So, I did.
I turned around and left. It wasn’t until I was sitting in the dry cleaning van, crying and wondering where I was going to sleep that I realized I’d lost the white scarf that I needed to return to the cleaners.
17
Tommy
“What do you mean it’s not stolen?” the blonde at the dry cleaners screeched into the phone. “It’s ours and she took it. She stole it! I don’t care if it’s registered to her! That’s just paperwork. It’s ours and she took it! It’s a big, blue van with mismatched hub caps. It has fuzzy blue dice hanging from the rearview mirror. You have to find it.”
I rang the little bell at the desk irritably. I’d been listening to this weird one-sided conversation for going on ten minutes now. I was running out of patience.
At the sound of the bell, the girl looked over her shoulder at me and put up a finger telling me to be quiet like an errant child. I frowned back at her, but she wasn’t paying me any attention. I was stuck listening to her phone conversation, which didn’t sound like it was work-related.
The blonde stuck her head behind a pink, velvet curtain, holding the receiver away from her mouth. “Connie! Get out here. There’s a customer.”
“I can’t!” a voice came from the back. “The machine will rip my arm off if I leave it.”
“Ugh,” the blonde growled. She looked like she might rip Connie’s arm off herself. “Fine. I’ll deal with it all myself.”
Nice customer service, I thought. Cindy should really change her dry cleaners.
“Listen,” the blonde continued with the person on the phone. “I know she did the registration. But that doesn’t mean it belongs to her. It belongs to us. She can’t just steal our van. I know you’re saying that no crime was committed, but it was.”
Whoever was on the other end of the line, and I assumed it was probably the police, hung up on her. The blonde made an angry squealing noise and banged her mobile phone against the wall. She was about Cindy’s age, if I had to guess. Maybe a bit older. I hoped she would remember Cindy.
“How can I help you,” she grumped when she came over to look at me properly. Then her jaw dropped open. “You’re Tommy Prince.”
I shrugged. It wasn’t exactly easy to hide who I was. Unless I was willing to go the way my uncle Connor did and wear a literal disguise around, I was stuck being recognized. I was conspicuous, especially considering the billboards hung around town advertising me.
“I’m looking for Cindy Brown’s address,” I told the blonde. “This is her scarf. I want to return it to her.”
I placed the scarf on the counter between us. I’d rushed over here this morning, praying this would work. It had to work.
There was something wrong with Cindy’s phone. I couldn’t believe she’d ghost me; our chemistry was too good. The only explanation was that something strange had happened to her phone. Maybe it had been hacked. Or destroyed. Maybe she forgot to take it out of her pocket during the sky dive and it had gotten cracked. Luckily, I had her scarf. The scarf led me here. I’d find her that way.
I’d find her some way. Even in a city of four million, I’d find her.
“Who?” the girl behind the counter stuttered. Her eyes were huge. I could see myself reflected in them. They were the palest blue, almost white. It was eerie.
“Cindy Brown,” I repeated. “I’m looking for her.”
Was the girl starstruck? That happened sometimes. People just forgot how to talk around me. It was awful and annoying. Also, oddly, embarrassing. I was just a person. I really was. But sometimes people seemed to think I was more, and that made me feel, perversely, inadequate.
“Cindy Brown?” the girl parroted. She swallowed hard and stared at me, pale. “Seriously? Cindy? You’re looking for Cindy?”
“Yes. Can you tell me where she lives? I’m looking for her and her phone is disconnected.”
“She’s… I don’t know where she is. I mean I don’t know who that is.” She seemed to be short-circuiting. Like her programming was on a loop.
I blinked. This was weird. This was officially very weird.
“Can you look up the ticket on the scarf and tell me what address it’s attached to?” I questioned. The girl was staring at me hungrily now. Her blue eyes were searching my face. This was not the way I expected this interaction to go. I thought I’d be in and out of this place by now.
“I, uh, I—” the girl couldn’t articulate a response. She just stared at me and her mouth worked up and down. “One second.”
