Thirst No. 4 (46 page)

SOME PARTIES ARE TO DIE FOR.

I
should never have gone on vacation in Europe,
Jessica Hart thought.
After climbing the Matterhorn, starting high school again feels ridiculous.

The day was a Friday, the last day of the first week of school, but Jessica’s first glimpse of Tabb High. Less than twenty hours earlier she had been enjoying the crisp, cool air of Switzerland’s Alps. Now she had Southern California’s worst to breathe; the morning was as smoggy as it was hot. Plus she had a terrible case of jet lag. She probably should have skipped what was left of the school week and rested up over Saturday and Sunday, but she had been anxious to see her friends and to check out the place where she was doomed to spend her one and only senior year. So far it had not impressed her.

“I want to have a party,” Alice McCoy was saying to her as they wove through the crowds in the outdoor hallway toward
Jessica’s locker room. “We could get, say, thirty kids from Mesa, with thirty kids from Tabb.”

Mesa High had been their alma mater until midsummer, when those in power had decided that the district could not afford two partially full high schools. Tabb had absorbed perhaps three-quarters of Mesa’s students. Although Tabb was older than Mesa, it was far bigger. The other twenty-five percent had ended up at Sanders High, five miles farther inland. Fortunately for Jessica, the majority of her friends had moved with her to Tabb, not the least of whom was Alice McCoy. Two years younger, she was—in Jessica’s unbiased opinion—the sweetest girl in the whole world.

“You mean as a get-to-know-each-other sort of thing?” Jessica asked.

“Yeah. I think it would help break the ice between us.”

“I wouldn’t worry about any ice today,” Jessica said, brushing her dark hair off her sweaty forehead. On hot days like this she wished she had Alice’s bright blond curls; they seemed to reflect most of the sun’s rays. “Does this joint have airconditioning?” Jessica asked.

“In some of the rooms.”

“Some?”

“The teachers’ lounge is real cool. I was in there yesterday. They want me to paint a mural on the wall.” Alice laughed. “They want a mountain glacier.”

“It figures. I hope you’re charging them?”

“I’m not.”

“Fool. Back to this party business. How would you know which thirty Tabb kids to invite?”

Alice nodded. “That’s a problem. But maybe in the next week we’ll meet some neat people. Have you run into anyone that you like yet?”

Jessica shook her head. “No, and I’ve been here all of thirty minutes. But maybe by lunch I’ll get some guy to fall in love with me.”

The words came out easily, but were accompanied by a slight feeling of uneasiness. She had gone on few dates while at Mesa High. Guys just didn’t ask her out much. Her best friend, Sara Cantrell, said it was because they were intimidated by her beauty.

“You’re right, Sara, that must be it. All those guys watching me from across campus and thinking to themselves that there’s a babe beyond their reach. Really, they have a lot of nerve even looking at me.”

Actually, Jessica knew she was pretty. Enough people had told her so for enough years, and they couldn’t all be wrong. Besides, she had only to look in the mirror. Her face was a perfect oval, with a firm chin and a wide, full mouth that she had trained to smile even when she didn’t feel much like smiling. Her hair and eyes matched beautifully. The former was dark brown, long and wavy, with a sheen that had stayed with her from infancy; the latter, an even darker brown, large and
round, giving her either a playful or nasty look, depending on her mood. And with a carefully controlled diet and daily jogs around the park, she kept her figure slim and supple. She’d even picked up a tan this summer.

I sound practically perfect!

But, no, she wasn’t perfect. She believed, like most teenage girls who don’t date much, that there was something wrong with her, something missing. Yet she didn’t know what it could be. She didn’t understand how Alice—a nice enough looking girl, but certainly no fairy princess—drew girls and guys alike to her in droves. Some people were charismatic, she supposed, and others weren’t, and that was that.

Just then Jessica caught sight of a girl in a cheerleader’s uniform standing beside a tree and chatting with a group of what appeared to be football players. A stab of envy touched her. The past spring she had successfully tried out for the cheerleading squad. And all summer she had been looking forward to entering the mainstream of her school’s social life. But then
her
school had disappeared, and those who decided such things—who were those jerks, anyway?—had felt that Tabb High should be allowed to maintain its pep squads without integrating those from Mesa High.

