Текст книги "Lead Me Not"

Автор книги: A. Meredith Walters

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Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

Brooks and I stood out like virgins at an orgy. It didn’t take a genius to see that the two of us were so far out of our comfort zone that we’d have to hitchhike back.

“Get out of here,” the bouncer said, with barely a look in our direction. He had a close-shaved head covered in some sort of elaborate tattoo as well as inch-round gauges in his ears. He also sported a rather fierce-looking spike pierced through the bridge of his nose. His goatee was styled into a point and dyed a bright red. Another spike poked out from below his lip. This dude was seriously edgy, and my jeans, cotton long-sleeved grungy jacket ensemble, and Brooks’s blazer and plaid button-down made it more than obvious that we most definitely didn’t belong.

“Wait a second, please. We’re just here to pick up our friend. She’s inside,” I said, stupidly trying to push past him in my agitation. Damn it! What was I going to do?

Scary biker dude pushed me back and scowled. “I said”—he leaned down until he was an inch from my face—“get the fuck out of here.” He literally growled when he said it, and it took everything I had not to be cowed under the weight of his glare.

“Come on, man, we’ll pay the cover. Double, if you want. We’re only gonna be a minute. We just need to find our friend. She called us and she needs a ride,” Brooks tried to reason with the guy.

But the bouncer clearly couldn’t give a shit whether we were there to get the Queen of England. We weren’t getting inside.

The people behind us were becoming antsy and more than a little tired of the holdup. “You heard him, get the hell out of here,” a scrawny man said. He was decked out in black leather, looking like an escapee from an S&M club gone bad.

My lips thinned, and my temper started to rise. I was gearing myself up to do battle, if necessary, because there was no way I was leaving without Renee.

Brooks must have recognized the ferocity in my eyes, because he put a hand on my shoulder, squeezing hard, trying to get my attention. I shook him off and leveled scary bouncer dude with my hardest stare.

“Look, buddy, I’m walking inside this door, and you’re not going to stop me,” I bristled, sounding way more confident than I was actually feeling. In actuality, I was shaking in my Converse sneakers. Bouncer guy didn’t seem to mind if I was a girl or not; he was going to physically remove me.

“Let her in, Randy,” a voice said from the shadows just inside the door. Randy’s face turned a flustered shade of red as he looked over his shoulder at the speaker.

I squinted into the darkness, trying to see who my savior was. All I could make out was the dim outline of a man.

I gripped Brooks’s hand and waited to see whether this anonymous man had enough sway to get us in. After a few seconds, the doorman, Randy, turned back to me and took my money. He stamped my hand and waved me inside without another word.

I turned around to wait for Brooks. The bouncer put his beefy arm across Brooks’s chest. “Uh-uh. She can come in. You wait out here,” he said firmly.

“She’s not going in there by herself,” Brooks argued, pushing against the bouncer’s arm, but it might as well have been made of stone. Randy, bouncer made of steel, didn’t move an inch.

“If you don’t get the fuck out of the line, I’m gonna make you move. You hear me?” Randy asked, his voice dipping low, his words dripping with a barely restrained violence.

“I’ll be okay, Brooks. Just wait out here for me, all right?” I urged, hoping he wouldn’t push the issue. I sort of liked the look of Brooks’s teeth in his mouth.

Brooks frowned. He wasn’t happy. In fact, he was as upset as I had ever seen him. I looked over my shoulder at the dark entrance to the club. The pulsating bass of the music hummed in my head.

I didn’t particularly like the thought of going in there by myself, but it wasn’t worth Brooks losing a limb to come with me.

“I’ll be fine. Renee said she’d be waiting inside,” I reasoned.

Brooks started to shake his head when Randy the bouncer, who had clearly had enough, shoved him roughly to the side. Obviously, the decision had been made for me.

“I’ll be over there. I’m giving you fifteen minutes, Aubrey, and then I’m coming in after you,” Brooks threatened, shooting me a less-than-pleased look.

I pulled the sleeves of my jacket down over my hands nervously and slowly made my way inside. I looked around for the guy who had gotten me inside, but my eyes were barely able to focus in the horrible lighting.

Whoever it was who had saved me from being booted on my ass was nowhere in sight.

I pulled off my hat and shoved it in my pocket, hesitant to move forward. And then, as though I was being pulled forward by an invisible cord, my feet started to move, one in front of the other, until I was standing in the middle of hell.

