As I bent down to pick up my books, someone crouched beside me. I looked up into hazel eyes peeking from behind bangs. “Forget him,” Rod whispered as he grabbed my French book off the floor. My heart skipped a beat as his arm brushed mine. Had he been the one to speak up for me after all? He smelled like Tide. Tide could make millions with a male fragrance line. Or was it just the combination of Rod and Tide that was so perfect?
Madame Tarantula bopped into class, poodle curls bouncing, sparkly scarves a-flying. Insistent that we learn French organically, she refused to translate a word. Each class was an elaborate game of charades. I eyed my sad, torn Feng Shui Planet on the floor by Marissa’s feet, wishing I had some better way to pass the time than call out guesses for Madame’s wild gestures. “Airplane!” the class cried. “Happiness? No, interpretive dance!” we shouted out.
The bell rang, finally ending my torture. I gathered my books and headed for the door.
“I think you dropped this,” a voice interrupted.
I looked up. It was Marissa Pritchard. I realized with horror that next period was lunch. She was going to invite me to sit with S.M.I.L.E., just like Trista had said. I braced myself.
Instead Marissa held up Feng Shui Planet in one hand. “Isn’t this yours?” she asked. In her other hand she held out a piece of white paper. “And this, too. Whatever it is.”
Spared a lunch of singing campfire songs to promote good cheer, I sighed and looked down at the black handwriting on the paper. I saw what she meant. None of the words made any sense. My heart beat faster. Rod had sent another code! “Thanks,” I mumbled, shoving it into my pocket before Marissa could ask any questions.
I sneaked a look at the code as I headed to lunch. In neat and careful black capital letters, Rod had written:
GET SMART AND ANNOY THE ASKEW TREASURY. ASK FOR FREE HONEYMOON AT PAGODA. FOUR OR MORE ADDRESSES SHARE EMPTINESS OF IDEAS. ASIAN DRAGON, REST FROM YOUR QUESTS.
Three full lines—and an actual note! Nothing like the short, simple letter substitutions he usually texted. I blushed at his code-word choices. Pagoda? Asian Dragon? It’s not like I ran around school declaring my love for all things Chinese. How’d he know? I ran my fingers along the half sheet of paper and imagined him huddled over his desk last night writing it. Getting a note like this almost—almost—made me forget everything else.
“Sophie!”
I jerked up. I’d nearly bulldozed my science teacher, Ms. Gant. In one hand she held a familiar poo-brown cone glued to a piece of cardboard and decorated with fiery orange streaks. I’d tried to make it look like a volcano. I really had. Maybe if my brown marker hadn’t been so low on ink, it would have looked less pathetic. She lifted it toward me. “Is this yours?”
I considered making a break for it. Ms. Gant looked pretty spry for fortyish though.
“Did I forget to put my name on that?” I asked. “Sorry.”
Ms. Gant searched my face, her blue eyes filled with such genuine concern that I had to look away. “I’m sorry too, Sophie,” she said, handing me my volcano along with a project evaluation sheet. I folded it over so the bright red C minus couldn’t stare up at me. Until then the only minuses I’d ever seen were attached to As.
I looked at the ground. It killed me to disappoint Ms. Gant. To let down patient, kind, wise Ms. Gant—the woman who managed to make PowerPoint presentations on the Earth’s crust entertaining—seemed unforgiveable.
“I heard about your trouble.” Ms. Gant frowned. “Are you sure everything’s all right at home, Sophie?”
Even Ms. Gant knew? I had a vision of Mr. Katz standing at an emergency closed-door faculty meeting, pointing to a huge pretend-inspirational poster of tiny me next to an exploding volcano. DISASTER, read the caption.
My ears turned red as I nodded and managed to mumble that everything was fine. “I’ve just been distracted,” I said. It was the truth.
At least Rod had sent me a code, I told myself as I shuffled to lunch carrying my pitiful volcano. At least I had that.
My heart soared when I saw Rod waiting for me. He was standing beyond the cashier, his tray heaped with curly fries. (Obviously a man of fine taste.) I swiped my lunch card at the register and waved. He didn’t see me. He probably couldn’t see me, behind that stupid volcano on my tray.
“Hey!” I rested my tray on the condiment bar next to him and held up the white paper. “I have pre-algebra next. Perfect for decoding, huh?” Our math teacher, Mr. Hawkins, had a lazy eye. We never knew where he was looking. It made the challenge of doing anything off task doubly risky—and therefore doubly fun.
Rod looked to see if I was talking to someone else. He turned back, confused. His eyes traveled over the volcano on my tray—the poo-brown ink, the scribbled orange flames. “Hey. Um, definitely,” he said, shifting his weight. He glanced around the cafeteria as if looking for an escape route.
One minute he slips me a note and the next he acts like I’m Psycho Sophie? The sounds of the lunchroom swelled and closed around me. I was searching for something to say when Peter Murguia blew past me and clapped Rod on the shoulder. Rod gave an awkward wave as the two disappeared through the double doors to the lunch patio.
Forget codes. Boys were even harder to figure out.
My hand shook as I set down the note next to the flaming-turd volcano. I thought Rod didn’t care what everyone else thought. He’d helped me with my books. He’d sent me a code.
