Sammy Keyes and the Night of Skulls (19 page)

I start talking anyway. “The reason we were coming down the police station steps is because El Zarape pulled a knife on Billy yesterday.”

“What!” Holly and Marissa say at the same time.

“Exactly! Holly and I figured out that those skulls were real—”

“They’re
real
?” She looks from me to Holly, and when both of us nod, her arms uncross and she says, “Wait—who said?”

“Never mind right now,” I tell her. “The point is they’re real and Casey and Billy were on their way over to Hudson’s with them when El Zarape jumped him.”

Marissa’s stony stare is gone. “Seriously?”

“Yes! So we decided to report everything to the police, because what kind of wacko is running around with two real skulls? Or holding up kids at knifepoint?”

She nods like, Yeah, makes sense.

“But as we’re coming out of the station, the Borschman and Danny are coming in.”

“Oooh, bad timing.”

“No kidding!”

“And Danny thought you were there because you’d
turned him in.” Marissa’s forehead goes all wrinkly. “But you
did
turn him in!”

“But the only other person who knew that was Holly! Casey and Billy had no idea! And when Danny called me a narc at the police station, Casey practically shoved him down the steps. After that I really thought I had to keep it a secret from him, but it was making me crazy. So the reason I took Casey on a picnic was to tell him the truth.”

Marissa gasps. “You
told
him?”

“Yeah. And believe me, it wasn’t easy.”

“What did he say?”

So I tell them the whole brother-versus-random-stranger bit and what Casey said about if the Preacher Man had been his dad instead of some annoying evangelist, and when I’m all done, Marissa just blinks at me. “So he’s
okay
with it?”

I nod and look down. “He was amazing about it.”

She takes a deep breath, holds it for the longest time, then finally lets it out. “It’s so hard to believe Danny would do something like that.” Her voice is all quivery, and even though her words say one thing, I can tell she’s finally starting to understand that it’s true.

I squat down in front of her. “I’m really, really sorry, Marissa. He’s just not the guy you think he is.”

She heaves a sigh. “I have
got
to get over him.”

Holly shakes her head. “How can you not be over him after this?”

“I don’t know!” She covers her face with her hands and
leans her elbows on her knees. “I’ve liked him for so long.” She sighs again. “And I thought he liked me, too!”

Very quietly I tell her, “He plays you, Marissa. Casey told me so.”

Her head snaps up. “He did?”

I nod. “Danny knows you’re nuts about him. Everyone knows. Casey says Danny uses it to his advantage.”

She covers her face again. “Oh, I feel like such an idiot!”

“Look. Try to forget the Danny you have a crush on. He’s a figment of your imagination. Picture him kicking a guy and stealing his stuff. Picture him bragging about it. See the real Danny and you’ll be over him.”

“I don’t know why I can’t just
do
that. What’s wrong with me?” She looks at me all buttery-faced. “I’m sorry I got so mad.”

“Yeah,” I tell her with a little laugh. “That was kinda scary.”

We’re all quiet a minute and then Holly says, “So what now? If this gets out, school’s going to be brutal.”

I rake my hand through my hair and sigh. “Yeah, well, Casey’s not telling anyone, and if you guys can
please
not tell anyone, I think we could contain it.”

“I have no problem with that,” Holly says.

Marissa takes a deep breath. “Me, either.”

I look Marissa in the eye and say, “One little slip and it’s all over.”

“I can do this.”

Holly nods. “Me too.”

I stand up and say, “I’m sure Heather’s going to be
firing off about it. I just have to remember she
doesn’t
know and come up with a good defense.”

We all look at each other, and even though no one says it, I know we’re all thinking the same thing: Good luck with that.

My problem was that a rumor becomes the truth if you don’t deny it, and how could I deny it when it
was
the truth? I decided that my only defense was an even more brutal offense, and by the time I got to school Monday morning, I knew what I’d do if Heather caused me trouble.

Which of course she did.

