by Lisa Graff
“Um, what?” Bernetta almost upended her tray, and she grabbed her soda just in time. Gabe’s plan did not sound good. “No way. I’m not going to steal her card. It’s in her wallet. You saw her put it in there yourself. No way I could get it out of there even if I wanted to.”
“You stole my watch right off my wrist without me even noticing,” Gabe said. “Of course you can do it.”
Bernetta shook her head. “You said people would be handing us stuff.”
Gabe paused. “Okay,” he said. “How about we make another bet?” Bernetta squinted an eye at him, but he continued. “You owe me ten dollars, right? Well, if I can’t get that woman to hand you her wallet, then I owe you ten dollars. But if I can get her to give it to you, then you have to take that gift card. Just slip it out without her noticing. You can totally do it. You have lightning hands. And if you do that, then we’ll be even. You won’t owe me anything.”
Bernetta raised her eyebrows. “You think you can get her to give me her wallet?” Gabe nodded. “She’s going to put it right in my hands?” He nodded again.
Bernetta thought about it for a moment. There was absolutely no way Gabe could pull that off. And if he could, she definitely wanted to know how.
“Deal,” she said at last.
Gabe just smiled and grabbed Bernetta’s soda off her tray. “Excellent,” he replied, and took a good long gulp.
They reached the table, and Gabe smiled at the lady, warm and convincing, just like Bernetta’s father when he worked his close-up magic. “Hi,” Gabe said to the woman, in an I’m-just-an-innocent-kid-so-don’t-worry voice. “Mind if we share this table with you? It’s pretty crowded.”
A quick look around informed Bernetta that there were at least two other tables they could have sat at, but the woman didn’t seem to notice.
“No problem,” she said, shifting her bag of books to the floor. She glanced at them briefly, then went back to her salad, stabbing a tomato with her plastic fork.
Gabe plopped himself down right next to the lady, so Bernetta sat too, directly across from him. Gabe took a bite of his pizza, and so did Bernetta. He was acting pretty normal, Bernetta thought. He wasn’t even paying attention to the woman. There was no way he was going to get her to hand Bernetta her wallet at this rate. Bernetta took a bite of her pizza and smiled at him across the table.
He smiled right back. “So,” Gabe said to Bernetta. His voice was calm and easy. “Did you find out when your cousin is going to have the baby yet?”
“Um . . .” Bernetta raised an eyebrow. She only had two cousins, and they were both under ten. But she’d promised to play along, so she did her best. “Um, yeah, I don’t know. Soon, though. Real soon. Any minute maybe. She could be having it right now.”
“Oh, yeah?” He took a bite of his pizza. “Is it a boy or a girl?”
“Um, it’s a girl, I think.”
Gabe was opening his mouth to say something else when the woman next to him cut him off. “You know, my daughter just had a baby,” she said. Her face was beaming with pride. “A little girl too.” The lady turned to Bernetta. “Does your cousin have a name picked out yet?”
“Yeah, um . . .” Bernetta glanced at Gabe, but he just wiped his mouth with his napkin. No help at all. “I think they might name it Wallamina?”
“Oh.” The lady’s eyebrows shot up. “Well, that’s certainly interesting.”
Bernetta smiled, all teeth. “It’s a family name,” she explained.
“I see.” The woman speared a cucumber and popped it into her mouth.
“When did your daughter have her baby?” Gabe asked. Bernetta couldn’t help wondering where this weird baby obsession of Gabe’s had come from or how on earth it was going to help them get that gift card. Maybe Gabe just really liked babies.
The lady held her hand in front of her mouth to let them know she was still chewing. Once she had swallowed, she replied, “Just two weeks ago.” She smiled wide. “It’s her first. Angela Grace, isn’t that a beautiful name? I’m flying out to see them all tomorrow.”
Gabe smiled back. “I bet she’s just adorable,” he said.
“She is,” the woman said. “Would you like to see a picture?”
“I’d love to!” Gabe replied. Bernetta squinted at him from behind her pizza. None of the boys at Mount Olive ever wanted to look at pictures of babies, she was pretty sure of that.
