Drea cracked her gum. “Who doesn’t want money?”
Money was never that important to me. This was the privilege of always growing up with just enough—but not too much—of it. New York City was home to some of the worst rich people on the planet. And yet, with a few thousand dollars, I could live large in ways otherwise unaffordable to a college student on the budget. Like taking a cab downtown instead of the 1 train. Or seeing Broadway shows that were still too popular for half-priced matinees. Maybe even renting an apartment near campus next summer, getting an unpaid internship at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, and never going back to work at the mall. But it hardly seemed worth even fantasizing about a treasure I didn’t believe in.
But Drea very clearly did.
“You must have big plans for the money,” I insisted, “or the treasure hunt wouldn’t matter so much to you.”
Another spearmint snap. I’d struck a nerve.
“You dragged me into this,” I said. “The least you can do is tell me why.”
Drea nervously drummed her fingernails on a shelf. The ping-ping-ping of acrylics on metal was the only sound.
“The witch knows more than she’s letting on. She’s avoiding us.”
Just like you’re avoiding the truth about the treasure hunt, I thought.
“Zoe’s probably avoiding arrest,” I replied instead.
After running into Zoe at seemingly every turn, she had all but vanished from the mall recently.
“If I were her, I’d want full credit,” Drea said.
Zoe’s role in Slade Johnson’s hospitalization was purely speculative on our part. Without a confession from the man himself, there wasn’t any proof that she had anything to do with it. Physically, Slade was fine. He was never at risk of dying from too much beta-carotene—only embarrassment. After calling out sick for two weeks, he grudgingly returned to work with a complexion best described as “Dorito dust.”
“Speaking of orange,” Drea said, hooking her arm through mine and leading me toward the exit. “You should swing by Orange Julius on your break. Buy one for Sam Goody. Surprise him at work…”
“Waaaaaait!” Now I was the one shaking Drea’s shoulders. “I thought you weren’t listening to me!”
“Of course I was listening to you,” Drea replied. “Bellarosas are master multitaskers.”
“Then why couldn’t we talk about him and hunt treasure?” I asked. “Why did we work in silence?”
“Because I am a master multitasker,” Drea said, stepping into the elevator. “You are not.”
Was Drea being insulting? Or insightful?
I was so stymied by the question that I barely got inside the elevator before the doors shut on me.
25
ROMANTIC AND TRAGIC
Bellarosa Boutique was busier than ever in the weeks leading up to the Back-to-School Fashion Show. This was the mall’s biggest event of the summer and a very lucrative day for the store. I thought Bellarosa’s participation was kind of ridiculous, though. The boutique was a popular destination for homecoming dresses and prom gowns, but Drea was the only girl at Pineville High who’d actually worn its clothes to school. That she was voted Best Dressed in a landslide only reinforced how Bellarosa’s aesthetic was far more aspirational than practical.
Running the Back-to-School Fashion Show was a huge deal. Gia had to find models who’d walk the runway for free—mostly from the deep pool of Bellarosa cousins, but still, a time-consuming job—pull, style, and make alterations to their looks; choose the music; massage egos (“I’m not trying to make you look uglier than your sister, so put on those jodhpurs and shut your gawddamn mouth!”); and do it all in six-inch stilettos. While Gia focused on these logistics, Drea covered the appointment-only fittings and pop-in business from regulars. As hectic as it got, I never imagined I’d be of any use outside the back office until Gia commanded me to action.
“Cassie! I need you on the floor right now!”
“Me?”
“Yeah, you,” Gia said, taking me by the arm. “By special request.”
“Special request? Who would special request me? I’m not even a salesgirl.”
“This gentleman thinks you are,” Gia replied, dragging me away from the computer.
From the tiniest seed of desire, hope half bloomed in my heart. Sam Goody?
“Cassandra!”
All hope shriveled in my chest. I was humiliated by my own imagination.
“Frank.”
My father was wearing his typical off-duty attire: plaid shorts and a golf shirt with an embroidered tooth where a Polo pony would normally be. I hadn’t seen him in a few weeks. What was he doing here?
“Shouldn’t you be at work right now?” I asked.
“My eleven o’clock canceled,” he said. “Which gave me the perfect opportunity to slip out to go shopping.”
Oh, no no no. I was not getting involved with building another parent’s post-divorce wardrobe. No way would I help him select a blazer for Singles’ Night at Oceanside Tavern. Frank was on his own for this one.
“I recommend Chess King, conveniently located right across the Concourse,” I said. “Or there’s always the International Male Catalog…”
Frank chuckled.
“I’m not here for me, kiddo.” He knuckled my scalp. “I want to get something for your mother.”
“For Mom?! Why?”
Honestly, if he were here to get sized for a leather Speedo, I would’ve been less shocked.
“Well, she was just saying the other day how much she liked Bellarosa’s selection and service,” he said. “And you get a ten-percent commission on everything you sell, right? So I’d be helping you out too…”
I cut him off before he could continue.
“First of all, I’m not a salesgirl, I manage the books,” I explained. “Second of all, you and Mom are getting a divorce.”
“So?”
“So? You shouldn’t be buying her gifts!”
