Bad Hair Day (4 page)

“If anyone else said that, I’d laugh.” He slung an arm over my shoulder. “Hey, I almost forgot. Elle, this is Kate. Kate, this is Elle. Elle’s a senior at St. Michael’s. She’s shadowing in orthopedics with me and Trey.”

“Nice to meet you,” Elle said, but she didn’t even look at me. She was too busy rubbing up against my boyfriend’s shoulder. He kept edging away from her, but she wasn’t taking the hint. I instantly disliked her.

“Dude.” Trey nudged Aaron’s arm, totally ignoring Elle and me. “What’s up with this crap weather? Back home in SoCal, I would have been surfing right about now.”

“Man, that sounds good,” Aaron said. “I bet you used to go all the time.”

“Yeah, there was this one time me and the guys made this bet.…”

This story bored me already, so I turned my attention to Elle. She kept tossing her hair around like her head was full of helium. This girl had the body of a blow-up doll and the brains of your average Barbie.

“So, Kate,” she chirped. “Are you like Aaron’s sister or something?”

I waited for Aaron to correct her, but he was listening to Trey tell some idiotic story about how it’s never a good idea to surf naked. Still, I was kind of pissed that she didn’t already know he was taken.

“Actually, I’m his girlfriend,” I said.

The words were only halfway out of my mouth when she chirped, “Well, we just hit it off so well that Aaron invited me to double-date with you tomorrow.”

He turned back to us and gave my shoulder a squeeze. “Yeah, is that okay with you, Kate?”

Aaron and I had a standing dinner date with my best friend Rocky and her boyfriend, Bryan, on Wednesdays, because it was the only night free for all of us. Between Rocky’s show choir, my Quiz Bowl, and Aaron’s track practice, our schedules were tough to coordinate. It was something special for the four of us to do together, and I couldn’t believe Aaron had invited some girl he’d just met, but I couldn’t say no. Then I’d be the bad guy.

“Sure.” I pasted a smile on my face. “Maybe Trey here could be your date.” I grabbed him by the arm and displayed him like this was a game show and she’d just won the grand prize. Neither of them looked particularly happy to be shoved together like that. I couldn’t keep from grinning.

“That’s a great idea!” Aaron said.

Then our bus driver flounced up. I knew her well; she drove me to school most mornings, which was the height of humiliation
given that I was a senior. I couldn’t drive because of my seizures. I’m an epileptic, and I had to be seizure-free for six months before they’d let me back on the road again. I had about three and a half months of misery left before I got my car back.

“Kate.” The driver scowled at me. “Sandi-with-an-
i
is super-pissed that you’re so late.”

She constantly referred to herself in the third person. It was just one of the many reasons why I considered the bus to be the physical manifestation of hell itself.

“Sorry,” I said. “My doctor kept me over.”

“Tell it to Mr. Dryer. He’ll want to know why we’re late for fifth period, and Sandi-with-an-
i
is not taking the blame.”

“Fine.”

I looked over Aaron’s shoulder just in time to see Elle boarding the St. Michael’s bus. She blew a kiss at the back of his head. Or maybe she was blowing a kiss at me. I wasn’t sure which would be worse.

Aaron followed me up the grimy steps onto the bus, and by the look on his face when he slid onto the cracked leather seat next to me, he knew I wasn’t exactly pleased. We bounced around for a couple of minutes in silence before he finally said, “So what’s wrong?”

I took a deep breath, folded my arms so he wouldn’t see my hands shake, and plunged in. “I had a bad day. And … you know I don’t have a lot of experience with this whole dating thing, so I’m going to come right out and ask: what’s up with Elle?”

He arched a brow. “We’re sharing a doctor, so Trey and I got to hang with her all day. She seems pretty nice.”

“So there’s nothing going on? Because she seemed really interested in you. And I’m trying not to be all jealous and clingy, but I could use a little reassurance here.”

“She was flirting with me pretty hard most of the morning, so I brought you up in conversation like four times. But if you think she didn’t get the picture, I can be more explicit. It’s just that …” He winced. “She’s Dr. Dickensheets’s daughter. I’ve got to be careful. If I piss her off and she tells her dad I’m a dick, it could ruin my chances of getting a good recommendation. I need it if I’m going to get off the wait list at Cornell.”

