The Accidental Bad Girl

by Maxine Kaplan

  “You sure?” he asked, still holding the bottle. “It’s no trouble.”

  “Yeah, I should get going,” I said, looking at him. Not really having anything else to say, I tapped my fingertips on the bar by way of good-bye and left. The cat had scampered away, too, as if it was as scandalized as Trev to see me there.

  Starting that afternoon, I was moving through the world differently than I had before. I had never felt so visible or so much like a ghost.

  My new domain was the coffee shop break room, the library study carrel, and, above all, the dorm.

  I first put my finger on the change when I delivered to Jeff. Jeff, I learned, was a regular. He opened the door, wafting marijuana smoke and Nelly music into the hallway. He stopped and stared at me, blinking stupidly.

  “Hi!” I said brightly, though not entirely able to suppress a sarcastic undertone. “I’m Mason’s tutor. Ready for chemistry prep?”

  I continued to stand there with my pasted-on smile while he looked down the hall in both directions and then beckoned me in.

  He shut the door. “You’re not Jo,” he drawled. Not in a southern way—just a lazy way.

  Jeff was wearing boxer shorts that were hitting the danger zone in terms of looseness, a white tank, and a pristine Lakers hat. His body lived in that middle ground of sturdy, beefy, stocky, all those adjectives that sounded way worse when applied to girls. He also had a really stupid-looking face.

  “No, I’m not,” I said, looking for a clean spot to sit and eventually perching on the windowsill. “I’m Kendall.”

  “But, you’re still . . .” Jeff struggled to find the question. “Mason still . . . I mean, you have—”

  “Yes, I have your doses,” I broke in. “Mason gave them to me, and I’m bringing them to you. Not Jo.”

  Jeff looked relieved. “Oh. OK, cool.”

  I swung the bag around to my front, unzipped it, and pulled out the doses. “That’ll be sixty even,” I said.

  He fumbled at his hip and then seemed to realize that he wasn’t wearing any pants. I rolled my eyes, thereby spotting a full-to-bursting, expensive-looking leather wallet on the desk to my left.

  “May I?” I asked, gesturing to the wallet. Without waiting for him to locate the hand motions that indicate acquiescence, I opened it and had to stifle a gasp.

  Jeff only had hundreds. He had eight of them. And a platinum card to boot.

  I looked at him, astonished. Why would a college kid need this much cash?

  “You don’t have anything smaller?” I asked.

  He grinned proudly. “I know, right?”

  I felt my expression sour. “No, seriously. I don’t have change. I’m not pizza delivery.”

  Jeff seemed more relaxed now that I’d seen his money. He kicked a pile of clothing off his bed—showing surprising aerobic ability—and crashed onto it, reaching behind the headboard for a pair of jeans.

  He handed me a crumpled fold of twenties. “Thanks,” I said, quickly counting the bills. It was all there. I stuck the wad in my back pocket and pulled my bio textbook out of my bag.

  “What are you doing?”

  I looked up at him, surprised. “My homework.”

  “Yeah, but . . . why?”

  “Didn’t Jo stay a little after dropping off?” I asked.

  “Yeah, but . . . she didn’t do homework.”

  “Oh no? What did Jo do?”

  He smiled slyly. “Jo would party with us.”

  I drew in an exasperated breath and sighed it out. I didn’t want to party.

  I shut my book, and Jeff perked right up. “Come with me,” I said to him, smiling.

  “Hell, yeah,” he answered. He climbed into track pants, and while he had his back turned, I grabbed an apparently untouched copy of Middlemarch off of his desk.

  Jeff followed me down the hall and kept going toward the elevator for a few steps before realizing I had stopped in the common room and was settling onto the couch with my textbook.

  “I thought we were going to get drinks. What are we doing here?” he asked, perplexed.

  “I’m studying,” I told him. “You should probably try it if you don’t want Daddy to cut you off after you flunk out.”

  Mason said I had to hang out with the buyers. He didn’t say I had to make it fun for them. And honestly, I would have rather treated Ellie to a mani-pedi than done anything else to make Jeff’s life more fun.

