Devil's Advocate (The X-Files: Origins #2)(23)
Ethan leaned back, hands up. “Whoa! Sorry,” he said quickly. “I wasn’t trying to start something.” He picked up his napkin and reached out to dab gravy from her cheek. “Really sorry.”
“I’m serious. Is that what this ‘oh, hey, let’s pretend we’re friends and have lunch together’ is all for?” she demanded. “You acting all nice to me just so you could ambush me with a question like that?”
“No,” he said firmly. “It’s not. I said I’m sorry twice, and I’ll keep saying it if that helps. Look, Dana, I’m not real good at talking to girls, and you scare the crap out of me.”
She blinked at him. “I scare you? Why? Because of what happened yesterday?”
His cheeks turned red and his eyes kept sliding away from hers and then flicking back. “Well … no, not really.”
“Then why? Because I’m the new girl and I’m a navy brat and I’m weird and—”
“No,” he insisted, his color deepening. He gave her a funny look. “It’s because I … well, I guess I’ve never really had a conversation with a girl as pretty as you.”
“Oh, please. That’s crap and you know it. I saw you talking with Corky Capriotti the other day.”
“Corky’s my cousin,” he said. “We grew up together. Ew.”
“Oh.”
They looked at each other.
“If it will help,” he said, “I’m willing to crawl on out of here and just see you in class.”
She said nothing.
“Or I could go out and come back in and we can pretend that the world’s most awkward conversation never happened.”
She said nothing.
“Or you could stab me with your fork,” he said. “Anything will work. Just give me a game plan here.”
She looked down and was surprised to see that she had picked up her fork again and was holding it in a clenched fist.
“Eat your mystery meat,” she mumbled, and they ate in silence for several minutes.
“Sorry,” Ethan said again.
She nodded. “Me too.”
“Why are you sorry?” he asked.
“For making you team up with a major weirdo.”
Ethan sat back and studied her. “Why would you say something like that?”
She avoided his eyes. “Pretty much because everyone thinks I’m weird. They can’t all be wrong.”
“Big whoop. So you’re not normal,” he said. “Who cares? I mean, why care what anyone else thinks? You’re smart and you don’t try to be popular, and you don’t hang with a clique.”
“You mean I’m basically a loner and an outcast.”
Ethan smiled. “I prefer to think of you as an individual.”
“You know,” she said thoughtfully, “you’re a little weird, too.”
“Takes one to know one,” he said. They ate.
“Why’d you ask me about seeing Maisie’s ghost?” asked Dana.
“Clumsy way to start a conversation?” he suggested.
“No, seriously.”
Ethan shrugged. “I … guess I’m interested in what happened to Maisie.”
“Did you know her?”
“Only by name,” he said. “But she’s not the first—”
“To die, I know. Five, right? That’s what I heard.”
“Right. So … do you think it’s true?”
Dana frowned. “Do I think what’s true? What are you talking about?”
“The five dead teens.”
“What about them? Oh, do you mean do I think they were all taking drugs?”
“No,” said Ethan in a low, intense voice. “Do you think they were all murdered?”
CHAPTER 23
Francis Scott Key Regional High School 12:01 P.M.
“Murdered?” cried Dana, so loud two teens at another table turned to look. Ethan faked a laugh.
“Yeah,” he said loud enough for them to hear, “we murdered that lab project. Easy A, easy A.”
The other students lost interest, and Ethan bent even closer to Dana and hissed at her. “Why don’t you say it a little louder? Pretty sure my deaf grandfather back in Philadelphia didn’t hear you.”
She jabbed her fork in his direction. “Why don’t you give a person some warning before you say something like that?”
“I thought that’s what we were talking about,” he fired back.
“No, we were not talking about that,” snapped Dana. “We were talking about teens getting high and wrecking their cars. We were not having any kind of discussion in which ‘murder’ was even a topic. What’s wrong with you?”
Ethan sat back and pursed his lips for a moment, working it through. “Okay,” he said after a moment, “maybe I didn’t read you right.”
“You think?”
“Sorry. It’s just that I think there’s something very wrong happening in Craiger.”
“Yes. People our own age are dying.”
“And you’re seeing their ghosts. My sister’s friend Meghan was there, and she heard what you told Mrs. Frazer. You said you saw Maisie bleed like she was stabbed.”