Deadly Little Secret (6 page)

Wes nods. “Last I heard, the boy chopped up his entire family and ate them for breakfast.”

“That’s sick,” Kimmie says.

“But tasty.” He thieves a handful of my corn chips.

“Speaking of sick,” I say, “what was up with the photo you left in my mailbox?”

“Photo?”

I nod. “The one of me . . . in front of the school . . . with a heart around it.”

He tilts his head, visibly confused. “
Qué
?”

“Don’t be a dick,” Kimmie says. “Fess up. It was you. Just like it was you with that Teletubby stunt.”

“Honestly,” he says, “dicks and Teletubbies aside, I have absolutely no idea what you’re even talking about.”

“Hold up,” I say. “You didn’t leave a photo of me in my mailbox?”

Wes shakes his head.

“Aren’t you taking photography this year?” I ask.

“And so, what does that prove—that I’m suddenly taking random pictures of people and leaving them in their mailboxes?”

“I wouldn’t worry about it.” Kimmie spits her fireball into her palm. “It’s probably just some lame-o’s idea of a joke.” She shoots Wes an evil look.

“Hey, don’t look at this lame-o,” he says, pointing out the front of his T-shirt, where the words
Innocent Until Proven Guilty
are printed across the chest.

 12 

I’ve been seeing her a lot lately, making it a point to be wherever she is.

I wonder if she can feel my eyes watching her—crawling over her skin, memorizing the zigzag part of her hair and the way her hips sway from side to side when she walks.

There’s so much I want to ask her about, like if she sleeps on the left side of the bed or the right, and what color her toothbrush is.

And if she liked the picture I left in her mailbox. I wish I’d been there when she opened the envelope. I’d love to have seen her expression—if she bit her bottom lip like she does when she gets nervous. If she hugged the photo against her chest, imagining someone like me. Or if her lips curled up into a smile worthy of a magazine cover.

I took that picture from across the street, standing at the side of the telephone building. I had my camera set to zoom as I waited for the perfect angle.

She looked so nervous. She kept fidgeting with her bag strap and twisting her fingers through her long blond hair.

But who am I to talk? I get nervous, too. Whenever I see her, I can barely think straight. I try to calm myself down— to remind myself to be patient, to not be too anxious, that I’ll soon have everything I want.

Inside my head, I chant, “calm, calm, calm.”

13

It’s Friday afternoon, and I’m sitting in chemistry class, doing my best to focus, to take Kimmie’s advice about chalking the whole mysterious photo issue up to some lame-o’s idea of a joke, since, after all, she’s probably right.

It’s the first lab session of the year, and Ben and I have a handful of test tubes set up in front of us, along with a graduated cylinder and a couple of teaspoons. The goal: to perform, discuss, and record the reactions that occur based on the mixture of a few choice chemicals.

I’m trying my hardest to concentrate, to tell myself that combining distilled water with sodium bicarbonate is the most important thing in the world right now, even though Ben is watching and recording my every move.

My hand shakes slightly as I add in a couple of teaspoons of phenolphthalein, which according to the Sweat-man, was formerly used in over-the-counter laxatives. I glance over at Missy and Chrissy Tompkin, otherwise known as the Laxative Twins, wondering if they’re going to try and pocket a stash for later.

“Thirsty?” I ask Ben, holding the mixture up like a drink. The addition of the laxative stuff has made the solution resemble fruit punch.

But he doesn’t think it’s funny. “Add in two grams of calcium chloride,” he says, keeping things all clinical-like.

“Don’t forget,” Sweat-man announces. “This lab isn’t just about your visual senses here. What does the test-tube glass feel like with each added substance? Does it get heavier in comparison to the other tubes? Does it get cold or heat up? Is there any change in smell? Do you hear anything?”

I look up at Ben, realizing we’ve completely omitted the whole touchy-feely aspect of the experiment.

“Do you want to hold it?” I ask, extending the tube out to him.

Ben looks at it but shakes his head, continuing to read me the directions from his lab book.

“Wait,” I say. “We need to record this stuff—our reactions, what we observe.”

“Can’t you just record it for the both of us?”

I try not to let his slacking bother me, especially since, as far as things look in everybody else’s tubes, it appears as though we’re doing everything right. I jot down my observations and then, following the instructions as Ben reads them aloud, I add in a couple more ingredients, finally topping the solution off with nitric acid and bromothymol blue.

The solution in the tube starts to fizzle and heat up, and the color changes from pink to yellow.

