My Kind of Crazy - Robin Reul Page 0,5

sniff to see if they’re tolerable, since I haven’t done laundry in a while. Not too ripe.

I’m about to head downstairs when I realize that being up and ready might arouse suspicion, especially if I stumble in while Dad is nursing his morning coffee, adding the shot of whiskey that he thinks no one notices. Of course, if he’d seen me sneaking in, he probably would have assumed I was out somewhere getting laid. That would make him happy, no doubt. Then again, we’d lose half of our source of conversation: him asking me if I’m getting any, me telling him “not that I’m aware of,” him giving me the list of why I’m repellent to the opposite sex.

Better to crawl back under the covers and wait it out. I try to close my eyes, but my brain is racing, processing everything that’s happened since last night.

As soon as the clock turns to seven, I’m out of bed like a shot, flying down the stairs two at a time and out the door, letting the screen door slam with a fwap! behind me. I have to find Peyton. I pedal to school like my life depends on it, and for all I know, it does.

3

The first thing I see as I lock my bike at school is a cop car parked out front. Although this is not a highly unusual occurrence at Kennedy High, I’d be lying if I didn’t say a little bile is rising in my throat. No one’s in the car, which means the cops must be inside talking to someone in the office.

Or searching a locker.

Or waiting for someone.

Or waiting for someone so that they can search their locker.

Beads of sweat sprout on my upper lip alongside the stubble. I mentally inventory my locker, trying to remember if I have as much as a wadded-up piece of paper with the name Amanda Carlisle written on it, let alone anything that would tie me to the events of the previous evening. But all I can come up with are a stinky pair of gym shorts and a Snickers bar so old it could chip a tooth.

I walk to my locker, whistling to show how totally relaxed and at ease I am with the world. I’m fiddling with my lock when I hear Amanda approach with her gaggle of girlfriends, who listen with rapt attention as she recounts how she defied death. I pretend to focus on my lock with all the concentration of a safecracker, careful not to look directly at her. In my peripheral vision, I can see her hair is loose and wavy today, her blond bangs swept to one side. Her lips are painted bubble-gum pink to match her cardigan. If her jeans were any tighter, she’d need a crowbar to get out of them.

She stops at her locker, which is in the next bank over. The girls fan out around her as she spins the dial and puts her books away. I hear her tell them, “The cops said whoever did it was trying to spell something, like a message. I swear to you, when I looked out, I saw someone standing there. These eyes looked up at me, but not in a creepy way, and then there was just this wall of flames.”

“Whoa.” Becca Henry’s eyes widen and her mouth hangs open.

“The thing is, I don’t think he was trying to hurt anybody. I believe that message was for me. I mean, right before it happened, I heard him call my name.”

“I’ve got chills,” Hannah Wolf says as she runs her fingers up and down her arms.

If I were a cartoon and Amanda looked over at me right now, she would see my heart practically beating out of my chest. I glance at her. She’s smiling and eating up the attention, as several of her friends make swoony noises. I decide to reorganize my locker so that I can keep listening.

“That’s so romantic. Who do you think it was?” Jenny O’Leary asks.

Amanda shrugs. “I don’t know. But I’m dying to find out.”

Hannah grabs Amanda’s arm and bounces on the balls of her feet as she says in a loud whisper, “O-M-G! Maybe it was Clay Kimball!”

Clay is a douche-bag jock on the baseball team who thinks that being able to hit a ball with a large stick entitles him to be a jerk. For reasons that remain a mystery, women seem to find this attractive.

“No, Clay’s too tall and built. This guy