"The kids who go to the other camps. There's like six camps in the three-mile radius in Fal en." Using both hands she pul ed her multicolored hair back and held it there for a few seconds.
That's when Kylie noticed the girl had lost her toad. And Kylie didn't see a cage or anything where she could have tucked it away. Great. She would probably have some freak's humongous drug toad hopping into her lap before she knew it. Not that toads total y scared her or anything. She just didn't want it jumping on her.
"They cal us boneheads," the girl said.
"Why?" Kylie pul ed her feet up in the seat just in case a toad hopped by.
"The camp used to be cal ed Bone Creek Camp," the girl answered. "Because of the dinosaur bones found there."
"Ha," said the blond boy. "They also cal us boners."
A few laughs echoed from the other seats. "Why is that funny?" the girl wearing al black asked in a tone so deadly serious that Kylie shivered.
"You don't know what a boner is?" Blond Boy asked. "If you'l come sit beside me, I'l show you." When he turned around, Kylie got another look at his eyes. Holy mother of pearls. They were gold. A striking feline gold. Contacts, Kylie realized. He had to be wearing some kind of weird contacts that were doing that.
Goth Girl stood up as if to join the blond guy.
"Don't do it," Toad Girl, without her toad, said and stood up. Moving out into the aisle, she whispered something in Goth Girl's ear.
"Gross." Goth Girl slammed back in her seat. Then she looked over at the blond boy and pointed a black-painted fingernail at him. "You don't want to piss me off. I eat things bigger than you in the dead of night."
"Did someone say something about the dead of night?" a voice came from the back of the bus. Kylie turned to see who'd spoken.
Another girl, one Kylie hadn't known was there, popped up from the seat. She had jet black hair and wore sunglasses almost the same color as her hair. What made her look so abnormal was her complexion. Pasty. As in pasty white.
"Do you know why they renamed the camp Shadow Fal s?" Toad Girl asked.
"No," someone answered from the front of the bus.
"Because of the Native American legend that says at dusk, if you stand beneath the fal s on the property, you can see the shadows of death angels dancing."
Dancing death angels? What was wrong with these people?
Kylie swung around in her seat. Was this some nightmare? Maybe part of her night terrors? She pushed deeper in her cushioned seat and tried to focus on waking herself up from the dreams the way Dr. Day had shown her.
Focus. Focus. She took in deep breaths, in through the nose, out the mouth-al the while silently chanting, It's just a dream, it isn't real, it isn't real.
Either she wasn't asleep or her focus had gotten on the wrong bus, and darn if she didn't wish she'd fol owed it onto a different bus. Stil not wanting to believe her eyes, she gazed around at the others. Blond Boy looked at her, and his eyes were black again. Creepy. Was none of this coming across completely off the normal chart to anyone else in the bus?
Turning in her seat again, she looked back at the boy she'd dubbed the most normal. His soft green eyes, eyes that reminded her of Trey's, met hers, and he shrugged. She didn't exactly know what the shrug meant, but he didn't appear al that weirded out by everything. Which in some smal way made him as weird as the others.
Kylie swung back around and grabbed her phone from her purse and started texting Sara. Help! Stuck on a bus with freaks. Total, complete freaks.
Kylie got a text message back from Sara almost immediately. No, you help me. I think I'm pregnant.
Chapter Four
"Oh, shit." Kylie stared at the text message thinking it would disappear, or that she'd see a "just joking" magical y appear at the bottom. Nope. Nothing disappeared or appeared. This was no joke.
But please. Sara couldn't be pregnant. That didn't happen to girls like them. Smart girls ... girls that ... Oh, hel . What was she thinking? It happened to everyone and anyone having unprotected sex. Or sex with a faulty condom.
How could she forget that little film at school, the one Mom had to sign for her to see? Or the pamphlets Mom had brought home and unceremoniously left on Kylie's pil ow like a bedtime snack?
Talk about a mood kil er. She'd arrived home from one of the hottest dates she'd had with Trey, wanting to enjoy the high from his hot kisses and bold caresses, only to find the statistics of unwanted pregnancies and equal y unwanted sexual y transmitted diseases waiting for her. And her mother knew Kylie always had to read herself to sleep. No sweet dreams that night.
"Bad news?" someone asked.
Kylie looked up to see Toad Girl sitting in the aisle seat across from her, her legs pul ed up to her chest and her chin propped onto her knees.
"Uhh. Yeah ... no. I mean..." What she meant was it was none of her damn business, but being that blunt or rude never came easy for Kylie-wel , not unless the person real y pushed the wrong buttons-buttons that her mom seemed to know so wel . Sara cal ed Kylie's unwil ingness to state her mind the "too nice" disease. Her mom would have cal ed it manners, but because her mom excel ed at hitting Kylie's buttons, her mom considered Kylie lacking in the manners department.
Kylie pul ed her phone closed just in case Toad Girl might have super twenty-twenty eyesight. Then again, she guessed the person she should worry about having super eyesight was the blond guy, with his ... She cut her gaze to where he sat and found him staring at her with ... blue eyes. O ... kay, at least one thing was clear, it couldn't get any weirder.
"It's nothing real y," she said, forcing herself to look back at the Toad Girl and not stare at her multicolored hair. The bus came to a quick stop and Kylie's suitcase dropped to the floor. Aware that the blond guy stil stared, and afraid he might take the empty seat as an invitation to come sit beside her, she moved over.
"My name's Miranda," the girl said, and smiled, and Kylie realized that other than her hair and her pet toad, the girl looked pretty normal. Kylie introduced herself, giving the floor a quick check to confirm the toad hadn't decided to visit.
"Is this your first time at Shadow Fal s?" Miranda asked.
Kylie nodded. "Yours?" she asked out of politeness, then she looked down at her phone, stil clutched to her stomach. She needed to text Sara back and say ... oh heck, what was she going to say to Sara? What did you say to your best friend who just told you that she might be ...