a noisy slurp of her diet soda that sucked the beverage dry. “You ought to be used to it by now. And he’s going to be your lab partner for the rest of the year, so you also better get used to just ignoring him.”
“Oh, thanks a lot, you two,” Rosemary grumbled. “You’re no help at all. I only wish I could ignore him. But he makes my life miserable. Not a day goes by that he doesn’t make me feel like...like...”
“Like a simpleminded, slack-brained know-nothing?” Angie supplied helpfully.
Rosemary frowned harder. Yeah, she thought. Exactly like that.
The three friends were taking a break from the dancing couples who crowded the floor of the high school gymnasium. The Welcome Back Bob Comet Festival was in full swing, and the gym doors had been thrown open wide to invite in the general public and the balmy September night for the traditional Comet Stomp Dance. Rosemary’s and Angie’s dates had gone in search of refreshment and left the three girls to talk among themselves on the bleachers. Kirby’s date...well, Kirby’s date was sort of nonexistent, Rosemary knew, which was all the more reason for her to remain with her friends.
The Welcome Back Bob Comet Festival was an event that occurred in the small southern Indiana town of Endicott every decade and a half, and, as always, the community had turned out in numbers to celebrate. Comet Bob had actually made his peak appearance in the skies over town the night before, but he would be visible to the naked eye for another few days, and within telescope range for another two weeks. The Comet Festival generally ran for the entirety of Bob’s appearance, for the most part constituting the whole month of September.
The festival belonged to Endicott and took place with such regularity because, for whatever reason, the comet returned to the planet like clockwork during the third week of every fifteenth September. And when it did, it always—always—made its closest pass at the coordinates that were exactly—exactly —directly above Endicott.
Bob’s punctuality and preference for such specific coordinates had frustrated the studies of many a scientist since the comet’s discovery nearly two centuries ago. Every fifteen years, scores of experts in the fields of astronomy, astrophysics and cosmology—and hundreds of amateurs, too—descended on southern Indiana in an effort to explain the unexplainable. And every fifteen years, those experts returned home again with notebooks full of data that defied analysis, and prescriptions for migraines that simply would not go away.
And because no one had been able to explain exactly what caused Bob’s constancy or his affection for Endicott, the comet’s celebrity had grown and grown, and the residents of the little Indiana town had come to claim the comet as their own.
Comet Bob actually had a much more formal name, but virtually no one could pronounce it correctly—no one but Willis Random, Rosemary thought to herself with much irritation. Because Bob was named after an eastern European scientist who had few vowels, and even fewer recognizable consonants, in his name, and who had been dead for more than a hundred years anyway, the general consensus seemed to be, What difference does it make?
Comet Bob was Comet Bob, and in addition to his mystery and celebrity—or perhaps, more accurately, because of it—myth and legend had grown up around his regular visits over the years. Anyone in Endicott who’d been around for more than one appearance of Bob knew full well that he was responsible for creating all kinds of mischief.
Virtually everyone was of the opinion that Bob was responsible for cosmic disturbances that caused the local citizens to behave very strangely whenever he came around. Waitresses confused restaurant orders. People got lost on their way to jobs they had been performing for years. Children cleaned their rooms and finished their homework in a timely fashion. And people who would normally never give each other the time of day fell utterly and irrevocably in love.
And, of course, there were the wishes.
It was widely believed by the townsfolk of Endicott that natives born in the small town in a year of the comet’s appearance were blessed in a way no one else was. Simply put, if someone was born in the year of the comet, and if that someone made a wish the year Bob returned, while the comet was making its pass directly overhead, then that someone’s wish would come true the next time Bob paid a visit.
Rosemary, Kirby and Angie had all been born the last time Bob came around. And the night before the dance, as the three girls had lain in Angie’s backyard while the comet passed directly overhead, each of them had made a wish.
Angie had wished that just once, something or someone exciting would happen to the small southern Indiana town. Which, of course, Rosemary was certain now, blew any chance for the myth of the wishes to come true, because nothing exciting ever happened in Endicott.
Kirby had wished for a forever-after kind of love, the kind normally found only in books and movies. Another longshot, as far as Rosemary was concerned. Not only did Rosemary not believe in that kind of love, but Kirby hadn’t ever even been on a date, let alone had anything even remotely resembling a boyfriend. All she did was go to school and take care of her invalid mother. All the boys in Endicott just thought Kirby was too sweet and too nice for any of them to ever want to take her out for romantic reasons. Not that Kirby hadn’t tried.
And Rosemary... She sighed with much satisfaction now when she recalled her own wish. Rosemary had wished that that pizza-faced little twerp Willis Random would get what was coming to him someday. And that, she thought, was a wish with some potential. Even if she had to be the one administering justice herself, she’d see to it that somehow, some way, someday, Willis would get his.
Oh, yeah, Rosemary thought smugly as she noted again the pizza-faced little twerp standing in the corner of the gym all by himself. Someday—say fifteen years from now—Willis Random was going to pay for the way he had treated her in high school. He’d get his. She knew he would.
After all, she had Bob on her side.
One
He had been hoping Rosemary March would age badly. Even though he knew she was only thirty now, he had been praying that when he saw her again, she would be gray-haired, haggard-looking, stoop-shouldered, wrinkled and flabby. She was, after all, two years older than he was. Unfortunately, from the looks of her, Rosemary had only improved with age.
When Willis Random had rounded her kitchen doorway only seconds before and seen her for the first time in thirteen years, he had halted in his tracks, unable to say a word because his mouth and throat had suddenly gone dry. Common courtesy dictated that he should say something to make her aware of his presence in her home. Their past history together demanded that he feel defensive about it, even though he was here at her mother’s invitation. But once he got a load of Rosemary standing there, he simply could not utter a sound.
Bent at the waist, she leaned lazily forward with her elbows propped on the kitchen counter. Her gaze was fixed on the dark liquid dripping methodically from the coffeemaker, her heavy-lidded eyes indicating she was clearly still half-asleep. As if that hadn’t been enough, Willis noted further with a gasp that got stuck somewhere in his throat, her attire—what little there was of it—upheld her not-quite-awake status.
Flowered cotton bikini panties hugged extremely wellrounded hips, and a cropped white undershirt revealed an expanse of creamy skin most men saw only in glossy centerfolds. She was wearing white kneesocks, too, one having fallen halfway down her calf, the other scrunched down around her ankle. Her hair was a tousle of dark brown, chin-length curls, rumpled from sleep and the fact that she had a fistful bunched in one hand.
She was a vision straight out of a thirteen-year-old boy’s fantasies.
