Red Heart Tattoo (6 page)

“S
o did the cops frisk you? I would have,” Trent joked.

“Not funny. They think I’m involved,” Morgan said. They were standing beside the staircase in the atrium after school. The herd of students leaving had thinned, but the area was still noisy with echoes of voices and foot traffic. Trent was heading to the gym for football practice, but she’d stopped him to unload her story about her police interview.

“Babe, cops always think everybody is guilty. It’s what makes them cops.”

“I just wish … I mean, if you could have seen the way that woman detective looked at me. And our principal didn’t stick up for me!”

Trent kissed her forehead. “Let it go. Besides, I think I have something interesting to tell you.”

“Like what?”

His brown eyes went mischievous. “No info without a tongue kiss.”

Her cheeks warmed. “Trent … we’re in the middle of the hall.”

“And?”

She glanced around. No one was paying any mind to them, but still she was uncomfortable. PDAs—public displays of affection—weren’t her style. Alone with Trent under their special tree in her front yard was more to her liking. “Later,” she said.

“Can I stop over after practice?”

Her parents would be working late, but they didn’t like her having Trent over when they weren’t home. “Fifteen minutes. And only outside.”

“Wow. Clampdown.” He didn’t look happy about the conditions.

“You can’t focus on fifteen minutes of me and you under the tree?” She poked him in the chest with her finger. Truthfully, it was getting more difficult to be alone with him—somehow their clothes kept falling off. They’d gotten dangerously close to “doing the deed” more than once.

Trent shrugged grudgingly. “I guess I’ll have to.”

She dipped her head to catch his gaze. “A really good fifteen. Now, what news do you have for me?”

“Heard some whispers about the fireworks. Roth’s name got mentioned.”

Her heart tripped. “Rothman?”

“Yeah, tattoo boy. Locker-room talk. Could be true. Nobody likes him.”

Morgan pressed her lips together. Rumors often held a grain of truth. “Why?”

“Why not? He’s got a rep for trouble—King of Detention Hall, Most Likely to Be Sent to the Principal’s Office. He could have his own bad-rap page in the yearbook.”

“How am I going to find out?” she said, mostly to herself.

“I could beat it out of him.”

She flashed him an exasperated look. “My problem. I’ll handle it.”

“Be careful. He’s not a nice guy. Look, I got to go. Coach hates us being late.”

“See you later,” she called as he jogged off.

He turned, pedaled backward. “Count on it.”

Morgan sat on the half wall near the staircase to think.
Roth
. The boy with the full sensitive lips and startling blue eyes. The boy who made her pulse go crazy and her palms sweat when he stared at her. She was pathetic. Suddenly his attention toward her made sense—he was probably watching her for a reason. But why? What had she ever done to tee him off enough to make him pull such a prank?

The image of his goth friend, Liza Sandiski, flashed through Morgan’s mind. Grunge-looking Liza with so much hardware in her face that she’d set off metal detectors. She and Morgan once had a run-in, during last year’s student council campaign. Morgan had bravely (to her way of thinking) approached the group of goth girls in the halls to pass out her “Vote for Morgan” literature. Liza had taken the flyer, stepped closer and torn it into small pieces
right in Morgan’s face. “I’m not voting,” Liza had said. “No one running I like.”

Everyone had laughed and sauntered away while Morgan stood feeling humiliated. Had Liza put Roth up to the fireworks prank? And if Liza had asked, would he have done it? Morgan grew agitated. If it was true, she wanted to know. Hadn’t she sworn not to let the perpetrators get away with it? She grabbed her book bag and made a dash for the parking lot. She needed to get started on homework before Trent arrived. And if Trent’s report was true, she needed to figure out how to best handle Roth and maybe Liza too.

Kelli sat cross-legged on the gym bleachers, staring at a history book but waiting for the football team to come through the doors from the locker room. Practice was over, so they had to come out this way once they showered and changed. They had to pass through the gym to get out of school and into the parking lot. Sooner or later, Mark had to come out where she could talk to him.

