Scammed

by Kristen Simmons

  “Girls only,” says Charlotte stiffly.

  He still doesn’t know. It’s her choice to tell him, but I hurt for him all the same.

  “Sorry, Sam,” I say.

  “Nope,” he says, and fastens his seat belt. “Strange stuff’s going on around here—I know you wouldn’t turn over Caleb unless it was. So let me off when you get wherever you’re going, but for the drive, I want an explanation why one of my best friends was kicked out of school last night.”

  “Great,” mutters Charlotte. Her eyes flick to the clock on the dashboard, and I can hear her sharp intake of breath. Her appointment must be sometime soon. “You’re leaving when I park,” she says coldly.

  “No problem,” he answers.

  We pull out of the garage, but no one speaks until the front gate has closed behind us. To my relief, there are no detectives camped outside the gates.

  “All right.” Sam crosses his arms and leans back in his seat. “I’m listening.”

  I can think of ten reasons why spilling any of these secrets is a bad idea, starting with Dr. O finding out, and ending with Sterling’s detectives hunting us all down and killing us in our sleep, but in the end, I’m tired of hiding from my friends. I’m sick of Dr. O driving a wedge between us.

  “I’ve been working in a restaurant where Matthew Sterling’s staff meets,” I start, and the rest falls out of me from there. Mark. Caleb following me to Risa’s. Myra Fenrir, aka Margot. The senator and his detectives cornering me on the stairs. My mom’s new job with Wednesday, and the mysterious police report I used to try to save Caleb from the streets.

  By the end, Charlotte’s lost somewhere on the east side, having taken one wrong turn after another, and Sam’s holding his hands in front of his mouth as if praying.

  “Why didn’t you tell me any of this?” Charlotte finally asks.

  “I don’t know,” I answer. “I thought I couldn’t, I guess.”

  She’s quiet, and Sam’s quiet, and for once, my mind isn’t racing to build another lie or figuring out a way out of one. I’m free of Dr. O’s chokehold.

  I’ve even managed to kill the tension between Sam and Charlotte.

  “That’s a lot,” says Sam as we pass a sign for a belowground SCTA station. “But I get it. Caleb … I think he’d get it, too.”

  I don’t know about that.

  Charlotte’s still quiet as we pull over in front of a brick office building. My stomach clenches in anxiety for her.

  Sam reaches over the seat and grabs my shoulder. He doesn’t say anything, just squeezes, which is enough to make it hard to swallow. I pat his hand awkwardly.

  “I’m going to find Caleb and fix this,” I promise him. “I don’t know how, but I will.”

  Sam’s head falls forward. “He’s already offline. It’s like someone pressed a kill switch and poof. No more Caleb Matsuki. No Ryan Ikeda or any of his other alter egos. I couldn’t find a single mention or picture.”

  He’s already been erased, the way Margot was erased when she was kicked out.

  Maybe it’s stupid, but I hope Moore wasn’t the one to do it.

  “He must have gone home,” I say. “Do you have his mom’s number?”

  “No number,” says Sam, releasing my shoulder. “No address. Didn’t really have a reason to get it when the guy slept in the room next door.”

  “Margot might know how to reach him.” It hurts to say the words out loud, but Caleb trusted her, and might still.

  If I can’t find her, I know where Caleb’s dad is.

  At least where he has been. If his care’s been cut off, I don’t know where he’d go.

  It doesn’t matter. I’ll find him. I’ll get his mom’s address, even if that means breaking into Caleb’s personal files in Dr. O’s safe to do it.

  Charlotte still hasn’t spoken, and it occurs to me that she’s waiting for Sam to leave and may be too nervous to ask.

  I turn around and hitch a thumb toward the window. “There’s a train station two blocks back. You can call Moore when you get—”

  “No.” Charlotte shifts in the front seat. “No,” she says a little quieter. In the backseat Sam is frozen, one hand on the door handle. He’s not looking at Charlotte, he’s looking out the window, but in the side mirror I can see his reflection, and I’m pretty sure he’s holding his breath.

