“I don’t know,” Alex said. “I don’t keep tabs on your boyfriend.”

Cordelia slowly lifted up her sneakers, checking the bottoms of them for any signs of Andy. There was none. Sighing in a sort of momentary relief, she slapped her shoes back onto the concrete and sifted through her handbag. Then she noticed something brushing against her wrist. She turned her arm over and saw Andy caught between her bracelet and her skin, his mouth open, trying to speak.

“Hi, Andy.”

He waved at her.

“That looks painful.”

He nodded fiercely.

“You’re almost as blue as the beads.”

He thrashed his arms about in an attempt to pry his body free.

“Hold still,” Cordelia told him as she stretched the bracelet, pulling Andy out, and held him in front of her face. “You okay, blue boy? You need a fiddle to play?”

“That,” Andy said, rubbing his red neck (no relationship to the country folk), “is going to leave a nasty rope burn.”

“At least we found a safer place to carry you instead of my shoulder.” She started to stretch the bracelet again.

“You can’t be serious,” Andy whined.

But she was. She pushed him under, gradually lowering the thread of the bracelet around his waist so that it would hold him in place like a seat belt. “Comfy?”

“No.”

“I could put it around your neck.”

“Suddenly, this feels like a cotton bed.” He put his arms behind his head. “Ah, snug pillow! I doth love thee…thou… Which is it?”

“You’re no Shakespeare.”

“That’s forsooth!”

“…Yeah.” Cordelia lowered her arm and turned back to Alex, who was busy hurling barrel after barrel of Crystal Light down the semi’s ramp. “Alex, what are you doing?”

“Trying to burn all the evidence before the feds show up. You want to go catch Liz and we can tie her up and burn her too?”

“You should really go apologize to her. She’s been known to hold very long grudges…”

“Ha! That girl couldn’t hold a single thought, let alone a grudge, in that head of hers for two seconds.”

“Still…”

“Look,” Alex poked his head out from the back of the semi, “if you’re going to stick around here and nag me, would you at least help me unload? We’ll hide this stuff in the basement of the school for now.”

“Your summer home, I take it?”

“Shut up. It’s dark and cool down there. It’s a great place to live.” Heaving another barrel off the ramp, he stood back and wiped his brow. “It’s always a great place to store things that you don’t want other people to find. If the government knew the things I kept hidden in there, I’d be dead already. We’ll burn the stuff tonight when nobody is around.”

“What about the semi? We can’t leave that here.”

“I don’t have my license.”

“I can’t drive a semi,” Cordelia frowned, flipping her wrist over so she could see Andy. “Do you know how?”

Andy wondered if she noticed he was still the size of her thumb.

“It doesn’t matter,” Alex said. “Judging by the blood splattered over the front of the semi, I’d say Liz doesn’t know how to drive one either. …Oh, and her Limburger…car…whatever it’s called is parked in here. You want to move that too?”

“I’ll take care of it,” Cordelia sighed. She climbed into the back of the semi with Alex and backed the Lamborghini off the ramp, parking it next to the crushed BMW. Then she proceeded to help Alex unload box after box of Crystal Light until the trailer was as naked as Paris Hilton in the dark and their bodies smelled like lemon shampoo in the shower. Towers of boxes and barrels of Crystal Light made a miniature city behind them.

“School will be letting out any minute now,” Alex said, closing the back of the semi. “I’ll haul this stuff into the basement while you find a good place to stash the semi. …If we’re lucky, we might live to see another day.”

Cordelia locked the trailer door and pulled out the keys. “Okay, I’ll meet you back here after football and cheerleading practice.”

She started walking towards the front of the semi, but Alex felt the need to ask something. “Um…Cordelia?”

She stopped. “Yeah?”

“Just…uh…what was it you and Andy were doing over the phone when I called?”

A grin appeared on her face.

“Come on!”

“Bye, Alex!”

He ran after her, but she had already scampered up to the door of the semi and dove in through the window. “Come on, Cordelia! I have to know!”

“Cheerleading practice ends at eight!” she called down. “I’ll see you then.” It took her some time to figure out how to move the semi, which resulted in an accidental reversal, knocking over one of the biggest towers of Crystal Light. But she eventually got it right, the tires rolling past Alex as he stepped back, watching her pull out of the school parking lot just as the buses were coming in.

His arms dangled loosely at his side. “Fine… But don’t expect to be getting your precious antidote any time soon!”