“And if this is what a hangover’s like,” she declared solemnly, pressing the heels of her hands against her temples, “I swear I’ll never even take a sip of beer.”

  She laughed at herself and looked to her friends to be sure they were laughing with her.

  They weren’t.

  Melanie smiled briefly, but only stared at her lap.

  Lynda looked as if she’d been punched in the stomach, her cheerfulness vanished, her face taut, almost angry.

  “What?” Roz said. “What’s … did I say something wrong?” When no one answered, she frowned. “Come on, what’s the matter?”

  Melanie cleared her throat and raised her head, staring at the school. “I saw him.”

  Roz blinked in astonishment. “You did what?”

  Melanie nodded. “I saw him. Last night.”

  Roz was so stunned, she couldn’t react.

  Melanie licked her lips nervously. “I was watching TV and I heard this funny noise. At first I thought it was the furnace coming on or something. Then I looked out the window and saw him.” Her head trembled as she turned to Roz. “He was just sitting there. In the middle of the street. Looking just like you said.” Her lower lip twitched. “I looked away—I swear it only seemed like a second—and when I looked back he was gone.”

  Roz hunched her shoulders as if against a chill. She looked up to find the cloud that had drifted over the sun, but the extraordinary blue sky was perfectly clear.

  “Forbin,” Lynda said tightly. “The creep gets around.”

  Roz couldn’t believe this. “You saw him too?”

  The girl grunted sharply. “I told my father to go out there and kick butt, but he was already gone when we got to the door.” Her hands gripped her knees. “Pop thought I’d been seeing things, said I was watching too much TV. But he was there. I saw him.” She bared her teeth and narrowed her eyes. “And if I see him today, I’m going to break his skull and put it in his hip pocket.”

  Roz leaned back, stretched her long legs, and stared thoughtfully at the tips of her sneakers. On any other day she would have found some humor here, some joke about Forbin having nothing better to do with his life than try to spook a trio of sophomore girls.

  But this was the day after her nightmare. This was the day after he had appeared on her street as well, long after midnight, not even knowing if she was awake or in bed.

  “What did we do?” Melanie asked in a small voice. She looked at Lynda, looked at Roz. “What did we do to deserve this?”

  The shadow passed.

  Roz slapped her thighs loudly, making the others jump. “This is dumb,” she announced loudly. “We didn’t do anything, okay? And if he’s trying to scare us, he’s doing a pretty good job. I mean, look at us. All he has to do is show up on our street, and we’re acting like he’s Freddy Krueger or something.”

  And, she added silently, it was all her fault. She had made such a big deal about seeing the mysterious rider behind the school, and on her own street that same night, that her nervousness had infected the others. Which was really dumb, when she knew despite her own misgivings who it really was.

  “Maybe you’re right,” Lynda admitted reluctantly.

  “Of course I’m right.” She poked Melanie with an elbow. “Unless, of course, it’s that poor murdered student.” Her voice deepened. “Riding around town all night, looking for someone to take his place on the bike. Like the Headless Horseman, you know?”

  At last Melanie smiled genuinely and poked her back. “Yeah, right.”

  “So what I think is,” Roz continued, “that we go over to the Barn—if you guys don’t have to get home right away—and find out where Forbin is hanging out. Then we—”

  “Hunt him down and kill him,” Lynda interrupted.

  “God, you’re disgusting,” Melanie said.

  “Okay, okay. So we shake our fingers in his face, tell him he’s a bad bad boy, and threaten to tell his mommy on him if he does it again,” Lynda snapped.

  Melanie sighed. “Now you’re being stupid.”

  “Look, if we tell him we know what he’s up to, and that it’s not working, he’ll stop. It won’t be fun anymore, and he’ll go bug someone else,” Roz said finally.

  “You wish,” Lynda muttered glumly. Then she shrugged. “But it’s worth a shot, I guess.”

