Monday, April 26th
5:08 P.M.
The low, steady hum of wheels rolling over the Lyonses’ hardwood hallway floors rumbled like an earthquake. The sound got louder and louder, then stopped, right outside Claire’s bedroom.
She had no fear. Her heart didn’t race. And she had no desire to ask who—or what—was there. All Claire felt was numb. Whatever it was couldn’t possibly fix her broken heart. And it certainly couldn’t make her feel worse than she already did. Cam was a liar, Nikki was a boy-snatcher, and she seemed to be the fool. And until that changed, it didn’t matter what was waiting for her on the other side of the door.
“Open up.” Layne jiggled the bronze knob. “I can help.”
Claire pulled her baby-blue comforter over her head and curled into the fetal position. She could see the outline of glittery stars through the blanket and wondered how the sappy design had ever made her happy, since, these days, happy was a concept more foreign to her than the Harajuku girls.
After some mild scraping and slight tinkering, the lock clicked and Todd, Claire’s orange-haired younger brother, burst in, dragging a large, gray wheeled suitcase. “Where do you want it?” he asked Layne, who breezed in behind him and tossed her black straw cowboy hat on Claire’s lemon-yellow CD locker.
Layne rolled down the turtleneck on her red wool poncho and surveyed the room. “There.” She pointed to the brushed metal desk, stacked with binders, textbooks, and long thin pens that looked like yellow tulips.
Todd dragged the suitcase across the white throw rugs, leaving a wake of soiled sheepskin behind him. Once his mission was complete, he held out his hand and wiggled his fingers.
Layne slapped him with a half-eaten York Peppermint Patty.
“That’s it?” he squealed. “That’s my tip?”
“No, that’s a treat.” She lowered her face to meet his. “Your tip is: Join a sports team. Your arms are quite underdeveloped for a boy your age.” Layne squeezed his thin, freckly bicep. “Now git!” She clapped twice and Todd scurried away.
“Nice pants, circus freak!” he shouted at the black-and-white polka-dot leggings Layne had tucked into fire-enginered Converse high-tops.
“How do you do that?” Claire asked, her face the only thing that wasn’t covered in blankets. “He never listens to me.”
“I make things happen.” Layne tapped her suitcase with pride. “Now get out of bed and come sit by the computer.”
“What? Why? What are you doing here?”
“Claire, face it, okay? You’ve got hotline potential.” Layne twirled the small gold dials on her luggage lock and yanked it open. “I sensed sadness in your font when we texted after school. So I came right over. I’m going up north to drama camp in a few weeks, and I need to know that you’ll be okay without me.”
The word camp conjured up another forklift-size heap of sadness behind Claire’s belly button. Was Cam really planning to dump her for Nikki this summer?
“Now get out of bed and c’mere.” Layne reached into her suitcase and pulled out a six-pack of Red Bull, a medium-size gold box of Godiva chocolates, a bag of pretzel rods, five Slim Jims, three loose slabs of watermelon-flavored Trident, and two large bottles of Smart Water. “We may be here all night, so I brought provisions.”
Claire sat up. “How did you ride your bike with that thing?”
“I didn’t.” Layne unzipped the bag. “When I asked my mom for a ride to the Block estate, Chris offered to drive me.”
“Really?” Claire asked, wondering if his recent encounter with Massie had anything to do with that.
“Swear.” Layne crossed her heart. “Now come!”
Claire slipped into her pink Steve Madden slippers and shuffled toward her desk. “Wait. What do you mean we may be here all—”
“Let me start with a few questions.” Layne pulled a mini mirrored clipboard out of her oatmeal-colored canvas Sunshine Tours bag. “How did you find out about Nikki?”
Sweat beaded across Claire’s forehead. How could she have been so stupid? When she’d texted Layne about Cam and Nikki, she’d forgotten Layne wasn’t supposed to know about ESP.
Layne tapped her silver-lead, teeth-mark-covered pencil against the black pad on her clipboard. “Waiting.”
“Um, I…” Claire pushed back her yellow velvet Pottery Barn curtains and looked out the window down at the Blocks’ kidney-shaped pool, which was shrouded in a baby-blue cover and coated with wet brown leaves. It was hard to imagine she’d be swimming in it in less than a month… and even harder to imagine staying afloat while Cam was at camp with—
“Wai-ting!”
“I read it in Cam’s journal,” Claire half-lied.
“You read his journal?” Layne slammed her clipboard on the desk. “Claire, I think that’s illegal in this state!”
“It’s not ill—”
Layne popped open a can of Red Bull. “When you snoop, you’re bound to find something you don’t like. And when you do, you can’t confront the person, because you snooped. Do you think it’s easy hanging out with Meena knowing she swiped my Rodgers and Hammerstein lyrics book and blamed it on you?”
“What?”
“Don’t worry—I knew you were more the Andrew Lloyd Webber type, so I peeked at her journal and my suspicions were confirmed. And now I’m stuck in an anger cul-de-sac.”
“Huh?”
“An anger cul-de-sac,” Layne repeated, as if Claire were having trouble hearing the term, not understanding it. “All my rage can do is bike around in circles. It’s a dead end. Why? Because I can’t tell her I read her journal.”
