The weird thing was, I was also backing off my theory about our principal killing Coach Killdare during a passionate quarrel because I’d discovered something else on Mr. Woolsey’s desk. Not bloodstained office equipment or a damning European mug, but a pad of hall passes, some already presigned.
“There’s a sticker on the back of the frame,” Chase continued while I picked up the pad—which was not unlike one I’d swiped the previous year. “It says ‘PIAA Annual Conference, 2010, Oahu.’” He set down the photo. “Mr. Killdare and Mr. Woolsey probably . . .”
“. . . Went to some stupid high school sports conference together,” I said glumly. “And hated each other the whole time. Which is why they aren’t in the photo together, palling around.” I held up the pad for Chase to see. “And Mr. Woolsey’s handwriting . . . It’s pretty girly, but it’s not the same as BeeBee’s.” I tossed down the pad, feeling defeated. I guess I’d really thought I’d found a new prime suspect—a boyfriend who might’ve had a deadly argument with the ever-volatile Coach Killdare. But I’d been wrong.
Had I seriously believed Mr. Woolsey was strong enough—emotionally or physically—to crush a skull? His hands were softer, and finer boned, than mine. I’d forgotten about the feminine-hygiene products at Mr. Killdare’s house, too. I could imagine Mr. Woolsey using hair spray to keep his comb-over in place, but he obviously didn’t need those.
“I should’ve known Mr. Woolsey’s not BeeBee,” I grumbled, mentally kicking myself. “I’ve forged his writing a million times. I know every loop and swirl he makes—and how weak he is.”
I was pretty sure Chase was about to ask why I’d faked our principal’s signature, but before he could open his mouth, we both heard something in the hallway. Footsteps, coming closer.
“What do we do?” I whispered, because there was no back way out of the office, and whoever was coming would definitely see us if we bolted out the regular way. Especially since the person sounded like she—or probably he, given that I didn’t hear the click of heels—was only a few yards away. I came around the desk, snatched the photo from Chase, and returned it to its proper place. “We are so busted if that person comes in here!”
“Millie, calm down,” Chase urged, even though the footsteps had halted—right outside the office door.
My heart started to race as I then heard Bertram Woolsey muttering to himself, “Now where did I put my keys . . . ?”
Freakin’ Mr. Woolsey!
“Come on,” I told Chase, grabbing his wrist. I could hear the panic in my voice and feel how wide my eyes were. Way, way too wide. I tugged his hand, not understanding why he wasn’t nervous. In fact, he seemed close to laughing when I suggested, “We’ll hide behind the ficus! And if—when—we get caught, we’ll say we were . . . we were checking it for blight, for a botany unit in advanced bio. It looks blighted, right?”
Outside the door, I heard a jangle, as if Mr. Woolsey had at least found his keys, if not the right one yet.
Time’s a wastin’!
But Chase didn’t budge. Instead, he rested his hands on my shoulders and said, calmly and still with a hint of laughter, “I’m not going to blame my actions on blight, Millie. Just relax, okay? It’s Mr. Woolsey. We’ll think of something.”
“Okay,” I agreed, taking a deep breath. “You’re right.”
Why was I getting so worked up? I was the one who skipped classes and flouted authority, and more to the point, we were talking about Bertram Woolsey here. I’d probably be able to convince him that he was intruding on us.
Honestly, it was like a repeat of the time I’d hidden from Chase in Mr. Killdare’s house. Something about getting caught sneaking around—it apparently triggered an adrenaline rush in me.
And it was that rush . . . That’s what I would blame for what I did next. Which was put my arms around Chase—just as the door opened—and kiss my sort-of date right on the mouth.
Chapter 73
I kissed Chase because Mr. Woolsey—just like Detective Lohser—would almost certainly assume that’s what I and a hormonally charged teenage guy would be doing alone in his office after slow dancing, and—unlike if we admitted to snooping through his Devil Dogs—he’d probably just shoo us, awkwardly, back to the dance. And I kissed Chase because I was sick of people thinking we were making out, and me not getting anything out of it but a bad reputation, if only with an authority-drunk cop and now my principal. And, let’s face it, I kissed Chase because I was an impulsive person, and I wanted to do it. Had wanted that for quite a while, actually. Just one quick touch of the lips—not his fault, only mine—to see what it would feel like.
