Red Heart Tattoo (8 page)

Mark’s jaw tightened. “Nothing. It’s over between us.”

“Since when?”

“For a while now.”

Morgan felt like an idiot. Why was she hearing this from Mark and not Kelli? She recalled Kelli crying on the phone and saying that Mark had someone else, another girl. Was that true? “So who did you bring?”

“I came alone. Be sure and tell her that.”

Morgan had a million questions, but just then Trent slipped his arms around her from behind, nuzzled her neck. “Am I going to have to spend the night refereeing you two?”

“Game over,” Mark said, walking away.

“Wait!” Morgan called. Mark kept moving. She turned to Trent. “Do you know what’s happening with them? Kelli won’t tell me anything. She lied to me about being here tonight.”

Trent threw up his hands. “Don’t want to know.”

“But—”

He dipped his head and kissed her, stopping her words. From the corner of her eye, Morgan saw two chaperones eyeball them. She ducked. “Let’s not get thrown out.”

Trent led her to the dance floor. “Then let’s not talk about Kelli and Mark. This is our night, not theirs.” He took her into his arms while lights from an overhead
spinning machine threw a sea of sparkle and color over the dancers flowing around them.

One of the cheerleaders spotted Morgan’s ring and shrieked. Girls clustered like a bouquet of spring flowers to admire the pearl. “Engaged?” one girl asked.

“Promise ring,” Morgan said. “College first.”

“Boy, I wouldn’t let him get far away from me,” another girl said. “Why risk him getting picked off by some babe?”

Morgan felt self-conscious about the attention they were giving the ring. Sure, she loved Trent, had loved him for almost three years. And yet the promise ring represented a commitment that she found strangely unsettling. What if she didn’t want to get married right after college?

Trent broke into the circle. “Hey, babe. Me and some of the guys are going out to the parking lot for a minute.”

Code for “Having a smoke and a sip of something eighty-proof.” Her stomach knotted. “What if you’re caught?”

“Won’t be. We’re going way off campus. To the mall parking lot.” The mall was half a mile away. “We’ll be back in a while.”

She wished he wouldn’t leave, but she knew it was a male ritual she couldn’t fight. “What if they check your breath when you come back in?” The chaperones were hugging the doors, their eyes darting everywhere suspiciously.

“Gum and mints. A guy’s best friend,” Trent said.

Morgan watched Trent and his buddies slip away, staggering their exits so as not to be noticed. She sighed,
feeling deserted. She missed Kelli. If her friend had been here, they would have hunkered down and commented on every girl and dress in the gym. But there was no Kelli. And to compound her absence was Morgan’s knowledge that Kelli had told her a bald-faced lie.

All of a sudden the air seemed stale. Morgan eased over to the table where she and Trent had placed their belongings. She picked up Trent’s letter jacket and headed toward the bathroom, slipping on the wool-and-leather coat emblazoned with the letter
E
as she walked, nodding to Mrs. DeHaven as she passed through the door into the hall. She paused at a side exit door, looked both ways, saw no one watching her. She eased outside into the cold night air, which stung her lungs but also felt refreshing after the closed air of the gym, thick with scents of perfume and hair spray and perspiring bodies.

Morgan needed to think. She needed to figure out what was going on with her feelings. Why had Kelli not come to her with the truth about her and Mark? Morgan had sensed something was wrong between the two of them, yet she hadn’t pushed Kelli for answers. What kind of a friend let something as important as a breakup get past her without pressing for answers? Morgan felt guilty.

The moon was overhead now, brilliant and bright. She walked slowly, deep in thought, and ended up at the football field. The carpet of grass looked blue in the moon’s white light; the bleachers were slivers of silver, the goalposts glowing rods rising out of the ground. She walked onto the field, her heels slipping in the manicured grass.
Her shoes would be a mess, but at the moment she didn’t care. If it were warmer, she’d take off her shoes and feel the sharpness of the turf on her bare feet.

