And then the horn of the Jeep blared, causing Alex to jerk away as if he had been electrocuted.

“I guess thatʼs your cue to leave.” For some idiotic reason, I was giggling.

“So it seems.”

Liam honked the horn again, and Alex immediately took off across the parking lot. “Iʼve gotta go,” he called over his shoulder. “Tell everyone that I got sick and had to go home, okay?”

I just nodded mutely. He was nearly to the Jeep when I realized what I forgot to say.

“Alex,” I called out. He turned to look at me. The motion was eerily the same in his human form as it had been the night before. “Thanks. You know, for being my hero and all.” He waved one last time and then climbed into the Jeep. I watched it pull out of the parking lot before returning to my room.

Talley was awake and waiting for me on the other side of the door.

“Did you just walk outside in nothing but a blanket? What happened to your clothes? Where is Alex going? What happened? Are you okay?” Talleyʼs questions came out in such rapid succession I had trouble picking out any single one.

“Slow down. My brain is too sleepy to work that fast.” Talley looked me over, taking in my puffy, bloodshot eyes and slow, stiff movements. “You havenʼt slept at all,” she said. “What happened?”

Oh, you know. Not much. I got in a fight with a cracked-out homeless guy, which I lost, by the way. No worries, though. Alex came by in just the nick of time. Hey, did you know he turns into a wolf during the full moon? I do, because there just happened to be one of those last night. Incidentally, heʼs a pretty hot wolf.

“Nothing.”

“Then why are your clothes covered in mud and not on your body?”

“I went for a walk because I couldnʼt sleep and fell down.” Which was basically the truth. I was just leaving out a few minor details.

“And what were you doing outside with Alex just now?” What was it that Monty Python used to say about not expecting the Spanish Inquisition?

“His brother came to pick him up because heʼs sick. He just stopped by to say good-bye before he left.”

“Youʼre lying to me,” Talley said. “Scout, itʼs okay. You can tell me, whatever happened.” I could. I could also end up with a nice padded room of my very own.

“Believe what you want, Tal,” I said walking into the bathroom. “Iʼm taking a shower.” I was pleased to discover that after two sessions with the cheap bar of hotel soap my skin had faded to a nice jaundiced yellow. I twisted my hair into a french braid and attempted to get as much of the dirt off my clothes as possible, but still looked like death warmed over when I arrived at the McDonaldʼs Ms. Ryder had designated as our gathering spot.

Talley was obviously still upset with me over our earlier conversation. She hardly said three words to me after I got out of the shower, which must have taken a great deal of effort on her part. Usually she was a regular Chatty Kathy in the mornings. After we got breakfast, she sat with Jane Potts, leaving me at a table with James Kiplinger.

I was tearing off bits of biscuit and rolling them into tiny little balls when Ashley Johnson sashayed into the restaurant. While the rest of us had spent our afternoon throwing snowballs and watching mind-numbing television, Ashley had put her daddyʼs credit card to good use.

The members of our Shakespeare class were pretty easy to pick out in the crowd. We were the ones who had obviously slept in our clothes and were lacking basic beauty products. Of course, that would never do for Ashley. She was decked out in a Vanderbilt University sweat-suit, complete with a baseball cap to hide her unstyled hair. She looked like a freaking recruitment poster.

“James, how nice of you to share your breakfast with a poor, destitute street person,” she said, stopping at our table. “Oh wait. Scout, is that you? My bad.” I was too exhausted to put with her crap or deal with Talleyʼs silent treatment. Not to mention, the sight of Jamesʼs greasy hair and the faint sour smell that accompanied him was turning my stomach. I decided sitting with the creepy Ronald McDonald statue outside would be preferable to keeping my current company. I got up to dump my uneaten food in the trash.

“God, would you look at her,” Ashley said as I passed by. “No wonder poor Alex had to go home. I would probably need hospitalization if I was forced to spend time with that.” I snapped.

The look on her face when my fist connected was priceless. She staggered back into a table, her eyes filled with tears.

“You bitch!” she shrieked. “You broke my jaw!”

“No, I didnʼt.” I had hit her in a spot that would, at best, leave a bruise, though my fun-filled night hadnʼt left me with enough strength to do even that much damage.

“Just wait until the school administration finds out. My dad will make sure you get expelled over this.”

“Youʼre not telling anyone,” Talley said from my left.

A blob of ketchup fell from Ashleyʼs new sweatshirt as she resumed an upright position.

“And why is that, Porky?”

Jane managed to grab me around the waist and jerk me backwards before I could break her jaw for real.

I expected Talley to cry or, at least, look deeply hurt and embarrassed. The sardonic grin that spread across her face put Ashley and me both on edge.

“Because while everyone else seems to have forgotten who you were before your step-mom performed her magical make-over, we haven't,” Talley said. “We have enough stories and pictures for a new humiliation every single day between now and graduation.”

“Like I care,” Ashley said. It was fairly obvious, however, she very much did.

“Fine then. Scout, you still have those pictures from your thirteenth birthday party, right?”

“You bet.” That was the night that Ashley decided we needed to “prepare” ourselves for our lives as teenagers. There were pictures of her in my momʼs lingerie, the top stuffed with toilet paper, making out with a poster of Zac Efron.

Of course, there were some equally embarrassing pictures of Talley and me, but no one is going to see those. Ever.

“You know, if you wanted, I could probably make sure that at least one or two of those pictures made it onto All Around the School,” said Jane, who was was the student director of our televised morning announcements. I was taken aback by her support. Jane is a nice girl, but weʼve never exactly been friends.

“I donʼt even know what you guys are talking about,” James said. “From what I saw Ashley tripped and fell into that table.”