Finding the Forger

by Libby Sternberg

  But once I’d had my satisfying moment of silent revenge, I pulled away from Neville and stood next to Doug. I might be weak, but I’m not stupid. Doug was my guy.

  And Doug wasn’t stupid, either. He knew Neville was putting the moves on me. Staking his claim, Doug grabbed my hand.

  “Let’s catch up with the crowd,” he said as if actually interested in the art exhibit. I was touched. Doug was pretending to like this hoity toity stuff just to please me. My eyes welled with tears of joy.

  Well, not really. But my mouth turned up in a kind of goofy grin that I’m sure knocked out my sophisticated look, good haircut or not.

  Neville, meanwhile, was undaunted by Doug’s territorial attitude. He strode right along with us, as if we were the Three Musketeers. And he kept up his funny banter, which annoyed Doug as well as most of the other art patrons within earshot.

  Trouble is, I’m a sucker for amusing banter. Okay, okay, I’m a sucker for anything silly—it doesn’t even need to rise to the level of “banter.” So I had a hard time controlling myself. To keep from laughing, I kept biting the insides of my cheeks. If this kept up much longer, I was going to need oral surgery by the time we were finished.

  But we were finished in a few minutes. Fawn Dexter said something about the generosity of several important patrons such as Jean Connelly, everyone applauded, and we were on our way back to the food again.

  When we tramped back downstairs, Kerrie and Sarah were waiting for us, looking like the best of friends, which is what they used to be. In fact, it now looked like Kerrie was comforting Sarah, who was pale and distracted, glancing this way and that as if looking for someone. Spotting Hector across the room, she shot him a glance that said “betrayal.” He, meanwhile, looked at her like a confused puppy, which, come to think of it, is a look I’ve seen on a lot of guys’ faces. It must be standard issue.

  I did the introductions and then turned to Sarah.

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Well, I …”

  Kerrie stepped forward. “She thought she was locked out.” “I had to go to my car,” Sarah said. “I had a blouse there. And when I tried to get back in, the door was locked.”

  I looked over my shoulder at the museum’s front door, which was open.

  “Not that door,” Sarah said. “The one by the dumpster.”

  Hector headed our way, and behind him I saw another figure enter the scene, a very familiar figure. Connie! But she didn’t come toward us—I’m not even sure she noticed me or cared that I was there. Instead, she headed purposefully up the stairs as if on a mission.

  Sarah saw her, too, and quickly turned to us to announce she was hungry. It was as if she wanted to draw attention away from Connie’s presence.

  “I can drive us all somewhere. Who wants to go?” she asked with false bravado.

  “Sounds smashing,” Neville said. “You’ll go, won’t you, Bianca?”

  Whoa, Neville. Suddenly he was part of our group. Grimacing, Doug squeezed my hand tighter. “I have my own car. But I have a term paper due …” Doug said.

  Neville grinned devilishly. “Then Bianca can come with us while you scoot on home to Mummy.”

  This didn’t sit too well with Doug. I actually saw the muscles in his jaw working as he struggled to control his anger. I was reminded of those nature shows where two rams buck at each other, horns intertwining.

  “I’m tired anyway,” I said lamely, wanting to avoid any carnage.

  “Aw, come on, Bianc, it’ll be fun,” said Kerrie. “We haven’t done anything together in a long time.” She was right. We hadn’t done anything together in a long time because of the unspoken feud between her and Sarah. This was reconciliation time and I didn’t want to miss it. Besides, I might be needed for more mediation.

  “Yes, Bianca, it will be fun,” said Neville. “Where are you going? One of those chain places, I hope. Where there are plastic menus and food that’s the same the whole country over.” He smiled and rocked on his heels. “I love those places.”

  While Neville launched into a funny riff on things he liked about America, I caught sight of Hector talking quietly to Sarah, just on the edge of our group. I edged a little closer to eavesdrop.

  “I thought we were going out together,” Hector was saying. He sounded miffed.

  “Not tonight,” she whispered back.

  “I get it—your friends. I don’t swim in the same sea.” He turned his back and walked away. Sarah stared after him but came back to our group.