“You really should feel this,” I say, holding the tube out to him again.

But Ben has his own idea of fizzle: “I’m all set,” he says.

“Not exactly a team player, are you, Mr. Carter?” The Sweat-man is standing right behind him now.

Ben glances at the tube again, and for five full seconds I think he’s going to take it, but instead he says: “I’ve already felt it.”

“Oh, really?” Sweat-man scratches his head, and I step back to avoid the flurry of flakes. “So, how would you describe the temperature of the tube?” he asks.

Ben shrugs. “Kind of cold.”

The Sweat-man makes his infamous game-show-buzzer sound, denoting the wrong answer. “You really should have phoned a friend.”

“Why don’t you feel it again?” I say, in an effort to play nice. I hand him the tube, just as the Sweat-man walks away. But Ben’s still being all weird. His fingers linger in the air, just inches from mine. “Take it,” I say, all but placing the tube into his hand.

He finally does. And his hand accidentally grazes mine. I feel the skin of his thumb rub against my middle finger.

The next thing I know, Ben drops the tube. It shatters on the floor. Yellow solution spills out everywhere.

Ben takes a step back, breathing hard.

“It’s no big deal,” I tell him.

But he doesn’t respond. He just stands there, staring at me. His dark gray eyes are wide and insistent.

“Real slick,” Sweat-man says. “Clean it up—
now
.”

Ben doesn’t move. So I grab a mop from the corner of the room and start to clean up the mess.

And that’s when he touches me.

His hand glides down my forearm and encircles my wrist, hard, making my heart beat fast and my pulse start to race. I open my mouth to say something—to ask what he’s doing, to tell him to let go—but nothing comes out.

“Shhh,” Ben says. He takes a step closer, his eyes fixed on mine. I can feel the heat of his breath on my neck.

“Hey, check it out,” I hear someone whisper.

Still, I don’t look away. Because I honestly don’t want to.

A smattering of giggles erupts in the classroom, catching the attention of Sweat-man at the front of the room. He makes a beeline for our table and butts his sweaty self between us as Ben releases his grip on my forearm.

“Did he hurt you?” Sweat-man asks.

I shake my head, feeling a slight sting in my wrist from Ben’s grip. After a few awkward moments, Sweat-man orders me to finish cleaning up, and then he orders Ben to the office.

“No,” I balk. “It’s fine. I’m fine. He was only trying to help me.” I look down at the mess on the floor.

But Ben doesn’t question the order. He just collects his books, takes one last look at me, and then scurries out of the room.

14

Even though I’m not scheduled to work at Knead today, I end up going there right after school.

I just have to get away.

Spencer, my boss, can sense my moodiness as soon as the doorbells announce my arrival.

“Here,” he says, handing me a mound of clay. “Sculpt your way to a happier self.”

Spencer is the greatest—totally laid back and unbelievably talented. You’d never know it from his hard-as-nails exterior—complete with straggly long hair, torn up jeans, and a three-inch scar down the side of his face—but he sculpts the most feminine of figurines using the most unyielding of materials.

I take his clay-mound offering but refrain from telling him that it’s not exactly unhappiness I’m dealing with right now. It’s confusion. I mean, why did Ben touch me like that? Why was he being so weird in lab? And what’s with all the mixed signals?

“Is it a guy?” Spencer asks, setting up the tables for tonight’s pottery class.

I nod and slip on an apron.

“Care to elaborate? I can give you the male perspective— free of charge, of course.”

“Maybe after I wedge,” I say, slamming the clay down on my work board.

Spencer is barely twenty-five, but he’s owned this shop for a little over two years now. I first met him during my freshman year, when he was substituting for Ms. Mazur, his supposed mentor—something he does only sparingly now that he has the shop. He told me I was a natural with the potter’s wheel and asked if I wanted a job. About a year and a half later—the time it took me to convince my parents I was responsible enough to handle work
and
school— I finally took him up on it.

And it’s been my dream job ever since.

After only three weeks of working for him, he gave me free run of the place: “So you can work on your stuff whenever inspiration hits,” he said, dropping the shop’s keys into my palm, “be it eleven o’clock at night or three in the morning.” And, though I’ve yet to take him up on the generous offer to work whenever I please, I have a feeling those days are coming.

I honestly can’t remember another time in my life when I felt this unhinged.

“Will you be needing something a bit stronger than that?” Spencer asks, referring to the clay. “A little maple wood? Or some iron, maybe?”

“No,” I smile, giving my clay another good thwack against the board. “This will do just fine.”