I stared at the picture, trying to make sense of it. Make sense of her. Then something clicked.
“Think about it,” I told Enzo. “Lizzie was born a werewolf. So she’s always had this duality, probably always felt like part of her was pretending to be something she wasn’t. So she tried on different personalities, never guessing that she’d never find one that fit. Not until she had her first transformation anyway.”
“Yeah,” Enzo said, still flipping through the yearbook. “I guess so.”
“I want to see if there’s anything like this in any of my werewolf books.” I jumped to my feet. I was suddenly buzzing with energy. We’d found another piece of the puzzle. We were one step closer to solving Lizzie’s mysteries.
“I actually think I’m going to stay here,” Enzo said quietly.
“Oh.”
“I kind of want to be around her stuff for a while longer.”
I deflated. He’d rather be around the idea of Lizzie than chase a lead with me. Who would have thought you could be rejected for someone who wasn’t even present?
“Yeah, sure,” I said. “Don’t you need a ride home though?”
“I can take the bus.”
I hesitated in the doorway.
I was stupid. I’d been so happy to have an ally that I’d let myself forget why Enzo was hanging around in the first place. It wasn’t about discovering magic. It wasn’t because he felt some kinship with me. He missed his girlfriend. He missed his girlfriend, whom he loved very much, and he wanted to find her. I was just a means of making that happen. I was a pit stop on the road back to Lizzie.
“Really, it’s OK,” Enzo said. “I’ve taken the bus from here a million times, kid.”
“Yeah. Of course you have. I’ll give you a call later, OK?”
Enzo nodded and looked back at the yearbook. I left him sitting in Lizzie’s sterile, white apartment.
There was a weird feeling in my stomach that I tried to ignore.
Chapter 18
Full Moon
At work, Christa was babbling about how she had so much to do to get ready for her cousin’s bridal shower and how her cousin was being a bridezilla and checking her registry, like, once an hour to see what gifts had been purchased. Which made Christa not want to throw the shower at all, but she had to. I nodded like I cared, even though weddings are not at all interesting to me.
“Want me to take your shift tonight?” I asked. I got off at eight, and Christa was scheduled to close. “It sounds like you could use a few extra hours.”
“That’s sweet, but you don’t need to do that.”
“It’s not a big deal.”
“Hawthorn, you’re seventeen, and it’s Saturday night. You have better things to do than hang out with Vernon.”
The thing was, I didn’t. I’d rather be at work than sitting at home feeling sorry for myself, because what could be more boring than that? I thought about telling Christa that, but she’d maybe, probably, think I was a loser, because she likely always had weekend plans when she was my age.
“Yeah, I guess I do have plans,” I mumbled.
“A date?” Christa asked, her eyes all sparkly at the prospect of gossip.
“Not really.”
“You aren’t still hanging out with Lizzie’s guy, are you?”
No one had sat at the counter since I’d last wiped it down, but I grabbed a cloth and hit the Formica with some elbow grease.
“Enzo, you mean? We hang out, but it’s not like that.”
“Good. You should be dating someone more…wholesome.”
I frowned. “What if the wholesome boys don’t like me?”
“Then make them like you.”
“What if I don’t like them?”
Christa laughed and patted me on the back. “We’ve all had that problem.”
She wandered to see if Vernon needed anything, and I continued to clean.
Did Christa really think I could just make someone like me? It sounded like something Lizzie would say. It wasn’t that simple. Either someone liked me or they didn’t, and it was out of my control.
Or was it? Christa was the kind of person who’d probably show up to a party whether she was invited or not. And she’d be so friendly and easygoing that no one would think anything of it. Christa accepted everyone, so everyone accepted her too.
Maybe it was my own fault that I didn’t have a real boyfriend. Or friends. Or a social life. Maybe I should have been putting myself out there instead of waiting for people to come to me. If I had nothing to do on a Saturday night, maybe it’s because I wasn’t really looking.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I went into Mr. Walczak’s office and called Enzo.
“Hello?” he said, sounding like I woke him up, even though it was evening.
“Do you want to go to a party tonight?”
? ? ?
The scene at the Barn was pretty much what I expected: drunk teenagers making stupid decisions while listening to bad music.