Crazy Dangerous by Andrew Klavan Page B

right somehow. It was a long way back to town on foot. I’d hate it if I left her alone up here and something bad happened to her.
    “Are you all right?” I asked again. “Are you lost or something? Do you need me to walk you back to town?”
    “No.” She pointed behind her into the woods. “I have my bike. My bicycle. My-cycle. So I can go around and around. And down. Down the hill. Home.”
    You see what I mean about the way she talked. It was really strange. “Okay,” I said. But I still felt bad just leaving her here. “You’re sure you’ll be all right?”
    Up till this point, Jennifer had remained standing next to the tree, one hand resting on it as if she wanted to make sure it wouldn’t run away from her. She was wearing jeans and a pullover shirt with big horizontal green stripes on it. It was still pretty chilly, especially around this time of day, so she also had on a blue woolen jacket, although she kept it unbuttoned. The sun was behind her, the beams falling all around her. She stood in a little pool of shadow, a dark figure. It was hard to make out the expression on her face.
    But now she stepped away from the tree. I heard the leaves crunch under her shoes as she walked slowly toward me. She stepped out into the road and kept coming, slowly, step-by-step as I sat on my bike watching her. She walked right up to me. She stood close. Really close. So close I could actually feel her breath on my face.
    She leaned toward me, staring at me, studying me. I just sat there on the bike. I didn’t know what to do or say. I let her look as much as she wanted.
    “Sam,” she said finally. It was as if she’d just figured out who I was. “You’re Sam Hopkins.”
    “Sure, Jennifer,” I said. “You know me. You’re in my English class.”
    “I know you,” she echoed. “I put you in my cell phone.” She took her phone out of her pocket and held it up—still staring at me. “I put everyone in school in my cell phone.”
    “Well . . . great,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say.
    She put the phone away again. “Your father’s a priest,” she said then.
    “Well, we don’t call them priests, we . . .”
    “A priest is a father,” she said. “Your father’s a Father. Father Father. Farther and farther. My father’s farther and farther away.”
    She murmured all this in a low, quick voice, and all the while she went on staring at me. It was really spooky. Then she smiled. And you know what? That was even spookier. It was a sort of small, secret smile. Her eyes glittered, as if she was about to share something with me, something very special that she’d never told anyone else.
    “You know what I’m doing here?” she said.
    I sat there on my bike, staring back at her. I was kind of hypnotized by her, by the way she was staring at me like that, and by her secret smile and glittering eyes. I slowly shook my head. “No,” I said. “What are you doing here?”
    She leaned even closer, edged even a little closer to me. And she whispered, “I’m looking for the devil.”
    I felt a chill go through me and I shivered. It was a strange thing to say, and the way she said it made it sound even stranger. Up there alone in the middle of nowhere surrounded by woods, just me and her, it was actually kind of frightening.
    My lips parted as I tried to think of an answer.
    But before I could, something even more frightening happened.
    I heard an engine roar and turned to see Jeff Winger’s red Camaro racing toward us.

8

A Revelation
     
    I knew right away this was a bad situation. Jeff and his friends were bullies, and Jennifer was a natural victim if ever there was one. She was small, weak, odd, confused, and all alone out here in the middle of nowhere. The minute Jeff set eyes on her there was going to be trouble. I was sure of it.
    I watched the chrome of the Camaro’s fender plowing up the hill toward us. Then I looked back at Jennifer. She hadn’t even turned at the sound of the car. She