Night Sky (30 page)

Dana smiled at me. “Don't sweat it, Bubble Gum. You are what you are. And remember that massive list on the napkin? What you are is pretty freaking fantastic, whether this kind of large-scale TK is in your toolbox or not.”

Would she say that, I wondered, if she knew that I'd gotten my heart rate up and spiked my adrenaline by thinking about kissing her boyfriend?

That night, I slept like a rock.

It was a welcome change. As helpful as the dreams probably were, they were also exhausting. Oblivion was relieving, and when I woke up the next morning, I felt like a million bucks.

And then, I remembered.

It was my birthday.

As if on cue, Mom burst into my room.

“Oh,
birthday
girrrrl
,” she exclaimed, her voice lilting and singsong.

And God help me if she wasn't wearing one of those pointy, paper party hats. Oh, lord.

“Wake
up
, sleepy
head
!” Mom cooed, dancing over to the side of my bed. She had kazoos. Oh, shoot me now, she actually had kazoos.

But then I remembered that film class was supposed to start tonight, and that Cal's mom had negotiated a twelve-thirty curfew. Since I was scheduled to go right over to Cal's house after school, that meant this was it. This too-early, oh-my-God, do-you-really-have-a-hat-and-kazoos moment was my mother's only chance to celebrate my birthday with me.

“Yay,” I said, mustering as much enthusiasm as I could.

“Get out of bed, Miz Seventeen-Year-Old!” Mom took my comforter and briskly uncovered me. I wanted to curl up into a ball, my pajama-covered knees tucked up to my stomach. Instead I sat up and gave her jazz hands. “Yay.”

She loved that, blowing gaily into one of the kazoos. “Come on downstairs and celebrate! There's a pile of presents with your name on them. And I cooked you a big, ol' special breakfast!”

I gave her a third
yay
as I tried not to laugh at that terrible hat. The glittery letters across the front read:
mom
o' bday grl
. “I'm just gonna shower. I'm right behind you.”

“Sounds good!” Mom exclaimed. She planted a kiss on the back of my head and danced out of the room, closing the door behind her.

The room was still dim, even though all my curtains and blinds were now open. A crash of thunder reverberated through my bedroom.

It was pouring outside.

Yay.

—

School was predictably lame, although the rain let up around noon.

Despite Cal's attempts at keeping things light for my birthday, I could tell as we ate lunch that he was freaked about tonight. I couldn't blame him. He would be walking into the home of his enemy. Garrett had been so terrible to Cal, and I doubted he was going to let up, especially after a couple of beers—and in front of an equally buzzed crowd.

I did my best to get through the day without feeling nervous myself. As much as I didn't want to admit it, as disappointed as I was that I hadn't moved that flagpole, I was still pretty spooked about my ability to crush a pair of porta-potties, simply by thinking about kissing Dana's boyfriend. So much was weird and wrong about that—I didn't even know where to start.

Calvin and I went back to his house after school and played some mindless video games to kill time and take our minds off the big, pink party elephant in the room.

As I worked on level five of some shoot-'em-up-'til-their-brains-fall-out game that I'd never played before, I felt Calvin's eyes on me.

“What?” I said, keeping my own eyes locked on the TV screen.

“Would you rather…”

“Oh my sweet Jesus, Calvin.”

I could feel Cal grinning. Meanwhile, my avatar did a backflip and then cut off a zombie's head with a machete.

“Would you rather…” he started again, “be forced to get a tattoo of yourself across your entire abdomen, or a nose ring that connected to a tongue ring that connected to two nipple rings by a chain?”

“I'm speechless,” I said, pressing a button and blowing up a car before annihilating two zombie women with a machine gun.

“Come on, this one's not that difficult,” Calvin said. “The piercings, of course. At least you could take them out.”

“I seriously think that the piercings would hurt more, though.”

“Girl, for a second! But the tattoo? That's some permanent shit!”

Not if you were Dana. Or me. I'd woken up this morning with my knee almost completely healed. I finished level five and handed the video-game controller to Calvin. “Maybe I
want
a tattoo of myself on myself.”

Calvin didn't have time to respond, because the doorbell rang.

