Speed Demon (8 page)

“Iz?” I whispered. “You okay? Do you see something?”

She snapped out of it and actually clicked the compact mirror shut. “No.” She scoffed. “Of course not. This whole thing is ridiculous. I’m going back downstairs.”

There was jostling as she made her way to the door and opened it, flooding the room with the light from the hallway.

We all blinked at each other.

“Well, that was weird,” Darla said. “What’s her problem? You’re next, Kenzie.”

Yeah, because I was just so eager to glance in the mirror and see something crazy. With my luck, Mary Worth would be all old and ugly and holding a pentagram. “Okay.” I took the mirror as Cecily closed the door again. I couldn’t exactly cop out at my own party.

I fought the urge to close my eyes as I did my three-time chant. Then I looked in the mirror quickly, to get it over with, like pulling off the hot wax strip. If you hesitate, it just makes it worse. There was nothing in the mirror, thank God and then some.

“Nothing for me either,” I reported, relief in my voice.

After everyone had a turn and no one saw squat, Cecily turned the light back on and said, “There’s another way to figure out who you’re going to marry.”

“Is this one of the freaky old wives’ tales where you have to like pee on wax or something?” Darla asked. “Because I’m not doing that.”

Cecily, her bee antennas bouncing as she shook her head, said, “Eew. No, no peeing, I swear. And by the way, I think that’s if you’re pregnant and want to see if you’re having a boy or a girl. You pee into ammonia or something weird like that.”

“Oh. Good. So what is this way?”

“You peel an apple, trying to get the whole peel off in one strip, and then you toss it over your shoulder. It will land in the shape of the initial of the guy you’re going to marry.”

“We’ll all be marrying someone named Owen then,” Sara said. “Come on, an apple peel is only going to make an O shape.”

“Let’s try it!” Darla was clearly up for anything.

And I was easy. Why not? I was sure an apple peel couldn’t twist itself into an
A
, but then again, it was really hard to visualize marrying Adam anyway. Hello. Sixteen years old. Not looking for the ring quite yet. Just wanted a boyfriend to send me cute texts and to hang out with.

Fortunately, we had a big bag of apples my mom had just picked up at the farmers’ market down the road. She loved that we lived in a suburb that still had a few remaining farms and she could score fresh fruit and veggies, and she was going to be confused, but pleased, that we had apparently eaten six apples at our party that wasn’t a party.

I left them digging in the kitchen drawers for paring knives, the destroyed (but being repaired) wall covered by a sheet of plastic, as I went to search for Isabella. She wasn’t in the family room with the guys, and she wasn’t by the front door passing out candy either. I finally found her sitting on my bed in the dark.

“Iz? You okay? What’s going on?”

My nightlight was glowing and I could see there were tears on her cheeks. She swiped at them. “Okay. Levi totally blew me off. It was
so
embarrassing. But it’s cool. I mean, I suddenly realized that he is totally not my type. And when have I ever been so desperate for a guy to like me that I’ve thrown myself at him in a Disney princess costume? No one is worth that.”

“No, they’re not. You don’t have to be desperate, you know that. The right guy will be there when he’s supposed to, and he’ll think you’re the bomb.” I sat next to her and nudged her shoulder. “Like I do. You’re awesome, Iz, and you shouldn’t settle for anything less than a guy who is totally into you.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking.” She finished wiping her face and said, “Ugh. I need a tissue, then I’m going downstairs and having fun. Why waste a good party, right?”

“Exactly. Hey, what did you see in that mirror?” I knew she’d seen something.

She made a sound of impatience. “Oh my God. It was crazy. I actually did see a guy in that mirror, Kenzie. But he was like the biggest nerd ever. Glasses and everything. I’ve never seen him before, but it had to be like some kind of power of suggestion thing. Like dreaming. Your brain just creates weird random images.”

Um. How exactly could your subconscious put a dude’s face into a compact mirror in the bathroom when you were wide-awake? I felt a chill crawl up my back and I rubbed my arms.

But Isabella just waved her hand in dismissal. “No big deal. What did you see?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

“Oh,” she said, and we just stared at each other for a second.

Then she said, “Don’t let me marry a nerd,” and we both laughed.