“Dickensheets? That’s probably the most ridiculous name in the history of the world. You’d think they’d change it.”

He snorted. “Yeah. So do you understand the dilemma here?”

“Honestly?” I took a deep breath. “I guess I can’t blame you for being in a sucky situation. I’m sorry. I hate being high-maintenance. Like I said, I’m really stressed. And I’m not so good at this relationship thing. I’m much better with fungal infections.”

“You have no idea how hot that is.”

I couldn’t figure out if he was kidding. His grin suggested he was, but the kiss that followed was awfully serious. Mrs. Gilbert had to separate us.

We pulled up to the school shortly thereafter. Mr. Dryer stood at the front doors, glowering at the bus in general and me in particular. After Sandi-with-an
-i
explained why we were tardy, he let
everyone else go to class while he escorted me to his minuscule office. We didn’t exactly get along, Mr. Dryer and I. He was a high school vice principal, and he had a mullet. I think that pretty much says it all right there.

In his office, he proceeded to read me the riot act, which consisted of the usual blah-blah about respect for the rules, courtesy to my fellow students, and the need to make a good impression on the FDA people. That took a good ten minutes, because he got really worked up and paced back and forth behind the desk even though it was only three steps in each direction. It made me dizzy.

“Do you have anything to say for yourself?” he finished, folding his arms over his scrawny chest.

This was the moment. I should have told him Dr. Burr had been arrested, and then he would have reassigned me to a surgeon and the world would have been right again. But I didn’t want to do that. Maybe I’d have a chance to check out that murder victim tomorrow. Maybe I’d notice something the experts hadn’t. It sounded egotistical, but it had happened before.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Dryer,” I said, keeping a straight face with some effort. “I understand how important this is, but the pathology department hasn’t had a student in ages, and they were awfully backed up. But we should be caught up tomorrow, so this won’t happen again.”

He blinked. “Well, okay. I … appreciate your candor. If you’ll promise not to be late again, I won’t report this to Mrs. Gilbert.”

“Absolutely.”

He dismissed me. I walked out of the office wondering where I’d left my brains. My top two bets were somewhere in the morgue, where they’d fit right in, or in Elle Dickensheets’s cleavage, where they wouldn’t. I’d just thrown away a chance to get everything I wanted. For a genius, I sure was stupid.

By the time I made it through the lunch line, all the pizza was gone. The other option was goulash, and that wasn’t an option at all. I ended up with a carton of chocolate milk and a cardboard bowl full of fries. Usually, I grabbed a Coke from my locker, but thanks to Mr. Dryer, I hadn’t had time. I could already feel the beginnings of a caffeine headache at my temples.

When I made my way through the packed cafeteria over to the cheerleader table, my friend Kiki scowled at me. Kiki was good at everything—she was head varsity football cheerleader, vice president of student council, this year’s homecoming queen, and a top contender for salutatorian. But she didn’t do angry well. It was like a bunny trying to be intimidating—it would never work. So I just smiled, tugged on a bouncy blond curl, and sat down next to her.

“Hey, you.” I shook my milk. “Sorry, the bus got back late, and then Mr. Dryer talked at me for like fifteen minutes.”

The angry look vanished from her face. “I was thinking you stood me up. What did Mullet Man have to say?”

“Nothing worth repeating. So did you look at the Rockathon sign-up?”

“Yeah, and I only had a few changes. Mindi and Kellan are on
the outs right now, so you might want to move him to a different time slot.…”

I scarfed down fries while she ran through my volunteer list. Before they’d set the dates for the FDA program, I’d decided to put on a Rockathon fund-raiser for the Epilepsy Foundation. It seemed pretty easy. Get a few rocking chairs, take pledges, and sign people up to rock all night long. Of course, the two activities ended up being scheduled during the same week, but by the time I found out, it was too late to change the date for the fund-raiser, and I wasn’t just going to cancel it. The Rockathon would help me stand out from the premed crowd. Curing the zombie virus had helped me get into a good program—but it didn’t make me a lock for med school.

