The Chase Page 0,6

got to go postering today anyway," Audrey said. "We might as well look for this girl while we're at it."

"It's not going to make any difference," Zach said flatly.

Chapter 3

The others turned to Jenny. He's your cousin; you deal with him, their looks said.

Jenny took another deep breath. "You know perfectly well it will make a difference," she said tightly. "If we don't get the paper house back-you know what could happen."

"And what are you going to do if we do get it? Burn it? Shred it? With them inside? Isn't that murder, or don't P.C. and Slug count?"

Everyone burst into speech. "They wouldn't care about us-" Audrey began.

"Just cool it," Dee said, standing over Zach like a lioness.

"Maybe they're not inside. Maybe they just took it and skipped town or something," Michael offered.

Jenny gathered all her self-control, then she stood, looking at Zach directly. "If you don't have anything useful to say, then you'd better leave," she said.

She saw the looks of surprise from the others. Zach didn't look surprised. He stood, his thin beaky-nosed face even more intense than usual, staring at Jenny. Then, without a word, he turned around and left.

Jenny sat back down, feeling shaken.

"Good grief," Michael said mildly.

"He deserved it," said Dee.

Jenny knew the point was not whether Zach had deserved it, but that Michael was surprised Jenny would give it to him.

I've changed, Jenny thought. She tried to push the knowledge away with a "So what," but it nagged at her. She had the feeling that, deep down, she might have changed more than anybody knew yet.

"We have to find the paper house," she said.

"Right," Dee said. "Even though I don't think so there's a chance in hell of P.C. and Slug making it all the way to the third floor where Julian is. Not with that snake and that wolf around-"

"The Creeper and the Lurker," Audrey said with precision.

"-but we might as well be safe." A bell rang. "See you in physiology," Dee added to Jenny, grabbed her empty Carbo-Force can, and ran for the art block.

Michael brushed cookie crumbs off his lap, got up, and began the trek to the gym.

Jenny knew she should be hurrying, too. She and Audrey had to get changed for tennis. But at the moment she really didn't care if she was late or not.

"Want to cut?" she said to Audrey.

Audrey stopped dead in the middle of reapplying her lipstick. Then she finished, snapped her compact shut, and put the lipstick away. "What's happened to you?" she said.

"Nothing-" Jenny was beginning, when she realized that somebody was walking up to them.

It was a guy, a senior from Jenny's world lit class. Brian Dettlinger. He looked at Audrey uncertainly, but when it was apparent she wasn't going anywhere he said hi to both of them.

Jenny and Audrey said hi back.

"Just wondering," he said, eyeing a bumblebee hovering over a clump of Mexican lilies, "if you had, you know, a date for the prom."

Prom's over, Jenny thought stupidly. Then she realized that of course he meant senior prom.

Audrey's chestnut eyes had widened. "No, she doesn't," she said instantly, with the slight pursing of lips that brought out her beauty mark.

"But I have a boyfriend," Jenny said, astonished.

Everyone knew that. Just as everyone knew that she and Tom had been together since elementary school, that for years people had talked about them as Tom-and-Jenny, a single unit, as if they were joined at the hip. Everyone knew that.

"Oh, yeah," Brian Dettlinger said, looking vaguely embarrassed. "But I just thought-he isn't around much anymore, and..."

"Thank you," Jenny said. "I can't go." She knew she sounded scandalized, and that Brian didn't deserve it. He was only trying to be nice. But she was put off balance by the whole situation. Obviously she couldn't have been his first choice, since today was Monday and the prom was this Saturday, but to have been asked at all by him was a compliment. Brian Dettlinger wasn't just any scabby senior scrambling for a date at the last minute, he was captain of the football team and went with the head cheerleader. He was a star.

"Ma epazzo?" Audrey said when he'd gone. "Are you nuts? That was Brian Dettlinger."

"What did you expect me to do? Go with him?"

"No-well-" Audrey shook her head, then tilted it backward, to look at Jenny appraisingly through spiky jet-black lashes. "You have changed, you know. It's almost scary. It's like you've blossomed, and everybody's noticed. Like a light went on