Asylum (Asylum, #1)(17)
He reached the entrance hall, and there she was, Abby, wearing a low-cut top with spaghetti straps and a skirt. What a departure from her usual slouchy shirts and grandma vests. Shit, he was being such a guy, and she was going to notice and call the whole thing off. . . .
“You okay?” she asked as they started down the path to Camford, the little town that lay a mile away from campus. It was still relatively light out, summer prolonging the balmy twilight warmth. “You look kind of pale.”
Pale? Damn. Was it from that phantom email in his Sent folder, or from that shirt of hers? Hard to say. What he did know was that she looked great, and Paul had taught him that this was the sort of thing a guy ought to say to a girl.
“No, I’m fine,” he said. “You look neat.” Abby glanced up at him, an uncertain smile on her face. Somewhere, his father was having a seizure. “I mean good. You look good. Amazing. You look amazing.”
That stupid ghost email had rattled him harder than he thought.
He fidgeted with a button on his sleeve. A thin vapor of fog clung to the ground. Dan had heard Professor Reyes refer to it as “the Brookline soup,” this fog that showed up without fail at dusk. Allegedly, it could get almost opaque in the autumn months.
The walk down to Brewster’s was uneventful. Not boring, just . . . easy. He liked that about Abby—nothing was overly dramatic or even really mysterious. Game playing, lying, rules—none of that seemed to apply with her. She said what was on her mind—at the moment, an obsession with glow-in-the-dark cats they were engineering in Japan (she wanted one for the cute factor, but more so for the geek factor)—and then said even more about what was on her mind.
“I’m rambling,” she said.
“No,” he answered. “You make it interesting.” He hoped that didn’t sound too pathetic. But she just gave him a smile and his heart lifted.
While they waited at the restaurant counter to order, Dan breathed in the intoxicating mix of scents—coffee grounds, pesto, and the flowery loveliness coming from Abby. She must have put on some perfume. She leaned into the counter, rocking from her heels up to her tiptoes as she tried to decide what to eat. Some guy only a year or two older than them took Dan’s order, scribbling all of it down without looking once at the paper because he was staring at Abby. If Dan’s sandwich came out anywhere near correct, he would be shocked.
They grabbed a corner booth and settled in with their drinks.
Abby sipped her Diet Coke and stared out into the street. The lamps had just come on, making the damp sidewalks glisten. Interestingly, the town proper seemed to be immune to the fog that plagued the campus.
Say something, Crawford. Anything.
“Do you know much about computers?” Dan blurted out. He hadn’t planned to talk about the email, but maybe he needed someone else to affirm that he wasn’t overreacting, that it was normal to be a little freaked out by what had happened.
“A bit,” Abby said as their sandwiches arrived, along with a double espresso for Abby (on the house) that the waiter had just accidentally (yeah, right) made for a mixed-up order (read: Abby). Dan’s side of mustard, of course, was nowhere to be found. “What’d you want to know?”
“It’s going to sound moronic,” he said.
“I promise not to laugh at you,” Abby replied. “Not much, anyway.”
“How sweet of you.” Dan ruffled the back of his hair, which he always did when he was choosing his words carefully. “Is it possible to like . . . I don’t know, have someone’s email show up randomly in your account?”
Abby blinked across the table at him. “Um . . . isn’t that . . . the entire point of email?”
“Oh! No. Shit, see? This is why I shouldn’t have brought it up.” Dan shook his head. “What I mean is, could the signals get crossed or something? A message someone else sent wind up looking like you sent it?”
He was botching this spectacularly.
Abby dabbed at her lips with a paper napkin and tilted her head to the side, considering. One loop of hair came free from her headband, brushing her cheek. Dan fought the urge to tuck it behind her ear. “I don’t think so,” she replied finally. “Not unless someone hacked your account or stole your password. Why? Do you think a ghost is using your email without permission?” She lifted her fingertips and danced them across the air, making an exaggerated booOOOOoooo noise.
“Uh-oh, Dan, haunted dormitory, spooky, scary . . .”
Dan smacked her hand lightly. But she did have a point. He sounded ridiculous. “Never mind. It’s nothing.”
“No, no. What was the message?” Abby picked up her sandwich again. A sliver of tomato escaped, plopping onto the plate. It looked unappetizingly like a bit of flesh.
“That’s the thing, I only caught a glimpse of the subject line. Then my browser borked and when I opened up my Sent folder, nothing was there. It had just disappeared. It’s like I imagined it.”
“Disappeared?” But for a moment, she looked a little uneasy. At least she wasn’t laughing at him anymore.
The waiter interrupted them, this time with an “accidental” cookie.
“Could you not?” snapped Dan, shooting the guy a black look. “We’re trying to have a conversation here.”
“Whatever, man. It’s cool.”