The woman pulled her wallet out of her purse and flipped through the pictures in the middle. “Here,” she said, showing Gabe the photo on top. “That’s Angela on the day she was born. She’s something, isn’t she?”
Gabe took the wallet for a closer look, and to Bernetta’s surprise the woman let him without blinking an eye. He studied the photo for several seconds and then handed it back. “She’s really cute,” he told the woman.
She held the photo close to her nose and sighed, still staring at it. “Isn’t she, though?” She turned to Bernetta. “Would you like to see too?” she asked.
Bernetta sucked in a quick breath of air. “Oh, I—” she said, eyes darting in Gabe’s direction. No way he pulled it off. No way. “I don’t know, my hands are all greasy.”
“Here, Jenny,” Gabe said, his chocolate brown eyes sparkling. “Use my napkin.”
“You really have to see her,” the woman said, thrusting her wallet at Bernetta. “I may be biased, but I think she’s simply the prettiest thing there is.”
Bernetta cleared her throat and wiped her greasy fingers on Gabe’s napkin. Then she took the wallet.
This was it, Bernetta thought, the wallet clenched in her hands. Gabe had done his part, and she’d promised she’d take the gift card, so she had to do it. Bernetta Wallflower was no welsher. And she did have lightning fingers. But the woman still had her eyes firmly planted on the wallet, smiling down at the photo inside.
Until Gabe dropped his fork. It flipped right off his tray, landing on the floor with a soft clank, and the woman’s gaze went with it.
In the split second that the woman looked away, Bernetta slid her thumb into the slit of the wallet and slipped out the bookstore gift card. It was stowed safely in her pocket before the woman even turned back around.
“She’s beautiful,” Bernetta told the woman as she returned the wallet.
“I think so anyway,” the lady replied. She took one last glance at the photo and then put the wallet back in her purse. “I guess I’m just a doting grandmother.”
After the woman had finished her salad and was safely out of view, Bernetta handed the gift card over to Gabe.
“See?” he told her. “I told you you could do it! You’re like the Artful Dodger in Oliver Twist.”
Bernetta shrugged. “I guess. How did you know she’d show us her baby photos?”
“I saw her at the bookstore,” Gabe replied. “She was buying a whole stack of baby books. Goodnight Moon, Pat the Bunny, everything. New grandmas always have pictures. And they always want to show them to you.” He put the card in his pocket. “I’m good at reading people, and you have killer hands. We’re the perfect team. I told you, right?”
Well, Bernetta thought, Gabe certainly was good at reading people, that was true enough. He’d figured out that new grandmother in a heartbeat. More than that, he’d figured Bernetta out too. Hadn’t he been convinced all along that she’d become his partner? And Bernetta had simply thought he was crazy. But Gabe, it turned out, had read her like a book. Was Bernetta really the type of girl who stole things from innocent people? Gabe seemed to think she was. And Bernetta had to admit that she was having much more fun being the girl Gabe thought she was than she’d been having as the falsely accused grounded-for-the-summer cheater. Maybe Gabe was right about her. Maybe this was who she’d been all along.
She took the last sip of her soda and set her cup down on her tray. “So what do we do now?” she asked.
&n
bsp; Gabe picked up the cup, popped off the lid, and tilted it into his mouth. He crunched on an ice cube and smiled at her. “Let’s go see if they changed cashiers at the bookstore yet,” he said. “I have a plan. You’re going to love it.”
Once they were back inside the bookstore, Gabe and Bernetta ducked behind the arts and entertainment section. “Good,” Gabe said to Bernetta, “there’s a new girl at the register. Now we can turn the gift card into cash.”
“Why does it matter if there’s someone new at the register?” Bernetta asked.
“It’s just safer,” Gabe replied. “This way no one will recognize us. Or remember the card. Come on, help me look. We have to find someone to let us pay for their books.”
Bernetta and Gabe scanned the aisles together, standing side by side with their noses buried inside a large book on film criticism.
