Overnight (11 page)

Leticia could sense that Caitlin and Kristy were rapt, listening. “She is saying do not be fr-frightened for her,” Zoë continued. “‘Do not fear me! Have no f-fear!’ is what she says. Oh!” Zoë dropped Caitlin’s and Martha’s hands to shade her eyes.

“What is it?” Caitlin leaned toward Zoë and cupped her shoulder. “Are you okay?”

“I’m okay. It’s just—” Zoë exhaled raggedly. “Well, if you want to know, but you have to promise not to tell? Lots of people in my family have ESP. I grew up around it. It wasn’t till now that I was sure, but I guess I have the Sight, too!” She pledged her hand to her heart and seemed to collapse against it.

“Oh, brother,” said Martha. “I wonder if Fielding gives out a Best Psychic prize.”

Leticia held back the laughter that burbled in her throat. Any other time, Leticia thought, either she or Martha would have caught the other’s eye with a sly wink, and they would have burst out laughing over Zoë and her dramatics.

I’m going to miss being friends with Martha, she realized. In spite of everything. I’ll miss laughing with her.

“My ESP is a secret, Martha,” said Zoë stiffly. “So don’t spread it around.”

“Zoë, you should tell the police about this cave vision of yours,” said Martha. “If you don’t, I think someone else should. Unless, of course, you’re making it all up.”

Now Leticia caught Martha’s eye in a different way. “Why would Zoë make up having ESP, and why would you go blab about it, if it’s a secret?” she asked lightly. “Why are you always going against people who are supposed to be your friends?”

Martha lifted her chin into another stare-off. “Actually, Luh-tee-sha,” she answered, biting off each syllable of Leticia’s name as if it were some bitter food, “I know for a
fact
that Zoë is faking.”

Leticia rolled her eyes. “Really? And what makes you so smart?” But she could sense all eyes on Martha now.

“Because I’ve got some real information about what might have happened to Gray. Information that, unlike Zoë’s, is one hundred percent true. If I tell it, though, you all have to promise not to inform anybody outside the group. Because it’s confidential.” Martha looked around the circle. “Promise?”

“Promise,” said Caitlin and Kristy in unison.

“Promise,” mumbled Zoë.

“Promise,” said Leticia. Inside she fumed. All the attention had turned to Martha as if she were a magic lantern. Just the way she liked it.

“Okay. When I went to get the mail for Caitlin’s mom this afternoon,” Martha began, speaking slowly so that nobody missed a word, “I saw a lady at the end of the driveway. Her hair was long and tied back with a scarf, and she was wearing a dress and this ugly coat with feathers hanging off it. And she was standing near a dark green or blue car that I think was hers. She came up to me and she asked me who was having a party. She talked like a preschooler. She was weird.”

“Oh my gosh.” Kristy giggled nervously.

“You didn’t give out my name, did you?” asked Caitlin. “You didn’t say who lived here or anything, right?”

“Of course not,” said Martha. “I didn’t say anything to her. I’m not stupid.”

Leticia shook her head. “If that’s true you saw a stranger lurking around here,” she said, “you should have told the police. Not us.”

Martha breathed a patient sigh. “Obviously,” she said, “I already told the police. In private, while you all were watching the movie. And they said don’t tell the other girls because it’s confidential. Pluswise, they thought you-all might get scared. See, I was trying to protect you.” She turned to Zoë, cold-eyed and disdainful. “That’s why I think it’s funny that you
conveniently
decide to have ESP, but you
unfortunately
can’t recall that lady.” She yawned. “But whatever. Now you know. The real truth.”

In the silence that followed, Leticia could feel Zoë’s embarrassment.

“Yeah, Zoë. You were faking your ESP, weren’t you?” Caitlin sniffed. “Faker.”

“Yeah, faker,” whispered Kristy. “Faker faker, credit taker.”

“ESP is for real!” Zoë hissed. “It’s not something to wish for. The Sight is a curse.”

“A fake curse,” said Martha.

“Enough, you guys.” Leticia moved toward her sleeping bag. “If the police have a suspect, then they’re probably close to finding Gray. By the time we wake up tomorrow morning, she’ll be back with us. Anyhow, my cousin Bethany is psychic, and she can predict if it’s a girl or boy on any pregnant lady. So
I
believe you, Zoë. Since you always figure out a lot of stuff before anyone else.”