“It's open! Come on in!” Calvin shouted, and I gave him my best WTF look. “What?”

“What if it's some nasty-ass serial killer out there?” I asked him. “Or a vampire—you just invited him in.”

“Vampires don't exist,” Calvin scoffed.

“How do you know?” I asked. “A week ago you would've said girls with telekinetic and telepathic powers don't exist.”

“Good point,” Calvin said, adding, “Holy shit.”

“Holy shit” was right, even though it definitely wasn't vampires who'd walked into Calvin's house.

It was Dana and Milo, dressed to the nines.

“Wow,” I said, and Calvin nodded his agreement. “You guys look…”

Well, they both looked amazing. It was the truth. Either my eyes were playing tricks on me, or Dana's hair seemed to have grown since the last time I'd seen her—which was absurd, since it had only been twenty-four hours ago. But she'd managed to put her blond locks into two spiky pigtails by the base of her neck. Dark cat-like liner framed her icicle-colored eyes, and her cheeks were glowing with color.

And that was just above her neck.

Her outfit was amazing. She was wearing a slinky, silver halter dress, her ample chest busting out of the top. Even though she was short, Dana's legs looked extra long tonight, probably thanks to the astronomically tall knee-high boots she was sporting.

And then there was Milo.

His hair was just messy enough to look undone without seeming sloppy. Five-o'clock shadow flirted across the expanse of his jaw, but it wasn't dark enough to cover the dimples that popped when he smiled. The button-down shirt he'd chosen was a light blue, its sleeves rolled up. The contrast of blue against the tan skin of his forearms was absolutely impossible to keep from staring at. He looked like a male model yanked from the pages of a fashion e-zine.

They were basically the hottest couple alive.

Dana was carrying a duffel bag, and she plopped it onto the leather ottoman and quickly unzipped it. “We're running a little late, so you should hurry and get dressed. I want to get going ASAP.”

Calvin was looking like a dog in heat as he stared at Dana and her slinky dress. I slapped him on the shoulder.

“Um, I don't know what kind of house parties y'all go to in whatever town you're from, but Coconut Key isn't exactly black tie.” Calvin looked at me with disapproval and rubbed his shoulder dramatically.

“Good to know,” Dana said. “But we're not dressed for your stupid party. We're going straight from there to the clubs.”

I looked at Milo. He'd carried a bag in too, but it was smaller than Dana's. He set it down next to his feet as he smiled at me. I looked away. “There's no way we're going to pull off this look,” I said, pointing to Dana's dress.

Calvin tugged at the front of his shirt and pretended to be offended. “Hey, speak for yourself, Sky.”

Dana didn't look up as she sifted through the pile of clothing she'd brought. “Here,” she said, throwing me something pink and something blue. “That'll look hot.”

The something pink was smaller than the something blue. Actually, both were pretty freaking small. “Wow,” I said. “Um, okay. You don't think I'll be arrested for wearing this?”

Calvin's eyes got huge as I held up a pastel halter top and jeans that would seriously hug my hips.

“I think that you're going to get into a very elite club for wearing that. And I think that's the only thing we're concerned with right now.”

It might have just been my imagination, but I seriously felt as if Dana gave me more attitude when Milo and Cal were around than when it was just the two of us.

Still, I didn't talk back to her. “I'll go put this on,” I said instead, heading into the bathroom to get changed.

As I walked past Milo and caught a whiff of his now-familiar vanilla, my stomach did somersaults. I swallowed hard and kept walking, purposely not meeting his eyes. But then he said, “Happy birthday.”

I couldn't not look at him when he said that, and as I smiled back into his extremely pretty eyes, I felt the world tilt. “Thanks,” I said.

“I wanted to get you a present,” he told me quietly in that almost unbearably sexy Southern drawl, “but I kinda ran out of time. See, I spent most of the day trying to track down some really effective black-market antinausea meds. I thought you might need them tonight, but…I didn't score. I'm sorry about that.”

He gestured to his bag, which was about the size and shape of one of those mommy bags that women carry filled with things like diapers and snacks and bottles. “So I packed some extra water and towels. And I found some surgical face masks at the drugstore, thinking maybe, you know, if you smell the sewage smell you can slap one on and…” He shrugged. “It's stupid, I know. It probably won't help.”

