He said it lightly, but Mom had taught me and Finn to pay attention to body language. Dex was twisting the strap of his bag around his fingers so tightly that his knuckles were turning white.
Before I could ask anything else, a face suddenly popped up over the seat in front of me. "Hey," Romy said. "Izzy, right?"
"That's me," I said. "Have you, um, been there the whole time?"
"Romy's like me," Dex said, nudging the back of her seat with one pointy-toed boot. "Picked up entirely too early, sleeps the whole ride."
"Tries to sleep," she corrected. "This idiot usually keeps me awake." Despite the insult, there was affection in her voice, and Dex was grinning at her.
"Anyway, just wanted to say thanks for tearing Ben McCrary's arm off yesterday."
"I dislocated his shoulder," I said, but Dex waved me off.
"I like Romy's version better. And just wait, by spring break, the story will be that you tore off both his arms and shattered his spine."
Romy snorted. "Did you tell her about the meeting?" she asked Dex.
"No, I was boring her with my life history first," Dex replied. "Why don't you give her the hard sell?"
Eyes twinkling behind her glasses, Romy rested her chin on her hands. "Well, since you're such a rad chick and all, we thought you might want to join our club."
I hoped my face looked confused rather than relieved. All that worrying over how I was going to get into the club, and then, bam, I'm invited. Maybe today really would be better than yesterday.
Doing my best to furrow my brow, I looked back and forth between them. There was something unnerving about their identical expressions of glee. "Um, is this one of those clubs where the first rule is you don't talk about it?"
Dexter threw his head back and laughed, and Romy made that snorting noise again. "No," she said. "But if it were, I'd definitely want you in that one, too. This is actually a school-sanctioned thing, so it counts for extracurricular stuff on college applications."
Oh, right. College. That was something I'd have to pretend to be thinking about, too.
But then Dex sat up and said, "Romy, I don't think Harvard is going to very impressed by your membership in something called PMS."
A startled giggle burst out of me. Paranormal Management Society. PMS. I hadn't even thought of it like that.
Romy looked a little chagrined. "I didn't come up with the name, and by the time we got it, Anderson had already made the T-shirts," she insisted, which only made Dex laugh harder.
"So what is PMS?" I asked, even though I already knew. "I mean, I know the traditional definition...."
"Paranormal Management Society," Romy answered, swatting at Dex.
"Oh," I said weakly. "That's...um...that's awesome."
"Okay, see, I feel like when you're saying 'awesome,' what you mean is 'lame' and 'making me not want to be friends with you,'" Dex said.
"No." I shook my head. "That doesn't sound lame at all. It's just...I never heard of a school-sponsored monster-hunting club. What do you guys do?"
"Mostly we lurk around places at night with dorky equipment purchased off the Internet," Dex offered, making Romy smack his arm again.
"We research local ghost legends, and then we...investigate them."
Dex leaned over and said in a stage whisper, "'Investigate' is code for lurking around places at night with dorky equipment purchased off the Internet."
"We're working on doing more," Romy said quickly. "Anderson-you'll meet him later-is our resident ghost-lore researcher, and he's looking into ways we can actually, like, banish ghosts and exorcise places."
She sounded so excited, and it was all I could do not to wince. Humans getting involved with the supernatural was bad enough, but exorcisms were way more than a bunch of teenagers could handle.
"Have you guys ever found anything?" I asked.
"We thought we got some ghostly voices on a tape recorder once," Romy offered. "At this creepy abandoned house in the next town over. And Anderson's closet door opened on its own one time."
"Because he had his window open," Dex muttered, and Romy shot him a look. "Maybe it was because of that. We don't know. It could've been...other stuff."
"Sure, why not? I just, uh, don't want to wear a T-shirt that says PMS, okay?" I added, and Romy stuck out her hand. "Deal."
CHAPTER 11
We shook on it just as the bus pulled up to the school. "Try to get kicked out of P.E. again today," Dex told me as he gathered up his stuff. "We can hang on the football field."
"Ha-ha," I muttered, slinging my bag over my shoulder.
Romy and I made our way to English while Dex sauntered off to his first class. We got to Mrs. Steele's room before the second bell, so Romy tossed her backpack onto the desk next to mine and said, "Gonna run to the bathroom. Watch my bag?"
"Sure," I replied as she dashed out the door.
As soon as she was gone, my eyes fell on her bag. Should I look through it really quickly? I wasn't sure if there was anything related to PMS or the case in there, but Mom said to check everything. If anyone asked what I was doing, I could just say I was looking for a pen.
My fingers were already reaching for the strap when something heavy landed on my desk. Startled, I looked up to see Adam sitting there.
"Hi," he said, smiling.
I drew back my hand. "Um. Hi."
"So I guess you decided to be a ghost hunter after all." He was still smiling, but there was something weird in his face. He looked kind of...bummed.
When I didn't say anything, he hurried on. "I mean, I just saw you talking to Romy and Dexter when you walked in, and you guys seemed really friendly. Especially you and Dex."
I was so confused that all I could do was stare at him while my brain raced for something to say. Why did Adam care who I was hanging out with? "They're nice," I finally said lamely, and Adam gave a little shrug.
"So, anyway, I was going to ask you this yesterday, but...you know."
Adam had gone kind of red and stammery, and I braced myself for whatever it was he wanted to ask me. "Anyway," he said again, "could I get your number?"