Scammed

by Kristen Simmons

  “You’re right,” I say. “We definitely snuck out to have a threesome.”

  “How was it?” She makes another turn, Caleb’s bumper in view three cars ahead. “Kind of awkward? Seems like there’d be a lot of elbows and knees involved.”

  I groan. “So many knees.”

  As we come to a stoplight, the comfortable silence grows brittle.

  I clear my throat. “Caleb and I kissed, and Grayson caught us.”

  “Oh shit.”

  “That’s what Caleb said.”

  “What’d you do?”

  I slump in the seat, my heels tapping against the floorboards. “Chased after Grayson. Told him I’m the worst.”

  “You kind of are.”

  I’m not forgiven for the party, but I think she might be joking.

  “What’d he say?” she asks.

  “He agreed.” I grip my knees, wishing this part wasn’t so hard. “I’m sorry I missed the rest of your party.”

  Her right shoulder lifts, then falls. “Whatever. It’s fine.”

  We both know it’s not.

  The light turns green, and we pull forward. But Caleb’s turn signal is already on, and he’s heading into a lot marked Sikawa City Transit Authority.

  The train station.

  “I’ll make it up to you,” I tell her. “We’ll go out dancing. I’ll buy you a whole cake.”

  Her green eyes light up in a scary way. “And a new cashmere sweater?”

  I think of the Ginger Princess T-shirt I made, still sitting in a wrapped box in my closet. I’d intended to give it to her after the party, when she could try it on as we ate M&M’s and hung out, but maybe that wasn’t a good idea after all. “Sure.”

  “And some earrings. Good ones. Platinum.”

  Danger, danger, danger. “I guess?”

  She slumps in her seat. “You sound like the girls on my assignments.”

  The rich girls, she means. I feel something tear inside me. Charlotte barely knew me on my birthday, and she still threw a basement party, with a homemade cake, and gave me a lei made out of construction paper. It’s not about stuff, it’s about being there.

  She’s been there, and I haven’t.

  But still, her party was for fun. This is serious. This is Caleb, possibly jeopardizing all of our positions at Vale Hall. If she knew what was at stake, she wouldn’t be so upset.

  She pulls into a spot in the back of the lot. “Have fun stalking.”

  I open the door to get out, eyes trained on Caleb’s car as he finds a closer spot.

  “Pick me up later?” I ask, guilt spreading. I know what it looks like—like I’m that girl who ditches her friends for a boy—but this is different. Caleb’s gotten himself into some kind of trouble. Dr. O thinks he’s endangering the program. When I get back I’ll explain everything. Charlotte will understand.

  She points to the front of the building. “There he goes.”

  With a quick good-bye, I race after Caleb, tugging my coat on as I run. My eyes stay trained on his glossy black hair and his leather coat as his stride picks up speed. Inside, he bypasses the pay stations and heads straight toward the turnstiles. I race after him, digging through my pockets for a leftover ticket.

  With fifty cents left on my pass, I make it through the metal arm and keep a careful distance behind Caleb as he takes the escalator to the upper level. At the top, he waits near the edge of the platform, checking his phone with a scowl creasing his brow.

  Did someone send him a message, or is he just checking the time?

  Who is he in such a hurry to meet?

  Gripped by a sudden change of conscience, I fall back into the crowd. This is Caleb I’m following. The same boy I was making out with last night. The guy who brought me into the fold of Vale Hall, and taught me the ropes, and drew pictures of me alongside skyscrapers in a copy of A Tale of Two Cities.

  This is the same Caleb who introduced me to his family. I have hugged his mom, and laughed with his brothers, and seen his dad pinned together by metal and machines.

  This is the Caleb I’ve wondered if I’m in love with.

  Following him breaks something between us. This is a line I’m crossing, and if I continue, whatever trust is between us will be gone.

  I wonder if he thought this same thing when he followed me to Risa’s.

  My resolve hardens as the train pulls into the station. With a hiss, the doors bounce open. Caleb gets inside one car, and just like he did the first day he followed me back to Devon Park, I get in behind him.

