Page 44 of School Spirits
Covering a smile, I asked, “So where’s Dex this morning?”
“He texted me that he was running late,” Anderson offered, lifting his legs to prop his feet on my seat. As he did, his leg brushed Romy’s, and I saw her give a little jump.
She cleared her throat, twisting her ponytail around one finger. “Did he say why?”
Anderson rolled his eyes. “You know Dex. He said it was because his Nana needed him to deliver a covert message to a Colombian drug runner, but he’d be in by lunch.”
I snorted with laughter, but Romy frowned. “I bet it was another asthma attack. He’s been getting them more often lately.”
“Is it bad?” I asked. “His asthma?”
Romy and Anderson nodded in unison. “He laughs it off, but yeah,” Anderson said. “It can be scary.”
The image of Dex gasping for breath suddenly flashed in my brain, and I felt my chest tighten.A job, a job, a job, I repeated in my head.
“He hasn’t lived here long, has he?”
Romy shook her head. “Just since August.” And then suddenly she turned to Anderson and said, “Okay, you need to go away for a second.”
His sneakers, which had been propped on the back of my seat, thudded to the floor. “Why?”
“Because Izzy and I need to talk girl stuff, and you can’t be a part of that.”
I don’t know if Anderson was just used to following Romy’s orders, or if he was terrified we’d start talking about Tampax, but in any case, he moved pretty quickly a few rows away. Reaching over the seat, Romy tugged my hand. “Come here.”
Moving over to the now-vacant seat beside her, I raised my eyebrows. “What is it? Something about PMS? I mean, the ghost-hunting PMS, not the…regular kind. Unless you want to talk about that, because we can.”
Romy waved her hand. “No, no business and not that kind of girl stuff. The more fun kind of girl stuff.” She leaned closer, her dark eyes sparkling. “Do you like Dex?”
She’d whispered it, but I still looked around, hoping no one had overheard. “First off, shhhh! And…yeah, of course I do. I like all of you.”
“No, but I mean do youlikehim? You know, in the carnal sense.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’ve clearly been spending too much time with Dex.”
Romy smiled and poked me in the middle of my chest with one lime-green fingernail. “And so have you, if what my sources at the Dairee Kween tell me is correct. Were you two on a date there last night?”
“Please,” I hissed. “The shushing. Could you at least try? And no, we weren’t on a date. We were just…hanging out.”
“In the sexy way.”
There it was again. That giggle. That sound I supposedly didn’t make. “No,” I whispered, trying to look stern. “In thefriendlyway.”
“Mmm-hmm,” Romy said, narrowing her eyes.
“What about you?” I said, ducking my head closer. “I saw you jump when Anderson’s leg brushed yours.”
Now it was her turn to hiss, “Shhhhh!”
Smiling, I leaned back in my seat. “Ah, I see. It’s different when the shoe is on the other foot.”
“There are no shoes on any feet,” Romy insisted, but the tips of her ears had gone pink. “Anderson and I are just friends.”
“So we’re just two awesome, ghost-hunting girls with two boys who may be cute, but are most definitely nothing more than friends,” I said, and Romy grinned.
“We are. Which is why I’m going to share this with you, even though I was going to hog it all to myself for the ride.”
With that, she reached into her backpack. I don’t know what I expected her to pull out. A tinfoil hat, maybe. A pamphlet on twenty-first-century ghost-hunting techniques.
