Red Heart Tattoo by Lurlene McDaniel Page A

another girl. Was that true? “So who did you bring?”
    “I came alone. Be sure and tell her that.”
    Morgan had a million questions, but just then Trent slipped his arms around her from behind, nuzzled her neck. “Am I going to have to spend the night refereeing you two?”
    “Game over,” Mark said, walking away.
    “Wait!” Morgan called. Mark kept moving. She turned to Trent. “Do you know what’s happening with them? Kelli won’t tell me anything. She lied to me about being here tonight.”
    Trent threw up his hands. “Don’t want to know.”
    “But—”
    He dipped his head and kissed her, stopping her words. From the corner of her eye, Morgan saw two chaperones eyeball them. She ducked. “Let’s not get thrown out.”
    Trent led her to the dance floor. “Then let’s not talk about Kelli and Mark. This is our night, not theirs.” He took her into his arms while lights from an overheadspinning machine threw a sea of sparkle and color over the dancers flowing around them.
    One of the cheerleaders spotted Morgan’s ring and shrieked. Girls clustered like a bouquet of spring flowers to admire the pearl. “Engaged?” one girl asked.
    “Promise ring,” Morgan said. “College first.”
    “Boy, I wouldn’t let him get far away from me,” another girl said. “Why risk him getting picked off by some babe?”
    Morgan felt self-conscious about the attention they were giving the ring. Sure, she loved Trent, had loved him for almost three years. And yet the promise ring represented a commitment that she found strangely unsettling. What if she didn’t want to get married right after college?
    Trent broke into the circle. “Hey, babe. Me and some of the guys are going out to the parking lot for a minute.”
    Code for “Having a smoke and a sip of something eighty-proof.” Her stomach knotted. “What if you’re caught?”
    “Won’t be. We’re going way off campus. To the mall parking lot.” The mall was half a mile away. “We’ll be back in a while.”
    She wished he wouldn’t leave, but she knew it was a male ritual she couldn’t fight. “What if they check your breath when you come back in?” The chaperones were hugging the doors, their eyes darting everywhere suspiciously.
    “Gum and mints. A guy’s best friend,” Trent said.
    Morgan watched Trent and his buddies slip away, staggering their exits so as not to be noticed. She sighed,feeling deserted. She missed Kelli. If her friend had been here, they would have hunkered down and commented on every girl and dress in the gym. But there was no Kelli. And to compound her absence was Morgan’s knowledge that Kelli had told her a bald-faced lie.
    All of a sudden the air seemed stale. Morgan eased over to the table where she and Trent had placed their belongings. She picked up Trent’s letter jacket and headed toward the bathroom, slipping on the wool-and-leather coat emblazoned with the letter
E
as she walked, nodding to Mrs. DeHaven as she passed through the door into the hall. She paused at a side exit door, looked both ways, saw no one watching her. She eased outside into the cold night air, which stung her lungs but also felt refreshing after the closed air of the gym, thick with scents of perfume and hair spray and perspiring bodies.
    Morgan needed to think. She needed to figure out what was going on with her feelings. Why had Kelli not come to her with the truth about her and Mark? Morgan had sensed something was wrong between the two of them, yet she hadn’t pushed Kelli for answers. What kind of a friend let something as important as a breakup get past her without pressing for answers? Morgan felt guilty.
    The moon was overhead now, brilliant and bright. She walked slowly, deep in thought, and ended up at the football field. The carpet of grass looked blue in the moon’s white light; the bleachers were slivers of silver, the goalposts glowing rods rising out of the ground. She walked onto the field, her heels slipping in the