Only this wasn't a nightmare. I was awake. I knew I was awake, because I would never have dreamed of my friends CeeCee and Adam sauntering by while I was confronting this monster from my past, and going, "Hey, Suze," like it was . . . well, like it was simply the first day back at school after summer vacation.
"You mean the part where you tried to kill me?" I croaked, when CeeCee and Adam were out of earshot. This time, I know he heard my voice shake. I know because he looked perturbed - though maybe it was because of the accusation. In any case, he reached up and dragged one of those largish tanned hands through his curly hair.
"I never tried to kill you, Suze," he said, sounding a little hurt.
I laughed. I couldn't help it. My heart was in my throat, but I laughed anyway. "Oh," I said. "Right."
"I mean it, Suze," he said. "It wasn't like that. I'm just . . . I'm just not very good at losing, you see."
I stared at him. No matter what he told himself, he had tried to kill me. But worse, he'd done his best to eliminate Jesse, in a completely underhanded manner. And now he was trying to pass the whole thing off as bad sportsmanship?
"I don't get it," I said, shaking my head. "What did you lose? You didn't lose anything."
"Didn't I, Suze?" His gaze bore into mine. His voice was the one I'd been hearing over and over in my dreams - laughing at me as I struggled to find my way out of a dark, mist-filled hallway at either end of which was a precipice dropping off into a black void of utter nothingness, over which, right before I woke up, I teetered dangerously. It was a voice filled with hidden meaning. . . .
Only I had no idea what that meaning could be, or what he was implying. All I knew was that this guy terrified me.
"Suze," he said with a smile. Smiling - and probably even scowling, too - he looked like a Calvin Klein underwear model. And not just his face, either. I had, after all, seen him in a pair of swim trunks.
"Look, don't be this way," he said. "It's a new school year. Can't we make a new start?"
"No," I said, glad that my voice didn't shake this time. "We can't. In fact, you - you'd better stay away from me."
He seemed to find this deeply amusing. "Or what?" he asked, with another one of those smiles that revealed all of his white, even teeth - a politician's smile, I realized.
"Or you'll regret it," I said, the tremor back in my voice.
"Oh," he said, his dark eyes widening in mock terror. "You'll sic your boyfriend on me?"
It wasn't something I'd have joked around about, if I were him. Jesse could - and probably would, if he found out the guy was back - kill him. Except that I wasn't exactly Jesses girlfriend, so it wasn't really his job to protect me from creeps like the one in front of me.
He must have figured out from my expression that all was not copasetic in Suze-and-Jesse-land, since he laughed and said, "So that's how it is. Well, I never really thought Jesse was your type, you know. You need someone a little less - "
He didn't get a chance to finish his sentence, because at that moment, CeeCee, who'd been following Adam in the direction of his locker - even though we'd solemnly sworn to each other the night before over the phone that we were not going to start off the new school year chasing boys - came back toward us, her gaze on the guy standing so close to me.
"Suze," she said politely. Unlike me, CeeCee had spent her summer working in the non-profit sector, and so had not had a lot of money to blow on a back-to-school wardrobe and makeover. Not that CeeCee would ever spend her money on anything so frivolous as makeup. Which was a good thing, since, being an albino, she had to special-order all of her makeup anyway, and couldn't just stroll on up to the M.A.C. counter and plunk her money down the way anybody else could.
"Who's your friend?" she wanted to know.
I was not about to stand there and make introductions. In fact, I was seriously thinking of heading to the administrative office and asking just what they were thinking, admitting a guy like this into what I had once considered a passably good school.
But he thrust one of those cool, strong hands at CeeCee and said with that grin that I had once found disarming but that now chilled me to the bone, "Hi. I'm Paul. Paul Slater. Nice to meet you."
Paul Slater. Not really the kind of name to strike terror into the heart of a young girl, huh? I mean, it sounded innocuous enough. Hi, I'm Paul Slater. There was nothing in that statement that could have alerted CeeCee to the truth: Paul Slater was sick, manipulative, and had icicles where his heart should have been.
No, CeeCee had no clue. Because I hadn't told her, of course. I hadn't told anyone.
The more fool I.
If CeeCee found his fingers a little too cold for her liking, she didn't let on.
"CeeCee Webb," she said, as she pumped his hand in her typically businesslike manner. "You must be new here, because I've never seen you around before."
Paul blinked, bringing attention to his eyelashes, which were really long, for a guy's. They looked almost heavy on his eyelids, like they'd be an effort to lift. My stepbrother Jake has sort of the same thing going, only on him, it just makes him look drowsy. On Paul, it had more of a sexy rock-star effect. I glanced worriedly at CeeCee. She was one of the most sensible people I had ever met, but are any of us really immune to the sexy rock-star type?
"My first day," Paul said with another one of those grins. "Lucky for me, I already happen to be acquainted with Ms. Simon here."
"How fortuitous," CeeCee, who, as editor of the school paper, liked big words, said, her white-blond eyebrows raised slightly. "Did you used to go to Suzes old school?"
"No," I said quickly. "He didn't. Look, we better get to homeroom, or we're going to get into trouble. . . ."
But Paul wasn't worried about getting into trouble. Probably because Paul was used to causing it.
"Suze and I had a thing this past summer," he informed CeeCee, whose purple eyes widened behind the lenses of her glasses at this information.
"A thing?" she echoed.
"There was no thing," I hastened to assure her. "Believe me. No thing at all."
CeeCee's eyes got even wider. It was clear she didn't believe me. Well, why should she? I was her best friend, it was true. But had I ever once been completely honest with her? No. And she clearly knew it.
"Oh, so you guys broke up?" she asked pointedly.
"No, we didn't break up," Paul said, with another one of those secretive, knowing smiles.
Because we were never going out, I wanted to shriek. You think I'd ever go out with him? He's not what you think, CeeCee. He looks human, but underneath that studly facade, he's a ... a ...
Well, I didn't know what Paul was, exactly.
But then, what did that make me? Paul and I had far more in common than I was comfortable admitting, even to myself.
Even if I'd had the guts to say something along those lines in front of him, I didn't get a chance because suddenly a stern, "Miss Simon! Miss Webb! Haven't you ladies got a class you should be getting to?" rang out.
Sister Ernestine - whose three-month absence from my life had not rendered her any less intimidating, with her enormous chest and even bigger crucifix adorning it - came barrelling down upon us, the wide black sleeves of her habit trailing behind her like wings.
"Get going," she tut-tutted us, waving her hands in the direction of our lockers, built into the adobe walls all along the mission's beautifully manicured inner courtyard. "You'll be late to first period."
We got going . . . but unfortunately Paul followed directly behind us.
"Suze and I go way back," he was saying to CeeCee, as we moved along the porticoed hallway toward my locker. "We met at the Pebble Beach Hotel and Golf Resort."
I could only stare at him as I fumbled with the combination to my locker. I couldn't believe this was happening. I really couldn't. What was Paul doing here? What was Paul doing here enrolling in my school, making my world - from which I'd thought I'd rid him forever - a real-life nightmare?