“What about that guy?” Bernetta asked, pointing to a man about her father’s age approaching the register. “He looks pretty nice. I bet he’d help us out.”
“Probably,” Gabe said. “But he’s only getting one book. And it’s a paperback. We should wait for someone with a big stack, so we can make more in one go.”
“Oh. Okay.” Bernetta was still trying to get a grasp of this whole reading people thing. There was a lot to keep track of. “What about that lady over there? The one in the blue dress.”
Gabe looked to where Bernetta was tilting her chin. “No way,” he said. “Look what section she’s in.”
Bernetta read the sign above the lady’s head: TRUE CRIME. “So?”
“She could be a cop,” Gabe said. “Or a law student or something. That could get tricky.”
“Oh,” Bernetta said with a gulp.
“I found someone,” he said, and he snapped the book closed. “That girl right over there. She’s got a ton of books. Come on.”
The girl may have had a ton of books, Bernetta thought as she followed Gabe to the register, but she also didn’t look like someone to mess with. She had straight blond hair pulled into a no-nonsense ponytail, and she looked just a few years younger than Elsa. Her black backpack was covered in tiny pins and patches from bands that Bernetta was not nearly cool enough to have heard of.
Gabe tapped the girl on the shoulder just as she was getting in line behind an old man with a cane.
The blond girl turned around. “Yeah?” she said, her eyebrow already raised in annoyance.
“Oh,” Gabe said, and Bernetta could tell that he was a little startled at the girl’s response. Bernetta stayed off to the side, a few feet to Gabe’s right, to watch and learn.
Gabe cleared his throat. “I was just wondering if I could buy those books for you with this gift card,” he said, holding out the card. “Then you could give me the money you would have spent.”
The blond-haired girl tilted her head and offered Gabe a phony smile, like he was the ugliest boy in school, asking to take her to the winter formal. Bernetta instantly disliked her. “Yeah,” the girl said, her head cocked to the side, “I don’t really want to do that. Thanks, though.” And she spun back around, her long blond ponytail swishing in Gabe’s face as she turned.
Gabe tapped her on the shoulder. “Are you sure you don’t—”
“Yep,” she said without looking in Gabe’s direction. “I’m sure.”
Gabe frowned at Bernetta and was making to walk away when Bernetta got a good look at one of the patches on the girl’s backpack: Wayland High Junior Varsity Cheerleading.
Bernetta took a deep breath and stepped toward the girl. Then, as Gabe shot her a quizzical glance, she tapped the girl’s shoulder.
“What?” the girl demanded before she’d even turned around.
Bernetta didn’t back down. “Hi,” she said. “Um, hi, I just . . .” Bernetta had a fraction of a second before she lost the girl for good, she could tell. “I’m trying to go to cheer camp,” she said quickly.
The blond girl turned back to Bernetta, sucking in her cheeks as she studied her up and down. “You cheer?” she asked.
“Um, yeah,” Bernetta said. “Well, I want to anyway. But cheerleading camp starts in two weeks, and my parents can’t afford it, so I asked my grandma for money for my birthday, but instead she gave me this card, ’cause she says I should read more.” Bernetta felt like her dad for a moment, dancing nimbly around the stage just before he thrust out his wand for the big reveal. “Anyway, my brother here”—she motioned to Gabe—“was just trying to help me out, but sorry if we bugged you.” And she grabbed Gabe by the elbow and pulled him, stumbling, toward the exit. She had no idea if that was the right thing to do, but Gabe’s way hadn’t worked either, so she figured, why not?
They were almost out the door when—
“Hey, wait up!” the blond girl called out.
Bernetta and Gabe turned. The girl had her head cocked to the side again, but this time she didn’t look quite so intimidating.
“You going into eighth?” she asked Bernetta.
“Yep,” Bernetta lied.
The blond girl finally smiled. “That’s when I started too. What school do you go to?”
“Kingsfield Middle.” Another lie. That was Ashley’s old school. Mount Olive didn’t have cheerleading. Maybe the blond girl wouldn’t know that, but Bernetta didn’t want to take any chances.
