“Little Kendall Evans!” he exclaimed, happy to see me, with just a hint—maybe more—of mocking in his voice. “You are stalking me!”
I opened my mouth, but Mason beat me to it.
In the politest, most even tone of voice ever, he said, “Please, get bent, Grant.”
Grant did a double take, and I held my breath, worried I would break in two if I let go of my laughter.
“What was that?” he asked, looking genuinely not sure if he’d heard right.
Still smiling with extreme pleasantry, Mason said, “Go. Get. Bent. Go fuck yourself.”
As Grant startled backward and went back upstairs, throwing a concerned, wounded look in Mason’s direction, I started gasping like a goldfish, hyperventilating with laughter while Mason calmly sipped his drink, looking at me with a small smile hanging around his lips.
I struggled to compose myself. Mason was my enemy, but I couldn’t deny that he had made my night.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Ellie and Audrey never showed up at the party. Simone got bored with Jerry and offered to drive me home.
“This really is a beautiful car,” I said, sliding into the passenger seat.
Simone smiled wide enough to show teeth. “It is the best car in the world,” she said, absently caressing the steering wheel with her index finger. “I remember when I found it. It was right after that snowstorm two years ago. The snow was actually worse upstate, believe it or not.”
She switched on her turn signal, moving onto the bridge.
“My grandfather’s place is on a field, leading up to woods on three sides. It was piled three feet high before we got out there with shovels, and even then, we just dug a few tunnels: to the garage, to the shed, the driveway out to the main road.” She paused and narrowed her eyes. After a second of thought, she said, “I hadn’t spoken to anyone for about three days at that point. I had been feeling nauseated for a week, and for some reason I couldn’t get enough of the cold. It was the only thing that would stop me feeling sick; it kind of ate through any other symptoms, you know? So, after my grandfather went inside, instead of walking in the clear spots, I walked in the snow. Walked around the yard in circles. For hours. I stayed out there until the sun started to go down.
“When it was getting dark, my grandfather came out on the porch and yelled at me to come inside. I still didn’t want to walk in the paths, or backtrack in my footsteps, so I went the long way around. And I literally walked smack into this car. It had sunk into the mud earlier that year and was totally submerged. I would have just ignored it maybe, but the sun was setting and happened to catch the paint where the snow had fallen away.”
She snuck a glance at me. “It’s a good thing I’m not as short as you, I would have drowned. I can’t believe I didn’t catch pneumonia. Anyway, I’ve spruced the car up since then, but I almost wish I hadn’t. The sunset on the rust was . . . pretty.”
I had a million questions, but I only had the guts to ask the easiest. “Where did you learn how to fix cars?”
She shrugged carelessly. “A lot of the old guys up there had worked at the repair shop. Pop, too. I’m good at mechanical things.”
We drove the rest of the way in silence, and I watched Simone. Watching her drive was like watching a ballet, her arms moving in sure, centered arcs from the wheel to the gearshift, her hips turning with the beat of the motor underneath them, every little motion of her fingertips carefully and skillfully calculated to a technical but somehow beautiful effect. An image of her, enraged, slamming a chair through a window with a piercing, guttural war cry came unbidden into my head. I remembered how very little I knew about Simone.
On Monday morning, I woke up to a voice mail from a blocked number.
“Hey, Kendall.” It was Mason’s voice. “It was great seeing you the other night. You have been a lovely blackmailee. The terms have changed. Come by when you get out of school.”
I played it for Simone at lunch. She listened, frowning.
She handed the phone back to me. “What do you think?” I asked.
“I’m not sure. I don’t really care for his tone, but I don’t know. What do you think?”
“Maybe it’s a good thing? Maybe he found the thief and doesn’t need me anymore? That could happen, right?”
Simone looked up and stiffened. “Can I help you?” she asked imperiously. I whirled around to see Gilly.
He ignored her and turned to me. “Kendall, can I talk to you alone, please?”
