Meg Cabot - Missing You

“Eventually,” I said. “First, I’m going to watch them.”

Rob made an incredulous face. “You’re going to—?”

“I have to,” I interrupted quickly. “Somebody’s got to try to find out what happened to all these girls, don’t you think?”

Rob’s expression changed. “You think he—?”

Again, I interrupted. “I don’t know. But I’m going to find out. And then…well, I plan on using them as leverage.”

“Leverage?” Now it was Rob’s turn to follow me. He trailed after me as I left 2T, putting the box I held on top of the box I’d taken from 1S. “Leverage for what?”

“I’m not sure yet,” I said, straightening. “But one thing I do know—this is a lot bigger, Rob, than just one guy shacking up with multiple girls. This looks like it might be a little home-based business Randy’s got going on the side, and that’s different than if he was just a horny jerk with a penchant for teenage runaways. You see that, don’t you?”

Rob’s breathing was still pretty heavy. In the quiet evening air, it was all I could hear, aside from the crickets and the occasional laugh track from someone’s TV inside their apartment.

The gaze he focused on me in the glare from the outdoor overhead bulb was laser sharp.

“Jess,” he said. His voice was laden with suspicion. “What are you doing?”

“Let’s not talk about it here,” I said as a woman with a golden retriever on a leash came out of 2L and looked at us questioningly before heading down the stairs. “Come on. Grab a box.”

Rob—to my surprise—did as I asked…only he grabbed both boxes, and started down the stairs.

“Moving out?” the woman asked me pleasantly as we went by her on our way to the parking lot.

“Yeah,” I said.

“He’s much better looking than your last boyfriend,” the woman said with an approving wink, nodding towards Rob’s departing back.

“I’m not—” I started to stammer, realizing she thought I lived in 2T with Randy. “He’s not—” Then, blushing scarlet, I just said, “Thanks,” and hurried to catch up with Rob.

“What did she say?” he asked me as he headed towards his truck.

“Nothing,” I said. I hoped he couldn’t see how red my face was in the glow from the streetlamps. “Will you follow me home and drop these off with me? I can’t take them on my bike.”

Rob looked like he wanted to say something, but he just nodded and climbed into his truck, after stowing the boxes in the back. I went to the next parking lot and got my bike—trying not to think about how nicely Rob’s backside had looked in those faded jeans as he’d climbed into his truck—then cruised over to where he was waiting.

Then we both headed out of the Fountain Bleu apartment complex, and towards my house on Lumbley Lane.

It was a warm summer night in southern Indiana. Downtown, the high school kids were out in full force, tooling up and down Main Street in their parents’ cars, and gathered in clusters outside what had been the Chocolate Moose but what was now a Dairy Queen. As I stopped at a red light—had there always been a traffic light there or was that new, too?—and gazed at the kids clutching their Peanut Buster Parfaits, it was hard not to think how young they looked, even though it hadn’t been so long ago that I’d been in one of those clusters myself….

Although, now that I thought about it, I hadn’t, really. Ever hung out much downtown, I mean. I hadn’t had that many friends in high school, aside from Ruth, who’d always been on a diet, anyway. I know how much my mom had longed for me to be like the girls I saw now, swinging their long hair and laughing up in the faces of the clean-cut looking guys who’d brought them there.

But I’d always worn my hair short, and the only boy I’d ever been interested in wasn’t exactly one my mom approved of….

“Jess?”

I turned my head. Had someone said my name?

“Jess Mastriani?”

There it was again. I looked around and saw a woman standing on the curb, her arm through the arm of a dark-haired guy in an IZOD and jeans.

“Oh my God, thatis you!” the woman cried, when I flipped up the glass shield on my helmet to get a better look at her. “Don’t you recognize me, Jess? It’s me, Karen Sue Hankey!”

I stared at her. Itwas Karen Sue. Only she was looking much, much different than the last time I’d seen her.

Then again, considering the fact that one of the last times I’d seen her, her nose had still been in a splint from when I’d broken it, this wasn’t much of a surprise.

Still, she looked totally different than she had in high school. She had done something to straighten her hair, and had ditched her usual frills for a sophisticated sleeveless sheath of some kind, in cream.

And obviously, she’d had her nose done.

“God, I can’t believe it’s you,” Karen Sue enthused. “Scott, look who it is! Jessica Mastriani. You remember, the one I told you I went to high school with? Lightning Girl? The one that television show is based on.”

Scott—whom I took to be some kind of frat guy Karen Sue had brought home from whatever Ivy League college she was attending, in order to meet her parents—drawled, “Oh, sure. Jessica Mastriani. I’ve read all about you, of course, and the incredible things you’ve done for our country. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

I just stared at them. The last time I’d seen Karen Sue—well, close to the last time, anyway—I’d had my fist in her face. And now she was acting like we’d been the best of friends?

This is what happens when you get even a little bit of fame. Everyone—even your sworn enemies—tries to make nice with you.

“You do remember me, don’t you, Jess?” Karen Sue didn’t look worried. She let out one of her annoying, tinkly laughs. “I’d heard you lost your powers, and all, but nobody said you’d lost your memory! Listen, what are you doing tomorrow morning? Want to have brunch? Maybe we could do some shopping after. Call me. I’m at my parents’ for the week. Just visiting down from Vassar.”

The light turned green. I flipped my visor down.

“Or I guess I could call you,” Karen Sue screamed.Now she was looking worried. “You’re at your parents’ place, right? Jessica? Jess?”

I gunned the engine and took off. Whatever else Karen Sue said was lost in the roar of my muffler.

I didn’t slow down again until I’d reached my driveway. I cut the engine and was pulling off my helmet when Rob pulled up alongside me.

“What was that all about?” he wanted to know. “Who was that girl?”

“No one,” I said. “Just someone I used to know.”

Rob studied me through the open driver’s-side window. “Someone you used to know, eh,” he said tonelessly. “Guess there’re a lot of people around here who you could say that about.”

“Guess so,” I said, not rising to the bait…whatever it was. “Can I have my boxes, please?”

Rob shook his head. But he got out of the truck and went around to get the boxes of tapes, and set them gently on my lawn.

It was quiet on Lumbley Lane, which wasn’t exactly a main thoroughfare. There were only a few lights on in Tasha’s parents’ house across the street, and only a few on in my own house, as well. People in southern Indiana go to bed early—after the eleven o’clock news, at the latest. It’s not like in New York, where sometimes the parties don’t even start until midnight, or two or threeA .M. The only things still up at two or threeA .M. in this part of the world were crickets.

“Are you going to let me in on the plan,” Rob wanted to know, breaking the evening’s stillness, “or are you going to keep on shutting me out?”

I felt my jaw clench. “I’m not the one shutting people out,” I said.