B00B9FX0MA EBOK (23 page)

The tears were dribbling out of her best friend, Andrea, a perfect specimen of
homo
dramaticus
and known to be mortally in touch with her emotions. Over the course of his relationship with Winnie, he’d had the misfortune to observe her three states of being: crying, scheming, and mocking. As a result, they’d never gotten along. Cole saw no reason to try to change that now, and was half a step away when he distinctly heard Winnie murmur his name.

She’s talking about me? She’s talking about me!

He aimed his ear at them, straining to listen but catching only snippets from Andrea’s half of the conversation. “ . . . you don’t know how it feels . . . can’t let anyone find out . . . especially Cole . . . ”

Cole examined the evidence: tears, adversity, and a vow that above all, the subject of the discussion will never be revealed to him. Together the pieces could form only one picture.

Andrea was secretly in love with him.

Except she hated him. And among the few assumptions Cole felt reasonably confident making about girls included the hunch that one would never, ever express interest in her best friend’s ex, especially if they want to remain best friends. Still, he might as well be sure. Because what if she really did like him? More important, would Winnie care?

Cole sidled closer to the stack, squelching the misgiving that there was anything wrong with soaking up a private conversation. If they didn’t want to be overheard, they’d text.

Suddenly a voice broke open the vacuum-sealed library air behind him. “
Magst
du Goethe?” Cole fell forward, startled, groping at the books before him for purchase, only to shove them flapping through the stack right at Andrea and Winnie’s feet. They locked eyes on him through the breach. Cole caught sight of himself in their expression and cringed: a
perv
in training. Andrea hurtled off, wailing. Winnie picked up a fallen book and glanced at the title and back at Cole, eyebrows in attack formation.

“German poetry?” Implied if not verbally tacked on was
really?

style="text-indent:5%;">Cole worked his guppy mouth for a response, but the answer came from elsewhere. “
Ja
,
danke
,” said the owner of the voice that had sent him sprawling in the first place. A dark-haired girl was reaching through the gap to pluck the book from Winnie’s grasp. “Deutsch
Poesie
ist
mein
Favorit
. Und
Sie
?” Winnie merely puffed out a breath and walked away.

Cole blinked at the girl before him. She wore red-and-white-striped knee-high socks, a black skirt, and a yellow cardigan over a shirt that ruffled limply at the neck. Her face was winged with dark eye shadow and her hair pulled into two uneven, rubber-banded pigtails. The overall effect was positively Dr.
Seussian
. On whether this particular strain was heartwarming
Seussian
or creepy
Seussian
he was undecided. Then she spoke again.

“
Ich
mag Faust,
weil
sie
Satan
Funktionen
.”

Creepy
Seussian
. Definitely.

“Sorry,” Cole said, backing away slowly. “All I caught was ‘Satan.’”

He pivoted and took off, leaving Cindy Lou Who-The-Heck-Is-She to
Gesundheit
by herself.

Cole looked for Winnie but she had vanished along with Andrea. The bell rang and he returned to the study carrel for his things only to find Greg and Scott lying in wait. Cole took care to avoid eye contact, remembering a nature program in which a field biologist urged the audience to never, ever look a primate in the peepers.

>“Something I can do for you guys?”

>Scott shot Greg a look. “Did I or did I not tell you to stay away from Winnie?”

>“You did not. You told me to keep my hands off your stuff. Is that what Winnie is to you? Stuff?”

Greg’s nostrils flared and he swung tentatively at Cole’s books, as though to send them spilling to the floor. But he lacked commitment; the pile only moved a couple of inches toward the lip of the table. He was miscast in the role of Bully.

“ . . . Do you want to give it a second try?” Cole offered.

“You know that jerky little kid in everybody’s family?” asked Scott. “The loud cousin who comes over to your house on the holidays and gets his cruddy fingerprints on your comics and breaks your PS3 before he’s even walked in the door?”

“How is Wonder Woman these days, Scott?”

“Then he sees your dog. And all the pooch wants to do is sleep. But this kid won’t let him. Goes straight for him, chasing him all over the house. And your dog knows he’s just a kid. But there’s only so much crap he can take from a snot-nosed brat who wants to ride him like he’s a horse. So you warn him. You tell him to leave the dog alone. How would he like it if you pulled his tail? But this kid doesn’t listen. Nothing you say is enough to get through. So when the dog finally sinks his teeth into the little bugger’s apple cheeks, part of you feels sorry for him ’cause he’s
gonna
have that scar for the rest of his life. But the rest of you is glad. He deserved what he got.” Scott swept the table clean. “You’re that little kid, Cole. Only nobody’s
gonna
feel sorry for you when you get your face bit off.”

“I’m confused. In this scenario, is Greg the mutt? Or Winnie? ’Cause I thought she was just stuff.”

Greg was perhaps not (yet) a bully, but he was a devoted boyfriend. He leaned in close. “Don’t talk about her like that. Don’t even think about her. She doesn’t think about you.”

“The bell rang, guys.” The gentle reminder came from Mr.
Chetley
, the assistant soccer coach and rookie Web design teacher. No one moved. “Is there a problem?”

“No problem, Mr.
Chetley
,” said Greg, secure that Cole had received his message.

“
Gregor
, my dad is Mr.
Chetley
,” said the teacher with his bouncing imitation of a Southern California accent. “I told you I’m cool with
Chetley
. Or even Chet. It’s all good! What happened with the books, Cola?”

“Cole’s just a little clumsy,” said Greg. He and Scott left,
Chetley
hounding them all the way out the door with an invitation to join his Protest Club. Gavin was president, and so far the organization had yet to protest anything save the administration’s rules against protest.

Cole gathered his littered books, aware that he’d pay for getting little work done with little sleep tonight. He didn’t care. He was thinking about Winnie, in direct disregard to Greg’s instruction. She had to think about him sometimes. Even if only to breathe relief that she’d traded up. There had to be a way to make her think about him more, and in a positive way. Maybe the key was to make her think less about Greg, or to think less of him. What would it take to open her eyes?

Cole was on his way out when he caught sight of the computer over which Greg and Scott had roosted. An idea took shape. He’d be late to
Calc
, but a five-point deduction on the day would only amount to a .001-percent nudge to his grade for the year, assuming no absences and adjusting for a one-two point differential on pop quizzes. He figured he could weather it.

Cole launched the computer’s search engine and examined its recent history. Greg had neglected to empty the cache. The most recent page was a Wikipedia entry. The subject: American serial killers. It took him just a moment to find what he was looking for.

Perhaps most striking is that when selecting victims, Americans tend to adhere to far more rigid criteria than their worldwide counterparts. An American serial killer knows his victim; an international serial killer
discovers
his victim.

Gavin was right. There in black-and-white pixels was hard evidence of Greg’s cheating. Cole printed the page, as well as a dozen of the most recent Web sites Greg and Scott had visited. He left with a ream of paper and the swagger of a private citizen carrying a concealed firearm. He had the gun and the bullet to put an end to Greg and Winnie’s relationship. All he had to do now was aim and pull the trigger.