The Amanda Project: Book One

The Amanda Project: Chapter Twenty-Eight

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

"OMG, have you heard?" Traci, apparently writing off my behavior at lunch yesterday to PMS, was jumping up and down with excitement about her news, and I tried to feign at least mild interest. Even under the best of circumstances, I wasn't one for jumping up and down over anything before nine a.m. And my life lately was most definitely way too confusing to qualify as the best of circumstances.

"Heard what?" All around us the population of Endeavor was slowly starting its day, but it seemed to me there were more than the usual number of people whispering in small groups gathered and talking in hushed voices. I perked up at the possibility that it might have something to do with Amanda but then realized the odds of Traci hearing something about her before I did were so low as to be nonexistent.

"Okay, you know Bea Rossiter?" she lowered her voice on Bea's name.

I felt a sudden wave of dizziness reached for the nearby wall of lockers. Luckily, Traci was too pumped to notice.

"Well, these really fancy plastic surgeons at Johns Hopkins have donated their time to her case. Can you believe it?" As if it weren't already flawlessly framing her face, Traci ran her hand through her hair. "They're going to, like, rebuild her face. Like that girl on . . . what was that soap we used to watch, the one with the hot doctor?" Traci squished up her nose in concentration, then shook her head. "Whatever-anyhoo, she's about to go from super-freak to super-chic!"

"Wow, that is so . . . amazing!" My mind was racing. Was it just a coincidence that this was happening the day after my conversation with Heidi's mom? Could Brittney and her husband have anonymously donated the money for Bea's surgeries?

Suddenly I thought of something-maybe the reason the unflappable Brittney Bragg had gotten so hysterical about what I'd told her wasn't because she didn't believe me but was because . . . she did.

I grabbed Traci's arm. "Who told you this?"

I was so sure I knew what Tracy's answer would be that I almost didn't hear what she said. "Um, Kevin maybe? Or . . . wait, no, Kelli texted me this morning. Or did Kevin tell me first? I can't remember." She shrugged.

"But not Heidi?"

Traci shook her head. "I haven't even seen her yet today. Look, I gotta motor. We'll talk at lunch, okay? And I have to tell you about this super-hot dress I got at Lollipop yesterday. You're going to flip." And with that she turned and was swept up into the crowd.

The whole morning passed in a haze. I heard more details about Bea's surgeries (she wasn't in school because they'd already brought her to Baltimore to be evaluated; the Rossiters had been so shocked when they got the call that Mrs. Rossiter fainted; no one knew if the surgeons would rebuild her face exactly as it had been or if she'd look completely different when the surgery was over), but never the one fact I wanted to hear: was this a donation from Johns Hopkins or was it a donation from a more local source?

We had a sub in history, and the woman was a witch with eyes in the back of her head, so there was no way for me and Heidi to exchange so much as a word much less a note. Still, the way she waved hello to me indicated that her mother had said nothing about our conversation yesterday morning. At first I was confused, and then, as the period went on, I found myself getting angry. Okay, so maybe the story had a happy ending, but the beginning and middle hadn't been so pretty. Bea had spent months walking the corridors of Endeavor like the living dead and was now going to have to endure what were probably painful surgeries just to look halfway normal again. I'd been walking around with a terrible secret, only to be called a liar and a freak by my friend's mom when I did the right thing and told the truth. And Heidi had-what? I sincerely doubted the girl had so much as lost a night's sleep over the entire incident.