  “… and we watch ‘ER,’ ‘Friends,’ ‘Frasier’—American shows are very popular at home. And music, too. Eminem is well good, if you ask me,” Neville was saying.

  “‘Well good’?” Kerrie asked. “Don’t you mean ‘very’?”

  “I suppose,” Neville laughed. “It’s how we say things. Like a bird. If she’s what you call ‘hot,’ she’s ‘well fit’ in Britain.” Neville looked straight at me and I blushed.

  “A bird?” Kerrie chirped.

  “A girl,” I explained. I might not have the slang dictionary, but I was good at getting things from context. And this context was getting too “well fit” for me.

  “Let’s go,” I said brightly.

  “We could go to Applebee’s,” Sarah said to us, her voice trembling. “They have fajitas.”

  “I love Mexican food. Oh, let’s do go,” Neville chimed in.

  Doug looked at me, then at Neville, and must have made an instant calculation. “I can go for a little while. We’ll meet you there.”

  “Just a sec. I need to go to the ladies room,” I said, and rushed off looking for Connie.

  I didn’t find Connie, but I did find Hector. When I came upon him just around the corner from the crowd, he was locking up a closet with a big ring of keys.

  “Hector,” I blurted out, “I understand you’re an art student.”

  He looked surprised and nodded slowly. “Yeah. So?”

  “What kind of stuff do you do?” I tried to sound conversational, but I knew I was coming off as just weird. Heck, I felt weird.

  “Watercolors. Nothing like this.” He swept his arm around in a gesture that included the whole museum, but I knew what he meant. Hector’s art was probably not what galleries and museums were looking for. Maybe Hector was behind all the museum shenanigans, and maybe that’s why Sarah was worried. And darn it, she couldn’t afford to get into trouble even if she was moony over a sweet-looking art student who moonlighted as a guard. I’d learned my lesson with Sarah already—don’t be quiet when you think something bad is on the horizon. So, pardon the pun, but I forged ahead. She might not have the courage to.

  “Look, Hector,” I said, wagging my finger at him. “Sarah is one of my best friends and I don’t want her getting hurt. A month or so ago, she was in big trouble, and if she even gets near that kind of trouble again—with the law and all—she won’t get any breaks. And I happen to know that the museum has been missing a few things and Sarah is afraid her friend has done something wrong, so all I can say is—stay away from her, buster, until you straighten up and fly right!”

  Woohoo—what a lecture! Now I understand why grown-ups enjoy it so much. The rush of power, the thrill of control, the high of being The Authority. It’s a wonder they don’t indulge in it more often.

  But if I’d expected Hector to simper and cower, beg for forgiveness, and back away, I was sorely mistaken. Instead, he pulled himself up like a bear ready to strike, and he unleashed his own lecture. Except it wasn’t really a lecture. It was the truth. And the reason I know it was the truth is because the truth has this funny way of zooming in on you like a heat-seeking missile. It doesn’t miss.

  “You can tell Sarah she has nothing to worry about,” he hissed and stomped off.

  In those ten words, he had communicated an essay’s worth of info. He was not the thief. And he was not going to pursue a woman—Sarah—who thought he was.

  Way to go, Bianca. I’d just managed, at one
and the same time, to falsely accuse a man I didn’t even know, and to ruin my best friend’s budding romance with him. Was I talented or what?

  Chapter Ten

  THE CAR RIDE to Applebee’s was silent and slow. I was in my own world, trying to figure out how to break it to Sarah that I’d ruined her relationship with Hector, while also berating myself for zeroing in on him in the first place. But hey, Sarah herself had been concerned about him, so I wasn’t completely in left field on this. I just was missing too much information. I had to talk to Connie. I started choosing the various torture methods I could use to pry the info out of her that night. Perhaps I’d remove all the tofu from the house and substitute packages of Jimmy Dean’s breakfast sausage.

  My silent musings soon gave way to silent fuming, however, when I realized that Doug was engaging in his own fume fest. Why should he enjoy it alone, right?

