Wish You Were Dead by Todd Strasser Page B

out the rest for him: It didn’t sound like a joke anymore. It didn’t sound like someone just wanted to play with my head. It sounded like whoever wrote that note knew in advance that something was going to happen to Adam.
    Reilly came toward us and handed the phone to Detective Payne, who assured Mrs. Bloom that this was perfectly normal and her daughter wasn’t in any trouble. I went back to the table and watched as Detective Payne escorted Reilly to his car and held the door for her.
    “I don’t believe it,” Jen said for the twentieth time.
    “It’s pretty obvious that detective thinks this mystery guy is involved somehow,” said Jake.
    “Like how?” Jen asked.
    “Who knows?” said Jake. “It’s a little weird that first the guy would do something to Lucy and then come back for Adam.”
    “I’d say it’s more than just a little weird,” said Courtney. “It’s totally weird. Like in the stuff-like-this-only-happens-in-movies category of weird.”
    I listened with only half an ear. Whoever had left that note had known that Lucy, Adam, and I were friends. That didn’t sound like something some “mystery guy” could have figured out just by talking to kids at a party or a kegger. It seemed a lot more likely that the note had been written by someone who knew us. I was wondering about that when, halfway down the block, a familiar-looking purple car went around the corner. It was Tyler, who’d told Dave he’d be away this weekend.
    The rest of us stayed at Starbucks and talked. Cell phones rang as friends called to find out where people were, and gradually the group sitting at the tables on the sidewalk swelled to more than a dozen. It was something I couldn’t remember us ever doing before. We often got together at school, sports events, and parties, but never on a Sunday afternoon outside Starbucks. I wondered if people felt there was safety in numbers. I also wondered what was going on with Tyler. The fact that he was still around and hadn’t gone away strengthened the “hot date” theory, but with no way of truly knowing, I forced myself to stop thinking about it.
    A little while later, Reilly returned and told us how, at the police station, they’d asked her some questions, but that she’d spent most of the time with an artist at a computer trying to come up with a face that matched the “mystery guy” from the kegger.
    We sat and talked a little longer. By now it was late afternoon and the sun had gone below a building and cast a shadow over us. The sidewalk began to feel chilly.
    “So what about tonight?” Jake asked Courtney. There’d been talk on Friday that since there was no school on Monday, somepeople might gather at her house Sunday night for what was termed more of a get-together than a party. But that idea had been floated before Adam had disappeared.
    “Does anybody really still feel like it?” Courtney asked.
    “It beats hanging around at home,” said Greg, and others nodded in agreement.
    Courtney gave me a curious look.
    “I might stop by,” I said. “But first I have to muck out Val’s stall, and I’m supposed to have dinner with my folks.” Then I had another thought. “One other thing, guys? Whoever goes out tonight, try to stay in pairs—like a buddy system, okay?”
    It had not been my intention to remind everyone of the frightening circumstances surrounding our lives at that moment, but that’s the way it felt. People started to drift away.
    “Give me a ride home?” Something about the easy way Courtney asked made me think that she wanted to make up. We got into my car and she said, “So you still want to know why I went with Adam?”
    “Only if you want to tell me.”
    Courtney looked out the window. “Maybe you were right. Maybe it was because Adam was Lucy’s boyfriend. So being with him … and knowing he wanted to be with me? Even when he was with her?”
    I was glad that she’d decided to tell me—but sorry, too. One reason I’d become