The next day Lilly didn’t show up for school. I didn’t see her in the halls, sitting on the front lawn, or in her geography class. Chainsaw didn’t see her either, and Robin couldn’t care less.
“We’re not married!” Calvin muttered, after I approached him at his locker. “How should I know where she is? Who are you, anyway?”
I replayed yesterday’s events in my mind. Her excitement over the stuffed swan, eating cotton candy as if for the first time. Graciously handing the beggar her coffee. Clinging to me desperately in the hall of mirrors, and then the way she suddenly pulled me into her and kissed me like a girl who’s not afraid of anything. I realized I didn’t even know her last name, her address. She was even more mysterious in real life than she had been in my imagination.
Chainsaw, Robin, and I went to the nosebleed section of the football bleachers for lunch. Robin sat a few rows down reading Rolling Stone, Chainsaw was watching The Fugitive on his million-dollar laptop, while I stood in the last row, facing away from the field, looking for Lilly among the throngs of students milling outside. The bleachers were the highest point at school, save for the flagpole. And I thought we’d look pretty silly if Lilly did wander in and spy me clinging to a pole underneath the stars and stripes.
“You did see her yesterday, didn’t you?” I asked, frustrated. “I couldn’t have dreamed about her twice?”
“Yeah, dude, I saw her!” Chainsaw said. “But I’m not sure that I didn’t dream about her last night. That body? Delicious!”
“Don’t talk that way about her!” I said, tossing a plastic cup at him.
“Or me either!” Robin said sarcastically. “I hate it when the two of you fawn all over me!”
“Take a Valium, dude! You’ll see her again,” Chainsaw said, adjusting his headphones.
“Maybe she got mugged. Or kidnapped.”
“It would have been on the news,” Chainsaw said. “Her parents would have called the school.”
“Maybe they have her locked in a cage!” Robin exclaimed.
“A lot of help you are,” I shouted back. But then I thought of my angel, helpless, like a caged bird. “Could it be true?”
“You both need to get out more,” Robin complained.
“This is making me crazy!” I shouted.
“Chill out! Maybe she’s sick,” Chainsaw finally said. “Did you ever think of that? She is human after all.”
“She did have cramps at the pier,” I remembered, sitting down next to him.
“Sure—it’s her girlie time! She took the day off to chew on Midol, eat Ben and Jerry’s and bawl her eyes out talking on the phone to her best friend.”
“You think so?” I asked eagerly.
“I know so! You’ve seen how psycho my mom gets—one minute she flies off the handle because the toilet seat’s up, the next minute she cries at a Hallmark commercial. Believe me, you’re better off not seeing her!”
I returned to my lookout post and leaned on the aluminum railing. Maybe Chainsaw was right. But I couldn’t wait until tomorrow to find out.
Mrs. Linwood, our airhead school secretary, was rummaging through her overstuffed file cabinet when I barged into her office.
“Candy—she didn’t show up today. Is she sick?”
“Excuse me?” Mrs. Linwood asked, startled.
“Candy. The transfer student.”
“Oh, I met her yesterday. Lovely girl,” she said, plopping into her chair.
“Is she sick?” I asked.
“No one called in for her today.”
“Do you know where she is?”
“If I did, that information would be confidential.”
“She’s my lab partner in Mr. Johnson’s class. We have an assignment due today,” I lied.
“But she just transferred yesterday. How could she have an assignment due today?”
“Ask Mr. Johnson. I don’t think it’s fair. That’s why I need your help!”
“But—”
“It’s thirty percent of our final grade. I could fail the whole quarter! He’s a madman, really.”
“Well…”
“Please, it’s up to you to save the day,” I begged.
“All right, all right. Let me take a look at the records.” She shuffled through the heap of files on her desk and picked up a Post-it. “One call was made to her house at noon. No one answered. They didn’t have a machine, so we couldn’t leave a message.”
She went back to her bloated file cabinet.
“Can you call again, please? Now? She’s also supposed to go to the fireworks with me tonight,” I confessed.
“With you?” she asked, skeptically.
“Please?” I begged.
“Oh, all right.” Mrs. Linwood pulled my angel’s record from her cabinet and punched in the phone number.
It rang forever. Mrs. Linwood shook her head and began to put the phone down. “Hello? Hello?” she suddenly said. “Yes, Seaside High School calling. Candy was supposed to be is school today, but no one has…yes…Candy Hartman…She transferred here yesterday…but she was standing right in front of me! Yes…Yes…Yes…Oh, I see…Thank you.”
She hung up the phone, confused and silent.
“Well?”
“That was the plumber.”
“The plumber!”
“Seems the Hartmans’ Realtor sent him. The family refused to move into the new home until they had brand-new pipes. They’re still living in their house…in Utah.”
“But I just saw her yesterday!”
“So did I.” She frowned.
“Then who was the girl I talked to at school?”
“Who was the girl I talked to at school? Oh, my! You must not tell anyone about this. Oh, dear, oh, dear! This could mean my job!”
Who was this angel girl? Where was this angel girl? And would I ever find out?
I fingered the necklace in my pocket, more confused than ever.
“You’ve been zoned, man,” Chainsaw said at the Seaside Pier Arcade, after I filled him in. “Totally Twilight Zoned! Like now I think maybe we all dreamed it.”
“It’s a nightmare to me,” I said. “I see her underwater, then I don’t. I see her at school, then I don’t. I see her at the pier, and then I don’t. Lilly…that’s all I know.”
“You think you know,” Robin interjected. “Her name could really be George.”
“In which case you could find her on the corner of Fifth and Main.” Chainsaw laughed.
“I just want to wake up a couple years from now. Then maybe all this’ll somehow make sense.”
“You can’t sleep. The fireworks are tonight,” Chainsaw said cheerfully.
“Are you kidding? I’m not going!”
“Sure you are, dude! It’s summer’s first blow-out. You have to go.”
“I’ll be there,” Robin reminded me. “I’m the one woman in your life that doesn’t disappear.”
“I appreciate that.” I sighed, giving her a hug.
“I’ll pick you up at eight,” Chainsaw commanded.