by Diane Hoh
She hadn’t done anything wrong. Burning her raincoat would make her feel as if she had.
Instead, she rolled up the coat and hat in as small a ball as possible, wrapped them in an old sweatshirt, and placed them at the very back of the closet, behind a pile of dirty laundry. Even when the laundry was moved, all Tobie would see was an old sweatshirt.
Quinn felt almost as guilty as she would have if she’d burned the coat and hat.
Am I hiding evidence? she wondered as she wiped her face with a tissue and took clean, dry socks from a drawer.
Evidence of what? She hadn’t done anything!
Suddenly, in her mind’s eye, she saw herself raising her arms and lowering them, once, twice, three times, and then her younger sister Sophie’s round, pink face screwed up in fear, her bright blue eyes wide with bewilderment as she woke from a sound sleep to find her beloved older sister pummeling her.
“But I didn’t mean it!” Quinn whispered softly to herself, sinking down on the bed.
“What didn’t you mean?” Tobie asked as she came into the room. Without waiting for an answer, she threw herself down on her bed. “I’m not leaving this room today,” she said flatly. “It’s lousy out there. I can afford to cut this one time. I’ll get the notes from people. I’m just going to stay in bed.”
“You okay?” Quinn asked. Tobie seemed awfully pale. Maybe she was scared. Who could blame her? That could just as easily have been her and Danny sitting in the car.
Tobie nodded and crawled back into bed.
It looked like a tempting idea. “It is getting pretty nasty out there.”
“You were outside? Already? I thought you were probably downstairs eating breakfast. You don’t have an eight o’clock on Fridays. What were you doing out there?”
Was Tobie deliberately avoiding the subject of last night’s attack? She must have heard about it. How could they not talk about it? Impossible. “I just went for a walk, that’s all. Listen, Tobie, is Suze a friend of Reed’s? Or Jake’s?”
Tobie’s face fell. She’d heard about the attack, all right. She had obviously made up her mind to ignore it, pretend it hadn’t happened.
But it had.
“Suze?” Tobie thought for a minute. “I don’t know. Why?”
Quinn didn’t want to tell Tobie that she’d seen Suze at the car. Not until she knew why Suze had been there. “I just wondered. Suze seemed really upset last night, so I thought …”
“I don’t want to talk about this now,” Tobie said, pulling her quilt up around her shoulders. She reached up and pulled her high school yearbook from the shelf. “And I’m sure Suze wasn’t the only one upset about it. Everyone must be.”
Yes, Quinn thought, but everyone didn’t go back to the car at the crack of dawn this morning, did they?
Well, two of us did. I know why I was there. But why was Suze?
“Are you going to stay here with me?” Tobie asked, opening the yearbook.
Quinn shrugged. Maybe if she stayed inside, Tobie wouldn’t bury herself in that yearbook again. It always seemed to depress her. On the other hand, Quinn wanted to get out on campus and find out what people were saying about last night’s attack. “Count me out,” she told Tobie. “I have a quiz in math, anyway. Can’t afford to miss it.”
When she left the room later, Tobie was lying on her bed looking at her yearbook, one hand reaching up to continually twist a lock of red hair.
Most of the gossip on campus revolved around the attack of the night before. Although Reed and Jake had been released from the infirmary that morning, they weren’t attending classes. No one really expected them to.
But at lunch in Lester’s busy cafeteria, Quinn was waiting on line for her soup when she overheard Suze and another girl, in line ahead of her, discussing the attack.
“Well, Reed saw something,” Suze told her companion.
Quinn moved an imperceptible inch forward. Reed had seen who attacked them? In all that rain?
“What?” the second girl said. “Did she see someone? Who was it?”
Quinn held her breath.
“Oh, she doesn’t know who,” Suze replied. “All she knows is, it was someone wearing one of those yellow rubber raincoats and a matching hat.”
Chapter 13
THE DAY SEEMED TO drag on endlessly. Quinn did all the things she was supposed to do: She went to class and she took notes, although she had no idea what she was writing.
