Perception (2 page)

“WHO?” I ASKED
.

Brooke giggled. “That was my response, too. I don’t think anyone knew her.”

Kendra added, “She’s a senior. New this year. I think she’d been homeschooled or something her whole life.” She clucked her tongue. “Only here a month and now she’s taken off. Some kids just can’t handle public school.”

I ignored Kendra’s ignorant snap judgment. “How long has she been gone?”

“Apparently a few days, but word only got around today when her mom showed up in the school parking lot, yelling at kids.” Kendra’s eyes gleamed at the drama of it.

“What was she yelling about?”

Brooke twirled a long strand of blond hair around her finger. “Just asking everyone if they’ve seen her and all that.”

“Does anyone know anything?” I asked, my interest piqued.

“There are a million rumors,” Brooke said. “I heard she met a guy online and they ran away together.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Kendra snapped. “She’d tell her mom.”

“Maybe she knew her mom wouldn’t let her go,” Brooke said. “Maybe she would have disapproved of her guy. So she left without telling her.”

I watched the conversation bounce back and forth like a Ping-Pong game until the homeroom bell rang. I followed the crowd, breaking off to file into our classrooms.

I felt sorry for the teachers who had to repeatedly try to regain control of their morning classes. Especially Mr. Rylander and Mr. Frederick — redirecting attention from juicy gossip to physics and algebra II were almost impossible feats. Sierra’s disappearance was all people talked about through the morning and well into lunch. Rumors were spreading like a virus, but no one seemed to have any facts.

I ate my lunch in relative peace, listening to Kendra, Brooke, and the rest of the junior girls around me talking about Sierra. I realized that — for the first time this fall — the spotlight was not on me. And I liked it. Then I felt guilty because it came at the expense of someone else’s problems.

I can’t win.

But I also felt something else. A stirring inside. Something I hadn’t felt since I was brought on board to help the police over the summer. I began to wonder if there was anything I could do to help find Sierra. Then I brushed the thought off. Sierra probably just had a fight with her mother, ran off, and would be back tomorrow.

When lunch ended, I dumped my tray and joined the crowd merging into the hallway, which was plastered with posters about the homecoming dance. I only had five minutes to get to my locker, grab my books, and make it to my next class. The herd was moving a little slow for me to accomplish all of that in time, so I zigged and zagged, apologizing when I accidentally hip-checked a freshman, and finally got to my locker. I spun the dial and started knocking off the numbers.

“They really should give us more time between periods,” the girl at the locker beside mine said.

She wore a black T-shirt and a black skirt with fishnets. Her hair was also dyed black, with one bright blue streak on the side that fell in front of her face as she bent down to pick up a dropped notebook. I figured she was new in school. I would have definitely remembered her from last year. There aren’t many people at Eastport High who stand out. Standing out is bad. I know this from experience.

“Seriously,” I agreed. “It’s like they want us to be late. I’m calling it detention entrapment.”

She laughed heartily.

“Was it this bad at your old school?” I asked, figuring I’d be nice and reach out.

She straightened. “What do you mean?”

“You’re new here, right?”

Her brow furrowed. “No, Clare Fern, I’m not.” And with that, she turned on her heel and sped down the hallway.

“Clare, what did you say to her?” Kendra asked, appearing beside me.

“I asked if she was new in school,” I said, still confused.

Kendra burst out laughing. “That’s Mallory Neely.”

Mallory Neely. I knew her, of course. She was the quiet girl, no friends that I knew of. She kept to herself, eyes cast down at all times, and never spoke unless spoken to. She was invisible. I’d actually felt slightly jealous of her in the past because I’d rather have been invisible like her than a big neon flashing bully target.

“I didn’t realize it was her,” I said.

“Why would you?” Kendra rolled her eyes. “No one notices Mallory. Except this year she shows up looking like a mall goth. Finally wanting some attention, I suppose.”

I shrugged. “I think she looks cool.”

Kendra bit her lip. This time last year, she’d have called me a freak, and now she wasn’t even disagreeing with me. I felt like I’d entered a parallel universe.

“Hey,” Kendra whispered, leaning in close to me. “You know the algebra quiz Mr. Frederick is planning?”

“Yeah …” I answered warily.

“Why don’t you spend a few minutes in his classroom while he’s in the teachers’ lounge. And … you know …” She waggled her eyebrows. “See if you can use your powers to get us the answers.”

I sighed, not bothering to hide my irritation. “No,” I said simply. There were about ten thousand different reasons why I would do no such thing — fear of getting caught being one of them. But Kendra should have known by now I wasn’t going to “Dance, Monkey, Dance!” whenever she asked. I wasn’t some sideshow at a carnival. She had asked a couple times for me to do a reading of this or that at school. I always refused.
If she truly wanted a reading, she could come to my place of business and pay like everyone else.

