Speed Demon (5 page)

“Cops make me anxious,” I said.

“Yeah, you sound really worried.”

Busted. I grinned at him.

The police came over and indicated for Levi to open his window. Levi smiled politely and said, “Is there a problem?”

“You were doing eighty-five in a sixty-five. I need your license.”

“Sorry. I’ll be more careful. My girlfriend”—Levi gestured to me—“is late to a class and she’s harping at me. She told me to go faster.”

Gasp. The loser had just dragged me into his speeding ticket. I was blustering too much to say anything in protest, but the cop glared at me.

“You should know better than that. Leave the house earlier next time.” Then he said to Levi with a stern reprimand, “You going to jump off a bridge if she tells you to? Get a backbone, kid. Girls will always drag you into trouble if you let them.”

What kind of a blanket sexist statement was that? Like the history of humanity proved that it was girls stirring the pot? I don’t think so. If anyone was getting anyone in trouble it was the opposite—boys dragging girls down. War. Corsets. High heels. Panty hose. The perming rods of the eighties. All created by men. Not that I knew any of that for a fact, but it had to be true. Why else would women have put fuzzy ringlets in their hair?

Not that I was going to argue with a police officer, me who didn’t even have a license and who was already severely grounded. Wasn’t going to touch that one, so I just clamped my lips shut and squeezed my purse in my lap.

“Okay,” Levi said, and handed him his license. When the cop walked back to his car to run the license Levi grinned at me. “No ticket. Watch and writhe in envy.”

“Why? Are you hungry?” Levi had a charming little demon characteristic. He fed on other people’s envy. It worked for him like pizza for me—it made him feel full and happy. I tried hard not to be the one generating his after-school envy snack, but there were times when I failed, and when he wasn’t sucking sustenance off of me, there were plenty of people in school who had envy Levi could engorge on. We lived in the suburbs, land of I Want One. He was definitely never going to starve.

“I could use a little something.”

The policeman came back and handed Levi his license. “Alright, I’m going to let it slide this time with a warning. But slow it down, speed demon.”

Then he was gone and I was left gaping at Levi. “What happened here?”

“Just my amazing charm and powers of persuasion.”

“You used your demon mojo to influence him, didn’t you?” How wrong was that? And why didn’t I have that kind of power?

“Uh, yeah. What good is having it if I don’t take advantage of it?” Levi said with really irritating logic as he glanced in the mirror and sped up to pull back onto the highway.

“Okay, I admit it. I’m totally jealous. Eat up.” I leaned against the window, the glass cooling my hot forehead. I felt tired.

“What’s the matter, K?”

“Nothing.” There was, but I couldn’t exactly pinpoint what it was. Probably worry over Adam, which I could not discuss with Levi. Fear, maybe, that I couldn’t close another portal when taking out the first one had gotten me in such serious trouble. And irritation that I was chronically dependent on the chauffeuring skills of my demonic companion.

“Come on, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Tell me.”

“Nothing.”

“I don’t believe you. Just spill it.”

“It’s nothing,” I said, getting exasperated.

“We can do this the whole way to the theater. It’s still ten minutes away. Or you can just tell me.”

“There’s nothing to tell.” I gritted my teeth and glared at him.

“Yes, there is. I know you. You’re upset about something.”

“Maybe I’m just moody.”

“Well, I know
that
.”

Hey. Totally untrue. “I’m not moody!”

“So then what’s wrong?”

Do you see why I frequently wanted to go into a dark closet and scream repeatedly?

I hit on the one way I could get him to drop it. “I have PMS . . . really bad cramps.” I didn’t, but that subject was guaranteed to get a teenage male to zip his flapping lips.

“Oh.” His tone totally changed from encouraging to horrified. “Sorry.”

He was silent for a second, changing lanes on the highway, while I enjoyed my triumph in getting him to shut up. Then he said, “Did you take some ibuprofen? That should help. We can stop at the drugstore if you haven’t and buy some.”

Have I mentioned Levi made it really hard to hate him sometimes?

 

 

Isabella sipped from her water bottle and eyed me. “What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing. Why does everyone think something is wrong with me today? I’m just tired.”

