I wondered what Lor meant by “different,” but they changed the subject. Perhaps he had been disfigured, or confined to a wheelchair. Mom had told me all sorts of stories about terrible accidents from her years of working in hospitals, enough to put me off ever becoming a nurse. I was half-tempted to ask, but I made the mistake of asking Elaine a question about a guy last year, out of curiosity, and she posted on her stupid blog that I was interested in him. She hated me that much. So I kept my head down and hurried off to class. It was going to be a long year.
I didn’t see my friends until lunchtime. Westmont High’s cafeteria consisted of an indoor concession stand and a common area the size of Macy’s with a wall of sliding glass windows rolled all the way open to let in the sun. Outside, a patio overlooked our track and football field, and the far edge of the school grounds backed onto a ravine.
Heather dashed for one of the large patio tables. “Let’s sit out here.”
I hesitated. Out here we’d be unprotected. Any sort of creature could come rushing right at us. “What if it gets cold?”
“Are you kidding? It’s practically summer out here.”
I nodded and sat with my back to the cafeteria so I could keep watch. Other students had obviously thought it was a good idea to spend lunch outside today, too. Some guys ran around tossing a football on the field, and a group of girls sat on the concrete, their voices a mixture of murmurs and squeals. Beside us, a few kids did their reading assignments in the sun. Everything seemed fine. There was safety in numbers, I hoped.
Fiona soon joined us. As we ate, I told them both about the strange dream I’d had the night before—how real it seemed—expecting I don’t know what. Understanding?
“Freud said that flying dreams are really about sex,” Heather answered plainly. She was planning to study psychology at college next year and had been reading everything she could get her hands on, from Freud to Psychology Today. She especially enjoyed diagnosing her friends. We were test subjects to her, lab bunnies.
“Sex?” Fiona perked up. “Now we’re talking!”
“Did you hear anything else Mia said?” Heather asked.
“Sex? How did you even get sex out of that?” I gulped my orange juice and gazed out the window, wondering why I’d bothered saying anything. The dream was vivid and gory. The birds were tragic. Surely I didn’t see sex that way. Not that I’d had that much experience to base it on. Making out with Paul Mathers at a party last summer didn’t count.
“It could represent two sides of your own nature battling things out,” Heather said. “You know, a fear of intimacy.”
“I don’t fear intimacy,” I said, wondering if anyone else thought that about me. “Granted I don’t have a boyfriend, but does that make me frigid or something?”
“Okay, abandonment then.”
At that exact moment, Heather’s boyfriend Jesse came along. He was with Dean, who slid onto the seat beside Fiona.
Jesse hesitated. I wondered how much he’d heard.
“Girl talk?” he asked.
“No,” I said, welcoming a change of topic. “Have a seat.”
Heather tucked a lock of blond hair behind her ear and grinned at Jesse. They were a blend of opposites. With his shoulder-length dark hair and leather jacket, he looked like a biker, while she was soft and feminine, verging on preppy.
Around Dean, Fiona’s smile brightened and her laughter grew louder and more frequent. I couldn’t help but think she was compensating for being two inches taller than him, but he ate it up. At least Heather played it a bit cooler with Jesse, so I wouldn’t have to be sick.
“Hey, we’re going hiking on Saturday—Fiona and I,” Heather said. “We’ve been going all summer. Wanna come?”
“Yeah, we discovered this great trail,” Fiona chimed in.
Hiking in the woods? Were they kidding me? I could barely stand eating outside on a busy patio.
I hesitated. “You going, Jesse?”
“Nope. Gotta work.”
“Come on,” Heather insisted. “The weather’s supposed to be great.”
Maybe I was being silly. It was time to live my life like a normal person again. “Okay,” I said slowly. Surely a hike would be fine. I wouldn’t be alone.
Jesse motioned to someone behind me. “Hey, Mike. Why don’t you join us?”
“Hi, Jesse,” said a rich, deep voice. It had just a hint of an accent.
I checked over my shoulder to see who was speaking and froze. Mike? It was the guy from the mall!
Fiona and Jesse moved over to make room for him at the table, and he ended up sitting across from me. Not knowing what to say, I studied the remains of my salad. If I recognized him, surely he must recognize me, too.
“Hi,” he said. “I’m Michael Fontaine.”
This was the new guy? Up close, he was even more attractive, and when his eyes widened for that fraction of a second after meeting mine, I actually thought I saw starlight. Could he be any more gorgeous?
“I’m Mia…short for Maria,” I offered. My palms began to sweat.
“Hello, Mia short for Maria.” His lips curved into a hint of a smile, but his gaze scorched right through me.
“H-hello.” I wanted to say something to him about the day before, but didn’t know how to start. Demanding to know what he’d been doing in the woods didn’t seem the best opening. “W-Where’d you come from?”
He raised a perfectly arched eyebrow at me. “The lunch line?”
“Actually,” I said, “I meant your accent.”
“We moved here from England when I was ten.”
He didn’t ask about me. In the background, I could hear Fiona laughing too loudly at something Dean said. The fact that I was having a totally awkward moment made her laughter even more irritating.
“You seem really familiar,” I blurted. “Have we met?”
He paled. “I don’t think so.”
Now what? Obviously he didn’t recognize me, and I couldn’t trust myself to speak without sounding stupid. Mia short for Maria and have we met? God, I am so useless!
One of the guys on the playing field shouted “Look out!” as a football hit the wall over my head. It landed on the concrete beside me. Michael got up and tossed the ball back to him.
“Careful,” he said.
“Thanks,” the guy shouted.
Michael folded his long legs back under our table and took a bite of his cheeseburger.
“Wasn’t it you?” I sputtered, wondering why I was going down that road again. What am I thinking?
A muscle in his jaw twitched. “What?”
Not wanting to draw anyone else’s attention to what I was about to say, I lowered my voice. “Weren’t you in the park yesterday morning?”
He let out his breath and smiled down at his plate. “That was you?”
So it was him. Sitting across from me, he didn’t seem too dangerous, unless you could kill someone with good looks. In which case he was lethal. “Whatever happened to…” I realized I couldn’t accurately describe what I’d seen, and there was a look in his eye that I couldn’t quite place. “Whatever happened to the weird dog?”
His smile never wavered. “Didn’t see any dogs.” It made me wonder if I’d noticed anything in his look at all.
“So you didn’t see anything?” I asked, trying not to show my desperation. I had hoped for a witness, someone to tell me I wasn’t crazy, that what I saw was real. But if it was, then what?
“Some girl screaming in the park.”
The blood rushed to my cheeks as I realized how insane I must have sounded. Not only was I asking about a dog he hadn’t seen, but I’d just let him know that the first time he saw me, I’d been screaming like a crazy person. No wonder he stared at me. Maybe I was seeing things and I actually was crazy.