Avalon High Part 9

"That was not," he said, in the same clipped tone, "the topic I a.s.signed you."

For a second I couldn't figure out what he was talking about. Then I realized what he meant.

"Oh," I said. "Right! I'm sorry. That's my fault, Mr. Morton. I'd already read Beowulf "-I thought it safer to say this than the truth, which is that I hate Beowulf. You never know with lit teachers...they can be really touchy about that kind of thing-"so we traded topics with someone else. Is that not allowed? I don't remember hearing you say so."

Mr. Morton frowned. Clearly I'd stumped him. Because he'd never said anything about trading topics being a no-no.

Still, that wasn't the only thing he was sore about.

"Did you work with your partner at all on that proposal?" he demanded.

My partner?

Then I remembered. Lance. Of course.

"Sure," I said, lying through my teeth. "He helped gather some of the source material-"

"I highly doubt that," Mr. Morton said. He was totally outraged. I could tell by his eyebrows, which were way lowered. An older guy-well past retirement age, if you ask me-Mr. Morton's eyebrows were gray, like his neatly trimmed beard.

"I a.s.signed you to work with a partner for a reason, Elaine," he said severely.

"I'm sorry," I said, truly taken aback. Teachers never yell at me. I'm pretty much a model student-like with my driving. I'm afraid to break the law. Mostly. "I...um...we...uh, we divided the paper up. I wrote the proposal, and he's supposed to do the oral report-"

But Mr. Morton wasn't falling for it. He said, "When I a.s.sign you to work with a partner, you're supposed to WORK WITH THAT PARTNER. You and Lance are to be together. I am not accepting your proposal."

This caused me to make a shocked noise, because no teacher had ever rejected anything I'd ever written before.

But Mr. Morton didn't seem to notice my shock, since he went on with, "And on Monday morning, I want to have a word with both of you. I'll expect to see you and Mr. Reynolds in my cla.s.sroom, first thing. You can let him know when you see him."

I was stunned. What was this all about?

"All right," I said.

I said "all right," but I wasn't feeling all right. I was definitely freaked. How had he known? How had he known Lance and I hadn't worked together on the proposal?

By the time I got back to my seat in the bleachers, I had calmed down a little...but not much.

"Where're the dogs?" Liz wanted to know, when I slumped down into my seat beside her. And that's when I realized I'd been so upset over my conversation with Mr. Morton that I'd forgotten to get the hot dogs.

"Sorry," I said. "Listen to this." And I told them both what Mr. Morton had said to me. "I mean, can you believe it?" I asked, when I was done describing what had happened. "Does he have a reputation for being a stodgy old crank? Mr. Morton, I mean? Or is it just me?"

The question had been rhetorical. I'd fully expected them to say, "Oh, yeah, he's a crank."

But they didn't. Stacy went, "I don't know. Everybody has always seemed to love Mr. Morton."

"Yeah," Liz said. "He's been voted best teacher every year since he started at Avalon, practically. And everybody gets a real kick out of the way he says 'Excalibur.'"

"Really?" I found this extremely hard to believe.

"I don't get why you're so mad," Stacy said. "I mean, he's practically ordering you to spend more time with your loverboy. Where's the tragedy in that?"

Liz laughingly agreed. "Seriously," she said. "I'd pay cold hard cash to be told to spend more time with Lance Reynolds."

I slumped in my seat. There was no point in telling them that my lack of enthusiasm at having Lance as a research partner stemmed from my being completely in love with his best friend.

So I just shut my mouth and didn't say anything for the rest of the game....

Until, sometime in the fourth quarter, when the teams were tied at twenty-one, something weird happened. At least, I thought it was weird. Not having been to a football game before, maybe it happened every day. Who knew?

But I did see exactly how it happened, because it involved Will, so I'd been watching closely. Will had called out some numbers and someone had snapped him the ball. He'd run with it for a few feet, looking for someone to throw it to.