Three weeks had passed since she’d been hurt, and she had yet to pin him down for a serious talk. Her texts went mostly unanswered, or minimally answered, things like “
GOT 2 RUN
” or “
PLEZ NOT NOW.
” If she caught him in the halls, it was the same story. If she called his cell, he didn’t pick up. Today was the day she was determined to corner him. She was desperate.

The locker-room doors slammed open and the team poured out, talking, laughing. Kelli looked up, waiting
until the flow turned into a trickle. For a moment she thought he’d known she was waiting and had slipped away. But the stragglers came out, among them Trent and Mark. Kelli shot off the bleachers and rushed up to Mark, saying, “We need to talk.”

He gave her a deer-in-the-headlights look. “Uh–I can’t now.”

“Yes, you can,” Kelli said. “You owe me.”

Mark glanced at Trent, who shrugged. “I’ll wait in the car.”

He must have driven them both to school today.

“Wait—”

“Now,” Kelli insisted.

Mark got a defeated hangdog look and nodded. He followed her to the hard wooden bleachers, sat gingerly, stared at the floor.

“Why are you avoiding me? You know what’s happening.”

“I’m not avoiding you. It’s just that we already talked this out. I won’t change my mind.”

Tears of frustration sprang to Kelli’s eyes. “You can’t do this to me! It’s not fair.”

He looked up, his expression tortured. “I know. I’m a jerk. But you know how I feel, Kelli. I’ve wanted to play ball all my life, ever since Pop Warner. I’m good. Coach has college coaches calling about me. A full ride, Kelli, at almost any university in the Midwest. My folks can’t send me to college. Dad hasn’t worked steady in two years. This is my chance.”

“And what about my chances?” she cried. Tears were streaming down her cheeks now. “What about
me
, Mark?” She held up her still-splinted wrist. “This is going to heal. Then what am I going to tell my mother?”

“I never wanted you to get hurt—”

“Save it. You’re killing me,” she said through clenched teeth.

He reached out to touch her, but she scooted out of his reach. “I—I love you.”

“Don’t even say that to me. I hate you.”

His face went pale and his eyes misted, but he stood quickly. “My offer still stands, Kelli.”

“Your offer.” She said the words as if they tasted bitter. “It wasn’t an offer, Mark. It was an ultimatum.”

He stood over her for a few seconds, lifted his book bag from the floor and walked away.

Kelli wept for a long time, alone in the tomblike quiet of the gym after the door clicked closed behind him.

T
he Watchers stood in their usual places in the atrium, leaning against a wall near the bathroom door, out of the stream of foot traffic, and observing the cliques of Edison, the hoods of their heavy sweatshirts raised to hide their faces.

“You said you had a plan?” the short one asked the tall one.

“It’s bold. You may want to chicken out when you hear it.”

“I won’t! I keep telling you I’m up for whatever you’re planning.”

“Once you know my plan, there’s no turning back.”

“Why do you doubt me? We’re friends, right?”

The thin one jammed hands into pockets. October’s cold air seeped through the cement walls. The school administrators were too cheap to pay to heat the atrium, so
everyone shivered. On the half wall next to the staircase, Morgan sat wrapped in Trent’s letter jacket, laughing at a joke someone had told. The tall one found their esteemed council president especially irksome.

“Know what I heard?” the short one asked.

“Will I care?”

Undaunted, the other one said, “I heard that Roth set the fireworks.”

The tall one turned full attention on the short one. “Where’d you hear that?”

Waves of satisfaction washed over the short one. The great smart one hadn’t heard the rumor. This was a coup. “Around. Sounds like something he’d do, though.” A glowering dark look crossed the tall one’s face and brought satisfaction to the one who’d shared the rumor.

“So Roth is a badass. So what? What I’ve got planned will make his joke look stupid.”

“I said I wanted to know your big plan.”

“
Our
,” the tall one said. “We’re doing this together.”

“Okay.”

“You have to come over to my house. I’ll show you everything on my computer.”

