The Hunter Page 0,6

of trouble?"

"Oh-no," Jenny said. If she explained what had happened, she'd just get yelled at for going into a bad neighborhood. Not by Dee, of course-Deirdre Eliade's recklessness was matched only by her somewhat skewed sense of humor-but by the ever-practical Audrey Myers. "I was just buying a game for tonight-but I don't know if we're going to need it after all."

"Why not?"

"Well..." Jenny didn't want to explain that, either. She didn't know how to explain it. She only knew she needed to look at that box before anyone else arrived. "It might be boring. So what are you making?" She peered into the wok to change the subject.

"Oh, just some Mu shu rou and a few Heijiao niu liu." Audrey was moving around the kitchen with her usual mannered grace, her tailored clothes un -

marred by a single spot of grease. "That's stir-fried pork and spring rolls to you provincial types. Also fried rice and the trimmings."

"Pork," said Dee, taking a leisurely sip of Carbo Force, her favorite energy drink, "is death on wheels. You have to lift at the gym for a week to work off one pork chop."

"Tom loves it," Audrey said shortly. "And he looks all right."

Dee gave a maddening laugh, and hostility flashed across the room like lightning.

Jenny sighed. "Oh, get over it. Can't you call a truce for just one day in the year?"

"I don't think so," Audrey hummed, expertly fishing a spring roll out of the wok with chopsticks.

Dee's teeth flashed white in her night-dark face. "And ruin a perfect record?" she said.

"Look, I am not going to have Tom's party ruined -not even by my two best friends. Understand?"

"Oh, go to your room and become beautiful," Audrey said indulgently and picked up a cleaver.

The box, thought Jenny-but she did have to change her clothes. She'd better make it fast.

In her room Jenny exchanged her crewneck sweater and jeans for a flowing cream-colored skirt, a tissue-linen blouse, and a beaded batik vest that glowed with hundreds of tiny golden threads.

Her eyes were drawn to a stuffed white rabbit on the dresser. The rabbit was holding a daisy with the words love you emblazoned across its center. An Easter gift from Tom, a ridiculous thing, but one she knew she would keep forever. The fact that he wouldn't say the words in public just made this secret confession all the sweeter.p>

For as long as she could remember, she had been terribly in love with Tom. Whenever she thought of him, it was like a sudden quick ache, a sweetness almost too much to bear. She felt it in various places in her body, but it was an emotional thing, mainly, and centered in her chest. It had been that way since second grade. Stuck around the frame of the mirror were pictures of them together-at the sixth-grade Halloween Hop (in costume), at the ninth-grade graduation dance, at the junior prom two weeks ago, at the beach. They had been a couple for so long that everyone thought of them as Tom-and-Jenny, a single unit.

As always, the very image of Tom seemed to wrap a thin blanket of comfort over her. This time, though, Jenny felt something nagging at her underneath the comfort. Something tugging at her to think about it.

The box again.

Okay, go look at it. Then think party.

She was dragging a brush through her hair when there was a perfunctory tap at the door and Audrey came in.

"The spring rolls are finished and the stir-fry has to wait till the last minute." Audrey's own hair, which she always wore up, was glossy auburn, almost copper. Her eyes were chestnut and just now narrowed in disapproval. "New skirt, I see," she added. "A long one."

Jenny winced. Tom liked her in long skirts, especially the soft and flowing kind. Audrey knew it and Jenny knew she knew it. "So?" she said dangerously.

Audrey sighed. "Can't you see? You're letting him get too sure of you."

"Audrey, please-"

"There's such a thing as being too good," Audrey said firmly. "Listen to me, because I know. Guys are weird, n'est-ce pas? You never want one to be that sure of you."

"Don't be ridiculous," Jenny began, then stopped. For some reason, for just a second, she thought of the guy at the game store. Eyes as blue as the core of a flame.

"I'm serious," Audrey was saying, her head tilted back to look at Jenny through spiky jet-black eyelashes that touched equally spiky copper bangs. "If a guy feels too