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She jumped, cutting off Nikki’s prepared retort, startled by a mysterious hand that, with a clink of bracelets, appeared from around the side of her open locker door. The handheld Isobel’s runaway tube of Raspberry Ice lip gloss between a set of long fingers.

Isobel took the gloss and tossed it into her locker, about to mutter a quick thanks, when Nikki interrupted, snatching her wrist again.Advertisement

“I mean, look at this!” she said, bringing Isobel’s hand to her nose, scrutinizing the numbers as though they spelled some hidden message. “It probably means you’ve made his death list or something. I mean, the guy is a total Trench Coat Mafia wacko.”

Isobel detached her wrist from Nikki’s grasp once more and leveled a mordant stare at her friend. “Nikki, are you kidding me? It’s a phone number.”

“Yeah, I know. That’s what I’m saying. You got hit on by Lurch, and now he’s going to leave dead animals on your porch and cyber-stalk your Facebook page.”

“It isn’t like that.” Isobel sighed again. “We just got stuck together for this . . . thing.”

She stared into her open locker as she changed out her books.

To her, the presence of Varen Nethers, aka “that one guy,” had always been like that of a fleeting shadow, an estranged entity that floated through the halls, never wanting to be bothered. In all truth, he’d probably crossed her mind no more than a handful of times and even then, only when someone chose to dredge up the latest crazy goth-centric gossip. She’d never had a class with him until this year, and Trenton was a big enough school that her day-to-day interaction with him had, before now, never amounted to more than the occasional hallway pass-by.

Isobel jumped again, shaken from her reverie, her breath catching when the mystery hand reappeared. This time it looped over the top of her locker door, the fingers clutching a familiar pistachio-green cylinder.

Cautiously Isobel took the tube of Pink Goddess lipstick and watched the hand of her locker neighbor slither away once more. She glanced at Nikki, who made a show of blinking before grasping Isobel’s locker door and moving it aside. But the girl—Isobel thought her name was Grace or Gabbie—slammed her own locker shut, swiveled away without a word, and walked off.

“Creepers,” Nikki muttered. She plucked the lipstick from Isobel’s hand and, repositioning the locker door, stooped to use the mirror inside. “Back into the Middle Ages she goes.”

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Isobel watched the retreating back of the girl, whose too long, too straight brown hair swished in time with her floor-length broom skirt. With a final faint tinkle of bracelets, the girl swept around the next corner and out of sight.

“Anyway,” Nikki said, finishing with the lipstick and tucking the tube back into Isobel’s makeup bag. She blotted her lips and popped her mouth. “I still think you should tell Brad.”

“Drop it, Nikki. I’m not going to tell Brad,” Isobel snapped. “And don’t you tell him either,” she added, slamming her locker door shut. At this, Nikki’s expression morphed, fading at once from scandalized coyness into wounded annoyance, and Isobel had only half a beat to regret her words before her friend twirled away.

“Nikki,” Isobel moaned, starting after her.

“Whatever,” Nikki shot over her shoulder. She fluttered one hand dismissively and quickened her pace. “You know,” she called, “he’s going to keep that stalker crap up if he thinks he can get away with it.”

Watching the bounce of Nikki’s ponytail, with its tiny blue and gold puff-ball hair tie, Isobel felt a tug of guilt. So maybe she’d been a little too insistent on keeping the whole phone number incident a secret. Then again, if she caught up to her, if she apologized now, Nikki might think it wouldn’t be such a big deal if she did blab to Brad.

Isobel found herself hating that she’d told Nikki the truth when she should have just made something up. Of course, she hadn’t wanted to play secrets, either. Nikki was her best friend.

She was on the squad and part of the crew.

She slowed her steps and let Nikki walk ahead of her to lunch. When she was out of sight, Isobel ducked into the nearest girls’ restroom. At the sink, she turned the water on warm and pumped soap from the dispenser into her hand. She lathered it thick over the numbers.

Like curls of smoke, the deep purple ink loosened into violet swirls and then slid down the drain.

At practice that day, she missed a jump.

She never missed a jump.

At the end of a round-off, back handspring, back tuck, she overrotated and had to catch herself on her heels. She hit the gymnasium floor hard, landing straight on her butt, bones jarring, teeth rattling. pqdm.com