“Why? Your best friend didn’t tell you?” he asked.
“She named a name. But I need more. I want you to name a name. And then I’m going to ask you for an address. It’s plain and simple,” I said.
Roger leaned back in his chair and pulled out a cigar. “Mind if I light up?” he asked. I snatched that damn cigar right out of his mouth.
“This is a latte bar, not a sleazy joint off some dingy, beaten route someplace. And, no, it is not cool to smoke. Haven’t you seen those lung cancer commercials in which people have to breathe through a hole in their neck?”
“No. I’m not allowed to watch television on weeknights,” he said.
“I don’t have time for this nonsense. Cough up the info, and hurry up.”
Roger looked at his watch. Then he moved his coffee cup from the left side of the table to the right. I was trying my best to be patient. But when I saw him twiddling his thumbs, it was the last straw.
“Do I look like I’m here on a date? I came for the information! So give it to me,” I said.
Now why did I have to go and say that? Maybe subconsciously I wanted to be alone for the rest of my natural life.
“No one would mistake this for a date,” the sexiest voice on earth said from behind me. “Your extra-foam mocha latte.” Jason dropped my coffee on the table in front of me. A piping-hot drop flew onto Roger’s face.
“You will pay for that,” Roger threatened.
“See, babe, this is Roger. He thinks he had a date with Cindy,” I said.
“Didn’t she say she was going to see Peter?” Jason winked at me to let me know he was playing along.
Roger’s breathing started to get heavy. His eyes enlarged. Oddly, I still didn’t find him remotely scary.
“What is MIA, anyway?” I asked.
Roger looked at Jason cockeyed. He gritted his teeth and shook his head. It was painstakingly apparent he didn’t want to spill the beans.
“Look, Roger, give up the information,” Jason said.
“I wouldn’t be here if I really didn’t need to know,” I said. For a second, I could see a glimmer of the old, compassionate Roger.
Roger threw his hands out and knocked his black coffee all over the table. Jason used the napkins he had in his hands to clean it up.
“I’ll get some more napkins,” I said.
“I can get them,” Jason said.
“No, I’ll get them.” Roger jumped out of his seat and bolted for the door. Jason and I looked at each other. I speedwalked out of the shop and caught up with Roger on his way to the escalator. I grabbed his arm.
“What’s the deal, Roger?” I asked. Roger scanned the area. He eyed every person on the escalator. Then he grabbed my arm and led me down the restroom hallway.
“I shouldn’t tell you this, but I know you’re clean. However …” he said.
“What?” I asked.
“For reasons I cannot say, I could not tell you in front of the basketball player.”
“Can you tell me now?”
“Mathlete Investigation Association.”
“MIA, you mean?”
“Uh, you call yourself a member of the National Scholars Association?”
Apparently I wasn’t nerdy enough for Roger. “So, you’re still a nerd?” I asked. There was hope. Everyone hadn’t gone crazy.
“I prefer ‘academically enhanced.’”
I saw Jason out of the corner of my eye past the dimly lit restroom hallway. He was probably looking for me. I moved into a part of the corridor where we could not be seen.
“Roger, we get the same grades. Cut the act. What is with this look?”
“I, too, care about prom. I, too, need a prom date. Is there a need to spell it out?”
Jason walked past the corridor again in the opposite direction. Since we were in the basement of the mall, there was no cell phone reception. I would have to go find him soon.
“Tell me now. I have to go. Who is at the top of the popular society?”
“What do I get out of this?”
“I have someone that might be able to go with you to prom.”
“Promise?”
“I can’t promise you a date, but looking like this you shouldn’t have a problem getting a date if you drop the fake bad-boy act and just be the same nice guy you were.”
“You think so?”
“I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t think so,” I said.
“Thanks.” Roger smiled.
“The info?” I asked.
“The brains of the operation is Michelle,” he said.
“I knew it! What is her address?”
“Ten-Ten Forelawn, right off Coldwell.”
I hugged Roger. “Thanks!”
He acted a little shaken—like he had never been touched by a girl before or something. I started to run down the hallway.
“One more thing,” he yelled.
I stopped cold in my tracks.
“There’s just this one other thing. …” His hands were shaking. “Cindy …” he whispered.
“Cindy?”
“She’s co-president of the society.”
“Nia!” Jason called for me at the end of hallway.
My worst fear had materialized. I ran to Jason. Why did it seem like everything was so different in each moment? Plus, now Jason believed in Cindy as my friend. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him.
“Why were you hiding here?”
“I wasn’t hiding! I got the info we need,” I said. He looked at me suspiciously.
“Babe, I had to follow him. We’ve come too far to just let him bolt out of the coffee shop. Now I know our next stop,” I continued.
Jason put his arm around me. It felt good to know at least somebody had my back. “So how did you get him to tell you?” Jason asked.
“I threatened to turn my boyfriend loose on him if he didn’t give me what I needed,” I said.
“That’s crazy. Did you really say that?” he asked. I didn’t know what to say. I just raised an eyebrow. “’Cause that’s kind of hot.” He kissed my neck.