  Jeff pouted, but he did as he was told—did what I told him to do.

  It hit me that now, in this new role, I could tell people what to do. I was used to following behind Audrey, but now I was the queen of whatever room I was in, or at least the girl in the photograph was.

  I finally got a break on Saturday. My parents were visiting friends in New Haven, and I was looking forward to a day of zoning out in front of the TV, with no one bothering me.

  I got off to a bad start when the doorbell rang at ten in the morning, jolting my eyes open. I trudged down the stairs in my PJs as the bell rang again and again and again.

  I didn’t recognize the man looking at me through the glass side panel of the door. Well-brought-up city girl that I was, I opened the door as narrowly as I could and kept my hand on the knob.

  “Can I help you?” I asked.

  He was handsome in a well-scrubbed, bland way. And he smiled a pleasant smile as he stuck out his hand.

  And his badge.

  “Good morning! Is this the Evans residence?”

  I took his hand and shook it automatically, unable to take my eyes off of the silver oval, even though it was reflecting the sun too fiercely for me to read any of the numbers.

  “Can I help you?” I asked again, forcing myself to look at him. I added in the highest voice I could manage, “My parents aren’t home.” I opened my eyes wide and slouched for good measure.

  The cop leaned in. “Are you Kendall?” he asked with a conspiratorial wink in his voice. I absolutely didn’t trust this.

  “What’s this about?”

  “May I come in?”

  He was still shaking my hand. “Not without a warrant,” I told him.

  He nodded, and then all the expression drained out of his face. I squealed in sudden pain as his grip tightened on my hand.

  “What are you—?” He jerked me out of the doorway and had me stumbling barefoot down the steps before I could even finish the question. I heard the door slamming shut behind me, the collision of wood on wood violent and splintering from the momentum of my wrist being wrenched away from the knob.

  I opened my mouth to scream for help, but he stopped short and shook his head, waving his badge in front of my face. My mind raced past the twenty hits of ecstasy I had just sold, and that was only from yesterday. I snapped it shut.

  He unlocked the back door to an unmarked Crown Victoria and tossed me inside before climbing into the passenger seat. The driver peered at me in the rearview mirror through thick, horn-rimmed glasses. “Hi,” he said with a jerky little nod.

  The car peeled off in silence.

  “Am I being arrested?” I blurted out. I went on, trying hard to dull the edge of desperation spiking my voice. “Because my mother is an attorney, and if she finds out I’m being questioned without a guardian or lawyer present, you’re headed for a bitch of a countersuit.”

  “Relax,” said Glasses. “We’re just going to have a conversation.”

  I crossed my legs, bare except for blue mesh shorts with the Howell Hawks logo on the butt, then opted to tuck them up against my chest instead—I was wearing a bra, thank god, but the gray T-shirt was pretty threadbare, with an ever-expanding hole in one armpit.

  The car swerved. Since I wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, I got thrown forward and caught myself on the armrests of the front seat.

  “Come on, kid,” said Glasses, laughing. “Buckle up. Safety first.”

  I took a deep breath and opened my eyes. A large gold medallion was dangling in my face. I snatched it—Columbia University, 1st Place, St
ate Swimming Championships. What was this doing in an NYPD car?

  Suddenly I remembered. The photo of the green Prius on my Facebook—it had a medal just like this one hanging over its dash.

  “Where did you get that police badge? At Ricky’s Halloween Store?” I asked, still holding the medal. The fake cop smiled and nodded. He took it out and tapped it, making a puny, hollow sound. Plastic.

  I went cold. “Have I done something to piss off Mason?”

  Glasses laughed so hard, he hit the brakes. So that was a no.

  A couple of minutes later, the car pulled into a garage connected to a shabby-looking warehouse. Fake Cop got out and hit a button. An aluminum wall slowly descended, closing off the exit.

  Glasses craned around in his seat. He considered me, a wrinkle forming in his forehead. “How old are you?” he asked.

  “Eleven.”

  “Ha.”

  I stayed where I was until he opened the door and tugged me out by the T-shirt.