Then something happened that hadn't happened at any time before during the game: Lance wasn't there to keep Will from getting tackled. Instead, Will got hit, hard, by a member of the opposing team.

Seeing this, I gasped and leapt to my feet, then looked around accusingly for Lance. He came running over from where Jennifer Gold was standing on the sidelines.

Jennifer Gold? What had Lance been doing, chatting up Jennifer Gold while Will was getting the snot knocked out of him?

I wasn't the only one who was appalled. The Avalon coach whacked Lance on the back of his helmet as he went racing to Will's side. A lot of whistles got blown, and the guy who'd tackled Will peeled himself off him. Lance fell to his knees beside Will's crumpled-oh, G.o.d! Don't let him be dead!-form, ripped off his own helmet, then leaned over to grab the front of Will's uniform, calling his friend's name.

I watched, my heart in my throat, not realizing I'd been holding my breath until a second later, when Will started, slowly and painfully, to get up.

Then I let out my breath in a whoosh and, my knees too weak to hold me up anymore, sat down....

To find both Stacy and Liz staring at me with their eyebrows raised.

I felt myself blushing, and hoped they wouldn't notice in the darkness.

"I had no idea football was so exciting," I said lamely.

A second later, with Will seeming to have brushed off Lance's apologies with a good-natured laugh, the game started again.

Only this time, no one got close to tackling Will. And the guy from the opposing team who'd knocked him down before? Well, first chance he got, Lance brought him down so hard that the game had to stop again, and the guy had to be removed from the field on a stretcher.

One thing was for sure: n.o.body was going to hurt A. William Wagner and get away with it if his best friend Lance had anything to say about it.

Avalon won by seven points. The crowd went nuts.

And then it was time for Will's party.

CHAPTER NINE.

She knows not what the curse may be,

And so she weaveth steadily,

And little other care hath she,

The Lady of Shalott.

I made Stacy and Liz come with me. No way was I going to a party by myself, not knowing anyone but the host, who'd doubtless be too busy hosting to talk to me.

Besides, I'd asked Will, when I'd e-mailed him back the other night, if it was okay if I brought a couple of friends, and he'd replied that it was fine.

Stacy had been nonchalant at the invitation, but Liz was excited by the idea of going. She had never, she confessed to me, been to a party at a popular person's house-let alone president of the senior cla.s.s-and she was dying to see what it was like.

She found out soon enough. What it was like could be described in one word: crowded. Will lived in one of the really nice houses by the Severn Bridge-on a hill overlooking the bay, in fact-and we had to park way down the hill, because there were already so many cars in front of the house that it made getting close to the driveway impossible.

"Holy-" was what Liz started to say, when we finally made it up the hill and into the Wagners' foyer. Because Will's house was really nice, all marble floors and giant mirrors in gilt frames. You had to wonder how his dad afforded it all, on a naval salary.

Liz had apparently been thinking the same thing, since she whispered to Stacy and me, "Family money," in a knowing voice.

I met Admiral Wagner almost as soon as we walked through the door. He was standing in the living room greeting people as they arrived, a drink in one hand, and an attractive blonde in the other. This, I a.s.sumed, was the dead friend's widow, and Will's new stepmom.

"Great game, wasn't it?" Will's dad was saying to anyone who would listen. "Help yourself to a drink. Great game, didn't you think?"

Will's dad certainly didn't look like an ogre who would purposefully get his own best friend killed, then marry his widow and, oh yeah, force his son into a career he didn't want. He was tall, like Will, with salt-and-pepper gray hair. He wasn't wearing his uniform, or anything, although the creases in his khakis looked kind of sharp for civilian clothes. But that might just be because I'm not used to seeing a man in ironed pants. My dad's never worn anything ironed in his life.

I went straight up to him and introduced myself and Liz and Stacy, because it seemed like the polite thing to do. I'll admit that I was also curious to see what Admiral Wagner would be like, after everything I'd heard about him.