Frank sighed.
“It’s her birthday.”
I hadn’t spoken to Kathy much lately either. We still lived together, but I’d done a bang-up job at avoiding her too—the result of all the practice I’d gotten at the mall this summer. So I’d not only forgotten it was her birthday, but adeptly dodged any hints she might have dropped to remind me. How old was she … forty-three? Forty-four?
“She’s forty-five years young,” Dad answered without me having to ask.
“So what if it’s her birthday? If you still care enough to remember her birthday, you shouldn’t have moved out.”
I knew I sounded like a brat.
And I absolutely did not care.
“It’s not that simple, Cassandra,” Frank said. “We’ve known each other for twenty-five years. I’m never going to forget that August eighth is your mother’s birthday.”
That struck me as simultaneously romantic and tragic.
“We’re ending our marriage, but she’s still a part of my life,” he said. “And remember, I still work with her every day…”
“Which is also not normal!”
I knew better to even attempt keeping my job at America’s Best Cookie after Troy and I split up. Then again, I could only assume my mom wasn’t dry humping any of the dental assistants right in front of my dad. Or vice versa.
Drea emerged from the fitting rooms.
“Oh hi, Dr. Worthy.” Drea flashed her biggest smile. “Is everything okay here?”
“Drea! I am so pleased to see that you’ve obviously maintained an optimal dental care routine!”
“I floss after every meal,” she boasted. “And brush for a minimum of thirty seconds in each quadrant.”
“Good girl!” Frank clapped her on the back. “You might want to consider an upgrade to our new line of malleable fixed retainers…”
Even Drea had to respect my dad’s hustle—one salesperson to another.
“What can we help you with, Dr. Worthy?” Drea asked.
“Frank
wants to buy a gift for my mom.”
Drea’s eyes widened. “Are you two getting back together?”
“Oh no,” I answered before Frank could. “They’re still getting a divorce. My dad is here to buy my mom a slutty outfit for Singles’ Nights at Oceanside Tavern, you know, when she’s on the prowl for her next husband.”
Drea and Frank gawked at me, mouths agape.
“It sounds messed up,” I said. “Because it is.”
I announced I was taking a mental health break. Let Drea earn another 10 percent. If anyone was going to come out a winner from my parents’ dysfunctional relationship, it might as well be her.
26
SEEING RED
I immediately, almost instinctively, headed in the direction of Sam Goody. Lately, that was where I’d gone whenever I needed a little lift during my shift. And he always seemed pretty happy to see me too. But my conversation with Frank had left me feeling a bit off-kilter. Like, maybe I was trying a little too hard? Maybe my visits were getting to be too much for a friendship that would certainly end when I left for college? After all, with the exception of delivering damaged goods, he hadn’t reciprocated by showing up at my workplace …
I arrived at his store before I had a chance to talk myself out of seeing him.
“So I’ve been meaning to ask,” Sam said, “is your mom still enjoying The Broadway Album?”
He pulled the trigger on his pricing gun, slapping a red clearance tag on the solo album by the other guy in Wham! who wasn’t George Michael.
“Actually, I don’t ride to work with my mom anymore,” I explained. “Drea takes me.”
Sam looked up and suddenly got way busier with the pricing gun.
“Unnnngh.”
The store manager wheezed by us with a box of new releases from Arista Records. Looking gray, sweaty, and generally unwell, Freddy was a fortyish drummer for Boss in the USA, described by Sam as “the third most popular Bruce Springsteen tribute band on the Jersey Shore.” He was a decent supervisor, easy to please, except on Mondays when he was brutally hungover after a weekend of gigs. Sam greeted him cautiously.
“Morning, Freddy.”
“Unnnngh.”
Sam waited until Freddy entered the back office before resuming our conversation.
“Why do you get rides to work every day?” he asked.
He red-tagged the solo album by the other singer in The Go-Go’s who wasn’t Belinda Carlisle.
“I don’t have a license…”
“You don’t have your driver’s license? Are you kidding? I counted down the days until I could take my driver’s test at the DMV! Driving meant freedom!”
I shrugged.
“I never felt like I needed it until…”
I didn’t want to talk about Troy. Again, not because I was still pained by our breakup. It was embarrassing to admit out loud to Sam Goody that I had ever dated him at all.
“Until what?” Sam Goody asked.
“Until my boyfriend dumped me and I didn’t have anyone to drive me to work this summer,” I said. “But it won’t matter much longer. In exactly fifteen days I’ll be riding the subway in New York City where only the cabbies need driver’s licenses.”
I thought Sam Goody would be impressed by my metropolitan attitude.
He was not.
I watched him tag a bunch of other failed solo albums by lesser members of big bands—including the poor schmo from Genesis who wasn’t Phil Collins, Peter Gabriel, or Mike (+ the Mechanics) Rutherford—before speaking up.
“What?” I finally asked.
“Not getting your license is a dumb idea,” he replied. “You should really get your driver’s license.”
“I told you,” I said, “it won’t matter—”
“Right, because in fifteen days you’ll be gone,” he said. “But what about when you come home? You don’t want to rely on your parents or your ex-boyfriend to take you everywhere, do you?”
