First Frost (12 page)

Even it looked a little in love with her.

“Okay, enough reminiscing,” Sydney said, pushing Bay into the hallway, toward the bathroom. “Hurry and get dressed!”

*   *   *

When Bay and Phin walked into the gymnasium together, Bay very nearly grabbed Phin's hand, she was so nervous. But his hand was impossible to get at. He was covered from head to toe in a white sheet dotted with tiny rosebuds. Two crude eye holes had been torn into it.

“I can't believe you wore a sheet,” she said.

“When you came to my door in a costume, I had to think fast,” Phin said, his voice muffled. “My mom is going to kill me for poking holes in her best sheets.”

“Why didn't you use your own sheets?”

He hesitated before he mumbled, “They weren't clean.”

Boys.

“So, what do we do here?” Phin asked.

“I don't know. I've never been to a dance before.”

“You helped decorate it.”

“That didn't give me any insight into the social dynamics of the thing.”

“It looks great.” He moved his head around, as if trying to see through the eye holes. “What I can see of it.”

“Take that thing off.”

“No way.” He sidestepped her when she reached to grab the sheet. “No one knows it's me. I'm in disguise.”

Bay looked around. The place did look great. The lighted, covered ball on the ceiling cast shadows on the gym walls that looked like dead trees. And there was a corner where stills from classic horror movies flashed onto a white screen. Riva had gotten Maisy Mosey's dad, who was a professional photographer, to take photos of kids posing in front of the movie stills as they acted like they were being chased by the Blob or Hitchcock's birds.

Unfortunately, without telling the decorating committee, it appeared that some parents had the brilliant idea of bringing bales of hay for everyone to sit on, and also cute little scarecrows left over from the kindergartners' party. The gym ended up looking like a square dance gone horribly, horribly wrong.

All the county high schools had been invited, and Bay could see the soccer players from Hamilton High making fun of the scarecrows, pretending to be afraid of them.

It was trouble having Hamilton High here. Everyone knew that except maybe the principals, who had set this whole thing up. The Bascom High soccer team didn't make the state playoffs, but Hamilton High did. They were old rivals, Hamilton High, the rural school with great sports teams, and Bascom High, the city school with a disproportionately large number of students from wealthy families. The two teams were sizing each other up from across the gym. All the soccer players on both sides were dressed as zombie players with white face paint, fake blood on their jerseys, and fake skin peeling off their arms. The only way to tell them apart was by the color of their uniforms and the numbers on their backs.

Josh was number eight. She found him right away. He'd spiked his blond hair and had poured some fake blood on his head so that it streaked down his face and onto his jersey. His mouth was painted to look like it was monstrously large, with extra teeth. Some of his friends had red eye contacts. One of them had hidden one arm inside his jersey so that it looked like his arm had been ripped off.

“Let's get something to drink,” Bay said to Phin, the moment she saw Josh. Bay felt strange, like something in her had changed, which she thought was silly, because only the outside had changed. It was this magic dress, but also the cleverness of her mother's gift with hair. Her hair made her feel pretty, but tender, vulnerable to thoughts of Josh taking one look at her and seeing her in a whole new light, of him walking up to her in front of everyone and telling her he hadn't realized how beautiful she was, that everything she'd written in the note made sense now.

She and Phin walked to the refreshment table while “Thriller” blared over the DJ's speakers.

“Nice spread,” Phin said, trying to pick up a cookie through the sheet.

“Take your hand out, for heaven's sake.”

“No way. I don't want anyone to know it's me.”

“They'd know you by your hands?”

“They might,” he said, picking up a cookie with his hand covered by the sheet, like a puppet. He brought it up to his mouth, forgetting he had no mouth hole.

Bay shook her head and looked away. A few seconds later, Phin said, “The cookies are really good.” But she could barely make out the words. She turned back to see his mouth making chewing motions behind the sheet. He'd obviously risked someone seeing his distinctive hands and grabbed at least half the cookies off a plate.