But he was totally charming, shaking my hand with energy, seemingly thrilled to pieces that his son had so many friends. He went, "Glad to meet you, girls. Go and get yourselves a drink. Sodas are out by the pool," in a happy, booming voice.

I looked closely at the admiral's new wife, to try to gauge how much she had to do with what Will called "things being weird lately."

But she didn't look mean or anything. She was very beautiful, pet.i.te, and blond...sort of like Jennifer Gold, actually.

But she also looked kind of sad. Like maybe she missed her dead husband, or something.

Or maybe she just didn't want to be at some dumb high school party. It was hard to tell.

Stacy and Liz and I did as the admiral told us to, and made our way out to the pool. We had had a little trouble finding the house, so Will and Lance and the rest of their teammates-not to mention the Avalon High cheerleading squad-were already there, high-fiving one another and jumping into the heated pool in the glow of about a million paper lanterns.

Stacy and Liz and I went and got ourselves sodas and then stood by the guacamole-which is where tall girls always end up standing at parties-watching everyone. No one paid us the slightest bit of attention. No one, that is, except a Border collie who came over and thrust her nose into my hand.

"Hey, there," I said to the dog. She was gorgeous, her long, silky coat white with just a few black patches. She was well-behaved, too. She didn't jump up and only licked me once.

This, I knew, could only be Will's dog, Cavalier. I found out I was right when Will managed to break away from the adoring throng around him and hurried over, exclaiming, "You came!"

While Liz and Stacy both looked behind them, trying to figure out who he was talking to, I felt myself starting to flush.

Because I knew he was talking to me.

"Yes," I said, as he stopped in front of me. He'd changed into baggy swim trunks and a Hawaiian shirt that was open to the waist. It was hard not to look at his abs, which were extremely six-packlike. I tried to ignore them as I said, "Thanks for inviting me. These are my friends Stacy and Liz."

While the two girls looked on in total astonishment, Will said hi. Then he said to me, "I see Cavalier found you. She must like you."

It was true. The dog had kind of been leaning on me as I stroked her soft ears. At least until Will came over. Then all of her attention shifted to him.

"She has nice manners," I said lamely, because it was the only thing I could think of to say. Other than, I love you! I love you!

Which wouldn't, you know, have been too socially acceptable.

Will just smiled, then asked us if we were going to swim.

"We didn't bring suits," Liz lied, with a quick glance at Jennifer Gold, who was wandering around, looking perfectly angelic in a snow-white tankini.

"Oh, we have plenty of spares," Will said. "Over in the pool house. Help yourselves."

Stacy and Liz just stared at him, guacamole-laden chips forgotten in their hands. There was about as much chance of the three of us strutting around in our swimsuits in front of the cheerleading squad as there was of a giant meteorite plummeting from the sky and incinerating them.

Not that I was wishing this would happen. Much.

"Have fun," Will said to me, with a grin, completely oblivious to our discomfort, as any guy would be. "I have to go do, you know. The host thing."

"Sure," I said, and watched as he-Cavalier padding close at his side-went to go talk to a tall, good-looking boy who I'd never seen before. Dark-haired, like Will, he seemed vaguely familiar. But I knew he didn't go to Avalon. Liz was only too happy to clear up the mystery of his ident.i.ty.

"That's Marco," she said, her mouth full of guacamole. "Will's stepbrother."

I stared. Marco was chatting amiably with Will and some of the other team members. He didn't look like he was too upset with the way things had turned out-you know, living in the home of the man who'd sent his father to his death, then married his mother. I mean, that kind of thing could mess a person up.

He also didn't look like the monster I'd been led to believe he was. He certainly didn't look like someone who'd try to kill a teacher. It was true he had a hoop through both ears. And one of those tribal tattoos around one bicep.

But that's pretty much normal, you know, these days.

I watched Marco make his way around the pool, greeting people the way a politician does, with a handshake and a slap on the shoulder if they were guys, and a kiss on the cheek if they were girls. I wondered how I would feel, living under the same roof as the man who was responsible-however indirectly-for my dad's death.