The woman pushing the stroller smiled, and Ivy returned the smile, then backed into a cart selling earrings and chains. Everything jingled.
"Sorry. Sorry."
She narrowly avoided a trash can, then headed straight for the Coffee Mill.
Ivy took her cup of cappuccino to the far end of the mall. The two big stores that had been there were closed, and several lights had burned out. She sat on an empty bench in the artificial twilight, sipping her drink. Voices from shoppers at the other end of the mall lapped toward her in soft waves that never quite reached her.
Ivy closed her eyes for a moment, enjoying the solitude. Then she opened them, turning her head quickly, surprised by three distinct voices to the right of her. One of them was very familiar.
"It's all there," he said.
"I'm going to count it."
"Don't you trust me?"
"I said I'm going to count it. You figure out whether I trust you."
In a dimly lit tunnel that led to the parking garage, Gregory, Eric, and a third person were talking, unaware that anyone was watching. When the third person turned his head into the light. Ivy could hardly believe her eyes. She had seen him outside the school and knew he was a drug dealer. But when she saw Gregory hand the dealer a bag, what she really couldn't believe was how she had forgotten about the other side of Gregory.
How had she gotten so close to a guy whose friends were rich and fast? How had she come to rely on someone who, bored with what he had, took stupid risks? Why did she trust a person who played dangerous games with his friends, no matter who it hurt?
Tristan had warned her once, before that night at the train bridges, before the night that Will was almost killed. But Ivy thought that Gregory had changed since then. In the last four weeks he'd— Well, obviously, she was wrong.
She got up abruptly from the bench, spilling cappuccino down the front of her.
Tristan! she cried out silently. Help me, Tristan! Help me get my head straight!
She ran down the hall to the brighter area of the mall. She was hurrying for the escalator when she slammed into Will.
The girl with him, an auburn-haired girl whom Ivy recognized from Eric's party, swore softly.
Will stared at Ivy, and she stared back. She could hardly stand it, the way he looked at her, the way he could hold her captive with his eyes.
"What are you doing here?" Ivy demanded.
"What's it to you?" the girl snapped.
Ivy ignored her. "Don't tell me," she said to Will, "you just had the feeling, you just thought— somehow you just knew—" She saw a flicker of light in his eyes, and she glanced away quickly.
The girl with him was squinching up her face, looking at Ivy as if she were crazy; Ivy felt a little crazy. "II have to get to work," she said, but he held her still with his eyes.
"If you need me," Will told her, "call me." Then he turned his head slightly, as if someone had spoken over his shoulder.
Ivy brushed past him and hurried up the escalator, climbing faster than the steps moved, and rushed to the shop.
"Oh, dear," Lillian said when Ivy burst through the door.
"Oh, my!" said Betty.
Ivy was panting, from anger as much as running. Now she stopped to look down the front of her pale green dress. It was mud-colored.
"We should soak that right away."
"No, it's okay," she said, trying to catch her breath, breathing slowly and deeply to calm herself down.
"I'll just sponge it off." She moved toward the rest room in the back, but Betty was already going through one rack of costumes, and Lillian was gazing thoughtfully at another.
"I'll just sponge it off," Ivy repeated. "I'll be out in a minute."
Lillian and Betty hummed to themselves.
"It's an old dress anyway," Ivy added.
Sometimes the old ladies played deaf.
"Something simple," she finally begged. Last time she had ended up as an alien — enhanced with batteries that made her blink and beep.
The sisters did keep it simple, giving her a soft 'white blouse, gathered and worn off the shoulders, and a colorful skirt.
"Oh, what a lovely gypsy she makes," Lillian said to Betty.
"We should dress her up every day," Betty agreed.
They smiled at her like two doting great-aunts.
"Don't forget to turn out the light in the back, love," Betty said, then the sisters went home to their seven cats.
Ivy breathed a sigh of relief. She was glad to be running the shop alone for the next two hours. It kept her busy enough to keep her mind off what she had just seen.
She was angry — but at herself more than at Gregory. He was who he was. He hadn't changed his ways. It was she who had made him into the perfect guy.
At 9:25, Ivy was finished with her last customer. The mall had become virtually empty. Five minutes later she dimmed the lights in the shop, locked the door from the inside, and started counting the money and adding up receipts.
She was startled by someone knocking on the glass. "Gypsy girl," he called.
"Gregory."
For a moment she considered leaving him out there, putting back the glass wall that he had erected between them last January. She walked toward him slowly, unlatched the store door, and cracked it open three inches.
"Am I disturbing you?" he asked.
"I have to total the register and close up."
"I'll keep quiet," he promised.
Ivy opened the door a few inches more and he entered.