Mark My Words

34 | The Getaway

"Why are you so happy," she said with a glum frown. She picked at her salad as she added with extra hostility, "I swear every meal before Adams is the last one."

"Dude, we've still got two more meals after this," Joanna said. She turned to Jamie. "Also, why are you here?"

"I think we're gonna win tomorrow. Because I have a secret weapon," he declared, chin in the air, hand on his hip. Juliana snorted and Alyssa rolled her eyes again, harder this time.

"Oh yeah, and what's that?" Rosalie said.

"My body," Jamie said. He smoothed his hand down the length of his body before settling at his thigh. Juliana spat out a leaf of lettuce and covered her mouth. Alyssa looked like she was about to take her food and move elsewhere.

Joanna laughed and shook her head. "Yeah, no, that's not gonna work."

"Why shouldn't it? I have a rocking bod," Jamie said.

"You might, but you're going against a closeted team," Joanna said. "Regardless of how Blake acts, no one on that team is about to explain to his bud that he just honed in on that junk and missed a shot."

Jamie opened his mouth to argue when a tray slammed onto the table beside Rosalie. She jumped and Ray leant over the table to point a finger at Jamie-Lee and Joanna. "This table was perfectly fine before the two of you showed up. Now who's honing in on who's junk, I gotta know."

"No one is honing in on anyone's junk," Rosalie said. "Now can we please stop talking about it?"

"But my secret weapon," Jamie whined.

"Jamie, no. And I mean it," Rosalie said.

She did mean it, but then again, she had no say in what Jamie did. She could tell exactly how much her words impacted him, and it was more like her argument was a feather landing on his hand. He brushed it off, and so after sixth period, she caught up with Lennie in the halls to say, "I think Jamie's gonna try and seduce Blake during the game tomorrow."

Lennie sighed. "Yeah, he already told me. I wish I could make coach just take him out for this game but Jamie's the fastest player on our team."

"I'm sure if you put Blake on one end of the field, he'll run twice as fast."

"That isn't funny," he said, but when Rosalie cracked a devious smile, Lennie gave in. He laughed and said, "Fine, okay. But I still don't trust either of them. How much do you want to bet that by the end of tomorrow, everyone's gonna know about them?"

"I'm not betting on that."

"Just figuratively speaking."

"Maybe twenty."

"You can go higher than that."

"I can, but I won't. I have college to pay for. But we all know half the class is paying for college via gambling, and the other half is being paid for by their parents," Rosalie said.

Lennie laughed. "I can't argue with that."

They split away to head to their designated lunch tables for study hall. Rosalie glanced back to where Lennie dropped his backpack off at his and Jamie's table before looking over at her. She twisted back around, horrified by the way her heart sped up. She clutched at her chest and cleared her throat as she dropped into the seat beside Juliana.

She barely unzipped her backpack before she got to thinking about practice—again. It was the tragic pre-Adam's Game practice and Rosalie knew that coach wouldn't tear them apart in fear of breaking them before the game, but she also knew just how tough it would be given that scrimmages put Joanna on the opposite team. She'd be playing a full game tomorrow on Rosalie's side of the field, but... after Friday, Rosalie felt a gnawing sensation at the thought of trying to score goals on Joanna. Perhaps it had something to do with the sound of Lieutenant Spencer's voice in the back of her head calling soccer girls two-faced bitches.

"What, did you forget something?" Juliana said from across the table. Rosalie realized she'd been staring into her backpack for the past few seconds.

"No, I—" The image of her cleats in the mudroom came to mind. "Shit. I forgot my cleats at home."

Ray snorted a little and said, "You did what?"

Rosalie slapped a hand to her ponytail, distress etching a line across her forehead. "Coach is gonna kill me. My gym sneakers have no traction on grass."

"That's how you get a sprained ankle," Juliana said.

"We got, like, forty minutes, fifty if you dress fast for practice—no horsing around," Ray said, and Rosalie nodded. "Because I know you've been horsing around lately."

"I haven't," she said, only to seethe at the cheeky grin on Ray's face. "I'm serious. I was late those times because of hanging up posters!"

"Sure girl. Let's go. Julie—watch our stuff and move it into the locker room if we're not back in time," Ray said, snapping her fingers at Juliana. Juliana nodded fervently, and watched as Rosalie and Ray bounded off to the courtyard doors. They walked as calmly as they could past the art department windows before making a getaway across the parking lot to Ray's car.

Ray shook her keys out of her blazer pocket. Rosalie was jumping on her feet on the passenger's side so that when the car unlocked, she was inside and buckled up before Ray so much as opened her door. She was at the ready for the Maple Grove gate, and as they pulled up to her driveway, she bolted across the driveway and leapt over the shrub at the corner of the walkway to shave a solid .2 seconds off of her run to the front door.

She unlocked the front door and flew threw, to the right, and into the mudroom where her cleats sat on the linoleum. She'd save laundry for that night, knowing that tomorrow would likely be a jersey day at school.

After swiping her cleats off the ground, she skidded back into the foyer, only to halt at the sight of the front door open just a crack.

She stared at it, wondering why that felt odd. She lowered the cleats to her side and stepped up to the door, pulled it open, and crossed the threshold. There, she stood on the welcome mat, and stared out at the yard.

Ray leant her head out the window and said, "What're you waiting for, girl! Get in!"

Rosalie turned back to the door and shut it before slowly making her way down the stone walkway and to the concrete drive where Ray stared at her through the passenger window. Rosalie leant over and said, "Did you... see Khoshekh escape?"

Ray's expression went blank. She glanced around Rosalie at the door and gave an uncertain shrug. "I... don't think so? Shit, Rosalie—"

"I gotta make sure he's inside," she said.

"Okay, but—hurry! Hurry!" Ray cried, flinging her hand out to shoo Rosalie back to the door.

She jogged back to the door and made absolute certain that the door closed behind her before sprinting up the stairs to her bedroom, her mother's bedroom, the bathroom, the living room, under the couches, and the litter box in the mudroom.

No Khoshekh sighting.

Rosalie stopped in the foyer, panting, face red. She put a hand to her forehead where the tension in her brow manifested into a full-blown headache before she even set foot out the door once more to deliver the news.

She tossed her cleats onto the porch and walked up to Ray's car. Ray dropped her head to her car horn and let it blare until Rosalie leant against the passenger window and said, "Just go back to school. I'll find Koshekh and run to practice."

"It'll be faster if I help you—"

"No, Ray," she said. Ray frowned at her from the driver's seat, devastated. It would take more than two hours to find a goddamn black cat that ran at the speed of light. "You have to be at practice. I'll be there."

"You fucking better," she said. "I'm not going against Adams without you."

Rosalie agreed and stepped away from the car. Ray pulled out of the driveway and, after pausing on the side of the road, headed back to the gates.