My Own Worst Frenemy

by Kimberly Reid

  Okay, the skank didn’t have a knife, homemade or otherwise, but she did have a serious uppercut, which she landed against my chin the minute the guard was out of sight. I hoped that was all I’d get, but then she sat on my chest—which was easy because her punch had landed me on the floor so quickly I didn’t have time to try to defend myself, which in my case meant assuming the fetal position. There were four other girls in the room, and no one seemed to notice I was about to get my butt kicked, except for the one who was standing over me saying, “Hit her again! Hit her again!” Now that girl seemed really interested.

  I think the skank was about to oblige her audience when someone else whispered, “Guards.”

  “Turn away from the door,” she said as she got off of me. “Don’t say a word or you’ll get a helluva lot worse when the guard leaves.”

  I would have, too, if the guard hadn’t come with MJ in tow. You can believe the minute that guard was out of sight, someone got a helluva lot worse, but it wasn’t me. MJ just about lost it when she saw my bruised jaw, which had already begun to swell. Lucky for the skank, I pulled MJ off of her before she could do her any serious harm. After that, no one came near MJ or me, and we had one roomy corner of the holding cell to ourselves.

  “Maybe we should call the guards about your face. You probably need some ice on that.”

  “I hope it looks bad. Maybe now I can teach my mother a lesson.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  That uppercut must have rattled my brain because I never slip up when it comes to Lana’s cover, especially around MJ, who I’d figured would probably not have much interest in me as a friend if she found out that it was my mom who had just interrogated us.

  “I mean, you know, when I get out of here, she’ll probably be mad about me taking the car without her permission. Seeing my face like this might soften her up.”

  “Oh yeah. Big Mama is gonna give me hell, too. When I called to ask her to pick me up, she went from pissed to crying in under sixty. I hate to make my grandmother cry.”

  “They’ll get over it eventually,” I said, not quite believing it.

  “Sorry I got you into all this mess. I really did think my cousin just wanted to see me while he was passing through town.”

  “So what did he really want?”

  “We can’t talk in here. They don’t have nothing on us though. Don’t worry. That cop was just talking smack.”

  “You think so?” I said, pretending I was afraid even though I knew everything was going to be okay, at least for me. I hadn’t been in that motel room. Though I knew MJ would never commit a crime intentionally, in our brief friendship I’d learned a couple of things about MJ that could easily land her back in JD—she’d do anything for a friend and she wasn’t likely to ever win class valedictorian. A big heart and a not-so-big brain is a dangerous combination.

  “Nothing but a thing. That cop though, I didn’t like her. The lady cops are always the worst. They have this game, pretending they can relate to you or something just because they’re women. She don’t know nothing about me.”

  “Not all cops are bad.” When I said this, MJ had the same look in her eyes that skank had just before she hit me. Rage. But it only lasted a second, and turned into pity, the way you look at a squirrel trying to cross a busy street. You know the poor dumb animal is doomed.

  “Believe this, Chanti, There’s is no such thing as a good cop. Not if you’re us.”

  She waved her hand back and forth when she said this, connecting us. At that moment, I didn’t feel like a traitor to Lana at all. I felt like I’d just made a friend for life.

  They let MJ out first, about ten minutes before me. That was the longest, most terrifying ten minutes of my life. Once she was sure MJ wasn’t coming back, that girl with the uppercut tried to make good on her promise, until I screamed for the guard. I was almost as relieved to see the guard as I was to know that MJ didn’t hear me scream like a baby. Then I spent another hour in Lana’s office while she finished her report without saying a single word to me after she got some ice for my bruised and swollen jaw. I guess she saw it as another lesson. That if I was terrified enough of jail, I would never get myself into enough trouble to land there again. Let me tell you—my mother is hard.

  “What if MJ is down there waiting for me?” I asked her as we took the elevator to the first floor of the department. “What about your cover?”

  “You think she’s such a good friend she’d wait around here for you?”

