Meg Cabot - Safe House

But my dad didn't seem to care. He gave my mom a squeeze and said, with only somewhat forced jocularity, "Hey, if something had to go, I'm glad it's this and not the house."

They didn't say anything else after that. They just stood there with their arms around each other and their heads together, watching a big part of their livelihood go up in smoke.

Douglas came up to me. I didn't tell him what I was thinking, which was that the last time I'd seen our parents standing like that, it had been outside the emergency room, when he'd slashed his wrists last Christmas Eve.

"I guess," Douglas said, "now probably wouldn't be a good time to tell them, right?"

I looked at him. "Tell them what?"

"About my new job."

I couldn't help smiling a little at that.

"Uh, no," I said. "Now would definitely not be a good time to tell them about your new job."

And so the four of us stood and watched Mastriani's burn down.

C H A P T E R

18

By the time I got to school the next day, it was noon, and everyone—everyone in the entire town—had heard what had happened. When I walked through the doors of the caf—it was my lunch period when Mom dropped me off—all these people came rushing up to me to express their condolences. Really, just like somebody had died.

And, in a way, I guess, somebody had died. I mean, Mastriani's was an institution in our town. It was where people went when they wanted to splurge, like on a birthday, or before prom or something.

But I guess not anymore.

I think I've mentioned how extremely not popular I am at my Ernest Pyle High. I mean, I don't have what you would call school spirit. I could really care less if the Cougars win State, or even if they win, period. And I don't think I've ever been invited to a party. You know the ones, where somebody's parents aren't home, so everybody comes over with a keg and trashes the place, like in the movies?

Yeah, I've never been invited to one of those.

So I guess you could say I was pretty surprised by the outpouring of sympathy for my situation from a certain segment of the student population at Ernie Pyle High. Because it wasn't just Ruth and Skip and people from the Orchestra who came up to say they were sorry to hear about what had happened.

No, Todd Mintz came up, and a bunch of the Pompettes, and Tisha Murray and Jeff Day, and even the king of the popular crowd himself, Mark Leskowski.

It was almost enough to take a girl's mind off the fact that there was someone out there who wanted her dead—and who'd see that she got that way, if she came too close to the truth.

"I can't believe it," Mark said, plopping his truly magnificent rear end down on the bench beside me and regarding me with those deep brown eyes. "I mean, we were just there , you and I."

"Yeah," I said, uncomfortably aware of the number of envious glances coming my way. After all, with Amber gone, Mark was fair game. I saw more than one cheerleader nudge the girl next to her and point to the two of us, sitting there with our heads so close together at the otherwise empty table.

Of course, they had no way of knowing that my heart belonged—and always would—to another.

"At least nobody was hurt," Mark said. "I mean, could you imagine if it had happened during the dinner rush or something?"

"It would have been hard," I said to him, "for whoever poured gasoline all over the place, to have done so without anybody noticing during the dinner rush."

Mark's dark eyebrows lifted. "You mean somebody did it on purpose ? But why ? And who ?"

"My guess would be whoever killed Amber and then beat up Heather. And they did it as a warning," I said. "To me. To back off."

Mark looked stunned. "God," he said. "That sucks ."

It was more or less an adequate representation of my feelings on the matter, and so I nodded.

"Yeah," I said. "Doesn't it?"

It was right after that that the bell rang. Mark said, "Hey, listen. Maybe we could get together or something this weekend. I mean, if you're up for it. I'll give you a call."

Okay, I'll admit it. It was kind of cool to have the best-looking guy in school—vice-president of the senior class, quarterback, and all around hottie—say things to me like "I'll give you a call." I mean, don't get me wrong: he was no Rob Wilkins or anything. There was that whole "unacceptable" thing, which was a little, I don't know, militaristic for me.

But hey. He'd asked me out. Twice now. All of a sudden, I had a clue as to how my mom must have felt, when she was in school. You know, Little Miss Corn Detassler and all of that. I could see why she'd been so excited for me when Skip had called. Being popular—well, it's pretty fun.

Or at least it was, up until Karen Sue Hankey came up to me on my way to my locker and went, in her snotty Karen-Sue-Hankey voice, "Missed you at chair auditions this morning."

I froze, one hand on my combination lock. The auditions for chair placement in Orchestra. I had completely forgotten. After all, I had been dealing with some pretty heavy stuff lately … threats to my life, and the destruction of a large portion of my family's business. It wasn't any wonder I hadn't been able to keep my schedule straight.

But wait a minute . . . the winds had been scheduled for Thursday.

Which was today.

"I suppose, since you missed them," Karen Sue said, "you'll have to be last chair until next semester's tryouts. Too bad. Mr. Vine is posting the placements after school and I'm betting I'll be—Hey!"

The reason Karen Sue yelled "Hey" is because I pushed her. Not hard or anything. I just had to get somewhere, and fast, and she was in my way.

And that somewhere was the teachers' lounge, where I knew Mr. Vine spent fifth period, decompressing after freshman Orchestra.

I tore down the hall, bumping into people rushing off to class, and not even saying excuse me. It wasn't fair. It totally wasn't fair. A person with an excused absence like mine—and my absence was excused—should be allowed to audition like everybody else, not relegated to last chair just because some psycho had burned her parents' restaurant down.

The thing was, I had totally learned to sight read over the summer. I had had this big plan of blowing Mr. Vine away with my awesome new musical abilities. I didn't want to be first chair or anything, but I definitely deserved third, maybe even second. No way was I going to take last chair. Not lying down, anyway.

I skidded to a halt in front of the door to the teachers' lounge. I was going to be late for Bio, but I didn't care. I banged on the door.

As I was doing so, somebody touched my shoulder. I turned around, and was surprised to see Claire Lippman, who hardly ever spoke to me in the hallways. Not because she was snotty or anything, just because, usually, she had her head buried in a script.

"Jess," she said. Claire did not look good. Which was also unusual, because Claire is one of those, you know, raving beauties. The kind you maybe don't notice right off, but the more you look at her, the more you realize that she is perfect.

She didn't look so perfect just then, though. She'd chewed all the lipstick off her lower lip, and the pink sweater she'd flung around her shoulders—she was wearing a white sleeveless top—was in grave danger of slipping off and landing on the floor.

"Jess, I …" Claire looked up and down the hallway. It was clearing out, as people darted into class. "I really need to talk to you."

I could tell something was wrong. Really wrong.

"What's wrong, Claire?" I asked, putting my hand on her arm. "Are you—"

All right. Are you all right. That's what I'd been going to ask her.