“Kingsfield!” the blond girl shrieked. “Really? That’s where I went too. Who’d you have for homeroom last year?”
Shoot.
Bernetta thought fast. “Mrs. Vincent.” That was her homeroom teacher at Mount Olive. “I think she’s new. She’s kind of strict, but not too bad.”
“Oh.” The blond girl nodded. “I had Mr. Prolanski.” She rolled her eyes, and Bernetta did too.
“Blech,” she said. “My friend Stephanie had him, and she said he was horrible.”
“Yeah. He was pretty awful.”
The blond girl’s books came to $58.27, but she gave Bernetta an even sixty.
“Good luck at cheer camp!” she called as she headed out of the store.
“Thanks!” Bernetta shouted back.
At her side Gabe was looking at her and nodding, a grin stretched across his face. “Cheer camp, huh?” he said. “Not bad. You’re a regular Bonnie Parker.” Bernetta could feel herself blushing. “Yeah.” He nodded again. “Not bad at all.”
12
TRANSFORMATION n: an illusion in which one object becomes another
In only one day Bernetta and Gabe managed to make a bucketload of money. They’d had one close scrape when a cashier in a department store had tried to call his manager over while Gabe was attempting a shortchange, but Gabe had been pretty convincing when he told the guy he’d just been confused math-wise about the change, and they made it out of the store without arousing further suspicion. Once they’d split the day’s take, Bernetta left the mall with $183.71 stowed safely inside her backpack.
Now she sat at the dinner table and took up a forkful of chicken, trying to figure out the best way to answer her family’s questions.
“So how was your day?” her mother asked.
Bernetta swallowed. “Good,” she replied. “Really good.”
Her father was busy buttering a roll. “How are the kids?”
Bernetta took another giant bite and got away with a mere nod in response. A part of her wished she could tell her family what she’d really been up to. Because she had had a good day; that part hadn’t been a lie at all. It was amazing the way she’d learned to read people in just a few hours—figure out which cashiers were nice and which ones were surly, just by the way they tapped their fingers on the counter or stuck a pen behind an ear.
But those were obviously skills she was going to have to keep to herself.
“So, Elsa,” their father said, “what time are you leaving for volleyball camp tomorrow?”
“Really ear
ly,” she said as she scooped rice onto her fork. “Before dawn, I think.”
Bernetta set her fork down. “Camp starts tomorrow?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Elsa replied. “It’s a really long drive, too. I’ll be gone before you get up. And I’m not even close to packed, either.”
“Well, make sure you get enough rest for your drive tomorrow,” their mother said. “Colin, eat your broccoli, please.”
“Beep beep boop beep,” Colin replied.
“What was that?” Bernetta’s father asked.
“I’m an alien,” Colin explained. “I can only speak in alienese. I mean, beep beep bang.”
Bernetta wasn’t really listening. How could she possibly have forgotten that Elsa’s camp started tomorrow? This wasn’t fair at all. It was the last summer before Elsa left for college, and she was spending practically all of it at volleyball camp. Once Elsa left in the fall, that would be it. Things would be permanently different in the Wallflower family. No Elsa at the dinner table, no big sister to practice new magic tricks on, no one to paint her toenails with when life was particularly upsetting.
Bernetta took a bite of rice, but the grains felt dry on her tongue.
“So, Bernetta,” her mom said, “tell us what kinds of things you do with the kids while the parents are working.”
Bernetta tried to make her bite of rice last as long as possible, but eventually she had to stop chewing. “Oh, you know,” she said, “just regular kid stuff.”
Elsa folded her napkin and set it on the table. “Well, I think I better get packing,” she said, pushing back her chair and taking her plate to the sink. “Netta, if you want, we can paint our toes one last time before I leave.”
Bernetta took up another forkful of broccoli. “Yeah,” she said. “Sure. I’d like that.”
“All right, just knock on my door before you go to sleep.” She rinsed her plate and left the kitchen.
Bernetta was taking a drink of water when Colin lunged at her, his fingers wiggling in her face. “Eek!” he cried.