  Glasses led me over the freezing cement floor to a kitchen in the back, where Fake Cop was sitting on the counter, doing something on his phone. He pulled out a rickety wicker chair, sat me on it, and joined Fake Cop above me on the counter.

  “We have a proposition for you,” said Glasses, rubbing his hands together.

  I pulled my feet up onto the chair and hugged my knees, protecting my body—and trying to cover the fact that I was shaking. “I don’t know anything,” I whispered. “I don’t even know who you are.”

  Fake Cop jerked his thumb at Glasses and then himself: “Rockford. Vin.”

  I swallowed, trying to dislodge the lump in my throat. “And you’re not cops.”

  It wasn’t a question, so Vin didn’t bother answering it. “We were wondering how happy you were with Mason,” he said.

  I shook my head in confusion. “Excuse me? Am I happy with Mason? That’s your question?”

  Rockford nodded.

  “I’m going to need you to be more specific,” I finally managed.

  Vin slid off of the counter. “We saw you at the Fish Hook the other night. You charmed the pants off of Trev. Talked to Jerry—he’s an old friend. And we can tell you from experience, Mason will just screw you over. Joey here tried to warn Jerry. You’re just a kid, obviously, but you have a certain . . . potential.”

  “I really don’t,” I said, scooting my chair back and away from them. I stood up, putting myself behind the chair. “I’m just a high school girl. I don’t know anything about Mason’s drugs.”

  “Who said anything about Mason’s drugs?” Rockford asked quietly, advancing. For a small, nerdy-looking guy, he moved with a scary grace, like a big cat.

  “I mean, everyone knows Mason supplies Trev,” I said, stumbling.

  Rockford kept moving forward. “He wasn’t this summer,” he said. “Trev was dry.”

  “But that’s only because the stash was-” I caught myself.

  “What?” asked Rockford. “The stash was what?”

  I lifted my chin. “I don’t know anything about it,” I declared.

  Vin looked at Rockford. “Jerry was right, then.”

  “Fuck me,” said Rockford quietly. He turned to me and, in one swift motion, had me backed up against the wall.

  “You listen to me,” he said. “Mason’s not the only one with an interest in that supply line. If you know anything about its production and distribution, you are going to tell me. Now.”

  I started breathing hard. I shut my eyes and counted the pulses from my blood throbbing through my skull. One, two, three. One, two, three.

  A landline rang out and Vin rolled his eyes. “Be right back,” he said to Rockford and left the room.

  Rockford turned to watch him leave, and I took the opportunity to push him off me. He raised his eyebrows, and, acting on pure instinct, I stood up straight and flung my hair to one side, swinging into the girl in the picture.

  We looked at each other in silence for a couple of moments. “Huh,” said Rockford thoughtfully, pacing the room.

  After a lap, he turned back toward me, now handling a rather large pocketknife with nimble fingers.

  He didn’t advance or threaten me. Rockford simply moved back and forth around the room, snapping the knife in and out, like a particularly shiny yo-yo. My heart thumped in my chest, and I looked around wildly, all my swagger leaking away. I did a double take. There was a back door—and it looked like it might have been left open.

  Rockford began to advance, looking at me curiously. I smiled at him, the exoskeleton of the girl in the photograph flickering in and out around me, and, before I lost my nerve, swung my instep into his groin, in perfect penalty-kick form.

  Surprised, he dropped the knife, which I caught. And then I ran like hell.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  It’s a very strange experience to find yourself on a busy city street with no shoes, no wallet, and no cell phone. Like being on Outward Bound, where they leave you in the woods with just a knife—which item, in fact, I actually had.

  I ran about ten blocks—dodging garbage can overflow, cars, weird looks—before I had to pause to catch my breath and remembered that there was no one chasing me. I leaned on my bare, sweating knees and panted, trying to be rational. They had a car: If they wanted me back in that warehouse, I’d already be there.

  I straightened up and quickly realized I was still clutching the knife. I hid it as carefully as I could, sticking it in my waistband, and looked around. I had run into the no-man’s-land under the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, the dividing line between a world of warehouses, gas stations, and always-startling urban slaughterhouses, and a world of—well, of my world. I ducked past a truck to cross to the sunny side of the street, trying to ignore the pain in my beat-up soles, and found a street sign: Twenty-Fifth Street and Third Avenue. I was about a mile and a half away from my house.

