I was in so deep, there was no way out. I knew it sounded crazy, but I wondered if there was a way to locate the shot caller without getting the girls in trouble.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “Her family is loaded. I don’t get why she’s doing this.”
“I’ve seen it before,” the cop said, folding his hands behind his neck. “She’s attracted to the lifestyle. It’s exciting for these spoiled rich kids to go slumming in neighborhoods like Wynwood. Makes them feel tough when they dirty up. This is a classic case. Broken home, too much free time, disposable income.”
“Morgan is a sweet girl,” I said, a little too quickly.
“Aren’t they all?” he said and I wanted to push my fist through his teeth.
He didn’t know them. He didn’t know that Morgan was a cutter, that she carried a jagged piece of metal in her sock. I left out the parts that I kept close to myself: Skully leaning over the seawall, the winged tattoo on her back. Morgan gliding against traffic on her bike, speeding in the wrong direction. Kissing her on the dock, the battered remains of an old hermit’s house, ripped apart by a hurricane with no name.
“Look. Don’t be getting too chummy with these kids.”
“What’s going to happen to them?” I asked.
He rubbed his forehead. “We need to find out who is supplying. If the girls lead us to the head honcho, they’re all going down together. Who knows? In a few weeks, we might be closing in on a bust. That is, if you do your job right. Is that clear?”
Right. What could be right about this? Basically, I was screwed. I kept telling myself that I was doing the right thing, whatever that meant, but I didn’t feel right about this. Not at all.
I nodded. “Yes, sir.”
10 : True Gentleman
On Monday, I drifted through the lunchroom, a social minefield divided by haircuts and sneaker brands. Above the cash register, a sign said DO NOT THROW FOOD. In the upper right corner, a fry dangled like a fishing lure.
Across the street, a few people had wandered over to the gas station. They popped into the convenience store and came out with Cokes and microwaved burritos. Some of them sat Indian-style, smack in the middle of the parking spaces.
I waited for the light to change at the intersection. The sun beat down, radiating heat off the sidewalk. When I reached the gas station, I waved to Skully. Unfortunately, she was there with Brent.
“What’s shaking?” she asked, clomping in her stupid Frankenstein boots.
“Look,” I said. “I’m sorry we ditched your party.”
“No worries.” Skully offered me a Dorito. I shook my head. She shrugged, then stuffed the entire chip into her mouth. “That party was wack,” she said between crunches.
“True,” I said. “Especially after the cops showed up.”
“Oh, that’s when it got good,” she said.
“Good in what way?”
Skully dug around inside the Doritos bag. “I hate how they fill the bag with air, just to make you think you’re getting more.” She tilted it into her mouth. “Anyway. I was on the roof, okay? And these emo kids come running over, all drunk and shit. They start throwing bottles at people. They end up denting Brent’s hood, just as he’s driving off. It was freaking hilarious. We still don’t know who did it.”
“Check out my battle wounds.” I showed her my arm.
Brent gave me a long stare. He was sitting on a skateboard so wide, it looked like he could surf waves with it.
“Nice kicks,” he said in this whispery voice.
I stared down at my own double-knotted Converse high tops.
Skully smacked Brent. “Shut up. What’s wrong with his shoes? You can’t knock a classic.”
“They’re too clean. Looks like he bought them yesterday.” The metal studs in his chin caught the light as he smirked.
Skully was on a roll. She said the cops shut down the party, a total invasion of her rights. They set up a roadblock at the end of her street. As the cars filed out, they checked IDs. A couple of people spent the night in jail.
“Listen,” she said, squeezing my arm so tight, I lost circulation. “This girl took my dad’s Hummer before the whole cop thing happened. She only has her learner’s permit.”
“You let her borrow it?”
“She said she’d be right back,” said Skully. “Anyway. She takes off, doing like eighty on the expressway. The cops finally catch up and pull her over. My parents say she stole the car. I mean, she drove it without my dad’s permission, but come on.”
“What happened to the car?”
“A tow truck brought it back this morning.”
“Yo,” Brent said. “Is she still in the slammer?”
“God,” said Skully, lighting a bidi.
“Isn’t that dangerous? Smoking in a gas station?” I asked.
“I’m living on the edge,” she said. “Just like Aerosmith.”
“So when’s the next party?” I asked. I needed to keep gathering info, try to get to the real criminal and bypass Morgan and Skully.
“Not at my place,” said Skully, blowing a smoke ring. “Somebody scratched up the kitchen counter and the cleaning woman ratted on me.”
“Are you going to that art show in Wynwood?” Brent asked her.
“You know I hate that kind of shit,” she said. “All those freaking pretentious art whores judging me with their
hundred-dollar T-shirts from Tokyo.”
This comment surprised me. Skully’s family was loaded, but she dressed like a skate rat. Maybe it was part of her disguise.
“So what’s up with you and Morgan?” Brent asked me.
“We’re friends,” I told him. “That’s all.”
“That’s not what I heard.”
“Well, you heard wrong,” I said.
“Admit it. Her body is slamming. You totally want to hit that, right?”
