I blinked at him. "But if it wasn't Josh and those guys, then who could it have been? I mean, no one else wants me dead. At least, not at the moment."

Jesse continued to stare down at me. "Are you so sure you were the intended victim, Susannah?"

"Well, of course it was me." I know it sounds weird, but I was almost offended at the idea that there might be someone else on the planet worthier of murdering than myself. I must say, I do pride myself on the number of enemies I've acquired. In the mediator business, I've always considered it a sign that things were going well if there were a bunch of people who wanted me dead.

"I mean, who else but me?" I gave a laugh. "What, you think somebody's out to get Doc?"

Jesse, however, did not laugh.

"Think, Susannah," he urged me. "Isn't there anyone else who was in that car that someone might want to see badly hurt, or even dead?"

I narrowed my eyes at him. "You know something," I said flatly.

"No." Jesse shook his head. "But - "

"But what? God, I hate when you do the cryptic warning thing. Just tell me."

"No." He shook his head quickly. "Think, Susannah."

I sighed. There was no arguing with him when he got this way. You couldn't really blame him, I guess, for wanting to play Mr. Miyagi to my Karate Kid. It wasn't like he had a whole lot of other stuff to do.

I exhaled gustily enough to send my bangs fluttering.

"Okay," I said. "People who might not be too happy with someone - besides me - in that car. Let me see." I brightened up. "Debbie and Kelly aren't too happy about Gina. They had a nasty little interlude in the girls' room just before it happened. The car thing, I mean."

Then I frowned. "But I hardly think those two would clip a brake line to get her out of the way. In the first place, I doubt they even know what a brake line is, or where to find it. And in the second place, they might mess themselves up climbing under a car. You know, break a nail, or get oil in their hair, or whatever. Debbie probably wouldn't mind, but Kelly? Forget it. Plus they had to know they might end up killing Dopey and Sleepy, and they wouldn't want that."

"Of course not," Jesse said mildly.

It was the very tonelessness with which he uttered the words that cued me in.

"Dopey?" I shot him an incredulous look. "Who'd want Dopey dead? Or Sleepy, for that matter? I mean, those guys are so … dumb."

"Hasn't either of them," Jesse asked in that same toneless manner, "done anything that might make someone angry?"

"Well, sure," I said. "Not Sleepy so much, but Dopey? He's always doing asinine stuff like grabbing people in headlocks and throwing their books everywhere...." My voice trailed off.

Then I shook my head. "No," I said. "That's impossible."

Jesse only looked at me. "Is it?" he said.

"No, you don't understand." I stood up and started pacing my room. At some point during our conversation, Spike had slunk through the window. Now he sat on the floor at Jesse's feet, vigorously lashing himself with his sandpapery tongue.

"I mean, he was there," I explained. "Michael was there, right after it happened. He helped us out of the car. He …" My last sight of Michael that evening had been just as the ambulance doors closed on me and Gina and Sleepy and Dopey and Doc. Michael's face had been pale - even more than usual - and concerned.

No. "That just …" I got as far as Gina's daybed before I spun around to face Jesse again. "That just can't be," I said. "Michael would never do something like that."

Jesse laughed. There was no humor in the sound, however.

"Wouldn't he?" he wanted to know. "I can think of four people who might have a very different opinion on the matter."

"But why would he do it?" I shook my head again, emphatically enough to send the ends of my hair flying. "I mean, Dopey's a butthead, it's true, but enough of one so that someone might feel compelled to murder him? Not to mention a bunch of innocent people along with him? Including me?" I raised my indignant gaze from the sight of Spike chewing on his own foot, trying to get the grime out from between his toes. "Michael couldn't possibly want to see me dead. I'm the best chance he's got for a date to the prom!"

Jesse didn't say anything. And in the silence, I remembered something. And what I remembered took my breath away.

"Oh, God," I said, and, clutching my chest, I sank down onto the daybed.

Jesse's neutral expression sharpened into one of concern.

"What is it, Susannah?" he asked worriedly. "Are you ill?"

I nodded. "Oh, yeah," I said, staring unseeingly at the wall across from me. "I think I'm going to be sick. Jesse … he asked me if I wanted to ride with him. Right before it happened. He was insistent I ride with him. In fact, when Sleepy said I had to go with him or he'd tell Mom, I thought the two of them were going to get into a fist-fight."

"Of course," Jesse said in what was, for him, a very dry tone. "His - what did you call it? Oh, yes - date for the prom was about to be exterminated."

"Oh, God!" I stood up and started pacing again. "Oh, God, why? Why Dopey? I mean, he's a jerk and all, but why would Michael want to kill him?"

Jesse said, quietly, "Perhaps for the same reason he killed Josh and the others."

I stopped dead in my tracks. Slowly, I turned my head to look at him. But I didn't see him. Not really. I was remembering something Dopey had said - weeks ago, it seemed like, but it had actually only been a night or two before. We'd been talking about the accident that had killed the RLS Angels, and Dopey had said something about Mark Pulsford. "We happen to have partied together," he'd said. "Last month, in the Valley."

At the same party in the Valley, I wondered, my blood suddenly running cold, where Lila Meducci had fallen into the pool?

A second later, without another word to Jesse, I'd ripped open the door to my room, taken the three strides across the hall to Dopey's room, and was banging on the door with all my might.

"Chill!" Dopey thundered from inside. "I turned it down already!"

"It's not about the music," I said. "It's about something else. Can I come in?"