God, now there’s a girl that looks out of reach.

Jessica stopped Alice, gestured in the direction of the cheerleader. Her blond hair teased and highlighted, the girl appeared hip, arrogant in a flirty way. Even from a distance,
Jessica could see the eyes of the guys gathered around her flickering down her long tanned legs. “Who is that?” she said.

“Clair Hilrey,” Alice replied. “Funny you should ask. She was one person I had already decided should come to my party.”

“Why?”

“She knows everybody. She’s probably the most popular girl on campus. She’s gorgeous, isn’t she?”

Jessica had already taken a dislike to her. It had been a dream of Jessica’s, since her freshman year, that she might be nominated homecoming queen. Back at Mesa, she would have had an excellent chance. Here it already looked as if the odds were stacked against her. She shrugged, started up the hallway again. “She’s all right.”

Jessica had been at her locker half an hour earlier to deposit her notebook before checking in with her senior counselor. The man had seemed nice enough, but sort of slow and boring, and she couldn’t remember his name any more than she could now remember her locker combination. Stopping in front of the locker, she searched her pockets for the slip of paper with the three magic numbers.

“Whoever you put on your list,” she said, finding the paper and twisting the steel dial, “be sure to invite that new guy you’re seeing. What’s his name, Kent?”

Alice looked doubtful. “Clark. I don’t know if he’d come. He doesn’t like to be around a lot of people.”

The dial felt as if it had gum stuck under it. This school was gross. “Where does he take you when you two go out, the desert?”

Alice smiled briefly. “We don’t really go out. He just comes over.” She added quickly, almost nervously, “He’s an incredible artist. He’s helped me so much with my painting.”

Jessica paused, studying her. The topic of Clark disturbed Alice, and Jessica wondered why. More than that, she was concerned. She had always felt the urge to take care of Alice. Perhaps because Alice had lost both her parents when she was only ten.

“I’ll have to meet him someday,” she said finally, brushing a curl of hair from Alice’s face. The younger girl nodded, kissed Jessica quickly on the cheek, and began to back away.

“I’m glad you had a happy vacation. I’m even more glad you’re home! Catch you later, OK?”

“At lunch. Where should we meet?”

Alice had already begun to slip into the crowd. “I’ll find you!” she called.

After waving a quick farewell, Jessica turned and opened her locker and discovered that the light blue cashmere sweater her mother had bought for her in Switzerland for two hundred francs was being spotted with
somebody’s
grape juice. The juice was leaking from a soggy brown-paper lunch bag perched on top of a thick notebook that didn’t belong to her and which she felt by all rights did not belong in her locker.

“Damn,” she whispered, hastily pulling the bag and the
notebook out of the locker and dumping them on the ground. Her face fell as she unfolded her prize gift and held it up. She had known it was to be in the high nineties today; she’d only brought the sweater to show off to her friends. Now it had a big stain over the heart area. It was dark enough to be a bloodstain. Suddenly she wished she had never gotten on that plane in Zurich.

“Excuse me, I think these are mine,” somebody said from below her. There was a guy crouched down at her feet, picking up the notebook and lunch bag. When he had his things in hand, he glanced up, clearing his throat. “Are we sharing the same locker?”

Jessica let her sweater down and sighed. “You mean you don’t even get your own locker in this school? What kind of place is this? I had my own locker in kindergarten.”

The guy stood, frowning as he noticed the juice dripping from his bag. “I guess it does take some getting used to. But I don’t think I’ll be getting in your way much. I only keep my books in my locker.”

“And your lunch.”

The fellow noticed her sweater and did a quick double take, from it to his bag. “Oh, no, did my grape juice leak on your sweater?”

“Somebody’s grape juice did.”

He grimaced. “I’m sorry, I really am. Do you think the stain will come out?”

“I’ll probably have to cut it out.”

“That’s terrible.” He reached a hand into the bag. “It’s all my fault. Boy, can I make it up to you? Could I buy you a new one?”

“Not around here.”

“Well, how much did it cost? I could pay you for it at least.”