She dashed to the back of the store, panting. She looked over her shoulder before she disappeared, practically shaking.
That girl knew where Cindy was. That was for sure. Otherwise why was she acting like such a weirdo?
“Hello,” a new voice said. The middle-aged version of the girl at the counter appeared from the depths of the shop. She cantered forward on very tall stilettos. I squinted. Did the girl step into a time machine in the back? “We can’t give you the personal address of any customer, but perhaps we can help another way.”
The woman in front of me had a lean and hungry look. She smiled at me. At least, however, she seemed to be able to speak in complete sentences. Something her daughter, and I was one hundred percent certain that girl was her daughter, didn’t seem to be able to do well.
“Oh?” I asked.
“Yes,” she smiled. There was a predatory glint to it.
I shook my head. Oh hell no. This place was not the way to find Cindy. I should go talk to the organizers of the benefit. Maybe they had her address on file from when she registered.
“Never mind,” I said, backing out. “I’ll find her some other way.”
“Wait!” the woman said, but I was already out the door. “Let’s make a deal!”
Whatever kind of deal this woman wanted to offer me was bad news. That was obvious enough. I wasn’t stupid or gullible enough to stay here another second. Hollywood is full of people who want to scam you in one way or another. You develop a sort of sixth sense for it after a while. My scam-o-sense was going crazy now.
Then I got back to my car, took a deep breath of relief, and realized the younger blonde had followed me. She seemed to have recovered the powers of speech, too.
“I’m Quincy,” she told me. “Cindy’s my stepsister. Take me to lunch and I’ll tell you where she is.”
Huh. Not what I expected. But at least it was progress.
18
Cindy
I was officially a van dweller. Did that make me homeless? Was living in a van considered homeless? I woke up contemplating this and other questions relevant to my sudden, total change in circumstances. Maybe I should have been terrified, but I was halfway optimistic. But I had a lot of problems.
Where would my next meal come from? That was the most pressing. I had approximately seven hundred dollars on my debit card, not horrible, but not a lot. I took the van over to the grocery store and bought myself a whole box of cereal. I nibbled on the Cheerios as I considered my options.
I could live off Cheerios for a while, but I couldn’t live out of the van forever. My seven-hundred-dollar net worth was also not enough for a security deposit on an apartment of my own. Rents weren’t cheap in LA. Even the crappiest, most dangerous parts of the city were expensive.
I’d also abandoned my birth certificate and social security card at the dry cleaners. They were in the safe in the back. Luckily, I knew I could slip in at night and steal them back. I had a key.
Which left me with my most pressing problem, which wasn’t missing Tommy. I shouldn’t miss him. I barely knew him. And he was better off not knowing me.
I shook my head to dislodge his face from my mind’s eye. My most pressing problem wasn’t Tommy Prince. It was the fact that I didn’t have a job.
At least, however, I had a marketable skill and a hunch. I wasn’t helpless. Hopefully. Still feeling headachy and wearing yesterday’s clothes, I drove around for a while, eventually making my way ov
er to the theater district. I’d never been here before, so I had no idea which one to pick. I picked the nicest looking one and walked inside, figuring I could always work my way down if the pretty theater told me to eff off.
“Hi,” I asked the first person I saw, “do you need a seamstress?” I made a confident face.
The guy raised his eyebrows at me. He was carrying something heavy. “Actually, we do. Good timing.” He cocked his head back at the stage since his hands were full. “Go find Lena. You’ll know her when you see her.”
I wandered back down the aisle and into the backstage area. Everyone around me looked busy, and no one took any notice of the new person in their midst. I walked around until I saw someone who stood out. It didn’t take long before I found her.
Lena turned out to be an extraordinarily tall, statuesque brunette in her late fifties. She regarded me over her rose-colored glasses (yes, really). Her lipstick was too red for her complexion and her eye makeup was sparkly. Her dress was too short and too tight, and it had sequins on it. She pulled it all off. If I had to hazard a guess, she dressed this loudly every day. I liked her immediately. She seemed a bit less convinced about me.
