We walked inside the building and followed the noise up the stairs. Yep, it was Rick's band all right. I recognized the tune. Rick had given Adrian a CD of his songs, so I am frequently forced to listen to them vibrating through her bedroom wall.
We walked toward a table that stood by the door to the ballroom. A girl and two guys—respectively, Little Bo Peep, a wizard, and Clark Kent—sat in front of a money box.
Great. I hadn't taken into account that I needed money to get into this and I didn't have any. I glanced at Samantha. "Do you have cash on you?"
"Just a couple of dollars and some spare change."
I walked up to the table anyway, keeping my eyes on Clark Kent. Which wasn't hard to do because, hey, the guy looked like Clark Kent. His white-collared shirt was half open to reveal a blue T-shirt with a large red S printed on it, and judging from the guy's build, it was truth in advertising.
I smiled at him. "Hi, um, have you seen any witches lately?"
"Does my chemistry teacher count?" He flashed a set of perfect teeth that made him look even more attractive. I nearly had to steady myself against the table.
"No, actually I'm thinking younger and greener."
Clark Kent considered this for a moment. "I guess we've had a few of the broom-stick persuasion come by tonight."
"Could we go inside and check?" Samantha asked. "We're just looking for a friend."
Bo Peep's expression stiffened. "It costs five dollars to get in."
"But we're not here to dance," I said.
"Pity," Clark Kent said, and for a couple of seconds I forgot about Adrian, forgot that I had to get in, and smiled at him again.
"If they just want to look around—" the wizard started, but Bo Peep cut him off.
"It still costs five dollars. We already said no exceptions."
Clark Kent shrugged an apology in our direction. "We're raising money for the homeless."
"What luck," I said. "Because I happen to be homeless. Instead of sending me money, can you just let me go inside and—"
"No," Bo Peep said, and glared at me. This is what happens, I suppose, to people who tend sheep all day. They lose their sense of humor.
Still, I was not about to give up. "We would be happy to pay you," I said with a sigh, "but angels don't use money and medieval princesses always barter with land. The best we can do is to bestow a few blessings or give you some prime real estate in the parking lot."
Clark Kent laughed. His eyes turned warm and they struck me as familiar somehow. I'd seen those eyes before. Where? I stared at him trying to figure it out, which probably wasn't polite, but he didn't seem to mind. He stared back at me with a grin.
Samantha held out a hand imploringly. "It would really only take a few minutes, and we have a couple of dollars. Could two dollars buy us a few minutes?"
Samantha opened her purse, but Bo Peep shook her head so that her store-bought curls bounced angrily around her head. "It's five dollars. No matter how long you go in."
I really had the urge to tell her to go look for some sheep, preferably off a steep cliff, but I didn't.
Clark Kent leaned forward and pulled his wallet from his back pocket. Before I realized what he was doing, he took a ten-dollar bill and handed it to me. My fingers tingled from where he touched them.
"I want a blessing for this," he said, looking at me intently.
"What kind?" I asked.
"I want to dance with an angel."
For the second time that night I completely forgot about my sister. "I think I could arrange that."
A grin stretched across his face. "Good. After you find your friend let me know."
Oh yeah, Adrian.
I handed the money to Bo Peep. "Do we need our hands stamped or something?"
She picked up a stamp from the table and pounded orange pumpkins onto our wrists. "All right, go in." You could tell it hurt her to say the words. We'd only walked a few feet away when I heard her turn to Clark Kent and say, "You're such a sucker for a pretty face."
"Hey, helping damsels in distress is my job," he said.
We walked into the ballroom, and it took a few moments for my eyes to adjust to the dark. Rick stood on a platform, decked out as Dracula and grabbing his electric guitar with such force that it looked like he was trying to wind the thing up. One of his band-mates sat behind a set of drums, the other stood off to the side with a bass guitar.