She knew that she looked normal. Jeans and a sweater, normal. A little mascara on the thick eyelashes Tobie envied, normal. Straight brown hair fell around her face, normal. She walked like a normal person, sat like a normal person, probably even answered any questions put to her like a normal person.
But if people could have seen inside her head … a giant crazy quilt of questions spinning around in there like a load of colored clothes in a dryer. Reed had seen someone in a yellow raincoat and hat at the car. The pockets of the yellow raincoat in Quinn’s closet had been full of glass. How had that glass made its way into her pockets? And what was Suze doing at the car first thing in the morning after the attack?
And … although it had nothing to do with the attack, why hadn’t Tobie told her roomie about the boyfriend who had died? How could she not have told? Wouldn’t keeping something so awful all to yourself be like carrying a mountain around on your shoulders?
Because it seemed important that she act as normal as possible, Quinn joined Ivy and Suze in a trip to the mall after classes. The rain had stopped, the sky had cleared, and the sun had warmed the air to bare-arm weather. It seemed the wrong kind of day to be sitting in an empty dorm room worrying over unanswered questions.
So she called Tobie from the lobby, inviting her along on the mall trip. “It’s nice out now,” she pleaded, “and you’ve been in that room all day. Come with us.”
Tobie declined. She sounded tired, her voice husky.
She’s been crying, Quinn thought with certainty. I should hide that yearbook from her. It just makes her sad.
Giving up, she joined Ivy and Suze out on the Commons.
“No gloomy talk about attacks on innocent, helpless cars,” Ivy half-joked on the way to the mall. “I’m as upset about it as you are, but it’s too nice a day to try to analyze why some crazy with a hammer would go after a helpless sedan, okay?”
“Okay with me,” Quinn said as she steered her own small blue compact car around a curve. Ivy had a point. Why waste time discussing a puzzle when no one had the missing pieces? Maybe this day could still be salvaged. And maybe she’d get the chance to ask Suze what she was doing at Jake’s car that morning.
They did have fun. Suze bought two new pairs of outrageously expensive earrings, Ivy found a CD she’d been hunting for for weeks, and Quinn tested four or five shades of lipstick, one a bold, daring red, which she didn’t buy. No guts, she accused silently, buying instead a pale coral shade.
Suze drove Ivy and Quinn crazy, stopping every few minutes to talk to a different guy.
“She is the most incredible flirt I’ve ever seen!” Ivy said with some disgust.
Quinn laughed. “Look who’s talking.”
Ivy shrugged. “Yeah, but it’s just a game to me. You don’t see me latching on to any one guy, do you? Who needs it?”
“Does Tim know you feel that way? He looks to me like he has great expectations concerning the two of you.”
“Tim’s okay. But I’m still having fun …”
Ivy was as casual about Tim, who seemed nuts about her, as Tobie was about Danny.
“I guess you and Simon are sailing along smoothly now,” Ivy said, stopping to gaze into a sporting goods store window. “Don’t you think that’s kind of risky?”
“Risky? Risky how?”
“Well,” Ivy turned away from the window, “some of the couples on campus aren’t going out in public now. They’re afraid to. I guess they think being a twosome on campus right now is a dangerous thing.”
Quinn wanted to retort
that people were just being silly, but the words stuck in her throat. Because maybe they weren’t. The attacks had all been on couples. How could you ignore that?
Ignoring it might be … what was the word Ivy had used … dangerous?
“I need new sneakers,” she said, pulling Ivy into the sporting goods store. She did need new sneakers, although she hated the thought of why she needed them. Not to mention new white socks, she thought dismally.
She was at the sock rack when Suze caught up with her. Quinn turned around when Suze said her name. Ivy was at the rear of the store, trying on boots. It seemed like the perfect time to ask Suze what she was doing at Jake’s car this morning.
But, Quinn thought, then she’ll want to know what I was doing there.
So, I’ll fib.
