Free Spiritdell Book 1 by Dalya Moon Page B

extortion.
    * * *
    We're back on the highway now, getting closer to civilization, and my cell phone has a signal. Julie seems to not hate me, so I figure I'm safe asking her for Austin's number.
    “Julie-ee-ee-ee,” I say. “Could I bug you for Austin's phone number?”
    “Where?” she responds. “Who? Don't you want to call Raye-Anne and talk about your great night together? About all the … sexy sex you were having?”
    “Raye-Anne? No. I went home with Austin after your party. Austin. With the long hair, almost silvery-white. She has really beautiful hair.”
    “Who?”
    “I said. Austin. She's friends, or cousins, with one of your friends.”
    “I thought you hooked up with Raye-Anne Donovan.”
    “No, Raye-Anne has some … well, she has a dark side I didn't like the look of. Didn't you see? I left your party with Austin.”
    Julie pulls out her phone and scrolls through a list. “You mean Tina? Short for Austina?”
    “She said her name was Austin, but ... Austina, yeah, I guess that would be her!” I say brightly. “You have her actual number?” I grab for the phone, but she yanks it away.
    “You slept with Brain Tumor Girl?”
    I lean back in my seat, trying to process what Julie said. She said Austin is also Tina, and then she said something mean about her.
    “Just because she's cute and a blonde,” I say, “doesn't mean you can call her awful names.”
    “That name's not awful,” Julie says.
    James interjects with, “Actually, Brain Tumor Girl is the definition of awful.”
    “Yes,” I say. “I've heard you and your friends talking about each other. It's always Fatneck and Sadmachine and Stumpy. Who's Stumpy anyways?”
    “I'm Stumpy. They call me Stumpy,” she says.
    “Julie, you do know guys who are friends don't call each other mean names,” I say.
    Her voice getting shrill with agitation, she says, “Yes, you do so. You call James a jamtart and he calls you a nozzle, whatever that means.”
    “But that's to the face,” I say. “You can say anything to the face. You don't say it behind the back.”
    She crosses her arms across her chest. “Fine! Now that I know the rules for your boys' club, I'll try to follow them. Cut me some slack, okay?”
    The dash beeps and James grumbles to the Jeep, “Gas? Already? I don't understand, I just filled you up.”
    An image appears in my mind, as familiar as ... well, the back of my hand. “Around the next corner, on the right, there's that gas station. We'll stop there.”
    We round the corner and find the gas station, as though conjured. “You really have memorized this route,” Julie says. “You have some sort of photographic memory you're not telling us about? I don't remember this place, whatsoever.”
    James puts on the turn signal and we pull into a little gas station with no name, just a faded Orange Crush sign.
    “Julie,” James says slowly, as though negotiating a social minefield. “Why is Austin, or should I say Tina, called Brain Tumor Girl?”
    Julie turns to me with sad eyes. As the Jeep crunches to a halt on the gravel, the whole world stops, holding its breath. Julie's eyes tell me something is wrong.
    “Zan, I'm sorry,” she says.
    Something is very wrong.
    I want to punch something. I clench my jaw and wait for the punching feeling to pass, then say, “Just tell me. You're making it worse, dragging it out.”
    “She has an inoperable brain tumor,” Julie says. “For real.”
    I clench and unclench my fists in my lap.
    Austin. With her soft hair flowing all the way down to her waist, her perfect, creamy skin, and that laugh that's been stuck in my head since I first heard it. She's not the one who's sick; Julie must be mistaken.
    “No, she's totally healthy,” I say to James and Julie. James is also wearing the sad eyes, nearly identical to Julie's. Four sad, blue eyes peer into me. “Stop looking at me like that! I would have known if she was sick. It must be someone else. I'm talking about Austin, she was