Chapter 92
Lunch was just as uncomfortable as the rest of biology had been. Lucy kept wanting to ask me stuff, and I kept silencing her with my stare. Finally, just before it was time to head to class, Emma said, “I don’t know what the big deal is. So, he faked his death.” She popped the last bite of her sandwich into her mouth and shrugged her shoulders. “It all goes with the drug cartel idea I had earlier.”
I stared at her. “You remember that?”
“Sure,” she replied. “A few things have come back to me. He probably didn’t want his folks to be disappointed in him.”
“Emma…” I began, but then I remembered I’d promised Elliott not to say more. “Okay. Just… we need to keep this to ourselves, all right? I mean, I think the authorities will catch him anyway.”
“Okay,” Emma agreed.
“No, not okay,” Lucy protested, looking from her to me. “When are you going to tell her the truth?” Her voice was low, but her eyes were stern.
“I’m not,” I replied. “She doesn’t want to know the truth.”
“I already know the truth.” Emma gathered up her trash and put it in her sandwich bag.
“See?” I asked, hoping Lucy would drop it.
Instead, she growled at me. “What about Jessica’s house?” she asked. “Is there any reason why we couldn’t talk about it there?”
“You mean other than Jessica being there and Emma not?”
“I have my ways of discussing things without people knowing what I’m talking about. You’d know that if you didn’t keep shushing me.”
I tended to disagree with her, but I didn’t say so. “Fine. We can try it.”
“Great. I’ll see if she wants to go over some stuff for cheerleading practice tomorrow after school. Does that work for you?”
I made sure I understood what that had meant and then nodded. “Sure.” Tomorrow was Tuesday, and while I had piano lessons on Thursday afternoons, I would be available the next day. Even though I was the worst piano player in the world after five years of lessons, my mom insisted I not be a quitter. I wished Elliott could brainwash some musical ability into my head.
“Great,” Lucy repeated. She gathered up her trash and stomped off toward the trash can.
I looked at Emma who shrugged again. “She seems to be taking this information about Jack very poorly.”
“Yeah, I know,” I agreed, not sure what else to say.
“You think she’d just be happy he’s not really dead.”
I opened my mouth but closed it. There really was nothing that needed to be said. I gathered up my trash as well and headed toward the receptacle, Emma behind me, thinking we’d get ahead of the crowd. Lucy was already long gone. It was going to be a fabulous afternoon, I just knew it….
Jessica Filbern lived about two blocks from the school. Her parents worked in a neighboring town and her younger sisters went to their grandma’s every day after school, so we’d have the house to ourselves. While we really did need to use her garage (which had been transformed into a game room of sorts but had a lot of unused space) to practice our jumps and cartwheels, it should also be a relatively safe place to have a discussion, if Lucy and I could find a way to talk without giving away too much information to Jessica. She was a cute blonde with curly hair, super tall, and while she did just fine in school, she was a little bit of a ditz, which should serve our purposes.
“Jess,” Lucy said, once we were in the garage and stretched out, “would you mind getting me a glass of water?”
“Oh, uh, how about a bottle?” Jess asked, one arm wrapped in front of her body as she pulled it back into a stretch with her other arm. “My mom doesn’t like it when I dirty up the dishes.”
“Perfect,” Lucy smiled. Jess returned the gesture and went into the house. I looked at Lucy’s water bottle sticking out of her backpack and raised an eyebrow. “It’s warm,” she replied.
I stifled a laugh. “Okay—quickly. Yes, Jack is a vampire. No, I don’t know how he got that way. Yes, my sister is a vampire hunter, and so are her friends—Elliott, Christian, Jamie, Eliza, Hannah, Meagan, and Aaron. I can’t tell you anything else, because I don’t really know anything else. Elliott said if I told you he’d get in big trouble, and he’d have to come up here and take away our memories again.”
“Wasn’t it Hannah who you said did that the first time, though?” Lucy whispered as we heard footsteps coming back.
“Yes,” I replied quickly as the door opened.
“Here you go,” Jess said, handing Lucy a room temperature bottle of water.
“Oh, thanks,” she said. “You didn’t have any cold water?”
“Oh,” Jessica shrugged, taking it back and heading inside again. Lucy rolled her eyes.
“Yes, Hannah did it last time, but Elliott can do it, too. He did it to me once before. I’ve seen him do it to other people. At school. Last Monday. He convinced everyone we were all happy even though Jack had just died and so did Drew.”
“Is Drew dead?”
“Yes!”
“How do you know?”
I had to think about that. I wasn’t sure. I mean, I was sure I’d asked if she was a vampire before, but I think Elliott told me Jack wasn’t either. “I don’t know,” I admitted. But then… Drew hadn’t been cremated. I was just about to say that when Jess walked back out with a cold water bottle this time and handed it to Lucy.
“Oh, uh, Jess, could I have one, too?” I asked.
Jess huffed and turned around to head back in to the kitchen as Lucy took a long swig of the water, presumably to make it seem like she’d actually wanted it.
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