“Riva came up with the idea for all of this,” Bay said. And it
was
a nice setup. The drink dispensers looked appropriately ghoulish, with plastic eyeballs floating in one, and a giant plastic brain floating in another. The finger pastries did actually look like real fingers, and the ghost cookies were clever—Nutter Butters dipped in white chocolate with chocolate chip eyes. There was also a platter of black licorice rats, hot dogs wrapped in dough to look like mummies, and a bowl of square white mints simply labeled,
Teeth.

But, there again was some parent's brilliant idea to use red gingham tablecloths and napkins that read,
Ya'll have a safe Halloween!
This had to be the weirdest hoedown ever. Hamilton High was yukking it up.

“Where is Riva?” Phin asked.

Bay looked around and found Riva near the DJ's setup. She was dressed in a big bee costume, like the bee girl in that Blind Melon video from the early nineties. All her friends' costumes looked inspired by iconic, retro videos. Dakota was in a Madonna cone bra. Trinity was in a suit like Annie Lennox, and Louise had on her Jamiroquai hat. Bay had to give them props for the clever costumes. Much better than all the zombie soccer players. “She's with her group. Over there.”

“What's your plan?” Phin asked, still eating his cookies under the sheet, like a little boy sneaking sweets into his bed at night.

“I don't have a plan,” Bay said.

“If this is about the bet, you have to let them see you. Shh, be quiet,” Phin suddenly said.

“Be quiet? Why? Are you always this crazy, or are you just too sleepy at the bus stop in the mornings and I haven't seen it?”

“Riva is coming over here,” Phin whispered. “Don't tell her it's me.”

“Why would I tell her it's you?”

“Bay, is that you?” Riva said as she walked over. “Great costume. The dress is so Gatsby! And your
hair
! Oh my God. Your mother must have done it. You might get the award.”

“Super,” Bay said, having no idea what the award was.

“What are you?” Riva asked.

“A Waverley,” Bay said.

“No, I mean, what is your costume?”

“I'm my great-grandmother, Mary Waverley. She used to throw parties in the Waverley garden dressed as a garden nymph.”

“Nice.”

“Blind Melon bee girl?” Bay asked, pointing to Riva's antennae.

Riva made a face. “It wasn't my first choice. We all got together and came up with a theme, then we each took turns picking which costume we wanted from the list. I got to pick last, hence, the bee costume. I feel like such a Mavis.”

This was the most Riva had ever said to her, and Bay wasn't sure what she was supposed to do. Finally, she said, “Mavis?”

“You know, like in
Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret?
The girls in the book formed a secret club and got to choose secret names. The other girls got names like Alexandra and Veronica, but Margaret got stuck with the name Mavis.” Riva's eyes went to Phin, who was standing next to them, and frowned. He
was
standing a little too close, like he thought he was invisible. “Well, see you later.”

“Bye.”

“Nicely done,” Phin said, back from being invisible. “You actually had a conversation with Riva Alexander. She's going over there to tell them.”

“I don't care.”

“You are such a liar. You like to think you don't care, but you do. There's this little thing called give-and-take. Some people you can be yourself with, some people you have to be less weird with. And guess what? Those people are all over the place. You can't avoid them. The world isn't just yours. Everyone has to live in it.” Phin began to back away from her, slowly, like she wouldn't notice he was moving. “Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to make like a ghost and hover.”

*   *   *

Over the next hour, Bay would catch sight of ghost Phin, hovering around different groups, listening to their conversations. He hung around Riva the most, and then would move when she started getting suspicious. He seemed to be ridiculously enjoying his anonymity.

Bay had lingered around the refreshment table for a while, and some people talked to her, complimenting her hair and dress. A Hamilton High boy dressed like a ninja had asked her to dance, but she'd said no. She'd spent the rest of the time with the awkward girls on the bleachers, watching Josh.

