Meg Cabot - Code Name Cassandra

"Bullshit!" Shane's voice bounced off the walls of the cave, his bullshit repeating itself over and over until it finally faded away.

I blinked at him. "Excuse me?"

"You used your powers to find me," Shane hollered. "Your psychic powers! You still have them. Admit it!"

I stopped coming toward him. Instead, I shined my flashlight on his face, picking up cookie crumbs and a Dorito-orange mouth.

"Shane," I said. "Is that what this was about? Getting me to prove I still have ESP?"

"Of course." Shane wiggled his butt against the hard cave floor, his lip curled disgustedly. "Why else? I knew you were lying about it. I knew the minute I saw that kid's picture in your hand, that first night. You're a liar, Jess. You know that? You can give me all the strikes you want, but the truth is, you're no better than me. Worse, maybe. Because you're a liar."

I narrowed my eyes at him. The kid was a piece of work.

"Oh, yeah," I said. "And you're one to talk. Do you have any idea how many people are out there looking for you? They all think you drowned in the lake."

"Too bad they didn't ask you, huh, Jess?" Shane's eyes were very bright in my flashlight's beam. "You could have set them straight, huh?"

"Your mom," I went on. "Your dad. They're probably worried sick."

"Serve them right," Shane said in a sullen tone. "Making me come to this stinking camp in the first place."

I crossed the rest of the distance between us, then sank down beside Shane, leaning my back against the hard stone wall.

"You know what, Shane?" I said. "I think you're a liar, too."

Shane made an offended sound. Before he could say anything else, I went on, not looking at him, but at the weird shadows across the way.

"You know what I think?" I said. "I think you like playing the flute. I don't think you'd be able to play that well if you didn't like it. You may have perfect pitch and all of that, but playing like that, that takes practice."

Shane started to say something, but I just kept on going.

"And if you really hated it that much, you wouldn't practice. So that makes you as big a liar as I am."

Shane protested, quite colorfully, that this was untrue. His use of four-letter words was really very creative.

"You want to know why I tell people I can't do the psychic thing anymore, Shane?" I asked him, when I got tired of listening to him sputter invectives. "Because I didn't like my life too much back when they all thought I could still do it. You know? It was too … complicated. All I wanted was to be a normal girl again. So that's why I started lying."

"I'm not a liar," Shane insisted.

"Okay," I said. "Let's say you aren't. My question to you would be, why aren't you?"

He just stared at me. "W-what?"

"Why aren't you lying? If you hate coming here to Lake Wawasee so much, why don't you just tell everyone you can't play anymore, same way I told everyone I can't find people anymore?"

Shane blinked a few times. Then he laughed uncertainly. "Yeah, right," he said. "That'd never work."

I shrugged. "Why not? It worked for me. You're the only one who knows—outside of a few close friends—that I've still got this 'gift' of mine. Why can't you do the same thing? Just play bad."

Shane stared at me. "Play bad?"

"Sure. It's easy. I do it every year when our orchestra teacher holds chair auditions. I play badly—just a little badly—on purpose, so I don't get first chair."

Shane did a surprising thing then. He looked down at his hands. Really. Like they weren't attached to him. He looked down at them as if he were seeing them for the first time.

"Play bad," he whispered.

"Yeah," I said. "And then go out for football. If that's what you really want. Personally, I think giving up the flute for football is stupid. I mean, you can probably do both. But hey, it's your life."

"Play bad," he murmured again.

"Yeah," I said again. "It's easy. Just say to them, Yes, I had a gift. But then I lost it. Just like that." I snapped my fingers.

Shane was still gazing down at his hands. May I add that those hands—those hands that had made that achingly sweet music—were not too clean? They were grimy with dirt and potato chip crumbs.

But Shane didn't seem to care. "I had a gift," he murmured. "But then I lost if."

"That's it," I said. "You're getting the hang of it."

"I had a gift," Shane said, looking up at me, his eyes bright. "But then I lost it."

"Right," I said. "It will, of course, be a blow to music-lovers everywhere. But I'm sure you'll make a very excellent receiver."

Shane's look of appreciative wonder turned to one of disgust. "Lineman," he said.

"I beg your pardon. Lineman."

Shane continued to stare at me. "Jess," he said. "Why did you come looking for me? I thought you hated me."

"I do not hate you, Shane," I said. "I wish you would stop picking on people who are smaller than you are, and I would appreciate it if you would stop calling me a lesbian. And I can guarantee, if you keep it up, someday someone is going to do something a lot worse to you than what Lionel did."

Shane just stared at me some more.

"But I do not," I concluded, "hate you. In fact, I decided on my way over here that I actually like you. You can be pretty funny, and I really do think you'll be a good football player. I think you'd be good at anything you set your mind to being."

He blinked at me, his chubby, freckled cheeks smudged with dirt and chocolate.

"Really?" he asked. "You really think that?"

"I do," I said. "Although I also think you need to get a new haircut."

He pulled on the back of his mullet and looked defensive. "I like my hair," he said.

"You look like Rod Stewart," I informed him.

"Who's Rod Stewart?" he wanted to know.

But this seemed beyond even my descriptive ability at that particular moment. So I just said, "You know what? Never mind. Let's just go back to the cabin. This place is giving me the major creeps."

We turned back toward the way we'd come. Which was when I noticed something.

And that's that we were not alone.

"Well, lookie what we have here," said Clay Larsson.

C H A P T E R

16

I would just like to take this opportunity to say that I, for one, had not believed Special Agents Johnson and Smith when they'd announced that Mrs. Herzberg's boyfriend was on some kind of killing rampage, and that I was his next intended victim. I think I was pretty much under the impression that they were just trying to scare me, to get me alone with them somewhere so that they could make their observations of me without interruption.

For instance, had I gone with them to the Holiday Inn, Special Agent Smith would have undoubtedly gotten up very early and then sat there, with pen poised on notepad, at my bedside, to see if I'd wake up babbling about where Shane was, thus proving that I had lied about having lost my telekinetic powers, or whatever.

That's what a part of me had thought. I had never—unlike Rob—taken very seriously the idea that there might be a man unhappy enough with my recent behavior to want me, you know. Dead.

At least, I didn't believe it until he was standing in front of me, with one of those long, security-guard-type flashlights in his hands. . . .

One of those flashlights that would actually make a really handy weapon. Like if you wanted to conk somebody over the head with it. Someone who, for example, had kicked you in the face earlier that day.

"Thought you'd seen the last of me, dincha, girlie?" Clay Larsson leered down at Shane and me. He was what you'd call a large man, though I couldn't say much for his fashion sense. He looked no prettier now, in the glow of my flashlight, than he'd looked in broad daylight.

And he was even less appealing now that he had the imprint of the bottom of my Puma tattooed across the bridge of his nose. There were deep purple and yellow scars around his eyes—bruising from the nasal cartilage I'd crushed with my kick—and his nostrils were crusted over with blood.