheski.” The short round man nodded. “And Detective Sanchez.” The dark-haired woman smiled.