Sammy Keyes and the Hotel Thief Sammy Keyes

by Wendelin Van Draanen

  He gets off the phone, mumbling, “Pork bellies...” and then he notices me. “Hey, you’re not supposed to read those here! You’re supposed to buy ’em and read ’em at home.” He goes to the freezer and takes out a Double Dynamo. “What are you doing here anyway? I thought school started yesterday.”

  I check out the freezer, which is chock-full of Double Dynamos, then count the money in my pocket. Not enough. I look at T.J. chomping away on his and say, “I got suspended.”

  His eyebrows shoot up. “Suspended? On the first day of school?”

  I pick out some gum and pop it on the counter. “That’s right.”

  He stares at me and I just stare back. Finally he rings me up and says, “Get out of here, would you? I don’t need juvenile delinquents hanging around my store.”

  So I stand on the corner of Broadway and Main awhile, watching cars do-si-do around each other, and all of a sudden I get a very bad idea. And the more I think about it the more I talk myself into believing it’s a good idea, and off I go down Main Street, straight to Madame Nashira’s House of Astrology.

  I wasn’t really expecting her to be there. I tried peeking around the old velvet curtains, but I couldn’t see much, so finally I pushed on the door. A bell jingled as it opened, and a voice called, “Not open, sorry!”

  I stood there blinking for a minute, trying to get used to the darkness. The walls and the ceiling were painted black, with little silver stars everywhere. There was an old velvet love seat, and in front of it was a coffee table with unlit candles and a big deck of cards. Across the room was an ancient-looking telescope on a brass stand, and sitting at a table next to it, punching numbers into a calculator, was Gina.

  The table had a thick green skirt around it, and behind it was a white curtain, coming down from the ceiling like a slice of the Milky Way.

  I watched her for a minute as she went back and forth between a book and the calculator. Finally I said, “Hi.”

  Well, she about jumps into outer space. And when she comes back down she’s clutching her heart. “Don’t do that to me! I was concentrating!”

  “Sorry...”

  She looks at me a little closer. “Oh, it’s you!”

  “Hi.”

  “What are you doing out so late?” She gropes for her watch and curses.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “That creep took my watch, too. Like he’s gonna be able to get anything for it. It’s just silver plate, but I really liked it. It had moons on one side of the band and suns on the other and...Doesn’t matter. It’s gone.” She eyes me. “The point is, what are you doing out so late? Does your mama know where you are?”

  I laugh. “It’s ten in the morning!”

  “No kidding?”

  I pull back the window curtain. “See?”

  She shields her eyes like I’m torturing her. “Put it down!”

  I drop the curtain and laugh. “Sorry!”

  “So why are you here?”

  “Um...I don’t know...I guess I was hoping that maybe they’d found out something more about...”

  “The jerk who stole my money? No chance. Not with that buffoon in charge.” She squints at me. “Why are you so interested, anyway?”

  I just shrug and stand there in front of her desk, toeing the carpet with my high-top.

  She studies me a minute. “You’re not just interested—you’re worried!”

  I keep digging at the carpet. “No I’m...”

  “Yes you are! What’s the matter? You worried that maybe the guy saw you, too?”

  I look up at her. “I know he did.”

  “Seriously?” She gives me a doubtful look. “How do you know that?”

  I go back to destroying the carpet and mumble, “Because I waved at him.”

  Her face twitches a minute, and then she busts up. “Oh, you’re priceless!”

  “More like stupid.”

  She laughs a little more, then makes herself stop. “Look, honey, you’re probably worried about nothing. Maybe he saw you, but he can’t know who you are. It’s too far away.”

  “I keep trying to tell myself that, but...”

  “So what you’ve got to do is get your mind off of it. Forget about him. Make yourself think about something else.” She taps the paper on her desk. “Ever had your birth chart done?”

  “I don’t even know what a birth chart is.”

  “You don’t? Well, sit down and let me show you!”

  She’s looking at me so excited, I can’t exactly say, No thanks, I really shouldn’t even be here, so down I sit, right across the table from her.

  She shoves this drawing at me that looks like a cross between a clock and a wagon wheel. “This is a birth chart. It plots out the exact position of the planets at the time of someone’s birth.” She points to the wedges. “These are houses. That’s the way we divide up the space surrounding Earth. There are twelve houses, and each one represents a sphere of human life.

  “For instance, the first one is the house of Aries and Mars. It reveals personality and psychological motivation, whereas, say, the sixth house—Virgo and Mercury—is related to health, diet, and exercise.”

  Now when Gina started talking about the birth chart it’s like she became a different person. She still looked like a Gypsy who’d dunked her head in a bucket of shellac, but all of a sudden she sounded different. She sounded really smart.

  She sees me staring. “Why’re you looking at me like that?”

  I blink. “Sorry.”

  “Okay. Like I was saying, these are the houses and this”—she points to a green line going through the middle of the chart—“is the horizon.”

  “The horizon?”

  “Yeah. The horizon at the time of birth. You need to know that so you can position the cusp of the first house. That’s called the ascendant.”

  “The ascen-what? What’s a cusp?”

