The Disappearance Of Sloane Sullivan. Gia Cribbs
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if you remembered.” Mark smiled but his voice was almost too confident, like he was trying to convince himself of that fact instead of me.
I took another deep breath.
“Well,” he said as he stood, “I’ve got to get to work.” A grin played on his lips. “And you, my friend, are late for school.”
I glanced at my alarm clock and winced. I must’ve slept straight through the alarm. “Shoot! Why didn’t you wake me?”
He made a circling gesture around my room with his finger and stopped when he was pointing at a box of tampons sitting on top of my dresser. “Because I don’t want to see stuff like that. I only come in here if you’re yelling ‘Run!’ at the top of your lungs.”
“I wouldn’t have to keep that in my room if you’d rented a house with more than one bathroom,” I grumbled as I jumped out of bed. “I missed the bus. If I’m ready in five minutes, can you drop me off at school?”
He pretended to shield his eyes and fumble his way out of my room. “Why do you think I rented a house with one bathroom? So there was so little space it would force you to corral all of your girly stuff in the one place I never have to enter. No more opening drawers in bathrooms to find curling irons and pink razors and weird things that look like torture devices but I think have to do with eyelashes.” He peeked his head around my door frame. “What exactly is the purpose of bronzer? I’ve always wondered.”
I threw one of my Chucks at him. He easily ducked out of the way.
“We’re leaving in four minutes!” he called from down the hall.
* * *
I swallowed the last of my Pop-Tart as I shoved my way through the crowd of almost five hundred seniors buzzing with excitement in the school’s outside courtyard, grateful the scavenger hunt hadn’t started yet. Now all I had to do was find my team.
I inched my way around a group of girls wearing matching Everyone Loves a Cheerleader T-shirts, craning my neck to search for Sawyer, Livie and Jason. I spotted them across the courtyard. Both Sawyer and Livie had their backs to me, but Jason was almost facing me. He bit his thumbnail as his eyes jumped from person to person.
“Jason!” I called over the hum of conversation.
His head snapped in my direction. He exhaled and smiled.
I sidestepped a puddle left over from the morning’s rain and took a deep breath as I crossed the courtyard. You can do this, Sloane. I held my hands up in apology when I reached the three of them. “I’m sorry I’m late. I overslept and literally had four minutes to get ready.”
“You got ready in four minutes?” Livie asked.
I self-consciously smoothed my ponytail, which already had tendrils of hair escaping around my face. I hoped the Chucks, jeans and white tank top I’d thrown on after brushing my teeth and splashing cold water on my face in record time didn’t look too horrible. “Um, yeah.”
Livie smiled. “I could never look that good in four minutes.”
Sawyer leaned toward me. “If I told you you had a great body, would you hold it against me?”
I rolled my eyes. “Do you know the meaning of moderation?”
Jason coughed at the same time Sawyer said, “Huh?”
“It’s too soon, Sawyer. I’m still traumatized from the Harry Potter lines yesterday. You have to space them out more. When they come rapid fire like this, they lose their effect.”
“Huh,” Sawyer repeated, like the thought had never occurred to him.
Livie threw an arm around my shoulder. “Thank God you made it. They just announced we can’t have teams this year. Apparently, last year the teams were too big and everyone split up their lists and sent people off individually and the whole scavenger hunt was done in, like, eight minutes. We’re only allowed to work in pairs this time, and we were afraid one of us was going to have to go solo if you didn’t show.”
So that’s why Jason looked so worried.
Livie stepped away from me and next to Jason, the back of her hand brushing against his.
Crap. The ramifications of pairs suddenly dawned on me. I was going to be stuck with Sawyer and his pickup lines.
Sawyer shook out the T-shirt he had crumpled in one hand and held it out to me. “We can still match though.”
I bit my lip to keep from smiling at the drawing on the shirt, the same drawing I realized was on all of their shirts. “What kind of superhero symbol is that?”
But I knew exactly what it was. It was a large yellow lightning bolt, in the middle of which sat a white star on a blue background surrounded by two red rings, and on either side of the last red ring were three yellow lines that looked like wings. It was the same mashup Jason created when we were little because he could never decide which superhero to play, the same one he doodled in notebooks and used as the logo for his dream garage band as we got older.
“No one could agree so Jason came up with this.” Livie looked down at her shirt, nose wrinkled.
I slipped my shirt on over my tank top. “It looks awesome.” I traced the S in the middle of the star with one finger. “Scavenger Hunt Sloane is ready for action.”
Sawyer opened his mouth.
I pointed at him. “No action comments from you.”
He grinned as Mrs. Thompson, the principal, approached with a large stack of papers in her well-manicured hands. “Jason, how many pairs do you have?”
“Two.”
She held out two lists. Jason grabbed one and Sawyer took the other.
They both scanned the lists as Mrs. Thompson moved on to the next cluster of seniors. “Yes!” Jason murmured.
“What’d you get?” Sawyer asked.
Jason held the list flat against his chest. “I’m not telling. You might try to sabotage my items just so you can beat me.”
“Oh, it’s going to be like that, huh?” The possibility of a wager gleamed in Sawyer’s eyes. “We were going to be the group to win it all and now it’s me against you?”
Jason’s bright eyes flicked to me. “Hey, Sloane, wanna be my partner and help me prove to Sawyer that even with the new girl, who knows nothing about this school or where to find anything on this list, I can still beat him?”
My stomach tightened. Me and Jason. Alone.
Disappointment flashed on Sawyer’s and Livie’s faces, but Sawyer rallied first. “Oh, you’re on. What do you say, Liv? Should we make these two pay for plotting against us?”
“Hey! I didn’t have anything to do with this bet,” I reminded him. “New girl, remember?”
“You’re right,” Sawyer agreed. He bumped Livie with his hip. “Should we make J pay for his poor choice of partner?”
“Hey!” I repeated, a wave of competitiveness flowing through me. “Now you’re going down.”
Livie chuckled. She entwined her arm with Sawyer’s. “Partner, I believe we should.”
The whine of microphone feedback interrupted the partner showdown before the stakes of the bet could be set. “Quiet down, people.” Mrs. Thompson’s voice echoed across the courtyard from where she was precariously balancing on top of a bench in heels taller than I’d ever seen. “Okay. The rules are simple: find each item on your list, take a picture as proof that you found the correct item, and return here where I’ll be waiting to check your pictures against your list. The first pair to accurately complete their list wins and gets to pick a song to be played at graduation. Remember, every list has