Into the Fire Read Free Page B

Gillman a call.”
    M-Susan slid off her stool, too, and led the way. Two steps out, though, she slipped on something—maybe a wet patch on the floor. Or maybe her insanity caused her to hallucinate, and she’d tripped over invisible purple poodles. Whatever the case, Izzy caught her arm to keep her from going down.
    It was hard to tell what it was, exactly, that stunned him into stupidity—the sensation of her smooth skin beneath his fingers or the sweet smile of gratitude she shot him.
    Either way, he didn’t feel inclined to let go, and she didn’t seem to mind. And when, as they passed the wailing jukebox, she leaned close to ask, “So you’re a SEAL, too,” Izzy knew with a tingly certainty that, as long as he didn’t do anything terrifically assholeish, odds were good that he was going to get some tonight.
    “I am,” he said. “So, see, maybe you don’t need to find Gillman after all.”
    SEAL groupies were women who would put out—usually in the bar parking lot—merely because a guy had gone through the ball-breaking BUD/S training and wore a trident.
    And color Izzy putridly shallow, but right at this moment, considering he filled the criteria quite nicely, he just couldn’t see the problem with that. He himself wasn’t particularly interested in finding out whether Maybe-Susan had had a puppy growing up, or what classes she was taking this semester, or what she wanted to do when she finished school. As long as they were both consenting adults…
    “If you can’t be, with the one you love, honey, love the one you’re with…”
Izzy hummed the melody just under his breath as he opened the door and followed the most beautiful woman in the world out of the Bug.
    A L IFETIME A GO …
S UMMER 1993
B ARTLET , M ONTANA
    “Hey, you! Scholarship girl!”
    Hannah put her head down and kept walking along the gravel road to the mess hall, but the girls from the Sunflower group, led by the insufferable Brianna Parker, ran and quickly caught up.
    They surrounded her—eight other fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds, including Bree, who’d been coming to this camp since she was seven, whose father donated liberally to the scholarship fund, which allowed so-called underprivileged girls like Hannah to spend two weeks in the company of Bree and her equally rich-bitch, entitled friends.
    It was only day two, and Hannah desperately wanted to go home.
    Carolyn Ronston and one of the multitude of Megans moved right in front of Hannah, forcing her to either push past them or stop.
    So Hannah stopped, looking around at eight angry faces. One of them, a girl named something ridiculous like Petunia, was in tears. Whatever was up, it wasn’t going to be good.
    She sighed. Are we happy campers yet?
    “Where are you going in such a hurry?” another of the Megans asked—or maybe it was the just plain Meg, who had a note from home that allowed her to break camp rules by wearing makeup to cover her acne. How the gallon of mascara and eyeliner that she wore did that, Hannah wasn’t exactly sure.
    She didn’t need to answer. Bree did it for her. “It’s lunchtime,” she said. “Careful she doesn’t trample you in her haste to stuff her face.” She turned to Hannah. “You should really wait and let the paying customers go first.”
    Carolyn was onboard for that. “They should really make these girls work. I mean, what are they learning here, anyway?”
    “Actually,” Hannah said, “I’ve already learned not to write a prizewinning essay ever again.” And to keep her Uncle Patrick away from Ms. Julio, the high school guidance counselor. They’d ganged up on her with this totally absurd idea that she needed to spend more time around women and girls—as in two weeks here at Camp Bitchfest. Which also conveniently would get Hannah out of Pat’s house just long enough for him to charm Nancy Julio out of her designer jeans and into his bed and then, unceremoniously, dump her.
    Which wasn’t going to bode well for