I tapped him on the butt. “Stay focused!” I said.
We had places to go and people to expose! One item was all an undercover starlet needed to even the score. And I had it: My trusty camera phone with voice recorder was going to save the day. It all seemed so simple in my head.
Chapter 10
In the car on our way to Forelawn, my mother called. “My mother’s plane lands in ten minutes,” I said.
“What kind of flight was she on?”
“Well, it’s almost ten. A nonstop would take about that time to get back to Long Island,” I said.
“So we have ten minutes,” he said.
“Basically. My grandparents’ place should only be a couple of minutes from here,” I said. I dialed my grandmother. “Hi, Nana, I’m on my way home. I had to take care of something. … I’m fine. … I know. I have to go. … Okay … I will. Bye.”
“What do we want from her?” Jason asked.
“Answers! Like when the hell this is going to be over and why,” I said.
When Jason opened my car door, he looked a little worried.
“What? I can take her,” I said.
He laughed.
“I like that.”
“You like what?”
“Your laugh. It’s real. You know sometimes people laugh, but it doesn’t feel like they really think it’s funny,” I said.
“So you like to keep it real,” he said.
“Always.” I smiled.
We approached the gate, me and my soldier. Out of nowhere, my cell started beeping. Cindy had sent me a text message.
“Don’t do anything stupid. Things are complicated now, but they are going to stop. I am not home so don’t go to my house unless you climb through my room window,” she texted.
What was the prospect of that happening?
“Turn your cell phone off,” I told Jason.
“I’ll put it on si
lent,” he said.
“Good idea.” I put mine on silent too.
We walked around the house; there was no one outside.
“What if we just walked up to the front door?” Jason asked.
“No! I never saw James Bond doing that,” I said.
“I think you might be wrong,” he said.
I was so caught up in trying to figure out if he was calling me wrong, I didn’t even notice him leading me by the hand up the grand, rolling driveway entrance. We walked right through the front door into the foyer of an old, Hollywood-style mansion. I hated Michelle, but what made it even worse was that her house was gorgeous.
“I can’t believe that just worked,” I whispered.
“I know.” Jason popped the collar on his polo shirt.
I laughed under my breath. We stood there, asking to be noticed while we pondered our next move.
“Senora Michelle,” a short Hispanic woman called from the back of the house.
Jason and I ducked into what looked like a formal dinning room with a marble-top dining table for ten. The interior designing was impeccable. Who cared? We had to get out of there and allay this stalking issue. The woman’s voice grew closer. We retreated to the back of the room. Jason quietly opened the door to the kitchen.
“There’s no one in here. Come on.”
He went, and I followed. The stark whiteness of the kitchen kind of freaked me out, and then there were spotlights everywhere! We ducked below the counters. I looked up for a minute and spotted a door at the back of the kitchen. The woman we had seen earlier came through the dining room door.
“Michelle!” she yelled.
She was dressed in a maid’s uniform, holding a tray of those little finger sandwiches that didn’t have any crusts. We scrambled around to the breakfast bar and hid underneath it. Jason peeked out over the ledge. I looked through the gaping entrance to the living room. Anyone coming from that direction could’ve spotted us a mile away. The maid cracked that lone door in the back. “I have sandwiches, Michelle,” she said in a heavy Spanish accent.
“Bring them down,” Michelle yelled.
Jason put his hand out for me to hold. “We’re going to wait for her to come up, and then we’ll go down,” he said.
“Maybe we should hide in the dining room,” I said.
I mean, who were we kidding? We weren’t hiding from anyone with the 1,000 watts of light hitting us from every angle. We scurried across the kitchen back to the refuge of the dark dining room.
“Let’s just get under here in case anyone comes in,” I pointed to the table.
“I have to see her come back up,” he said.
“Right.”
What was going on? Wasn’t I supposed to be leading this mission? I couldn’t be too mad though, his idea did make sense. Jason cracked the door open. A slither of light shined through the room. He kept one eye on the housekeeper. I watched the entrance to the foyer.
“Okay, she went in the living room,” he said.
“Showtime,” I said.
Next thing I knew, we were creeping down a narrow staircase. Jason quietly walked down a couple more stairs. He kneeled down a little until he could get a full view of what was going on. First he stared starry-eyed, then he squinted. He stood tall in front of me with his eyes glued to the floor. I could see he was carefully searching for the right words.
“Let’s just bounce,” he whispered in my ear.
What? I hadn’t just crawled under some foreign dining room table and ducked the housekeeper to just up and go. Please! The part of me that was leading this mission was trying to be strong. I took a deep breath.
“Not today,” I said.
He put his arms out and held onto the banister firmly so I couldn’t get past him. I tugged at his arms as hard as I could.
“Are you for real?” It was becoming increasingly difficult to whisper. My temper was flaring up.
“Chill. Listen for minute. Sometimes, things look like one thing, but they’re something else,” he said.
“Don’t I get a little more out of my fortune cookie? Tell me some words in Chinese.”
I could see he was doing everything he could not to laugh. So I took another tug at his arm with no luck.
“Okay. You can stop grabbing me now,” he said.