I avoided Simone’s glare and followed him to the hallway, where he stopped and said, “I thought I should tell you that I’m going to call the cops and tell them about the whole thing.”
“Goddamn it, Gilly! Why?”
“Have you found the drugs yet?”
I looked down. “No.”
“Were you just talking about having to go see Mason?”
“You were eavesdropping? That’s attractive.”
He nodded. “Right. So that’s that. I was trying to stay out of your business, but you’re not safe. We’re calling the cops now.”
“We are not doing anything, Gilly. This has nothing to do with you.”
“But it has something to do with her?” He motioned to somebody behind me.
“Ahem,” said Simone. Swallowing a curse, I turned around.
Simone was slouching against the lockers. Her arms were crossed, and she was definitely not smiling.
The two stared each other down like gunfighters outside a saloon at high noon. She narrowed her eyes; he clenched his fists. The other students filling the hallway were so many tumbleweeds.
I turned back to Gilly. “We’re friends,” I told him, keeping my voice down.
He rolled his eyes. “Whatever. If she gets to help you, I get to help you.”
“Calling the police is not helping me.”
“Let me come with you to talk to Mason, and I won’t call the police.”
I sighed, nodded, and walked over to Simone, who was looking at Gilly’s retreating back distastefully.
“So, can you give me a ride to your building after school?”
“Fine.”
I took a breath. “I have to bring Gilly.” “Jesus, Kendall!” Simone threw up her hands and walked away.
Simone hadn’t gotten over her annoyance at having to include Gilly, but at the end of the day she set her teeth and unlocked her car door for him anyway. Gilly scowled as he slid into the backseat, muttering some unintelligible bitchery, and slammed the door hard behind him. Simone rolled her eyes at me and let me into the passenger side.
“So, last time I saw him there it was around 4:30,” I said, awkwardly breaking the silence.
“Well, that’s barely enough time to prepare,” Simone said, pounding the gas pedal.
“Prepare how?”
Gilly broke in. “Set my number on speed-dial and then keep your ringer on silent, with your phone in your pocket, so you can text me if something goes wrong. It’s 917—”
“She already did that with my number,” Simone interrupted tersely. I elbowed her in the ribs. She shot me a death glare but said, “Though I guess it won’t hurt. Go ahead.”
After entering his number in my phone and handing it back, Gilly grumbled. “What was your big plan, Simone?”
“Nothing that concerns you.”
“OK, you know what? Let’s just have some quiet time,” I said, turning on the radio. “Listen to some music.”
When we got to Simone’s apartment, she kicked off her heels and motioned for me to do the same with my Keds, disappearing down the hall to her room. I turned to make sure Gilly was behaving but found that he had automatically taken his shoes off already. Curious, I held back and watched as he made the turn to Simone’s room just a fraction of a second before I did.
Inside, Simone was laying out a pair of narrow black pants with a big silver button and a red and black corset top.
“Is this for me?” I asked, fingering the lush velvet of the pants.
“Yes,” she said, pulling a crate of shoes out from apparently nowhere. “Put it on. You”—this to Gilly—“wait outside. Kendall, what size shoe are you?”
“Six-and-a-half,” I said, quickly unbuckling my pants. Simone rummaged to the bottom of the crate and pulled out slightly worn silver flats.
“These should work for you. My feet grew like crazy two years ago,” she said. Turning and seeing Gilly still standing there, Simone snapped, “I thought you were gone already! Go away so Kendall can change.”
Gilly opened his mouth, looking furious, but I guess he couldn’t think of anything to say, because he eventually shut it and left the room with a long-suffering look in my direction.
I changed into the clothes Simone had picked out for me. The pants were tight and sleek. I ran my hands down them, feeling the firmness of my thighs, while Simone tilted my head forward and shook out my hair, ripping a comb through it.
While she worked on me, I took in her room, which was weird in a kind of spectacular way: somehow both Spartan and Roman. It had a military tidiness and a crisp minimalism: no movie posters, no visible shelves, no stuffed animals, nothing. There were several armoires and cupboards, but they all had doors and all the doors were shut, and her desk was an old-fashioned rolltop. Much of the room was white: the walls, the ceiling, the armoires, the desk, the curtains. Even the floorboards had been painted white.
