A Grave Problem

11. Setting a Trap

The next day passed incredibly slowly for Mia. In each of her classes, she found herself wishing to be anywhere else. She kept scanning the faces of everyone she saw, but no one seemed particularly suspicious. Except, of course, those two girls in her history class. Mia watched them closely as they walked into the room. She was hoping to see some signs of guilt or even nervousness, but there was no sign of either. They just stared at her coolly for a minute before taking their seats, the way they always did.

When she'd first gotten that note, Mia's thoughts had immediately turned to those two girls. They were the only ones in school who stared at her like she'd done something wrong, and she would have been sure that they were the ones who'd given her that little paper. But their reactions today were exactly like they had been since she'd first seen them. Mia was pretty sure that if they were the ones responsible they'd at least try to avoid looking at her. Mia remembered dropping her own note off last year, and how she'd never wanted to see Fredrick or Jacqueline less than on the days leading up to their attack. If these two were responsible, Mia was sure they wouldn't be able to look so calm, even if they were on the other side of the room.

As soon as the bell rang, Mia hurried off to her next class – P.E. Surprisingly, it had become one of Mia's favorite subjects. She didn't like P.E. because she was fond of sports or anything like that. Although, now that she was a vampire, P.E. had definitely improved; it'd gone from being a place where Mia was constantly tripping over her own feet to a place where she could easily outrun even her fastest classmates. It was true that she was so much better at sports than she used to be, but she still didn't particularly care about any of them. No, the reason she was so happy to go to P.E. was twofold. Partly, she liked it because it meant that history was over, and she wouldn't have to think about those two girls again for the rest of the day. But the main reason she liked it was because of a boy in her class – that friend of Luke's.

She'd been right on the first day of school when she thought she'd spotted him across the room in math. But she barely counted that since he was so far away. What good was it to be in the same class if she couldn't even talk to him? But in P.E. there was enough moving around, doing sports, that she usually had a few minutes to at least say hi. It still wasn't as much time as she would have liked, but at least it was something. It was funny how every time she talked to him, her heart would skip a beat. Somehow, he was able to make all her worries melt away.

But this was too big a problem; not even talking to Zev could make her forget that her life was probably at stake. Still, she tried to act normal around him. Even if she was facing an attack and the possibility of being run out of town, there was always that slight chance that she would win. And if she did, she couldn't afford to let him know that anything unusual was going on.

"Hey," Zev said when she walked into the gym.

She'd tried to dress slowly, figuring that the less time she spent with Zev, the less opportunity he'd have to figure out something was wrong. But a quick glance at the clock let her know she still had a few minutes to spare before their baseball game. Mia had never wished so hard for something interesting to do in P.E.; there was no way she could ever be busy enough during baseball to keep her mind off of all this!

"Hi." she said back, forcing herself to smile.

"Everything all right?" Zev asked, studying her face.

"Yeah. I just have a lot of homework I have to do, and I really don't want to." Mia said, thinking fast. Apparently she hadn't looked as calm as she'd been hoping.

"I know what you mean. I've had a ton of English homework lately, and chemistry's starting to pile up. Looks like this year's going to be a lot harder than last year, doesn't it?"