Overnight (12 page)

Gray quaked. “Can’t I stay here? In the house?”

“Yeah, right. Last thing I want is some blabbermouth little girl putting the whole state force on Kat’s tail.”

“I won’t talk. Promise, cross my heart.” Gray crossed her heart. Her teeth were chattering from the cold. It would be safer to be inside the house than in the car. She’d hide in the tub, or under the couch maybe. If she got too hungry, she would eat the moldy sandwich and wait for the sun to come up. In the daytime, the answers would come clear.

“Sorry, Gray Rosenfeld. I can’t take chances. Look,” Drew continued, “it’s not like I’ll drive you the whole way. I’ll drop you somewhere. But you can’t be
here.
I can’t risk it. Okay?”

Gray nodded.

“I’m going back inside to pull my stuff together. You jump in the car and wait. Kat’ll be out in a minute.”

“And you’ll drop me off at a gas station or something?”

“Yeah yeah yeah.”

She moved to the car slowly. Her arms wrapped around her shoulders. It was too cold to be outside with no coat. Was now when she should break for it? But break for where? She was too far away from everything.

Gray opened the car door and slid into the backseat. Of course Drew would drop her off somewhere safe. He had to.

Eventually, Katrina appeared. She was wearing her feather coat and her wig. She waved at Gray and settled into the front passenger seat.

“Katrina, do you remember where you picked me up?” Gray asked. “Do you think you could tell Drew to drop me off close to there?”

Katrina stared straight ahead as if under a hypnotist’s trance. “What I like best about cars is the radio. I close my eyes and I listen to the music and imagine I’m in these exotic places, like Fiji.”

Gray leaned back in the seat and fumbled with her seat belt. Katrina was so infuriating, like the Mad Hatter at the Wonderland tea party. Only, unlike Gray, Alice never turned into a crybaby. Alice treated the Mad Hatter as if he were a small, silly child. Katrina was like a silly child, too, but in real life, a grownup acting like a child was scary.

Gray wondered what the other girls were doing now. They were in their sleeping bags. Maybe playing truth or dare, or would you rather?

Would you rather eat five live caterpillars or would you rather ride the school bus naked? Would you rather live in a sewer or would you rather be blind in one eye? Would you rather have warts or pimples? Would you rather have one missing finger or two missing toes?

The Lucky Seven would play this game until their stomachs were sore from laughing. But it was so funny to imagine even a single terrible thing actually happening to them. As if anybody would really go blind! Or get warts! Ridiculous!

Would you rather be kidnapped by strangers, or would you rather have your mother die from cancer?

But Gray wasn’t really being kidnapped. Her mother wasn’t dying, either. She was in remission. And in real life, there was no choice about what bad luck or what mistake you would rather have happen to you. It just happened, and then you would survive it or you would not.

“I think it’s really unfair,” said Gray, speaking up to Katrina in her most authentic adult voice, “that you picked me up from the Donnelleys’ house and you didn’t even have a plan to get me back.”

“I think it’s really unfair that you came along,” said Katrina, Mad Hatterishly.

It was no use talking to her. Gray slumped back in her seat and waited.

After another ten minutes, or maybe longer, Drew emerged from the house. He was holding a fresh beer and a paper bag that he tossed in the backseat next to Gray. She peered into it. It was full of clothes.

“Ready for our road trip?” he asked.

Neither of them answered. Drew put the key in the ignition. The car leaped to life.

Gray hooked her thumbs beneath her fastened seat belt and looked out the window, trying to memorize the house, the road, and the trees. As soon as she was dropped off, or got away, or something, she would be able to give good descriptions to her parents and to Mrs. Donnelley.

Poor Mrs. Donnelley. She might be mad at Gray for a long time, for ruining her daughter’s party. Maybe Gray could take Mrs. Donnelley one of her mother’s “get well soon” gifts as an apology. Some soap or a scented candle or slippers. Mrs. Donnelley would probably appreciate a thoughtful present.

Katrina was asleep. Her seat was cranked back all the way and her seat belt was unfastened. Gray waited for Drew to tell Katrina to buckle up, but he didn’t. He switched to his high beams. The lights shone onto a wall of woods.

Katrina yawned and turned her cheek. Reflected light caught the sparkle in her face. With her arm thrown in a long arc over her head, she looked like one of Caitlin’s fairy paintings.

