A trickle of cold sweat slid down Mina’s back.
“I recognize the scent,” Jared said quietly. “Grey Tail.” They watched as the black reflective helmet nodded at Jared before tearing off down the road, leaving a trail of burned rubber behind him.
“What’s going on, Jared?” Mina asked in as brave a voice as she could muster.
“Time is running short. The pack is gathering.”
***
Two weeks before the dance, Mina noticed that Jared had made himself scarce. He didn’t attend classes the rest of the week. She knew he, too, could feel what was coming. When Mina did see him, he always seemed to be walking a fine line between barely controlling his anger and being completely aloof. He avoided Brody entirely.
Surprisingly, he appeared Thursday during lunch. He walked directly toward her and slid onto the bench next to Mina, ignoring her presence as he asked Nan to the dance.
Mina waited for him to look at her, to glance her way, acknowledge her with a self-satisfied smirk or even a frown. She needed confirmation from Jared that she wasn’t in this alone, that he had her back or was there to help her out. She waited for Jared to bait her with a snide comment or joke. He didn’t.
When Nan accepted his offer, Jared squeezed her hand and told her he would call her. He left the table as silently as he had appeared, without a backward glance at Mina.
Mina was crushed. Without Jared’s help, Mina knew she couldn’t finish the tale. Only Brody’s weight on the bench snapped Mina out of her depression.
“What’s going on?” he asked Nan.
Nan positively glowed with excitement when she told Brody about her date. Brody’s smile turned into a frown as Nan spent the rest of her lunch hour talking about costumes.
Chapter 20
When Mina told her mother about the dance theme, Sara wisely kept from speaking, but gave her daughter a wary look. She even helped pick out Mina’s costume. The costume shop was dimly lit, and smelled like a cross between shoe polish and a school locker room.
“It smells like old people,” Mina whispered to her mom, wrinkling her nose in distaste.
Sara tried not to laugh. “It’s the moth balls, honey. There are a lot of old clothes here. They are vintage, after all.”
Mina did her best to put on a smile. To her mom, “vintage” meant cheaper than the mall and one step up from a thrift store. Mina tried to look enthusiastic when the sales lady greeted them. She only hoped the dresses didn’t smell like the store.
Just for fun, Mina tried on various renaissance gowns and princess costumes, probably castoffs from some long-ago school plays. But every costume had the same problem: it didn’t fit with what the Story wanted. It seemed as if the Story was controlling even Mina’s dance attire. Every dress either had a fault or wouldn’t fit.
“This would be a great Cinderella gown.” Sara grunted as she pulled and fumbled with the zipper. “It must be caught on something.” Sara tried and tried but could not get the zipper to cooperate. Even when Mina explained that the Story wouldn’t let her go as any other character, Sara seemed determined to try to change the Story’s mind.
“Try this one instead.” Sara held up a sapphire-blue dress with long, delicate sleeves. “You could be Sleeping Beauty. That tale doesn’t have any wolves.” She smiled hopefully, but Mina detected the stress that was ticking under her mother’s left eye. When that dress, too, refused to zip, Sara was awash in tears of frustration. A store seamstress, Molly, came over and tried to help, but neither one could get the zipper to work.
“That is so strange,” the bewildered seamstress commented. She fumbled with the zipper and could find no cloth or string hindering the teeth. She tried a different dress and tested the zipper before asking Mina to step into it. “Let’s try a larger dress.”
Mina rolled her eyes and stepped into the next size up, blowing her bangs out of her eyes. She was exhausted from trying on dresses. Yes, she would have absolutely loved the blue Cinderella gown, but she knew better than to get her hopes up.
“It’s stuck!” Molly gasped out. She tugged and tugged on the zipper, which had worked perfectly only minutes ago. “I don’t know what to tell you. I was sure it would work.” She was flustered and didn’t know how to appease Sara, who was by now moved to tears of frustration.
“Oh, my poor girl!” Sara cried and blew her nose on a tissue from her purse. She knew what the signs meant as well as Mina.