And wow, did it feel amazing.
More . . . powerful than I’d expected. So powerful that I immediately wished I hadn’t done it. Because the second my mouth met his, everything I’d started to feel for Chase—the stuff I’d pushed away, and tamped down, because I knew he didn’t feel the same way for me—all overwhelmed me, in a way, and even though we were barely touching, it hurt.
Ms. Parkins was wrong. I was wrong. I can’t just not care that he doesn’t like me.
Stop now, Millie!
“Sorry,” I muttered, dropping down off my tiptoes, averting my eyes, and wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, although we hadn’t gotten sloppy with the whole thing. Chase hadn’t even responded. His lips had been hard against mine.
“Um . . . Millie . . . ?” Not surprisingly, he sounded pretty confused.
And Mr. Woolsey seemed shocked, too, as he came into his office—I’d almost forgotten him—and flipped on the bright overhead light, echoing Chase—although in a higher, less appealing voice, “Millie?” Then he turned to the guy I’d just pawed. “And Mr. Albright? What are you two doing here?”
Chapter 74
“I feel like such an idiot,” I mumbled, walking with Chase across the dark parking lot toward his car, my strappy shoes dangling from one hand and a detention slip crumpled in the other. “Two days’ punishment for me—and you have to sit out a game, which means Dad will kill me, too.” I winced. “Plus my feet hurt. There are little stones everywhere.”
Chase stopped and held out his arms, an uncertain look on his face. “Millie, I could, um . . . It wouldn’t be a problem . . .”
Yeah. It would be. For me. The last thing I needed was Chase carrying me with his stupid, wonderful strong arms.
Why did I kiss him?
“No, thanks,” I said, continuing to pick my way across the lot. “I’m not really a mutt like Baxter. You don’t have to haul me around.”
We’d made it to Chase’s car, and I was grabbing for the door handle when he reached past me, stopping me. I thought he was going to be polite and open the door. But all of a sudden, without saying a word, he took me by the wrist instead and turned me to face him. Then Chase wrapped both those stupid, wonderful strong arms around me and kissed me. And not just some little peck on the cheek or the lips.
A real kiss.
Chapter 75
“Chase,” I whispered when we separated for a moment. Long enough for me to realize I’d dropped my shoes, lost my detention slip, and was leaning against his car, both of us breathing hard, because apparently I wasn’t the only one who’d kept feelings pent up for a while. The kiss we were sharing—the one that was starting again, his lips brushing against mine, shutting me up, although I had no idea what I’d been about to say—had begun intensely, almost feverishly, both of us clinging to each other and me, embarrassingly, kind of groaning now and then.
But I couldn’t help it.
The whole thing was pleasure, but still tinged with a hint of the pain I’d felt back in the principal’s office, too.
I knew then that Chase really did want me in the same way that I wanted him, but it was wrong. He was giving in—but trying to stop himself, too. I could feel it in the way he held me, and the way he kept saying my name, “Millie . . .” There was frustration in his voice—and apology—even as we both gave in again, only more slowly and
tenderly this time, like we were managing to get control of ourselves, but still couldn’t completely part.
Just kiss me, Chase, I thought, slipping my hands up into that thick, amazing hair. But the weird thing was, I wasn’t really focused on how Chase looked or how his perfect muscular body felt—although those were definitely things that had first attracted me to him. But as we finally really touched each other, his lips rough but gentle against mine, I knew that what I was truly drawn to was . . . Chase. The guy who cared about a coach everybody else hated, and affectionately babysat an ugly dog, and shared cookies with a lonely old lady, and who beat himself up for some mistake he’d made in the past. A mistake I still didn’t know all about.