“You don’t think I know this?” Claire’s eyes filled with tears. She scurried toward the heap of T-shirt-covered throw pillows beneath her window and collapsed on them, face-down.
Seconds later, Layne was whacking her butt with them. Claire lifted her tear-soaked face.
“Want one?” Layne waved the Godiva box under Claire’s nose.
“No thanks.” She sniffled.
“Fine, then. Let’s review what we know.” Layne pulled Claire to her feet and dragged her toward the shiny silver desk. She reached for her mini mirrored clipboard and scanned the first page.
“I told you.” Claire reluctantly rested her butt next to her Mac laptop. She could feel the cold hard slab of metal through her pink chenille robe. “He met Nikki at camp. She’ll be there this summer. She sends him gummy bears. And cinnamon hearts, and then”—she sighed—“he gives them to me.” Claire dabbed her leaking eyes with the sleeve of her robe. “All this time I thought he bought them and—”
“Well, I have to say I’m a little relieved.” aLayne spun in Claire’s white padded chair.
“What?”
“Claire, all this time Cam seemed soooo…” Layne’s narrow hazel eyes darted back and forth. “Perrrfect.”
“He was,” Claire said to her slippers.
“Yeah, but I mean perfect in that creepy way that serial killers are perfect.”
“Huh?”
Layne exhaled, as if being the only person on the planet who truly understood life was an exhausting burden. “You know how serial killers act all nice and polite as a cover-up? Well, before we found out about her, I thought Cam was nice and polite. But now that I know he’s not, I can stop thinking he’s a serial killer. Get it?”
“I guess.” Claire felt the quake of an impending smile. Somehow Layne always managed to cheer her up. Even on hotline days.
“May I?” Layne’s index finger hovered above the POWER button on Claire’s PowerBook.
Claire nodded yes.
While the computer whirred to life, Layne sucked back an entire Red Bull. She cracked her knuckles over the keyboard and went straight to Google.
“Let’s find out who this mystery girl is, shall we?” She typed “Nikki” in the search bar.
Claire wrapped her arms around Layne’s back. “You’re the best!” She squeezed. A little factual information would calm her nerves. Without it, Nikki might as well have been a post–nose-job Ashlee Simpson look-alike who knew the words to Cam’s favorite Strokes songs.
“One million, nine hundred and forty thousand.”
Claire leaned over her shoulder. “Huh?”
“That’s how many matches I got when I Googled her name.” Layne clicked on the first one, called, “Next-Door Nikki.” A pair of boobs bigger than J.Lo’s butt filled the screen.
“Ew!” they giggle-screamed.
“Did you happen to get her last name?”
“Nuh-uh.” Claire reached for a pretzel rod.
“How about the name of the camp? Did you get that?”
“It’s something like Full Moon or Bright Moon.” Claire rubbed her temples. “I can’t remember.”
They keypad clacked as Layne searched both of those names. “Nope.”
“I know. Try MySpace. Maybe she has a profile.”
“Genius!”
Claire sat on the metal arm of her chair to get a better view. Her teeth started chattering with anticipation.
“Good news.” Layne leaned back, folding her arms behind her head. “There are one hundred and thirty-three thousand three hundred and thirty-eight Nikkis.”
“How is that good news?” Claire snapped, unable to hide her frustration.
“On second thought, that is lot to weed through, especially with finals coming up.”
“Um, yeah!”
“I guess the best thing for you to do is avoid him.” Layne gathered her provisions and started stuffing them in her suitcase.
“I can’t.” Claire’s hands began to shake. “If I don’t ask him to Skye’s costume party, Massie will kill me.”
“Well, there’s one thing you could do.” Layne rolled her suitcase toward the door.
“What?” Claire asked, hearing the hope and desperation in her own voice.
“You were the star of Dial L for Loser, right?”
“Yeah. So?”
“So? Act!” Layne insisted, reaching for the brass doorknob. “Wait, where are you going?” Claire pushed herself to stand, ignoring a sudden wave of dizziness. Life had never felt so hopeless. “I thought we were going to pull an all-nighter.”
“That’s before I knew you snooped.” Layne opened the door. “Snooping is a fool’s game. A sucker’s bet. Like I told you, a nonstop bike ride to the anger cul-de-sac.”
“But I need to get out of the cul-de-sac.” Claire desperately dashed toward her friend. “Help me.”
“I feel your pain, believe me.” Layne stepped back into the room and hugged Claire. The sudden affection made her eyes well up again. Was it possible to feel loved and abandoned all at the same time?
Layne released her and, with genuine kindness, wiped Claire’s tears away with her thumb. “You think it’s easy looking Meena in the eye, day in and day out, knowing she stole my songbook? But I do. I manage.”
“How?”
“Take your mind off of it.”
“How am I supposed to do that?”
“Try Sudoku.” Layne blew Claire a kiss and placed it on her cheek before leaving her alone in her room. Alone with a broken heart, one hundred and thirty-three thousand three hundred and thirty-eight Nikkis, and no clue what to do next.