I hadn’t left yet. Why would I already be thinking about coming home? As if that weren’t annoying enough, he took his argument to an even more infuriating level.
“As a feminist, shouldn’t you value your independence?”
KA-BOOM. An anger so intense, it distorted my senses. I literally saw red, as if Sam Goody had pulled the trigger on a pricing machine gun and shot a million crimson clearance tags directly into my eyeballs.
“You know what feminists really love?” I retorted. “When men tell us how to be good feminists!”
“Hey, Bellarosa, I’m sorry,” Sam said, “I didn’t mean it that way…”
He set down the gun and took a step back in a show of surrender.
It wasn’t his fault, really. I could see he hadn’t intended to enrage me then, just as he hadn’t meant to upset me when we first met. Sam Goody pissed me off because he didn’t know me. I was starting to think that maybe I was a tough person to know. I mean, Troy and I dated for two friggin’ years, and I don’t think he ever knew me at all.
My parents were married for twenty friggin’ years.
Did anyone ever know anyone?
Standing in the clearance section, the last chance for all the saddest has-beens and barely-weres, I didn’t have that answer. But this I knew for certain: The fifteen days I had left in Pineville wouldn’t be enough for Sam Goody and me to reach a deeper level of understanding. So why even bother trying?
“Maybe I’ll solve the problem by never coming home at all,” I said. “It’s not like there’s anything here worth coming back for.”
Sam Goody took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Well, I guess that solves that.”
And then he abruptly excused himself to assist a customer who—like me—didn’t need his help.
27
HOSTAGE
I was in a bad mood for the next few days.
And to make matters worse, Drea had zero time to attempt to cheer me up. On this particular day, she was wrangling with an exceptionally challenging bridal party. It’s never easy finding a dress that fit and flattered a dozen bridesmaids of greatly varying shapes, sizes, and ages, but the future Mrs. Charles Cappuccio was really making Drea work for the commission.
“It’s gotta go with the theme,” the bride-to-be demanded.
“Which is?” Drea asked.
“Pretty Woman meets Dances with Wolves.”
Drea—ever the professional—responded with zero hesitation.
“Beverly Hills Heartland.”
I was thinking “Frontier Hooker.” But I doubt my suggestion would have elicited a downright orgasmic reaction from the future Mrs. Charles Cappuccio.
“Yes! Yes! Yes!”
I lacked Drea’s impressive improvisational skills. This is why I worked in the back office and not up front. Drea’s impeccable professionalism is to blame for what happened next. If she hadn’t been 100 percent consumed by the demands of the future Mrs. Charles Cappuccio, she would have used her body as a human barricade to stop my sworn enemy from trespassing on sacred turf.
“Knock knock.”
My ex had already entered the office when he said it. These words—like everything Troy had ever said to me—were meaningless.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
He blinked at me with blue-eyed bewilderment.
“Come now, Cassandra. That’s how you greet me?”
Troy was the only person besides my parents who called me Cassandra. The full-name formality equaled familiarity. I thought it was romantic when we were together, you know, because of the mythological connection between our names. But now, my skin crawled at the sound of those three syllables hissing against his lips.
“You have two seconds to get out of here before I call mall security.”
I picked up the phone to show him I meant it.
“I have your doll,” Troy said quickly.
I held the phone to my ear, refusing to believe what I’d just heard over the dial tone.
&nbs
p; “What?”
“I have your doll,” he repeated. “From the freezer.”
I slowly hung up the phone. Troy assumed the arrogant countenance I’d seen hundreds of times at Mock Trial competitions. This wasn’t an act. It was the expression that came most naturally to him and only meant one thing: He had the irrefutable evidence to win his case.
“I don’t believe you,” I lied.
“Believe me,” he said. “I tracked it down.”
Then he reached into the back pocket of his khakis and produced a Polaroid as proof.
“This is the doll you’re looking for.”
A pigtailed girl in purple overalls. No box, which I assumed meant she—unlike the dolls in the basement—had been played with.
Hugged.
Loved.
Thrillingly, a pink envelope rested in her lap. Could I get a good enough look to verify the doctored documentation? Or confirm that this was, indeed, the next clue…?
Troy snatched the photo away.
“You’ve seen enough,” he said.
“You won’t give it to me?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Then give it to me.”
He returned the photo to his back pocket.
“I didn’t say that either.”
Troy didn’t know why I wanted the doll, only that I did. And that was enough for him to hold it hostage. As much as it pained me to negotiate with a heartless terrorist, I didn’t want to let Drea down. This was our only opportunity to finish the treasure hunt before I left Pineville for college.
For good.
“Where did you find it?” I asked casually. I couldn’t let Troy know how much this doll mattered to me.
“The family who bought the America’s Best Cookie franchise found it deep in the freezer when they renovated One Potato Twenty,” he explained. “It went to one of the granddaughters.”
Troy had always been a tenacious problem-solver. As his Odyssey of the Mind teammate, it was a quality I had always valued, his unwillingness to give up on what seemed like an impossible problem right up to the second he figured out the solution.
“And you tracked down the granddaughter?”
The Mall Page 13