Blonde hair up in a curly ponytail, blue eyes wide with pleasure as she joined Quinn, Suze looked like the most innocent person in the world. “Suze,” Quinn began, “have you heard any more about Reed and Jake? I can’t believe they got out of that car with only some scratches, can you?”
“No, but they did. I saw Reed this morning. She had a Band-Aid on one cheek and some scratches on her hands, but that’s all. They were really lucky.”
“I’ll say.” Quinn fingered a pair of thick white socks and said very casually, “I wandered over to the car this morning to see what was left of it in daylight, and I thought I saw you there.”
“You did? I didn’t see you.”
Quinn felt her cheeks grow warm. That’s because I was hiding, Susan, like the sneaky person that I am. Aloud, she said, “No? So … what were you doing there?”
“I was getting something for Reed,” Suze answered without hesitation. “She called early this morning, said she’d left her purse on the front seat.”
Ivy joined them then, and Quinn dropped the matter. Who was she to be grilling Suze? Hadn’t she herself been at the car? And which of .the two of them was Most Likely To Be Suspected? Which one of them had found a paint-stained skirt and sweater in her room? Which one had been wearing grungy, grimy socks in bed shortly after the attack on Jake’s car, and which one had found glass fragments in her raincoat pockets?
And which one sleepwalked, wandering around at night like some beady-eyed nocturnal animal when everyone else was asleep?
Not Suze.
Maybe it was time for Quinn Hadley to visit a campus counselor again. She didn’t want to. Talking with a counselor would make her feel like she was really losing it.
Well, maybe she was.
They stopped at Vinnie’s on the way home. To Quinn’s surprise, Reed and Jake were there, sitting quietly in a corner booth. The simple Band-Aid on Reed’s cheek lied about the severity of the attack.
“I didn’t expect to see them here,” Suze commented. “You’d think after their narrow escape, they’d be hiding in their rooms.” She shook her head and her ponytail bounced. “It’s a miracle that they weren’t hurt worse than they were.”
“They must have ducked the first time the hammer hit the car,” Ivy commented, reaching for a napkin. “Or maybe they both fainted, facedown. I know I would have.”
“Me, too,” Quinn agreed. In her mind’s eye, she saw a yellow-clad figure lifting a large hammer, slamming it down against the car …
“I’m not hungry,” she announced, standing up. “Just order me something to drink, okay? I’ll be right back.”
She hurried over to the table in the corner. “I’m glad you guys aren’t lying in hospital beds,” she told Reed and Jake. “We were just talking about how lucky you were. I mean,” she added hastily, “I’m sure it was horrible, but it could have been so much worse.”
Reed nodded. “We know, Quinn. Of course, Jake here is without wheels now.”
Quinn couldn’t help noticing that Reed’s hand shook slightly as she lifted her glass.
Small wonder.
“Well, at least no one stole your purse from the car,” she said to Reed. “It would have been so easy to just reach in through that broken windshield and yank it right out of there.”
Reed looked up at Quinn. “My purse?”
Quinn nodded. “I’m not surprised that you forgot it when the fire fighters helped you out of there. You must have been so glad to get free.”
“I didn’t forget my purse, Quinn. What are you talking about?”
Quinn’s eyes moved from Reed’s face to Suze, standing over by the jukebox, flirting outrageously with “Mower” Platte, one of the football players.
She lied, Quinn thought. She lied.
Well, her conscience snickered, you were going to lie to her, if you had to. You just didn’t have to, that’s the only difference between the two of you.
I know why I was going to fib, Quinn thought. Because that raincoat and hat are lying in the back of my closet. But why did Suze lie?
Quinn made up a flimsy excuse for commenting about Reed’s purse, and returned to the booth, where she announced that she wanted to leave. Headache.
No one argued.
When they got back to campus, Quinn went straight to the library, where she staked out a quiet corner and tried to decide what to do. She needed to talk to someone about all of this. Simon? Maybe. She was seeing him later. But she hated to dump all of this on him when they’d just made up. They weren’t that sure of each other yet.