Maybe that’s why I followed Katrina in the first place that’s how bad I want something magical
—
something better to believe in?

Watching Katrina sleep, Gray remembered how she used to watch her mother as she slept in her hospital bed. The veins of her mother’s eyelids were webbed dark in her pale skin, like the mold swirls in blue cheese. Gray would stare at her mother and wonder if she would ever wake up.

Drew belched, interrupting her thoughts. Gray leaned up toward the driver’s side. “Drew? Drew? You’re not supposed to drink and drive.” Her voice was just above a whisper.

“Stuff it, Gray Rosenfeld. It’s only a beer.”

Gray sat back.

“A beer is hardly even alcohol,” said Drew after another slurp.

Gray knew that was not true. She was too nervous to argue more.

Tears flooded her eyes again.

She should argue more. Here was the place where she should draw on any strength that might be buried inside her. Here was the place where the brave girl escaped from the car, got on the bike, the plane, the train, put out the fire, saved the school, the town, the dog, the land, yelled at the Bad Person, pointed to the Good Person, explained why the rules were wrong, and forced the tiny change that always made Gray wonder,
Could I do that? Is there enough bravery inside me to do this one small strong thing that makes a difference?

And always Gray wanted to believe
Yes! Yes! Yes!

Even though she doubted it.

B
EFORE SHE FELL ASLEEP
, Zoë said a prayer, since Mrs. Donnelley had told them to.

She prayed: Please, God, let me fall into a psychic sleep and in my dream I will be the one to see where Gray is and then I can rescue her.

Maybe it was God who was supposed to help her win. Zoë figured God was on her side for most things. Like today, He helped her spell
ancillary
right on the English test, and yesterday He helped her find her green notebook. God granted Zoë plenty of luck when she asked for it, although He helped Shelton more.

If her dream gave her some clues to find Gray, then Zoë would get more attention than Shelton, more attention than anyone at Fielding, and maybe even in the whole town.

Now she had pushed herself into a dream that was not quite going her way. Swimming through murk, she had found Gray, who was stuck underwater in a dark cave, so it was lucky that Zoë could breathe underwater. The problem was that Gray was screaming and ruining Zoë’s rescue.

“I’ve got you! I’ve got you!” Too late, Zoë realized the dream had turned nightmarish, because she didn’t have Gray. No, in fact, it was just the opposite—Gray was trying to drag Zoë down into the cave.

Zoë’s eyes snapped open. Her heart was beating fast. Sweat was sticking to the back of her T-shirt. What time was it? How long had she been sleeping? She listened to the room. Caitlin was snoring, but otherwise the room was quiet. Outside Caitlin’s room, down the hall, the house was awake with muffled goings-on, but none of the noise suggested that Gray had returned.

“Hey,” Leticia, on her side, whispered so quietly, Zoë could hardly hear her. “Are you okay?”

“I was having a nightmare,” Zoë whispered back. She was still breathing hard. She flattened a hand to her heart.

“You were talking in your sleep. You seemed mad.”

“I was?” Zoë yawned. Had Leticia been sleeping next to her before, or had she moved places?

“Yeah, and I wondered if it was because of the science test.”

The science test? What was Leticia talking about? “Well, I think I got an A plus,” said Zoë, trying to keep her voice nonchalant. It was unc to brag about grades.

“Well, guess what? Martha got an A plus, too,” whispered Leticia.

“Nuh-uh. Martha never gets A’s.”

“Not on her own. When she asked to copy off me. I said no, so she went and sat behind you. To cheat off
you.
I thought you knew about it.”

Zoë frowned. She hadn’t known. It irritated her to think of Martha copying her test. Without cheat permission, even. But she did not want Leticia to think she cared more than she did. “It’s no big deal, I guess. We’re friends.”

“Oh. I thought you two were in a fight about it. But I guess it must be about something else.”

“No, no—we’re not fighting, Martha and me. Why would you think that?”

“It’s just…” Leticia turned on her side to face Zoë. Her breath smelled like bubble-gum toothpaste. “Just that Martha’s been especially on your case tonight. Right from saying you didn’t win Enchanted Castle when we all knew you did. Then telling you that you don’t have ESP. She makes you out to be such a loser.”

“You think? Do other people think that?”

