Shadows (2 page)

‘He’s got us,’ Eve said to Jess. It
had
taken quite a bit of shopping to get close to her parent-set monthly AmEx limit. Maybe even a little too much. Those earrings she’d bought at the airport weren’t exactly essential. But the flight back home had been delayed, and she and Jess had used the time to make the round of the gift shops.

‘He does,’ Jess agreed. She grinned at Luke. ‘We love to shop, and we’re very good at it!’

‘I’ve got to go,’ Luke said. He leaned closer to Eve. ‘But to answer your question, I wouldn’t say I’m extra, extra bad.’ He reached out and tugged gently on one of her long dark ringlets. ‘But I wouldn’t say I’m an angel either.’

With that, he stood up, dropped a five on the table, and walked off.

‘Oh my God, he played with your hair! I think he likes you more than me.’ Jess gave an exaggerated pout.

‘I thought your heart was lost to Seth Schneider,’ Eve said, pretending to be shocked. Jess had been into Seth since for ever, but he never seemed to notice.

‘Well …’ Jess shrugged.

‘Anyway, he’s clearly in lu-u-u-urve with me!’ Eve joked. Although, no joke, when he’d touched her hair she’d felt it down to her toes. ‘Come on, let’s get cones to go, and walk around.’ Suddenly she was having a hard time sitting still.

They started towards the counter. Eve managed to bump into one of the café tables – things like that happened to her all the time – and she stumbled. She leaned down to steady the table – luckily nothing had spilled – straightening up just in time to see Luke
giving Shanna Poplin’s hair a gentle tug. He’d said he was leaving, but he hadn’t gotten very far. Only halfway across the room.

Jess followed Eve’s gaze. ‘Hmm. Looks like he’s in lu-u-u-urve with Shanna too. I think our preacher’s kid might be a little bit of a player,’ she said.

Eve used both hands to shove her thick, curly hair away from her face. Yikes. Seeing Luke do the hair-thing to Shanna about a minute after he’d done it to her kind of stung. Which was ridiculous. She’d spent all of five minutes with the guy.

‘He’s as much of a flirt as Megan,’ Eve said. ‘But I think he needs to work on his moves. He’s pulled out the hair-touch twice in about a minute and a half.’ The very effective, feel-it-to-the-toes hair-touch. Well, at least she’d seen the true Luke. Now she knew not to take any of his
playing
seriously.

Jess ordered their ice creams – Swiss orange chip for her, coconut chocolate chip for Eve. ‘So what do you think, now that we’ve seen him up close?’ she asked softly. ‘I say Choo all the way.’

‘I don’t know if I’d go as far as a Choo,’ Eve said thoughtfully. After all, Jimmy Choo was the highest ranking on the shoe scale – Eve and Jess’s system for classifying boy hotness – and Luke needed to have
some points knocked off for the limited variety of his so-called moves. ‘But he’s definitely a Blahnik,’ she had to admit.

‘And a Balenciaga bag!’ Jess added with a grin. ‘So what about the other new boy in town that Megan mentioned?’

‘Oh yes – Mal, wasn’t it?’ Eve exclaimed. ‘The one who’s moved into the rock god’s house.’

‘Rock god’s
mansion
, you mean,’ Jess corrected. The Razor place – people still called it by the rock god’s name – was huge even by Deepdene standards, which was saying something. And the grounds were almost endless – a large pond, sunken tennis courts, formal gardens, sprawling meadows, all behind a high green privacy hedge. It was surprising that it had been empty so long, almost ten years. Property – any property – in the Hamptons was almost always immediately snapped up.

But the Razor place had a history. Before the rock star killed himself – right in the house – there’d been some kind of software genius living there. One of the Kennedys for a while. And way back when Eve’s grandmother was growing up, a famous director had lived in the mansion. All of them had moved out after less than a year. Jess said it was because the place was haunted. And she wasn’t the only one.

But Eve didn’t believe in ghosts, at least not now that she wasn’t sitting in a dark movie theatre. She was more interested in flesh-and-blood-and-muscle guys. ‘Two new boys in one year. That’s got to be a record,’ she said thoughtfully.

‘I can’t believe our luck,’ Jess agreed as she paid for the cones. ‘And right in time for high school!’

‘We’ve seen one new boy. What are the stats on the other one?’ Eve asked. She led the way out of Ola’s, noting that Luke was still loitering around Shanna’s table.

‘Our age. Dark hair. Dark eyes. Cute. That’s all Megan could tell me,’ Jess replied. ‘Like I said, she couldn’t stop yawning. It was ridiculous. I wanted to force-feed her a litre of Pepsi Max.’

