Death and the Girl Next Door

“Do you have any idea where he might be right now?” Brooklyn asked.

He shook his head. “Not even a smidgen of one.”

* * *

“What about you?” Glitch raised his brows at me, as though everything was normal, as though he hadn’t seethed all the way home after visiting Cameron’s dad the night before.

I dropped my books on my desk, deciding to drop the line of questioning I’d planned as well. We had enough going on without adding fuel to Glitch’s fire. Even though our lives were in utter turmoil, school started at eight in the A.M., sharp as a thumb tack, unwilling to cease its relentless weekday schedule despite our extenuating circumstances.

To top it off, I’d had one of my recurring dreams, the disturbing one where I swallowed something dark and it ripped me in two, trying to escape. I woke up panting and sweating as I always did when I had that dream. Then I tossed and turned the rest of the night, wondering where Jared was, if he was okay.

So, with only three hours’ sleep under my belt, I turned to him in frustration. “Not only am I sleep-deprived and cranky, I’ve also been grounded for life.”

“Me too,” Brooklyn said as she walked into first hour. “My mom was totally pissed. She acted like I committed armed robbery or something.”

“How do you do it?” I asked Glitch, a master at ditching and other nonproductive ventures. “How do you skip school and get away with it?”

With the spotlight on him, Glitch brightened. He took a moment to slick back his hair and polish his nails on his Riley High jacket, then leaned in as if to impart some ancient guarded secret. “Skill, ladies,” he said under his breath. “Pure, unmitigated skill.”

Brooklyn squinted at him. “You were so busted, weren’t you?”

“Yep,” he confessed. “Grounded for two days past forever.”

I whistled, impressed. “That’s longer than life.”

“Bummer, huh?” he said. “I gotta get to class. See you at lunch.”

After he left, I asked Brooklyn, “Think we’ll get detention?”

An older feminine voice behind me answered. “I wouldn’t make any immediate plans.”

I turned to Ms. Mullins, my science teacher, as she handed me an official-looking slip of paper. I opened it with dread. “The principal wants to see me?”

“It would seem so,” she said, peering at me from over her glasses. “Hurry down there.”

“Man,” I whined as I left the room, “my grandma is going to kill me.”

* * *

So this was the hot seat.

I eyed the stuffed bear perched atop Principal Davis’s computer as I sat waiting in his office. Appropriate. Everyone called him the Bear, a fact that did nothing to ease my discomfort. My nerves were becoming more frazzled the longer I sat there, staring at that bear, questioning my inane decision to take the previous day off to investigate Houdini. Jared had disappeared. Vanished. And Cameron seemed to have joined him.

I rolled my eyes in annoyance for the fiftieth time at having to be in the principal’s office. As if last night wasn’t bad enough.

Apparently, the school’s automated system called the house when I missed class without an excuse. By the time I got home, which was past my curfew, my grandparents already knew I’d skipped and I was promptly and thoroughly grounded for the rest of my natural-born life.

But Grandpa had faith in me. He couldn’t believe his pixie stick would skip for no reason. Surely I had a good explanation.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t come up with one on such short notice. I hadn’t expected them to find out so soon, and I couldn’t tell them the truth. They would have called their psychologist friend from Los Lunas in a heartbeat. So I lied. I told them I skipped because I forgot to study for a test.

“Okay,” Grandpa said, turning against me in a disappointing instant, “ground her for life. But for heaven’s sake, Vera, don’t take the girl’s phone. I don’t think she’d live through it.”

I laughed at the thought. Grandpa, all bark and no bite. But I had to watch out for Grandma. That woman could put the shrew in shrewd when she wanted to. Thank goodness she didn’t want to very often.

My phone vibrated in my pocket. I took it out and flipped it open, then squinted as I tried to decipher the text from Brooklyn through my broken screen.

“Sup? R u toast?”

I smiled and texted her back. “Bear not in cave yet. Pray 4 me. Pray hard.”

As I closed my phone and stuffed it back into my pocket, I scanned Principal Davis’s office. Even though it never met the standards of the school’s administrative assistant—she fussed about it constantly—it had always been fairly organized. But not today. Books, newspaper clippings, and scraps of paper with scribbled notes engulfed his desk in a huge, mountainesque formation.

I realized the books were old Riley High yearbooks. A couple were open and written in with thick black marker. With curiosity piqued, I eased up to get a look at what the stalwart principal had been up to. Just as I scanned to a face in a crowd he’d circled and starred, the book slammed shut in my face.

I leapt back in surprise.

“Find anything interesting?” Mr. Davis asked.

With a hand on my chest, I said nonchalantly, “Not really. Are those old yearbooks?”

He took a moment to get situated in his chair before answering. Principal Davis was a tall man, dark and broad. He could charm a snake one minute and send the toughest football player at Riley High home in tears the next. But I’d always liked him. I hoped this meeting wouldn’t change that.