“What’s up, Kendra,” Tiffany said as she approached her locker, almost directly across the hall from mine. She sneered at me and said, “Hey, freak.”

Apparently, Tiffany never got the “Clare’s cool now” memo. No matter how much her friends supposedly liked me, she never would. Tiffany had always been the one to rally the anti-Clare troops and instigate all devious plans against me. She’d ramped up the torture last year after my brother, Perry, hooked up with her and never called her again. I had to suffer for my brother’s man-whore ways. As part of her revenge plot, Tiffany had set her sights on my boyfriend at a party, and Justin had been dumb enough to fall for it. Yeah, alcohol was involved, but that’s no excuse. It would take a lot more than tequila to make me lose my virginity to Satan.

“Don’t mind her,” Kendra whispered into my ear. Then she bolted over to Tiffany, probably to relay the “hilarious” story about how lame Mallory was.

I shook my head and focused on finding my history book. The bell was going to ring any second. I pulled the textbook out and a paper fluttered to the ground. I reached down, expecting to find an old quiz of mine, but it was a note. Written in all caps were three words:

YOU AMAZE ME.

I smiled and my stomach did that little butterfly thing.

And that was when Tiffany screamed.

TIFFANY WAS A DRAMA QUEEN, SO LOUD SQUEALS
and other attention-getting techniques weren’t unusual for her. But this wasn’t a playful scream. This was an
open your closet door to find Freddy Krueger, Jason,
and
Michael Myers hiding in there
scream.

Kendra started screeching, too, while waving her hands in the air in some crazed dance of ick.

I, along with everyone else in the hall, first froze, then rushed over to see what had kicked off this performance. On the floor by Tiffany’s locker was a little red box, like what you’d get with the purchase of some cheap jewelry. It was flipped over and no contents could be seen. Tiffany had one hand over her mouth and was pointing repeatedly at the fallen box with her other.

I reached down and turned it over.

Inside was a cockroach. A large one, in fact. My first thought was that it must have come from our cafeteria.

“It’s dead, Tiffany,” I said. “You can stop freaking out now.”

“Stop freaking out?” she repeated incredulously. “Someone put that thing in my locker! Disguised as a present.” She
wiped her hands repeatedly on her designer jeans, though I doubt she had even touched the bug.

“It’s a prank.” I shrugged. “It happens. Believe me. I’ve found all sorts of things in my locker or scrawled across it.”

Tiffany narrowed her eyes. “Is that what this is? Some sick revenge you’re taking on me for treating you like the freak you are? You think because Kendra and Brooke have been struck with temporary insanity that you’re going to get away with this?” She stepped closer and pointed a finger at me. “Enjoy your little time in the sun now, because soon you’ll be crawling back into your loser cave.”

“I didn’t put the bug in your locker,” I hissed. I was about to fill her in on the fact that I wasn’t the only one at Eastport High who hated her guts, but before I had the chance, Mr. Frederick stepped out of his math classroom.

“Break it up, girls,” he bellowed. Mr. Frederick didn’t believe in going bald gracefully. He grew the sides of his hair extra long and then wrapped it around the top, like no one would realize he was just covering up a hairless dome. “Everyone better be off to their classes in three seconds or I’ll start handing out detentions like after-dinner mints. Three. Two …”

He didn’t make it to one. We all scattered like rats, fear of detention pulsing in our veins. At most schools, detention was just another place to do your homework. Not much of a punishment, really, unless you were missing a sports practice or something. In Frederick’s detention, however, you were not allowed to do your homework. You had to do additional math assignments. A true punishment.

The rest of my day passed uneventfully until I found myself waiting in the parking lot, watching everyone else hop on school buses or into cars. My brother, Perry, was supposed to pick me up but was clearly running late. So I sat on the curb and fished around in my backpack for the note I’d found in my locker earlier. I read it over again.

It was so sweet. I wished I knew who’d written it. My first thought was Justin. I’d seen him in physics that morning, and he’d smiled at me, but we hadn’t had a chance to talk. I knew his handwriting though, and this wasn’t it. He could have disguised his writing, of course. But why go through the trouble?

So if it wasn’t him … maybe it was Gabriel. We had shared some serious chemistry that morning. But he knew I wasn’t ready to move forward with anything romantic.

Or maybe it was someone I hadn’t even considered.

A secret admirer.

Before I could compile a list of suspects, I spied Mallory Neely trudging down the grassy hill behind the school, heading toward the woods. I stuffed the note in my pocket, swung my backpack over my shoulder, and rushed after her.

“Mallory!”

She stopped and turned around, then waited for me to catch up.

“I’m sorry I was such an idiot earlier,” I said, slightly out of breath from jogging over to her. “Of course I know you. I just didn’t recognize you with your new hair and all that.”

She shrugged. “S’okay. I wouldn’t expect you to know me anyway. I’ve always sort of blended in with the walls, you know?”

