"G!" Sleepy strolled up to us. "There you are. You doing lunch now?"

Gina's lips were pressed together in annoyance with me, but Sleepy did not appear to notice this. Neither did Dopey, who showed up a second later.

"Hey," he said breathlessly. "What are you guys just standing here for? Let's go eat."

Then he noticed me and sneered. "Suze, where's your shadow?"

I said with a sniff, "Michael will be unable to join us for lunch today, having been unavoidably detained."

"Yeah," Dopey said, and then he made a rude remark pertaining to Michael's having been detained by an inability to get certain parts of his body back into his pants. This was apparently an allusion to Michael's lack of coordination and not an intimation that he was more endowed than the average sixteen-year-old male.

I chose to ignore this remark, as did Gina, though I think this was because she hadn't even heard it.

"I sure hope you know what you're doing," was all she said, and it was clear she was not speaking to either of my stepbrothers, which puzzled them enormously. Why would any girl bother speaking to me when she could be speaking to them ?

"G," I said with some surprise. "What do you take me for? An amateur?"

"No," Gina said. "A fool."

I laughed. I really did think she was just being funny. It wasn't until much later that I realized there wasn't anything amusing about it at all.

Because it turned out Gina was one hundred percent right.

CHAPTER 15

Here's the thing about killers. If you know one, I'm sure you'll agree with me:

They can't help bragging about what they've done.

Seriously. They are totally vain. And that, generally, is their undoing.

Look at it from their point of view: I mean, here they are, and they've gotten away with this terrific crime. You know, something totally ingenious that no one would ever think to pin on them.

And they can't tell anybody. They can't tell a soul.

That's what gets them almost every time. Not telling anyone - not letting anyone in on their brilliant secret - well, that just about kills them.

Don't get me wrong. They don't want to get caught. They just want somebody to appreciate the brilliance of this thing they've done. Yes, it was a heinous - sometimes even unthinkable - crime. But look. Look. They did it without getting caught. They fooled the police. They fooled everybody. They have to tell somebody. They have to. Otherwise, what's the point?

This is just a personal observation, of course. I have met quite a few killers in my line of work, and this is the one thing they all seem to have in common. Only the ones who kept their mouths shut were the ones who managed to keep from getting caught. Everybody else? Slammer city.

So it seemed to me that Michael - who already believed that I was in love with him - just might decide to brag to me about what he'd done. He'd already started to, a little, when he'd told me how Josh and people like him were just a "waste of space." It seemed likely that, with a little prompting, I could get him to elaborate … maybe to the tune of a confession that I could then turn around and give to the police.

What's that you're saying? Guilty? Won't I feel guilty for snitching on this guy who had, after all, only been trying to get back at the kids who'd let his sister hurt herself so badly?

Yeah. Right. Listen, I don't do guilt. In my book, there are two kinds of people. Good ones and bad ones. As far as I was concerned, in this particular case, there wasn't a single good person to be found. Everybody had done something reprehensible, from Lila Meducci crashing that party and getting herself trashed in the process, to the RLS Angels for throwing the drunken free-for-all in the first place. Maybe some of them had committed crimes a little more heinous than the others - Michael's killing four people comes to mind - but frankly, in my mind … they all sucked.

So, in answer to your question, no, I didn't feel guilty about what I was about to do. The way I saw it, the sooner Michael got what was coming to him, the sooner I could get back to what was really important in life: lying on the beach with my best friend, soaking up some rays.

It was as I was in the girls' room just after last period let out, applying eyeliner in the mirror above the sinks - I have found that wringing confessions from potential murderers is easier when I am looking my best - that I got my first indication that the afternoon was not going to go exactly as I'd planned.

The door opened and Kelly Prescott walked in, followed by her shadow, Debbie Mancuso. They were not, apparently, there either to relieve or coif themselves, since all they did was stand there and stare at me in a hostile manner.

I looked at their reflections in the mirror and went, "If this is about funding for a class trip to the wine country, you can forget it. I already spoke to Mr. Walden about it, and he said it was the most ludicrous thing he'd ever heard of. Six Flags Great Adventure, maybe, but not the Napa Valley. Wineries do card, you know."