Her bed was a gigantic bronze four-poster mounted on a black circular platform and hung with a shining, sheer black canopy. Beyond its folds, I saw silver satin pillows and a sumptuous velvet bedspread in gold. The same metallic colors had been neatly painted onto the moldings lining the bleached furniture. She had strung gold, silver, and bronze PVC bars in intricate patterns high up on the walls, near the ceiling.
Other than the pipes, there were only two pieces of wall decoration, stuck side by side in the very center of the wall perpendicular to her bed: One was a black-and-white photograph of a boy wearing a yarmulke and a fringed scarf, reading from a scroll—the Torah, I guess. The other was a yellowed piece of paper with four Chinese characters printed in red ink, in a red border. They were in identical black frames.
Simone let my hair go. “OK, now throw your head back.”
I did as she said. She stepped back and surveyed me. “Dress for the job you want, or in this case, the one you’ve been blackmailed into,” she told me. “I think this will help. Take a look.” She called out to Gilly, “You can come in.”
I turned to the mirror and gaped. I still looked like a high school student, but somehow Simone had managed to make me look as sophisticated and adult as it was possible to be in that stage of the human condition.
“And this is your contribution, Simone?” scoffed Gilly. “Make her look like you. Yeah, that will give her credibility.”
“You will literally never, ever understand girls, huh? That must be sad for you. Good luck with that V card.”
They glared at each other, and I was about to yell at them to knock it off, when I looked closer. Simone was clenching her fists so tightly her knuckles had gone white. Gilly’s forehead and collarbone above his T-shirt were both shiny with sweat.
They were scared, I realized. They were trying so hard to be helpful because they were scared.
I turned back to the mirror. Was I scared? I reached down into the pocket of my crumpled jeans for my cell phone and checked the time. 4:25. I slid it into the pocket of Simone’s pants.
“I’m going to go down there,” I heard myself say. Feeling slightly disconnected, like I was floating, I moved toward the door. “I’ll be back soon.”
I searched myself for fear in the elevator and again as I pushed open the door that led to the basement stairs. I’d better be scared, I told myself, the light getting dimmer the farther down I went. I knew that staying scared meant staying smart. Using my cell phone for light, I concentrated on finding the right door.
Once I did, I took a deep breath and wished so hard for an empty room that I actually expected one. What I did not expect was to push open the door to the secret office and find Mason alone, headphones on, bare feet tucked up underneath him on the couch, playing God of War on a PlayStation.
“Um, got a minute?” I asked, after standing awkwardly in the doorway, waiting for him to notice me.
He looked up and smiled at me, pulling off his headphones. He put down the controller and motioned me in.
“Sit down,” he said. He swung his legs off the couch to make room for me next to him.
I looked at the soft dent in the fabric where his feet had been and felt something twist in my chest. Fear, I finally identified, as if it were something happening to someone else.
I willed myself to calm down, ordering my circulatory system to pump blood at a normal rate. I raised my eyes to his. “I think I’d rather stand if it’s all the same to you.”
Mason met my gaze with his own. “Jerry, I ordered a pizza at the corner. Would you go pick it up?” I hadn’t even noticed Jerry, but there he was, leaning against the far wall with his eyes closed, like he was napping.
Jerry looked from him to me. “Now?” he asked, hesitating.
“Yes, please,” answered Mason, still looking right at me.
I felt Jerry waiting for my reaction. Remembering how I looked in Simone’s clothes, I threw my hair back and my hip forward, jamming myself into the girl in the photograph. I nodded.
“OK,” he said, throwing his jacket on.
The door shut behind him, and Mason said, “I wasn’t sure you would come.”
My head snapped back to him. “What would you have done if I hadn’t?” I asked, suddenly suspicious.
