"What is it?"
"We've got to get everybody," Jenny said. "Do you have your lunch?"
"Yes." Audrey didn't ask why they had to get everybody. She just shook spiky copper bangs out of her eyes with an expert toss of her head and pressed her cherry-glossed lips together.
They cut across the center of campus toward the girls' gym. The sun shone on Jenny's head, sending a little trickle of dampness down the back of her neck. Too hot for May, even in California. So why did she feel so cold inside?
She and Audrey peered into the girls' locker room. Dee wasn't even dressed yet, snapping towels and snickering with a couple of girls on the swim team. She was naked and completely unself-conscious, beautiful and lithe and supple as a jet-black panther. When she saw Jenny and Audrey looking at her significantly, she hiked an eyebrow at them, then nodded. She reached for a garnet-colored T-shirt and joined them a minute later.
They found Zach in the art block, standing alone outside the photography lab. That wasn't surprising -Zach was usually alone. What surprised Jenny was that he wasn't inside the lab, working. Zach's thin, intense face had always been pale, but these days it looked almost chalky, and in the last few weeks he'd taken to wearing black cotton twills and shirts. He's changed, Jenny thought. Well, no wonder. What they'd been through would have changed anyone.
He saw Jenny, who tilted her head in the general direction of the staff parking lot. The usual place. He gave a brief jerk of his head that meant agreement. He'd meet them there.
They found Michael near the English block, picking up scattered papers and books from the concrete floor.
"Jerks, porkers, bozos, Neanderthals," he was muttering.
"Who did it?" Jenny asked as Audrey checked Michael for bruises.
"Carl Vertman and Steve Matsushima." Michael's round face was flushed and his dark hair even more rumpled than usual. "It would help if you kissed it here, "he said to Audrey, pointing to the corner of his mouth.
Dee did a swift, flowing punch-and-kick to the air that looked like dancing. "I'll take care of them," she said, flashing her most barbaric smile.
"Come on, we've got to talk," Jenny said. "Has anybody seen Tom?"
"I think he cut this morning," Audrey said. "He wasn't in history or English."
Wonderful, Jenny thought as Michael got his lunch. Zachary was wearing Morbid Black, Michael was getting stomped, and Tom, the super-student, was cutting whole mornings-just when she needed him most.
They sat down by the parking lot on what was commonly known at Vista Grande High as the grassy knoll. Zach arrived and dropped first his lunch sack, then himself to the ground, folding his long, thin legs in one easy motion.
"What's happening?" Dee said.
Jenny took a deep breath.
"There's this girl," she said, and she did her best to describe the Crying Girl. "Probably a ninth grader," she said. "Do any of you guys know her?"
They all shook their heads.
"Because she said we killed Summer and hid her body, and that she knew that P.C. didn't do it. She sounded like somebody who really did know, and not just because she has faith in him or something."
Dee's sloe-black eyes were narrowed. "You think-"
"I think maybe she saw him that morning. And that means-"
"Maybe she knows where the paper house is," Michael said, looking more alarmed than excited.
"If she does, we have to find her," Jenny said.
Michael groaned.
Jenny didn't blame him. Everything about their situation was awful. The way people looked at them now, the questions in people's eyes-and the danger. The danger that no one but their group knew about.
A lot of it was Jenny's fault. It had been her own brilliant idea. Let's tell the police the truth....
There were two policewomen. One was Hawaiian or Polynesian and model-beautiful. The other was a stocky motherly person. They both examined the pile of fragments around the sliding glass door.
"But that doesn't have anything to do with Summer," Jenny said, and then she and Tom and Michael and Audrey explained it all again.