Ring of Light (8 page)

“I am
so
sorry,” she said. “I know I ruined everything.”

Rudy laughed. “Don't worry about it,” he said. “Do you know how many times one of these props has frozen up on me? I swear sometimes they have minds of their own.”

“It wasn't the pitcher,” Annie said. “It was me. I just forgot because I was nervous. That man you picked from the audience and I have kind of a history.”

Rudy cocked his head. “He seems a little old for you,” he said, feigning seriousness.

Annie laughed in spite of her unhappiness. “Not that kind of history,” she said. “I sort of broke something that belonged to him a few days ago. I don't think I'm his favorite person around here. After today I'm sure I'm not.”

“He'll forget about it,” Rudy said. “Give him a few days.”

Annie shook her head. “I don't think this guy forgets anything,” she said. “I think he's just mean.”

Rudy chuckled. “Or lonely,” he said as he took the now-infamous pitcher and put it back in the box.

“What do you mean?” asked Annie.

“I run into a lot of people who seem unfriendly,” Rudy said. “Five-year-old kids who refuse to enjoy their own birthday parties. Parents who try to push me around. Old men who act like they don't need anyone. It's easy to write them off. But what I've found is that often what they really want is for someone to keep trying to get in.”

“I don't know,” Annie said. “I don't think old Ben wants anyone to come in.”

“Maybe,” Rudy agreed as he sealed up the box. “But you won't know unless you try knocking again.”

Annie helped Rudy carry his things to his car. After saying good-bye, she stood in the parking lot thinking about what he'd said. The idea of trying to make friends with Ben Rowe made her cringe. Even if Rudy was right and Ben did want someone to try to befriend him, it sure wasn't going to be her. She already had two strikes against her. One more and she was out of the game.

She looked back at the doors to Shady Hills. Somewhere inside the nursing home, Ben Rowe was probably changing his pants and thinking about what a jerk Annie was. Could she really risk another encounter with him? Did she even want to? The answer to that question was a resounding no. But maybe Sophia had been right. Maybe Ben Rowe was a challenge she had to face.

Annie sighed.
Maybe you will strike out,
she thought.
But maybe you'll hit a home run instead.

CHAPTER  6

Cooper checked her hair one final time in the side mirror of the blue Ford Explorer parked outside the restaurant.
I guess SUVs do come in handy sometimes,
she thought as she played with the carefully arranged spikes sticking up from her head. She'd gotten rid of the green color she'd put in as part of her Midsummer ritual costume, and now her hair was almost jet-black. It was the only color that would cover the green completely, and while it wasn't her favorite it would have to do either until her natural color grew back in or she could figure out what she wanted to do next. She was grateful that her hair was short and grew out quickly, so she wouldn't have long to wait.

She took another look at her outfit and then pushed open the door to the pizza place and walked in as if she hadn't just spent five minutes preparing her entrance. She scanned the booths, saw T.J. sitting at a table in the back, and made her way toward him.

“Hey,” she said casually as she slid into the seat opposite him.

“You're a brunette now,” T.J. commented. “Very Joan Jett.”

Cooper snorted. “I wish I could play half as well as she can,” she said.

“You can,” T.J. said simply as he picked up the menu in front of him and opened it.

Cooper didn't respond, but inside she was glowing. T.J. was the first person who had ever complimented her on her guitar playing. It was one of the things she was most proud of, and to have him notice it made her feel good. She especially liked that he didn't make a big deal out of it. He wasn't trying to get in good with her, like some people did. He just liked the way she played.

“Have you talked to Jed or Mouse lately?” Cooper asked, wondering about the other two members of the band she and T.J. had put together.

T.J. shook his head. “Mouse is on vacation with her folks, and Jed is stuck in summer school,” he said. “We won't be seeing much of him until fall.”

Cooper nodded. That was fine with her. She liked Mouse and Jed, but the band was really hers and T.J.'s. They wrote the songs. The others just came to play. She was happy to have a couple of months just to write and try out new stuff.

“I think I'm going for the mushroom and spinach pizza,” T.J. said, putting down his menu. “How about you?”

“Maybe the shrimp and pineapple,” Cooper answered. “It sounds just weird enough to be good.”

T.J. nodded. When the waitress came, they gave her their orders. Cooper looked around the restaurant, suddenly at a loss for anything to say. She'd never felt that way with T.J. before, and it bothered her.

“Last time I saw you, you were just about to go camping with your friends,” T.J. said. “How'd that go?”

Cooper sighed. He was talking about the trip she had made with Annie and Kate to the Midsummer ritual. Had it really been that long since she'd seen T.J.? That seemed like forever ago. But she realized that it had only been a couple of weeks.

“It was okay,” she said vaguely. “It wasn't really what I expected. I guess I'm just not the camping type.”

She hoped that T.J. wouldn't ask her any more questions about the trip. She was afraid that would lead to talking about her involvement in Wicca. Several months before, when she had been going through all of the stuff surrounding the death of Elizabeth Sanger and her encounter with Elizabeth's ghost, Cooper'd been afraid that T.J. wouldn't want to be friends with her when he found out about what she could do. As it turned out, he had been very supportive of her at a time when many people weren't. But they'd never discussed those events, and they'd never talked about Cooper's interest in witchcraft.

Now she didn't want to discuss it. Once she would have liked more than anything to have a friend apart from Kate and Annie with whom she could be open about her interests. She'd thought for a while that that person might be T.J. Ironically, she now found herself hoping that he never brought it up. She didn't want it to be a big deal. For once in her life, she wanted to feel normal.