“There she is!” Her Royal Snideness calls from across the way. “The narc!”

She’s with Monet, and there’s a bunch of other people around. So instead of ignoring her like I usually do, I go toward her, and start talking loud so everyone can hear, “Nice try, Heather, but I heard
you’re
the one who called the police on Danny!”

Everyone stops and stares. “Me?” she screeches, and it’s almost funny to see how shocked she is that
I
would be starting a rumor about
her
.

“Yeah, you! What do you think, we’re all idiots? Everyone knows what a backstabber you are! What better way to get back at Danny for dumping you?”

“What are you
talking
about?”

A crowd is forming and my heart is beating like mad, but there’s no backing out now. I look at her like she’s the world’s biggest idiot. “You versus that hot high school girl? Who do you think’s gonna win?”

“Shut up!”

I snort. “I’m not the one who needs to shut up! Apparently you’re the one going around flapping her lips.” I walk away and toss, “Narc,” over my shoulder.

All of a sudden Holly and Marissa are next to me and Marissa’s whispering, “Ohmygod! That was genius!”

Holly snickers, “She didn’t know what hit her!”

And maybe I should have felt proud of myself, or at least happy that I’d dodged a bullet, but I actually felt kind of sick.

I hated that having done the right thing was somehow considered wrong.

And I hated that there didn’t seem to be any other way to survive school.

Billy Pratt’s a peacekeeper. I didn’t understand that about him at first—at first I thought he was a total goofball, but underneath all his joking and silliness is a sweet guy who just wants everyone to get along.

His dad, on the other hand, apparently has no problem yelling at people, or calling the cops, because that’s what Billy said happened when Danny was outside their house trying to beat his way in. Billy said Danny took off before the cops or Casey showed up, and then Casey went to find him to try to talk to him.

Trouble is, none of us had heard from Casey since.

“I’ve sent him, like, eight texts,” Billy said when we were hanging around at lunch with Marissa and Holly talking about it. “I wonder what happened.”

“It’d be nice if we could just ask his sister,” I grumbled.

Well, there’s no way Marissa, Holly, or I could do that, but like dowsing rods to water, our noses all turn toward Billy.

“She hates me!” he says, reading our minds.

“Everyone loves you, Billy,” Marissa tells him. “And she’d love you to hate
us
, so just act like you do.”

He locks eyes with Marissa for a minute, then goes, “Aw, maaaaan,” and takes off.

Holly looks at Marissa, then over her shoulder at Billy, then back to Marissa. “You know what? I think he likes you.”

It takes a second, for Marissa and for me, but when it clicks, it clicks hard.

At least for me.

I blink at Marissa. “I think she’s right!”

“Are you guys nuts? Billy doesn’t like me. Billy’s just nice like that. To everyone.”

Holly and I eye her and shake our heads.

“Oh, yeah?” she says. “Well, since when has he liked me, then?”

First all the things he did on Halloween flash through my mind—the way he’d grabbed her hand, the way he’d walked near her, the way he’d vampired her neck.… And then I think back to all the times Billy has hung out with us—how he’s just
been
there, kind of waiting in the background. “Wow … maybe for a long time.”

“Shut up,” Marissa says, backhanding me. “Like I wouldn’t have noticed?”

“Not with the way your head’s been in Dannyland.”

All of a sudden Dot comes hurrying up. “You guys! You guys! Guess what?”

I hadn’t seen Dot since Friday afternoon when she’d decided to take her sisters trick-or-treating instead of going with us, so it could have been anything. And since she’s all wide-eyed and out of breath and about to burst at the seams, I don’t waste time guessing. I just say, “What?”

“Heather’s in the bathroom smoking and texting and crying.”

Now, the smoking and texting part was easy to believe.

But crying?

“Does she know you saw her?”

Dot’s head shakes like crazy. “She was in a stall.”

“But you’re sure it’s her?”

Now she
nods
like crazy.

Holly asks, “Were Tenille and Monet there?”