At least that seemed to be the theme they were going for. Red lights shone through the room, casting everything in an eerie shadow. Barbed wire covered the windows and gave me the feeling of being trapped.

But it was the energy that took hold and threatened to swallow me whole. The music pumped from gigantic speakers suspended from the ceiling, and the floor was a mass of writhing bodies swept away by the beat. The mood in the room was more than just frenetic; it was something I couldn’t describe.

It was hot, and the air smelled of something sweet I couldn’t place. My heart started to thud in my chest, and my hands started to twitch. I had never seen such total abandon before. The music seemed to hold everyone and everything in its snare; the dancers were helpless against it.

As much as I tried to resist it, I was entranced by the scene in front of me. Compulsion terrified me. It was overwhelming and borderline psychotic. But it also transfixed me in a way that had me questioning my own sanity.

Because suddenly I wanted it.

I craved it.

I ached to lose myself in the oblivion.

That is what this place promised. Sweet and total anarchy. And how easy it would be to hand over my careful control to the frightening and intoxicating world laid out before me.

The thump, thump, thump of the music rattled around in my chest. I could feel the vibration from the speakers buzzing in my ears. The darkness was both smothering and strangely comforting.

I closed my eyes and started to sway on my feet.

And then the moment was over. I was jostled from behind as people pushed past me, pulling me out of my momentary loss of reality.

What was wrong with me? I was here to get Renee, not play irresponsible club kid for the night.

The large, open room was full of people, and it was proving impossible to get through the crowd. I looked around, straining on my tiptoes, trying to find Renee. I elbowed and shoved my way to the outer wall.

I stumbled over something. My hands came out as I fell face-first onto the ground. My knees collided painfully with the concrete floor. And I lay there, sort of dumbfounded by everyone’s total disregard for the pathetic girl sprawled out at their feet.

No one offered to help me up. They simply walked around or, in some cases, over me. I tried to get to my feet, but my ankle twisted in protest. I came back down on my knees and suddenly felt like I could cry.

Someone spilled beer down my back at the same time I was knocked sideways. Shit, I was going to be trampled to death. I felt hysteria bubble up in my stomach and overshadow the anger I had felt toward my wayward roommate.

Suddenly a pair of hands gripped me underneath my arms and hoisted me up. I groaned at the pain in my ankle as I steadied myself. A hand pressed into my back, right between my shoulder blades, and pushed me forward.

“Are you okay?” a soft male voice whispered in my ear. I tried to turn to see who was navigating me through the throng, but it was so dark I couldn’t make him out.

I nodded, even though it was a lie. I was so not okay.

I could feel the heat of the guy’s hand through my shirt, imprinting my skin. He was pressed close to me as we moved forward, his front brushing against my back. It was uncomfortably intimate, and if I could have, I would have run far, far away.

“Take a deep breath. You’ll be fine,” the voice soothed, somehow saying the words I needed to hear.

I found myself complying automatically. The voice floating in my ears through the dark held some sort of strange sway that was hard to resist.

The hand at my back began to move in comforting circles, and I found myself start to relax in spite of my trepidation. It was like the dude pumped Valium through his fingertips. He was Club Man, able to calm freaked-out girls with the power of his voice and hands alone! I tried to twist and squint at him again, but I still couldn’t make out more than a silhouette.

“I see thee better—in the dark—I do not need a light,” the man murmured, his breath stirring the hair at my temple.

Mystery dude was quoting Emily Dickinson? What in the hell? Had I unknowingly dropped down the rabbit hole and not realized it?

And just like that, my calm popped like a soap bubble, and the reality of where I was set in like a hundred-ton weight on my chest.

I was in an underground nightclub trying to find my friend. That was what I needed to focus on.

I didn’t know this guy and shouldn’t be dropping my guard in a place like this—what the hell was wrong with me?

I tried to push ahead—anything to get some distance from the potential serial killer behind me. But the wall of people made it difficult to move very fast. The hand at my back slipped up to the nape of my neck, fingers curling up into my hair.

My heart was hammering in my chest, and I was scared. I could almost read the headlines now: Girl killed while trying to locate her selfish jerk of a roommate.

But then the hand disappeared from my skin, and I was steered toward the bar. I could barely breathe. I was on the cusp of a full-blown panic attack.

