Abandon - Meg Cabot [63]
“Oh,” I said, remembering the expression on my mom’s face as she’d asked about Coffin Night. It was obviously a big deal around Isla Huesos. “But what is the tradition, exactly?”
Cody cough-sneezed the word D-Wing, but Seth, after giving him a frown that clearly said Hey, give the new girl a break, explained, “Every year, the senior class at Isla Huesos High constructs their own coffin. Then we hide it somewhere on the island. And it’s up to the junior class to try to find it.”
I waited, expecting to hear more.
But more did not follow. Everyone just looked at me expectantly, as in the background, seagulls swooped around, looking for stray French fries anyone might have dropped. Over on the beach, some shirtless guy tossed a Frisbee to his dog, who missed and then dashed happily out into the water to retrieve it.
“Uh,” I said finally. “Okay. But…why?”
Seth glanced at everyone else for help. “Why what?” he asked finally.
“Why do they want to find it?” I wasn’t trying to be a pain. I honestly didn’t get it. “What’s inside it?”
Seth smiled as if I’d asked something cute. “What do you mean, what’s inside it? Nothing’s inside it.”
“Well, then why does it matter?” I asked, genuinely bewildered. “Who cares about finding some empty old coffin?”
Seth’s smile vanished, and there was some muttering from down at the other end of the picnic table. I distinctly heard the words Really? and God, she really is D-Wing.
“Hey,” Seth said sharply. But to everyone else, not to me. “Cool it.” To me, he said, his tone gentle and his perfect smile back in place, “First of all, it’s not an old coffin. It’s a brand-new coffin, like I said, one that we’ll be constructing and hand painting, with our class year and all our names on it. Yours, too. And if the juniors find it, they’re going to take it out to the middle of the football field during the first game of the season and set it on fire in front of everyone. And film themselves doing it, and then post it online everywhere. Then we’ll be totally humiliated. So we don’t want that.”
I had already put the fire part together, after the incredibly boring speech Principal Alvarez had given, with what Nicole had mentioned about her house smelling of smoke for months after the Rector Wreckers — which I assumed were Seth and his friends — had discovered last year’s senior class coffin in her neighbor’s garage and apparently had chosen to set it on fire on site.
What I still didn’t get was why any of them cared.
“That’s why,” Farah said, laying a hand on my shoulder, “we were thinking it would be so great if we could hide the coffin at your place this year. Just for a little while. Because you live in Dolphin Key. To drive in and out of your neighborhood, people have to have permission from the guard at the front gate, right? You’re the only student from IHHS who lives there this year. I know, because my mom’s on the booster committee and I checked the database. Dolphin Key’s mostly a retirement and snowbird community. It’s really exclusive. Most people here on Isla Huesos can’t afford to live there. What that means is that no one from IHHS should be able to get in but us, and only when you buzz us in at the gate. You — and the coffin — will be totally safe. What happened at Cal’s last year would never happen at your place.”
I just stared at her. This was such a joke. None of these people even knew what they were talking about. Safe? I was the least safe person in the world.
Especially right now, with my necklace gone.
Oh, yeah. And the guy who’d given it to me, whom I’d met while I was dead, didn’t like me anymore because we were having a huge fight. Or something. Which was fine, because I was making a new start. New Pathways. I needed another soda.
“It’s just until we get it painted anyway,” Seth added hastily.
“Then we’ll move it somewhere else. We can’t keep it too long in any one place, in order to avoid detection. After your house, we’ll probably move it to an airplane hangar over at the Isla