“Meow. Relax. I was just asking. You know, out of concern, seeing as you’re my best friend.”

Setting her water down, Isabella did some really amazing leg kicks to keep her muscles loose. She was a dancer and was taking a break between her two Saturday classes, Advanced Ballet and Workout for the Dancer’s Body. Both required a skill level and balance that I didn’t possess, though I had taken tons of ballet, jazz, and dance for the theater in an attempt to gain chorus parts in productions. Isabella wanted to be a professional dancer, but given my average skills at the barre, I was pinning my hopes on my acting skills in my post-high school New York City life.

Not that my parents knew I was planning to ditch Ohio for the Big Apple. That little surprise would have to wait until after I got a nice big juicy graduation present. Then we could have that battle out.

“I’m sorry,” I said, knowing I sounded bratty. “It’s just exhausting to be grounded. And Levi is driving me crazy, as usual.” Though how crazy I couldn’t share. Iz didn’t know about the whole demon thing, and that was starting to unnerve me. It was this huge mega-major secret that only Levi and I knew, and it felt so totally wrong not to be able to talk about it with the person I had shared everything else with since the age of ten.

“I don’t understand why the two of you don’t get along. He’s so sweet. And cute.”

Isabella bent over to stretch her eight-mile-long legs again, her raven black hair neatly up in a bun, her black leotard lint-free and flattering. Isabella was Grace, I was Goofball. It worked for us.

Even if she had somehow fallen under the Levi Influence. “We don’t get along because I have no boy-girl feelings for him”—liar, liar—“and when you take that element away, he’s hard to deal with.”

“It’s probably because your mothers are good friends and you grew up with that whole ‘we’re cousins’ thing.”

That was a lie Levi had told everyone, and it was hard to keep feeding it to my best friend, so I didn’t say anything.

She didn’t seem to notice and asked, “How are things with Levi and Amber? They break up yet?”

That was Isabella’s hope and dream—that Levi and Amber would spontaneously combust and then Isabella could swoop in and show him that his true happiness lay in taking her out on Friday nights. I had no good news for her and this ill-fated lie-in-wait plan.

“They seem fine. I’m sorry, Iz.”

She frowned but seemed resigned. “I do have an idea though. We need to have a Halloween party at your house, and we’ll invite a bunch of people, including Levi, but not Amber.”

“Won’t he just bring her? I mean when you invite someone they kind of just bring their girlfriend or boyfriend along, like an appendage. You can’t really leave your arm at home.”

“She is not his arm,” Isabella said in disdain. “There is nothing about her he needs.”

Amber didn’t seem to know that, because she totally acted like he needed her every second of every day.

“We’ll plan the party for the night of the football game, and then she can’t come,” Isabella said.

“Then Adam won’t be able to come either.” My boyfriend, at least my boyfriend until he learned I was a disgusting cheat (not that he would because I wasn’t going to tell him and it was all going to be fine), was a placekicker for the football team since he had brilliant foot moves from soccer.

She made an exasperated sound. “Well, I don’t know. We’ll figure something out. But the point is, we’ll get Levi there, no Amber, and then I’ll get him alone and convince him he needs to be with me.”

There seemed to be some holes in that plan.

And I wasn’t pointing them out.

Because even if I thought the plan wasn’t really a plan but just sort of grasping at anything that might somehow, if all the planets aligned, result in Isabella and Levi’s getting together, I wasn’t going to take that hope away from her. She hadn’t done that to me, back when I was seriously crushing on Adam, and he was not even looking at me in Anatomy and Physiology class, let alone talking to me or indicating in any way I was of more importance than the chair he sat on. Actually, the chair had probably been more important, because it was useful, and at that point, I was pretty much irrelevant in Adam’s life.

Or so I had thought. And so Isabella had thought. But the point was, she never told me that. She indulged my crush, encouraged me to not sit back, to go for it and see what might happen, and here I was, together with Adam in a brand new budding relationship.

I had to do the same for her, even if I thought she and Levi were about as likely a couple as . . . salt and pepper? No, they went together. There was one of those mom metaphors about food that I was trying to think of but couldn’t, but you get the point. Two things that didn’t belong together. Isabella and Levi were a mismatch.

