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us."
They watched him dragging himself over the old graves toward the woods.
"I might be ... an artist," Popeye said with admiration, "but that boy ... is art."
64
Phoebe woke up in a bad mood. She could feel herself emitting a dark cloud of negativity; it poured from her in thick, invisible vapors.
Her terrier, Gargoyle, looked up from the foot of her bed, turned, leaped, and scampered away before her fog swept over him.
She didn't have the energy to argue with Mrs. Garrity when she said that Adam was "too sick" to go to school that day. "Dead kids don't get sick, Mrs. Garrity," is what she should have said, and then she should have asked if she could speak to Adam. Instead she sighed and walked out to the end of her driveway to catch the bus, pushing her hat down lower over her ears against the cold that seemed to be seeping into her.
The bus was seven minutes late. The first thing she heard when she stepped on was Colette's shrill, catlike laughter. Because she wasn't in the mood, she took a seat in the front across from a freshman boy with glasses. He was obviously terrified of her. Phoebe, was self-aware enough to notice that many of the younger kids regarded her with fear. Margi said they gave her the hairy eyeball because of her goth stylings and perfect skin; Phoebe was inclined to think it had more to do with her presence at Adam's murder--either that or being the cause of the murder. She looked over at the boy, who clutched his backpack and stared straight ahead.
Bride of Frankenstein, they called her. She was sure of it.
"Phoebe, Phoebe!" she heard Margi call from the back of the bus.
65
Phoebe ignored her. She made sure that she was the first one off, sliding into the aisle while the younger boy remained crouched in his seat.
"Where's Adam?" Mrs. Rodriguez asked her at the start of algebra, and if Phoebe had possessed the power to petrify, she would have used it then. She mumbled that she didn't know.
"Tommy isn't here either," Mrs. Rodriguez said. "Do you have any idea where he is?"
Phoebe had to hold back the answer that came to mind, which was to ask Mrs. Rodriguez if she thought she was the den mother for the morgue.
"It isn't like Tommy to miss a day of class," Mrs. Rodriguez said. Phoebe shrugged and went to take her seat. She glanced over to where TC Stavis sat, studious in his attempt to avoid looking at her.
I'm the Gorgon, Phoebe thought, looking over at him, squinting. My stare is death.
TC leaned over his algebra book and seemed to flinch.
Later in the lunchroom Phoebe unwrapped a lackluster lunch of milk, carrots, lukewarm macaroni and cheese, and an apple with a bruise as big as the Tycho crater. Margi came and sat down next to her with such a haphazard flop that she made Phoebe spill milk on the front of her blouse.
"Hey, hey," Margi said as Colette and Karen took chairs on the opposite sides of them. "Baby's in black again."
"Well, I was in black," Phoebe said, frowning. "But now I'm in milky black." She rubbed the front of her shirt with a napkin.
"Here, let me help you," Margi said, grabbing another
66
napkin and thrusting it at Phoebe's chest. Phoebe slapped her hand away, the sharp sound of it making the dead girls laugh.
"Jeez," Margi said, a wry smile on her face, "ease off on the jiujitsu. I was only trying to help."
"Yeah," Phoebe said, "thanks for that 'help.'"
"Still thinking about the trial, huh?"
"No," Phoebe said.
"Adam really freaked, huh?"
"No!" Phoebe said, her voice rising above the boisterous din of the lunchroom. "No, he did not 'freak.' Who told you he freaked?"
"Um," Margi said, looking back to Karen and Colette, but she didn't find any help there. Karen took the lid off a cup of sliced strawberries. "I heard it from Norm. Who heard it from Gary, who I think talked to Morgan Harris, who must have gotten it from TC."
"TC," Phoebe said. "A necessary link in the daisy chain of idiots."
Margi knew that she was being included as a link in the "daisy
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