“I probably would have called the TA at YATS,” he said, putting his feet up on the coffee table. “But I wouldn’t have enjoyed it.” He looked up at me and tilted his head. “Kendall, come on, sit down. You were so friendly on Friday. Why be nervous now?”
“I’m not nervous,” I lied. “And I wasn’t friendly on Friday. I threw a drink in your face.”
He laughed. “That was great.”
“You must have a weird fucking social life.”
Mason nodded. “I do. That’s actually why I asked you here. Please sit down, Kendall. I know you haven’t found the thief. I’m not mad about that—we re-upped, so there’s no supply issue. I’ve got time to find the idiot. Sit down and talk with me.”
I pulled out the desk chair and sat.
Mason scooted down the couch so he was closer to me. “Jo’s very angry at me.”
I snorted before I could stop myself. “OK. I’m sorry?”
“Yeah, me too. She’s been in my life for a long time. I tried to talk to her this weekend, but she wasn’t letting it go. I think we’re kind of broken now.”
I stared at him, but he didn’t say anything else. “That’s a really sad story,” I said eventually. “What does it have to do with me?”
“I’m getting to that.” He pulled a pink cell phone out of his pocket and started fiddling around with it, twisting it between his palms. “She was my childhood friend, but she also helped me with my business.”
“Yeah, I know,” I snapped, pointing to my just-barely-healed black eye. “Remember?”
He looked confused and then laughed. “Oh, no. Not that. I’m not Scarface, dude; I don’t need a full-time goon on payroll. Even if I did, Jerry would be better for that gig, don’t you think? Though it would have been harder for Jerry to fit in at Howell. No, Jo is my—well, she liked to say ‘courier’, but, really, she was my delivery girl. But Jo quit and I’m out a delivery girl. And it’s a busy season.”
It was slowly dawning on me what he was saying, but I couldn’t quite grasp the truth of it. I didn’t want to believe it. I wouldn’t believe it. So I did what I do when I don’t want to believe what I’m being told, whether it’s the truth or a lie, and played dumb.
I asked, “What do you want from me?”
He laughed again. “I want what every guy wants.” He fl
ipped the phone out of his hands, sending it twisting through the air. I caught it neatly in my lap.
“I need a new gal Friday,” he said. “I need a new Jo.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I turned the phone around in my hand and saw the Barbie logo—Barbie, again—scrawled across the back. “What’s this?” I asked.
“Your new work phone,” Mason answered, pulling out his own, nondescript, black-cased phone. He punched at it a few times, and the cell in my hand beeped. “That’s my number, but don’t save it under my name.”
I stared at the screen in my hand, my fingers hovering over the unfamiliar digits. “I don’t want this.” I thrust it back toward him.
Mason shook his head, pulling his hands away. “Sorry, kiddo. You don’t really have a choice. I told you the terms of your blackmail had changed. The fact of your blackmail hasn’t. And, seriously, I think you’re going to be really good at this once you get used to the idea. Hey, Jerry’s back. Yay.”
Jerry dropped a large pepperoni pizza onto the coffee table. I ignored him and thrust the phone back at Mason.
“No! No!”
Jerry looked at me, startled, and I realized that I was shouting.
Mason reached out his hands. But he didn’t take the phone. He twined his fingers around mine, locking the phone in my grasp.
“Your reputation is still bad enough that I can wreck you, Kendall,” he said gently. The bottom fell out of my stomach. I pulled my fingers away from his, and, when they were free, I was still clutching the phone.
He smiled. “Don’t worry, kiddo. I’m not going to ask you to do anything you’re not entirely capable of doing.”
“And what’s that?” I whispered.
“I think you’re capable of anything you put your mind to.” I tried to put every ounce of rage I had ever felt toward anybody into the glare I gave Mason, but he looked me in the eye and said, “I mean it as a compliment!”
Jerry brushed past me, and I felt him put a surreptitiously sympathetic hand on my back. I counted the steps he took back to his chair by the wall and at the end—eleven—was calm enough to say, “Just tell me.”
The Accidental Bad Girl Page 10