Wish You Were Dead by Todd Strasser

rumor was that Lucy and Adam had planned from the start to run away together. I didn’t believe it, but I kept my thoughts to myself.
    The one person I wished I could speak to was Tyler. Even though I was still disappointed that he hadn’t been around the previous night, this was the sort of thing I felt I could call him about. Or maybe I was just using it as an excuse to connect. I dialed, got his voice mail, and left a message.
    After a while, Courtney popped up on the IM list. So now we both knew the other was online. How long were we going to ignore each other? There were times when you had to rise above your pride and do the right thing. I IMed her.
    This time, she IMed me right back.
    “I don’t believe Lucy and Adam ran away,” Courtney said later that afternoon. For the moment, or maybe forever, we’d put aside our disagreements. After several days of cold rain, it had turned warm and sunny. Under a blue November sky, we sat at a metal table outside Starbucks, both of us having felt the need to get out of our houses. I wore a hoodie and jacket. I’d looked for my red cashmere scarf at home but couldn’t find it, and I wondered if I’d left it in the Safe Rides office the night before. Courtney wore sunglasses. Every few moments she would poke the cuff of her hoodie under the glasses and into the corner of an eye. So I knew she was upset.
    “Neither do I,” I said. “But you can see how other people might. All the other explanations are so creepy.”
    Courtney sniffed and dabbed her eyes under the sunglasses again. “I know,” she said in a quavering voice, as if fighting not to break down completely. “I mean, what’s going on?”
    The question hovered uncomfortably in the air between us. From a corner of my mind came the question I still wanted to ask from a few days before—why had Courtney chosen to fool around with Adam?—but I knew this was the wrong time. Searching for something else to talk about, I said, “Anything interesting happen last night?”
    “What, with Maura?” Courtney made a face, as if the words interesting and Maura could not possibly be connected. “She gives me the creeps.”
    “It’s not her fault,” I said.
    “I’m not talking about the way she looks or dresses. It’s the way she acts . When you’re in the car with her”—Courtney feigned a shiver—“she’s so quiet. And if you ask her a question, you get a one-word answer. I always feel like she’s sucking something out of me. She’s like … I don’t know, a leech.”
    “She’s shy,” I said.
    A crooked little smile appeared on Courtney’s lips. “You always have to say something nice, don’t you?”
    Before I could reply, Jen cruised down the street in her car, leaning over the steering wheel and peering at Starbucks. When she saw Courtney and me, she jammed her brakes so hard that she was almost rear-ended by the car behind her. She quickly parallel-parked and got out. Courtney and I shared a “brace yourself” look.
    “O-M-G, girls!” she gasped, coming toward us, trying to act somber given the recent news about Adam, but with a telltale glimmer of excitement in her eyes. She pulled a chair to our table. I had mixed feelings about her arrival. It was both an unwanted intrusion and a welcome relief from the shroud of gloom.
    “Like, what in the world is going on?” she asked.
    Courtney and I shook our heads.
    “But you don’t believe they planned it, right?”
    We shook our heads again.
    “It’s so weirdly symbolic,” Jen said.
    “Come again?” Courtney said.
    “I mean, the most popular boy and girl in our school?” Jen said. “The king and queen of the prom? The male and female most likely to succeed? The—”
    “And your point is?” I interrupted.
    Jen leaned close and lowered her voice. “I’m just saying that if something bad happened to them, maybe it’s not a coincidence. Don’t tell me you didn’t think of that?”
    Courtney and I shared a surprised look. Neither