“I won’t, swear. I’ve got your back.”

“He likes you, you know,” she added.

“Who? The nerd in the mirror?” I was confused, as usual.

“No. Levi. He doesn’t like me that way, but he does like you as way more than a friend. It was obvious when he was talking about you to me.”

I scoffed, even as my heart rate sped up. I was glad the room was still kind of dark, because I could feel a flush marching across my cheeks. “No, he doesn’t.”

“Well, he does, but it’s cool. I understand you didn’t do anything to encourage him, and God knows we can’t control who we’re crushing on. Just be honest with him if he puts it out there, okay? Don’t lead him on because you don’t want to hurt his feelings. He’s got it bad for you, and you’ll make it worse if you aren’t straight up.”

“Okay.” Because letting him kiss me was so totally the way to keep things uncomplicated. I almost groaned out loud. “Now let’s go try peeling apples and see if the nerd with the glasses has a first initial.”

 

 

When we got to the kitchen, all our friends were bent over staring at the floor.

“Whose is it?” I asked, trying to check out the apple peel on the floor.

“It’s mine,” Cecily said. “But I sort of had some problems. I can’t peel apples and I just end up with all these little pieces that I’ve hacked off, so I just threw all of them. What does it look like to you?”

A pile of apple peels. “Um ... it kind of looks like a
W
to me.”

“Ohmigod, it does!” Madison said.

Kind of. If you squinted and tilted your head to the left. “Maybe it’s Wyatt Price,” Darla said.

“No!”

Cecily looked horrified and rightly so. Wyatt’s width exceeded his height and he had a habit of throwing things at people in outbursts of anger. A cool name like Wyatt was truly wasted on him.

“It’s just a game,” I told her. “No one is saying Wyatt Price is truly your destiny. Besides, don’t we all really make our own destiny?”

She sighed in relief. “That’s true. Why don’t you do it next, Madison?”

Madison tossed her peel over her left shoulder. It landed in a D shape. “Well, an
R
for Reggie was going to be impossible to get, so I choose to not believe this tradition. Your turn, Kenzie.”

“Okay.” I peeled an apple from the bag into a nice long red skin strand and set the uneaten apple part down. I turned with my back to the wall and decided I really needed to smack it against the wall and have it crumple into a pile so that it didn’t manage to land in an L shape, which was highly likely given the shape of an apple peel. But of course no one else would choose to see it as statistically probable and would say Levi and I were supposed to be together or something insane like that. That was all I needed to complete my night.

I tossed it as hard as I could, expecting to hear a whack as it hit the wall, but I didn’t. Turning around I asked, “Where did it go?”

They were all laughing. Isabella grinned at me. “Your aim sucks. It shot two feet to the left and went straight through the hole between the two pieces of plastic. That was classic.”

“It went through the
hole
?” The hole I had made with the minivan? The hole that was supposed to be covered in plastic and that was probably a demon portal? Oopsie. That was probably a bad thing. “I’d better go get it.” With my luck my mother would slip on it and break her arm in the garage.

I opened the door to the garage and flicked on the light. I didn’t see the peel immediately so I eyed the hole in the drywall suspiciously and inched toward it. I didn’t want to be sucked into the portal. I spotted the peel lying next to the tire of the minivan, right under the hole. I went to grab it and let out a yelp, jumping back a foot.

Holy Red Delicious . . . The apple peel was bleeding all over the concrete. A thick, mucky red slime was oozing out like Jell-O blood and there was a hissing sound, like air being let out of a tire.

“Uh . . . don’t panic, Kenzie. Just step away from the apple peel.” I backed up slowly, keeping my eye on that thing.

I had barely gone two inches in retreat when it growled at me. A freaking apple peel was growling at me like a dog with a juicy bone. I started shuffling backward faster, trying to convince myself that I did
not
see a pair of angry, glowing black eyes in the sloppy slimy mess the peel had become. When I thought I was close enough to the door, I turned and ran like the total wimp that I was, slamming the kitchen door behind me and locking it.

Of course, there was still a gaping
hole
in the wall, but it was reflex (or pants-wetting fear) that made me turn the deadbolt.

“Where’s the apple peel?” Madison asked.