“Your friend is over there,” came the soft whisper again.

Huh?

I craned my neck and almost passed out with relief at the sight of Renee, perched on a stool, looking shaky and uncomfortable, her eyes darting around nervously.

“Thank you,” I said loudly, finally finding enough light to take in the person who’d helped me. He was tall, with broad shoulders; a baseball cap was perched low over his brow, obscuring his face. In the red-tinged light of the club, I couldn’t make out a single detail, nothing to identify him. And that was more unsettling than anything else had been up until now.

The inexplicable control this man exerted made itself known again. I was like a fish on a hook, flopping around in vain, hoping to be set free, but at the same time stupidly enjoying the trap.

I wanted to see him. I needed to.

The guy leaned in, his lips brushing against my cheek as he spoke. I caught the faint smell of peppermint and smoke.

“You and your friend need to get out of here. This isn’t a place for you to be.” He brushed my ponytail off my shoulder.

“What?” I asked dumbly. I was having a hard time wrapping my head around the strange turn my night had taken. Why was he helping me? Did I have easy mark stamped on my forehead? Or was he a rare breed of Good Samaritan?

I patted the front of my jeans just to make sure I hadn’t been pickpocketed. Phone and cash seemed to still be there. That was a relief, I guess. But when I looked up, he was gone.

He had disappeared like he had never been there, a figment of my overactive and overly stressed mind.

I stood rooted to the spot, my ankle throbbing, my head dizzy, my ears ringing. I was shaken.

That man had shaken me. And I wasn’t sure if it was fear or excitement that thrummed through my veins.

He was right. I needed to get out of there. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and saw that ten minutes had already passed. If I didn’t get Renee outside soon, Brooks was going to go all suicide mission on the bouncer.

“Renee!” I yelled over the music. My roommate and questionable best friend turned in my direction, and her face went slack with relief. She jumped down from the stool and threw her arms around my neck.

“Aubrey, thank you so much for coming to get me,” she sobbed into my neck. I hugged the smaller girl and then pulled away.

Renee’s eyes were bloodshot; her mascara ran in dark ribbons down her cheeks. Her hair hung in a tangled mess on her back. She wrung her hands together in agitation, and my protective instincts kicked in.

She looked frightened and sad. I wanted to take Devon Keeton by the balls and give them a really painful squeeze. He didn’t deserve Renee. Why couldn’t she see that?

“Let’s go home,” I said, wrapping an arm around her trembling shoulders.

Keeping her close, and with a hand out in front of me, I started body-checking people as we made our way to the entrance.

The music had picked up a notch, and the air buzzed with a frenetic energy. It pulled me in and didn’t want to let go. A part of me wanted to stay and get lost in it. My feet stopped moving, and I felt inexplicably torn. I needed to leave, but I wanted to stay.

Renee tugged on my arm, and I gave myself a shake. My momentary loss of rational thinking gave way to the more pressing desire to ensure Brooks wasn’t making nice with bouncer Randy’s meaty fist.

Just as we made it to the door, I felt a tingling along the back of my neck—a sensual awareness that made my hair stand on edge. My mystery man, with his face shadowed, stood just to the side of the exit. I felt his eyes follow my movements, and I couldn’t suppress a shiver of apprehension that was oddly enticing.

I tried to meet his eyes, almost desperate to see them. But he turned away, denying me what I sought. I watched with a strange displeasure as he faded into the gloom.

“Aubrey!” I heard a yell coming from outside. Brooks looked anxious, and I knew he was only seconds from bulldozing his way inside.

Holding tight to Renee’s hand, I half dragged, half carried her out of the club. We passed Randy, whose scowl could have made a lesser person piss themselves. I was half tackled by a perilously-close-to-losing-it Brooks.

“You gave me gray hair, Aubrey! Gray hair!” Brooks yelled, grabbing me by the shoulders and giving me a little shake.

“Sorry. It took me a while to find Renee,” I explained, trying to communicate with my eyes for him to chill out.

Brooks rounded on Renee and gave her his best stern-older-brother expression. “What were you thinking, spending your evening at Hepatitis Central? You need a swift kick in the ass, girl,” he lectured, though I knew his harshness had more to do with being worried than anything else.

