In all this time, I'd never thought that one of my classmates might have a boyfriend—especially not Anna. "His name is Carl," she added.
"Sorry, boys," Bex said, sliding her arm around Anna's shoulder. "Carl beat you to it."
"Oh, so they have boyfriends. Tell me, is Carl a townie?" Dillon asked, as if he wanted to be let in on a secret. "Do you girls like to go slumming?"
"It's probably Carl Rockefeller," Macey added, and Bex squeezed Anna harder until she said, "Yes. Carl Rockefeller. We know each other from the physics"—another hard squeeze—this time with fingernails—"um, yacht," Anna corrected, "club."
Two pats on Anna's shoulder told her she'd done well.
"Hey," Dillon said, stepping forward as if he were tired of beating around the bush. "I was wondering if you know someone I know…" His voice trailed off. He leaned forward, and I just knew—I mean KNEW—that he was on to me, but then he said, "The Queen of England."
Well, Bex actually has met the queen, but obviously she wasn't about to say so. She just stood quietly as Dillon and his buddies laughed far too hard at the joke, making it even less funny.
"Honey, I got your—" The woman behind the counter stopped abruptly when she saw four boys closing in on three girls. The only sound in the room was the white paper bag that held Anna's prescription as it crinkled in her hands.
"Thanks," Bex said, snatching the package. "Is this all you needed?" she asked Anna, who nodded, and the color slowly returned to her cheeks.
"How 'bout you?" Macey asked Dillon. "You get what you came for?"
But they didn't wait for his response. Instead, they walked together past a long shelf of magazines, where Macey's face stared out from the cover of Newsweek, along with the rest of the McHenry family, beneath a caption that read The Most Powerful Family in America?
Dillon looked at it, then at her. Macey cocked a hip. "We appreciate your vote."
A long time after they'd gone, I still couldn't turn away from the bells that were still ringing. I watched Anna stroll down the street with her saviors—with her friends. A hand circled my wrist, and Josh said, "Hey." I saw his reflection in the mirror from the corner of my eye, but there was something through that window I couldn't turn away from.
Liz was standing on the sidewalk, staring at me through the glass as if she didn't know me. As if she didn't want to.
"Hey, what's wrong?" Josh asked, finally turning me to face him. "What are you doing with those?" He gestured to the half dozen bottles of aspirin I must have subconsciously gathered in my arms to throw like snowballs at Dillon and his cronies if help hadn't come.
"Oh." I looked down. "I knocked them off and was picking them up."
"That's okay," he said, and pushed the bottles back onto the shelf.
I turned back toward the window, but Liz was already gone.
Chapter Twenty-four
A cold front blew in that night—in a lot of ways.
Fires burned in all the lounges. We traded our knee-socks for tights. Every window we passed was covered with frost, blocking our view of the world outside. But nothing made me shiver quite as much as the look on Liz's face. For days, it was as if we were still separated by the pharmacy windows. It was as if she hardly knew me.
When I went to the chem lab after supper Tuesday night, Liz was already there.
"Well, fancy seeing you here," I said, trying to sound chipper as I gathered my things and moved to the lab table across from her.
Her eyes were shielded behind her protective goggles. She didn't even look up.
"Earth to Liz," I tried again, but she turned away.
"I don't have time to help you with your homework, Cammie," she said, and it might have been my imagination, but I could have sworn all the beakers frosted over.
"That's okay," I said. "I think I've got it under control."
We worked in silence for a long time before Liz said, "He was Josh's friend—wasn't he?"
I didn't have to ask who she was talking about. "Yeah, they're neighbors. I'd met him before, that's why I couldn't compromise—"
"Nice friend," Liz snapped.
"He's all talk," I said, repeating Josh's words to me. "He's harmless."
But Liz's voice was shaking when she said, "Go ask Anna how harmless he is." Of course, word of Anna's encounter in the pharmacy had spread like crazy, and Anna was now something of a hero—thanks to the fact that Bex and Macey insisted that Anna had the situation well under control when they got there.
But I couldn't share this with Liz. We both knew the truth. "If things had gotten out of hand I could have—"
"Could have or would have?" Liz asked.
The difference between those two words had never seemed so huge. "Would," I said. "I would have stopped it."
"Even if it meant losing Josh?" Liz said, not asking what she really wanted to know—that if it had been her instead of Anna in Dillon's sights, would I have saved her; if it came down to a fight between the real me and my legend, which one would I choose?
The glass doors at the back of the lab slid open, and Macey walked in. "Hey, I thought I might find you two—"
"It's gone too far, Cammie," Liz said, shaking ingredients wildly into the mix until the whole thing started to bubble and change colors like something in a witch's caldron. "You've gone too far."
"I've gone too far?" I said. "I wasn't the one blowing up Driver's Ed cars!"