by Karen Karbo
I’d tried to call the Hightower office, but no one ever answered. If I could set the record straight maybe then Jordan’s problems would be all her own, and I could go back to minding my own business, and not be a Nosy Parker. I would do a super fine job on my Boston Tea Party report. I would get through the rest of the school year without talking to Hannah, who was turning out to be meaner than Cruella Deville. I would pay more attention to Jupiter. I would take Junior Lifeguard over the summer, and maybe learn to play the guitar.
But for now, all I wanted was the people who gave out the Hightower to know once and for all that Jordan deserved the scholarship. I could tell them what happened the day she was pulled over. Part of me also knew that I didn’t want to find out any more bad things she might be into. No matter what else she’d done, she had had her identity stolen, she’d been framed—
“Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute!” I said, sitting up straight. A few people looked up from their paperbacks.
“Jordan may be a crook, but she was still framed. The cop pulled her over for a smashed taillight, but when she picked me up—remember, I was walking home from Tilt—the light wasn’t broken. It was totally fine. I remember, because I’d had a chance to read her bumper sticker, ‘Blond if you’re Honk.’”
“She’s not one of those chicks who parallel parks by feel, is she? ’Cause she could have smashed the light then,” said Reggie, flipping back his bangs.
“I didn’t hear anything.”
“So that means someone broke it when you guys were in the bookstore,” said Reggie.
“Maybe Clyde the homeless guy?” I said.
“Or the person who stole her identity, who knew she’d eventually be pulled over for a broken taillight.”
I wondered. Suddenly, I felt the urge to be back on the case. Reggie reached up and pulled the cord to signal our stop.
The Hightower was such a big deal in our state, I expected the office to be a big-deal office, but it was on the top floor of an old green house just off NW 23rd Avenue. We stood outside on the sidewalk, double-checked the address. On the first floor was a nail salon. Through the huge, clean window I could see ladies perched at little tables, getting their fingernails painted.
There was a light on in the second-floor window. A wooden staircase hugged the side of the house, leading up to the second floor. We stood there for a few long minutes. I cracked my knuckles.
“I think I should go in by myself,” I said.
“’S cool,” said Reggie. I couldn’t tell whether he minded or not. He kicked his skateboard from where it’d been resting on his thigh and rolled off down the sidewalk.
“Come back in fifteen minutes!” I shouted after him.
The office was one big room with a lady sitting at a desk and a smaller room behind her. There was a big pinky-beige flowered sofa against one wall, very girly, and black-and-white pictures of women from long ago hanging on one pinky-beige wall. Some of the women wore graduation gowns.
The lady had thick dark, shoulder-length hair and a long nose. Down-turned hazel eyes that looked kind and sad at the same time. I was so surprised that she didn’t look like crabby Sister Patrice at school—what I always imagined all ladies in charge of things looked like—that I blurted out, “Are you the one in charge around here?”
She laughed, took off her glasses, looked me up and down. I hadn’t bothered changing out of my uniform. It was just me, Minerva Clark, in my blue Holy Family T-shirt, khakis, and tennis shoes, my mess of a head of hair hanging down on either side of my head. “That depends on what you mean by in charge,” she said. “Have a seat. What can I do for you?”
“I have some information about Jordan Parrish, just, you know, I thought someone should know. Someone in charge of things. She still deserves the Hightower.” Even as these words came out of my mouth, I wondered if she did deserve it. I didn’t want to think about that now. I just wanted to do what I’d come to do.
“Oh yes,” she said. She folded her hands over her papers. “I’m Emma Larson, by the way.”
“Minerva Clark. Jordan’s my cousin.”
“Ah,” said Emma Larson. Like Mark Clark, she was the kind of serious responsible person who could only be called by two names.
I sat on the edge of the girly couch. I rubbed my sweaty palms on my thighs. I had that same old feeling of having a really good idea at home in my bedroom, then realizing how lame it was only after it was too late. And now my mind felt all mixed up by this new realization about Jordan’s smashed taillight.