  She laughs. “Here. This line is a cusp. It separates one astrological sign from another. The ascendant is the degree of the zodiac rising over the eastern horizon at the moment of birth. Each degree takes about four minutes to rise.”

  “Wait a minute. How do you know the moment of birth?”

  “You need a birth certificate. Gotta have it. You can’t just guess ’cause even if you’re only a few minutes off, by the time you’re done making all the conversions into sidereal time your whole chart’ll be off. Same with the place of birth. If the latitude and longitude are off, well, forget it.”

  “Seems pretty complicated to me.” I look at her chart for a minute. “So what do you do with it?”

  “I’m not anywhere near done yet! I’ve got to finish writing in the glyphs, draw in the midheaven, position the sun and the moon and the planets. Then I’ve got to draw in the aspects, progress it, and interpret it.”

  I shake my head. “Wow.”

  She studies me a minute. “You’re an Aries.”

  It’s not a question, but I nod anyway.

  She laughs. “Who but an Aries would wave at a man stealing money?” She collects her papers and says, “What I want to know is, what else have you seen through those binoculars? You some kind of Peeping Tomasina?”

  I can feel my cheeks turning red. “No! I just...well, sometimes I get bored.”

  Gina nods like she understands. “Ever try looking at the stars through binoculars? It’s pretty cool.”

  “Really? They’re so far away I wouldn’t think you could see them any better.”

  She slides her papers into a drawer and straightens out the books. “Try it sometime. You’ll be surprised.” She points to the telescope across the room. “Last year around Christmas I hauled that thing to the roof of the mall. It was spectacular!”

  My mouth drops open. “The roof of the mall? How do you get up there?”

  “Haven’t you ever gone behind one of those ‘Employees Only’ doors?”

  “No...”

  “They’ll take you straight to the roof.” Gina laughs. “And her
e I thought you were an anarchist.” She picks up her keys and says, “Bedtime for Madame Nashira.”

  I watch her lock up and go, and the minute there’s a break in traffic I jaywalk across the street so I don’t have to walk through the guys already hanging around the Red Coach. And before I even reach the far side of the street I’ve got a whole new plan for how I’m going to spend my day.

  TWELVE

  Mrs. Graybill’s nose wasn’t in the hallway, and Grams’ binoculars were under the bed—right where I’d left them. I cleaned the lenses, scrawled Grams a note, then headed for the mall.

  When I got there, I tried to act real casual riding up the escalator, but since the only people at the mall in the middle of a school day are adults and babies, it felt like everyone was staring at me. Like any minute someone was going to come right out and say, “What are you doing here? And, hey...what’s with those binoculars?”

  The second I got to the top floor I found an “Employees Only” door and ducked behind it. I stood there for a minute, just glad to be away from all those adults and babies and eyes staring at me. Then I started walking.

  I’d always thought there were just bathrooms behind those “Employees Only” doors. I didn’t know there was a whole maze of corridors! And I’m cruising along, feeling like a hamster in a new cage, when a door swings open and practically knocks me over. It’s not an adult, and it’s sure not a baby—it’s Brandon.

  He flips back that shiny hair of his and says, “Sammy! Sorry.”

  I said, “What are you doing here?” because everyone knows Brandon’s supposed to be at school.

  “I had a dentist appointment. I just stopped by to pick up my paycheck.” He looks me up and down. “I might ask you the same question...”

  I blush and mumble, “I got suspended.”

  “Suspended—you?”

  I check out my high-tops, feeling pretty stupid. “Yeah. For punching someone in the nose.”

  He laughs. “Well, I’m sure they deserved it.” Can you believe that? I tell you, Brandon’s all right. Anyhow, he looks at his watch and says, “I’ve got to run. I’ll talk to you later.”

  I stop him. “Hey, Brandon? Do you know how to get up to the roof?”

  “The roof? Why do you want to get on the roof?”

  “I don’t know, I just do.”

  He pulls on the back of his hair, studying me a minute. Finally he says, “Go down this way and turn left at the next T. It’s the first door on the right.” He turns to go, then stops and says, “You didn’t hear that from me, right?”

  I laugh. “Right!”

  I ran down the corridor and turned left, then opened the first door on the right. It led to some cement steps, and up to another door.

  I went up the steps and through the door, and all of a sudden there I was, on the roof of the mall. And it felt like I was on top of the world. I ran around a bit, peeking over the edge of the roof wall; then I cut through a bunch of fans that looked like the top of some Saudi sheik’s palace and went over to the other side. I could see the tops of trees and power lines and the roofs of houses. And then people—lots of people—just kind of hurrying along the sidewalk.

  After I’d looked around with my eyes, I started using the binoculars. First I checked out the Salvation Army. There are always people hanging around at the Salvation Army. They kind of spend the day sharing cigarettes and lying back on their sleeping bags, watching people go back and forth to the courthouse, waiting for someone to come out of the soup kitchen with some food.

  I spent a little while watching them watching people, and then I decided to watch the people they were watching. Lawyers mostly. They were hanging around outside the courthouse, sharing cigarettes and talking, looking quite a lot like the people at the Salvation Army, only dressed up. It didn’t take long to get tired of watching them, so I moved on over to the police station.

