Lost Girls(58)

“Shit!” I said, all my anger seething to the surface as I glanced down at the spreading stain. “Thanks a lot, jerk!”

“I don’t know why you’re making such a big deal out of it—”

“You can find your own way home after school today, smart-ass.”

“Whatever.”

“And I can’t believe you told Dad I was teaching you how to fight—”

“You know what? You suck!” He got out of the car and stood up, glaring at me through narrowed eyes. Then he huffed his chest out and left his school books scattered all over my car and headed toward the school building, his whole body angry, shoulders hunched in, torso leaning into a jog-run, fists clenched.

I cursed, loud and long, and then slammed my fist against my steering wheel, inadvertently making the horn blast. Almost like it had been synchronized, a pack of sophomores all turned at the same time and gave me a weird look. “Get out of here,” I growled at them through the open door. They started to run away, right as a gust of warm air blew a handful of cherry blossoms into the car.

I blinked. No longer able to fight their haunting fragrance. Or the spinning white petals.

“Hey, girl,” a voice from the past called to me. “Over here.”

I blinked again.

The gorgeous spring day faded away as a memory came over me. Stronger than any I’d had so far, it consumed me, it was so real—

...

I was walking to my car, head down, still mad because the past few days had sucked, royally, totally. So much I could barely breathe. I’d lost my team, my friends, and my boyfriend, almost within a matter of hours. Even going to school had become a major effort. There should have been somebody standing outside the school doors today, handing out awards to all of us who wanted to be anywhere but here. I’d have a gold star tattooed on my forehead right now.

She called to me again.

“Come on,” she said, leaning toward me. She sat in a white Mazda hatchback, her long, dark hair catching in the breeze, those bright pink strands fading because she hadn’t dyed her hair recently. I left my car behind and walked in her direction, toward where she parked at the curb, her car rumbling beneath those Japanese cherry trees.

It looked like a postcard, one of those perfect shots that could lure vacationers to come visit Southern California. A pretty girl sitting in a white car beneath blossoming trees, mountains in the background.

“What’s up, Nicole?” I called. She wasn’t part of my problem. If anything, she was the solution. Nicole Hernandez and I had met back when we were both in Silver Level. At that point, neither one of us had a team yet and we used to spar together—back before I became Odette of the Swan Girls and she became Taffy of Pink Candi. Once we both got our own teams we vowed to never, ever compete against each other, so we rarely attended raves on the same nights.

None of my other friends knew about her—not Lauren or Dylan or Zoe. Nicole was my secret friend, the person I talked to about everything. I even told her how bad I’d felt about ditching Molly. I cared way too much about my best friend to drag her into my dark, dangerous world of raves and drugs and fighting.

“You’ll never guess what I got,” Nicole said with a devilish gleam in her dark eyes.

I hoped she wouldn’t say E or weed, because I wasn’t in the mood to get high.

Long fingers snapped a pair of tickets against her steering wheel. So fast I couldn’t even tell what they were. I leaned in her window and grabbed them away from her. Heavy black cardstock and glittering silver letters.

Platinum Level tickets.

I pulled in a long breath.

“It’s frigging real?” I asked. My knees actually felt weak for a half-second. “There really is a Platinum Level?”

“It’s real, all right. But we gotta leave. Like, now. Get in, girl.”

I ran around her car and jumped in, slamming my knapsack into the backseat.

“This level’s different, really different. Check it out.” She handed me a computer printout to read as she drove away. I had a momentary snap of conscience as I realized I was ditching my little brother. He’d have to find another way home today. Then I remembered all the times I’d waited for him after school and he hadn’t bothered to tell me he was going to a friend’s house to play video games.

I scanned the paper. It contained a list of instructions for the event.

“It starts in an hour?” I asked, glancing at the map. “Can we get there in time?”

“Watch me. I’ve got mad driving skills.” She laughed, a deep, throaty sound that made me laugh, too.

“And what’s this?” I pointed at the page. “The only rules are there are no rules? Is that scary or exciting?”

She shrugged as we zipped onto the freeway, buzzing from one lane to another. “Maybe a little bit of both?” she said.

We had to get down to a sketchy neighborhood in Rosemead, somewhere off the 10, so Nicole and I focused our attention on the road, her slipping into tiny slots that opened up between speeding cars and me pointing out any open spaces I saw. It took about forty-five minutes before we were chugging along the 10, then swinging off an exit. Neither one of us had been down in this area before, a narrow industrial park wedged between Temple City, El Monte, and Rosemead, where most of the buildings were colored by graffiti and gang signs. We passed abandoned gas stations with broken windows, a drive-in theater, tiny stucco houses with bars on the windows, and strip malls where all the signs were written in Korean.