Eve paused in front of the Madewell boutique. ‘The denim bar! I missed this place,’ she said. ‘Every pair of my favourite jeans comes from here.’

‘The consultants understand your butt better than you do yourself,’ Jess agreed.

‘I want to get a pair with custom embroidery. I’m thinking of—’ Eve paused, suddenly becoming aware of little prickles dancing up the back of her neck – the kind of prickles she always got when somebody was watching her. She could almost feel the staring eyes on
her back.
Could it be Luke?
Her bad, bad, too-romantic brain just went there.

Luke equals player
, Eve reminded herself.
You do not want to crush on Luke. You don’t want to, and you aren’t going to. Don’t even bother to look.

But she couldn’t help herself. She had to know.

Eve glanced over her shoulder. No Luke. But somebody else was staring at her.

A guy she’d never seen before. He stood across the street, leaning against the wrought-iron fence that enclosed the park, one foot crossed over the other. And he was just … staring. When he realized she’d caught him, he looked away. But then looked back, and a slow, sexy half-smile spread across his face. Just for Eve. Like the two of them shared a secret.

The fairy lights in the elm trees clicked on. Like magic. Like something out of a movie. A non-horror movie.

Eve dragged her gaze away from him, every nerve-ending in her body tingling. That had to be the other new boy. Mal. But Megan had been wrong. He wasn’t cute.

Mal was smouldering.

Eve adjusted the dragonfly clip holding back her curly hair. The sapphire Swarovski crystals on the wings almost exactly matched her eyes.

‘You’re going to be late, Eve! And I don’t have time to drive you. I have an eight-thirty,’ her mother called. An eight-thirty as in an eight-thirty surgery. Her mom was a cardiac surgeon.

‘OK, OK, I’m leaving!’ Eve grabbed her fringed Hobo bag and turned away from the mirror. Continuing her klutzy streak, which had really only developed in the last year or two – her mom said it was probably because she was growing and her body was still getting used to its new dimensions – she tripped over the mound of clothes behind her. There was another mound on the bed and more clothes draped over her desk chair. She had tried on just about every outfit combo that was mathematically possible. And texted
pics of most of them to Jess for a second opinion. The first day of school was always a fashion show, and Eve suspected the first day of high school would be even more so.

She grabbed a pen and scribbled a note to Donna, the housekeeper, saying she would put everything away herself. She stuck the note to the corkboard on her door and hurried down the grand curved stairway to the foyer.

She made a quick stop at the kitchen for a wild berry smoothie, then walked the two blocks to the corner where she met Jess. For a moment Jess took in Eve’s outfit in silence.

‘I know, I know, we decided I should wear the skinny jeans and the flowy top,’ Eve said, knowing Jess was curious as to why she had deviated from the first-day clothing strategy they’d devised together. ‘I changed my mind at the last second.’

‘Mm-hmm,’ Jess said, falling into step with Eve as they headed towards school. ‘And was there any particular reason you decided on the T-shirt of Lu-u-u-urve?’ Jess dragged out the word ‘love’ so long that she had to take a big breath in the middle.

‘I liked how it went with the Peasant Skirt of Effortless Chic,’ Eve replied. Which was true. The skirt
she’d bought yesterday, squeaking under the AmEx limit, was the perfect colour to complement the tee. But it was also true – and Jess knew it – that Eve always wore her funky tee with the gramophones on it when she wanted to look especially good for a guy. The T-shirt just
fitted.
It got attention without looking like it was trying to get attention. Which was why it had been christened the T-shirt of Love.

‘Ri-i-i-i-ight,’ Jess answered, drawing out the word almost as long as she had ‘love’.

Why did Jess have to know her so well? ‘Fine. I thought I’d start high-school life with a little love mojo,’ Eve admitted.

‘I knew it!’ Jess exclaimed. ‘Who’s the mojo for? Has to be one of the new boys, obviously, but which one?’ She tapped her lips with two fingers and frowned, her patented silly
I’m thinking
look.

‘Well, not the player,’ Eve said. ‘I don’t need any of that.’

‘Oh, but he touched your hair,’ Jess reminded her.

‘He practically made the rounds in Ola’s, putting his fingers all over girls’ heads,’ Eve said.

‘It’s settled then,’ Jess said. ‘I get Luke, since you don’t want him. And that means you get Mal.’

Eve laughed. ‘Don’t they get a say in that? And I
think we’ll have some competition from, you know, every other girl in school.’

