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supposed to compete with a twenty-seven year old named Darla with tattoos and
her own hog? I can't, I tell you. Not with an eleven o'clock curfew.
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My life was over. So over.
"Hey," Mark said, lowering his menu. In the candlelight yes, there was
candlelight. Come on. It was the make-out table he looked more handsome than
ever. But what did it matter? What did it matter, how handsome Mark was? Mark
wasn't the one I wanted.
"I forgot," Mark said. "You own this place, or something, don't you?"
"Something like that," I said, not even attempting to hide my misery.
"Whoa," Mark said. "I'm sorry. I mean, I don't want you to think I picked
this place so I wouldn't have to pay or anything. I just really like Mastriani
pizza." He put the menu down. "But we can totally go somewhere else, if you
want to "
"Oh, yeah? Where, exactly?" I asked.
"Well," he said. "There's Joe's...."
"We own Joe's, too," I said with a sigh.
"Oh." Mark winced. "That means you probably own Joe Junior's, too, then,
huh?"
"Yeah," I said. I lifted my chin. Okay. It was the make-out table. But that
didn't mean I had to make out with Mark Leskowski. Not that that would be such
a sacrifice and all, but, under the circumstances, it would hardly be
appropriate.
"Look, it's all right," I said, trying to rally my downtrodden spirits. "We
can stay. You just have to tip really good, okay? Because I & know this
waitress. Really well."
"No problem," Mark said, and then he started asking me what I liked on my
pizza.
Look, despite all the evidence to the contrary, I'm not the world's biggest
dope. I knew why Mark had asked me out, and it wasn't because since I'd
started wearing miniskirts to school he'd suddenly realized what a great pair
of legs I've got. It wasn't even because in the guidance office earlier that
day we'd had that lovely little bonding moment, before the Feds so rudely
busted in on us.
No, Mark had asked me out because he thought he could pump me for information
. . . information I didn't have. Did Special Agents Johnson and Smith suspect
him of murdering his girlfriend? Maybe.
Or maybe they'd just wanted to ask him some questions, so they could figure
out who else might possibly have done it.
And hadn't I wanted to do the exact same thing? Pump him for information, I
mean, about Amber's last moments on earth & or at least her last moments with
Mark? Because however strenuously I tried to deny that Amber's death was my
fault, there was still a part of me that felt like, if I'd only been around,
it wouldn't have happened. I was convinced that if Heather and those guys had
managed to reach me, I'd have been able to find Amber before she was killed. I
knew it. I knew it the way I knew that when Kurt, the head chef at
Mastriani's, found out I was sitting at Table Seven, he'd arrange the
pepperonis on my pizza in the shape of a heart. Which he did, to my utter
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mortification.
Mark hardly even noticed. That's how strung out he was about the whole
being-suspected-of-his-girlfriend's-murder thing. He just handed me a slice,
and, as we ate, we talked about how it felt to be grilled by the FBI.
And the sad part was, that was about all we had in common. The both of us
having been interrogated by the FBI, I mean. That, and our mutual dislike of
Karen Sue Hankey. Mark's whole life, it appeared, was about football. He was
being scouted, he explained, by the coaches at several Big Ten schools, and
even a couple out east. He was going to take the best scholarship he could
get, and play college ball until the NFL came knocking.
This seemed like a reasonable plan to me, except that even I, a football
ignoramus, knew that the NFL did not come knocking on the door of every
college player. What if, I asked, that plan fell through? What was his backup
plan? Medical school? Law school? What?
Mark stared at me blankly over our pepperoni with extra cheese. "Backup
plan?" he echoed. "There's no backup plan."
I thought maybe I hadn't expressed my meaning with sufficient clarity.
"No," I said. "Really. Like what if you don't make it to the pros? Then
what?"
Mark shook his head, but more like he was flicking away something unpleasant
that had landed on his head than actually disagreeing with me.
"Failure," he said, "is unacceptable."
There it was again. The whole unacceptable thing he'd mentioned back in the
guidance office. These athletes, I couldn't help noting, really took their
calling seriously.
"Unacceptable?" I coughed. "Yeah, okay. Failure is unacceptable, of course.
But sometimes it happens. And then & well, you have to accept it."
Mark regarded me calmly from across the table.
"That's a common mistake," he said. "Many people actually believe that. But
not me. That's what makes me different than everybody else, Jess. Because to
me, failure is simply not an option."
Oh. Well. Okay.
It was kind of weird, I have to say, being out with Amber Mackey's boyfriend.
Not just the fact that we were being waited on by the mother of the guy I
really liked, either. No, it was the whole Amber-Was-Here thing. I couldn't
help thinking, What had Amber seen in this guy? Yeah, he was totally buff, but
he was also kind of & boring. I mean, he didn't know anything about music, or
motorcycles, or anything fun like that. He'd seen most of the latest movies,
but the ones I thought were good, he hadn't liked, and the one he'd liked, I'd
thought were stupid beyond belief. And he didn't have time for anything else,
like reading books or watching TV, because he was always at football practice.
Seriously. Not even comic books. Not even the WWF.
Not that Amber had been Ms. Intellectual herself. But she at least had had
interests beyond cheerleading. I mean, she'd always been organizing bake sales
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