Renee hung her head sheepishly, and even though I wanted to give her my own lecture, I knew it wouldn’t do any good. She was obviously tired and in a state of emotional shutdown.

She didn’t need judging. She needed a good night’s sleep, and then maybe I could give her the “I told you your boyfriend was a total dickhead” speech.

“Sorry, Brooks,” Renee said quietly, and I glared at Brooks, who held his hands up in a placating gesture.

“Okay, it’s cool. Let’s just get the hell out of here. I sure hope your car still has tires,” he muttered as we started to walk away from Compulsion.

As we headed down the street, I couldn’t help looking one last time back over my shoulder.

I couldn’t decide whether I felt disappointment or relief that the person I was searching for was nowhere in sight.

chapter
three

aubrey

i sucked on the red, angry skin of my thumb, silently cursing the metal chair that lay discarded at my feet. I gave it an annoyed kick before leaning down to pick it up.

“Ouch, did it pinch you?” a kind voice asked. I opened up the chair and set it on its feet in the circle I had created. Kristie Hinkle, the support group facilitator, smiled at me as she pulled the plastic off a sleeve of Styrofoam cups.

Two weeks had passed since Brooks and I had played Batman and Robin on a rescue mission to Compulsion. The disquiet that settled inside me after my experience left me feeling edgy. I couldn’t quite put my finger on why I was feeling that way. But there was no doubt as to who had put it there, even though I had never gotten a look at his face.

Renee had gone straight to bed after we had gotten back to the apartment. When I got up the next morning, she had already left for work. My plans to find out exactly what had gone down at the club were sidelined by my friend’s blatant avoidance.

I could tell she was embarrassed. Renee was easy to read. She wore her feelings on her sleeve. And when she became uncomfortable, her MO was to hide away until the dust settled.

I had hoped that Devon abandoning her at the club would have been the wake-up call she needed to make the final break, that it had put the nail in the proverbial coffin of her shitty relationship.

So it was with an almost homicidal frustration that I found Devon the Jackass sitting in our living room the next night acting like he belonged there.

His feet were propped up on the coffee table as he ate a sandwich, crumbs going everywhere. For a moment, I saw red. I gripped my keys in my hand and thought about flinging them at his arrogant, overly large head. You know, right before I kneed him in the junk.

Was this for real? Was Renee really going to allow this guy back into our home after he had left her, by herself, at Compulsion the night before?

I wanted to tell him to get his fucking feet off the furniture. I wanted to scream at Renee to wake up and smell the sucky-boyfriend coffee.

But I didn’t, because painful experience had taught me that saying anything would only accomplish the opposite.

Nothing pushed two people together more than a case of Romeo and Juliet syndrome brought on by thinking the whole world was against them.

It was at times like this that the similarities between Renee and my sister were so excruciating that it took my breath away.

I had played the sneering judgmental card once upon a time, and it had cost me dearly. Self-righteous disappointment got me nowhere.

So I had reined in my anger, and I had given my friend a smile, one that she hesitatingly returned, before going to my room to do my homework.

The days passed, and my relationship with Renee came to an uneasy standstill. She was still with her jerk of a boyfriend, and there still wasn’t a whole lot I could do about it.

But for the time being I had to focus my energies elsewhere.

Tonight was the first meeting of the campus substance-abuse support group. I had been reading up on curriculums and methodologies, trying to figure out the best approach for facilitating the sessions. When I couldn’t deal with things on an emotional level, it was always easier for me to surround myself with hard facts.

I knew that this would be hard for me, that it had the potential to trigger in me painful memories that perhaps were best left forgotten. But I was bound and determined to do it anyway. I was ultimately responsible for where my life was headed, and this was exactly what I wanted to do with it.

I grimaced at Kristie’s question. “They’re sneaky little bastards,” I said, repositioning the chairs until I was happy with the layout. When I was finished, I joined Kristie at the table and got the muffins and cookies out of the grocery bag on the floor.

Kristie held up her hand to show three fingers covered in Band-Aids. “They got me last week. Those chairs are merciless,” she joked. Kristie was in her late thirties and ran the outpatient program at the substance-abuse center in town. She had an unassuming air about her that was both relaxing and inviting. With frizzy black hair and green eyes behind dark-rimmed glasses, she was the epitome of the supportive counselor. I could easily see why people would be comfortable talking to her about their problems. Her demeanor lacked judgment, and her voice was soothing. I instantly liked her. Which was good, considering I would be co-facilitating this group with her for the next twelve weeks.