Where was Adrian? She had to be close by; somewhere in the Rick adoration zone. I didn't walk through the dance floor, I couldn't maneuver around people with my wings, so we walked around the circumference of the room, looking. In the darkness, sports figures, monsters, genies, and more cats than you could count—probably because WSU's mascot is the cougar—all moved to the music. I spotted a witch, but it was just a freckle-faced coed who wore a pointy hat, not Adrian.
I saw one man without a costume and he looked so out of place that I stared at him for several seconds before I realized he was a security guard. He stood in the back of the room, arms folded and looking bored.
I made my way up to the front of the room. Samantha followed but we didn't talk. The music didn't allow for it.
I suppose it was too much to hope that Rick wouldn't notice me. After all, it's pretty hard to overlook a girl towing mammoth-sized wings on her back.
Between songs Rick went to the mike and said, "Hey, great costumes, everybody. I especially like yours, Chels, because what says Halloween better than a giant anemic butterfly?"
I ignored him and kept looking around for Adrian.
"Anybody got a jumbo-sized can of Raid?" he called.
Some people shouldn't be allowed access to microphones. Especially people who don't like me. A few people in the crowd stared at me and chuckled.
Rick leaned in closer to the mike and added, "Why aren't there ever any six-foot tarantulas around when you need them?"
This pretty much sums up my relationship with Rick. It's been this way since last year, when Rick and Samantha both ran for school president. He was a jerk during the campaign, and by the time the election was over, we hated each other. Which makes the fact that my little sister dates him that much more annoying.
I moved away from the front of the room. Adrian wouldn't be up by the stage anymore—not after Rick had drawn attention to me. Now that she knew I was here, she'd be hightailing it to somewhere less visible. Where? Deep in the crowd? The bathrooms, maybe?
Then I saw her. I recognized the hat, wig, and green makeup. She strolled toward the refreshment table in an unconcerned manner.
So maybe she hadn't been paying attention while Rick asked for volunteers with insecticide—either that, or she didn't care that I'd come after her. I quickened my step and followed after her.
"Adrian!"
She didn't turn around. She either didn't hear me because of the music or she ignored me. Probably the latter.
I gritted my teeth together and went faster. "Adrian!" I shouted.
Now she and several other people glanced over their shoulders at me. I have to admit, she'd done a good job with her makeup. Her putty nose curved down and her chin pointed up so that they almost met. Several warts grew on her face and she'd done something to her cheekbones so that they looked exaggerated. If I hadn't been with her when she bought the costume, I wouldn't have recognized her.
Without answering me, Adrian turned back around and went on.
"Don't you dare walk away from me," I said and pushed my pace. "You know you're not supposed to be here."
She glanced over her shoulder again, looked at me nervously, then walked faster.
Samantha trotted up to my side. "Do you want me to talk with her? Maybe if we call your mom and tell her we'll stay here and chaperone Adrian—"
"No," I said. "Adrian has to learn that she can't treat people this way. She can't just worry us, and make us run all over town looking for her, and pretend it doesn't matter." I turned away from Samantha and watched Adrian's retreating back. "Hey," I yelle
d again. "You had better turn around and come with me right now."
She glanced back at me again with wide eyes, but instead of stopping and waiting for me, she took off in a sprint.
Without a word I hiked up my dress and ran after her. "Don't think you can get away from me!" I yelled. I knew I could catch her. I've always been faster. True, I wore white ballet slippers which had roughly the same traction as cotton balls, but my determination gave me extra speed.
Adrian ran to the refreshment table, then made a sharp left. I followed. Okay, actually I bumped into the table, and as I turned to go after her, my wings knocked over a large stack of paper plates and several cookies. They fell to the ground and scattered in my wake as I hurried after Adrian.
I heard someone from behind the table yell, "Hey!" and I called out, "Sorry!" but didn't slow down. A few moments later I had gained on my sister again. Her black cape fluttered out behind her, almost within my grasp.
"You are so dead!" I called out.
"Leave me alone!" she called back. At least I think that's what she said, because Rick crescendoed into a loud part of the song just then and it muffled everything out.