Emma Larson sat. She waited. From the other room came a strange noise, like someone was whispering.
Crap.
“I just wanted to say that I was with Jordan that day she was arrested and that it turned out to be a mistake. You can even ask my dad. He’s a lawyer. I mean, no matter what your criminal background check thingy said, she didn’t do anything. She was pulled over for a broken taillight and then it turned out that someone had stolen her identity and—”
“Criminal background check thingy? What do you mean?” asked Emma Larson.
“You know, the final double-check before you give her the money.”
Emma Larson now was looking at me like I was mad. The weird whispering noise coming from the other room was getting louder. Actually, it was less like whispering than like someone going, “Pssst!”
“Last week …” Her voice trailed off as she flipped through a black date book. “We received a phone call actually … on Thursday, the nineteenth, it looks like … It was left with the message service after hours, around six o’clock. A friend of the foundation calling to let us know that Ms. Parrish had been arrested.”
Thursday the nineteenth? That was the day this whole mess had begun.
The hissing was getting louder and louder. Suddenly, it tipped over into a high scream. A teakettle. The smaller room must be a kitchen. “Do you want some tea?” asked Emma Larson, standing up and going to the kitchen.
“Sure,” I said. I hated tea. Grown-up tea tasted no different than the “tea” Reggie and I used to make out of sticks and leaves in preschool.
All I could think was Someone called, someone called, someone called. I couldn’t remember who said it was a criminal background check—I wasn’t even sure what that was, quite frankly, but the point was, there was no background check. It was a phone call.
Someone deliberately ratted Jordan out. Probably the person who broke her taillight and who gave the cops her name in the first place, the same person who murdered Dwight in broad daylight.
I hopped up from the girly couch and whipped around the side of Emma Larson’s desk.
“Would you like peppermint?” she called from the other room. “I know when I first began drinking tea that’s what I liked.”
“Sounds great,” I called, too loudly. I read the entry in the black book, but there was no name, no number.
“Or apple-cinnamon?”
“Uh-huh!” I caught sight of the phone; it was just like the one we had at Casa Clark, with the built-in Caller ID. Beneath the screen was a little button labeled CID; hit that and you could scroll back until the dawn of time, to see who called and when.
“So which is it?”
I pressed the button about seven thousand times until I got back to the nineteenth. There were six numbers: Hurd Alan C. Out of Area. An unknown caller had called three times.
Then the jolt of a name I recognized:
Hollingsworth Tiffani.
I grabbed a pen from a mug on the corner of the desk and scribbled the number on my palm. I scampered back to the girly couch just in time for Emma Larson to bring back my cup of boiling water flavored with dirt and sticks. The white mug said A WOMAN’S PLACE IS IN THE HOUSE—AND THE SENATE.
I thanked her, put my lips to the rim, could tell it was scalding, took a sip anyway. “Auh!” I said.
“Be careful,” she said. “Hot.”
What would we talk about now? What was I doing here? Emma Larson looked
at me, expecting me to go on. All I wanted to do was get out of there and call the Tiffani Hollingsworth number. It was probably her cell. I tried not to want this. I tried to remember that the whole reason I’d come to the Hightower Scholarship office was to tell someone what I knew so that I wouldn’t have to think about it anymore, sort of like taking a lost dog to the pound. I wanted to drop off this half-solved mystery with Emma Larson and let her feed and water it and worry about it. Instead, I was back to obsessing.
“In any case,” said Emma Larson, settling herself back in her chair, “we’re still following up on the tip. Nothing’s been decided. Your cousin just needs to sit tight for the time being.”
I blew on my tea. Why did people drink this stuff? “Well, I just thought you should know.”
“I’ll be sure to look into it,” said Emma Larson. I could tell she never would. “Your cousin is lucky to have someone so concerned about her well-being.”