“Let’s have a look at the curriculum materials for the group today. Like I said on the phone when we talked last week, I won’t expect you to do much today. Just observe, get to know the group members, get a feel for how these things work. Today serves more as an introduction than anything else. It’s a ‘get to know you’ for everyone. Be prepared for some very resistant individuals, though. Not everyone is here voluntarily, and there’s always one or two who have to be an ass,” Kristie said, pulling her notebook out of her bag.

I sat down beside her as she began to flip through the pages. “Really? I thought this was a group people came to because they wanted the help,” I said in confusion. Kristie chuckled good-naturedly.

“I wish. That would make my job a heck of a lot easier. But no, some of these people have been court-ordered because of drug possession, usually a misdemeanor. Some are first-time offenders; others have been through the system a few times. You always hope they learn something from what you’re trying to teach them, but I can’t confess to being that naïve,” she said, handing me a stack of name tags.

“Wow, that sounds pretty jaded, Kristie,” I teased. Kristie snickered.

“I’ve been doing this group for almost five years. I will always have the hope that I’m making a difference, but I’m only human. And I’ve seen too many people end up at the bottom to think otherwise. But we keep on trucking. Because giving up isn’t an option,” she said sagely. I couldn’t say anything to that. I understood feeling jaded, but I was determined to feel the hope all the same.

“Do they all go to LU?” I asked. Kristie nodded.

“This group is for students. I facilitate several other groups in town as well. But we keep this one separate and just for the college community. These kids are dealing with issues that are very different from those of the addicts I see in the other meetings. The pressures, the expectations, and the failures of university life go hand in hand with their addiction.” I nodded.

Kristie wrote her name on one of the tags and peeled it off. She stuck it to the front of her shirt. I followed suit and then put a name tag and pen on each seat. I had a vague idea of what to expect from the group. Having an addict in the family gave you a front-row seat for that particular brand of fucked-up.

But still . . . I was apprehensive.

And it all had to do with a night three years ago. A desperate phone call in the middle of the night that I had so quickly dismissed as inconsequential. Followed by days of guilt and fear when my fifteen-year-old sister, Jayme, never came home and the realization that her phone call hadn’t been so inconsequential after all. Then finally the morning when I had opened the door to find two police officers on our porch. Their sympathetic faces as they told us that Jayme had been found dead in some skeevy alleyway. Cold and alone. It was that moment that everything I had known, my entire world, was flipped on its axis.

I hadn’t handled my grief well at first. I had berated and abused myself. My guilt ate me alive. My parents blamed me for not taking care of my little sister. I blamed myself for spending so much time on my sanctimonious soapbox that I had been blind to what was really going on.

In the aftermath, my relationship with my parents deteriorated into barely functioning. And I had made it my mission to find a way to fix the pieces inside me that were broken and to live a life that mattered. A part of me was convinced that helping others would in some way help me move on from the devastation of my past.

So I came to Longwood University wanting to escape and to focus on becoming a drug-addiction counselor. It was far enough away from my hometown in North Carolina to feel like I was in another world. Yet it was close enough that it would be impossible for me to ever truly escape what had happened. Because I needed the daily reminder. It was motivation. It’s what got me out of bed every goddamned morning.

It made me a fighter.

But it didn’t change the fact that I was scared. I worried like hell that I’d never be able to do enough for the people who needed my help. That I would never be able to stop the slide once it began. The fear of failure was acute and debilitating.

Kristie made it all seem so easy. I appreciated the way she displayed such competence. She must have sensed my unease because she kindly patted my arm.

“We all have our crosses to bear, Aubrey. Yours led you here. And I know that is a good thing, for you and for the lives you’ll make a difference in,” she said knowingly. My smile was tight, and I wished I could believe her. But self-doubt was like a mosquito buzzing around my ear. The more I tried to swat it away, the more determined it became to suck me dry.

Before long the group members began to filter into the room. It was a relatively small group. We were expecting only twelve people. I didn’t know all of their stories. Kristie had filled me in briefly on the few who had been in the group before. But for the most part, the group would consist of newbies. Four had been court-ordered after being brought up on misdemeanor drug charges. The rest were here voluntarily, which was a bit of a relief. Hopefully that meant they’d be more open and accepting and less combative.