“Yeah. I’m Lena. I’m the director. Seamstress, huh?” She cocked her head to the side. “You must have a sixth sense. We’re working on a production of As You Like It and our costumer just quit.”
I’d read that play in high school. If I recalled correctly, it had involved a lot of gender swapping.
“I can do the work,” I said, standing up straight and trying to project confidence. I had no clue if it was working, but I tried really, really hard.
“Have you ever worked in a theater before?” Lena asked. She seemed to be buying it.
“No. But I can do it.” I smiled.
“Do you have any references?” she asked me.
“I can show you my work. But I’m new in town. I don’t have any references.”
She nodded. “I figured you must be. Most people who live here aren’t crazy enough to just walk in somewhere and look for a job.”
I shrugged. “Maybe it will pay off.”
She flashed her teeth at me. It wasn’t quite a smile, but not quite a sneer either. “Maybe so. But how can I trust that you can actually do the job?”
“Do you want to see my work?” I asked.
Luckily, I had two or three dresses in the back of the van that I’d done small work on. I’d meant to take the van out this morning and do the deliveries, but that seemed unnecessary now. The merchandise was insured, and my problems were more pressing. If Marigold was smart, she’d write it off as a loss. Thankfully, the van was registered to me. It was my legal property, but only because my stepmother was too lazy to do the paperwork herself. But none of that mattered.
Getting this job mattered.
Lena shrugged her sequined shoulders, sending little rainbows of light off in every direction. “No. I don’t want to see your work. I want to see you work. Alter that dress over there to fit me. If you can do it, you’re hired.”
I blinked. This wasn’t what I expected. I thought I’d get, like, a job application.
Did he miss me? Was he thinking of me? The thought came out of nowhere. I pushed it from my mind. I’d dreamed about Tommy all night long, but it was time to save myself.
“Sure,” I told Lena, recovering myself. I pushed thoughts of Tommy away. I’m sure he’d forgotten me. Better for me to forget him. “How long do I have?”
I picked up the dress. It was lined, but at least it was A-line. There was a zipper in the back rather than on the side. That would make it easier. The material was a cheap, polyester blend, in a loud blue and yellow flower pattern. The pattern was random, so it would be forgiving. I could do this.
“Two hours?” Lena asked. “Is that reasonable?”
No. Not really. That was laughably fast. But I could do it.
“I can have it done in one,” I told her. I could be anyone now. I didn’t have to be meek and mousy if I didn’t want to be. I could be bold and brash like Lena. I could be confident and proud of who I was. I could even impress people if I tried hard enough. “You wear an eight?” I asked her.
Lena smiled. “More like a twelve, but I appreciate the thought.” She winked at me. “I’ll be back in an hour. Oh, and add a pair of sleeves, would you? I like bell cuffs.”
Shit! I sat down at the machine and got to work.
19
Tommy
“Cindy’s my stepsister, actually,” Quincy told me over a ham and cheese sandwich. Her smile was almost apologetic, like she was embarrassed to admit the connection. “Her father married my mother when I was twelve. We’ve been taking care of her since her dad died a couple of years ago. We grew to like her after a while.” She shook her head like she was admitting to taking care of a poor, abandoned puppy with one leg, and not her own sister.
If Quincy and Cindy became stepsisters when Quincy was twelve, that meant that they’d been family for more than a decade. Apparently, it hadn’t been enough time for feelings to spring up.
“Cindy mentioned she had sisters,” I offered.
Quincy raised an eyebrow. “Did she?” She shook her head. “Well, we aren’t actually related. We aren’t sisters.” Her voice was dismissive.
Jeez. Okay. Tell me how you really feel.
I’d taken Quincy to a trendy place in West Hollywood. I wanted her to talk. That meant treating her nicely and making her comfortable, even though she kind of gave me the creeps. I felt deeply unsettled by this entire interaction, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on why.
