by Diane Hoh
Kyle seemed restless. “I don’t know why we always come here,” he complained. “The pizza isn’t all that great, and it’s so noisy I can’t hear myself think. Why can’t we go someplace quiet, for once?”
Alex glanced over at him. What was it that Kyle had on his mind, that he needed peace and quiet to think about? Was he remembering that he’d accidentally locked her in the booth last night? Maybe he was wondering if anything had happened because of his carelessness? Worried that Beth had found out and he was about to be fired?
“Oh, Kyle,” Kiki said coyly, “are you worried about the game Saturday? I heard State doesn’t have such a great team this year.”
Marty laughed. “Kiki, Kyle and I probably won’t even get in the game. Why would he be worried about it?”
Bennett said nothing. Alex felt sorry for him. It must be hard, when he wanted to play so bad, to already know that he had no chance at all.
Bennett said then, “We’ll all be there, whether we’re playing or not. It’s still our team.”
Marty and Kyle nodded solemn agreement.
When their food came, Alex noted with amusement that Kiki ate more pizza than anyone else at the table. No diet yet, apparently.
So she was surprised to notice, as they prepared to leave, that Kiki’s belt was loose.
“Kiki,” she pointed out quietly, “I think your belt’s broken.”
Kiki looked down. “No, it’s not.”
“But…”
Kiki fumbled with the buckle, adjusted the belt, and slipped into her red ski jacket. “I played four games of soccer this week, Alex. I’ve probably lost a few pounds, after all that racing around out on the field. It’s great exercise.”
Before they left, Marty insisted on seeking his fortune at the booth.
Alex tried to talk him out of it. “When you put a quarter in, The Wizard’s eyes light up,” she argued. “I hate that! It’s so creepy!” They were standing directly in front of the booth, and everything Alex had thought earlier about the figure being harmlessly ugly had disappeared from her mind, now that she was facing him. He really was creepy. “Anyway, it’s such a waste of money, Marty. Let’s just go.”
“C’mon—maybe this old codger can tell me how I’m going to fare with my soc speech. I wish I could get out of giving it. I’d rather do anything! Besides, what else can I buy for a quarter these days?”
He dropped the coin in the slot. When he picked up the small white card, he laughed. Holding it out to Alex, he said, “I guess you were right. Waste of money. I think this one was meant for Kyle.”
Alex looked down at the card he handed her and read, SILENCE IS GOLDEN. She groaned. “Another old bromide. I swear, my grandmother wrote every single one of these. And you’re right. Kyle was the one who wanted peace and quiet. I hate to say I told you so, but you have it coming, so…I told you so!”
On their way out of the restaurant, Marty tossed the little white card in the trash.
Chapter 7
CATH DEVON CALLED ALEX the following morning. “I wanted you to know why I didn’t show up,” she said anxiously. “I got a call telling me I didn’t need to come to the station, that you wanted to work a double shift. I thought that was kind of weird, but the guy who called seemed so…definite.”
“Who called you?” a half-asleep Alex asked.
“Well, the guy said he was Kyle. It didn’t really sound like him, but I’ve never talked to Kyle on the telephone before, so I don’t know.”
Alex struggled to clear her mind of the last remnants of sleep. Someone had called Cath and told her not to show up? Why would someone do that?
“Anyway,” Cath said, “I’m really sorry. I know I’m late sometimes, but I’d never just not show up, Alex.”
“I know that, Cath. And it’s okay. Not your fault. But…if it wasn’t Kyle, do you…do you have any idea who it was that called? I mean, did the voice sound like anyone you knew?”
“I’ve thought about that ever since Beth told me the call wasn’t for real, that it was probably a prank. And no, I didn’t recognize the voice, Alex. I’m sorry. I think now whoever was calling was deliberately trying to disguise his voice. With a tissue or something, like in the movies.”
When Alex didn’t say anything, Cath added, “Beth said you’re quitting. It’s not because of me, is it?”
“No, Cath, of course not.” Alex couldn’t bring herself to tell Cath about what had happened out on the deck. But she did ask, “Cath, has the wind off the observation deck ever bothered you at all?”
