*
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?
The crowd began to hum, and people turned to see teachers and parents appearing at the back door of the gym, their faces illuminated by the ambient security lights.
Everyone started to scramble. Cobie’s Hamilton High teammates pulled him up, dazed, and dragged him away as he kept asking, “What in the hell just happened?”
In the chaos, Bay was jostled around and she fought against the surge, trying to find Josh. When she finally saw him, he was still on all fours, trying to lift himself up. Quick as a flash, she ran to him and helped him to his feet. Everyone else was running in a herd toward the security crossbar at the entrance to the parking lot, trying to make it around to the front of the building. The problem was that it would be very easy to head them off at the pass, and several teachers and parents had already disappeared back into the gymnasium, presumably to do just that.
Bay put Josh’s arm over her shoulder and headed in the other direction, one that led them away from the gym and toward the academic buildings. She guided him around the back of those buildings, through the field of dogwood trees that had been planted by the alumni association years ago. The wind was blowing, making the bare limbs clack and scratch eerily.
Josh was walking with a slight limp, favoring his rib cage on his right side. He had to lean on her as they finally walked up the far hill, the back way into the well-lit student parking lot. There wasn’t anyone there, proof that most had, indeed, been stopped at the front of the gymnasium.
She looked around for the Pathfinder she knew he drove. If pressed, she could probably even recite his license plate, as many times as she’d watched him drive away.
“Where is your car?” she finally asked.
Josh’s head jerked up from where he’d been watching his feet, each step a focused effort. He immediately stepped away from her.
He hadn’t known it was her. The look on his face was as if someone had come up behind him and said, Guess who? And he’d turned, geared for a pleasant surprise, only to find that it was the last person he’d wanted it to be.
He looked around. She saw his relief that no one was there to see them together. She also saw his suspicion start to grow, as if she had planned this. “Why did we come this way?”
“Because we would have been caught if we’d gone the other way. Where is your car?” she asked again.
He stared at her for a long time. If she yelled Boo! he would probably jump a mile. “Over there,” he finally said. “I brought my dad’s Audi.”
She looked at the car, then back to him, trying to judge whether or not he was capable of driving. “Can you make it?”
“Yeah. He got me in the ribs, but nothing’s broken.”
“How do you know?”
He rubbed his side. “I’ve been hit with soccer balls harder than he can punch.”
Bay turned to go, not able to stand the way he was still looking at her, as if she would … what? Bewitch him? What on earth did that mean, anyway?
“Wait,” he called as she walked away.
But she didn’t. She kept walking, her hands fisted at her sides. Insufferable boy. He was foolish and hardheaded and, now that she thought about it, had horrible taste in shoes. How could she belong with him? Why did she love him so much? Why couldn’t she just turn it off, like a switch?
“Bay, wait,” he said as he galloped awkwardly after her.
“What?” she whirled around and said.
He wasn’t expecting her anger. Frankly, neither was she. They both looked a little startled. “At least let me take you home.”
“No, thank you. Phin’s mom is picking us up.”
He pressed his lips together. His white makeup and painted mouth were smeared and blurred from the fight. He looked like he had been blotted out and someone new was coming through. “So you and Phin…,” he said.
“Me and Phin what?”
“Nothing.”
Bay turned away again.
“Wait. You have my blood all over you.”
She looked down to see that the fake zombie blood he was wearing was smeared all over the side of her great-grandmother’s beautiful dress. It made her want to cry. Her mom and aunt Claire were going to kill her.
“It’s fake,” she said, trying to keep her voice even. “I can tell everyone I was going for a Stephen King Carrie look.”
“Let me take you home.”
She was feeling tender, that was all. That’s how she justified this moment of weakness. She pulled her phone out of her ankle boot and called Phin.
It took a moment for him to answer. It almost went to voice mail. He finally answered, sounding breathless and shaky. “Hello?”
“Phin, it’s Bay. Where are you?”
“I’m in front of the gym. My mom will be here any minute. Where are you?”
“In the student parking lot.” Bay looked at Josh, then looked away. “I’ve got a ride home.”
“Oh,” Phin said, distracted. “Okay.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah.” He paused. “Yeah, I’m fine.”