head back to scour the mall parking lot for the second time, when he spotted her.
Miss Phillips from English class. Alone. Coming out of the old-fashioned music store.
Granddad's truck wasn't the sexiest vehicle, but it would have to do. Jamison pulled up behind her car and rolled down, by hand, a very unsexy window.
“Miss Phillips, I presume.”
She spun around and smiled. “Mr. Shaw, as I live and breathe. The Southern gentleman who is so humble he believes himself to be a coward.” She prowled over to the truck as seductively as any Southern belle, clutching her bag in both hands.
He realized she was pushing her boobs together on purpose. Interesting.
“It's not humility, Miss Phillips. It's honesty.”
“Uh huh.” She dropped the Southern belle act. “Can you believe that crap? Calling us Miss Phillips and Mr. Shaw? I think he does it so we'll think he's cool, like he thinks we're all just adults, sitting around shooting the breeze. As if.”
“I don't know. At least his class hasn't been boring. Yet. But I've only been in it a couple of times.”
“Well I heard,” she leaned on his open window, “that Mr. Evans likes to date eighteen-year-olds. My friend heard that Mr. E calls lots of his old students after they graduate. To. Hang. Out! Can you imagine? He's like almost 60!”
Again, Jamison toyed with the thought of getting his hands on Mr. E’s cell phone. Maybe it was watching a man his age so into texting that made something seem...off about the guy. If he was texting young girls, that was sick, as in...sick.
Suddenly Jamison wished he could keep Mr. E from reading his essay from that morning.
Ew, and he so did not want to be calling him Mr. E!
Someone honked.
“I gotta move.” He started rolling away and Miss P backed up, no doubt preparing to pounce on him as soon as he was parked.
Sure enough, as soon as the pickup stopped moving, she was back at his window.
“Miss Phillips?”
“Yeah.”
“What the hell is your name?”
She laughed. “Rachel.”
“Well, Rachel. I need a big favor, and I thought you might have the time to help me.”
“Oh, anything. Really.”
And he believed her. Really.
Step 7. Check and then some.
***
Step eight was easy enough. After he pulled the pickup under the carport of the shed, he ducked inside the tack room and shut off the breaker for the yard lights. When night came, the lights wouldn’t come on automatically, as they usually did. No one would notice, though; they'd just think the night was unusually dark, or so he hoped. He and his mom had turned them off plenty of times for star-gazing, and it was always days later, after a couple of comments about how dark it was outside, that someone would remember to turn the yard lights on again.
***
It was early yet when Jamison arrived back at the school. All the student-officer-sweatered kids were delicately building up the wood for the bonfire. Even from the parking lot he could hear one young man giving orders, reminding the others that since he was an Eagle Scout and knew more about fires than they ever would, they'd better do just as he said or they'd be sitting around trying to get the damned thing lit all night. Another kid shouted he had lighter fluid and wouldn't let that happen and the struggle for dominance was on.
Jamison walked to the bleachers, out of earshot, and sat down to wait.
It was going to be a long night. He wished he could take a nap, there on the cold aluminum seats, but he didn't want to wake up frozen to death, or miss Skye. If she came and couldn't find him, she might take off and jack up all his plans.
It didn't matter if those idiots got the fire started or not, it only mattered that she showed. There was no other chance. It had to be tonight. Who knew how long it would be before he woke up with his memory wiped out again? Even now he feared waking up to the smell of real bacon cooking. Maybe bacon would scare the shit out of him for the rest of his life.
Pity, that, his granddad would say.
Pity, all of it.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Lucas, I’m going to the Homecoming Bonfire.” Sky reached for her keys.
“Is that wise?”
“I have no idea. I need to have Jamison’s trust. I assume that doing teenage activities with him will earn me that trust.”
“No reason for him not to trust you already. We eliminated his suspicions.”
“True. But