  “Brynn, you think you can ride the train back?” she asks. “I’ll get you at the station in a couple hours. Sam and I need to talk.”

  Sam’s hand falls into his lap. I’m scared and nervous for Charlotte, and so proud I think I might burst. It’s easy to think handling everything by yourself is safer, and smarter, and less messy than pulling in other people. But sometimes the collateral damage is greater when you face your demons alone.

  I reach for her hand and thread her fingers through mine. She nods and blows out a tense breath, and I go.

  I walk half a block down, then slip into the doorway of a bakery to watch the car, just in case things don’t go well. If she needs me, I’ll be here.

  Sam leaves the backseat and sits in the front. Through the back window I can see him take off his hat.

  Neither of them move for a long time. Then he reaches for her and they’re hugging. The minutes pass and they don’t move. They hold on to each other like a tornado is threatening to tear them apart.

  Whatever happens next, they’ll figure it out together.

  Like Caleb and I should have.

  Swallowing my regret, I lift my chin and jog to the train that will take me closest to the Macintosh Building.

  * * *

  I CAN’T GO into the club. If Sterling’s detectives haven’t tracked me around town already, they’re surely keeping tabs on my place of work. I linger inside a coffee shop across the street, hoping Margot comes in before her shift to get one of those fancy drinks she’s always stashing in her locker.

  An hour passes, and I’ve power-slurped my way through two hot chocolates by the time she finally shows, accompanied by Ben.

  Our eyes meet across the cart of stirring sticks and creamers, and her smile flattens.

  She knows I know about Caleb. She knows I’ve finally figured out who she is.

  I’m out of my chair immediately, but I don’t carve a direct path toward her. I make my way around the line, so that I can block off the exit in case she decides to bolt. She doesn’t, though; she keeps right on talking to Ben as if my discovery is nothing out of the usual.

  I want to kick something. I want to spill steaming hot coffee all over her nice wool coat.

  “Oh good,” says Ben when he sees me. “I’ve got twenty-six coffees to order. I’ll buy you a puppy if you help me carry them to the office.”

  He looks like he’s already had a little too much caffeine. He’s twitchy, which makes Margot look overly calm.

  “A puppy?” says Margot. “He only offered me his eternal gratitude.”

  “Guess he likes me better.” I stare at her.

  She stares back.

  “The barista is going to love us,” she says.

  “I can’t believe we’re even here today,” Ben adds.

  I may be standing face-to-face with the slickest con artist in the city, but at Ben’s grim tone, my stomach sinks.

  “Why?” I ask. “Did something else happen?”

  “You haven’t heard?” He looks to Margot, shocked. “Mark’s in the hospital. Someone jumped him last night after we got out. He’s at First Presbyterian now.”

  “What?”

  “He could’ve died,” says Ben. “I heard he broke his arm and six ribs. If there hadn’t been a witness, who knows what would’ve happened.”

  “A witness?” I’m frantically trying to absorb this new information. “They know who did this?”

  “Apparently it was a big guy.”

  “How big?”

  “I don’t know,” says Ben. “Scary looking is what I heard. Probably one of our voters, pissed about the health care thing.”

  O
r Geri’s father, sent by Sterling to tie up his loose ends around Jimmy’s disappearance. I think of the man’s arms, barely fitting in the suit jacket in that picture from the fund-raiser. A fixer, Geri called him.

  I try to shake the image from my head, but it sticks.

  “It was late,” says Ben. “I didn’t leave until after one. In case you missed it, my fearless leader jumped ship again.”

  I glance to Margot, who is watching me silently.

  “Oh yeah?” I ask quietly.

  “Yeah,” says Ben, irritated now. “Matt reverted his stance on gun control. You know, I picked this campaign because he stood up to the big arms sellers. Now he’s just as greasy as the rest of them.” He looks down at his list of drinks, scribbled on a scrap of paper.