What was the deal with this guy?
Skully made a face. “I really don’t need to hear about your jerk-off fantasies right now.”
He let out his jackhammer laugh. I felt like punching him.
I glanced across the station. An attendant was waddling toward us, belly straining against his polyester shirt.
“No fumar,” he said, wagging his fat fingers.
“No problemo,” Skully said, flicking the bidi into the street.
The attendant’s face glistened with sweat. “Out,” he bellowed.
We got up and moseyed across the intersection, taking our time. Brent skated ahead, propelling himself forward with deep, sweeping kicks. I turned around and the attendant was still there, making sure we didn’t come back.
As we approached the school parking lot, the post-lunch herd had wandered back to campus.
“Only ninety minutes to go. That’s, like, a whole mix tape, both sides,” Skully said. “What class have you got now, Brent?”
“A.P. Biology,” he said.
“That blows.”
Brent stepped on the board and it bounced into his hand. Damn. I wished I still had my wheels and decks. I hadn’t skated in years.
“Listen to Ms. Special Ed,” said Brent. “For your information, it rocks. We’re dissecting pig fetuses today.”
Skully groaned. “You freak. Catch you later.” She skipped off toward the classrooms.
Brent reached into his backpack and pulled out a heap of flyers. “Want to give me a hand?”
A hand. Yeah, right. I’d give him a fist. Straight into his metal-studded chin.
“Sure,” I said.
“Thanks, bro,” he said without looking up. Okay. So now we were buddies? He moved to a Jeep, slid a flyer under the windshield wiper.
“Is this for the thing in Wynwood?” I asked.
“Yeah. I promised Morgan that I’d pass these around. It’s for her lameass art show,” he said, shoving a handful at me. “Last time she gave me a shitload of flyers, I dumped the entire pile at Sweat Records. She didn’t know the difference, bro.”
We spent a few minutes tucking flyers into windshields. Brent had it down to a science: one in each corner of every window.
I slipped a flyer in my pocket, though I’d already memorized the gleaming, bold-faced font, the vector graphics rendered in Photoshop (an anime space girl with massive boobs).
“Stay away from Morgan,” he said, all of a sudden.
“Look. Nothing happened. Besides, I’m not into her. I mean, she’s hot or whatever, but I don’t—”
I scanned the picnic benches and saw Morgan walking toward the trees near the tennis courts. This is where she usually hung out at lunch. She caught my stare and quickened her step.
Brent leaned closer. “She’s bad news. Watch. She’ll end up in jail, like that guy she’s always with.”
“What guy?” I asked.
“Finch and his boys. The e-tards were rolling, like, in front of everyone downstairs at Skully’s, having a cuddle puddle on the floor.”
He said this like it was no big deal.
“Where did they get the X?” I asked, trying to sound casual. “Can we get some?”
Brent raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t know you liked to party like that.”
“Forget it. I’ll catch you later.” I bumped past him.
Morgan saw me coming and kept up the fastwalk.
“Wait a sec,” I called out, half-jogging across the grass.
“No running,” said Mr. Pitstick. He slouched against the wall, a whistle dangling around his neck like he was some kind of food coach. When I ignored him, Mr. Pitstick blew the whistle. No doubt, he’d been waiting to do that all day.
Morgan didn’t stop. I found a tennis ball on the ground and beamed it at her. It bounced near her feet and stuttered across the tennis court. She untangled herself from her iPod, still playing the depressing soundtrack of her life. “Aim a little higher next time.”
“If you slowed down, my aim would improve,” I said, catching up with her.
She stuck out her lower lip and puffed her bangs. God, she was hot. Her eyes were smudged so dark, it seemed like she was peering through a hole.
“I’m sorry. Do I know you? Oh, it’s coming back to me now.” She pushed me. Hard. “You really think you’re special, don’t you?”
“What?”
“When I first met you, I thought you were different. But I must’ve been on crack because you’re just like all the other assholes in this school.”
“Morgan, chill. What are you talking about?”
She shot me a look and all the molecules in my body vaporized. “Everybody knows.”
“Knows what?”
“Do I have to spell it out?”
“Spell what out?” I asked.
“Would you please shut up?” Her eyelashes were wet. “I can’t stand the sound of your voice right now.” Morgan wiped her face on her sleeve.
“Can we talk for a second?”
“I think you’ve done enough talking.”
“What do you mean?”
“You told everyone.”
“Told them what?” I shouted.
“That we slept together.”
“I didn’t say that. Who said that?”
“Maybe this will refresh your memory,” she said, brandishing her cell phone.
I squinted at the picture on the screen: me and Morgan, locked in an embrace. From that angle, it looked like she wasn’t wearing a top, but it was just her arm in the way. I racked my brain, trying to figure out when it was snapped. Probably at Skully’s party. From the message details that appeared as she scrolled down, the picture was sent to a hundred different phone numbers.
“Who sent that picture?” I asked.
“Obviously, you did. It came from your cell.”
“Look.” I shoved the phone at her. “You can scroll through all my photos, if you want.”
