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“Where am I?”
“You gotta be joking.”
I shook my head, trying to keep the wave of panic from swelling up inside me. “No. I’m not.”
“You’re in the goddamn English building.”
“What English building?”
“At Columbia. Jesus, girlie. You hit your head or something?” He now looked a little guilty for prodding me with the broom.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, ignoring his question as I pushed past him and out of the classroom.
Outside, I called my number-two speed dial. It rang twice and a groggy male voice answered.
“Keaty, something weird is happ—”
“Huh? Secret, you called my cell, not Keats.”
I couldn’t place the voice, but he obviously knew me. Something in my chest tightened. Should I know this man? I must, but my brain wasn’t giving me a mental image to match with the words in my ear. A frustrated growl escaped my throat, and I hung up.
On the next attempt I dialed Mercedes’s number by memory, not trusting my speed dial.
“What’s wrong?”
I hadn’t said a word yet. “I…uhh. Cedes?”
“Who else? You called me. At one. What’s wrong?” In the background a masculine voice mumbled something and she replied, “It’s fine, go back to sleep.”
“Cedes, this is going to sound a little strange…”
“Like that’s a shocker.”
“Have you seen me today?”
She didn’t answer me for such a long time I said her name again. At last she said, “What do you mean?”
“It wasn’t a trick question. I need to know if you’ve seen me today.”
“No, I worked the day shift today. But we talked on the phone earlier. Tyler said you put on quite a show at the station tonight, though.”
“Tyler?” Was that a name to pair with the voice on the phone? It didn’t sound right for some reason, but at the moment now nothing was right.
“Tyler Nowakowski.”
I shook my head. Although she couldn’t see me, my silence was enough of an answer. When she spoke again her pitch was a little higher, and she sounded worried. “What’s your name?”
“Secret,” I replied with a snort. “As if I could possibly forget that.”
“Where do you live?”
“West 52nd Street.” When she didn’t respond, I added, “New York, New York.”
“Who are you dating?”
“No one.” Like she could ask me that. Gabriel had just left me. I wasn’t too keen to leap headfirst into the dating pool at this point. Or, you know, ever. But who the hell had I called by accident? It definitely hadn’t been Gabe’s voice. Or Keaty’s. “No one?” I said again, only this time it was a question.
“I don’t think Lucas Rain would like to be called a no one.”
