Exposure (16 page)

“How was the Running of the Reindeer?” asked Jillian. I shrugged my shoulders again. “Okay, Grumps. I can take a hint.” Just then Leonard and Megan walked in, bickering as usual.

“All I'm saying is, I don't think golf is really an athletic pursuit,” Megan said in a griping tone. “I mean, you might as well say that billiards is a sport.”

“Some people
do
say that,” Leonard said, rolling his eyes until they landed on me. “Well, if it isn't Skye Kingston, my one and only future prom date, looking exceptionally gorgeous on this Monday — !”

“Zip it, Lenny,” Jillian said. “She's not in the mood.” I continued to sulk over my sandwich.

“That's how I like my ladies.” Lenny was unrelenting, placing his hand on my shoulder. “Feisty, not flirty.”

“Lenny,” Jillian said, “there's pepper spray on my keychain that is meant for molesters. Don't tempt me into using it.” Lenny made a dramatic point of lifting his hand off my shoulder before bowing in deference to our editor.

“Sorry, Skye.” He leaned in and whispered amicably in my ear. “I didn't mean anything by it.”

“I was going to tell you at the meeting this afternoon, but I guess I can spill it now,” Jillian said. “A reliable source down at police headquarters told one of the guys at the
Daily News
that there might be a break in the case.”

“Do you think they have a suspect?” Megan asked. I listened intently.

“I don't know anything beyond that,” Jillian answered.

Suddenly my appetite was shot. I stuffed the rest of my sandwich in my brown paper lunch bag and crushed it into a ball. As if I really needed another reason not to cross paths with Craig today. I tried to repeat the mantra “not my problem” as I left for my next class, but it was hardly convincing.

THE DAYS WERE BEGINNING TO STAY LIGHTER, longer. The snow had melted from sidewalks and parking lots, though there were still thawing patches on the grass. An epidemic of senioritis was underway at school as we officially started to count down not just the months but the weeks and days we had left. That was good news for most, but bad news for me, as I spent most of my waking hours studying for my AP exams with the ultimate aim of getting advanced college credit. They were supposedly going to be brutal if the horror stories from last year's seniors were to be believed. Considering my collegiate future was pretty much in limbo, I had to wonder why I was even bothering. Worse still, I had yet to figure out what to turn in for my final project in Richter's art class. I had enough photographs from the past four years to fill a tractor-trailer, but were any really momentous enough to encapsulate my high school experience?

As I poured over my boxes of prints in the darkroom, it occurred to me that my high school career had merely been spent as an observer, looking from the outside in. Of course, it goes without saying that I wasn't in any of my own photos — pictures of pep rallies and football games, student council meetings and amateurish musical productions — but that was my problem entirely. To judge from these photos, I never even went to this school. I didn't exist. I silently cursed our English teacher for assigning Camus's
The Stranger
as end-of-year reading. The last thing I needed, with all my other problems, was existential angst. But seriously, beyond hiding behind my camera for the
Polar Bear Post
, what had I really involved myself in at this school? What was my clique? Where were the candid shots of me, laughingly roaming the halls or crowding into a group photo at a school dance?

Speaking of dances, ugh. Lenny. Prom was fast approaching, and every time I thought about his hands around my waist during some cheesy rock ballad, I wanted to barf. When he'd asked me in October to be his date, it didn't seem real, but now that it was staring me in the face, it was hard to pretend away. He was a nice enough guy, if only he didn't try so hard or lust after me in such a completely goober-faced way. Letting him down semi-gently wasn't working, so at some point I would have to make Lenny understand that, prom or no prom, romance wasn't in the cards for us; not now, not ever.

By this time I had restored minimal interaction with my parents, but I'd hardly call myself Suzy Sunshine with regards to their split. In March, Mom had moved into a condo with some chick she went to school with. She occasionally still dropped in for dinners and we had prearranged visits with her on the weekends, which usually involved wandering around the mall for a few hours, followed by lunch. Dad stayed at the house with us, and while he was at work, Ollie got dropped off at a neighbor's daycare. Even though I blamed Mom for most of this, I still hadn't wanted to reward my dad by granting him any normal-seeming father-daughter chats. Instead, I continued to make a habit of going to school at the crack of dawn rather than engage him with forced pleasantries over the breakfast table. I sat in the school library from six-thirty to seven-fifty every morning, sharing the space with mostly freshmen who'd been dropped off by parents on their way to work. Currently, three freshmen girls with enough metalwork in their mouths to cage a lion were giggling behind me. They were hunched over a table perusing
Lady Chatterley's Lover
for the sex scenes, and their titillated outbursts were making it hard for me to concentrate on my calculus questions.

It was seven-forty. Odds were, my homeroom door would be unlocked by now, so I tossed my textbook in my bag and headed for the hallway. No sense listening to those prepubescent Mouseketeers if I didn't have to. As I passed by the cafeteria, Kristy Winters emerged and her face lit up at the sight of me.
Random
. What was all this about?

“Oh good! Come with me.” She grabbed my arm and led me down a row of lockers. “I'm trying to round up all the seniors today,” she explained. We stopped at her locker, where she brought out a stiff manila envelope. “These are the proofs for the yearbook. Oh, hey, Craig! Wait up!” I turned around and saw Craig walking by, his eyes still groggy with sleep. He had a granola bar in his hand and a small carton of milk. We glanced at each other before he looked, vacantly, at Kristy.