“Yeah, well. I’m a freak,” I said. I could never drink this whole thing. In the movies, people always made a big production about serving people something to drink, then no one ever finishes drinking whatever it is. Have you noticed? Reggie told me this was stage business, something the actors did with their hands so they weren’t just standing there like meatheads delivering their lines. But Emma Larson had the kettle on before I came in, so it couldn’t have been stage business. Suddenly, I felt as if my brain was going to explode and spew out of my ears. Tiffani Hollingsworth? Tiffani Hollingsworth? Could it really be what it looked like? Jordan said the first person she’d called after the police had hauled her off to jail was Tiffani. Did Tiffani then turn around and call here?
“Thanks for the tea.” I slid the mug onto the edge of the cluttered desk, and walked out before Emma Larson had a chance to speak. Lucky the office was so small; I was out the door and down the steps in a heartbeat.
The minute I hit the sidewalk I pulled my Emergencies Only cell phone out and punched in the number on my hand. It was already starting to smear from the sweat. Maybe the rat was another Tiffani Hollingsworth. That wasn’t such an uncommon name, was it?
I didn’t expect the person on the other end of the number to pick up on the first ring.
Yes, it was her. My old best babysitter, my cousin Jordan’s best friend.
“Hi, Tiff, I was wondering if … I wanted to talk to you about what’s going on with Jordan and why she was so mad at me the other day when I saw you guys after Rose Princess practice. I mean ambassador. You know what I mean.”
“Who is this?” she asked.
“Oh! It’s Minerva Clark.”
She laughed. “You don’t always need to say your last name, Min. I don’t know any other Minervas.”
I laughed, too. I was out of breath from walking so fast. A woman talking on her own cell phone while pushing an enormous baby carriage looked at me hard as we passed each other on the sidewalk.
It felt good to be laughing with Tiffani. Maybe there was another reason she called Emma Larson and the Hightower people. Maybe she wanted to warn them that when they actually did do their criminal background check thingy, they should ignore it because it was a mistake.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“Where am I?” Why didn’t I want to tell her where I was? It was a simple question.
“At the library, researching a paper.”
“Wow, you still have papers due this late in the school year? Middle school must have gotten a lot harder.”
“Yeah, it’s on the Boston Tea Party.” Liar! You are not at the library. You are not researching a paper. And you haven’t even started the Boston Tea Party report.
Crap! I’d forgotten to wait for Reggie. I spun back around and retraced my steps back down 23rd. I walked faster and faster. I almost tripped over one of those little green metal tables that sit outside coffee places in this part of town.
“Why don’t you stop by here? I’ll be taking lunch in half an hour.”
Lunch? It was four thirty. What was she talking about? Why was I suddenly so wigged out? I pulled a piece of hair out from behind my ear and starting tugging on it. Ack! I was turning into Quills, with his mad hair tugging. I stopped, retraced my steps, and sat at the green metal table I’d nearly tripped over. I tried to catch my breath.
“Isn’t it late for lunch?” I asked.
Tiffani laughed again. She was a much bigger laugher than Jordan, who was a more serious girl altogether. “I’m working at Nordstrom now. In the mall. Meet me at the food court, at Panda Panda, in half an hour. I’ll buy you an egg roll.”
I said okay. I had used the Emergency Only phone for a nonemergency. I had lied to Morgan about my whereabouts. I had stalked off without waiting for Reggie, whom I’d dragged across town with me. I had dishes at home, piles and piles of them. I was so busted. I was so dead. Still, I said okay.
- 15 -
AFTER I HUNG UP I WENT to the nearest Starbucks to ask for directions to the mall. It wasn’t that far, but it was over one of the bridges that connects the two halves of our city. One barista dude asked another, who asked another. Eventually one of them told me what bus to take. Within twenty minutes I was standing in front of Panda Panda, cracking my knuckles and wondering whether this was what it was like to go insane.