But I had to support Isabella even if Levi had a girlfriend.

Even if he had kissed me.

“Okay,” I said, thrusting my guilt to the back of my brain. “We’d better pick the date and start inviting people. I don’t know if we should do a Halloween theme though since Halloween is actually tomorrow. We’ll have to plan the party for next weekend.”

“No! That’s it. We’ll have the party tomorrow night, on Halloween. And people will think it’s seriously cool to have a party on a Sunday and to get a last-minute invite. It’s very Hollywood. And we can just not invite Amber.”

She looked thrilled and I could tell she was creating a mental invite list.

Me? Not so thrilled. I wasn’t exactly sure how I was going to convince my parents that even though I was grounded, I really should be allowed to have a spontaneous Halloween party on a school night solely for the purpose of breaking up Levi and Amber. Not that I intended to do anything to break the happy couple up. I didn’t like Amber, but there wasn’t a vengeful or malicious bone in my body. I just couldn’t stomach the idea of inserting myself between two people. Intentionally, that is. I bit my lip when I realized in a way, I had done just that, and it was seriously not a good thing, and could I feel any crappier? But while I wasn’t going to break them up—not on purpose, anyway—I wasn’t going to disillusion Isabella either, and who knows? If Levi and Amber had a massive fight and split, maybe Levi would actually
want
to be with Isabella despite the fact that they had absolutely nothing in common. There was no predicting these things. I hadn’t seen a demon popping out of my shower coming and that had happened. I had no idea what Isabella saw in Levi (okay, lying again), but who was to say they weren’t made for each other?

It was all so complicated and I needed sugar. There was unfortunately none to be found in the hallway at the theater.

But as for my parents, they were likely, just based on knowing my parents, going to laugh hysterically at all our party logic and tell me no way.

So I’d have to do some maneuvering, because Isabella really wanted the party and I had been feeling bad that we weren’t spending as much time together as we had pre-Adam. And then there was the guilt over Levi and his lips on mine, which was getting worse by the minute.

“Okay, we need to get Levi to ask my parents about the party. They’ll tell me no, but they’ll let him do it.” If not, he could throw some of that famed demon mojo on them and convince them to say yes.

“Should we say costumes are required?”

“It’s a Halloween party. Of course.” I smiled at her.

Letting loose all our friends under a shroud of fake spider-webs had the potential to be a lot of fun.

 

 

Agreeing to a party on twenty-four hours’ notice to make Isabella feel better was fine in theory. Actually putting that plan into motion was a different story.

The minute Isabella had walked away with a cheerful wave to go back to dance class, I had started stressing. Levi wasn’t answering his phone and he was crucial to the success of Halloween Happiness.

When Adam picked me up to go home, I was biting my nails. We were going back to my house to watch a movie, my parent’s compromise to the grounding. I could have Adam over for two hours, no more, and we couldn’t actually go anywhere. Which seriously decreased our ability to make out, which seriously sucked.

But they could have been totally evil and not let me see him at all, so I wasn’t going to whine. Too much.

“What’s the matter?” Adam said a minute after I climbed into his SUV.

“Nothing.” What could I say? I’m worried that the demon who lives with me who appeared in my shower and is dating Amber isn’t answering his cell phone so I can make him force my parents to allow a party on zero notice so that same said demon can be lured into a romantic relationship that he didn’t know he wanted with my best friend?

Adam might actually consider that a little strange.

“Are you sure you’re okay? You look worried.” Which made Adam look worried. And Adam worried was even cuter than Adam not worried.

I leaned my head on his shoulder for a brief second since he was actually pulling out of the parking lot and I didn’t want to cause an accident. But it was nice to lean on him. He was tall, with black hair, perfect teeth, a rock-solid body (all those sports were boring to watch, but they did lovely things to his build), and a very sweet smile. Adam made me feel safe, protected, and not at all self-conscious, which was funny because for months I had secretly liked him, and had spent every day sitting next to him in science class sweating through my hoodies in uncomfortable silence hoping he’d notice me.