  They hurried straight over to Parkside Boulevard and swung west on the town’s main commercial street. Though the sidewalks were crowded with shoppers and strollers, they marched three abreast, looking, Roz was sure, like a trio of righteous gunmen searching for the killer of the beloved local sheriff. She almost laughed aloud.

  Once inside the Barn, however, they noticed that, although it was crowded with kids and adults alike, many of the kids, especially the older ones, were oddly subdued.

  “He’s not here,” Lynda said, disappointed. “We’ll have to ask around.”

  “Why don’t we just forget it,” Melanie told her, books huddled against her chest.

  Then Roz spotted Kyle hunched over a table crammed into a back corner, and she felt her mouth part in a shy smile before catching and erasing it. She didn’t miss the nudge Melanie gave Lynda, however. But she ignored it and the comical look and giggle Lynda gave her.

  She also couldn’t help feeling inordinately pleased to see Kyle, and the idea bothered her. He was a friend, after all, so she ought to be glad. But this was something else, something more, and she couldn’t figure it out. She loved Bart Corry. How could she feel anything for anyone else?

  It wasn’t right.

  The smile faded then when she realized he was sitting with someone else. A french fry dangled from his lips like a cigarette, and he leaned on his forearms, head forward as he seemed to be listening intently to something Zeena Worman was trying to tell him.

  “Well,” Lynda said quietly. “Well, well, well.”

  Roz scowled at her, but couldn’t help feeling a prick of disappointment and confusion. Why should she care who Kyle sat with? Why should she care who he talked with after school?

  Nevertheless, when he looked up and saw them, and waved them over, she didn’t want to move. It was Melanie who groaned in disgust, grabbed her elbow, and practically dragged her through the maze of tables. Lynda hung behind as if blocking an escape route.

  Zeena was already on her feet by the time they reached the table, smiling a curiously somber welcome through gleaming braces, then saying something to Kyle before waggling her fingers and leaving. Roz stared after her, for so long that it took a pinch from Melanie to bring her back. Then she plopped into a chair and ordered herself to stop behaving like a child. Kyle wasn’t her boyfriend, and Zeena therefore couldn’t possibly be a rival.

  Kyle, however, didn’t seem to notice her confusion. His sharp-edged features were unusually solemn.

  Something was wrong.

  The others noticed it too. As they piled their books on the table, they kept whatever comments they might have had to themselves.

  Finally Roz couldn’t stand the silence any longer. “Kyle, what’s up?”

  He took a deep breath, blew a length of straight black hair from his eyes, and glanced over her shoulder at the next table. Then he leaned forward and lowered his voice. “You guys hear about Johnny Reardon?”

  “Do I care?” Lynda said to no one in particular.

  They grinned at each other until the expression on his face told them the news wasn’t very good.

  “It’s …” He cleared his throat, rubbed a hand over his face. “I don’t know how to tell you.”

  Six

  The noise level in the Barn rose substantially when a group of seniors barged through the door. The girls had to practically lean into Kyle’s lap so they could hear every word.

  Zeena, he reminded them, was a candy striper at the hospital, and she’d taken half a day off in order to put in some extra hours in the children’s ward. Roz nodded; she wasn’t surprised. Zeena was rather plain physically, but her incredible enthusiasm for everything was enough to animate her into a strange and beguiling kind of attractiveness. Virtually everyone in the class knew that her main goal in life was to become a pediatric nurse, and skipping school to work with sick kids somehow didn’t seem wrong to her.

  It was while she’d been hanging around the nurses’ station that she heard about Johnny Reardon from some gossiping interns.

  Evidently he had indeed gone to the movies the night before, spent some time in the Barn afterward, and on the way home with some of his buddies, a hit-and-run driver had plowed through the group of five or six as they were crossing a darkened street.

  “You’re kidding,” Lynda said.

  Melanie’s eyes widened. “God, did they get the license plate?”

  It hadn’t been an automobile.

  It had been someone on a motorcycle.

  The girls looked at each other and drew closer together without actually moving, and the room’s noise became oddly muffled.