I looked down at the grass, not sure what to say. Lying to make her feel better would seem fake and lame. So I said, “Well, you don’t blend in anymore. I like the new look.”

She smiled. “Really?”

“Yeah.” I peeked at the woods over her shoulder. “Where are you headed, anyway?”

“I’m walking home. There’s a shortcut through the woods that leads to Fennel Street. You live on Rigsdale Road, right? Cutting through would save you some time.”

I’ve walked home plenty, but never taken the shortcut. The woods creeped me out. But they were probably safe with the buddy system and all. Plus, it looked like my brother wasn’t coming to pick me up.

“Sure,” I said, casting one last glance over my shoulder before we entered the woods.

We followed a well-beaten path that snaked through the trees. It was narrow, with barely enough room for us to walk side by side. The air was thick with damp earthy smells. A pinecone crunched under my foot.

“Fennel Street, huh?” I said, making conversation. “I think someone mentioned at lunch that Sierra Waldman lives there. Do you know her?”

“Sort of.”

I waited for her to continue, but she didn’t. I added, “Do you think she ran away?”

Mallory shrugged, but didn’t look at me. “She’s a senior, but she’s already eighteen. That makes her an adult. She can do what she wants, I suppose.”

“People said some of her stuff is missing, like she packed up and —”

“Don’t know,” Mallory interrupted. This obviously wasn’t a topic she wanted to gab about.

We walked in silence for a minute while I tried desperately to think of something else to say. Anything we might have in common. “You know,” I said, “going unnoticed isn’t so bad. It’s better than being the school freak.”

“You’re not the freak anymore,” Mallory said.

I figured she was referring to my new celebrity status, but then she added, “Because of Justin Spellman.”

It was kind of true. When I’d started dating Justin last year, the teasing had let up a bit. But then we broke up, and I was right back where I started from — until the summer’s drama.

“He wants to get back together with you, right?” Mallory asked.

“How do you know?”

“Anyone with eyes and ears knows. The way Justin looks at you,” she said dreamily. “The way his face lights up when you enter the room. I’d kill for someone to love me that much. You should take him back.”

I almost laughed out loud because this was the same conversation I had with myself every time I saw Justin. But the argument always ended the same. “It’s not that simple.”

“I know what he did. With Tiffany. But doesn’t he deserve a second chance?”

“He slept with her,” I said. “That’s not a small thing.”

Justin and I hadn’t slept together. I wasn’t ready. I dreamed that when it happened, it would be this perfect moment we would remember forever and all that cheesy stuff. But then his first time was on Tiffany’s basement couch and he was so drunk he didn’t even remember it. That sort of killed the dream for me.

We reached a small stream, wide enough that I wouldn’t have been able to jump it. But we didn’t have to. A plank of wood served as a little bridge. We gingerly walked single file over it, then fell in step beside each other again.

“What about that new senior, Gabriel Hottie-ano?”

I nearly tripped over a tree root. Gabriel Toscano’s nickname sounded so unnatural coming from her.

“Didn’t you guys date this summer?” Mallory asked, tucking a blue strand of hair behind her ear.

I stopped and shot her a sideways glance. Maybe she was just awkwardly making conversation, but I was starting to feel weirded out. “You seem to know a lot about me.”

Mallory shrugged. “It’s a small town. Word gets around.”

A twig snapped somewhere in the trees. I turned around to see if someone else was taking the shortcut, but saw no one. Mallory either didn’t hear the noise or wasn’t fazed by forest sounds.

“We didn’t really date,” I said, and picked up the pace. “We might have gone that way but … it’s complicated.”

The path emptied onto Fennel, a dead-end street that intersected with Rigsdale, our town’s main road and where I lived. The afternoon sun shone brightly, and I squinted as we left the shade of the woods.

Mallory pointed at a small Cape-style house with clapboard siding. “That’s me.”

“Oh, okay.” I was surprised that I’d actually enjoyed our walk. It was nice to talk about girl things. My brother was my best friend, but he didn’t want to hear too much about boy problems. And, yeah, I had girls clamoring to be friends with me for the first time in my life, but I wasn’t about to share my feelings with the likes of Kendra and Brooke. They’d probably post whatever I said online and tell everyone in school.

I didn’t feel that way with Mallory, though. And it was strange because, before today, Mallory and I had never said one word to each other our whole lives. She was probably the only girl at school who’d been lonelier than me.

Maybe this year could be a new start for the both of us.

“So you’ve got a tough decision, then,” Mallory said, stopping at the edge of her driveway.

“About what?”

“Homecoming. It’s in two weeks.”

“Yeah, I saw the posters at school. What about it?”

“It’s Ladies’ Choice this year. The girls have to ask the boys.” Mallory paused and gave a little smirk. “Everyone knows Justin and Gabriel both want to go with you. So the big question is, who are you going to choose?”