And for Pete's sake, whatever else you do, DON'T tell him about the make-out table. For the love of God, don't mention the make-out table.

Only of course I couldn't say that to her. I mean, how could I say that to her?

So instead all I did was wave back at her, feeling sick to my stomach, and say, "Thank you!"

Oh, God. I was so dead.

I tried not to think about it. I tried to be all bright and chipper, like Amber had always been. Seriously. No matter how early in the morning it was, or how foul the weather outside, Amber had always been cheerful in homeroom. Amber had really liked school. Amber had been one of those people who'd woken up every day and gone, Good morning, Sunshine, to herself in the mirror.

At least, she'd always seemed that way to me.

Of course, a fat lot of good it had done her, in the end.

I tried not to think about this as Mark walked me back to his car. I tried to keep my mind on happier subjects.

The only problem was, I couldn't think of any.

Happy things, I mean.

"I guess you probably have to be getting home," Mark said as he opened the passenger door for me.

"Yeah," I said. "I mean, I'm sort of in trouble. For the whole Karen Sue Hankey thing, I mean."

"Okay," Mark said. "But do you want to maybe stop at the Moose for a minute? For a shake or something?"

The Moose. The Chocolate Moose. That was the ice-cream stand across from the movie house on Main where all the popular kids hung out. Seriously. Ruth and I hadn't been to the Moose since we were little kids because as soon as we'd hit puberty, we'd realized only the beautiful people from school were allowed to go there. If you weren't a jock or a cheerleader and you showed up at the Moose, everybody there gave you dirty looks.

Which was actually okay, because the ice cream there wasn't as good as it was at the Thirty-one Flavors down the street. Still, the idea of going to the Moose with Mark Leskowski . . . well, it was strange and off-putting and thrilling, all at the same time.

"Sure," I said, casually as if boys asked me to go to the Moose with them every day of the week. "A shake'd be good, I guess."

There weren't many people hanging out at the Moose at first. Just Mark and me, and a couple of Wrestlerettes, who gave me the evil eye when I first walked up. But when they saw I was with Mark Leskowski, they relaxed, and even smiled. Todd Mintz was there with a couple of his friends. He grunted a hello to me and high-fived Mark.

I had a mint-chocolate-chip blizzard. Mark had something with Heath candy bar crunches sprinkled in. We sat on top of a picnic table that had a view all the way up Main Street, right up to the courthouse. The courthouse and, I couldn't help noticing, the jail. Behind the jail, the sun was setting in all these vibrant colors. It was beautiful and all—a true Indian summer sunset. But it was still, you know. The jail.

The jail where Mark might end up, admiring the sunset from behind bars.

I think he sort of realized that, too, because he turned away from the sunset and started asking me about my classes. That's desperation for you, when you start asking someone about their classes. I mean, if I hadn't realized before then that Mark and I had nothing in common, that would have been a real big clue.

Fortunately, a car pulled up about midway through my description of my U.S. Government class, and the people who piled out of it all started calling out Mark's name.

Only it wasn't, as I'd first thought, because they were so glad to see him. It was because they had something to tell him.

"Oh, my God." It was Tisha Murray, from my homeroom. She still had on her uniform from the memorial service—Tisha was on the varsity cheerleading squad—but she'd apparently left her pompons in the car.

"Oh, God, I'm so glad we found you," she gushed. "We were looking everywhere. Look, you've got to come quick. It's an emergency!"

Mark slid off the picnic table, his shake forgotten.

"What?" he asked, reaching out to take Tisha by either shoulder. "What's happened? What do you need me to do?"

"Not you," Tisha said, rudely. Except I don't think she meant to be rude. She was just too hysterical to remember social niceties. "Her."

She pointed. At me.

"You," Tisha said to me. "We need you."

"Me?" I nearly fell off the picnic table. Never before had a member of the Ernie Pyle varsity cheerleading squad expressed even the slightest interest in me. Well, except for the past two days, when they'd been berating me for letting Amber die. "What do you need me for?"

"Because it's happened again!" Tisha said. "Only this time it's Heather. He's got her. Whoever killed Amber has got Heather now! You've got to find her. Do you hear me? You've got to find her, before he strangles her, too!"



C H A P T E R

9

It probably isn't politic to slap a cheerleader. That's exactly what I did, though.