  Doug always drives slowly, which is okay by me. I’d rather have that than some Dale Earnhardt wannabe behind the wheel. But today, his slowness was matched by a clenched jaw version of simmering irritation, which just lit my own irk-fuse, if you know what I mean.

  Okay, question for guys now: why can’t you just come out and say what’s on your mind? I mean, with girls, it’s blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. A guy would have to be an alien mutant not to know what’s on a girl’s mind. (Come to think of it, maybe guys are mutants.)

  But guys, I have discovered, are real Silent Sams. Something bothers them, they mope and fume, but don’t say a word. Then, like some big loping dog, they eventually get over it or snarl and bark at you.

  Now, I knew that Doug was miffed because of the whole Neville thing. I was miffed that he was miffed because I had been miffed about the Kerrie thing, but I had not moped and fumed. So he shouldn’t either, right? Keep it to himself!

  Uh-oh. He was keeping it to himself. That was the problem! I needed to rethink this whole comeuppance flirting thing.

  “It’s nice that Kerrie and Sarah are getting along again, isn’t it?” I asked, looking over at him.

  “Yup,” he said, keeping his eyes on the road.

  That was the sum total of our pre-Applebee’s conversation. Every time I thought of something else to say, traffic picked up and I didn’t want to distract him.

  By the time Doug and I finally arrived at the restaurant, Neville had Sarah and Kerrie laughing hysterically with his imitations of Fawn Dexter, and they’d long ago placed their order of fried onion strips. Doug and I joined them at the round table, but as Neville stood, he held out a chair for me next to him instead of the one I was heading for next to Kerrie. What’s a girl to do?

  As I settled between Doug and Neville, I thought I heard Doug growl.

  Well, not really. But he didn’t look too happy, which kind of set the tone for the rest of our meal. Sarah had clearly put her troubles with Hector behind her, which was a good thing since she didn’t know I’d caused more trouble ahead. I’d have some explaining to do, and I wanted to catch her alone before she left the restaurant so I could do my guilt-dump and get it over with.

  But maybe Hector was guilty of something, if only a “prank.” I couldn’t tell! I was confused.

  Confusion, though, gave way in short order to fun because it turned out that Neville was a hoot. When I sat down, he was just ordering “a brew” from a startled waitress.

  “I’m going to have to card you,” the woman said to him, peering over half-glasses.

  “What?” Neville looked perplexed and disgusted.

  “She means she needs to see identification to know how old you are,” Kerrie explained.

  “What’s my age got to do with it?” Neville asked.

  “You can’t drink alcohol unless you’re twenty-one,” Doug chimed in, his tone of voice conveying his belief that Neville was pretty dumb for not knowing this.

  “Alcohol? Since when does tea have alcohol in it?” Neville said.

  So that’s when we learned that tea is “a brew” in England, as in “after the soap on TV, I’ll fix myself a brew.” Now, I suspect Neville knew a brew wasn’t a brew here in the old US of A, but it certainly set us up for another round of fascinating chitchat on the differences between our slang and our outlook on each other.

  According to Neville, most of his countrymen think all Americans carry guns just like John Wayne. And even though he didn’t need to show ID for his “brew” of tea, he found it pretty annoying that he couldn’t drink here, because in Britain, he could drink at age eighteen.

  When our food arrived, he treated us to yet more instruction.

  “These,” he said, holding up a French fry, “are chips.”

  “Well, what are chips then? I mean potato chips?” Sarah asked.

  “Crisps,” he answered, popping a fry into his mouth.

  “What about chocolate chips?” Doug asked smugly in an “ah-ha, gotcha” kind of voice.

  “Hmm … those things in cookies? Well the cookies are just chocolate chip cookies. But other cookies, like macaroons and such, are biscuits,” Neville answered, smiling. Doug just frowned.

  Poor Doug. No, poor me! I’d put up with days of silent jealousy during his sympathy fest with Kerrie. Now that I was soaking up some attention, he was being Mr. Jealous Boyfriend.

  Was that good or bad? I didn’t know! The hottie in me said “go, girl, let him seethe!” But the Good Teen in me said “now, now, Bianc, show some sympathy for the lovesick puppy.” I was going to have to start wearing an aluminum hat to block these inner voices!