She waved my hand away. “Do you think I’m stupid? You deleted it, obviously.”
“But I dropped my phone, right? Somebody must’ve taken that picture and sent it out. I’m sorry this happened. It sucks. But I swear, I had nothing to do with it.”
I could feel the stares burning into my back.
Now I had what my little sister would call a rep-yoo-tay-shun.
“You know what? You’re a terrible liar,” Morgan said, walking away.
If only she knew.
Part Two
11 : Dirty Laundry
The rest of the day passed in a blur. At home, I logged onto Facebook and noticed that my friend count had gone down. I scanned through all the names and Morgan didn’t show up. She must have deleted me. God, this hurt on so many levels. I glanced at the rubber band that she’d slipped on my wrist. I never took it off.
Out of desperation, I typed her name into the search box, but when I found her profile, it said something like, Morgan only shares with friends …
In other words, I’d been blocked.
I scrolled through her so-called online community and clicked on Brent’s profile. Just looking at it made me sick. I kept going down the list, all those meaningless names and crappy photos, searching for the guy with the ecstasy connection.
On the next page, I saw my own face.
I stared at the picture. Judging from the washed-out pixilation, it looked snapped from someone’s cell phone. I blinked at it for a few seconds, then clicked on the profile.
Whoever made the fake Aaron profile had cut and pasted all of my interests from the original page, down to my stupid misspelling of the band Evanesence. The only thing they got wrong was my age, which they listed as 100. My fingers shook as I clicked on PHOTOS and found a picture of my smiling parents, stolen from my cell phone.
The fake Aaron didn’t have many friends, just a couple girls from English class. After gawking at all those animated graphics wishing me a happy hump day, Jewish new year, and Friday the 13th, I clicked back to my real page. This was so messed up. I mean, who would do something like this? And why?
There was a new message in my Facebook inbox. The subject line said, What u looking 4, sent by someone whose name was just a random series of letters: HIOFCR. Maybe it was spam, an automated message sent by a robot. I clicked on it anyway.
A new profile appeared, someone without a picture. Still, I noticed that the mystery profile was a male who lived in Miami. The message itself said, “October 31,” which was just a few weeks away. “Tamiami Trail. (US HWY 41).”
On a hunch, I Googled the text. The first thing I found was a Wikipedia entry. Turns out the Tamiami Trail crossed into Shark Valley, the northern edge of Everglades National Park. Beneath a bleary photo of an alligator, the caption said, Wildlife sightings are common along the trail, which has no fences.
I scribbled down the info. Then I changed my password.
Status: UNSENT
To: LadyM
From: Metroid
Subject: Give Me Novacaine
Dear Morgan,
Do you ever write letters in your notebook and retype them as e-mails? Would you believe I’m desperate enough to try it? I’d have to answer “yes.” Plus my pen is bipolar or something.
I hope Pitstick doesn’t make me read out loud. Today he’s wearing one of those tent-sized “pleather” jackets, the kind that’s always on sale at Burlington Coat Factory because nobody wants to wear a dead cow.
Pitstick: Blah blah blah.
Me: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
He always writes three rows of notes on the board.
Three. Separate. Rows.
&n
bsp; When he runs out of room, he just squishes it together, writing more useless crap with that ugly green marker. It hurts, just staring at it.
We are reading about the Trojan Horse (1000x better than The Odyssey). This morning, he’s making us watch a stupid DVD: “The Crucible of Civilization.” It wouldn’t suck so bad if he didn’t keep stopping and starting it, just to “enlighten” us with his brilliant commentary. He won’t even turn the lights off so I can sleep.
OMFG. A girl just asked Pitstick if he believes in the Lost City of Atlantis.
“That’s a good question,” he said.
When teachers say, “That’s a good question,” it means they don’t know the answer.
I’m pressing the “save” button in my head. I need to remember this so we can talk about it later. You are, like, the smartest person I know. We’ll probably have another one of our epic conversations … if you ever talk to me again.
You said that your family tree was rotten. I’m still trying to figure that out. I don’t want to psychoanalyze you about it. But when you mentioned that your stepmom calls you fat, I couldn’t believe it. Shit. I just think that’s so wrong. And so untrue.
I want to know everything about you.
I want to kiss your branches and your leaves.
I am so sorry about what happened at Skully’s party. Things got out of control. We were all pretty wasted, I guess. For the record, I didn’t send that picture.
And you’re not fat. Trust me. You’re perfect. Well, nobody’s perfect.
Especially not me.
—A.
After class the following Friday, I was hanging out at the Tombstone. As usual, Nolan Struth was there, taking up space. This time, he was by himself. When he saw me, he got this bugged-out look on his face, like he was scared.
“Did you find the plutonium? For your time machine or whatever,” I said, lighting up a bidi.
Nolan leaned back in his wheelchair. He squeezed his eyes shut, like that could make me disappear. “I’m not supposed to talk to you.”
“Why the hell not?” I was kind of surprised. And a little hurt. “You’re talking to me now.”
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