She ran behind the platform that the band stood on. It was darker back here and a bunch of cables for the electrical equipment snaked from the platform to the wall. I slowed my pace so I didn't trip on them. Adrian didn't and managed to snag one of them with her foot. I know this because suddenly both the electric guitar and Rick's voice stopped booming across the room.
An overall improvement, really.
I didn't have time to stop and plug it back in. Adrian dashed out a side door and I turned and followed her into the hallway. Well, technically I slid into a bunch of people who stood by the doorway chatting, but after that I followed.
Stumbling out into the hallway, I struggled to regain my balance, then set out after Adrian again. As Adrian weaved in between groups of people, Samantha ran up beside me and called out to her, "We just need to talk to you!"
Adrian didn't slow down and I was losing patience and ground. My wings kept knocking into people, which jostled me back and forth in the hallway like a pinball. "Just grab her!" I told Samantha.
And so she did. She dashed forward to close the gap, and grabbed hold of her arm. Adrian tried to jerk away, which pulled Samantha into her. They fell to the ground in a heap.
Samantha's tiara rolled across the floor and Adrian's witch hat and wig flipped off.
And that's when I noticed the witch wasn't Adrian.
Adrian had dyed her hair maroon. This person was brunette.
Oops.
"I've got her," Samantha called to me, as she sat up.
The witch tried to pull away from Samantha again, and screamed, "Help! Get away from me!"
Samantha turned at the sound of the girl's voice—which, now that we were away from the noise, didn't sound at all like Adrian's. Samantha dropped her hands off the girl, and let out a scream herself.
I walked over to them. My mouth moved, but for several moments no words came out. Then they all rushed out at once. " I 'm so sorry. Really, I just—I thought you were someone else. Another Wicked Witch of the West. She looks just like you. Well, in the dark from the back, anyway." I picked up her wig and hat from the floor and handed them to her. "You know, one day this will all seem funny."
She glared as she took her things from me.
"Maybe not today," I added. "But one day."
I didn't have time to say anything else because the security guard pushed his way through the crowd of people and yelled, "What's going on here?"
The witch pulled herself up off the floor and pointed a finger in my direction. "I was minding my own business when that psycho-butterfly girl started yelling at me, and when I tried to get away from her, she chased me out here and told that other girl to tackle me."
The guard turned and stared at me. My mouth went dry. "It was all a mistake," I said. "I thought she was my little sister." No one moved. No one spoke. "Great makeup job," I added.
The witch let out a humph and said, "And you didn't realize I wasn't your sister when I yelled out, 'Leave me alone' and ran away from you?"
I shrugged apologetically. "It's something she might do."
The girl arranged her wig and hat back onto her head. "Well, we don't have to wonder why, do we?"
" I 'm really sorry," I said again.
The guard looked between Samantha and me, then growled, "You two, come with me."
We did. And this time I managed to follow without running into things. He marched us down the hall, away from the ballroom, lecturing us about our rowdy behavior. It was people like us, he said, that ruined things for everybody else. What if the administration decided not to let the students put on more fund-raisers because a few people didn't have the decency to behave in public? Had we thought of that before we'd gone careening into the refreshment table and jumping on innocent people?
Well, obviously not, but I didn't say so.
He kept lecturing us, and our only saving grace was that he'd taken us away from the crowd. I don't think I could have stood to be chewed out in front of Rick or the Clark Kent guy.
The Clark Kent guy. The thought of him made my shoulders droop. He'd paid for me to get in, and I'd told him I'd dance with him. Now he'd think I'd just used him for his money and disappeared.
The guard led us to an exit, opened the door for us, and said he'd better not see us anywhere near the dance again. The next moment we were outside in the cold night air.
We walked side by side toward the car, moving quickly. "I'm sorry," I told Samantha, "but how was I to know? It was the exact same costume that Adrian bought."