  “I know she is. You’re passing judgment without even knowing her.” That last line I actually said to myself. I’m not brave, but I’m also not stupid. I was pretty sure Lana was still looking for someplace to land her shoe.

  “She won’t be. I had a cruiser take her home. Didn’t want to disturb her grandmother. I checked out her whole situation and that girl did some time in JD. Big Mama took on a handful.”

  When we stepped off the elevator, there was no MJ. I still expected her to be there even though Lana told me a uniform had taken her home.

  “You said yourself we didn’t do anything.”

  “You didn’t do anything that will keep you locked up, but you made a lot of bad decisions tonight. Taking my car when you only have a learner’s permit—be happy I didn’t have you ticketed. But don’t worry, I’ll be treating you to my version of jail. And you know nothing good happens at those motels over there. Have I taught you nothing? Your average person wouldn’t have noticed what was going on at the motel, but you aren’t average. You notice everything.”

  It was true. But not tonight, and I still hadn’t figured out why. Lana had, though.

  “That MJ girl is trying to lead you down the wrong path. Not while you’re under my roof, Miss Thing.”

  I was grateful Lana didn’t have any more lecturing for me in the car. It turned out she was only waiting until we got home. She picked up where she’d left off the minute we were out of the car.

  “There is no way a child of mine is going to be running the streets with all kinds of delinquents. I better not ever catch you with that girl again, you hear me?”

  She was still talking as she went up on the porch, even though I had turned back to get my bag out of the car, which I will forever think of as my “personal effects.” Lana was still lecturing when she opened the front door and went inside the house. I could hear her saying “that girl” at the very moment I noticed MJ come from behind a car parked on the other side of the street.

  “I was waiting for you, wanted to make sure those cops didn’t hold you when you didn’t even do anything, but I see I wasted my time.”

  “MJ, look, she’s vice. I couldn’t say anything. She has a cover and I . . .”

  “Don’t worry, narc. MJ ain’t no snitch.”

  Chapter 24

  I thought that was my worst day ever, but no, it actually can get worse. It’s Tuesday, the day after Lissa spread the story that I robbed Annette’s house, and by now everyone at Langdon has probably heard about it. Despite me faking illness, pretending to cry, and for-real begging, Lana makes me go to school today, and I feel like crap. She thinks I’m paranoid, MJ thinks I’m a snitch, Bethanie acts like I don’t exist, and I can’t find Marco anywhere on campus. Maybe he’s like Bethanie, keeping his distance in case anyone thinks he’s a crook by association. The rumors are still flying about me. In one version, I’m already in jail, even though I’m sitting right here in the library during my study period, checking e-mail, hoping Lana felt some pity for me and at least looked at the police report on the burglary at Annette’s house. Just when I’m looking at my empty in-box and thinking my life could not get any worse, I prove myself wrong. Someone has just deposited their soda in my lap. I look up to find it’s one of the clones.

  “Oh my God, I’m so sorry. I’m such a klutz.”

  “You have got to be kidding me,” I say, feeling the cold liquid go through my skirt. Great, I have to walk around school for the rest of the day with wet und
erwear, on top of everything else.

  “I’ll clean this up. You’d better get to the girls’ room and try to dry off. I might have a pair of yoga pants in my gym locker if you want me to bring them.” She doesn’t mention they’re probably two sizes too small for me, like Lissa would have. This clone is nice enough that I might think the soda incident was accidental . . . if I weren’t me and didn’t suspect everyone of everything, especially one of Lissa’s minions.

  “No thanks. I have some shorts in my gym bag,” I say, walking out of the library amid stares, whispers, and laughs that make me think it was all staged for their entertainment.