“Like you don’t like it,” I retorted.
He moved his hands from the stair rail to my waist as I crept past him to get an eyeful of the action. He lifted me up and placed me on the exact step he was on, as if I would see things the same way he did from there. He continued to hold onto me. I slowly ducked my head down to peek through the space between the banister posts.
I’m not sure which came first, my mouth dropping or the feeling of tears weighing down my lower lids. I know I had known it, but to see it felt like a stab in the chest—now I knew how Caesar felt. Uh! That AP English reading had me all discombobulated, thinking of all types of conspiracy theories.
She was like my sister. I ripped Jason’s hands off me. All of a sudden, I was Wonder Woman. I flew down the stairs and practically leapt my way over to the pool table where Michelle and Cindy stood. At this point, the wow factor of this glamorous farmhouse didn’t faze me. The marble floors in the basement and the hand-painted mural on the ceiling were all part of Michelle’s image. See, it would seem like someone who lived here should be above this whole stalking thing. But we all knew her cards.
As I approached, I could see Cindy handing Michelle the Dare Go Undercover bag I had been begging her for for three months. And it was so unlike me to beg! Pleading is not my look. It was a StarletShop.com limited edition, for Christ’s sakes. As if her betraying me and secretly cavorting with my enemy wasn’t enough!
“I guess you took one for the team, getting your leg all bruised up and everything.”
“No!” Cindy said.
I stood a couple of feet away from the best friends. Cindy had an iced latte in her hand, and she was notorious for throwing coffee on people. In junior year, she and Jane had gotten into a heated debate over some gossip about Cindy’s latest boyfriend that Jane ran in the morning texts. It made it seem like he went both ways. Suddenly the supersize chocolate coffee Cindy had been drinking was all over Jane’s face. I had no time for that. If she poured coffee on me, there would be no going back.
“Can’t get enough of me, huh?” Michelle said.
My word, she was like that psycho from Fatal Attraction. Inside of that unbalanced mind of hers, we all wanted a piece of her.
“What are you doing?” Cindy whispered to me.
“Blowing this shit wide open!”
Usually I tried to curb those curse words. It was sort of unladylike, but I couldn’t be censored now.
“Just let it ride. It’s over. I got it. Go home,” Cindy said.
“Right. What, are you two swapping your favorite finds? All this time! This is the depths of deceit.”
I was so upset I didn’t even think I was making any sense, but she knew what I meant. That was the thing about a best friend—they knew you. They knew what you meant and how you felt even when you were too angry to articulate your feelings. I was torn between wanting to cry tears of anger and wanting to choke the hell out of Michelle.
“Stop following me! You will not come to my house anymore. This whole thing is so over,” I said.
“Whatever do you mean?” Michelle giggled under her breath.
“Just shut up for freakin’ once.” Cindy grabbed Michelle by the shirt collar. “It is over. Just freakin’ admit it so we can all go home, because if you scratch me again I will cut you!” Cindy continued.
“Get out! All of you! Including you, Jason. Vala, get back to work.” Michelle looked right through me, over my shoulder.
When I turned around, what did I see? Jason, tucked away in a corner near the bottom of the stairs, talking to a girl I’d never really seen around before.
“It seems like you want everything I’ve got. My ex-boyfriend, my ex-best f
riend, my picture in the yearbook. Do you want to double as me too?”
I drew a long breath as I racked my brain for more clever things to say. I was so angry my hand was twitching. It took everything in me to keep from slapping Michelle. One part of me figured there was no reason to be civil at this point. The other part of me said to just walk away. So I did. I had nothing left. I was running on empty. I couldn’t believe Cindy. I had never been let down so much in my entire life.
“Did he tell you he’s a member?” Michelle shouted.
Everyone in the basement stopped in their tracks. My eye caught Jason’s. He stood up and knocked his head on the low ceiling by the staircase. Was this house made for midgets or just people under six-foot-four?
“I’m not in it. I never went to a meeting or anything. It’s just part of being on the team.”
“So that’s what Roger meant when he said he couldn’t tell me in front of the ‘basketball player.’”
In a matter of hours, everything I had known was gone. So I did what anyone ex-popular girl in my shoes would’ve done. I walked up to Cindy and snatched that Undercover Starlet™ bag right off the table. She owed me at least that. I stormed past Jason, up the stairs. I realized things would continue on as they were without me. The juniors would finish working on the yearbook, Cindy would continue to be shallow, and I would always be the outsider with the worst luck with guys. But one thing would change. Even if Michelle decided to come after me again, mystery was not in her arsenal. The cat was out of the bag, and I was ready to go toe to toe with her. I could sense that she knew it too. The only question was: How was I going to get home?
“You don’t want her either,” Michelle said to Jason.
“Don’t act like you know me. This is the second time I’ve talked to you since I’ve even been at this school,” he said.
“Third,” Michelle corrected him.
“At least she didn’t come after you with a mask on and send strange notes and write things on the wall. You’re sick! Then you took a sucker hit at Cindy and threw her down the stairs. Stay away from Nia if you know what’s good for you!” Jason said.
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