“The wind? Uh-uh.”
Darn.
“Beth probably told you we keep the doors open a lot because the booth gets so stuffy. But I don’t remember the wind ever getting nasty, Alex. Is that what happened?”
Beth hadn’t told her. Well, good. If Beth hadn’t, Alex certainly wasn’t going to. “I’m not sure what happened, Cath. Anyway, I’m fine now.”
“Alex, I really am sorry.”
“It’s okay, Cath. Thanks.”
When Alex had hung up, she sat down on her bed and thought about that observation deck outside the booth.
The radio station wasn’t the only thing on the eighteenth floor. There were other offices up there. And that deck went all the way around the building. The offices flanking the radio station must have been empty when she was being torn from the booth and bounced around the deck. Or someone in one of those offices would have heard her scream.
She had screamed, hadn’t she? She couldn’t remember. Maybe not. Maybe all anyone would have heard was that eerily whistling wind.
Shoving all thoughts of her terror from her mind, Alex got dressed and went to class.
That Saturday provided perfect weather for the football game: brisk, but not really cold, sunny with a clear, blue sky, and only the faintest of breezes.
The stadium was nearly full when Alex, Jenny, and Kiki arrived. Jenny had surprised Alex by putting on makeup, something she’d never done before, and curling her hair before leaving their room. Alex had to admit the effect was stunning. The hair that had always hung, straight, around her shoulders, was now a thick froth of curls that Jenny seemed to take delight in swinging and shaking, the way a woman with a new diamond ring waves her hand about frequently. In place of her customary jeans and sweatshirt, Jenny had dressed in a pair of Julie’s black leather pants and a thick peach-colored sweater.
“I’m just trying to cheer myself up,” Jenny said when she saw Alex’s mouth hanging open in shock. “Wearing Jules’s clothes makes me feel closer to her. And besides, she won’t mind if I wear them.”
Because Alex knew that was true, she said only, “You look really pretty.”
Jenny flushed with pleasure. And fastened a pair of Julie’s black onyx earrings in her earlobes.
They sat four rows up in the bleachers, directly behind the team bench, at Jenny’s insistence. “I want the guys to know we’re here, whether they get to play or not.”
Alex couldn’t argue with that.
She wasn’t that wild about the game itself. Too violent. She liked tennis and swimming and basketball, but football broke too many bones. What she did like about football was the atmosphere. Sitting in the stands, even when it was very, very cold and maybe even snowing, friends all around her, all of them there to cheer on their team. Drinking hot chocolate or cider, munching on hot dogs and chips, screaming at the top of her lungs, those were the things that brought her to the stadium. And if she held her breath during a particularly rough play, hoping like mad that no one would break an arm or a leg, she kept that fear to herself.
Milo Keith, Ian Banion, and Jessica Vogt, some other Nightingale Hall residents, were sitting right behind her. Milo was quiet, but he had a wicked sense of humor. Alex sat in front of him in English class, and occasionally laughed aloud at some of the remarks he made about their teacher, Professor Landis.
“I heard Bennett Stark might play today,” he said now.
“No way,” Ian replied. “I
’d heard he might be playing, too, but I saw him before the game and he said he wasn’t ready yet. Seemed okay about it, though.”
Gabe, of course, wasn’t playing, either. But he was sitting on the bench with the team, his crutches propped up beside him.
At halftime, Alex was about to join the long line at the restroom when a voice over the loudspeaker announced, “Telephone for Alexandria Edgar. Telephone for Alexandria Edgar.”
Her first thought was Julie. Something’s happened to Julie. She’s worse…
She would have run to the nearest phone, but running was impossible in the throng making its way up the stadium steps. She pushed, crying out, “Excuse me, excuse me,” but couldn’t make herself heard over the noisy crowd. Finally, by leaving the steps and climbing over empty seats, she made her way to the upper deck of the stadium. That, too, was crowded, and no one seemed to know where the nearest phone was located.