It was a good thing I had Kiki, because without her magical powers of recruitment, there was no way I could have filled all the slots. We had shifts of two people signed up to rock for an hour each, from Friday at six p.m. all the way to Saturday at noon. And Rocky had arranged for the show choir to do a rock-and-roll medley, and the cheerleaders would be selling concessions. Between the Rockathon pledges and concessions, we’d probably rake in about five thousand dollars. Thank god for my friends, because without their help, I probably would have raised four. As in four dollars.

Kiki had offered to rearrange the schedule to make sure that people paired to rock together got along and no blood was spilled. It was just one of the many things she’d done to make this thing work, even though it hadn’t been her idea in the first
place. I really appreciated that. But while she was running all the changes by me, I couldn’t stop thinking about Aaron and Elle and Dr. Burr and the mysterious murder victim. I wondered if they’d released any information about the deceased yet; maybe I could swing by the library and look it up online. I probably had time to do it before the end of lunch if I left right away.

Kiki folded the list and handed it over with a smile.

“I owe you big-time for this, Keeks,” I said. “And I really want to hang with you, but I need to do a little emergency research in the library before class starts. Can we catch up later?”

“Emergency?” She knew me well enough to take me seriously. “I’ll walk with you. Anything I can do to help?”

“I don’t really know what I’m doing to help.”

I told her all about it as we climbed the stairs to the third floor, where they’d hidden our library. It was pretty empty at this time of day; Mrs. Wilson was helping a mousy freshman girl in the biography section, and she raised a hand to greet us as we passed but didn’t bother us. I’d spent plenty of time in here; she knew I didn’t need supervision. And Kiki was … well, Kiki.

“That’s really terrible,” she whispered as we made our way to the computer bank at the back of the room. “I can’t believe you didn’t run screaming in the other direction. I mean, if Dr. Burr comes back, won’t you be wondering if he really is a murderer?”

I shrugged. “He doesn’t scare me. If you turned him into a vampire and sent him after me, then I might be scared.”

“Please don’t say things like that.” She snickered under her breath. “It makes me tempted to go stake shopping.”

“Don’t worry. Even after everything I’ve seen and done, I still don’t believe in vamps.”

“Reassuring.”

I sat down at the computer on the end, typed in my student ID number, and started searching. The
Gazette
website didn’t have any info, so I tried the local Fox news station. All I could find there was this completely useless story:

I scowled. “Well, that’s no help at all.”

Kiki leaned down to get a better look at the screen. “What did you find?”

When I glanced up, I noticed a blur of movement in the air behind her, like a giant hummingbird had broken into the library and was checking out the reference materials.

“Wha—”

Kiki started to turn, but everything happened so fast. I didn’t even get the word out before the flying mystery object slammed into the side of her head. She let out a grunt and toppled right on top of me, clocking my nose with her elbow and knocking my glasses off. Tears filled my eyes; I half fell, half slid out of my chair.

“What the hell?” I gasped.

Another projectile flew toward me. I batted at it wildly, and it struck my forearm and fell into my lap with a thump. My arm went instantly numb. That was inconvenient but probably preferable to screaming in pain. We were in a library, after all. Screaming was not encouraged.

I could see a tan-colored blur crouched over near the reference books, and it launched another red projectile at me. My choices were pretty limited. I could call for Mrs. Wilson, but she’d just gotten back to school after being out for a month after her heart attack. She would have been just one more person to protect.

In my lap was the encyclopedia that had nearly obliterated my arm. It was time to give this idiot a taste of his own medicine. I threw it as hard as I could. Details were still indistinct, between my lack of corrective lenses and the watery eyes, but I didn’t need to score a direct hit. I just wanted to scare him off. So as soon as that one was in the air, I grabbed the one that had clocked Kiki and threw that too.

I had no idea if I was hitting the guy or not, but he wasn’t throwing any more books at us. Kiki groaned and rolled into my lap with her head clasped in her hands.

“That hurt!” she wailed.

“Stay down!” I hissed, grabbing another book. But by the time I cocked my arm to throw, the fuzzy figure was gone.

It took only a minute of groping around on the table to locate my glasses. When I finally found them, I wished I hadn’t. Mrs.
Wilson stood over near the reference books, wearing a tan tweed jacket, a matching skirt, and an expression of pure horror. Had I just flung a Britannica at her head?