  He doesn’t see me—I make sure of it. I keep to the back of the crowded compartment, standing with the other passengers, my face to the window. I watch him through the reflection in the glass, his face warped with worry as he checks his phone again.

  Doubt needles through my suspicion.

  By the time we reach our first stop, I’m wondering if he really is going to Sycamore Township to follow some new recruit, or to his father’s care home in White Bank. He could have told security he was going out on assignment as a cover, but really something happened with his dad, and he didn’t tell me because he knew Grayson might be listening. The story’s so built up in my mind, I’m almost shocked when he gets off the train at Lake Street in Uptown.

  I follow fifteen feet behind him as he skips down the stairs and walks quickly into the heart of the business district. I’ve come to recognize these streets since I began my internship, and as we pass the police station on my left, I shiver, thinking of Jimmy Balder’s parents walking down the steps in that picture on Dr. O’s laptop.

  A block past the station, before we get to the Macintosh Building where The Loft and Sterling’s campaign headquarters are located, Caleb turns. The sidewalk is crowded with commuters, and I nearly lose him as he ducks through a restaurant’s outdoor seating area, past a metal cylindrical heater, and cuts into an alley. Near the edge, I pause, reluctant to follow with so few people to hide behind.

  He doesn’t go far. As I wait beside the heater, warming my hands with the other customers waiting to get in, I see him slow beside the restaurant’s kitchen exit. He walks hesitantly forward, then stops and rolls back his shoulders. His next steps are steady, more confident.

  I’ve seen this change in him before—right before he runs game.

  Repositioning myself on the other side of the heater, I can make out the shadowed profile of another person—a girl, I’m guessing, based on the curves and height. A cold readiness washes over me before I consider the options of who this might be or why Caleb’s meeting her in some shady alley in Uptown. If he’s in trouble, I’m close enough to step in.

  He stands two feet away from the other person, his head tilted down as he listens to what she has to say. His hair hides his eyes—I can’t make out his take on the situation—and when she slides toward him, I edge closer to the corner, prepared to come to his defense.

  The way he did when I was with Mark.

  I swallow my shame. This can’t be his assignment—he was supposed to tail the new girl, not make contact. She was in Sycamore, not Uptown.

  I tilt my ear toward the alley, but it’s impossible to hear him over the noise off the street. The girl is twisting her finger through her hair, drawing Caleb’s gaze there. Then she reaches for him, toying with the collar of his shirt.

  I wait.

  His hand covers hers.

  My stomach twists.

  She leans in, whispering something in his ear, so close she could kiss him.

  I fight the urge to look away.

  My heart counts the seconds until she finally pulls back.

  Then Caleb is leaving, heading straight toward me. I should stop him and say something, but I don’t know what. Instead, I turn toward the heater, hiding my face, trying to make sense of what I just witnessed.

  Caleb passes without noticing me, heading down the street in the same direction we came. I feel like I’ve done something awful, like I’ve drunk poison and am waiting for it to take hold.


  I wait until the girl leaves the alley, needing to see who Caleb’s come all this way to meet in secret. I tuck my chin into the collar of my coat and keep my head turned as she approaches. My hands fist in front of the heater. I have no right to be angry with her, not after what’s happened with Grayson. But I am.

  Then she steps into the light, and I feel as if the ground has given way beneath my feet, and I’m falling straight through to the sewer below.

  Long black hair braided over her shoulder.

  Copper skin and dark eyes.

  A black skirt and a wool coat, open to reveal a white button-down top with a snug black tie.

  Myra Fenrir.

  CHAPTER 26

  The train ride home takes approximately forty-seven years. I miss my exit and don’t have enough cash to refill my ticket, so I end up waiting for a hard turn on the train, then falling into a man to snag a ticket from his coat pocket just to get back.

  Being right has never felt so awful. Caleb has been following me. Lying since the first night he told me about his new assignment. He was never tracking some potential recruit in Sycamore Township—he was using Myra to spy on me. And that’s even worse, because she doesn’t deserve to be conned.

