still waiting. She was a senior—or had been; she’d gotten her diploma at Friday’s ceremony—and was pretty OK. Not popular, exactly, but not bottom of the barrel, either. Her family was a hair above poor through the winter, lower-middle class in the summer, same as most of Port Isley; Lisa’s dad was an accountant or something; her mother worked in the bookstore on Water Street. She was just a girl, some random girl who Amanda had seen being murdered by Ed Billings, the shop teacher at their high school. Mr. Billings also coached girls’ basketball. And Lisa was on the team, Amanda remembered…
Don’t try to make connections. It was a dream.
She smiled at Lisa, the smile better now, almost real. “It was nothing. I was asleep.”
Ally Fergus, Sean’s little sister, was standing close by. “Not nothing,” she supplied helpfully. “She said she saw you get killed by Mr. Billings. Screamed like her tits were on fire, too. What, you didn’t hear her?”
Lisa wasn’t smiling anymore. She looked from Ally back to Amanda, her expression unreadable. “Are you serious?”
Devon scowled at Ally. “Fuck off, brat.”
“You fuck off,” Ally mumbled, but melted away a moment later. Amanda tried her smile again on Lisa.
“I got too high or something,” she started. “Had a nightmare is all. Really, it’s—”
“That’s fucked,” Lisa said, her voice tight. Her face was flushed, and Amanda realized that mild, pleasant Lisa, whom she’d grown up with, known for most of her young life, and never known to have a harsh word for anyone, was totally pissed off. “Why don’t you keep your little dramas to yourself from now on, OK? No one wants to hear your shit.”
“Jesus, Lis, you on the rag or something?” Devon asked. His voice was mild with surprise. “Calm down. She said—”
“I heard what she said, and it’s…it’s bullshit,” Lisa snapped. “Like usual. Just stay away from me, all right?”
She turned and stalked off, leaving Amanda and Devon staring after her, Amanda feeling like she’d been kicked in the stomach. They’d never been friends, but she’d always considered Lisa to be kind of a neutral personality, not an enemy, certainly. The people watching dropped their gazes, turned away, tried to act like they hadn’t been entirely engrossed in the exchange.
“Psycho cunt,” Devon said loudly. A couple of people laughed. “Come on, let’s get some air.”
Amanda allowed herself to be pulled toward the back door, her head spinning, stumbling over an extended foot as someone turned the lights out again as the party returned to itself. Everything had happened so fast, she didn’t know what to make of it, of anything.
The air outside wasn’t as cold as she’d expected, summer coming on fast, and as Devon handed her a smoke, one of his barfy Winstons, she had a sudden flash of understanding, a thought that was complete in its clarity.
He’s here, she thought, and because she didn’t know what that meant, didn’t know how she knew or who he was or pretty much anything at all, it seemed, she began to cry.
CHAPTER TWO
Lisa waited a few steps down the trail, in the dark. Coach usually parked at the head of the trail—there were no streetlights where Eleanor dead-ended—and she went to his car, but tonight, she wanted to walk and talk, not to do it, not have sex.
Thinking of sex with him gave her a chill, sweet and heavy and terrible, too, her heart suddenly picking up speed. He was married and more than twice her age, and she knew what people would think if they knew, but it felt so good, so wrong and wild and good…
He says I’m beautiful; he says I’m his beautiful girl.
She clamped down on the thought. It was over. It had to be over now. He had been getting…strange. It had been a mistake, telling him that she loved him. She hadn’t meant to, but two weeks ago he’d said he loved her, and she’d had to say something, she couldn’t just leave him hanging. And then he’d started talking about the two of them running away together, and she had nodded and agreed because she didn’t want him to feel bad, but she had to tell him; she couldn’t let him keep thinking what he was thinking.
Lisa crossed her arms against the chill, wishing she had somewhere to sit, hoping it wouldn’t go too badly, that he wouldn’t be too upset. She knew it was going to hurt him and was afraid he might cry or even yell at