She stopped in the center of the field, stretched out her arms and lifted her face to the moon. Its light had swallowed the dimmer light of distant stars. Her mind tumbled over thoughts like water over stones—Kelli, their friendship, the promise ring, her college dreams, her future with Trent. She held out her arms like a worshipper, letting the moonlight wash over her. She closed her eyes, hoping to wash away the jumble of confusion rolling through her.

She stopped when she heard somebody clapping over near the bleachers. Her eyes popped open and she saw Roth coming toward her across the field, dressed in black—boots, jeans, hoodie. “What are you doing out here?” she asked, shocked by his sudden brooding appearance. She wasn’t afraid of him. She felt infringed upon, but not afraid. He stopped in front of her, his hands shoved into the kangaroo pocket of his sweatshirt.

“Watching you in the moonlight.”

A preposterous answer, but still it made her pulse quicken. “Did you come to the dance?”

“I don’t dance.”

“And yet you’re here.”

“Nothing else to do tonight.” He tipped his head to one side, pulled the hood off his head. His rumpled hair made him look darkly sexy. “So what brings you outside?”

She owed him no explanations, but she wondered as much herself. Had she somehow sensed his presence?
“Fresh air. Trent went off with his friends, but he’ll be back soon.”

Roth grinned. “Is that a warning for me to get lost?”

“It’s a free country.” His emergence from the bleachers disconcerted her. In the moonlight, he made her feel off balance, out of kilter. She didn’t understand why he had this effect on her, especially when she was in love with Trent. And yet he did. Roth seemed edged with danger, forbidden and, therefore, compelling in her well-thought-out and ordered world.

He touched her crystal earring, made it swing. “You look pretty.”

She swallowed, unable to take her gaze from his face.

“Your hair’s up. It’s pretty, but I like it better down.” He took his hand from her earring to behind her head and touched the twisted hair, sending chills up her spine. “May I?” he asked.

Morgan could scarcely breathe. Her body felt lighter than smoke and about as substantial. And despite the trip to the salon, the hour enduring a beautician messing with her hair until her scalp hurt, plus endless squirts of hair spray, she nodded.

It took him only minutes to pull out the hairpins, untwist the knot of her hair, fluff it all around her shoulders. He dropped the pins onto the grass. “That’s better,” he said.

She shook her hair, untangled it with her fingers. He helped by dragging his fingers behind hers, which caused her heart to thud harder.

Inevitably his fingers touched the ring. He caught her
hand, held it up and studied the ring. He rubbed the pearl with his thumb and watched it glow. “He has good taste in all things.”

Agitated, unnerved, feeling unsure and misplaced in this new universe of confused and clashing emotions, she whispered, “I—I love Trent.”

He stared down at her for a long time, holding her in place with a look she couldn’t read but couldn’t break free of either. “Then why are you out here with me and he’s nowhere around? I would never have left you alone.”

She had no answers for him. Her teeth began to chatter. “I—I’m cold.”

“Then you’d better go back inside while you can.”

She didn’t need another prompt. Morgan turned and hustled off the field as quickly as her troublesome heels would allow her. Like a jackrabbit chased by a wolf, she moved toward the hulking form of the gym and to the safety of feelings she could control.

“Hey, I’ve been looking for you,” Trent said when she hurried into the gym. The heated air felt stifling after the chill of the night.

“Went for air,” she said breathlessly.

“Your cheeks are red.”

“Cold outside.” She smelled beer mingled with spearmint gum on his breath.

“And your hair’s down. Why’d you take it down?”

“All those bobby pins were giving me a headache.” She’d never lied to him, had never had any reason to lie to
him, and suddenly she felt guilty, ashamed for lying now. She slid out of his jacket, hung it on the back of a chair.

“Aw … too bad,” Trent said, looking disappointed. He rolled a long tendril of her hair between his forefinger and thumb. “I really, really like it up, babe.”

“I’ll remember that,” she said brightly, but what she felt was the weight of Roth’s fingers undoing her hair in the moonlight.

“I
’ve picked D-day,” Apocalypse said.

Executioner’s stomach did a somersault. “D-day?”