  That’s kind of a hike in the best of circumstances. Barefoot, dressed in booty shorts and a see-through tee? That’s an odyssey.

  But with my feet really starting to hurt and the sky turning a potent gray, I had no choice but to move through the streets as quickly as possible.

  My heart was slowing down finally when, still a good ten or twelve blocks from home, the air shifted with an audible snap and I was drenched within seconds.

  This wasn’t a little early fall sprinkle. This was the kind of rain that seems to come down in fully formed sheets. The hard kind, that waves horizontally in the wind.

  I ducked under the awning of a deli and hugged myself, teeth chattering. It wasn’t a perfect solution—my feet and legs were still getting splashed with the blowback from cars slamming the gutter—but at least I had a moment to rest.

  “Hey, girl! What are you doing there?” I spun around to see the deli owner looking at me curiously. His eyes went wide as he took in the sight of the small underdressed girl taking refuge under his awning. I saw him reach for his phone and started to back away.

  “Kendall?” Another voice called out from behind the owner. He moved out of the way and—of course.

  He would catch me soaking wet in my PJs.

  “Hi,” I said, shivering, as Gilly, fully decked out in a camping parka and Timberlands, headed toward me with a sly grin on his face. “You live near here, right? Do you think I could borrow some pants?”

  He put down his bags and pulled the parka over his head. “Arms up,” he said and dropped it over me, pulling it carefully down around my body so as to drip as little rainwater on me as possible.

  “I’m just around the corner,” he said and ducked out into the rain. I put the hood up on the parka and, side by side, we tore down the block.

  Gilly lived in one of the Victorian houses that sprinkle the older neighborhoods of Brooklyn. It was a peeling but still kind of grand-looking white three-story with a peaked attic and a wraparound porch. We clumped up the muddy steps, and Gilly swung the unlocked door open for me.

  It was warm in the house and smelled like someo
ne was making eggs. The sounds of NPR and a woman laughing filtered through from the back of the house, and Gilly twisted the shopping bags around his fingers.

  “Why don’t you go upstairs?” he said quickly, craning his head to look behind me.

  “But I don’t even know where your room is.” Before the sentence was halfway out of my mouth, Gilly had practically thrown me up the first few steps, his hand pushing on my soaked back.

  “Yeah,” he said, not really listening, his eyes darting back and forth. “I just don’t—”

  “Mikey!” A woman’s voice called out, musical and deep. “Did you remember the half-and-half?”

  “Yes,” he groaned loudly, dashing around the back corner, returning without the shopping bag, and hustling me the rest of the way up to his room.

  “What was that about?” I asked, annoyed at being handled. “What, are you embarrassed to introduce me to your parents? I do great with parents.”

  He gave me a hard look and handed me a pair of cotton gym shorts.

  “Here,” he said. “Borrow these. And, no, I’m not embarrassed, I just don’t want to have to explain the nearly naked wet girl.”

  I snorted. “Yeah, I can see how you and a near-naked girl would be an anomaly. Or even you and a clothed girl. You and a girl in a snowsuit and goggles.”

  He folded his arms. “What were you doing out there?”

  I suddenly realized that I was shivering. “Do you have a towel?” He picked a folded towel off of a desk chair and handed it to me. “Um . . . can I also have a shirt?”

  Gilly moved slowly to his closet and unhooked a big gray hoodie with the Apple power sign on the corner from its hanger. I took it from him and looked at him pointedly.

  “What?” he asked, irritably.

  “Well, Prince Charming, you could turn around while I change.”

  “Oh, so we’re going to maintain that illusion,” he scoffed. But he turned. For the first time, I noticed that he was sopping, too. His T-shirt was plastered to his back. While I was shucking off my shorts and rubbing my legs down with the towel, he stretched his arms out to the right and then the left, twisting his hips. Bent over with a towel, I suddenly zoomed onto the patch of skin between his shirt and his pants. The crease in the center of his back deepened and tightened. He sighed a little as he stretched.