“It might,” I said, and what was stupid was that I was on the verge of tears at the idea that he'd gone to so much trouble for me. “Thank you.” I bolted for the bathroom, locking the door behind me.

It really was ridiculous. The outfit, that is.

I checked myself out in the mirror from different angles.

First off, my stomach was showing. I
never
wore outfits that revealed my midriff—partly because my mom would have keeled over from a heart attack, and partly because it wasn't really my style.

Still, I had to admit it. The jeans fit me pretty perfectly. Even though I was lanky, my curves were being hugged with a serious vengeance.

I wondered if I should put some makeup on to complete the outfit. But I didn't have anything with me in my backpack besides an old tube of lip balm.

The makeup-free look would have to do.

Quietly, I exited the bathroom, feeling slightly absurd. The halter was tight enough to show off what I was seriously lacking upstairs. It was embarrassing.

But it wasn't about me. This was, ultimately, about finding Sasha, who was not dead.

I slunk over to my backpack with the intention of stashing my clothing inside, when Dana, Cal, and Milo all turned to stare at me.

Calvin's jaw dropped. “Dude. I seriously feel weird saying this, but…you're hot.”

“Shut the front door,” I told him.

Dana's gaze flitted back and forth between Cal and me. “You look good, Bubble Gum.”

Milo didn't say a word. But he also hadn't stopped staring at me from the moment I'd come back into the room. I both wanted him to stop—and to never stop looking at me, ever again.

“What do you think, Miles? Can she pull off the look?” Dana eyed Milo intently.

He nodded. “Um. I…Well, the short answer is yes.”

I tried my best to keep from blushing. And I failed miserably. And I started to get a little mad. What was he doing staring at me, when Dana was standing right there looking the way
she
was looking?

“All right, Scoot,” Dana replied. “It's your turn.”

“What, did you get me a pink halter too? That's really nice of you.”

Dana made a huffy sound, as if she didn't have time for him. “You're wearing this,” she said, and shoved a pile of clothes onto Calvin's lap. But then she cleared her throat. “You…need help?”

“Sadly, no,” he said. “I'll be right back for my photo shoot.” He wheeled himself into the bathroom with a flourish.

I looked at Dana, who was now busy pulling a smaller bag out of the duffel. She took a seat on one of the couches. “Come here,” she ordered me, patting the cushion beside her. “Let's get you made up.”

I sat and Dana spread foundation across my nose, cheeks, and chin. “Hold still,” she commanded, and began working on the bottom lids of my eyes with a liner pen. “And try not to blink.”

I blinked.

Dana looked at me with barely contained disapproval.

“I'm doing my best,” I told her.

I glanced across the room to find Milo smiling at me. I smiled back, but then jerked my gaze away—and found myself staring into Dana's icy eyes.

“Sorry,” I said.

She narrowed her eyes at me and said, “You're lucky you're working with a pro.”

She finished my eyeliner, then used a thick wand to swipe mascara on both my top and bottom lashes. She also pulled out a palette of different colors of eye shadow and used the pads of her fingers to spread and blend shades across the arch of my lids.

I tried to ignore the fact that I could feel Milo watching me from across the room, even though I wasn't looking.

Finally, Dana brushed a little pink blush across my cheekbones and added a dab of tinted gloss to my lips.

“You're good to go,” Dana replied.

“Can I see?” I asked.

“Sure,” she said. She pulled out a miniature mirror and handed it to me.

I looked at the reflection. And the reflection didn't look so bad.

“Dang,” Cal said as he coasted back into the room, “every time I turn around, Skylar gets hotter and hotter. It's, like,
Twilight
Zone
shit.”

Milo, meanwhile, walked up to Calvin with a grin on his face. “You don't look so bad yourself,” he replied.

I looked at Cal's outfit. His T-shirt was snug and a cool shade of green, and his jeans fit perfectly. On his feet were his favorite green and black sneakers, and they matched the outfit well.

“Yeah, you look really awesome,” I had to agree with Milo.

“Okay, okay,” Dana interrupted us. “We've established how good we all look. So let's do it. Let's go.”