“A man? I saw Rod Delveccio giving Tabitha Collins a hell of a mouth check back there, but I wouldn’t say he was a real man about it.”
“No,” she said. “A guy, a man. Right here”—she patted the air—“by me. He had his hand on my arm.”
He cocked his head, gave an eyebrows-up frown. “There was no one else down here that I saw. What do you mean, he had his hand on your arm? Are you okay? Did some guy try to hurt you?”
Trevor seemed to puff up in the chest, his cheeks flushing a hint of crimson as he whipped around, looking for some imaginary Lothario.
“No, Trevor, I guess I was just…” Bex looked around again, feeling exposed, feeling watched. “I guess I just thought I saw someone. Must have been nothing.”
“You ready?”
Bex swallowed hard, Detective Schuster’s message burned in her head. He’s here, Bex. She looped her arm through Trevor’s and held on tight, trying to get as close as possible.
Here in Kill Devil Hills? Here at the game?
She scrutinized every face she could, paying extra attention to those who glanced at her, but it was futile: there seemed to be thousands of people, and half of them were wearing baseball hats pulled low or had their faces painted red and black. It should have been impossible to spot someone, but Bex was sure she could feel eyes on her, that she was pinned under someone’s unfaltering gaze. When she turned, she saw Laney and Chelsea deep in conversation with a clutch of other cheerleaders. Zach was at the top of the bleachers staring down, but was he looking at her or at his GoPro?
And halfway down, arms crossed in front of her chest, was Lauren, staring passed Bex with flat eyes that looked vacant, unfocused. Bex’s stomach seized as the chatter and noise went on around her. People approached her, chucking her shoulder, fist-bumping Trevor, jumping up and down. All around her, people moved forward while she seemed to wind down, slipping into some sort of vortex where everyone but her swirled and blended. She stood out like the hard-lined oddity.
Trevor tried to convince Bex to come with him out to the beach where Laney, Chelsea, and the rest of the spirit squad were setting up a bonfire and a keg, but Bex’s nerves were a jangled mess. She slid down in Trevor’s car, not sure whether she was hiding from her father or Detective Schuster, not entirely sure whether she wanted to sit by Trevor’s fire or pack up all her things and run.
Once home, she didn’t bother turning on the lights. She went straight from the front door up to her room without checking in with Denise or Michael. She undressed in the dark, using a bath towel to rub off the pitchfork tattoo that Chelsea had insisted she wear since halftime, then folding herself into the relaxing cool of her mint-green sheets. She pressed her eyelids shut even as Detective Schuster called and texted her. She glanced at the first text, “Did you get my message? Has he contacted you?” then thumbed the phone to silent and pushed it under the bed.
Her father was in Kill Devil Hills. She thought that he had come for her, that he was there under the bleachers but—but what? Had she made the whole thing up? And if she hadn’t, what had happened to him? Bex’s heart skipped from thrilled to terrified to guilt-ridden to sick. The filmstrip of girls… Detective Schuster, convincing Bex she was doing the right thing.
But what if I’m not?
Bex pulled her laptop from her desk and opened it. She began to type:
BETHANNER has requested a private chat with GAMECREATOR.
Immediately, GAMECREATOR accepted.
BETHANNER: Who is this?
GAMECREATOR: You put buckets of powdered sugar on your waffles. At least you did whenever we went to the diner and your gran wasn’t around to stop you.
Bex’s head started to buzz. Her palms started to sweat. Could this really be him? She kept typing and continued with a question-and-answer session that lasted deep into the night, that convinced her that if GAMECREATOR wasn’t her father, he was someone very close. That was the last conscious thought Bex had before falling off to sleep.
? ? ?
“Shouldn’t they have to pay us for this or something?” Chelsea whined. “School’s been out for an hour. We should get overtime.”
Bex unfurled another loop of red crepe paper and Trevor cut it off. “If you’re getting paid to go to school, I need to know,” Trevor said.
“It’s one day,” Laney said.
“It’s a week,” Chelsea corrected, holding up the appropriate number of fingers. “Three days to decorate these ugly halls, one day to make the ‘Yay parents!’ posters, and one day to hand out punch and cookies. All after school hours.”
“In other words, it’s Back to School Night.”