‘Not a problem. If the guys were seniors or something, maybe. But they’re freshmen, just like us. And I’m a cheerleader, remember? Or at least I’m sure I will be once we have try-outs.’ Jess had been a cheerleader all three years of middle school. ‘And more than that, I’m a blonde cheerleader. And I’m peppy. I’m a completely lovable package.’

‘Plus – you’re so modest,’ Eve added.

‘I know.’ Jess slipped her arm through Eve’s. ‘And you. Those curls. Those eyes. That creamy skin. You look like you stepped out of some pre-Raphaelite painting. Except your hair is dark, which is even better.’ Jess had gone to Europe over winter break last year, and her parents had put every conceivable museum on the itinerary.

Eve and Jess stopped in front of the high school. Both of them gazed at it in silence for a moment. ‘Remember when we used to play “high-school girls” back when we were about five?’ asked Eve.

‘My high-school-girl name was Roberta. I thought that was the coolest name back then. Somebody must have been putting something in my chocolate milk,’ Jess answered.

‘Well, we’re finally here,’ Eve said.

‘Let’s go conquer.’ And they walked across the quad and through the big front doors. Then Jess made a left and Eve went right. Their lockers weren’t together because they had different homerooms. Eve stowed her iPhone – cellphones weren’t allowed in class – and attached a magnetic mirror to the inside of the locker door. That was essential for hair and make-up checks. Then she pulled her schedule out of her purse and verified the location of her homeroom. She found it with no problem, and – bonus! – without knocking anything over, or tripping, or displaying any other klutzy behaviour. So far, so good.

She was only the second person there. Even the teacher wasn’t in the room yet; Ms Reiber was probably off directing traffic in one of the hallways. The person who’d beaten her there? Mal.

Thank you, T of Lu-u-u-urve
, Eve thought as Mal gave her that
we’ve got a secret
half-smile she’d seen on Main Street. She smiled back. A small
maybe I will, maybe I won’t
kind of smile. She hoped it made her look as mysterious as Mal. And besides, she hadn’t been able to come up with just the right casual comment. Usually she was good at that. But he was so new-boy. She was used to having years of history with
every guy in Deepdene’s small school. She wasn’t entirely sure how to talk to somebody brand new. And the way Mal looked at her – it was kind of intense, even in the few seconds his gaze had lasted. She felt as if he’d sucked the words right out of her.

Should she sit next to him? Across the room? Eve decided on something in between, taking a desk that was two rows over from Mal, and a little further forward. As soon as her butt hit the chair, she wondered if she’d made a mistake. She could feel him looking at her, the way she had on Main Street. At least, she
thought
she could feel it. She glanced over her shoulder and caught him in the middle of looking away.

‘So, um, you’re new, right?’ Eve asked. Yes, she’d come up with something that brilliant all by herself in less than a minute. She was going to have to do some remedial reading in
Cosmo
about how to talk to boys. Asap.

‘Right,’ Mal said. That’s all. Just ‘right’.

‘I’m Eve,’ she told him. ‘Eve Evergold.’

‘Mal,’ said the big talker.

‘Mal, as in Malcolm?’ Eve asked, to keep the conversation going.

Mal just raised one dark eyebrow, as if he were shrugging.

‘OK, not Malcolm,’ Eve said.

Mal raised both eyebrows.

‘If you won’t say, it must be something embarrassing,’ Eve guessed.

‘Oh, really? I never heard that theory before,’ Mal said, with just a hint of snarkasm – Eve and Jess’s word for snark mixed with sarcasm.

At least that had gotten more than a word out of him. Eve thought for a moment. What other names started with ‘Mal’ anyway? Or ended with it? Sometimes names were shortened that way too.

‘I’m always jealous of people with nicknames,’ Eve said. ‘Having a one-syllable name will do that to you. I don’t have any options. Jess, my best friend, calls me Evie sometimes, but that’s it.’

‘Who said it was a nickname?’ Mal asked. He didn’t smile-smile. But his voice was smiling. And his dark chocolate eyes. He should definitely talk more. His voice matched him somehow. It was low and husky. Sexy. Yeah, that was the word for it.

‘It’s obviously a nickname.’ Eve still couldn’t think of what it was a nickname
for
, though. ‘I’ll find out eventually.’

‘We’ll see,’ he answered, but the right side of his mouth tilted up in that sexy half-smile again. Eve was
already starting to love that smile. Before she could find a way to make him do it again, Ben Flood and Alexander Neemy came in. Loudly. Followed by five others and the teacher.