  Dr. O’s gotten to Sterling again. Last night he said he needed to keep Grayson at Vale Hall for his safety, but I knew the truth. On the run, Grayson’s a liability. If his dad’s detectives got to him before Dr. O, Grayson could change his story. Say the phone wasn’t Susan’s. Blow up the director’s blackmail plans.

  A new fury burns inside me.

  “You know what?” Ben says. “Screw it. This is crazy. I’m done with this guy.”

  With a sound of disgust, he steps out of line and shoves the list of drinks into the trash. Giving only a half wave, he leaves the coffee shop.

  With Ben gone, my focus sharpens to the point of a knife. My hands fist at my sides. The clank and hiss of the steamer falls below the cannon boom of my heart. I’m facing Margot, who stalked me, who actually had me convinced she was someone else.

  “Want to sit down?” she asks.

  I hold out a hand, and she leads the way to small, quiet table in the back.

  Only after she sits do I.

  “He told you,” she says.

  Even thinking Caleb’s name rubs salt in the wound of my betrayal. I wish I could shoot back that I’d figured it out myself, but I can’t. “He did.”

  “I told him not to.”

  “Why?”

  “Full honesty?”

  “Sounds like a solid plan,” I say.

  “I thought I might be able to recruit you.”

  “Recruit me for what? Your poli-sci club at Sikawa State?” I think of how passionate she was about that professor who sang about foreign trade. I’ll give her this: she did her research.

  She smiles, but it’s not Myra’s smile. This smile is harsh, and deceiving.

  I smile back, because this, I understand. This makes sense to me.

  “What do you want?” I ask.

  She sighs, and then reaches into her purse. For a second, I think she’s going to pull a knife. It wouldn’t shock me at this point.

  “Kind of tense, aren’t you?” she says.

  “It’s been a wild couple of days.”

  She pulls out a piece of paper, folded lengthwise, and sets it on the table in front of her.

  “It’s awful, isn’t it? Realizing you’re not the puppet master, you’re the puppet? Believe me, I’ve been there.”

  “Are we having a heart-to-heart?”

  A line creases her brow. “We could, you know. You probably won’t believe me when I say this, but I like you, Brynn. In some parallel dimension, we could’ve been friends.”

  I’m trying to keep cool, but I’m boiling, bubbles of rage popping, breaking through my composure.

  She’s a liar, and a con.

  She is the backside of the mirror.

  She is me.

  Her fingers tap on the folded white paper as she leans back in her chair.

  “I see why he’s in love with you,” she says, and my chin jerks up. “Caleb. You balance him out. You run hot, he runs cool. You act, he deliberates. But you always get to the same place, don’t you?”

  I stare at the paper, unable to meet her gaze. I don’t want to hear this. She doesn’t get to talk to me about Caleb when she cheated on him with her mark, when she’s been meeting him behind my back.

  But my heart aches all the same.

  “He needs someone solid, who doesn’t bend under pressure. He admires that kind of strength.” A voice behind us cracks in laughter, and we both glance that way. “I couldn’t give him that. At least, not then. Things have changed since my Vale Hall days.”

  “Don’t talk to me about Caleb.”

  She smirks. “Isn’t that why we’re having this little chat? What did he tell you?”

  Not enough.

  I hold her gaze. “That I should leave school because it wasn’t safe.”

  She shakes her head. “Oh Caleb. What did he tell you about before? About me and him?”

  I shift in my chair.

  “You must know he told the director I was breaking the rules.”

  I nod.

  “And you know I was kicked out because of that.”

  I can see Caleb holding his box of personal items. So few things to take with him. Does she know he’s gone now, too?

  “What do you want, Margot?”

  She smiles. “I want to help you.”

  “Somehow I doubt that.”

  She tucks her hair behind her ear. “Caleb told me about the senator’s son.”

  My teeth press together.

  “You need to watch yourself around Grayson Sterling,” she says.

  “Thanks for the tip.”

  “He lied about Susan Griffin’s death being an accident.”