“Why did your mother say she didn’t know who Cindy is?” I asked. I wasn’t hungry at all, it was a bit early for lunch, but I was humoring Cindy’s sister. She was, for now at least, my only lead.
Quincy shrugged her shoulders and waited for a passing waiter to move away before answering.
“Cindy’s got issues.” Her voice was a reedy whisper. Quincy rolled her index finger in a circle at her temple to indicate ‘crazy.’ “My mom doesn’t like to talk about it. She’s embarrassed.”
Cindy was… crazy? I struggled to understand what I was hearing. I frowned at Quincy who stared steadily back at me without blinking.
“Do you know where Cindy is?” I asked, wondering if that was a strange, bad joke. I sometimes said my brothers were crazy as well. “I’m trying to find her. Her phone isn’t working.”
“Why do you want to find her?” Quincy asked. She seemed confused.
“I want to return her scarf.” I didn’t have to admit to being in love with her. Especially not to her mean sister.
“It’s just a scarf. And I can tell you right now that she stole that from the dry cleaners. It’s not even hers.”
“I just want to find her.”
“Why?”
“Because we went on a date and I like her,” I spit out. Quincy blinked in shock. “And I want to find her. Do you know where she is?”
Quincy shrugged her shoulders and flipped her hair. She took a deep drink of her soda before continuing. Her table manners weren’t the greatest, which was odd, because Cindy’s were perfect. “Cindy took off last night. We think she went back to Wisconsin. She stole the van in the middle of the night.”
I blinked. What? At least now I understood the conversation about the van.
“Why do you think she went back to Wisconsin?” I asked.
Altoona, Wisconsin, if memory served. If I had to go there to find Cindy, I would. But why did she run? If she was in trouble. she could have just called me…
“Like I said, she has mental issues. Serious ones. Poor Cindy, she really is troubled. I’m sure whatever she told you were lies by the way. How did you meet her anyway?” Quincy smiled at me like we were friends. She wasn’t quite as creepy as her mom was, but I got bad vibes from her.
I was pretty good at guessing about people’s lives. If I had to guess, Quincy here wanted something from me. Something I didn’t want to give her. And weir
dly, I didn’t even think it was sex. That meant it was probably money.
“We met at a charity ball.” Thoughts of that night drifted through my head. It was only a few days ago, but it felt like forever. In fact, it felt like forever since I’d kissed Cindy although it had only been a day. I missed her already. More than I cared to admit.
“Cindy went to a charity ball?” Quincy almost choked on her sandwich and then laughed and rolled her eyes. Her tone was dismissive. “Like I told you, she’s completely crazy. She probably snuck in or stuffed somebody in a closet and took their place. Seriously, she’s dangerous. Unpredictable. It’s good you found us. You’re way better off without her.”
“Cindy’s really got mental problems?” I asked, although I felt bad even entertaining the thought. She hadn’t seemed crazy at all. A bit frustrated maybe. A bit shy at times. But smart and capable. If anyone so far had seemed crazy, it was this family. They gave me the heebie-jeebies.
But Cindy had let me think she was a socialite. That wasn’t true. She’d been vague in her actual answers to my questions, but she let me fill in the blanks myself. She’d lied by omission to let me think she was from a wealthy family. Clearly, she wasn’t. If anything, the opposite was true. Her family operated a pretty terrible looking dry cleaning business in the worst part of town. For a moment, I didn’t know what to think.
Was Cindy sick? She didn’t seem sick.
“She’s totally certifiable,” Quincy told me. Quincy made a fatal error then, although she didn’t know it. “That’s why we try to keep her away from people,” she told me. “It’s better if she just stays in the back of the dry cleaners. She’s good at cleaning and putting on buttons and stuff. Not much good at anything else. She’s not that smart.”
The pieces clicked into place in my mind. Cindy wasn’t crazy. She wasn’t stupid either. Her family was controlling her—smothering her.
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