The seats began to fill. There were two girls I recognized from one of the sororities on campus. To say I was shocked to find them in a substance-abuse support group was an understatement, though if there was one thing I had learned in my life, it was that addiction didn’t discriminate.

A guy and a girl, obviously a couple, came in behind them. They seemed unsure and more than a little nervous, and a selfish part of me was relieved that I wasn’t the only one freaking out.

I needed to do something more than stand by the wall trying to blend in with the scenery. If I wanted Kristie to sign off on my volunteer hours, I had to jump into this experience with both feet. Who cared if I got wet?

I approached the couple with what I hoped was a welcoming smile. The guy seemed very protective of his girlfriend. His arm was around her shoulders, and she was pressed into his side as if he could shield her from everyone else. He had short, cropped dark hair and hoops along the outer shell of his ears. His jeans had holes in the knees, and he wore an old Black Sabbath T-shirt.

His diminutive girlfriend had bright pink hair cut just below her chin. She had a ring through her septum and two studs in her left eyebrow. I could see part of a tattoo on one side of her neck. Despite her kick-ass appearance, she came across as skittish.

“Hi, guys! I’m Aubrey,” I said, introducing myself. The girl’s eyes darted to me and then away again. I noticed the guy squeeze her shoulders before he turned his attention to me. He didn’t smile. His eyes were a dark, chilly brown.

“Hi,” he responded shortly, not offering his name. I looked at the girl again, but she had turned her face toward her boyfriend’s chest, and I wondered what their story was. They were anything but friendly, and I wished I hadn’t approached them at all. But this is what I was here for. They would have to get used to me eventually.

“I’m glad you guys are here. Find a seat. There are drinks and some food on the back table. We’ll be starting in about ten minutes,” I said, forcing a smile.

The guy watched me closely, his eyes narrowed and suspicious. The girl hadn’t moved from the protective shelter of his arm. Something about him reminded me of Devon and thus instilled an instant dislike. Okay, this was going nowhere. Without bothering to attempt to prolong the conversation, I returned to my seat.

Kristie finished handing out a packet of information to the people who had already taken their places and then found her own seat. She glanced up at me as I came to sit down beside her. She looked over at the couple as they finally made their way to the chairs. The guy had moved his arm but was now clutching his girlfriend’s hand so tightly it looked as though it hurt.

“I’ve seen them at the clinic downtown. I know they’re two of the court-ordered crew. Don’t take their lack of social skills personally. I think they’re a pretty rough pair,” Kristie said quietly, watching them carefully.

“Yeah, just kind of a sucky start, I guess,” I muttered, flipping through the pages of the introductory packet. Kristie chuckled.

“If it didn’t suck, I’d start to worry it would be a boring group,” she joked. I tried not to stare as the rest of the group entered the room, but it was hard, particularly when I realized I recognized quite a few of the participants, including a frat guy who hung out with Brooks.

There wasn’t a whole lot of talking. The room was silent except for the sounds of chairs scraping across the floor as people found their self-designated spots.

Just before group was about to start, the door swung open, and I glanced up at the person who entered.

Instantly the mood in the room changed, and the air crackled with an electric energy. I felt an immediate awareness inside me that was surprising. Because the boy who walked in was beautiful. That was the only word my addled brain could come up with to describe him.

His broad shoulders strained under a shirt that looked as though it had been sculpted to his form. His blond hair fell in haphazard curls around his ears. His almost startling blue eyes were framed by the thickest and blackest lashes I had ever seen. It should be criminal for guys to have eyelashes like that.

His face was lean, and his chin was dimpled in the middle. His lips were stretched in a smirk as he took in the other people in the room. Every single person, male and female alike, focused on his entrance. And he seemed to revel in the effect he had.

There was something in the way he moved that had me frowning. Why did he seem so familiar?

“Welcome! Come have a seat. We were just getting ready to start,” Kristie called out to the newcomer, breaking my internal processing. Mr. Hot and Hazardous slowly moved to the last remaining chair, which just so happened to be across from me.

He sank into the cold, hard metal and stretched his legs out in front of him as though he were lounging on a couch and not at a support group meeting. He flashed a brilliant smile in the direction of the girls who sat beside him. They seemed a bit thunderstruck. Not that I blamed them.