  I doubt she thought twice before trusting him. She’s a nice person, and that’s what nice people do. But it’s also what makes her a perfect mark.

  People like her never see people like us coming.

  Why couldn’t it have been anyone else? I like Myra. We’re friends—kind of.

  Which is exactly why he chose her.

  I can’t figure out what he’s trying to learn from her. Whatever he said to win her over must have been smooth. I saw the easy way she approached him. How she flirted with him. I wish I could unsee it.

  Distant, the director said. Troubled.

  Because Caleb’s conning me, and working my contacts for information. Maybe at Dr. O’s orders.

  My mind keeps churning out more questions. How long, and why, and how could I have been so blind? He said he needed to tell me something in the garden, but we’d been kissing awhile before he got to that.

  Would he have mentioned Myra, or was that off-limits?

  What game is he playing?

  I call Charlotte to pick me up from the train station, but I don’t tell her what’s going on. She’s in her own world anyway, and when we get to the house, she goes to study, and I head up the stairs to my room. I don’t see Caleb at dinner, but Henry is back, tight-lipped about his day and the stacks of cash he no longer seems to have. As he and Grayson head into the study to finish the reading on Othello, Sam asks if I’ve heard the news.

  “What’s that?” I say.

  “Caleb’s on an overnight pass,” he tells me. “Something with his dad. I think he might be in the hospital.”

  Worry clenches around my spine. “Who told you that?”

  “Heard Moore telling Belk about it.” Sam pulls at the brim of his hat. “I never knew his dad was around. He only talks about his mom.”

  Because he’s afraid of jeopardizing his father’s care by screwing up here.

  So afraid he’s stealing my marks to get information on me.

  I picture his mom and his brothers. Even if I’m on the wrong end of this, I can imagine the sickness Caleb must feel on their behalf if his dad is really going downhill. I hear Caleb telling me about right after the accident, when he and his mom had to make decisions about his dad’s care without knowing what they were dealing with. The powerlessness they all felt when they learned he would be paralyzed and on life support.

  And then, with a punch of guilt, I wonder if this overnight pass story is true, or if it’s just some cover for the bigger con he’s really pulling.

  And I hate myself for wondering.

  I text Caleb as soon as I get back to my room.

  What happened? Is your dad ok?

  But he doesn’t respond, and the doubt spreads, like a cancer, through my mind.

  * * *

  THE NEXT DAY, Moore drops me off ten minutes early for work. I expect to see Myra waiting tables or downing another giant coffee near her locker when I arrive, but she’s nowhere to be found. Pierre tells me she hasn’t called in, though, so I take my place at the hostess station and wait for her arrival.

  I intend to find out everything she knows about Caleb, and what exactly he wants to know from her.

  When Mark arrives for the campaign’s afternoon meeting, he barely looks at me, buffering his presence with four other staffers. I’m not sure if human resources has contacted him about his behavior yet, but either way, he’s scared.

  Good. He should be.

  “What about that church?” one of the senior staff asks as I lead them to their room. She pulls out her phone, scrolling through stories as she weaves around tables. “That man was just arrested this morning for embezzling all that money from them.”

  “Perfect,” says the woman behind her, wearing a royal blue Greener Tomorrows with Senator Sterling shirt. “I’ll schedule Matt to speak to the congregation. Something about the importance of community involvement. Standing together in times like these. That should get the press off his ass about the medication bill.”

  I stand aside as they filter into the room, catching sight of the first woman’s phone screen as she passes by. A familiar face fills the box on the left side of the screen. The man is pale, grimacing in his orange jumpsuit. His hair is thin and uncombed, and I start as I recognize Luke, Henry’s stepfather.

  I only see part of the caption below, but it’s enough. Cash Found in Car …

  I see the money Dr. O handed Henry from the safe—the stacks of green bills Henry stuffed into his pockets. I hear Henry’s voice, whispering that he’s cleaning up his mess.

