Meg Cabot - Code Name Cassandra

This seemed to me to be neither flattering nor very romantic, but Shane found it hilarious. He giggled.

"What happened?" Shane wanted to know. "To the dog that was like Jess?"

"Oh," Rob said. "He was convinced he could stop moving cars with his teeth, if he could just sink them into their tires. Eventually, he got run over."

"I am not," I declared, "a car-chasing dog. Okay? There is absolutely no parallel between me and a dog that's stupid enough to—"

I broke off, realizing with indignation that Rob was chuckling to himself. He was in a much better mood now than he'd been earlier, when he hadn't been sure I wasn't seriously injured. He'd had a lot to say, let me tell you, on the subject of my insisting on staying at Camp Wawasee in order to find Shane, and thus endangering not only my life, but, as it had ended up, a lot of other people's as well.

And, of course, he was right. I'd screwed up. I was willing to admit it.

But, hey, things had turned out all right in the end.

Well, for everybody but Clay Larsson.

"So," I couldn't help asking, "you're not mad at me?"

All he said in reply was, "I think I'll be able to get over it."

But for Rob, that was like admitting—I don't know. His undying love for me, or something. So while I lay there, waiting for the inevitable moment when the nurse was going to decide I was well enough for questioning, I perked up. Why, I thought to myself, I'm going into my junior year! Juniors at Ernie Pyle High are allowed to go to the prom. I could invite Rob, and then I'd get to see him in a tux after all … that is, if he'd go with me. It is kind of weird, I'll admit, to go to prom with a guy who's already graduated, and who knows, maybe if I ask him, he'll refuse. . . .

But by the time prom rolls around, I'll finally be seventeen, so how can he refuse? I mean, really? Resist me? I don't think so.

These happy thoughts were somewhat dampened by the fact that Shane was in the next bed making gagging noises over what he deemed our "mushiness"—though if you ask me, there'd been nothing mushy at all going on … at least, not by Cosmo standards. Or any other standards, really, that I could see.

It was at that moment that the nurse went, "Well, from the sound of it, you two are well enough to take on a few more visitors. And there are a lot of them out there. . . ."

And then the evening became a blur of relieved faces and pointed questions, which we answered according to the story we'd so carefully prepared, Rob and Ruth and Scott and Dave and me, while we'd been waiting for the cops to show up.

"So," Special Agent Johnson said, sinking into a seat close to the one Rob occupied. "Anything you'd like to add to your somewhat sketchy account of just what, exactly, happened out there tonight, Miss Mastriani?"

I pretended to think about it. "Well," I said. "Let me see. I remembered a ghost story I'd told about a cave, so I figured I'd check the one on the camp property for Shane, just in case, and while we were in there, that crazy Larsson guy tried to kill us, and Shane whacked him in the head with a stalactite. That's about it, I think."

Special Agent Johnson didn't look very surprised. He looked over at Shane, who was sitting up in bed, fingering a plastic sheriff's badge one of the deputies had given him for his bravery.

"That sound right to you?"

Shane shrugged. "Yeah."

"I see." Special Agent Johnson closed his notebook, then exchanged a significant look with his partner, who was sitting on the end of my bed. "A hero. And just how, precisely, did you happen upon the scene, Mr. Wilkins? It was my impression that you left the camp some hours ago."

"Well," Rob said. "That's true. I did. But I came back."

"Uh-huh," Special Agent Johnson said. "Yes, I can see that. Any particular reason you came back?"

Rob did something very surprising then. He reached out, took hold of my hand, and said, "Well, I couldn't leave things the way they were with my girl, could I? I had to come back and apologize."

His girl? He had called me his girl! He had taken my hand and called me his girl!

I was grinning so happily, I was afraid my lips might break. Special Agent Johnson, noticing this, looked pointedly toward the ceiling, clearly sickened by my adolescent enthusiasm. But how could I help it? Rob had called me his girl ! So what if he'd done it to throw off a federal investigation into my affairs that evening? Prom had never seemed so likely a prospect as it did at that moment.

"Um," Special Agent Johnson said. "I see. Please forgive me if I sound unconvinced. The fact is, Special Agent Smith and I feel that it is a bit of a coincidence, Jess, that you went looking for young Master Shane in Wolf Cave. You certainly didn't mention that he might have been in this cave to anyone when you first learned of his disappearance."

"Excuse me, sir." The nurse appeared and stuck a mug of extremely hot, extremely sugary tea in my hands. "For the shock," she said in an explanatory manner to the agents, even though they hadn't asked, before she handed a similar mug to Shane.

I took a sip. It was surprisingly restorative, in spite of the fact that I was trying to look like someone whose only recent shock had been finding her boyfriend's tongue in her mouth.

Yeah, I know. Wishful thinking, right?

"Jess," Special Agent Smith said. "Why don't you tell us what really happened?"

I sat there, enjoying the warm tea flowing down my insides, and the warm arm flung across my outsides. Talk about a happy camper.

"I already told it," I said, "exactly like it was."

At their raised eyebrows, I added, "No, really. That's it."

"Yes," Shane said. "She's telling the truth, sir."

We all looked over at Shane, who, like me, was downing his own mug of tea. He had, through it all, clung to his bag of Chips Ahoy cookies, and now he slipped one from the bag, and dunked it into his tea.

Special Agent Johnson looked back at me.

"Nice try," he said. "But I don't think so."

"I highly doubt, for instance," Special Agent Smith said, "that that little boy was the one who set off a Molotov cocktail beneath our van."

I rolled my eyes. "Well, obviously," I said, "that could only have been Mr. Larsson."

Both Special Agents Johnson and Smith stared down at me.

"No, really," I said. "To distract you. I mean, come on. The guy's a real psycho. I hope they put him away for a long, long time. Going after a little kid like that? Why, it's unconscionable."

"Unconscionable," Special Agent Johnson repeated.

"Sure," I said defensively. "That's a word. I took the PSATs. I should know."

"Funny how," Special Agent Johnson said, "Clay Larsson happened to know exactly which vehicle was ours."

"Yeah," I said, swallowing a sip of tea. "Well, you know. Criminal genius and all."

"And strange," Special Agent Smith said, "that he would pick our vehicle, out of all the other ones parked in that lot, to set on fire, when he doesn't even know us."

"One of the hardest things to accept," Rob remarked, "about violent crime is its seeming randomness."

They both looked at Rob, and I felt a moment of pride that I was, as he'd so matter-of-factly put it, his girl.

Then Dr. Alistair appeared at the end of my cot, wringing his hands.

"Jessica," he said, glancing worriedly from me to Special Agents Johnson and Smith and then back again. "You're all right?"

I looked at him like he was crazy. Which I was pretty sure he was.

"Oh, thank goodness," he cried, even though I hadn't said anything in reply to his question. "Thank goodness. I do hope, Jessica, that you'll forgive me for my outburst earlier this evening—"

I said, "You mean when you asked me why I didn't get my psychic friends to help me find Shane?"