Emily Kenyon 01 - A Cold Dark Place

house on Orchard wondering just what her mother had been up to all night and this morning. The past few days had been anything but routine. With school and work, routine was always a little on the fragile side. But the storm was completely unexpected, and her mother had thrown herself into a 24-7 schedule. What with her breakup with that jerk Cary, and her dad’s constant button pressing, Jenna knew her mother was enduring what she called a “bad patch” It would pass. They always did.
    Shah’s classic VW bug-cream with a slightly tattered black ragtop-lurched into the driveway. The car radio’s volume was cranked up loud enough for Jenna to make out the song lyrics from the Kenyons’ front door. Not good. But that was Shalimar Patterson to the nines. In your face, but forgivably so. Jenna hurried to the car. A half-empty bag of kettle corn and a backpack occupied the passenger seat. She was also anything, but neat.
    “Sorry about that” Shali revved the engine. “Oops, foot slipped.”
    Jenna smiled and scooted both items to the backseat. Popcorn fell on the driveway.
    `Birds will eat it,” Shali said.
    “Yeah. Hey, something’s up at Nicholas Martin’s place.” Jenna slid into the duct-tape-repaired bucket seat as Shali, a decidedly ordinary girl with a name that always promised so much more, grinded the gears as she found reverse.
    “You mean that freak with the black eye makeup?”
    Jenna fished for the seat belt, wincing as her fingertips touched an apple core stuck between the door and the seat. Got it. She pulled the belt across her lap. Her mom was a cop and she followed every rule. It irritated some of her friends, but that’s the way it had to be.
    “I had that art class with him,” Jenna said. “He was kind of cool in the obviously tortured-soul-seeking-attention way.”
    Shali checked her makeup in the rearview mirror, permanently tilted toward her for just that purpose. The blush on her right side was heavier than the left, so she evened it out with her palm.
    “What did he do? Meth?” she asked.
    Jenna shrugged, but Shali kept pushing for details. She did that even when she didn’t know Cherrystone’s criminals and losers, but had merely read their names in the paper and knew that Jenna’s mom had the dirt on someone.
    “I’ll bet it was meth” She spat out the words. “Or pot. He comes to school baked half the time. Must have been doing a lot of it if your mom’s on the case”
    Shali’s Volkswagen sped by kids without wheels who’d lined up to catch the bus to the high school a few miles away. A few stared hard at the car as if they could stop it and get a ride. Anything was better than the bus even a ride with Shali Patterson behind the wheel.
    “Probably. But I don’t know. My mom’s been out there all night.”
    “Yeah? Cool.” Shali scrunched her long dark hair, over- gunked with a hair product she’d ordered from a TV shopping channel. She wore a hooded sweatshirt and a baby-T, cropped pants, and chunky gold ankle bracelet (also from the home shopping channel) she had put on in the car. Jenna wore her uniform 7 blue jeans and a sweater. If Shali was the ho’ in the video-or at least an all-talk wannabe-Jenna was the good girl who never got any airtime.
    Their friendship worked because Jenna was confident about who she was. A friend like Shalimar Patterson could be over-the-top annoying, the type that sought the spotlight whenever she could find it. Jenna wasn’t like that. She just didn’t feel the need to sell herself so hard. Shali did.
    Jenna changed the subject. “Want to get a latte? I could use a boost”
    “No kidding. Me, too. A white chocolate soy mocha sounds kind of good”
    Shali pressed the pedal to the floor as they drove the short stretch of roadway to the school. They passed a place where the twister had set down. Shali scrunched her hair again and made a face as the splintered house zoomed from view.
    “Never liked the color of that house anyway,” Shali said. “What were they thinking?”
    Jenna nodded in slight agreement, though she hadn’t really felt that way. Shali could be such an idiot. The people who owned that house were without far more than good taste. They no longer had a place to live.
    “You can be such a bitch,” she finally said.
    Shali knew that. This almost a game between the two best friends. She smiled.
    “You got a problem with that?”
    “No. Not really.” Jenna hesitated. “Maybe sometimes.”
    “Make up