  Luke deserved it. He hurt Henry. He went to the cops. Maybe he recognized Grayson before, maybe they showed him a picture once he got there; either way, he threatened everything we have at Vale Hall.

  But this feels wrong. Henry was mad at his stepdad, but not mad enough to send him to prison. Dr. O must have pushed him, threatened expulsion maybe.

  And Henry went to Grayson last night when he came home. Not to me, or Charlotte, or Sam.

  The family I’ve found is unravelling, and I don’t know how to stop it.

  I reach for my phone, and I’m scrolling through to find Henry’s name when Myra walks through the door. She’s wearing her heavy coat, her hair windblown but her eyes bright. She smiles at me, and I make myself smile back.

  “Is it too much to hope that Jessica hasn’t noticed I’m late?” she says quietly, glancing around the pavilion for our boss. “There was a huge pileup on the highway.”

  Two days ago, I would have believed her without question. Now I’m not sure what is truth and what is lie.

  “I think she’s too busy to care,” I say. Jessica is in the kitchen, inspecting every plate before it’s served to make sure there are no more health code violations. She got lucky—Mr. Jefferies agreed not to report the Band-Aid due to the long-standing good service he’d received from the club, but Jessica isn’t about to allow another slipup on her watch.

  Myra nods and starts to head toward the lockers, but I step in front of her before she can pass. Everything in me is screaming to ask about Caleb.

  “Wait,” I say. “Jessica will come out in a minute to recheck the bar—you can slip through the kitchen then.”

  She nods. “Good call. Thanks.”

  “We should go out sometime,” I say. “You and me.”

  Her brows arch. “Why?”

  Not exactly the response I was hoping for.

  “Um, because it’d be fun to have a girls’ night?”

  “Yeah.” Her cheeks take on a pink glow. “That would be awesome. When? Tonight?”

  “Tonight’s good for me.”

  She does a little shimmy. I wish I didn’t have an ulterior motive.

  “Is there something going on?” she asks. “Is there a reason you wanted to get together
?”

  There’s intention in her tone, and it occurs to me a beat later that she might think this is a date.

  “Not really.”

  She’s nodding. A lot. “Okay. Cool. Food? Coffee? Ice cream?”

  “All of the above? I just thought we could talk.”

  “About what?” She’s stopped nodding and is holding my gaze as if expecting a confession of some sort.

  I may have approached this wrong.

  “I don’t know. We always talk about me. I don’t know anything about you. I don’t even know where you live.” I lean a little closer. “Or if you’re dating anyone.”

  She slumps, and I’m positive now I’ve said the wrong thing. Her expression locks down, and a chilly distance fills the space between us.

  “No boyfriend,” she says. “Definitely no boyfriend.”

  “Definitely.” I lean against the wooden stand. “That sounds like a story.”

  “It isn’t. There was a guy. Now there’s not.”

  I think of the way she touched Caleb’s collar. I’d been so sure she was flirting with him, but maybe I misread what had happened. Was he turning her down?

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  “Not nearly as sorry as I am.”

  “What happened?”

  She takes off her coat. Folds it over one arm. “I screwed things up.”

  I can’t help feeling bad for her. Caleb might be playing her, and she’s the one thinking she messed up.

  How many people have we screwed up while working a job? I don’t want to add Myra’s name to the growing list of people who hate me.

  “He was kind of perfect.” She unbraids her hair and runs her fingers through the black strands. “I miss him.”

  Her words echo through me, evoking an image of Caleb on the roof, with a card against his chest that says Trust. I wish I could go back to that moment, before I saw him with Myra when he was supposed to be tailing some recruit in Sycamore Township. Before he and Geri danced together at Family Day. Before I kissed Grayson.

  “How’d you meet him?”

  Her mouth curves in the tiniest of smiles. “It was at this coffee place near the Rosalind Hotel. He was arguing with the barista about how the building was used in A Love to Remember, you ever seen that movie?”