  “Man,” Lynda said, shaking her head slowly. “Was anybody hurt?” She winced at what she realized was a stupid question. “I mean, real bad?”

  Kyle cleared his throat and stared at his hands clasped on the table. “Zeena said one guy got a broken leg, another guy was all scraped up. The rest were okay, I guess. She didn’t know about them. “ He puffed his cheeks and blew out a slow breath. “But there were cops all over the place, and when she saw Johnny’s father yelling at one of them, she kind of eased over to see what was going on.

  “When she found out, she left.”

  Suddenly Roz didn’t want to hear the rest. Kyle looked at her. “Johnny,” he said tightly. “He’s … he’s dead.”

  A glass shattered on the floor, and Pat Tiklos, the potbellied owner, started clearing people out, complaining loudly about how all his profits were going down the drain because they were acting like animals. Some of the kids laughed halfheartedly, others ignored him, but the offenders were soon hustled out the door.

  The girls didn’t react to any of the commotion.

  Melanie’s lips moved, but she couldn’t speak. She only took off her glasses and began polishing them with a napkin.

  Lynda blinked. “You’re joking. God, you’ve got to be joking, right? Maybe she got the name wrong. Maybe it was somebody else.”

  Kyle shook his head. “She was there, Lyn. She heard his father.” His hands twisted in his lap. “It happened just a few minutes ago, I guess. We got here at the same time, and she grabbed me before I could even say hi.”

  Suddenly, at a table near the door, a girl burst into loud sobbing.

  The word, it seemed, had already begun to spread.

  Roz closed her eyes, saw Johnny dancing away from her the other day—your loss, kid—with that smug, self-centered grin on his handsome face, and realized with a cold shudder that if she had gone with him, she might have been hurt herself. Even worse, she might even have been the one who had died. Her arms folded protectively across her stomach.

  He can’t be dead.

  High school kids don’t die—they live forever.

  He can’t be dead.

  “I don’t believe this,” Melanie said, still cleaning her glasses. “God, I mean, I didn’t like him and all, you know, but this is …” She caught herself and squinted when she looked up. “It isn’t right, Roz. It just isn’t right. I don’t …”

  Roz nodded her understanding, and still it was an awkward moment. It confused her, confused them all, and when a boy slammed a fist against a table and began cursing, Kyle eased his chair back and suggested they get outside and walk for a while to get some fresh air.

  No one argued.

  And no one spoke until, as they waited at an intersection for the traffic light to change, he turned to them and said, “Someone was at my house last night, you know. Some guy on a bike.”

  When the light changed, they hurried immediately across the street, and once on the other side Lynda demanded that they head straight for the police.

  “But they can’t do anything,” Kyle told her. “Nothing happened to us.”

  “Well, we can at least let them know,” she insisted.

  Kyle wasn’t sure it would do any good, and they argued about it quietly, glaring at Melanie whenever she tried to put in a word, glaring at Roz for not saying anything.

  But Roz was trying to figure out just what Forbin was up to. His behavior didn’t make any sense, not even if he was pulling some stunt to try to upset them. It was clear there was no love lost between him and Kyle, but surely he had to know that spooking around the Munroe house wasn’t going to do anything but get Kyle mad. And while the girls might not be able to retaliate, Kyle certainly could.

  It just didn’t make any sense.

  In the end Lynda grudgingly agreed to give up the idea. After all, she said, the whole thing seemed kind of dumb anyway, considering the news they’d just gotten.

  Ahead, across the boulevard’s four broad lanes, they could see the southern end of Ashford Park, its low stone wall already overhung with tree and shrub branches. Roz didn’t realize they had walked so far already—they were just about in the center of town—and she glanced at her watch. It was almost four-thirty, and she grunted in surprise.

  “Hey,” she said, holding up her wrist. “I’ve got to get home or I’m going to get fried.”

  A passing car slowed to pace them as they headed for the nearest crosswalk, its pale green surface scratched and pitted with rust. Beetle Malley, Forbin Gray’s best friend, leaned out the passenger window and pointed at Kyle. “Hey, Chief!” he snarled.

