post on the #rememberolivia hashtag that’s been flying through the Twitter stream for the last twenty minutes.
“Why?” I ask.
“To talk about it, I guess.” She rolls off the bed and starts digging around her clothes for a jacket, but I don’t move.
“I don’t want to go to school today, Moll.” I want to digest this some more. And, God, I want to tell her all the weird things that have been happening, so she can totally make me see how dumb it is to even try to connect the accident, the gas leak, or that car that buzzed me on Baldrick. And now Olivia’s death. But for some reason, putting that into words is so incredibly lame I can’t mention it. Why would I even go there?
“Not in the school,” she says. “Everyone’s in the junior lot. We need to be there. We’re her classmates, Kenzie.” She sighs. “Well, we were.”
But I was never close to Olivia Thayne, unless I count the fact that she invited me to the party at Keystone Quarry. Where she died.
Molly pops out of a pullover hoodie and fluffs her hair in the mirror. “Would it be wrong to wear makeup?”
“Wrong? It would be out of character and … Why?”
She pivots, narrowing her brown eyes. “Because that’s what cool girls do.” She lets her voice rise on the last word, almost a question, as if she’s not sure at all what cool girls do.
“I wouldn’t know,” I say dryly.
“Well, you better find out since you’re one of them now. And if you are, I am, right?”
“Right.”
“And by the way …” She returns to the mirror, picking up a brush and running it through her shoulder-length hair. “Josh is there.”
I wait for my heart to skip or soar or at least do a little tap dance at the thought of seeing Josh. Nothing. “Really?”
She smiles, catching my eyes in the mirror. “Want to go now?”
Do I? “Kind of sick to use the tragic death of a classmate to see a guy.”
“So that’s a yes?”
“I don’t know. We wouldn’t have gone two days ago, would we?”
She frowns, not following.
“The list,” I say. “You think we belong where all the kids are gathering like I have some kind of entrance pass because of the list. We’re still the same band/Latin club/uncool kids we were on Thursday.”
“I am, you aren’t.” She kneels on the bed and looks hard at me. “Anyway, Olivia was like a, you know, sorority sister to you.”
I give a dismissive wave, thinking of Nurse Fedder’s comment. Most of us have been lucky. Beware. The warning echoes, but I don’t share it. There is some weird tug at my heart, though. As if I should go to school in a show of solidarity for my dead listmate.
“Well, think about it, Kenz,” Molly says. “There are, what, four hundred and forty kids in the junior class? The list is less than …” She screws up her face. “A small percent.”
“Two point three,” I supply.
“Smartass.”
“I am. I’m smart and I’m quiet and I’m boring and I’m not hot, so I don’t belong on that freaking list!” My voice gets a little too loud, and she draws back at my outburst.
“How can you say that? You’re pretty.” She pulls me off her bed and turns me to the mirror. “You have beautiful blue eyes.”
I squint, not seeing anything beautiful.
She takes two handfuls of my hair and lifts it like angels’ wings. “You have gorgeous mahogany hair.”
“Mahogany?” I laugh. “Who says that?”
“Me. And look at that face.” She takes my chin, angling my head. “Not a zit in sight.”
“That doesn’t make me pretty.”
“Kenzie! What is wrong with you? You got voted onto the list, why don’t you just embrace it? The world—and the boys in it—sees you differently than you see yourself. It’s time to break out of that bad habit, and I know just the trick.”
“What?”
“A boyfriend. Josh Collier.”
I can’t help but snort. “He’s just being nice to me, Molly. I’m not girlfriend material. Not for a guy like him.”
“Then who?”
I have to get Molly’s opinion, so I risk it. “How about Levi Sterling?”
She chokes softly. “I assume you’re kidding.”
Am I? “You know how I told you what happened at my locker? Well, right before I got hurt, he asked me to, um …” I make a show of using her brush and fixing my hair, just to avoid looking at her. “… tutor him.”
Her jaw slackens, her eyes turning into slits. “You wouldn’t do that, would you?”