Alex pushed and shoved her way through the long lines gathered at the refreshment stands, unable to get close enough to any vendor to ask for directions to a phone. Her name being repeated over the loudspeaker was maddening.
“I know, I know,” she muttered, “I hear you…I’m trying, I’m trying!”
Finally, a uniformed security guard pointed in response to her question, and she raced around a corner and grabbed the receiver off a black wall phone hidden in an alcove.
“This is Alex Edgar,” she cried into the mouthpiece. “I have a phone call?”
A woman’s voice said, “Right. Hold on.”
Expecting momentarily to hear Julie’s voice, Alex’s jaw dropped when instead, a deep, unfamiliar voice said in a dull monotone, without so much as a hello, “Hear me well, Alexandria. Are you listening?”
Stupified, Alex stared at the stone wall in front of her. “What?”
“Hear me well. Take me seriously, Alexandria, or you will regret it.”
No one called her Alexandria. No one. “Who is this?”
“Do not dispute the wisdom of the ages. Skepticism is dangerous. Heed me well.”
There was a click, and the dial tone sounded in Alex’s ear.
Slowly, Alex replaced the receiver. Weird. Who…?
She turned away from the phone and walked back around the corner. The crowd had thinned. She could hear the last faint notes of the band’s halftime show fading away. The game would be resuming. Time to get back to her seat. Time to watch the rest of the game…
If she could put the bizarre phone call out of her mind.
Alex moved slowly, thoughtfully, lost in a fog of confusion. She hadn’t recognized the voice. But it could have been disguised. Hadn’t it sounded a little like the voice at the radio station, the voice that had requested Who’s Sorry Now for Julie? She couldn’t be sure. She’d been so surprised to hear a voice that wasn’t Julie’s that she hadn’t been paying enough attention to what the voice did sound like. She had focused only on the words.
Who was it that she wasn’t taking seriously?
Alex had a terrible time concentrating on the game. She kept hearing the deep, flat voice ordering her to “hear me well.”
Where had it come from?
Salem won the game, but Marty and Kyle were given no playing time. They warmed the bench throughout the game.
Alex knew Marty would be disappointed. But he seemed to be taking it well when they met outside the stadium after the game.
“I hate not being in on a win,” Bennett said crankily. “I could have played…”
“Stark,” Marty said amiably, “do you have any idea how weird that looks, a guy on crutches complaining because he didn’t get to play?”
“I meant, if it hadn’t been for my knees, I could have played,” Bennett said sullenly. “Maybe next week…” his voice was wistful.
“Sure. Now, can we just go eat? Sitting on the bench for a couple of hours sure works up an appetite.”
No one noticed that Alex was preoccupied. She walked along with the others as they left the stadium for the parking lot, but her mind was elsewhere. Should she tell them about the phone call? Yeah…no…maybe…
What brought Alex back to reality was the surprising but indisputable fact that Jenny was flirting with Bennett.
Flirting? Jenny?
Bennett had, until recently, been dating a gorgeous, red-haired Omega Phi. She’d dropped him like a hot potato the minute he’d taken to crutches. If he wasn’t going to be a football hero, she was no longer interested.
Her loss.
Jenny would never be that shallow.
At Alex’s insistence, they tried Burgers Etc., a diner not far from school, after the game. But they couldn’t even get into the parking lot.
“I don’t see why you guys had to take showers,” Kiki complained as they drove around the parking lot searching for a space. “You didn’t even play!”
“Thanks for pointing that out, Kiki,” Marty said drily. “You thought maybe we hadn’t noticed that?”
“Well, it let everybody else get here ahead of us. And I’m so hungry I could eat a cow.”
Alex had thought that Kiki looked a little thinner when they’d first met in the stands. Then she’d watched Kiki do nothing but eat chips and pickles and hot dogs and cookies and candy throughout the game and decided she was wrong. No dieting being done here, she’d thought, and helped herself to the bag of cookies sitting on Kiki’s lap.
Kyle refused to go to Vinnie’s. “It’ll be a madhouse. I need peace and quiet, okay? How about Chinese?”
