Page 67 of Eye on the Ball
36
Tess
We’d swung by the shop to pick up the trophy on our way to the park, but we left it in its null container in the truck’s backseat. I covered the whole thing with an old blanket, we locked the truck, and then we headed out to find Shelley and my aunt and uncle.
“I really need a funnel cake.” I scanned the area and pointed. “There!”
“We just ate lunch, Tess.”
“Isn’t that usually my line when you want food? Besides, fair food goes into a different stomach.”
“Noted. Onward to funnel cakes!” He casually took my hand and started walking. I felt a twinge inside, remembering what Rose had said.
If Jack’s deepest desire was really me, he wasn’t alone.
Mine was him.
After a couple of hours of wandering around, chatting to everybody we knew, eating all the fair food we could hold, and funding Shelley and Zane’s carnival game frenzy, it was time for the pig races. We’d walked past their racecourse that was set up on one edge of the park grounds, but the smell of pig sent us scurrying back the other way.
“They’re filling up the pigs’ pool!” Shelley danced around us, her arms filled with stuffed animals Jack had won for her. “They’re going to swim! And they’re not all adult pigs! There are the cutest little piglets!”
Uncle Mike, who’d joined us while Aunt Ruby did mayor stuff, grumbled. “Sure, they’re cute when they’re piglets. Then they grow up and you’re staring down a pen filled with three-or-four-hundred-pound monsters.”
He gave Jack a side-eye when he said that last bit.
Jack laughed. “I’m more of a five-hundred-pound monster.”
Uncle Mike chuckled and then ambled off to rejoin Aunt Ruby. After he’d gone, a gaggle of college students wearing Florida State sweatshirts walked past us, and suddenly one guy did a double-take and whipped his head around to stare at Jack.
“Guys,” he said urgently. Then, when his friends didn’t hear him, he said it again, louder. “Guys! That’sJack Shepherd.”
Oh, no.
This had happened a few times before, even here in Dead End, and it always made Jack uncomfortable. Like now, for example, when he tightened his grip on my hand and scanned the area for an escape route. But it was too late.
The kids surrounded us.
“Dude,” the first boy said, his voice awed. “You’re Jack Shepherd!”
I pretended to be surprised, so I could defuse the situation for Jack. “You are? You told me your name was John Smith!”
Jack grinned at me. “It was John Jones. Try to keep up.”
The kids ignored this byplay. The first boy whipped his phone out of his pocket.
“Dude! Can I get a selfie with you? We just read about you in our modern warfare history class! You’re, like, famous!”
Jack gave me a cornered look. He hated this kind of thing and never did selfies. I decided to rescue him.
“He really can’t,” I said in a low, confiding tone. “He’s in Witness Protection. If news of his whereabouts gets out, it could be dangerous for everyone.”
The kids’ eyes were all getting wider and wider.
I gestured at the people all around us. “You wouldn’t want to be responsible for a vampire attack that could harm these families, would you? Look at all those children.”
The kids quickly agreed to keep Jack’s secret. The first boy took some convincing, but one of his friends smacked him in the back of the head when he tried to sneak a photo of Jack and me.
“Cut it out, Monkey! The guy’s a hero. Let’s let him enjoy his old age in peace.”