“Stop looking so stupid. Detonation day. I told you last week, everything was ready to assemble.”

They were standing in the atrium, their backs to a wall, watching the before-school foot traffic gather at the wall.

“Right … I just didn’t think … you know, it would be so soon.”

“Sooner the better. Come over on Saturday. My parents will be out all day.”

Executioner swallowed hard. “All right.” Voices echoed off the concrete walls. A high laugh from the seniors on the wall broke through the din. Both glanced over.

“They really annoy me,” Apocalypse said.

“Yeah, me too.” Executioner bit a chunk from a strawberry toaster pastry and crumbs scattered on the floor. “So what day have you picked?”

“Next Wednesday morning.”

The last day of classes before Thanksgiving break. “That’s … really … soon….” Executioner’s appetite vanished.

“I figured it’ll give the janitors a few days to clean up the mess before we start classes again.”

“How—um—how much of a mess will there be?” Executioner was foggy on the particulars because Apocalypse had said that all bombs were not created equal. Some had more bang, held more destruction than others.

“Enough to cause a nice explosion. Flash, noise—bomb stuff. Sort of like a hand grenade, but on a timer.”

“So where you going to plant it?”

“I’m not sure yet, but we may not want to meet up in the atrium. And bring an old backpack when you show up on Saturday.”

Executioner blinked, heart accelerating. “I’ll be there.” Executioner shifted from foot to foot. “Too bad no one will know it’s us.”

“We’ll know.”

“I’m just saying—”

“Well, shut up. No one can ever know. Got that?” Apocalypse drove a finger hard into Executioner’s chest.

“Well, yeah, sure. I’ll never say anything. You know me. I was just wishing.”

“Two things.” Apocalypse made a fist, ticked off points on two fingers. “Credit will never be ours. And we’re not going down with the ship like those Columbine dudes. We just walk away. Because I’m smart about this and because we can.”

•  •  •

The Wednesday before break, Morgan sat on the half wall in the atrium listening to the chatter all around her. Trent, sitting beside her, was arguing with his friends about upcoming Thanksgiving football games, potential winners and losers, and the girls, mostly cheerleaders, were gossiping. She only half heard both groups, instead mulling over her visit to Kelli’s that past weekend. Kelli wouldn’t even come to the door. Her mother, Jane, had let Morgan into the foyer and said, “Kelli’s sick.”

“She is?”

Jane looked pale, her expression strained. “Terrible case of the flu.”

She had the flu last week
, Morgan had thought, but she’d been too polite to say it out loud. “She’s been sick a lot,” Morgan said.

“Yes. That’s true.”

Morgan had seen Kelli at school the Monday after the homecoming dance. She’d looked awful: her hair needed to be cut and she looked frumpy tucked into an oversize sweatshirt and baggy pants. Morgan wanted to yell at her. She wanted answers about why Kelli had lied about coming to the dance, why she’d not bothered to mention breaking up with Mark. But Kelli’s physical appearance made her take a different tact. Morgan had pasted a smile on her face. “You want to come over after school? We haven’t hung around at my place for a long time.”

“Can’t. Big test tomorrow.”

Morgan didn’t believe Kelli. She reached out and took her friend’s hand. “Please tell me what’s going on. I know something’s wrong. I know about you and Mark breaking up too.”

Big tears filled Kelli’s eyes. She squared her shoulders. “Isn’t that enough?”

“It’s not worth you falling apart. Not worth you giving up on life.”

“What would you know?” Kelli snapped at her like a dog backed into a corner. “Your life is perfect. You live in wonderland.”

Morgan dropped Kelli’s hand, ripped not so much by her words but by the hot tone of her voice. “Hey, I just want to help.”

“You can’t help. No one can help. Just leave me alone!”

And Kelli had taken off while Morgan watched, dumbfounded. So she gave herself and Kelli some more time and on Saturday had gone over to Kelli’s house only to be stonewalled by Jane. “I just want to talk to her. I know something’s wrong. We … we were friends.” She used the past tense, hoping her plea would be heard.