Fortunately, the bell hadn’t rung yet, and she gave me a prompt reply.
JUST HEARD. UM … CONGRATS?
UR SO DEAD, I punched in.
EXCUSE MOI? U THINK I DID THIS?
“Better put that away,” said a cheerful voice. “Sarraf is squinting at you.”
Marcie Millar dropped into the next desk over. I knew we had English together, but she always sat in the back row with Jon Gala and Addyson Hales. It was no secret Mr. Sarraf was practically blind, and they could do just about anything back there short of lighting up.
“If he squints any harder, he’s going to give himself a brain hemorrhoid,” Marcie said.
“Brilliant,” I said. “How do you come up with this stuff?”
Missing my sarcasm, she sat taller with self-satisfaction.
“I saw you made the homecoming ballot,” she said.
I said nothing. The lilt of her voice didn’t appear to be making fun, but eleven years’ worth of history between us implied differently.
“Who do you think will win male junior attendant?” she kept on. “My bet’s on Cameron Ferria. Hopefully they’ve dry-cleaned the royalty robes since last year. I have it on good authority that Kara Darling left armpit sweat marks inside her robe. What if you had to wear her old robe?” She wrinkled her nose. “If she did that to her robe, I’d hate to see what she did to the tiara.”
My mind unwillingly traveled back to the only homecoming I’d attended. Vee and I had gone as freshmen. We’d been newly anointed high schoolers, and it only seemed appropriate to see what all the fuss was about. At halftime, the booster club marched onto the field and announced the royalty, starting with the freshman attendants and ending with the senior class queen and king. Each member of the royalty had a robe in school colors placed on their shoulders and a crown or tiara shoved on their head. Then they took a victory lap around the track in golf carts. High class, I know. Marcie won freshman attendant and soured any desire I had to attend another coronation.
“I nominated you.” Marcie flipped her hair off her shoulders, giving me the full wattage of her smile. “I was going to keep it a secret, but anonymity isn’t my thing.”
Her words whipped me out of my reflection. “You did what?”
She tried on a sympathetic face. “I know you’re going through a rough period. I mean, first the whole amnesia thing and”—she dropped her voice to a whisper—“I know about the hallucinations. My dad told me. He said I should be extra nice to you. Only I wasn’t sure how. I thought and thought. And then I saw the announcement about nominating this year’s homecoming royalty. Obviously everyone wanted to nominate me, but I told my friends we should nominate you instead. I might have mentioned the hallucinations, and I might have exaggerated their severity. You gotta play dirty to win. Good news is, we got over two hundred signatures, more than any other nominee!”
My mind reeled, tottering between incredulity and disgust. “You made me your charity project?”
“Yes!” she squealed, clapping her hands daintily.
I bent across the aisle, pinning her with my most hardened and severe look. “Go to the office and retract it. I don’t want my name on the ballot.”
Instead of looking wounded, Marcie put her hands on her hips. “That would mess up everything. They’ve already printed the ballots. I peeked at the stack in the front office this morning. Do you want to be a paper waster? Think of the trees that sacrificed their lives for those reams of paper. And what’s more, screw the paper. What about me? I went out of my way to do something nice, and you can’t just reject that.”
I tipped my neck back, glowering at the water stains on the ceiling. Why me?
CHAPTER 23
AFTER SCHOOL I FOUND A NOTE TACKED TO THE front door: Barn. I stuffed the note into my pocket and headed to the backyard. The split-rail fence at the edge of our property opened to a sprawling field. A whitewashed barn was plunked down in the middle of it. To this day, I wasn’t sure who the barn belonged to. Years ago Vee and I had dreamed of turning it into a secret clubhouse. Our ambitions quickly died the first time we hauled open the doors to find a bat hanging from the rafters.
I hadn’t tried to enter the barn since, and even though I hoped I could say I was no longer terrified of small flying mammals, I found myself opening the door with great hesitation.
“Hello?” I called in.
Scott was stretched out on a weathered bench at the back of the barn. Upon my entrance, he pulled himself up to sitting.
“You still mad at me?” he asked, chewing a piece of wild grass. If it weren’t for the Metallica T-shirt and frayed jeans, he might have looked like he belonged seated behind the wheel of a tractor.
I skimmed the rafters. “Did you see any bats when you came in?”
Scott grinned. “Scared of bats, Grey?”
I dropped down on the bench beside him. “Quit calling me Grey. It makes me sound like I’m a boy. Like Dorian Gray.”
“Dorian who?”
I sighed. “Just think up something else. Plain old Nora works too, you know.”
“Sure thing, Gumdrop.”
I grimaced. “I take that back. Let’s stick with Grey.”
“I came by to see if you have anything for me. Information on Hank would be good. Do you think he knows it was us spying on his building that night?”
I was pretty sure Hank didn’t suspect us. He hadn’t acted any creepier than usual, which, in retrospect, wasn’t saying much. “No, I think we’re clear.”
“That’s good, real good,” Scott said, twisting the Black Hand’s ring around his finger. I was glad to see he hadn’t taken it off. “Maybe I can come out of hiding earlier than I thought.”
“Looks to me like you’re out of hiding now. How did you know I’d find your note on the front door before Hank?”
“Hank’s at his dealership. And I know when you get home from school. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’ve been checking up on you now and then. I needed to know the best times to contact you. By the way, your social life is pathetic.”
“Speak for yourself.”
Scott laughed, but when I didn’t join in, he nudged my shoulder. “You seem down, Grey.”
I heaved a sigh. “Marcie Millar nominated me for homecoming royalty. Voting happens this Friday.”
He gave me one of those complex handshakes that college fraternities use on TV. “Well done, champ.”
I gave him a look of pure disgust.
“Hey, now. I thought girls loved this stuff. Shopping for a dress, getting your hair done, wearing the little crown thing on your head.”
“Tiara.”
“Yeah, tiara. I knew that. So what’s to hate?”
“I feel stupid having my name on a ballot with four other girls who are actually popular. I’m not going to win. I’m just going to look stupid. People are already asking if it was a misprint. And I don’t have a date. I guess I could take Vee. Marcie will come up with a hundred lesbian jokes, but worse things could happen.”
Scott spread his arms wide, as though the solution was obvious. “Problem solved. Go with me.”
I rolled my eyes, suddenly regretting bringing up the topic. It was the last thing I wanted to talk about. Right now, denial seemed the only way to go. “You don’t even go to school,” I reminded him.
“Is there a rule about that? Girls at my old school in Portland were always dragging their college boyfriends back to dances.”
“There’s not a rule, per se.”
He considered briefly. “If you’re worried about the Black Hand, last time I checked, Nephilim dictators don’t consider human high school dances a top priority. He’ll never know I was there.”
At the image of Hank trolling the school gym, I couldn’t help but laugh.