“So this concert should really kick,” she said. “The last time I saw them, Mark dropped trou and mooned the audience.”

T.J. smiled. “Maybe you should try that next time we play,” he said, laughing.

Cooper laughed along with him. That was another thing she liked about T.J.—his sense of humor. He had a dryness to him that she found really refreshing. He didn't resort to stupid jokes like a lot of guys she knew did. In fact, he didn't talk all that much in general.
Except when he's with you,
she thought to herself. She'd never really thought about that before, but now that the thought had crossed her mind she realized that it was true. T.J. did talk more when they were alone together. She wondered why.

She looked at him sitting across from her. His red hair was, as usual, shaved down almost to the skin. The three earrings in his ear and the stud in his nose looked totally normal on him, not affected like they did on a lot of the kids who liked to think of themselves as punks or rocker types. T.J. always seemed to do things because he liked doing them, and not because anyone else said they were cool or because everyone was doing them. Cooper liked that.

Do you have a crush on this guy or what?
she asked herself. The thought embarrassed her. She was the one who was always picking on Kate for being so boy crazy. She thought girls who drooled over guys were spritz-heads, brainless dolts who didn't have anything better to do than hang on their boyfriends' every word and sit at home waiting for them to call. She herself had never dated anyone, preferring to be by herself and pursue the things that interested her.

But T.J. liked the things that interested her. And she liked being around him. She could talk to him, at least when she wasn't scared of saying something stupid like she was now. But a boyfriend? She couldn't even imagine what that would be like.

The arrival of the pizza saved her from having to think about it anymore. As she and T.J. picked up their slices and started chewing, her thoughts turned to other things, namely Kate and Annie. She found herself wondering what they were doing. She hadn't called either of them in a long time, and she felt a little guilty about that. She'd almost picked up the phone on Tuesday night, but then she'd realized that they were probably at Crones' Circle with the rest of the study group.

Of the three of them, Cooper had always thought that she was the one with the strongest ties to witchcraft. After all, her grandmother had been teaching her simple charms and spells when she was a little girl, even though Cooper hadn't realized what they were at the time. She was the one who had accused Kate of being afraid of what Wicca could do back when Kate had tried to run away from the group, and there had never been any doubt in her mind that she would be joining a coven as soon as her year and a day of study was completed. Why, she'd been one of the first ones to step up to the cauldron and claim her word of power during their dedication ceremony in April.

Connection.
That had been her word. It was supposed to signify both the challenge of her journey that year as well as one of the gifts that would help her along the way. And at first her connections
had
helped her. Her friendship with Annie and Kate had brought a lot of good things to her life. Her connection to the women at Crones' Circle, and to the members of the various covens who participated in the rituals she attended, had taught her many things about magic and the Wiccan way. Even her connection to Elizabeth Sanger's ghost had been something she welcomed.

But those connections hadn't helped her during her ordeal on Midsummer Eve. If anything, her connections to the witch community had been severed that night when she'd run into those strange kids. After pretending to befriend her, they had turned on her. Even though they claimed it was all in fun, she hadn't had fun. She'd been frightened, and angry, and all they had succeeded in doing was showing her that sometimes connections couldn't be trusted.

But where did that leave Kate and Annie? Did cutting her ties to the Wiccan community mean she had to cut her ties to them as well? She didn't want to think that it did. But could she really still be friends with them in the way that they were all friends before? She wasn't sure that they could, and that made her sad.

“You look awfully serious all of a sudden,” T.J. said, snapping her out of her thoughts. “Are you having vegetarian guilt over eating the shrimp?”

Cooper finished chewing the food in her mouth and swallowed. “Hardly,” she said. “My rule is that I don't eat anything that has a face. I know technically shrimp have faces, but it's not quite the same as a cow or a pig or something with a snout. No, I was just thinking about some stuff that's been going on.”

T.J. nodded. “Anything you want to talk about?”

Cooper was surprised. Besides Annie and Kate, and sometimes her parents, nobody ever asked her if she wanted to talk about what was bugging her. Usually, people stayed clear of her when she was in one of her moods. But here T.J. was going right into things.

“No,” she said. “But thanks for asking.”

“Any time,” he said, shrugging as he picked up another piece of pizza and started eating.

They finished up, paid, and then walked a few doors down to the concert hall. People were already lined up outside waiting to get in, and Cooper saw some people she knew. She nodded to them as she and T.J. took their place in line. It felt good to be out doing something she liked, instead of sitting inside feeling sorry for herself. She hadn't been to a concert in a while, and she was ready to have some fun.

“Cooper,” someone called out.

Cooper looked up and saw Sasha walking toward her, and her stomach churned. Like Cooper, Kate, and Annie, Sasha was involved in Wicca. Although she didn't participate in the weekly study group, she was living with Thea, one of the members of the coven that ran Crones' Circle. Sasha was a runaway, and Thea had recently been appointed her legal guardian. Cooper hadn't spoken to Sasha since deciding to leave the group, and she didn't know how much Sasha knew about what had happened to her and why she'd decided to stop coming to classes and rituals.

“Hi, Sasha,” Cooper said nervously as the other girl stopped in front of her. “You look great.”

It was true. Sasha did look great. Her once-scrawny frame had filled out, and she seemed happy and at ease.

“Thanks,” replied Sasha. “Thea's cooking helps. It's really worked magic on me, if you know what I mean.”