Kelly's upper lip curled. "This isn't about that," she said in a disgusted tone of voice.

"Yeah," Debbie said. "This is about your friend."

"My friend?" I had extracted a hairbrush from my backpack, and now I ran it through my hair, feigning unconcern. And I wasn't concerned. Not really. I could handle anything Kelly Prescott and Debbie Mancuso dished out. Only I didn't exactly feel like dealing with this, on top of everything else that had happened lately. "You mean Michael Meducci?"

Kelly rolled her eyes. "As if. Why you would ever want to be seen with that, I cannot imagine. But we happen to be talking about this Gina person."

"Yeah," Debbie said, her eyes narrowed to angry little slits.

Gina? Oh, Gina. Gina, who had stolen both Kelly's and Debbie's inamoratos. Suddenly all became clear.

"When is she going back to New York?" Kelly demanded.

"Yeah," Debbie said. "And where is she sleeping? Your room, right?"

Kelly elbowed her, and Debbie went, "Well, don't act like you don't want to know, Kel."

Kelly shot her friend an annoyed look, and then asked me, "There hasn't been any … well, bed-hopping, has there?"

Bed-hopping?

"Not to my knowledge," I said. I thought about messing with them, but the thing was, I really did feel for them. I know if some superhot femme fatale ghost had come along and stolen Jesse from me, I'd have been plenty peeved. Not that Jesse had ever even been mine to begin with.

"No bed-hopping," I said. "Footsie under the dinner table, maybe, but no bed-hopping that I know of."

Debbie and Kelly exchanged glances. I could see they were relieved.

"And she's leaving when?" Kelly asked.

When I said "Sunday," both girls let out a little sigh. Debbie went, "Good."

Now that she knew she wouldn't have to put up with her much longer, Kelly was willing to be gracious about Gina. "It isn't that we don't like her," she said.

"Yeah," Debbie said. "It's just that she's … you know."

"I know," I said in what I hoped was a comforting manner.

"It's just because she's new," Kelly said. Now she was getting defensive. "That's the only reason they like her. Because she's different."

"Sure," I said, putting my hairbrush back.

"I mean, so she's from New York?" Kelly was really warming to her subject. "Big deal. I mean, I've been to New York. It wasn't so great. It was really dirty, and there were these disgusting pigeons and bums everywhere."

"Yeah," Debbie said. "And you know what I heard? In New York, they don't even have fish tacos."

I almost felt sorry for Debbie then.

"Well," I said, shouldering my backpack. "It's been a pleasure. But now I gotta go, ladies."

I left them there, dipping their pinkies into little pots of lip gloss and then leaning into the mirror to apply it.

Michael was waiting for me exactly where he'd said he would be. You could tell the eyeliner was doing its job, since he got very flustered and went, "Hi, uh, do you, uh, want me to take your backpack?"

I cooed, "Oh, that would be lovely," and let him take it. With two backpacks slung over his shoulders, mine and his own, Michael looked a bit odd, but then, he always did - at least with his clothes on - so this was no big surprise. We started down the cool, shady breezeway - empty now that most everybody had left for the day - and then stepped out into the warm yellow sunlight of the parking lot. The sea, just beyond it, winked at us. The sky overhead was cloudless.

"My car's over there," Michael said, pointing at an emerald green sedan. "Well, not my car, really. But the one the rental agency loaned me. It's not a bad little number, actually. Has some punch to it."

I smiled at him, and he tripped over a loose piece of concrete. He would have fallen flat on his face if he hadn't saved himself at the last minute. My lipstick, I could see, was performing as well as the eyeliner.

"Let me just, uh, find the keys," Michael said as he fumbled around in his pockets.

I told him to take his time. Then I pulled out my DKs and turned my face toward the sun, leaning against the hood of his rental car. How, I wondered, to best bring it up? Maybe I should suggest we stop by the hospital to see his little sister? No, I wanted to get to his house as soon as possible so I could start reading his email. Would I even know how to access his email? Probably not. But I could call Cee Cee. She'd know. Could you talk on the phone and access someone's email at the same time? Oh, God, why wouldn't my mom let me get a cell phone? I was practically the only sophomore without one - Dopey excepted, of course.