“Couldn’t find it,” I said breathlessly, trying to calm my pounding heart. “I need to tell Levi something. Be right back.” I booked it into the family room, knowing my friends were probably questioning my sanity, but not caring. I didn’t even want to be in the kitchen, let alone within grabbing distance of that peel/portal. I shuddered as I visualized that disgusting mess again.

Yeah, demon slayer. So me. Not. I was afraid of fruit, which was just totally pathetic.

The guys were watching
Halloween
on DVD and three of the seven of them glanced at me as I came into the room and hovered. Dirk stuck his tongue out at me, Adam gave me a look of longing like he wished it was me on the couch next to him instead of Reggie (me too, would give anything to be encircled in Adam’s arm watching scary events unfold instead of living them), and Levi looked over at me, mildly curious.

Dilemma. How did I let Levi know I wanted to talk to him without making Adam mad? I continued to hover behind the couch waiting for them to stop caring what I was doing and turn back around, hopefully in the order I wanted: Dirk, Adam, Levi. When I didn’t respond to Dirk’s “pay attention to me” tongue-out-of-mouth gesture, he lost interest and went back to watching Michael Myers slice people. One down. Both Adam and Levi were still looking at me. I looked back.

We were all just looking.

Not going to get anywhere that way, but how could I let Levi know we had a problem without Adam’s jumping on the jealousy train?

“What’s up?” Adam said. “You going to watch the movie with us?”

“Actually, I’m going to check on the cat. We probably should have taken that angel costume off of him before we locked him up.” True, but had I cared until I needed an excuse to leave the room? Not really, which probably made me an evil person, for which I was going to feel bad about later, after I discussed bleeding face-filled apple peel with Levi.

“Okay. Then come sit with me,” Adam said.

“Of course,” I said with a forced smile. Perfect girlfriend, that was me. (Insert anxious emoticon here.)

I ran up the stairs hoping that Levi would somehow get the hint I never gave and follow me. On the landing, I tripped over a pile of something that shouldn’t be lying there and went down.

“Ow, get off me!” my brother Brandon yelled, shoving at my legs.

Peeling myself off his gut, I glared at him. “What are you doing lying on the floor in the dark? I could have broken my ankle!”

“You could break your ankle standing still in bubble wrap.” Brandon’s cell phone chimed and still sprawled out on his back he flicked it open, obviously reading a text.

Sticking my tongue out seemed like the only recourse for his rudeness, so I did that absentmindedly and left him to his random hallway weirdness.

Opening the door to Zoe’s room, I flicked on the light and found Marshmallow Pants crashed out on Zoe’s zebra-striped chaise, looking fluffy and annoyed, even in his sleep, his angel halo crooked. Maybe it was just the type of cat, but I swear every time I looked at him MP was wearing his angry eyes. It was possible he was still recovering from whatever tragedy had landed him in our driveway or maybe he was just a crank.

Carefully I slid the strap out from under his furry chin (do cats even have chins?) and lifted the halo off and tossed it on Zoe’s desk. MP opened his eyes, checked me out, licked his paw, then laid his head back down, eyes drifting closed again. Okay, now what? If the cat was sleeping he couldn’t be that miserable in his satin outfit, so I’d just leave it for now, but how long did I wait for Levi to show up when he didn’t know he was supposed to show up? Everyone was going to start to wonder where I was.

Panic had me pacing in my Mary Janes, my sweaty hands rubbing over the front of my blue trapeze dress.

I tried to tell myself it was no big deal. It was just an apple peel. Whatever. No one had tried to kill me, snatch me, molest me.

Just a piece of fruit skin.

With a face. Bloody slime. And the ability to growl.

The door to Zoe’s room opened and I whirled, imagining a giant raging apple rolling in to crush me with its fiber content.

It was Levi. Almost the same thing.

“What are you doing?” he asked. “You look like you could cry at any given second.”

Hello. I don’t think so. “I’m not going to cry. I’m just trying to have this party and want everyone to have a good time and not know that my house is possessed.”

“The house is not possessed. What has you so overdramatic?” Levi strolled in and shut the door behind him. “Oh, wait. You’re always overdramatic.”