  After I grab my shorts from my bag and put them on, I hide out in the bathroom of the empty locker room for way too long, pretending to rinse out my skirt. Then I manage to burn through French class by spending an hour holding my skirt under the hand dryer. I can’t think of any excuse to skip my last two classes, so I fake like I don’t care that the whole school thinks I’m a loser, and finally leave the locker room to accept the fact that I’m in hell. When I get to my locker, I find someone has stuck a note through the slots. I expect it to be some joke about me being an ex-con but it’s from Marco. That’s so romantic—he’s going old school like they probably did in Lana’s day. I guess I shouldn’t have missed French because he was here at school after all, and seeing him was just what I needed today.

  Sorry I missed you in French. Hope you aren’t letting these people get to you. I want to talk, but not around Langdon. Can you meet me at 7:00 at the park on Lexington? There’s a picnic table near the fountain. I’ll bring dinner and a smile in case you need cheering up. I’ll be there whether you come or not. Hope you come.

  And just like that, the day from hell turns into the best day I could hope for.

  Marco is right where he said he’d be, but there’s no dinner, and he looks a little tired. I may be the one who has to cheer him up.

  “So what’s the emergency?” Marco says, not sounding all that pleased to see me. And hearing him hack up a lung is not quite the romantic reception I’d imagined on the walk over.

  “I wouldn’t exactly call it an emergency, but you were right. I definitely needed cheering up. Are we going to go somewhere for dinner? I guess I misunderstood—I thought we were having a picnic.”

  “Chanti, I have no idea what you’re talking about. Your message said you absolutely had to see me, that it was urgent. I really hope it is because I had to spend an hour convincing my mom to let me out of the house since I’m running a temperature of one hundred and one. Do you know how hard it is to chill a thermometer just so it says ninety-eight point six? I don’t like lying to my mother.”

  First, I’m incredibly touched that he was willing to lie to his dear old mom just to meet me when I have an emergency. Not only is he gorgeous, but he’s sweet, too. But I only get to swim in that delicious thought for a minute, because it’s clear someone has set us up. Do I tell him this now, or play along and milk this for all I can? I mean, we’re here, even if under false pretenses. We gotta eat. Why not together? But no, it’s never a good idea to start a new relationship based on lies. Believe me, I’ve tried. It doesn’t work.

  “Sorry, Marco, but I think we’ve been punked. I’m guessing you didn’t put that note in my locker?”

  “A note? No way—I would have texted you.”

  So much for Marco being an old-school romantic.

  “Besides, I haven’t been to school since last Friday. Fever of one hundred and one, remember?”

  “So I guess you don’t know what’s going on at school, all the rumors about me and Annette’s house being burgled.”

  He starts laughing at this, making him seem a little crazy. But still cute.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Burgled. Is that even a word?”

  “It is a word, but that’s not really the issue. I thought you called me out here to cheer me up from all the accusations flying that I broke into Annette’s house and stole some stuff.”

  “Hey, you may have a lot in common with Malcolm. He went to jail. Wait, I wasn’t supposed to talk about that.”

  So I was right about Malcolm’s time off. Note to self: Marco can’t be trusted to keep a secret when he’s sick and doped up on cold medicine. I want to know more about Malcolm’s time, but we’re talking about me right now.

  “Marco, I’m trying to tell you how my world is falling apart.”

  “I’m paying attention. You broke into someone’s house—Annette whose party you went to. Why would you steal stuff from a friend?”

  “First, she’s not a friend and second, I wouldn’t steal from anyone. All I know is I got into it with Lissa, and stormed out. They left for pizza or something, and while they were gone, the house was robbed.”

  “What did you get into it with Lissa about?”

  Oh yeah, he hasn’t been at school the last two days and knows nothing about my criminal record, which is not really a record. I’m thinking this isn’t the best point in our relationship to lay this on him. Between his being sick, me being a suspected burglar, and his mother waiting at home for him, victim of her son’s first lie, I figure that can wait.

  “Oh, something stupid, not important.”

  “But why do they think it’s you? Anyone could have done it, someone who burgles professionally.” He cracks himself up with this, which makes him hack up the other lung. I ignore his question because he’s probably already forgotten he asked it.

