Sister Ernestine continued to stare at me. She didn’t say anything. She was a big lady, not quite as tall as me in my two-inch heels – I was wearing black Batgirl boots – but much wider, with exceptionally large breasts. Between them dangled a silver cross. Sister Ernestine fingered this cross unconsciously as she stared at me. Later, Adam, who’d watched the entire event unfold, would say that Sister Ernestine was holding up the cross as if to protect herself from me. That is untrue.

She merely touched the cross as if uncertain it was still there. Which it was. It most certainly was.

I guess that was when David stopped being Doc to me, and started being David.

‘Don’t worry,’ I told him, just before we parted ways because he looked so worried and cute and all with his red hair and freckles and sticky-outy ears. I reached out and rumpled some of that red hair. ‘Everything will be all right.’

David looked up at me. ‘How do you know?’ he asked.

I took my hand away.

Because, of course, the truth was I didn’t. Know everything was going to be all right, I mean. Far from it, as a matter of fact.

Fifteen

Lunch was almost over by the time I cornered Adam. I had spent almost the entire period in the library staring into a computer monitor. I still hadn’t eaten, but the truth was, I wasn’t hungry at all.

‘Hey,’ I said, sitting down next to him and crossing my legs so that my black skirt hiked up just the littlest bit. ‘Did you drive to school this morning?’

Adam pounded on his chest. He’d started choking on a Frito the minute I’d sat down. When he finally got it down, he said, proudly, ‘I sure did. Now that I got my licence, I am a driving machine. You should’ve come out with us last night, Suze. We had a blast. After we went to the Coffee Clutch, we took a spin along Seventeen Mile Drive. Have you ever done that? Man, with last night’s moon, the ocean was so beautiful—’

‘Would you mind taking me somewhere after school?’

Adam stood up fast, scaring two fat seagulls that had been sitting near the bench he was sharing with Cee Cee. ‘Are you kidding me? Where do you want to go? You name it, Suze, I’ll take you there. Vegas? You want to go to Vegas? No problem. I mean, I’m sixteen, you’re sixteen. We can get married there easy. My parents’ll let us live with them, no problem. You don’t mind sharing my room, do you? I swear I’ll pick up after myself from now on—’

‘Adam,’ Cee Cee said. ‘Don’t be such a spaz. I highly doubt she wants to marry you.’

‘I don’t think it’s a good idea to marry anyone until my divorce from my first husband is finalized,’ I said, gravely. ‘What I want to do is go to the hospital and see Bryce.’