On the other hand, it was wrong of Heather—so wrong—to have been so mean to me about something that was in no way my fault.
"But these Feds . . . ," Mark went on. "Well, you know them. Right? I mean, they seem to know you. They're just so … secretive. It's like they know something. Like they have some kind of proof I did it."
"Oh," I said as we turned onto Second Street. "I'm sure they don't."
"Of course they don't," Mark said. "Because I didn't do it."
"Right," I said. Too bad I didn't have a cell phone. Because then I could make up some excuse about how I had to call Ruth, and then I could tell her I was with Mark. Mark Leskowski. That I was with Mark Leskowski in his BMW.
Why does every sixteen-year-old girl in the entire world have a cell phone but me?
"That's right," Mark said. "They don't. Because if they did, they'd have arrested me already. Right?"
I looked at him. Beautiful. So beautiful. No Rob Wilkins, of course. But a hottie, just the same.
"Right," I said.
"And they'd have told you. Wouldn't they? I mean, wouldn't they have told you? If they had something on me?"
"Of course they wouldn't have told me," I said. "Why would they have told me? What do you think I am, some kind of narc?"
"Of course not," Mark said. "It's just that you seem to be, you know, real friendly with one another...."
I let out a bark of laughter at that.
"Sorry to disappoint you, Mark," I said. "But Special Agents Johnson and Smith and I are not exactly friends. Basically, I have something they want, and that's about it."
Mark glanced at me curiously. We were stopped at an intersection, so it was okay that he was looking at me and not at the road, but I'd noticed that Mark also had a tendency to stare at me when he should have been paying attention to where we were going. This, in addition to his seeming to think that stop signs were mere suggestions, and that it wasn't in the least bit necessary to maintain a distance of at least two car lengths from the vehicle in front of him, led me to believe Mark wasn't the world's best driver.
"What," he asked me, "do you have that they want?"
I looked back at him, but my look wasn't curious. I was amazed. How could he not know? How could he not have heard? It had been all over the local papers for weeks, and most of the national papers for about the same amount of time. It had been on the news, and there'd even been some talk about making a movie out of the whole thing, except of course I wasn't too enthused about seeing my personal life transferred to the big screen.
"Hello," I said. "Lightning Girl. Remember?"
"Oh," he said. "That whole psychic thing. Yeah. Right."
But that wasn't the only thing Mark had forgotten about. I figured that out when he swung his car into the parking lot for Mastriani's. Mastriani's is one of my family's restaurants. It is the fanciest of the three, though it does indeed serve pizza. I thought it was a little weird that Mark was taking me to my own family's restaurant, but I figured, well, it is the best pizza in town, so why complain?
It wasn't until we'd walked through the door—Heather Montrose had not, unfortunately, been downtown to see me get out of Mark Leskowski's BMW—and the waitress who had been assigned to show us to our table went, "Why, Jessica. Hello," that I realized what a huge, colossal mistake I had just made.
Because of course Mark wasn't the only one forgetting things. I'd forgotten that the new waitress my dad had just hired for Mastriani's was none other than Rob's mom.
C H A P T E R
8
Yeah. That's right. Rob's mom.
Not that my dad knew she was Rob's mom, of course. I mean, he might have known she had a kid and all, but he didn't know that I was sort of seeing that kid.
Well, all right, that I was madly in love with that kid.
No, my dad had hired Mrs. Wilkins because she'd been out of work after losing her job when the local plastics factory closed down, and I'd told him about her, saying she was a real nice lady and all. I never said how I knew her, though. I never went, Hey, Dad, you should hire the mother of the guy I am madly in love with, even though he won't go out with me because he considers me jailbait and he's eighteen and on probation.
Yeah. I didn't say that.
But of course up until the moment I saw Mrs. Wilkins standing there with a couple of menus in her hand, I totally forgot she worked at Mastriani's . . . that she had been working there most of the summer while I'd been away at camp, and had been doing, from what I'd heard, a real good job.
And now she was going to get to wait on me—the girl who might, if she played her cards right, one day be her daughter-in-law—while I ate pizza with the Ernie Pyle High quarterback who, by the way, appeared to be a suspect in his girlfriend's murder.
Great. Just great. I tell you, with that, in addition to Skip's apparent crush on me, everyone thinking I was responsible for Amber turning up dead, and Karen Sue Hankey's lawsuit against me, my school year was shaping up nicely, thank you.
"Hi, Mrs. Wilkins," I said, with a smile so forced, I thought my cheeks would break. "How are you?"
"Well, I'm just fine, thanks," Mrs. Wilkins said. She was a pretty lady with a lot of red hair piled up on her head with a tortoiseshell clip. "It's great to see you. I heard you were away at music camp."
"Um, yes, ma'am," I said. "Working as a counselor. I got back a couple of days ago."
And your son still hasn't called me. Three days, three days I've been back in town, and has he so much as even driven past my house on his Indian?
No. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.
"That must have been fun," Mrs. Wilkins said.
It was right then that I saw, with horror, that she was leading us to Table Seven, the "make-out" table in the darkest corner of the dining room.
No! I wanted to scream. Not the make-out table, Mrs. Wilkins! This isn't a date, I swear it! This … is … not … a … date!
"Here you go," Mrs. Wilkins said, putting the menus down on top of Table Seven. "Now you all have a seat and I'll be right with you with some ice waters. Unless you'd prefer Cokes?"
"Coke sounds good to me," Mark said.
"I'll . . . I'll just have water," I managed to choke. The make-out table! Oh, God, not the make-out table!
"Coke and a water it is, then," Mrs. Wilkins said, and then she bustled away.
Great. Just great. I knew what was going to happen now, of course. Mrs. Wilkins was going to tell Rob that she'd seen me, on a date, with Mark Leskowski. She might even tell him about the make-out table.
Then Rob was going to think I'd finally accepted his mandate that we not see each other romantically. And what was going to happen after that? I'll tell you: He was going to start thinking it'd be okay for him to go out with one of those floozies from Chick's Biker Bar, where he hangs out sometimes. How am I supposed to compete with a twenty-seven year old named Darla with tattoos and her own hog? I can't, I tell you. Not with an eleven o'clock curfew.
My life was over. So over.
"Hey," Mark said, lowering his menu. In the candlelight—yes, there was candlelight. Come on. It was the make-out table—he looked more handsome than ever. But what did it matter? What did it matter, how handsome Mark was? Mark wasn't the one I wanted.
"I forgot," Mark said. "You own this place, or something, don't you?"
"Something like that," I said, not even attempting to hide my misery.
"Whoa," Mark said. "I'm sorry. I mean, I don't want you to think I picked this place so I wouldn't have to pay or anything. I just really like Mastriani pizza." He put the menu down. "But we can totally go somewhere else, if you want to—"
"Oh, yeah? Where, exactly?" I asked.
"Well," he said. "There's Joe's...."
"We own Joe's, too," I said with a sigh.
"Oh." Mark winced. "That means you probably own Joe Junior's, too, then, huh?"