* * *
“You need to work on being a bitch.”
“I… what?” Alex nearly choked on her latte. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re too nice!” Cassie punctuated the sentence by slamming her styrofoam cup onto the counter.
They’d spent another two hours after their lunch at The Mainsail shopping before Alex could convince Cassie that it was time for another break. She was praying that the caffeine fix wouldn’t leave Cassie too wired to consider making their way to the beach.
Alex wasn’t sure she was up for another round of shopping at the hands of the fashionista she claimed as her best friend. She was fairly certain that neither her tired feet nor her aunt’s borrowed MasterCard would survive the massacre intact.
For the moment, anyway, Cassie seemed content to sit there in the window of Bayside Brews watching the tourists wander the boardwalk. She had her digital camera sitting on the counter in front of her and was occasionally snapping off pictures of the men who passed by wearing ridiculous Hawaiian shirts.
Alex wasn’t sure what her friend planned on doing with all those images and, to be honest, she was a little scared to ask.
Like Alex’s Aunt Cil, Cassie was constantly creating. But while her aunt preferred to stick with more traditional mediums, such as oil painting and working with ceramics, Cassie’s creations tended to be of a much more modern bent.
Alex rarely got their meaning.
Physical works of art like those created by her aunt and her best friend didn’t move her by their beauty, so much as perplex her by their overly subjective nature.
Now words, on the other hand? Those she understood.
The countless stacks of books piled high in every corner of her bedroom attested to that, as did the half a dozen leather-bound journals she’d filled to the brim with her thoughts and stories.
Plot, characterization, metaphor. Those she understood. Half-naked sculptures of a man sporting a giant cube where his head ought to be? Um. Not so much.
“Niceness—especially for someone in your position—is no good,” continued Cassie. “It turns you into a doormat.”
“When did being nice become a bad thing?” asked Alex.
“The second Connor and Jessica ripped out your heart and danced a jig on it, that’s when. Back in the shop, you should have been tearing Connor a new one, not giving serious consideration to talking to the jerk.”
“But I—”
“And don’t even try to tell me you weren’t considering it, because I saw the look in your eye, Lex. You were about two seconds away from hearing him out. That’s the only time in my life I’ve ever been grateful to see Jessica Huffman walk into a room,” Cassie shook her head. “After the whole computer lab thing you completely lost your backbone! Not that you had much of one to begin with.”
“Hey!”
“I’m only telling you this because you’re my friend and I love you. And because I know that somewhere, deep down, there’s an Alex that has some moxie just waiting to break through.”
Alex swirled the coffee around in the bottom of her cup. Suddenly it wasn’t all that appetizing.
“Oh, honey,” said Cassie, snatching up her camera. “Who let you out of the house in that?”
It wasn’t what Cassie had said that bothered her, exactly. It was the fact that she might have a point.
Sticking up for herself had never really been Alex’s strong suit. Generally, she avoided conflict like the plague. Before the computer lab incident, that had never really been an issue. But now…
Well, these days, conflict seemed to be all she was capable of attracting.
“Speaking of the she-devil.” Cassie directed a withering glare out the window. “There goes Jessica and her merry band of bootlickers. God forbid any of them let an original thought enter their pretty little heads. The world as we know it would probably unravel.”
“Jessica’s world would, anyway.”
Emily, Marcie, and Veronica—Jessica’s perpetual, sycophantic shadows—trailed obediently behind their leader as they bypassed the coffee shop in favor of the frozen yogurt place next door.
As she passed by the window, Veronica caught sight of Alex sitting at the counter. Biting her bottom lip, Vee averted her gaze and hastened to catch up with her friends.
Alex sighed.
Talk about not having a backbone.
Before the computer lab incident, Vee and Alex had been on pretty good terms. Jessica’s crowd and Alex’s had never been all that close, but the lines separating the two cliques had been just blurry enough to allow for a relative peace between the groups. Alex and Vee had even been lab partners in chem class the previous semester.
But after Jessica’s plans to steal herself a boyfriend resulted in a demolished computer lab and Alex’s exile from Bay View High’s social scene, Vee had stopped speaking to her entirely.
“Hey!” said Cassie. “What the heck is wrong with this thing?”
The camera in Cassie’s hands was zooming in and out, apparently of its own volition. She set it down on the counter.
“Alex?” Cassie was eyeing the camera as though she expected it to blow at any moment.
“It’s not me,” said Alex. “I’m not doing anything this time.”
The camera zoomed in on something across the street, snapped off a picture, zoomed out and then returned to the standby setting. Cassie picked it up gingerly, as though she were afraid that it might still shock her.
“Okay,” Cassie mumbled as she inspected the view screen. “That’s kinda creepy.”
“What is?”
Cassie handed her the camera.
Standing in the center of the frame, leaning against the railing that lined the walkway, was Mr. Military Jacket. He was staring directly into the camera, a self-assured smile on his face… and he was waving.
Alex looked quickly out the window in the direction the picture had been taken. He was gone. Again. When she glanced back at the camera, the image had disappeared.
With one last beep, the camera turned itself off.
Alex glanced nervously out the window.
“Excuse me, miss?”
A heavy hand came to rest on her shoulder and Alex nearly jumped out of her skin. As she whipped around, she heard the barista’s startled cry and the crackling sound of electricity arcing from a nearby socket. She didn’t need to look to know that the espresso machine was toast.
People really needed to stop sneaking up on her like this.
The owner of the hand turned toward the commotion behind the counter and Alex let out a slow breath of relief.
It wasn’t the guy in the military jacket. Just a middle-aged man with shoulder length salt-and-pepper hair and a neatly trimmed beard. He was dressed in dark jeans, a long-sleeved shirt and a brown vest. His thin, wire-rimmed glasses gave him the unassuming appearance of a college professor.
Somewhere behind her, the espresso machine ground to a halt with one final ratcheting death rattle. Alex cringed. That machine had probably cost more than her Jeep. The barista behind the counter unleashed a string of curses far more colorful than the ones the clothing-store clerk had employed.
The man smiled politely. “I believe you dropped this,” he said.
Alex registered his Scottish accent with distraction and stared at his outstretched hand. He was holding her wallet between two fingers. She was positive that her wallet was still safe inside her satchel in an interior zippered compartment, where she always kept it.
Alex took the wallet from him and flipped it open. The mugshot she’d had taken at the local DMV almost a year earlier stared back at her. The wallet was hers alright. “Thank you. I didn’t even realize I’d dropped it…”
In fact, she was almost certain she hadn’t.
She unlatched the cover flap of her satchel and unbuttoned the tab that held the main compartment closed. The interior pocket was still zipped tight. She opened it.
Empty.
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How had it fallen out?
“No trouble,” said the man. “Saw it over there by the door. Lucky you were still here.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Lucky.”
She returned the wallet to where it belonged and spun back around, intent on thanking him again.
The sitting area was empty. Alex’s gaze swept across the coffee shop and then out the window to the now deserted, sun-drenched boardwalk.
“Where did he…?” Cassie trailed off. “Okay, that’s it. I need some vitamin D if I’m going to be expected to deal with all this weirdness. It’s time for the beach.”