The Haunted - Jessica Verday [106]
I clicked the link and arrived at the university’s website. Pictures of tall buildings and smiling students littered the home page, and the “About Us” page said that it was a liberal-arts school. Wow. Perfect.
We decided to take the trip two days later, and I hung up the phone feeling a sense of ac-complishment. This just might work. And the school looked pretty cool, too. Too bad I didn’t have any plans to actually check it out.…
I wasn’t sure how to tell Caspian about the trip, so I waited until the next day. I still hadn’t figured out the best way to say, “Oh yeah, I’m going to be spending the entire weekend with Ben. Alone.”
We were in the mausoleum, sitting on the bench together, when he suddenly stood up. “I almost forgot. I have something I wanted to show you.” He crossed over to his boxes, reached into one of them, and pulled out a tiny acid-washed blue-jean backpack.
“Classy,” I said, raising one eyebrow.
“I know, right? But I think you mean classic. This is vintage eighties style right here.” Unzipping the backpack, he came over and sat back down. “What’s even better, though, is what’s inside.” He pulled out a fistful of cassette tapes, and then produced a small, neon-pink tape player. “Portable.”
“That is better.” I grinned at him. The sight he made with the bright pink, girly tape player in his hand was comical. “It’s your color, too. Pink.”
“Matches my eyes.” He held the player up and batted his eyelids.
“You made another trip to the thrift store, huh?” I said. “What did you leave this time?” Caspian ducked his head and fiddled with the battery compartment. “I sort of, um, didn’t?” He looked up at me. “I don’t really have anything left, and there are only so many books a guy can read before he goes crazy. It’s not an iPod, but at least it’s something.”
“I don’t think they’ll miss it. What songs did you get?” He held out one of the tapes. “Christmas Kids Sing the Blues,” I read. “Wow, that’s kind of an oxymoron.”
He gave me a half smile and flipped through the remaining cassettes. “We also have…
Grover and Me Sing-a-long, the Sheldon Brothers…”—he raised both eyebrows—“and…
Debbie Gibson.”
“Now that’s what I call an eclectic music mix.” I laughed.
Caspian put one of the tapes into the player, adjusted the volume to low, and pushed play.
“I’m open-minded.”
A mariachi band started up.
I wrinkled my nose at him. “Now we know what the Sheldon Brothers are.” He pushed stop and switched the tapes. An instant later soft piano and synthesizers came out of the tiny speakers. “Better than the mariachi band,” I said. A female voice started singing.
Caspian tapped his foot along to the beat, and I gave him a skeptical look. “Really? You’re enjoying this?” He cocked his head to one side but didn’t say anything, while Debbie sang about silence speaking a thousand words. I raised an eyebrow at him.
“Don’t you get it?” he said finally. “My silence is speaking a thousand words.” I rolled my eyes. “My silence is going to speak a thousand words too.”
“Is your silence answering my silence?” he asked, a teasing glint in his eyes. “Because my silence is getting very suggestive right now.”
I blushed and looked down at my hands. Will I ever get over this whole embarrassment thing around him? I sure hoped so.
My phone beeped, and I took it out of my pocket, flipping it open in one fluid motion. Ben’s number was there, and instantly, guilt flooded me. I still hadn’t told Caspian about the trip.
I reached over to the cassette player and turned it off. The sudden silence between us was deafening. “Caspian… I need to tell you something.” His face changed. “Is it Vincent? Did he find you again?”
“No, no. It’s not him. It’s… I’m leaving tomorrow to go to West Virginia.”
“To Martinsburg?” he asked quietly.
I nodded. “With Ben.”
“Ben? Why?”
The words spilled out of me. “My parents wanted to go. Not to your grave, but to this college. Only, I’m not going to the college. I just told them that as a cover. So then they suggested that a friend go with me, and I joked about Ben, and… it just… worked out.”
“Is he driving?