  “If you haven’t been at school, how did you get a message from me?”

  “You sent an e-mail to my school account.”

  “Around 1:30 today?” I ask.

  “Yeah, I think so. I was kind of delirious with fever and Sudafed.”

  “Well, now I know who punked us. But I don’t know why, other than I’m apparently the entertainment of the week, not just the day.”

  The nice clone wasn’t so much, and must have used my open e-mail account to send Marco that message. Now I’m looking around the park for signs of a clone. But the park is empty, at least the section we’re in. Dusk has fallen, but it’s still light enough for me to see that the place is a ghost town. That’s when I notice all the little plastic yellow flags stuck in the grass. I guess I missed them before because I was too busy thinking about Marco waiting for me with a picnic basket, all ready to cheer me up. I go up to the closest one for a read, and find a skull and crossbones. No wonder we’re the only ones here. They just sprayed pesticide this afternoon. Marco is about to fall over from the flu, so I’m thinking toxic fumes could not be good for him. The love of my life is going to die before we even get to the love part.

  “Marco, we have to get out of here.”

  “Why? You promised me dinner. I’d really love to have dinner with you.”

  While this makes me uncontrollably giddy, I’m skeptical since it could be the meds talking. Now I wonder just how much Sudafed he’s had and whether he should be driving. But we do have to eat, right?

  “No dinner,” I end up saying, because he’s really sick and I’m not quite that selfish. “You need to get home and take care of yourself. We’ve given them enough of a laugh tonight.”

  “Who?”

  “Our punkers. Whoever thought this would be hilarious, getting you and me out here in a toxic park.”

  “Maybe they were trying to fix us up. Sort of like a blind date.”

  “Do you want us to be fixed up?” I ask, hoping his delirium will make him reveal secrets.

  “No.”

  “Oh.”

  “We don’t need fixing up. We’re already up, right?”

  I hope tomorrow when he recalls this conversation—if he can after his cold-medicine high—that he won’t remember the idiotic grin I’m wearing as we walk back to his car. I hope he remembers that I drove him home just to make sure he got there okay. I even hope he noticed that before I walked home, I stood in front of his house for a minute after he went inside, wishing I was in there with him.
/>   Chapter 25

  “You know this is crazy, right?” Lana is saying into the phone the next morning.

  I’m already running late for my bus and can’t find the cereal bars so I guess I’m gonna go hungry because whatever is going on in Lana’s world, it’s probably not the best time to ask if we have any cereal bars. I wave at her as I head for the door, but she shakes her head and motions for me to stay. That’s when I start getting the uneasy feeling that the craziness might be about me.

  “This is my kid we’re talking about. There’s no way this is possible.”

  No way what’s possible? Smythe just won’t get off my back, will she? Now what’s she saying I stole?

  “I understand procedure, Sergeant, but . . .”

  Okay, that ain’t Smythe on the other end of the line.

  “Well, can I at least be the one who brings her in?”

  WTF ? !

  “Thanks. We’ll be there in half an hour.”

  When Lana gets off the phone, she doesn’t have to say a thing because it’s written all over her face. Only thing I don’t know is what I’m being charged with.

  Let me tell you that it feels a lot different when you’re sitting in an interrogation room and you know everything’s just a big misunderstanding than when you’ve been arrested for burglary, theft by taking, breaking and entering, and whatever other charges they can come up with. This time Lana isn’t the one questioning me. She’s on my side of the table, sitting on my right, and on my left is her lawyer friend from the firm where she actually used to be a paralegal back in the day. Across the table is Detective Bertram from the Burglary Unit. I can’t believe any of this is happening.

  “It all points back to you, Miss Evans,” says the detective, summing up his story as though I haven’t been there listening to it for the last two hours. “So we’ve got these Mitchell Moving clients’ home burglaries last night. We’ve got the break-in the night of your friend’s pajama-party, when you claim you were walking around looking for a bus stop.”