Shake-shake-shake.

“So how’d you know it was her?” Marissa asks. “Did you hear her talking?”

Shake-shake-shake.

“You recognized her shoes?” I ask.

Shake-shake-shake.

And all of a sudden Marissa, Holly, and I get totally bug-eyed. “You
peeked
?” we say together.

“Over the divider,” she says with a giggle.

I can’t help laughing. “Payback!” because Heather and her little wannabes do that exact thing to sneer and jeer and intimidate girls who are using the stall for its, you know, intended purpose.

“Heather
hiccups
when she cries,” Dot whispers all conspiratorially, and then goes into this whole hic-sob-convulsion thing that makes the rest of us just bust up.

So yeah, we were being pretty heartless, but if you knew even a fraction of what Heather’s done to us, you would completely understand why.

It wasn’t until after lunch that I started to get twinges of guilt.

*   *   *

I have science with Ms. Rothhammer, who’s nice, but very strict, and the good thing is she has Heather’s number. Billy’s also in that class and I’m pretty sure that not-so-deep down Ms. Rothhammer thinks he’s hilarious, but she never lets him hijack lesson time like he does in some classes.

Now, showing up late to Ms. Rothhammer’s class is a bad idea because not only will she mark you tardy, she’ll give you lunchtime detention cleaning the science lab if you do it more than once. So when Heather didn’t slide in at the bell like she normally does, I thought,
Tsk-tsk
, the Tearful Texter’s gonna get detention.

But then I notice that Billy’s not in class, either, and since he never reported back to us after he set out to find Heather, I start wondering if maybe he found her all sobby-faced and got sucked into some of her woe-is-me drama. And
then
I start worrying. I mean, Billy’s
such
a peacemaker and Heather’s
such
a manipulative drama queen—was she getting him to spill stuff he shouldn’t?

As far as I knew, Casey hadn’t told Billy about me calling the cops on Danny, but I hadn’t talked to Casey since he’d taken off so fast from the graveyard.

Maybe something had changed?

What
didn’t
I know?

So I’m in the middle of getting the total queasies about everything all over again when Billy walks into the classroom.

“You’re ten minutes late, Mr. Pratt,” Ms. Rothhammer
says, interrupting her lecture on the wonders of the Krebs cycle.

“Emergency, sorry,” he says, walking an admit slip up to her. Then he shows her his bandaged arm. “They say I’ll live.” He smiles at her. “I’m sure that’s a big relief to you.”

“Have a seat, Mr. Pratt,” she says. It’s definitely a no-nonsense command, but there’s also a little smile behind it.

“Yes, ma’am!” he says, and goes straight to his desk without even glancing at me.

Now, I could see that the bandages he’d flashed her were covering the scrapes he’d gotten from diving into the rosebushes.

Scrapes that had been scabbed over at lunch.

So I started thinking that he must’ve made them bleed again so he could get bandages and a pass from the office, which on a normal day would have made me stifle a grin. But this wasn’t a normal day, and instead I started to freak out. It had to be something serious for Billy to risk detention from Ms. Rothhammer, and I just knew it had to do with Heather.

I stole looks back at Billy three times, but he didn’t seem to see me. His eyes were glued to the board, but they weren’t really tracking. They were just staring.

By the time the bell finally rang I was a spastic mess and had picked up absolutely nothing about the Krebs cycle.

“Billy!” I called when I got outside.

He turned and waited for me at the bottom of the ramp.

“What happened?” I whispered.

He just shakes his head. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but I’m worried about Heather. She’s a wreck.”

“Why is she a wreck?”

“Everyone thinks she turned in Danny. People from
high
school are sending her hate texts.” He frowns. “She says you started it.”

I mutter, “Man, she can dish it but she sure can’t take it.”

He looks at me. “So you did start it?”

“She started it! First thing she said when she saw me this morning was ‘Narc!’ I just turned the tables on her, that’s all. She shouldn’t start fights and then complain when she gets hurt.”