Haunted by Meg Cabot Page B

road—imaginatively named Scenic Drive—with what was left of my self-esteem still more or less intact. It wasn’t until I was out of sight of Paul’s house that I yanked off my shoes and said what I’d wanted to say the whole time I’d been striding, with as much hauteur as I could, away from him. Which was, “Ouch, ouch, ouch!”
    Stupid shoes. My toes were in shreds. No way could I walk in the torturous mules. I thought about flinging them into the ocean, which would have been easy considering it was below me.
    On the other hand, the shoes were six hundred bucks, retail. Granted I had gotten them for a fraction of that, but still. The shopaholic in me would not allow so rash a move.
    So, holding my shoes in my hand, I began to mince my way down the road barefoot, keeping a sharp eye out for bits of glass and any poison oak that might be growing alongside the street.
    Paul had been right about one thing: it was a five-mile walk from his house to mine. Worse, it was about a mile walk from his house to the first commercial structure at which I might reasonably expect to find a pay phone where I could start calling around to see if I could get someone to pick me up. I could, I supposed, have gone up to one of the huge houses belonging to Paul’s neighbors, rung the bell, and asked if I could use their phone. But how embarrassing would that be? No, a pay phone. That was all I needed. And I’d find one, soon enough.
    There was only one real flaw in my plan, and that was the weather. Oh, don’t get me wrong. It was a beautiful September day. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky.
    That was the problem. The sun was beating down mercilessly upon Scenic Drive. It had to have been ninety degrees at least—even though the cool breeze from the sea didn’t make it seem uncomfortable. But the pavement beneath my bare feet wasn’t affected by the breeze. The road, which had seemed comfortably warm beneath the soles of my feet when I’d first come barreling out of Paul’s cold, cold house, was actually extremely hot. Burning hot. Like fry-an-egg-on-it hot.
    There wasn’t anything I could do about it, of course. I couldn’t put my shoes back on. My blisters hurt more than the soles of my feet. Maybe if a car had gone by, I’d have tried to flag it down—but probably not. I was too embarrassed by my predicament, really, to have to explain it to a total stranger. Besides, given my luck, I’d probably manage to flag down a serial killer and find myself out of the frying pan—literally—and smack in the middle of the fire.
    No. I kept walking, cursing myself and my stupidity. How could I have been so dumb as to have agreed to go to Paul Slater’s house? True, the stuff he’d showed me about the shifters had been interesting. And that thing about soul transference…if there really was such a thing. I didn’t even want to let myself think about what that might mean. To put a soul in someone else’s body.
    Shifting , I said to myself. Concentrate on the whole shifting thing. Better that, of course, than on the soul transference thing…or worse, the even more unpleasant topic of how I could be so carried away by the kisses of someone other than the guy I happened to be in love with.
    Or was it just that, after Jesse’s seeming rejection, I was simply relieved to find that I was attractive to somebody…even somebody whom I did not particularly like? Because I did not like Paul Slater. I did not. I think the fact that I had been having bad dreams about him for the past few weeks was proof enough of that…no matter how fast my traitorous heart might beat when his lips were pressed against mine.
    It felt good, as I walked, to concentrate on this instead of my extremely sore feet. It was slow going, walking down Scenic Drive without any protection from the shards of gravel and, of course, the hot pavement beneath my soles. Of course, in a way I felt that the pain was punishment for my very bad behavior. True, Paul had lured me