“Chase.” I said his name again, more firmly, if still a little breathlessly. “Chase . . . Maybe . . .”
He seemed to understand, and he pulled back so I could see his eyes.
Oh, gosh, I was so crazy about those eyes, and all the things that I could see in them. Even the bad stuff, like the guilt.
“Millie,” he whispered, resting his forehead against mine and cradling my face in his hands, his thumbs brushing my cheeks. His breath was a little ragged, too. “I’m . . .”
“Don’t say ‘sorry,’” I warned him quietly. I’d never held a guy in my life, but I somehow knew that I was supposed to slip my hands around his neck and stroke his hair. How could it feel so right to stand like that? So natural? And yet . . . “Just don’t say ‘sorry,’ okay?”
“I . . . I don’t know if I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I’ve wanted this . . .”
“Me, too,” I admitted. “But I never thought you would . . . You know, with me . . .”
We weren’t managing complete sentences, but we somehow understood each other.
“Millie.” He began to whisper the words I’d wanted to hear since I’d first pretended not to be interested in him, right after he’d moved to town. Real compliments. “I think you’re the most incredible, unique girl I’ve ever met. You have this . . . thing that other girls don’t have.” He paused, no doubt trying to figure out how to explain a word that must’ve sounded wrong to him, too. Then he continued. “You . . . You make me laugh, and you try to act so tough when you’re really not.” He withdrew slightly and brushed some of my curls—which were in total chaos, my updo demolished by his hands—from my face. “And I can’t stop looking at you. You’re so pretty, even if you don’t believe that.”
Everything he was saying was making me feel happy in a way I’d never felt before—even though I knew there was going to be a “but.” One that came way too soon. He spoke even more softly, and his blue eyes registered regret—and something like pain that I didn’t quite understand. “I just . . . I don’t think I’m . . .” We were completely calm then, no longer sucking air, but he still didn’t seem able to express himself the way he usually could. “I don’t think I should . . .” His frown deepened, and then he said the word I’d been dreading. Her name. “It’s like I’m betraying Allison,” he finally admitted. “Moving on . . . Caring about somebody else—more than I did for her, which makes it even worse . . .”
I’d thought I’d understood what he was trying to say—thought I’d been filling in the copious blanks—but all at once, he’d lost me. It was “like” he was betraying her?
“You’re . . . You’re talking in the past tense,” I said, searching his face—hopefully, in spite of the hurt I saw. “Like you two aren’t together.”
Something about what I said caused a flash of raw agony in his eyes.
“Oh, God, Millie,” he groaned, resting his forehead against mine again, but this time bracing his hands on either side of me against the car. Not holding me anymore. “I should’ve told you before I kissed you . . .”
“Told me what?” I asked. My heart, which had just been—for lack of a less hokey word—soaring, iced over and started its inevitable plummet. Still, I had to ask, my throat tight, “What, Chase?”
The wretched anguish I heard in his voice wasn’t enough to keep me from getting sick—physically ill—when he confessed, more loudly, like he needed me to hear and understand, “I killed my last girlfriend, Millie.”
I didn’t even feel the stones under my feet as I ran home, barefoot, without ever looking back.
Talk about the clock striking midnight and everything just exploding. And when I got to my house, bursting through the door, my dad and Ms. Parkins, who were sitting on the couch, jumped apart like they were teenagers caught making out. But to her credit, even though I’d obviously lost her shoes and was clearly upset, my librarian-slash-father’s-girlfriend knew when to back off, and neither she nor my dad followed me to my room, where I lay awake all night, pretty sure that Chase was referring to an accident, but still wondering . . .
Did I just kiss a murderer?
Chapter 76
“This is a pathetic Saturday night, even by our standards,” Laura complained to me and Ryan the evening after my disastrous dance. She was sitting cross-legged on my bed, flipping through my latest edition of Philosophy Now magazine, a gift subscription from my father, for my seventeenth birthday. I’d been surprised by the thoughtful present, but now strongly suspected that Isabel Parkins might’ve played a role in its selection. “Do you want to take the ‘Am I a Moral Beauty or a Beast’ quiz?” Laura asked, sounding less than enthused. “I see the name Schopenhauer in there, so it might be fun for you at least, Millie.”
