Shadowmaker by Joan Lowery Nixon Page B

of the guys who saw her spying on me at school. They thought it was funny.”
    “I’m sorry,” I said.
    He looked down at the toes of his Nikes, scuffing them back and forth in the sand. “She told me she even wrote down everything she saw me do or heard me say in her journal for English lit class.”
    When I didn’t answer he continued, “B.J. told me thatMrs. Walgren asked you to help Lana Jean with her journal. I assume you probably read it. Right?”
    “Only a little bit,” I answered.
    He straightened up and studied me. “What parts did you read?” When I hesitated, he pleaded, “You don’t know how embarrassing this is for me, Kate.”
    “You don’t need to be embarrassed,” I said. “I only read the first couple of entries. I skimmed a few others.”
    “Did you read about the carnival?”
    “Just the first couple of paragraphs. That’s when I told her she’d have to write it over again and explained about description and emotion and sensory perception … you know, all of that.”
    I thought I noticed a kind of relief in his eyes, and that took me by surprise. “It’s just that I ran into Cindy Jones at the carnival and … well, there were a couple of minutes behind the Ferris wheel … but it was just for fun, and if Lana Jean wrote about that, well … It’s just not something I’d want everybody to read about—especially you. Okay?” His face turned a blotchy red.
    “It’s okay,” I mumbled. “I don’t know why you’d care what I thought about you and Cindy Jones—whoever she is.”
    He leaned back and smiled again, his words coming out in an easy drawl. “Now that I’ve met you, Katie, I really do care what you think.”
    It must have been the way he said my name, but I began to be glad he cared. I could understand what Lana Jean saw in him.
    I shook myself back and realized I’d better stick with theway the conversation was supposed to go. “Lana Jean told me that you said she was a very interesting person, and you’d like to get to know her better.”
    He grimaced and moaned, “No way!”
    “And she said you were going to take her out.”
    Travis looked directly into my eyes and said, “If someone kept shadowing you, then cornered you in an alley while you were waiting for a friend, and told you how he followed you and wrote all about everything he saw you do and heard you say, would you tell this person how interesting he was and say, ‘Let’s get to know each other better’? Or go on a date?”
    I didn’t have to think about it. “No,” I answered.
    He hunched his shoulders and spread his arms wide. “There. You see?”
    I nodded. “I’m the new kid in Kluney and Lana Jean was so open and kind to me, like a little kid. I just didn’t think she’d lie.” Now it was my turn to be embarrassed. “I was so worried about what happened to her after her mother called and said she was missing, that I tried to help. I told the sheriff that you and she had been talking, but I didn’t tell him what you were talking about.”
    He said, “I’d appreciate it if you could keep it that way. I told Sheriff Granger that what happened was I was waiting for B.J. in back of Kennedy’s Grill and Lana Jean came out and wanted to talk to me, but I brushed her off. Maybe I was even kind of rude to her. I’m sorry now if I was rude.”
    He looked so contrite I impulsively reached out and rested my hand on his. He sandwiched my hand between his two and said, “There’s no harm done. The sheriff’sknown me and my family all my life, and he knows Lana Jean and her mother. He believed me.” He turned my fingers so that my hand was tightly held inside his own, and bent toward me. “I hope you’ll believe me, too, Katie.”
    I gulped. I had no reason not to believe him, except that it made no sense that Lana Jean had called me so excited she could hardly talk, then fed me a made-up story. It was crazy, but then some people might say Lana Jean’s obsession with Travis was