“Two hundred Swiss francs.”

“How much is that?”

“I don’t know.” Jessica leaned an elbow on the wall of lockers, rested her head in her hand, blood pounding behind her temples. What a lousy way to start the day, the whole school year for that matter. “I can’t remember.”

The guy stood staring at her for a moment. “I really am sorry,” he repeated.

Jessica closed her eyes briefly, taking a deep breath, getting ahold of herself. She was making a mountain out of a molehill. Fatigue often made her overreact. Chances were the dry cleaners could get the stain out. And if they didn’t, they didn’t. Her bedroom closet was overflowing with clothes. When she thought about it, she realized she had little right to blame this guy. After all, she was invading his territory. He had probably had this locker since he was a freshman.

She straightened up, letting the sweater dangle by her side, out of the way. “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “I have another one at home just like it.” She offered him her hand, lightening her tone. “My name’s Jessica Hart. I’m a Mesa High refugee.”

The guy shook her hand. “I’m Michael Olson.”

“Pleased to meet you, Michael.” She wondered if this was their first meeting. She could have sworn she had seen him before. “Are you a senior?”

“Yeah.”

“So am I.”

“I thought so. Did you just get here? I didn’t see you earlier this week.”

“Yeah, my family’s vacation ran a few days too long.”

Michael nodded, looking her straight in the face, and as he did, Jessica realized that, besides seeming familiar, he was rather attractive. He had thick black hair and eyebrows, pleasant friendly features. Yet it was his eyes that sparked her interest. There was an extraordinary alertness and intelligence in them, a sharpness she had never seen before in anyone her age. But perhaps she was imagining it. For all she knew, he could be the local druggie, high on something.

But he seems nice enough.

“I bet you were in Switzerland,” he said.

She laughed. “How did you guess?”

“Your accent.” He glanced about. “I suppose this place looks old to you after Mesa.”

She nodded. “And crowded. And hot. We had airconditioning.”

“Some of our rooms are cooled. The gym is. We take our basketball very seriously here at Tabb.”

Jessica brightened. “Oh, now I know who you are! You’re on the basketball team. I saw you playing last year. You killed us, didn’t you?”

Michael shrugged. “It was close most of the way.”

“Yeah, right, all through warm-up.”

“Well, you guys were never very nice to our football team. What did we lose to you, the last nine in a row?”

“The last ten. And you know what’s worse? Practically our whole varsity was transferred to Sanders High.”

“I guess we couldn’t expect to get beauty and brawn both.”

Did he just compliment me? It sounded like a compliment.

Jessica didn’t take compliments well. To simply accept them, she felt, was to acknowledge that her looks were important to her, and she always thought that was the same as saying to the world that she was superficial. On the other hand, she did love to be complimented. She was nuts, and she knew it.

She laughed again. “Before the football season’s over, I know you’re going to think Tabb got the raw end of the deal.”

“I hope not,” he muttered, lowering his head, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket, and wiping up the few remaining drops of juice from the locker. “I’m going to pay you for that sweater no matter what you say. What’s a Swiss franc in U.S. money these days?”

“One and a half pennies. Forget about it, really. I have parents who can’t spend enough on their darling daughter.”

“It must be nice. Did you enjoy Switzerland?”

“Yeah. And the Greek islands. It was neat floating on a raft in the Mediterranean. The Vatican was far-out, too.”

He nodded, repeated himself. “It must be nice.” Then he began to back up. “Well, I have to go. I hope you like Tabb. I’m sure you will. If you need help finding your way around, just let me know.”

“Thanks, Michael. See you later.”

“Sure.”

Michael was gone no more than ten seconds when Sara Cantrell appeared. It had been Sara who had been kind enough to pick Jessica and her parents up at the airport at three that morning. Sara had grumbled about it, naturally, but that was to be expected, and wasn’t to be taken seriously. The two of them went back to the beginnings of time; they had taught each other to talk. Or rather, Jessica had learned to talk, and Sara had learned to make astute observations. Sara had a biting wit and was usually hungry for potential victims. Tabb High did not yet know what it had inherited. It would know soon, though.