I heard the sound of barbells falling back into their stand. Then Dopey grunted, "Yeah. I guess so."

I laid my hand on the knob and turned it.

I'd like to point out something here. I have been in Doc's room. Many times, in fact, as he is always the stepbrother I go to when I have a homework problem I cannot solve, in spite of the fact that he is three grades behind me. And I have even been in Sleepy's room since he usually needs actual physical snaking in order to wake him up in the morning in time to drive us all to school.

But I had never, ever been in Dopey's room before. Truth be told, I had always hoped I might never have a reason to cross that particular threshold.

Now, however, I had a reason. I took a deep breath and went in.

It was dark. This was because of Dopey's decision to paint three of his walls purple and one white, Mission Academy wrestling team colors. He had chosen a purple so dark it was almost black. The darkness of those three walls was only alleviated by the occasional poster of Michael Jordan urging the viewer to Just Do It.

The floor of Dopey's room was a deep carpet of dirty socks and underwear. The odor was pungent - a mixture of sweat and baby powder. Not unpleasant, necessarily, but not an odor I'd particularly want permeating my wardrobe. Dopey, however, did not seem to mind.

"Well?" He was stretched out on his back on a padded bench. Above his chest hung a set of barbells. I would not have liked to hazard a guess as to how much weight he was lifting, but allow me to assure you, with enough reps, I was quite sure he'd have no trouble heaving Debbie Mancuso out the window in the event of a fire. Which is all a girl really needs out of a boyfriend, if you ask me.

"Dope - " I took another deep breath. What was with the baby powder? Wait. Don't tell me. I don't want to know. "Brad. Were you at that party in the Valley where Lila Meducci fell into the pool?"

Dopey had reached up and seized the barbell. Now he heaved it into the air, awarding me a glimpse of his excessively hairy armpits. I tried not to hurl at the sight of them.

"What are you talking about?" he grunted.

"Lila Meducci."

Dopey had lowered the barbell until it was just above his chest. His biceps had bunched up into melon-sized balls. Allow me to point out that normally, the sight of a male bicep that size would have caused my knees to go weak. But then, these biceps were Dopey's, so all I could do was swallow hard and hope the slices of pepperoni pizza I'd downed for dinner would stay where they were.

"Michael's little sister," I elaborated. "She nearly drowned at a party out in the Valley last month. I was wondering if it was the same party you mentioned you'd been to, the one where you'd run into Mark Pulsford."

Up went the barbells.

"Could have been," Dopey said. "I don't know. Why do you care?"

"Brad," I said. "It's important. I mean, if you were there, I think you would know. An ambulance must have shown up."

"I guess," he said between reps. "I mean, I was pretty wasted."

"You guess that a girl almost drowned in front of you?" I don't have much patience for Dopey under the best of circumstances. In this particular case, my tolerance for his stupidity had dipped to an all-time low.

Dopey let the barbell fall back into its stand with a clatter. Then he sat up and regarded me testily.

"Look," he said. "If I tell you I was there, what are you going to do? Go running to Mom and Dad, right? So why would I tell you? I mean, seriously, Suze. Why would I?"

Aside from my great surprise at hearing Dopey, too, mess up and call my mother Mom, I was prepared for the question.

"I won't tell," I said. "I swear I won't tell, Brad. Only I have to know."

He still looked suspicious. "Why? So you can tell that creepy albino friend of yours, and she can put it in the school paper? 'Brad Ackerman stood there like a schmo while a girl almost died.' Is that it?"

"I swear it isn't," I said.

He shrugged his heavy shoulders. "Fine," he said. "You know what? I don't even care. It's not like my life doesn't already suck. I mean, I haven't got a hope of getting down to one-sixty-eight before sectionals, and it's pretty clear now that your friend Gina likes Jake better 'n me." He eyed me. "Doesn't she?"

I shifted my weight uncomfortably. "I don't know," I said. "I think she likes both of you."

"Yeah," Dopey said sarcastically. "That's why she's in here right now with me instead of locked in with Jake, doing whatever."

"I'm sure they're just talking," I said.

"Right." Dopey shook his head. I was a bit stunned. I had never seen him looking so … human. Nor had I known he had goals. What was this 168 business? And did he really care that much about Gina that he would think his life sucked just because he didn't think she liked him back?

Weird. Really weird stuff.

"You want to know about that party in the Valley?" he asked. "I was there. All right? Are you happy now? I was there. Like I said, I was wasted. I didn't see her fall in. I only noticed her as somebody was pulling her out." Again, he shook his head. "That was really uncool, you know? I mean, she shouldn't have been there in the first place. Nobody invited her. If you can't hold your liquor, you got no business drinking, you know? But some of these girls, they'll do just about anything to get in with us."

I knit my eyebrows. "Us?"

He looked at me like I was stupid. "You know," he said. "The jocks. The popular people. Meducci's sister - I didn't know it was her until your mom said it the other night at the dinner table - she was one of those girls. Always hanging around, trying to get one of us guys from the team to ask her out. So she could be popular, too, see?"

I saw. Suddenly, I saw only too well.

Which was why I left Dopey's room then without another word. What was there to say? I knew what I had to do. I guess I had known it all along. I just hadn't wanted to admit it.

But now I knew. Like Michael Meducci, I thought I had no other choice.

And like Michael Meducci, I needed to be stopped. Only I didn't think so. Not then.

Just like Michael.

CHAPTER 17

Gina was in my room when I came back from my visit to Dopey. Both Jesse and Spike, however, were gone. Which was actually fine by me.