  The police station is right next to the fire station, so you’d think there’d be a lot going on, but there wasn’t. I watched the front door of the police station for a long time and it only opened once. Same at the fire station. I could see a couple of guys cleaning the fire trucks, but it all seemed like it was in slow motion.

  So I cruised along the wall for a while, watching some bulldozers level dirt for a new mall parking lot, and then I thought to look for William Rose Junior High School. Maybe I could even spot Heather Acosta picking her nose or something.

  I found the school all right, but all I could really see were the basketball hoops, so I gave up and went over to the other side of the roof. There were people sitting on benches in the little grassy area around the mall—mostly in the shade, because it was pretty hot out. There was a lady with her baby, sitting under a tree playing peek- aboo. There were a couple of guys drinking out of Styrofoam cups, playing checkers. There was a man in a three-piece suit, and with his briefcase and perfect hair I would’ve been sure he was a lawyer, except he was doing something you never catch lawyers doing: he was eating an ice cream cone. A Double Dynamo.

  Well, I looked down the street a little farther and sure enough, there’s Oscar, sitting on a planter by himself in the shade of a big tree, cleaning his glasses with a hanky, enjoying a rest from pushing that cart of his around. And all of a sudden I realize that the roof of the mall is the hottest place in town and I’m dying for an ice cream—or at least a drink of water.

  So I start for the door, telling myself I’ll come back when it isn’t so hot—maybe at night, to check out the stars—when I get the idea to look for Hudson’s house.

  So I run across to the far side of the roof, then find Hudson’s house with just my eyeballs. I put the binoculars up, adjust the focus, and sure enough there’s Hudson, sitting on the porch, beating the heat with a tall glass of iced tea, laughing.

  And sitting right next to him, beating the heat with a tall glass of iced tea, laughing, is my grandmother.

  * * *

  I felt like going down to Hudson’s but I didn’t. I went home. And the longer I waited for Grams, the madder I got. What was she doing? Trying to teach me a lesson? What if I hadn’t seen her through the binoculars? And why was she spending the whole day with someone she thought I spent too much time with?

  When she finally came through the door, she was hauling a bunch of plastic shopping bags, humming. She put them down on the kitchen counter and smiled at me. “Did you have a nice day?”

  I crossed my arms. “I was suspended, remember?”

  She starts taking cans out of a bag and putting them away. “Oh, I remember all right.”

  I watched her for a minute. “This was just your idea of teaching me a lesson, wasn’t it?”

  She keeps humming away, putting up the groceries. Finally she turns to me and says, “I’m sorry, Samantha. Really. I didn’t mean to be gone so long.”

  Huh. I’m quiet for a while, then I heave a sigh. “Worrying’s the pits.”

  Grams throws her head back and laughs. “You can say that again!”

  And she’s on her way over to give me a hug when I say, real quietly, “At least when you worry about me it’s because of emergencies—not because I decide to spend the day sipping tea on someone’s porch.”

  That stops her cold. “What?”

  “Have a nice time with Hudson today?”

  She takes her glasses off and starts buffing them, holding them up to the light, then buffing them some more. “I only went there because I thought it was high time I knew a little bit more about the man.”

  “Because of me?”

  “Yes, of course, because of you.”

  “So...? I’m right, huh?”

  “I’ll agree he’s a very knowledgeable man, but frankly I find him to be an insufferable flirt.”

  “An insufferable flirt? Hudson?”

  She pops her glasses back on her nose. “That’s right. But if you think for one minute you can make me forget your recent behavior by talking about Mr. Graham, you are sorely mistaken.” She points to the
couch. “Sit. Right now. Sit and talk. You’ve got a lot of explaining to do.”

  So I sit. And I talk. And I tell her right off that I didn’t leave Mrs. Graybill that note—that I think somebody who knows I saw him steal something left it. Then I back up and tell her about the burglary at the Heavenly Hotel, and when it comes out that the binoculars were involved in the trouble I’m in, Grams is just dying to say, I told you so! but she doesn’t. She just sits there, real quiet, looking paler and paler. And when she finally can’t stand it anymore, she says, “Why in heaven’s name did you wave?”

  I shrug. “Grams, I don’t know—I just did, okay?”

  She looks at me through her glasses like Mikey looks at some new fish in an aquarium. “And next I suppose you’re going to tell me you didn’t call the police because you didn’t want to worry me?”

  My face crinkles up—part smile, part cringe. Then I add really fast, “But I have talked to the police. There’s this guy named Officer Borsch—I told him the whole story that night at the Heavenly Hotel and—”

  “At the Heavenly Hotel? You mean to tell me you went inside?”

  My face crinkles up again. “Well, there were police cars parked out front, and I wanted to find out what was going on, so I—”

  “You are never to set foot in that hotel again! Do you hear me? Never!”

  “But Grams...it’s not seedy, it’s really kind of neat. It’s got—”

  “I don’t care what it’s got! It is no place for a girl your age, do you hear me?”