Phin had been right about word getting around about her. Riva had gone immediately and told her friends that Bay was there. But Bay wasn't the only news that night. Riley Asher had been sent home for wearing a nude body suit and long wig, saying she was Lady Godiva. There was a rumor that someone brought a flask of vodka. And some Hamilton High soccer players were saying rude things to the cheerleaders. With so much gossip going around, it was hard to keep track of which news was spreading where, but Bay knew exactly when Josh found out about her. She'd been watching him intently, waiting.

Someone from his team came up to him and punched him on the arm, saying something with a laugh. Josh shook his head. The teammate looked toward the bleachers and pointed at Bay.

That's when Josh's eyes met hers. She didn't look away, even though she felt her heart beat so hard in her chest that it made the gauzy parts of the dress flutter. He looked confused. He took in her hair and her dress, and his lips parted slightly.

This was it
, she thought. She stood up. The awkward girls around her looked at her, then looked over to Josh, and for a moment she felt their hope, too, like it was contagious, like she was doing this for all of them.

His teammate punched him on the arm again, and Josh frowned at him and turned his back to her.

She slowly sat back down and the awkward girls looked away, dissapointed.

Well, that was it, she thought, her shoulders relaxing a little.

Josh had seen her. That was all she'd wanted. Well, that's not all she'd wanted, but she'd accomplished what she came here to do.

It was done.

Now she just had to wait for Phin to stop floating around, eavesdropping on everyone. Then she could go home and finally try to stop loving Josh Matteson so much.

 

7

At some point during the next hour, Bay became aware that Josh had left the gymnasium. She'd never looked directly at him again, but she always knew where he'd been by the thin stream of smoke he left behind him. Until now. She was sitting on the bleachers, by herself now because the other awkward girls had decided to be even more awkward and dance in a group to slow songs in the middle of the gym. She was near the door, close enough to hear the word
fight
whispered as several kids snuck out.

She suddenly had an uneasy feeling as to where Josh might have gone.

There's a secret society in high school that most kids only find out about later, and then it suddenly makes sense when they remember the week all the popular girls went without makeup and all the popular guys dyed their jeans pink. It was their rush week, their formal induction into the upper crust. The exclusivity made them feel important and in control, and their gatherings were mostly harmless. But sometimes there were drugs. And sometimes fights.

Bay couldn't find Phin—there were too many ghosts at the dance, boys who would go home in ruined sheets to angry mothers—so she slipped out the door with the others, going to the faculty parking lot, which was almost void of cars.

The soccer players from Hamilton High were all out there. Bay broke through the crowd to find that the swellhead soccer star of Hamilton High was on the ground with a player from Bascom High. It took her a moment to realize she recognized the number eight on the back of his jersey.

Josh.

Bay saw Riva's bee costume and pushed her way over to her. “What happened?” Bay yelled over the din.

Riva's bee antennae were trembling. “That's Cobie from Hamilton High,” she said, her voice high. “He and Steven were getting into it, so Josh stepped in to intervene. And then Josh just starts pummeling Cobie for no reason! He totally caught him off guard. But not for long. And now no one will help him!”

Bay's breath caught. Josh was quick and lean, but Cobie was much taller and heavier. He was trying to pin Josh to the hard pavement, sneaking in punches to his side as he did so.

If no one else was going to help, then she had to. She had to do something. They wouldn't hurt a girl, would they? They would part the moment she came up to them. Right?

This was the first fight she'd ever witnessed in real life. There was something primal about it, filling the air with a charge. She was caught up in it and scared, scared for Josh, and scared for herself, because she'd always thought of herself as the person who would step up to help, who wasn't like everyone else. But maybe Phin was right. Maybe she lived in a made-up world. Maybe in the real world, maybe deep inside, she was just like everyone else.

Suddenly, something flashed by her in a gust of wind, blowing her hair and making the hem of her dress flutter.

It happened so fast. In seconds Cobie was tossed into the air with a force that landed him on his backside, feet away. The breath was knocked out of him and the look on his face mirrored what they were all feeling. What on earth was
that
?