"Just had it last month," I said.
He said a word that I will refrain from recording here.
"Look," I said. "I don't care that you're on probation."
"Yeah, but your parents will."
"No, they're cool."
He laughed. "Right, Jess. That's why you made me drop you off at the end of the street the other night, instead of in front of your house. Because your parents are so cool. They're so cool, you didn't want them to know anything about me. And you didn't even know about the probation thing then. Admit it."
He had me there.
"Well," I said. "They're just going through sort of a hard time right now, and I don't want to cause them any more stress. But look, there's no reason they have to know."
"Word gets around, Jess. Look at Wendell. It's only a matter of time before your parents—and my probation officer—get wind of what's going on."
Well, I wasn't going to stand there and beg him to go out with me. The guy was hot and everything, but a girl has her pride. So I just shrugged and said, "Whatever."
Then I turned around and started walking again.
"Mastriani," he said, in a tired voice. "Look, just get on the bike, will ya? I'll take you home. Or to your street corner, I guess."
"I don't know," I said, looking back at him and fluttering my eyelashes. "I mean, Miss Clemmings already saw us together. Supposing she goes running to the cops—"
He looked annoyed. "Just get on the bike, Mastriani."
I can tell what you're thinking.
You're thinking that, in spite of the whole jailbait thing, Rob and I went on to have this totally hot and steamy relationship, and that I'm going to go into all the lurid details right here in my statement, and that you're going to get to read all about it.
Well, sorry to disappoint you, but that is so not going to happen. In the first place, my love life is my own business, and the only reason I mention it here is that it becomes pertinent later on.
And in the second place, Rob didn't lay a finger on me.
Much to my chagrin.
No, he dropped me off, as promised, on the corner, and I walked the rest of the way home, cursing the fact that I have to live in this backward state with its backward laws. I mean, a sixteen-year-old girl can't date an eighteen-year-old boy in the state of Indiana, but it's perfectly okay for first cousins to marry at any age.
I'm serious. Look it up if you don't believe me.
As usual when I got home that night, there was a commotion going on in the kitchen. This one involved my mom and dad and Douglas (big surprise). Douglas was standing there, looking down at the floor, while my mom yelled at my dad.
"I told you he wasn't ready!" she was screaming. My mom has a pretty healthy set of lungs on her. "I told you! But did you listen? Oh, no. Big Joe Mastriani always knows what's best."
"The kid did great," my dad said. "Really great. Okay, so he dropped a tray and broke some stuff. Big deal. Trays get dropped every day. It doesn't mean—"
"He's not ready," my mom yelled.
Douglas saw me in the doorway. I rolled my eyes at him. He just looked back down at the floor again. There are kids, back at school, who say things to me about my "psycho" brother, about how he's been voted most likely to be a serial killer, and that kind of thing. That's one of the reasons I have detention from now until the foreseeable future. Because I've had to slug so many people for talking dirt about Douglas. But I don't think Douglas could ever be a serial killer. He's way too shy. That Ted Bundy guy, he was pretty outgoing, from what I heard.
My dad noticed me in the doorway and went, "Where have you been?" only not in a mean way.
"Band practice," I said.
"Oh," my dad said. Then he started yelling at my mom some more.
I grabbed a bowl of cereal—checking the milk carton, of course. As I'd suspected, my mom had seen the expired date and run out to buy a new one. I studied the faces of the kids on this particular box. I wondered if, in the morning, I would know where they lived. I had a feeling I would. After all, the mark on my chest, where the lightning had struck me, was still there. It hadn't faded hardly at all.
I wondered how Sean was doing. By now he'd probably been joyfully reunited with his family. He owed me, I thought, one heck of a big thank you. And an apology for acting like such a little headcase that day outside his house.
I went upstairs, but before I got to my room, Mike scared the bejesus out of me by tearing open, not his bedroom door, but Douglas's, and going, "All right. Who the hell is he?"
I had slammed back against the hallway wall in my surprise at seeing him come out of nowhere like that. I went, "Who the hell is who? And what were you doing in Douglas's room?"
Then I saw the binoculars in his hand, and I knew.
"Okay," I said. "It's not what you think."
"Oh, yeah?" Mike glared at me through the lenses of his glasses. "What I think is that you are slutting around with some Hell's Angel. That's what I think."
"You are so lame," I said. "He isn't a Hell's Angel, and I am not slutting around with anybody."
"Then who is he?"
"God, he's in your class, all right? He's a senior. His name is Rob Wilkins."
"Rob Wilkins?" Mike glared down at me some more. "I don't know any senior named Rob Wilkins."
"Color me surprised," I said. "You don't know anyone whose name isn't followed by an A in a little circle and the words AOL dot com."
He wasn't letting me off the hook though, no matter how hard I dissed him.
"What is he?" Mike demanded. "A dropout?"
"No," I said. "Not that it's any business of yours."
"Well, then, how come I don't know him?" Then Mike's jaw dropped. "Oh, my God. Is he a Grit?"
"Gosh, Mike," I said. "That is so PC of you. I bet your new friends at Harvard are just going to love your open-minded attitude."
Mike shook his head. "Mom is going to kill you."
"No, she isn't, because you aren't going to tell her."
"Like fun I'm not," Mike declared. "I don't want my little sister going out with a Grit."
"We aren't going out," I said. "And if you don't tell Mom, I'll … I'll take your shift at the restaurant this weekend."
He brightened up, his protectiveness for his little sister forgotten. Hey, why not? More time on the Internet for him.
"Really?" he asked. "The Sunday night one, too?"
I sighed, like this was a big sacrifice, when really, I would have worked all his shifts for the rest of my natural life if he'd asked me to, in order to keep Mom from finding out about Rob.
"Sunday night, too, I guess," I said.
Mike looked triumphant. Then he seemed to remember he was my older brother, and he was supposed to look out for me and stuff, because he said, "Don't you think a senior is a little old for you? I mean, after all, you're just a sophomore."
I said, "Don't worry, Mikey. I can handle myself."
He still looked worried, though. "I know, but what if this guy … you know. Tries something?"
It was my fondest wish that he would. Unfortunately, it did not look like this was going to happen.
"Look," I said. "Don't worry about it. Seriously, Mike. You just keep on spying on Claire Lippman, and let me do the actual making out, okay?"
Mike turned kind of red, but I didn't feel sorry for him. He was blackmailing me, after all.
That night, after I'd gone to bed, my mind was too filled with the whole Rob problem to think about what was going on, you know, with the psychic thing. I mean, the missing-kid stuff just didn't seem that important.
Of course, that changed completely, the next day.
C H A P T E R
10
Rosemary sounded strange when I called her the next morning. Maybe it was because someone else had answered at first, and I had been all, "Is Rosemary there?" The man who had answered had said, "One moment, please," and then I'd heard a click, and then Rosemary came on.