  Kyle ignored him.

  “Damnit, Chief, I’m talking to you!”

  Kyle stopped, looked apologetically at the girls, and stared at the pock-faced junior. “What,” he said flatly.

  The car backfired as it braked.

  Malley, small dark eyes made smaller by his angry squint, shook his finger. “Where are your feathers, man?”

  Kyle glanced skyward.

  Beetle laughed. “I mean it, Chief. Does your mom know you forgot your feathers today?”

  Feathers? Lynda mouthed to Roz, who shrugged her ignorance.

  But Kyle only shook his head in disgust and walked away, taking Roz’s arm to make sure she stayed with him.

  “Hey, Chief, I’m not through talking to you!”

  “What’s going on?” Roz whispered while Melanie and Lynda crowded closer.

  “Tell you later,” he answered.

  “They your squaws or what, Chief?” Malley cackled, and thumped the car door with his hand. “Man, you got no taste, you know that?”

  A look from Roz stopped Lynda from charging him and tearing his head off. Melanie only clutched her books closer to her chest.

  The car followed them for nearly a block, Malley swearing at them all and threatening Kyle a dozen times before he ducked back inside and ordered the driver to move on. The car backfired again and sped away ahead of a choking cloud of black exhaust.

  “You know some nice guys,” Melanie said sourly.

  “Yeah.” He slipped his hands into his jeans pockets and lowered his gaze to stare at the ground. “Tell me about it.”

  Puzzled, and a little afraid, Roz waited until they had crossed to the other side before asking him what that scene was all about. When he shrugged, she waited for him to explain. He didn’t. He only muttered to himself, spat dryly at the tips of his boots, and grunted.

  Then Lynda snapped her fingers. “I get it! Chief. It’s because he thinks you’re an American Indian, right?”

  It was true. It took some persuading, but he finally admitted that Gray and his buddies had decided that because of his hair and features, and where he had grown up, he had to be an Indian. Once their minds were made up, they’d been on him ever since. As a matter of unpleasant fact, Johnny Reardon had been in on it too, Kyle added, even though he wasn’t part of Gray’s gang.

  “So that’s what you two were fighting about,” Roz blurted, then slapped herself mentally for speaking without thinking when she saw the way his eyes darkened for a second. “I mean—”

  “It’s okay,” he said, lips twitching in amusement. “Really. You’re right.”

  “What a jerk,” Lynda muttered. When Melanie looked at her, shocked, she frowned. “Well, look, I’m sorry he got killed, okay? It’s a terrible thing, a real waste. But it doesn’t hide the fact that he was still a jerk.” She kicked viciously at a pebble. “Calling Kyle ‘Chief’ is the same as … well, you should have heard what he called me once, when I wouldn’t go out with him.”

  No one asked; they could guess.

  They could also guess what would happen to their weekend freedom if they didn’t get home when they were supposed to. After hurrying up the park’s south side, they headed west again, one by one peeling away to their respective neighborhoods until Roz was left alone.

  She wished Kyle had offered to walk her home. Although life on the streets she used continued normally, although the sun still shone brightly, she felt curiously vulnerable, unable to stop herself from jumping away from hedges that seemed to rustle on their own, or spinning around every few yards because she had the undeniable impression that she was being followed.

  She supposed it had less to do with Forbin’s pranks than with Johnny’s death. She must, she decided, be more affected than she realized.

  That night at dinner she told her parents about it and, finally, about Forbin Gray. Her mother shook her head at the terrible news, and virtually in the same breath wondered if maybe Forbin wasn’t trying to show off a little.

  “More than a little, Mom,” Roz told her.

  “If you ask me, boys are just a big pain in the butt,” her father declared from the head of the table. He grinned; cheeks puffing like a chipmunk’s stuffed with nuts. “Seems to me this guy likes you, sugar. He’s showing off. Macho crap, you know what I mean?”

  Roz was so astounded she couldn’t speak.

 

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