Samantha spoke in a low voice, "Don't tell anyone about this night. Not Rachel. Not Aubrie. It's a secret we carry to our graves. Even if Rick hears about it, we deny everything. It was another medieval princess and angel who got tossed out of the dance, not us."
"Right," I said, and really hoped Rick hadn't been paying attention as I rammed the refreshment table while chasing a hapless stranger. I mean, once that story got around, Naomi would never let go of it.
On the way home my mom called my cell phone. "Guess what? Stefy's mom just phoned and it turns out Adrian has been there the entire time. Stefy's mom just didn't recognize her because she looked so different in her witch costume." My mom let out a relieved chuckle. "So I'm sorry I made you leave your party, but you have to admit, it's funny."
Maybe one day, but not today.
Chapter 3
On Monday at school I waited for Rick or one of his friends to say something obnoxious to me in the hallway, like: "Hey—tackle any more strangers lately?" Or "This is just a guess, but you flunked out of guardian angel class, didn't you?"
No one said anything out of the ordinary though, which must mean he didn't know. This was the first good news I'd had in a long time.
After school we had an extra cheerleading practice at my house. Extra because we had a pep assembly the next day and we wanted to make sure we had our routine down. Our cheerleading advisor, Mrs. Jones, had gone to a cheerleading conference and come back with a great choreography to "Be True to Your School" but it was more difficult than the routines we usually did.
Forty-five minutes into practice—and still without us doing the whole thing perfectly—Samantha walked to the CD player and pushed the off button. "We need to take a break."
I started to protest, but Aubrie and Rachel headed to my kitchen, moving very quickly for people who were agreeing that they needed a rest.
I went with them, and while I poured everyone drinks, Samantha said, "I think we've almost got it. One more time through is all we need."
Rachel eyed Samantha's still-in-place long blonde hair and perfectly applied makeup. "You just want to end early so you can go hang out with your boyfriend."
Samantha gave her a satisfied smile. "Right."
She had totally missed the point. Love apparently makes you immune to sarcasm.
; "I think we need to go through it until—" I took a sip of my drink, "we do it flawlessly a bunch of times."
This brought forth groans from Aubrie and Rachel. "It's a pep assembly," Aubrie said, "not the Olympics."
"I can't mess up in front of Naomi and her minions."
Rachel let out a sigh. "Since Mike broke up with you, you've become an absolute perfectionist." She turned to Samantha and Aubrie as though I wasn't in the room. "You know, we'd all have a lot more free time if Chelsea got a boyfriend. We should do something about that."
"Maybe we could take up a collection to buy her one," Aubrie said.
"Or we could set her by the road with a sign that says, 'Will cheer for hot guy,' " Samantha added.
Rachel sighed into her drink. "I know I'd cheer for a hot guy."
Right. Poor her. Apparently she hadn't found Mr. Right at her party.
While I finished my drink, Adrian and Rick strolled into the kitchen. Adrian had taken to gelling and hairspraying her short hair so that it stuck up in random angles, resembling a maroon feather duster. Today Rick's hair was almost as messy.
Adrian went to the cupboard, grabbed a bag of Cheetos, and sat down at the table with them. She used to hate Cheetos. We used to laugh at anyone who ate food with so much orange powder on it that you could use it to write messages on the table. But Rick liked them and that changed everything.
He pushed past me and stood in front of the fridge. "Well, if it isn't the cheerleading quadruplets: Blonde, Blonder, Blondest"—he nodded in my direction—"and Dangerously Blonde. Are you done jumping around in the living room, or is it still unsafe for normal people to come out?"
Rachel folded her arms and eyed his shirt, which looked like it had been spray painted by thugs and then thrown under a moving truck. "Since when are you a normal person?"
He let out a snort. "Like you'd know the difference."
It was one thing for Rick to insult me at my house—which trust me, he did often enough—but it was another thing for him to insult my friends at my house. Instead of ignoring him, and saying my usual prayer that Adrian would wake up from her almost trancelike adoration of the guy, I turned to him and said, "Do you need something? I mean, besides the obvious fashion lesson?"