“Oh, I don’t know…Listen, I’m sorry,” said Leticia. “I guess I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“No,” said Zoë. “I’m glad you did.” Her mind wound back through the night. Now that she thought about it, Martha had been pretty mean. Worse than usual? And was Leticia only saying this because she and Martha were in a fight?

“You’re sure she got an A plus?”

“Positive.”

“And it was from cheating off me?”

“Positive.”

“Huh.” Zoë gnawed the edge of skin around what was left of her thumbnail. “Um, Teesh? Do you also think Martha made that stuff up, about the lady? Because I really do believe my ESP was right. About the caves.”

“I don’t know. I was thinking, though. Probably we should go to the police and tell them what Martha told us.” Leticia’s voice was the barest whisper. “Just to double-check. Don’t you think?”

“Except that it might get Martha in trouble,” said Zoë. “I mean, what if she really made it all up? As a prank or whatever.”

“See, that’s how we’d find out for sure,” said Leticia. “If she was telling the truth or not. Because she couldn’t lie to the police.”

“It seems kind of a big deal, going to the police.”

“So what? C’mon. It’d be like a dare.”

Zoë rolled on her back. So what? “Maybe. In a few minutes,” she said. “Let’s make sure everyone is asleep.”

“Hey, I wanted to ask you something.” Leticia’s whisper lifted, lightened. “In a couple of weeks, my parents and I are going to visit Celeste at her college. They said I could bring one friend, anyone I wanted. But just one, you know.” She paused. “Maybe you’d want to come?”

“Yeah, that’d be cool.” In the dark, Zoë smiled and nodded. She knew, all right.

M
ARTHA HAD STRAINED TO
hear what Leticia and Zoë were whispering about. Now it seemed that they had fallen asleep. Martha could predict what was going to happen, though, and it infuriated her. Tomorrow morning, there would be two pairs. Caitlin and Kristy, Leticia and Zoë.

Martha despised the image of herself at breakfast the next morning, being called
Meow
, being laughed at or frozen out, plus in trouble with the Rosenfelds and Donnelleys and the police.

She shouldn’t have been so hard on Zoë.

She tried to put her secret out of her mind. Maybe she had just imagined it. She wished something else would happen. Something to distract everyone. Something to shake things up.

The idea opened her eyes. A hush of balanced breathing, like a soft ocean, washed in and out around her, its calm broken by the hovercraft of Caitlin snoring in her bed above.

All clear.

She slithered out of her sleeping bag, then groped in the dark for her overnight bag. Fumblingly, she retrieved her Kleenex-wrapped mothball and her other bag of candy and chocolate hearts. She tiptoed into the bathroom, shut and locked the door, and snapped on the light, which made her squint. After she stopped squinting, she looked at herself in the mirror and touched her face gently.

“My freckles are where I’m bulletproofed,” Martha whispered to her face. It was a silly thing she used to tell kids back in kindergarten if any of them dared to make fun of her freckles. Only tonight she didn’t feel bulletproofed. Tonight, she felt as if she had been shot with a thousand darts.

She dropped, cross-legged, on the bath mat. Carefully, she used the edge of her fingernail to push into the chocolate heart. She made a small dent that slowly cleaved into two perfect halves. She licked out liquid chocolate. Then she fit the mothball into the heart, neat as a toy surprise, and she closed it up.

She tiptoed out of the bathroom, out of Caitlin’s room, closing the bedroom door quietly behind her. She tiptoed past the den that rumbled with voices of the grown-ups.

A fresh pot of coffee had been brewed in the pantry and the lights were on in the kitchen. She would have to be quick and careful.

Bumpo was in his basket bed. He raised his head to watch her. She paused.

Maybe this was not such a good idea after all.

But if she could make Bumpo sick, Martha reasoned, then she could rescue him. She would call for help from Topher. Best of all, they would blame Leticia, for feeding Bumpo chocolate earlier. And when she finally told about the lady, there would be potentially two people in trouble tonight instead of just herself.

A perfect plan. She dared herself to try. She was good at dares.

“Here, boy,” Martha coaxed. She slid to her knees on the floor next to the dog basket. She scratched Bumpo’s ears and under his collar, the way he liked it. “I’ve got a treat for you.”

One single mothball would not really hurt him, Martha figured. Her parents were always cautioning about the dangers of this and that, but experience had taught her that nothing was ever as bad as they warned. The mothball would only make him sick. Sick enough to help her.