The food court was packed with teenagers, mostly couples where the girls looked all hot and done up in their low-rise slacks and high-heel shoes, makeup perfect, hair perfect, and the boys looked like they just came from doing yard work. All the food court smells swirled together—french fries, melted cheese, spicy Chinese, chocolate chip cookies. Ugh. I felt sick.
Tiffani showed up just as I was thinking of calling Morgan or Quills and begging them to come get me. She was dressed up herself, which is part of working at Nordstrom. She wore a black skirt and blouse and a pair of really strange black suede platform clogs with a buckle and the thickest wooden sole ever. I stared at them as she clomped up to me.
“Aren’t these cute?” she said, turning and lifting up her heel so I could admire them.
“Sure,” I said. “Aren’t they, uh, hard to walk in?”
“Not at all,” she said, looking up at the menu over the counter. “They’re totally comfy. I could get you a pair if you want. They’d be awesome on you.”
“They’d make me about eight feet tall,” I said. Why were we talking about these stupid clogs?
“Tall rocks, though. I wish I was taller. Five-ten at least. You and Jordan are lucky being tall. I’m just a little shrimp. It sucks. So what are you eating?”
“Could I just have a Sprite? Please.”
“Still so polite! Even when you were a little kid you always said ‘peas.’ Do you remember that? How you used to say ‘peas’ instead of ‘please?’”
“I don’t think that was me.”
“Well, whatever!” she said gaily.
After she ordered we found a table and sat. “So you’re looking hot these days. Is it just growing up, or what?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m using a new shampoo.”
Tiffani laughed and clapped her hands. “Yeah, that’s it.”
I said, “How is my cousin? I’m worried about her.” This seemed as good a place as any to start. One of the things I was learning is that sometimes you just needed to start talking, and what you needed to say would come to you.
“I’m worried about her, too!” said Tiffani. “You know, she’s gotten even thinner. I wish I could lose some weight. How do you think she does it? I don’t think she’s bulimic or anything. I mean, that’s the kind of thing a best friend knows, you know?”
“Uh,” I said. How on earth did we get talking about this? I had this strange feeling about Tiffani. She was so nice, but there was something else. It was the way you opened the refrigerator and smelled something going bad, but you couldn’t find what it was.
The boy behind the counter at Panda Panda called out “Yo!” to Tiffani and waved her over to pick up her tray.
&nbs
p; “Be right back!” she said.
But she wasn’t right back. She stood and talked to him, shifting her weight from one foot to another, playing with her hair. She was about to take the tray, then it looked as if he’d forgotten the drinks, and there was another giggling exchange about that. He turned and took two cups from the stack near the soda machine.
I slouched in my seat. I bounced my leg. I waited.
Tiffani picked up the tray, tossed a giggle over her shoulder, and just as she started back to our table, turned around yet again. She’d forgotten the straws.
I sat up straight when I saw her coming and accidentally kicked her purse, which was sitting on the floor between us. It was a big leather bag that yawned open at the top.
Inside, winking up at me, was one of the glittery eyeglass cases from Under the Covers. I stared and stared at it. I was shocked to see it, but there was something else. It wasn’t just any case, but the one that was more purple than blue, the one Jupiter had chewed the day Jordan and I had stopped at Under the Covers on the worst day of my life. All of a sudden I felt dizzy, like I’d just gotten off the Tea Cups at Disneyland.
“Sorry!” Tiffani sang out as she clomp-clomp-clomped back over to her seat across from me. “That guy is just such a hottie, don’t you think? Or are you too young for that still?”
“That’s a cool case,” I said, looking down at her purse. I was sure she could hear my heart slamming around inside my chest.
“Wha—Oh that. Yeah, I love it. I get a lot of compliments on it.”
“Is it for sunglasses, or what?”
Tiffani stopped, her plastic fork full of noodles dangling in midair. She looked at me as if she were trying to figure something out. She put her fork down, reached over, and pulled the glittery case from her purse. She turned it over, this way and that. “It is pretty cool, isn’t it?”
“Where’d you get it?”
“You know, I can’t remember. Maybe it was a present.”