“You could email it to me.”

The tall one glared down at the other. “My plan can’t be spread from computer to computer. I know how to eradicate all traces on my computer. You don’t.”

The heavy kid bristled but knew the assessment was correct. Smart, yes. Supersmart, no—not smart like the other one. “When should I come over?”

“This afternoon. I’ll be the only one home.”

“How am I supposed to get there?”

“You walk, flabo. It’ll do you good.”

The short Watcher’s face burned with shame. In his gut he longed to be defensive or to say something back. But he knew better. The other Watcher was in charge, and that was the way it would stay. At least there was someone to call.

The bedroom was like a cave. The walls were painted black, with black lights in two lamps and a lava lamp on the dresser. Gaming posters of death and destruction, of war and carnage hung on the walls, slapped up haphazardly. The rumpled bed was wrapped in black sheets that glowed purple under the black lights.

“How do you see in here?” the short one blurted.

For once, the smart one seemed oblivious. A laptop, two backup hard drives and a lamp with a halogen bulb sat on a desk. “When you’re in my room, call me by my Web avatar name. It’s Apocalypse.”

“Really? That’s cool. Who can I be?” The short one regretted the question as it came out.

Apocalypse smirked and said, “How about Pop-Tart, since you like them so much.”

“I don’t think I like—”

“Or Pop-Fart. Your choice.”

“Please don’t make fun of me. It—it hurts my feelings.”

“So I’ll call you Executioner. That better?”

“Yes. Much better.”

Apocalypse shrugged, fingers flying over the laptop keys. After several screens of bland, boring websites, an encrypted file was found and loaded. It popped open and caused Executioner’s breath to catch. “Is that … is that a diagram of a
bomb
?”

“A thing of beauty, yes?”

“You’re going to build a
bomb
?” Executioner asked, voice trembling.

“
We’re
going to build a bomb,” Apocalypse said. “Together.”

“But, I don’t know how to build—”

“I have instructions.”

“But a bomb …”

“Not a huge one. Just something to make noise, mess up the atrium. You said you wanted people talking about us.”

“But how will they know it’s us? I don’t want anyone to know—”

“Man, you’re dense. No one will know it’s us but us. It’ll be talked about forever. Isn’t that what we want? Fireworks are nothing. But a bomb—no one will ever forget that.”

“What if someone gets hurt?”

“So what? You’re such an idiot. We don’t care about those people.”

Executioner was flabbergasted, but the idea wasn’t a total turnoff either, not after one of the jocks had “accidentally” doused Executioner with chocolate milk earlier in the week.

“But the stuff to build it …?”

“I have a list. We’ll buy it a little at a time. Use cash. We can work in my garage, behind that pile of junk in the corner. No one will ever know.”

Executioner stared hard into Apocalypse’s cold blue eyes. “You’re—you’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Serious as a heart attack. I will do this.
We
will, ’cause now you’re in.”

Morgan was steaming mad. The school halls were empty, the bus carrying the football team to the away game and the caravan of students’ cars following the bus were gone, and here she was stuck putting up posters for next week’s homecoming bash by herself. Where were the rest of her council and helpers? They had said they’d stay behind and help, but instead everyone had made a dash to leave as soon as the bell buzzed. Everyone, of course, except Morgan. Now she’d have to drive to the game alone,
after
she hung all the posters.

She told herself to be grateful that they still had a football season to play after the fireworks stunt over six weeks before. The season had teetered on disaster for twelve days, but Coach, the players and their parents had rallied to save the season for the sake of the boys being scouted by college coaches. Mr. Simmons had also gone to bat for Edison, pleading before the school board that one bad apple shouldn’t ruin it for everyone.

Morgan kept telling herself “Be grateful” as she hurried to staple posters on school-authorized corkboards
when she heard a noise. Someone came up from behind, placed hands firmly on either side of her shoulders, trapping her in between. She yelped in surprise, spun and, with her back pressed against the wall, found herself staring into Roth’s electric-blue eyes.