  As we ate, Kerrie and Sarah produced a veritable onslaught of chatter. They were either making up for lost time or putting on a Public Display of Reconciliation for all of us to admire. Whatever, it was a good thing they were such motormouths because Doug was absolutely mum.

  Okay, okay, I don’t usually say “mum,” but with Neville around, my thoughts were coming through with a British accent. How do I turn this thing off?

  It didn’t help matters that Neville spoke to me a lot, asking me what I thought about the exhibit, what I liked about my school, what kind of music I listened to. It was clear he liked me, and Doug was picking up the vibes.

  All of this made me a little angry because, though I enjoyed the attention, I found myself holding back so as not to upset Doug, which just made me resentful of Doug. Not a good set of feelings to have toward your boyfriend.

  By the time we finished our dinners, I was a simmering stew pot of mixed feelings. Doug’s attitude held me back from having fun. I’d not only missed out on enjoying Neville’s attention. The whole meal at Applebee’s had been spoiled, too, because Doug more than once mentioned he had a big paper to work on and he needed to get going.

  You have to understand. I love chain restaurants—fast food or slow food. McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Applebee’s, Olive Garden, Red Lobster—they’re all high on my list of guilty pleasures. But I hadn’t been allowed to savor this Applebee’s moment because my boyfriend was dragging me down.

  So, when we got ready to leave and Neville oh so casually said, “I’d love for someone to show me around Baltimore. Since you have to run off, Doug, why don’t I let Bianca be my guide?” I was primed.

  Doug just stood there and sputtered. Well, maybe not exactly sputtered. But he did say, “Uh, well, um …” and gritted his teeth. Then he said something that pushed me ever closer to Neville’s arms. He said, “Bianca’s, uh, got to study, too.”

  He might as well have spray painted “Stupid Girl” on my forehead. But even this wasn’t enough to tip me over the edge completely. No, it was when I protested. When I said, “I don’t need to study, I—”

  “Didn’t you tell me you got a bad grade in History?” he interrupted.

  My face reddened. I didn’t get a bad grade in History! I just got a B when I wanted an A, and that was only because my paper was a day late, and even that wasn’t my fault! Now he was making me look like a cultural Neanderthal around this sophisticated British guy. And as we know, British guys (and g
irls) don’t need to be taught history because they are hard-wired to know it.

  “I don’t need to study,” I said. Now I was the one with gritted teeth. Quick, call an orthodontist before we both mangle our perfect pearly whites. “So I can go with you, Neville.”

  I smiled at Doug. “I wouldn’t want Neville to think we’re not good hosts,” I said, as if I was part of the official United States Welcome Wagon.

  I expected Kerrie and Sarah to pipe up at this point and offer to come, too, and I looked at them, but they didn’t pick up the brain signals I was beaming their way. They both started sympathizing with Doug’s need to study, talking about papers due and homework undone.

  Neville impressed us all by paying the bill. Doug left with Sarah and Kerrie. I stood at the counter as Neville waited for change. And you know what? I didn’t even want to go with him any more! I wanted to go home. No, let me be more specific—I wanted my boyfriend to drive me home in that slow, crazy way of his, and I wanted him to walk me to my door and say sweet things to me like “Uh, see ya tomorrow, I guess.” I also wanted to dream about the Mistletoe Dance and pepper Connie with questions about the museum shenanigans.

  But no, I had to prove just what an independent woman I was—hear me roar—so I had to leave Doug in the dust. Watching my boyfriend and two best friends make their way to the parking lot, I had the certain sense that I’d made a big mistake.

  Chapter Eleven

  BOY, WAS IT EVER! A big mistake, that is. As soon as I got in Neville’s car, I regretted it. He was driving his father’s silver Mercedes, a car with a lot of power and speed. And whereas Doug was Mr. Cautious behind the wheel (to the extreme), Neville was devil-may-care. He careened down boulevards, squealed around corners, and screeched to a halt behind stopped trucks with so little room to spare that I saw my life flashing before my eyes on more than one occasion. Add to this his admitted “need to get used to this right side of the road thing,” and you had a recipe for disaster.