Ryan was stretched out on the floor, tossing a ball he’d formed out of my stray socks toward the ceiling. “Go ahead,” he urged Laura. “It couldn’t make this night more boring.”
“Yeah, whatever,” I also agreed with indifference, even though I’d just been puzzling over that very theme as I sat at my desk, idly shaking the mouse connected to my laptop.
What is Chase?
Beauty or beast? Or both?
Am I more upset that he lied, at least by omission, or that he TOOK A LIFE?
I shuffled the mouse again.
And why am I afraid to confirm what I suspect? Because I know his true name and could Google the story. At least, I hope I know his real name . . .
“Millie, I was asking you whether you’d lie about your immigrant friend Sonja’s employment status if telling the truth meant she’d be deported and maybe imprisoned by a harsh regime,” Laura said, snapping me back to reality. She sounded exasperated. “It was a long scenario, and I think you daydreamed through the whole thing!”
Ryan sat up and checked the old Winnie-the-Pooh clock on my nightstand. “And aren’t you supposed to be at work? Why are you even here?”
“I called in sick,” I told my friends. Because we’re showing Ikiru, a Japanese film about a lonely bureaucrat dying from cancer, and Chase will show up for that. “I guess I’m a beast,” I concluded gloomily. “No need to take a quiz.”
“Millie, what is wrong with you?” Laura tossed aside the magazine. “Why won’t you tell us what happened at the dance? Was Chase a jerk or something? Did he dance with a bunch of other girls and leave you by the wall?”
I’d finally come clean about going to the formal, if only because by Monday word would be all around school about how the ultimate-outsider quarterback had finally deigned to attend a school function—with Millie Ostermeyer, who’d teetered around on too-big shoes and worn a scarf as a belt.
I cringed at the recollection.
What had I been thinking?
“Hey, Millie.” Ryan tapped my leg. I looked down to see that he was deadly serious. “Chase didn’t try anything, did he? Because I’d kick his ass if he didn’t take no—”
“No!” I said quickly. I was upset with Chase, and confused, but he was no date rapist. What little we’d “done,” I’d technically started, and I’d wanted every second of what had followed, right up to the point when he’d confessed to killing someone.
“No,” I repeated. “Please don’t think that about him.” Then, because I had to tell somebody, and Laura and Ry always kept
my secrets, I said, “We did sort of . . . kiss, though.”
Ryan didn’t seem surprised, but Laura’s eyes got huge. “You did what?”
“Kissed,” I confirmed. “A lot. In the parking lot.”
Okay, it sounded borderline sleazy when put that way. But we’d been caught up in a moment . . .
How could I get butterflies again just thinking about how it had felt when Chase had first pulled me to him, and how I’d never wanted to be so close to another human being in my life, and had almost blurted out “I love you.”
Not only would that have been about ten years premature, but I couldn’t love somebody I didn’t even know, right? And I certainly couldn’t love somebody who kept a secret that big. We’d talked about Allison before. He should’ve said something . . .
“Millie, was it bad?” Ry asked. I could tell he was still ready to beat up Chase if necessary. “Because you don’t look very happy about it.”
“I can’t explain it,” I told them both. Yet I tried to. “It was too good, in a way.” Then, because it wasn’t my place to spill Chase’s secrets, I just concluded, shoulders slumping, right as the doorbell rang, “Anyway, it’s over now.”
Or maybe it wasn’t, because a few moments later, my father rapped on the door to my room and poked his head in. “Millie? Chase is downstairs. He’s returning your—Isabel’s—shoes.” That clearly displeased him, but he was being uncharacteristically cool about my coming home a mess, without part of my outfit. “He’d like to talk to you.”
“Millie!” Only Laura seemed happy about that prospect. She shooed me with her hands, practically bouncing on the bed. “Go! Talk!”