gold charm bracelet.
“Oh my God!” Claire shouted. She grabbed the bracelet and hugged it to her chest. “I only took it off because I was worried some of the charms might fall off while I was dancing. Last year I lost the little gold horseshoe I got for my eighth birthday and almost had a nervous breakdown.” A dark look crossed her face, and she glared at the weasel in the trench coat. “You idiot!” she yelled, and pulled back her leg to kick him in the ass. Lucky for him, he saw it coming and twisted out of the way.
I, however, was not so lucky, and the kick landed square on my wrist.
“Ow!” I screamed.
“Oh no!” she screamed back. “Are you all right?”
Before I could answer, the weasel jumped up and raced toward the parking lot. I tried to stop him, but the best I could do was hang on to his trench coat. He pulled himself free, and the coat came off in my hands.
“Jerk!” Claire shouted, and threw a shoe at him. She was a much better kicker than quarterback, and the shoe landed ten feet short.
“Damn it!” she yelled.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “It’s going to be a long time before he tries something like that again. I think I broke his nose.”
“You did? Nice!”
Not the kind of response you’d expect from the vice president of the junior class who had never so much as given me a second look. Claire went inside and came back with a cup of ice. She held it against my wrist, and I swear it was the warmest thing to ever touch my skin.
“Does it still hurt?” she asked.
It took me a while to answer because I was too busy staring at Claire’s face which was so close to mine I could feel her breath. “Yeah, it does,” I finally said. “I better go get it checked out.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“No biggie. Why don’t you take that coat inside and give people their stuff back.”
“Right,” she said, staring at me for a moment too long. “Good idea.”
Then she turned and walked back to the party.
I went to the infirmary and didn’t expect to hear from Claire again. I was totally shocked, therefore, when I walked out of the infirmary and found her sitting on the steps.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I wanted to thank you again for saving my charm bracelet. How’s your wrist?”
“It’s just bruised.”
“I’m really sorry.”
“How’s your foot? I’m surprised you didn’t break a toe.”
“My foot’s fine,” she said, standing up. “I guess seven years at Miss DeMarco’s ballet school finally paid off.”
“She must have been a great teacher because that was some kick.”
“She was an excellent teacher. Unfortunately, she also had affairs with half the dads in the school, including mine.”
“Ouch.”
The chapel bell rang in the distance and Claire said, “That’s curfew. We better get back to the dorms.”
“Don’t worry about me,” I said, and pulled a white piece of paper from my pocket. “I have a pass from the infirmary.”
Claire looked at the pass. “There’s no time written on it. You could stay out all night if you wanted to.”
“Why would I want to stay out all night by myself?”
“Who said anything about staying out by yourself?”
“Won’t you get in trouble?”
Claire dismissed my worries with a wave of her hand. “My roommate snores like a freight train on steroids, and the floor monitor doesn’t even bother to check our room anymore. As long as Campus Safety doesn’t catch us we’ll be fine.”
“Where do you want to go?”
“The Drowning Pool.”
“Just the two of us?” I asked.
“I don’t see anyone else around, do you?”
“No.”
“Then let’s go.”
• • •
The Drowning Pool was a swimming hole behind campus. Rumor had it that a freshman had died there in the nineteen fifties, and a trip to the Drowning Pool was as much a Wheaton right-of-passage as Mrs. Zelinski’s first year Latin class.
I followed Claire into the woods, and we were immediately swallowed up by shadows. Leaves and spiderwebs tickled our faces, and the trees and bushes seemed closer than they had just moments before. We followed a trail of pine needles and dappled moonlight until the trees parted and we came to a small lake. Tiny clouds floated over the surface of the water, and I half expected to see a glowing fairy or a chain saw–wielding psychopath flitting about. We found a log by the edge of the water and sat down to take it all in. Claire removed