Ivy? Suze was Ivy’s roommate, and a good friend. Ivy knew Suze was a flirt, but she probably wouldn’t even consider the idea that Suze could be something worse.
And Tobie had problems of her own. It didn’t seem fair to overload her.
There didn’t seem to be a whole lot of choice, and Quinn had to talk to someone.
Sighing, she got up and left the library, walking directly to the student services offices at Butler Hall, the administration building.
If she absolutely had to talk to someone, it might as well be the counselor she’d talked with before. At least she wouldn’t have to start from scratch. The thought of starting from the very beginning was mind-boggling.
Oh, that’s pretty funny, she thought as she pulled the heavy wooden door open. Like my mind isn’t already boggled to the max. Maybe even beyond repair.
She was just about to turn a corner when she heard a familiar voice say an even more familiar name. She stopped, remaining safely behind the corner wall.
“Stop in any time, Tabitha. I’m always here for you, you know that. You mustn’t keep things bottled up inside. It’s not healthy. It can be dangerous. And Tabitha,” said the voice softly, “time really does heal even the worst pain. I promise.”
The voice that answered quietly, “Thanks a lot, Doctor. See you next week,” was even more recognizable.
Quinn shrank back against the wall, making herself as small as possible, then breathed a sigh of relief as the footsteps turned in a different direction and faded.
The voice belonged to her counselor, the one she had confessed to about her sleepwalking. The therapist had said almost the same thing to Quinn. “It’ll get better, Quinn, I promise.” A very optimistic woman.
The footsteps belonged to Tabitha.
How many Tabithas could there be on campus? And if there was another, it wouldn’t have that voice, would it? The voice that belonged to Tabitha Thomason.
Tabitha Thomason, better known to friends and family as Tobie.
Her roommate Tobie.
It wasn’t so surprising, after what Quinn had learned about Tobie recently, that her roommate was seeing a counselor. For that matter, even without the horrendous event in Tobie’s past, she could easily have been seeing a counselor because she was homesick, or having a hard time with her studies.
Lots of people on campus probably talked with the counselors. I was on my way to see one, Quinn told herself. Why shouldn’t Tobie?
Right. Why shouldn’t Tobie?
It was at that precise moment that Quinn remembered where she’d seen the bright pink paper like the sheet that Simon had pulled from his wallet.
&n
bsp; On Tobie’s cork bulletin board over her desk.
Tobie often had trouble concentrating, remembering things, and so she often wrote notes to herself about her schedule or library books to be returned or assignments to finish. She pushpinned the notes to her bulletin board and discarded them when they were no longer needed.
The pushpins, Quinn remembered, were yellow.
But the notes were pink. Bright pink. Each and every one of them was the same exact color and texture as the piece of paper telling Simon Kent that Quinn Hadley wasn’t interested in having him in her life anymore.
The letter to Simon had been written on Tobie’s stationery.
Chapter 14
TOBIE WASN’T IN THE room when Quinn got back, but she had left a note on her bulletin board. Not on pink stationery but on plain white notepaper.
Went over to Danny’s, Quinn read. Back later. Have fun with Simon.
So, Tobie had finally decided to get out of her funk. Talking with the counselor must have made her feel better.
There were no pieces of bright pink stationery pushpinned to the bulletin board. The other two notes, one a laundry reminder, the other a scribbled phone number, were both on plain white notepaper.
Had Tobie run out of bright pink? Or … didn’t want to use it for fear Simon had shared his letter with Quinn (as he had) and Quinn would recognize the paper?
The first moment they were in this room together, just the two of them, Tobie was going to have to explain that letter.
Pushing the unpleasant matter from her mind, Quinn took a quick shower and got ready for her date with Simon. They were driving into Twin Falls for dinner at Hunan Manor, Quinn’s favorite place to eat, and then taking in a movie. Just the two of them. Quinn’s idea. She had decided they needed to get reacquainted, and that would be easier without a crowd around.
Ivy had pretended to be insulted. “You’re not coming to Tim’s frat party? Okay, that does it, Quinnie, you are no longer in my will.”