  I stiffen at the name, wondering how much Caleb has told her. Thinking again of the police report he mentioned, and why she would have given him that information.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “She’d been attacked before.” Margot inhales slowly. “She met the senator outside a restaurant opening he was attending summer before last. She’d been beat up pretty badly and was looking for help. Matthew offered to drive her home, but she was too paranoid that the man that did it would find out and kill her.”

  “How do you know all that?”

  “Jimmy told me.”

  I go still. “Jimmy Balder.”

  She’s a liar. I can’t believe her.

  But there is no hitch or rush in her words, and her gaze holds steady.

  “That’s right,” she says.

  “How do you know Jimmy Balder? He interned for Sterling before you started at The Loft.”

  Her brows arch. “Caleb really didn’t tell you?”

  I wait.

  And then, slowly, like staring at the sun through a moving cloud, the truth begins to glow, a white orb, growing brighter with each passing breath.

  Margot’s position at The Loft. Her reaction at Risa’s, when Ben showed her the picture from the fund-raiser. Her curiosity about my mission to find my missing “friend.”

  Jimmy Balder was Margot’s assignment.

  The boy she fell in love with. The boy she cheated on Caleb with. Her mark, given to her by Dr. O.

  “You were with Jimmy,” I say.

  She nods. “He was Dr. O’s first shot at pinning Matthew Sterling. He’d just taken up an internship in the campaign office. I … I set myself up to meet him at a coffee shop by the river.”

  He was going on and on about how the building had been used in something like fifteen movies—you could always tell because of the gargoyles hanging off the sides. She’d spilled her coffee on him.

  “The one by the Rosalind Hotel.”

  “See? I didn’t lie about everything.”

  That story was true, only I thought it was about Caleb, not about Jimmy.

  “What happened to him?” I ask.

  Her lips curl. “Dr. O happened.”

  CHAPTER 35

  “You know what happens to us if we get kicked out?” Margot asks.

  I nod. Behind her, the baristas shout orders to each other across the hissing copper steamer.

  “Dr. O took my life. I didn’t have a school record. I didn’t have a bank account. I couldn’t get a job or reapply at school. I stayed in a youth shelter for months before I found a place to land
.”

  Her tone has turned angry, and I don’t blame her. But she knew the risks in her actions.

  “Surprised the state didn’t pick you up,” I say.

  “Are you listening? I’m a ghost. I don’t even have a name on record anymore. You know where they send kids without family?” She gives a bitter laugh. “I did the group home thing after my mom died—that’s the rat hole Dr. O pulled me out of. Perhaps you’ve noticed he leans toward students with a similar background.”

  I have. At first, I thought it was because he was looking to help the kids who didn’t have much, but now it’s clear that there’s another reason we were chosen. Family Day may keep the more diligent parents from asking questions, but on the whole, we’re on our own, and have been a long time.

  “I wasn’t the only one he erased,” she says. “Dr. O had to cover his tracks, and he knew I’d told Jimmy about Vale Hall. So he got rid of Jimmy.”

  He’s hurt people.

  He’s out of control.

  People are dying.

  “How?” I ask.

  “He hired someone to kill him.”

  I want to laugh her off. Tell her I’m done with her wild lies. But she holds my gaze, steady and certain.

  “It was after a fund-raiser,” she continues. “The one at the art gallery—Ben showed us a picture from that night at Risa’s, remember?”

  The picture with Geri’s dad in the background, that had Margot pale as death at the restaurant when Ben showed us.

  “I remember.”

  “After Jimmy left the fund-raiser, Matthew Sterling and the artist at the event cornered him.”

  “Susan Griffin.” This lines up with Mark’s story and seems to lower the temperature of the room a full ten degrees.

  “Right. They told him someone wanted him dead, and he needed to get out of town immediately. They offered to help, but he said no. He said he needed to find me first.” She swallows a shaky breath, glancing over her shoulder. “He knew from what I’d told him that Dr. O might be coming for me, too.”

  It’s possible, but Dr. O burned Margot. I can’t forget that. This still might be some desperate attempt to get back at the director that ruined her life.

  “Okay,” I say. “So then Dr. O, what? Pulled out a machete and chopped him up?”