So, they drove into town and ate at Hunan Manor. It was quiet, just as Kyle wanted, and not crowded. At Jenny’s gentle coaxing, Bennett finally pulled out of his funk, and they had a good time.
But on the way home, Marty, Bennett, and Kiki insisted on stopping at Vinnie’s. “I have to check with The Wizard,” Bennett said, half-jokingly. “Maybe he can tell me if I’m going to be able to play next week.”
Alex had no intention of going into Vinnie’s. “I’ll ride back to campus with Kyle,” she said as she got out of the car. “Jenny? You said you were tired.”
“I am.” Jenny hesitated, then smiled at Bennett. “But I think I’ll stay.”
They all argued with Alex, especially Jenny. “Why go back to the room and be alone? C’mon, Alex, we won today, and we haven’t really celebrated.”
But Alex wasn’t in any mood for celebrating. She could have told them about the phone call, but she was afraid they’d think she was being silly. Marty would say it was obviously just a joke. They’d think she was making too much of it.
Maybe she was.
“C’mon,” Bennett urged, “you haven’t had your fortune told yet. Now’s your chance.”
“I don’t want my fortune told,” Alex said sharply. “That stupid Wizard is totally bogus, and you all know it. I wouldn’t waste my money on that thing.”
Surprised by her reaction, they all began backing away. “Alex, chill,” Kyle chided. “He might hear you.”
“Who?”
Kyle laughed. “The Wizard, dummy. He could have far-reaching powers, Alex. You wouldn’t want to hurt his feelings, would you?”
“He’s right,” Kiki said, grinning. “You should watch what you say about someone who has the power to grant wishes and tell fortunes, Alex. You could be asking for trouble.”
Alex regarded both of them with suspicion. “Did either of you make any phone calls during halftime?”
Kyle looked bewildered. “Phone calls?”
But Kiki’s grin widened. “Why?” she asked with phony innocence. “Did you get one? Did you, for instance,” her words deliberately slow and measured, “get one from someone who warned you about being skeptical?” And then she cleared her throat, and with one hand over her mouth, repeated in a low monotone the words Alex had heard over the phone. “Hear me well, Alexandria, skepticism can be dangerous.” Laughing, Kiki pointed at Alex’s face. “You should see yourself! I wish I had a camera.”
“You made that stupid call?” Ale
x’s face burned. “It was you?”
“Oh, relax, Alex. I was just having fun. You were such a drag about The Wizard. Where’s your sense of humor?”
“Maybe I left it in Julie’s backseat the night of the accident,” Alex snapped. Lips clamped together, she whirled in disgust and walked stiffly to the edge of the parking lot to await the shuttle.
There was whispering and muttering behind her, and then Marty was standing beside her. “I sent everyone else on inside,” he said. “What’s up? What was that all about?”
“I actually thought, for just one tiny little second, that it might be him,” she murmured, so low that Marty couldn’t hear her. And it’s not really Kiki I’m mad at, she thought angrily, it’s myself. For being so incredibly stupid.
Marty bent his head toward hers. “What? What are you mumbling about?”
Alex shook her head. “Nothing. Never mind.” She felt like such a fool.
He was annoyed with her lack of response. “Why are you pooping out on us? C’mon inside, Alex. It’s too early to call it a night.”
“I don’t want to go in there,” she said. “Like Kyle said, it’s too noisy. I have a headache.”
“You’ve always liked Vinnie’s,” Marty said, a frown furrowing his forehead. “What’s up?”
What was up was that being in Vinnie’s reminded her of the storm and the lightning and the accident. She didn’t want to be reminded of any of those things. And then there was that stupid wooden Wizard, fixing his cold blue eyes on her as if he could see right through her. Reminding her of what a fool she was, not guessing that Kiki was behind the stupid practical joke.
Maybe dieting made Kiki irrational. Because in spite of the enormous amount of food she’d eaten tonight, she really did look thinner.
“I told you, I’m tired,” Alex repeated, becoming as annoyed as he was. “I mean, I don’t have to do everything everyone else does, do I? I want to go home, and that’s what I’m going to do, okay?”
