Death and the Girl Next Door

Glitch rolled his eyes as he drove his ancient Subaru through the canyon. “Don’t try to pull your peer-pressure Jedi mind tricks on me. Are you sure it was this far?”

“Yes. It’s just up here,” I said, pointing ahead redundantly.

“How are your ribs?” Brooklyn asked.

I tested them with my fingertips. “Better, I think. Just a little sore.” I touched a tender spot and winced. “Or a lot sore.”

“They’re really bruised. I still think you should have them checked out by a doctor, or at least the school nurse,” Glitch said.

“How can I have them checked by the nurse without my grandparents finding out? She’d call them. She would have to.”

Brooklyn shrugged. “You know, Lor, they’re a lot stronger than you think.”

“I know they are, but they can’t find out. Ever. My parents disappeared off the face of the earth. Just vanished. How do you think they would feel if they knew I almost did the same? In a roundabout way.”

“I know. I’m just saying—”

“Here! Right here!” I pointed with more enthusiasm than I’d intended. “See the skid marks?”

Glitch pulled to the side of the road and turned toward us. “Okay. What now?”

The hill that Jared had disappeared behind was only about a quarter mile back. I opened my door, grabbed my water, and said, “Now, we search.”

* * *

Four hours later, I sat in the Java Loft with two slightly annoyed friends eyeing me.

We’d skipped school for nothing. After looking all day, we didn’t find even a trace of Jared. My feet hurt. I’d almost sprained my ankle seventeen thousand times trying to traverse the uneven ground of the canyon. And worry gnawed at me, twisting my insides into knots. Where could he have gone? He was hurt and alone and probably cold and hungry.

And why on planet Earth did the white news van for the Tourist Channel keep circling the block?

“Have you given any thought to their strength?” Glitch asked, jarring me out of my musings. “Because I have. I’m thinking maybe this Jared’s an alien. The Roswell crash site is just around the corner. Or maybe he’s a supernatural entity. You know, like a demon or something.”

“A supernatural background would definitely fit with the vision I had, no matter how crazy it sounds, but what about Cameron?” I asked. “I mean, Cameron Lusk? Come on. We’ve known him since kindergarten.” I nursed a mocha cappuccino, my imagination running amok.

“This bites,” Brooklyn said. “Cameron’s hot.”

Glitch and I glanced up in surprise, though Glitch did seem a little more annoyed than surprised.

“He is,” she said defensively. “He was hot when I moved here in the third grade, and he’s still hot now.”

“Well, I can’t argue that,” I said with a shrug. While he definitely had the tortured, brooding teen down pat, there was a reason girls fawned over him. Sadly, they usually ended up disappointed. He took the loner bit to a whole new level. “He’s just so antisocial.”

“Man, but that smile of his.” Brooklyn seemed to slip into a dream, her stare looking but not seeing.

“His smile?” Glitch asked, irritated. “Cameron Lusk hasn’t smiled in years.”

“I wonder what his home life is like,” Brooklyn said, ignoring him. “It can’t be good. I mean, look at the way he dresses.”

Normally, the look of utter disbelief plastered on Glitch’s face would’ve lifted my spirits. But his expression held something more, something desperate. Something close to agony lined his eyes. He relaxed his facial muscles almost immediately, wiping away any evidence that Brooke’s impression of Cameron had hurt him. “Isn’t this the same guy who tried to murder another human being yesterday?”

Brooklyn snapped out of it and cast him an angry look. “You just said Jared is probably an alien. There are no laws against killing aliens.” She tilted her head in thought. “Least none that I know of.”

“Great,” he said, his jaw flexing. “That just makes everything peachy.”

I understood Glitch’s point, but this was not the time for personal biases. Whatever happened between him and Cameron during that camping trip, if anything, it couldn’t hinder us now. But I found it impossible to tell if Glitch’s gut reaction to Brooke’s sentiments had anything to do with that or if he’d been hurt for different reasons.

Either way, I couldn’t worry about it now. I needed Glitch on the bandwagon 100 percent. I wanted more than anything to find Jared. Needed to find him.

“Look,” I said with determination, “Cameron said he was following Jared, not me. I don’t know how and I don’t know why, but I do know he is our best bet in finding him. I say we look for Cameron and hopefully find Jared along the way.”

Glitch shook his head. “I don’t want you anywhere near Cameron Lusk.”

“Well, I think it sounds like a plan,” Brooklyn said. “Got any idea where to start?”

“Absolutely not,” he said, bitterness creeping into his voice. “We are not going in search of a certified psychopath who takes better care of his guns than he does his truck.”

I leveled a hard stare on him, my face tightened, my expression unyielding.

Moments later, he caved. “Fine.” He tossed a napkin onto the table. “But I can’t miss football practice.”