Hey, she was hysterical, all right? Isn't that what you're supposed to do to people who can't get ahold of themselves?

Looking back, though, it probably wasn't the smartest thing to do. Because all it did was reduce Tisha to tears. Not just tears, either, but big baby sobs. Mark had to get the story out of Jeff Day, who didn't know nearly as many words as Tisha did.

"We were at the memorial thingie," he said as Tisha wept in the arms of Vicky Huff, a Pompette. "You know, up at the quarry. The girls threw a bunch of the wreaths and flowers and crap from the service into the water. It was all symbolic and shit."

Have I mentioned that Jeff Day is not exactly on the honor roll?

"And then it was time to go, and everyone went back to their cars . . . everyone except Heather. She was just … gone."

"What do you mean," Mark demanded, "by gone?"

Jeff shrugged his massive shoulders.

"You know, Mark," he said. "Just . . . just gone."

"That's unacceptable," Mark said.

I wasn't sure what Mark was referring to … the fact that Heather had disappeared, or Jeff's shrugging off that disappearance. When, however, Jeff stammered, "What I mean . . . what I mean is, we looked, but we couldn't find her," I realized Mark had meant Jeff's answer. Jeff's hurrying to correct himself reminded me that, as quarterback, Mark was in a position of some authority over these guys.

"People don't do that, Jeff," I said. "People just don't just disappear."

"I know," Jeff said, looking a little miserable. "But Heather did."

"It was just like in that movie," Tisha said, lifting her tear-stained face. "That Blair Witch movie, where those kids disappeared in the woods. It was just like that. One second, Heather was there, and the next, she was gone. We called and called for her, and looked everywhere, but it was like … like she had vanished. Like that witch had gotten her."

I regarded Tisha with raised eyebrows.

"I highly doubt," I said, "that Heather's disappearance is the result of witchcraft, Tisha."

"No," Tisha said, wiping her eyes with her twig-like fingers. The tiniest member of the varsity squad, Tisha was the one who always ended up on the top of the trophy pyramid, or came popping up into the air, to land in a cradle of arms on the gym floor beneath her. "I know it wasn't really a witch. But it was probably, you know, a Grit."

"A Grit," I said.

"Yeah. I saw this movie once about these Grits who lived in the mountains, and they totally kidnapped Michael J. Fox's wife—you know, that Tracy Pollan. She was an Olympic biathlete, and they kidnapped her and tried to make her, like, tote their water and all. Until she, like, escaped."

I can't believe my life sometimes. I really can't.

"Maybe some freaky Grits like those ones in the movie, who live out in the woods by the quarry, got her. I've seen them out there, you know. They live in shacks, with no running water or electricity, and, like, an outhouse." Tisha started sobbing all over again. "They've probably stuffed her in the bottom of their outhouse!"

I had to give Tisha her propers for having such a colorful imagination. But still, this seemed a bit much to me.

"Let me see if I have this straight," I said. "You think a deranged hillbilly, who lives out by Pike's Quarry, has kidnapped Heather and stuffed her down his toilet."

"I've heard of that kinda thing happening," Jeff Day said.

But instead of supporting his fellow team member, Mark snapped, "That's the stupidest thing I ever heard."

Jeff Day was the kind of guy who, if anybody else had called him stupid, would have slammed his fist into the speaker's face. But not, evidently, if it happened to be Mark Leskowski. Mark, it appeared, was next to godlike in Jeff's book.

"Sorry, dude," he murmured, looking shamefaced.

Mark ignored his teammate.

"Have any of you," he wanted to know, "called the police?"

"Course we did," another player, Roy Hicks, said indignantly, not wanting to look bad, the way his teammate Jeff had, in front of the QB.

"A bunch of sheriff's deputies came up to the quarry," Tisha chimed in, "and they're helping everyone look for her. They even brought some of those sniffer dogs. We only left"—she turned mascara-smudged eyes toward me—"to look for her." Tisha could not seem to remember my name. And why should she? I was so far out of her social sphere as to be invisible....

Except when it came to rescuing her friends from psychotic hillbillies, apparently.

"You've got to find her," Tisha said, her damp eyes aglow with the last rays of the setting sun. "Please. Before … it's too late."