Leticia’s eyes held Zoë’s a moment.

“Thanks, Leticia,” said Zoë.

Alone, staring at the ceiling, listening to the others settle down around her, frustration surged in Leticia’s brain. Somehow, Martha had turned the séance to her own advantage. Somehow, she had pulled ahead of the rest of them and shown herself to be the leader again.

Was that story about the lady even true?

Martha’s a quick thinker, thought Leticia. But so am I. And Martha shouldn’t have been mean to Zoë, mocking her like that. Just because Gray isn’t around to pick on tonight doesn’t mean Martha should transfer her bullying to the next easiest target.

Leticia thought through her plan. Because it was a plan, yes, it was. She saw that now. She was making a plan to split apart from Martha, and to split up the Lucky Seven, permanently.

She also realized that no matter how she sliced the group, she needed Zoë. Although Zoë was not a leader, she was always a winner. Zoë would always be Fielding’s class president, Student Government president, swim team captain, and the girl most likely to win Fielding’s end-of-year Gold Blazer. Best Everything of Everything, that was Zoë on record.

Off record, Zoë pushed too hard, she was too know-it-all. But if Leticia and Zoë were a team, Leticia could guide her. They would be the right combination of finesse and brains, and everyone else would follow them into a new and improved, cooler Lucky Seven. Only it would be another lucky number.

What she needed to do was to talk to Zoë. She would say the right things. She would win Zoë over.

I can do this, Leticia reassured herself. I had what it took to get in this group. That means I have what it takes to become the leader of it. I can turn the Lucky Seven into whatever I want it to be.

She yawned. She was sleepy. Stressed-out, Celeste would say. But if anything good already had happened tonight, it was that Leticia had proven to the others that Martha Van Riet was not as strong as everyone thought she was. That in fact, Martha could be teased, ganged up on, made fun of, and ignored just like everybody else.

She, Leticia, had been the one to show the others. She had torn down some of Martha’s supposed strength. That had to count for something.

Didn’t it?

M
ARTHA WAS IN A
fog, twitching inside thoughts that were almost like dreams. She knew she had to stay awake the longest so that she could sneak out and report her secret to the police for real. Dread constricted her stomach. She had held on to this stupid secret too long, and it had turned big and ugly and was squeezing her from the inside. Telling the others had been right for the moment, but had not shrunk it. In fact, now the secret was bigger. Now she had to let it go. Every minute she waited only made everything worse. She wished she had never seen that lady.

Why couldn’t the secret just disappear?

She heard the clock chime and chime and chime. It must be midnight, she thought. She heard voices from the study, and the crackle of the police transistor radios, but Gray’s disappearance and all of its chaos seemed far away.

If only she could put off telling until tomorrow. Uneasily, she drifted.

Light cut Martha’s eyes and startled her. Had she dozed off? She shielded an arm.

“Ouch!” she hissed. “Turn that off!”

“Shh!”

Who was it? Martha propped up on her elbows, reached out, and knocked the hand that held the flashlight, jumping the light away.

“Whossat?” she whispered. She squinted. Leticia? Yes! A trickle of hope ran through her. Was this a friendly visit? She kept her voice neutral. “Teesh. What do you want?”

“I want to tell you what Celeste said.”

“Celeste?” Martha’s pulse jumped against reason. Was Leticia inviting her to come along on her visit to Celeste’s college this spring? Martha knew a trip had been planned. “What about Celeste? What did she say?”

“It’s a joke she told me.” Leticia aimed the light, vicious and bright, into Martha’s eyes again.

No, this was not a friendly visit.

“Well, it better be funny,” said Martha, shifting herself into shadow. “Funny enough to wake me up for.”

“Celeste said your freckles show up on the outside of you to let other people know how you’re rotten inside. Like spots on bad fruit, like on apples and bananas.”

Under the sleeping bag, Martha clamped her hands together, forcing herself not to touch her face. She could feel the sizzle of each freckle on her skin. She never should have told Leticia how much she hated her freckles. She never should have told Leticia a lot of things.

“Like worms ate through you!” Leticia was laughing softly, hee hee.

She’s trying to scare me, Martha thought, wide-awake now and fully alert. Like when we crank-called Ralph Dewey that time. “If this is really about the science test, Leticia, you need to get over it,” she said. “If you’d been smart enough to get an A plus, too, I bet you wouldn’t be so bent out of shape.”