“I was looking for you,” she said. “The yearbook staff needs everyone to sign something. Oh wait, let me find my Sharpie.”

While Kristy dug around in her backpack for her wayward marker, Craig and I waited in silence. “Did you guys hear about Duff?” she smiled at us, still digging around through her bag's various zippered compartments. “He's on his way back from Scotland! Good thing, too, because I told him he'd be in the doghouse, bigtime, if I had to fly solo at prom. I found out just in time, because the King and Queen nominations are due tomorrow. Sorry, Craig,” she said with a wink, “but you've got some competition now.” Craig looked decidedly uninterested.

“Oh duh!” Kristy exclaimed, finally noticing the Sharpie pen clipped onto one of her folders. She slid the contents out from the oversized manila envelope. “We just thought this would be a nice gesture for the yearbook, if everyone could write a special thought or memory.” She shoved two sheets of oversized paper in front of Craig. In the center of one sheet were the words, “Forever Missed, Forever Loved.” On the other piece of paper was Duncan's class picture from junior year. There were already several marker-inscribed epitaphs on the pages, including one, I noticed, signed by Beth:
“Good night, sweet prince.”

“It's going to be a two-page spread,” continued Kristy, “so write anywhere you can find a …
Dammit, Craig! Watch what you're doing!
”

Craig's carton of milk had dropped —
THWAP!
— on the linoleum floor and exploded, spraying my legs, his shoes, and the bottom of four lockers. Kristy snatched Duncan's memorial pages back. “Thanks a lot, Craig! You almost destroyed it.”

“I already did.” Craig said under his breath, to no one in particular. “I destroyed everything.” I found a packet of Kleenex in my bag and started soaking up some of the offending two-percent. He stooped down next to me.

“Are you okay?” I asked. He didn't answer as we continued mopping up the mess.

• • •

A migraine would have been preferable to the current plague wreaking havoc on my brain, and Kristy's lunchtime performance wasn't helping. Gloating to her group of friends, she had stood up from the table, grabbed a spoon for a microphone, and started singing “My Boyfriend's Back,” that smug and saccharine pop song from the sixties. Great God almighty. I had immediately scanned the caf to find Beth, who no longer held a place of honor at Kristy's table. She had begun sitting with Craig and the hockey team several months ago. Not that she even needed a lunch break. I'd been paying attention ever since her return from the anorexia resort. She'd made a show of ordering a meal since the teaching staff was keeping an eye on her, but she only ever seemed to push the food around on her plate.

Kristy's antics across the room caught the attention of both Beth and Craig. Beth had a serious scowl on her face, which wasn't all that unusual these days, but Craig looked like death warmed over.

“Look at those two,” Tess said, taking a break from tying knots in her straw wrapper. “They look deranged.”

“
That's
our future Prom King and Queen?” Cat said. “Do they even make straight jackets with sequins?”

Cat had a good point. Beth and Craig were both trying to pretend like it was business as usual, but everyone in school had figured out by this point that they were seriously jacked-up. Beth ambled around school like she was sleepwalking and Craig now sported a hair-trigger temper. He'd gotten detention three times in the last month for mouthing off to teachers. “Do you know who I am?” he had demanded of Principal Schaeffer just last Wednesday. “My father could
buy
this school.”

Driving home that afternoon that stupid song Kristy had been singing at lunch was still stuck in my head. I flipped stations on the car radio in the hopes of finding another tune to dislodge this one from my brain. All commercials. Figures. Kristy wasn't the only person at school who seemed excited that Duff was homeward bound. In his first three years at East Anchorage, he had enjoyed an unparalleled popularity. Yes, he was good-looking and one of the cool crowd, but it was more than just that. He was the king of afterschool activities, playing on the hockey team, starring in school plays, helping tutor remedial freshmen, planning “
fiestas locas
” with the Spanish club. He even used to turn up at Jenna's sparsely attended environmental pep rallies. He'd positioned himself as a good-natured, charismatic everyman, and I'd never heard anyone badmouth him. Now, people were getting stoked about his return. From what I'd been hearing today, he had completed his schooling in Scotland and was coming home so that he could participate in the end-of-year seniorpalooza with the rest of us. Kristy had accused Beth of being behind Duff's exile, but whatever had prompted him to be shipped off in the first place didn't seem to be much of an issue now. Or was it? Kristy's boyfriend was coming back, just like the song said. And as the lyrics cautioned, I wondered if trouble could be far behind.

I pulled into my driveway, wishing I could swing by Ollie's daycare and pick him up early. Too bad I didn't have his car seat. The weather was still so beautiful that I considered walking over with his stroller to get him. Before making my way to the front door, I stopped to check the mailbox. It was jammed full. Catalog, catalog, bill, junk, junk, bill…. University of Southern California? My heart stopped. It was a thin envelope. My heart sank. Oh well, there are still my Plan Bs, I reassured myself. I stuck the rest of the mail under my armpit and ripped open the letter. My heart soared:

Certainly, there would still be some numbers to crunch, but all at once my college dream was suddenly within reach. Remember in
The Wizard of Oz
, when Dorothy was having a tough time of it, but she finally caught her first glimpse of The Emerald City and everything was sunshine-y and cool? That was me right now. Then again, meeting the Wizard didn't exactly solve all of Dorothy's problems, did it?