In the pause that followed, Martha sensed that Leticia was considering this. “Cheating on tests is only one of the ways you don’t play fair,” said Leticia.

“Speaking of unfair.” Martha’s hand snapped out like a jackknife. It caught and wrenched the flashlight out of Leticia’s grip and turned it off. “I’ve got a joke for you. Maybe you won’t think it’s so funny, but here it is. I’m dropping you out of my group.” She laughed, too, hee hee, parroting Leticia. “I see what you’ve been doing tonight. But I’ve gone to Fielding since kindergarten and I know every single girl better than you do. Everyone has been way better and longer friends with me than they have with you.”

“Longer doesn’t mean better.”

“I could get anyone to go against you.”

“You can’t do anything. It’s not
your
group.”

Martha was silent. Was that true? She could hardly imagine the Lucky Seven without herself at its center.

“But you’re right about one thing,” said Leticia. “Which is that I don’t want to be part of any group that you’re in.”

No no no, thought Martha, confused. Leticia was joking, right? She didn’t really want out, did she? What kind of group would the Lucky Seven be without Leticia? Martha scrambled for the right words, the words to pull Leticia back on her side without actually having to admit that she was worried or scared or sorry for what she had done. Which she was, but the only thing worse than the pain of these feelings would be to acknowledge them.

“Teesh, we used to be friends.” Martha despised herself for the yearning that curled up in her voice. “I wouldn’t mind going back to being friends with you if you admitted how much of a jerk you’ve been tonight.”

Please, Martha thought wildly in the silence that followed. Please stay friends with me. She’d never had a real best friend before Leticia, and she couldn’t believe it was already over. It had been so fun! As if parts of them had disintegrated and recombined into a single, perfect person. It was a better best-friendship than Caitlin and Kristy’s. It was a better best-friendship than anyone else’s. And now it was over. Now Leticia had knifed herself apart from Martha, and she had turned into somebody completely different, a stranger Martha hardly knew.

“Good night,” said Leticia. In the darkness, the quiet expanded between them, forcing their distance.

“You’re such a loser,” said Martha finally. “I was only joking. I’m bored of you, anyway, if you want to know the honest truth.”

“Good night,” said Leticia again.

Martha listened to the rustling as Leticia crawled back to her sleeping bag.

Alone, she waited. Waited for Leticia to come back for the flashlight. Waited for Leticia to come back and tell her she was playing a game. She was so hot, burning up. Her breath sounded loud, as if she were alone in a tunnel. She smelled the scrubbed flower scent of her nightshirt and the soapy heat of her skin underneath. Everything seemed extra-real. She tried to pretend that she was made out of stone. Unmoving, unfeeling. But her eyes watered anyway, and when she closed them, she saw hot pink and yellow jagged lights.

Leticia was not coming back.

It felt bad now, but it wouldn’t tomorrow, Martha promised herself. Tomorrow, she would start to hatch some plans against Leticia. Good plans that would show once and for all who was the real leader. Only she wished she could do something mean against Leticia right this minute. Some kind of revenge that would get the others on her side by morning.

She had to go to the police now, she had to tell, and yet the weight of the secret kept her pinned in place, helpless.

How had this night slipped so far out of her grasp?

D
REW’S HAND SMELLED BAD
, like underneath a car, like gasoline. The hand had stopped her voice. Gray writhed and wriggled to get free.

“What are you doing?” With the force of his fingers, Drew squeezed and shook her head back and forth. “What’s the big idea, screaming your head off like that?”

“Mrrmmmp!”
Gray swatted and pried at Drew’s fingers, sealed heavy as a guard bar in a carnival ride. Dizzying, sickening. Nothing budged. She jumped up and down.

“Look, kid, I’ll take my hand away if you promise not to scream again!”

She nodded her head yes, yes, yes. Drew took off his hand and Gray did not scream. She was finished with screaming, for now.

“Okay,” said Drew. He was too close, intimidating her with his chunky self. “You, Kat, me. We all gotta leave. My friends are coming back any minute, and they’ll want money for this stuff they’re delivering. But
poof!
The money magically turned into a coat, right?” His laugh was tight with displeasure. He seemed nervous. His feet shuffled back and forth like a boxer. “So, for my next trick, I will make myself disappear. And you’re coming with us.”