“Oh, good! I hoped you’d eat lunch with us,” a voice interrupted.
I turned to face a row of white teeth and blond bangs. Marissa Pritchard. Alissa and Larissa materialized at my side. They turned and waved to Jenn, who sat alone at a center patio table. This had to be the third straight week S.M.I.L.E. had put Jenn on table-claiming duty.
“That’s okay. Trista will be—”
“Oh, Trista’s so funny,” said Clarissa, joining the group. “Isn’t she sooo funny?”
“Trista’s sooo funny,” confirmed Marissa. “I love Trista. Where is she? She should eat with us, too.”
The four of them steered me toward Jenn. I felt like a gale force wind was sweeping me away.
“Oh my goodness, what’s that?” asked Jenn as I put down my tray. For a second I thought she meant my volcano, but she was pointing at my lunch. The cook in the cafeteria was all about themes, and today’s offering was Dogs of the Sea. A hot dog stood on end, cut so it flared out into tripodlike “legs.” Surrounded by a heap of curly fries, the hot dog was meant to resemble an octopus adrift in the ocean.
“I like nautical themes,” I said, smiling to myself.
“Naughty what?” A wrinkle creased Alissa’s brow. Or was that Larissa’s?
“Interesting,” Marissa said, looking at me intently. “In dream imagery the sea can represent anger.”
I wondered if Agford gave S.M.I.L.E. weekly scripts to memorize. I pictured group hypnosis sessions in her office, the row of -issas sitting on the purple couch chanting lines about “emotional baggage” and “unresolved conflicts” while Jenn, crammed in the beanbag, struggled to mouth along. I shuddered. The scenario probably wasn’t that far-fetched.
Clarissa nudged closer to me. “Marissa said you had a note. A weird note,” she said. “Can I see it?”
I leaned away.
Alissa’s eyebrows arched. “That’s awfully defensive body language, Sophie,” she said.
A throat cleared. S.M.I.L.E. and I looked up. Trista stood above us in a green T-shirt that read PROUD TO BE AWESOME.
“Trista!” Marissa said. “We were just talking about you and how funny you are.”
Trista didn’t look impressed.
“I love your shirt,” said Larissa.
Jenn nodded. “Dr. Agford was just telling us how important it is to express confidence in ourselves, wasn’t she?”
“And our bodies,” Marissa added. “Confidence is important for women of all shapes and sizes. Why don’t you sit with us, Trista? We have plenty of room.” Marissa shoved Jenn o
ver to create a space that easily would have accommodated three Tristas.
“I would love to, Marissa,” Trista replied. “But you know, setting healthy boundaries is important for women of all shapes and sizes. So Sophie and I will be sitting waaaay over there today.” Taking my arm, Trista pointed to the sun-bleached tables in the far corner of the patio. She plunked my volcano on their table as a centerpiece, then chuckled and nudged me as we shuttled off. “I am pretty funny, aren’t I?”
I cast a glance at Trista’s lunch tray when we sat down. Grilled chicken over a bed of lettuce. I was starting to think she had simply willed herself to take up more space in the world. “Thanks for the rescue,” I said.
“Ah, To lift an autumn hair is no sign of great strength,” Trista said.
My mouth dropped. “What did you just say?”
“Nothing, I’m just quoting—”
“Sun Tzu. The Art of War! How do you know that?”
Trista shrugged as she unpacked a recyclable container she’d brought from home. She dumped a pile of carrots onto her plate and smiled. “When are you going to realize I know a little bit about everything, Sophie Young?”
I’d already begun to. That morning Trista had been bent over the cell phone she’d stolen from Trent Spinner, reprogramming it to cc his mom on every text he sent. “I think she’s going to be very impressed by his vocabulary, don’t you?” she’d said, chortling as she detailed phases I–IV of her revenge plan.
I’d assumed Trista’s skills were limited to technical stuff. Her mom was high up at AmStar. She was an actual rocket scientist, so it was no surprise that Trista’s favorite hobby was taking stuff apart and putting it back together. Last year for the science fair, she’d actually built a hydraulic go-kart by herself, from scratch.
“And if there’s one thing I know,” she continued, pointing her fork at my poor Dog of the Sea struggling in tempestuous curly-fry waters, “it’s that if you eat like that, you’ll die before you’re thirty!” Her shout made kids stare. I didn’t even mind this time.
“That sounds pretty good around now.” I sighed and shoved a fistful of fries into my mouth. “It’ll shorten the misery.”
“Oh, c’mon. So S.M.I.L.E. watches you for Agford. Big deal.”
I wondered whether Trista would feel the same way if she had the full picture. S.M.I.L.E. could pass along plenty of useful information about me to Agford, even if they thought they were just doing recon for therapy sessions.
“Yeah, you’re right,” I lied. “Just a bad day.” I pulled out the white paper. “Rod sent me another code. Great, right? Then he totally snubs me in the lunch line.”
Trista picked up the code. “A null cipher?” She whistled. “I’ve never even made a null cipher.” She tapped her finger down the letters on the first line and counted to herself.
It was as though she hadn’t even heard me. I shouldn’t have been surprised. The other day I’d wondered aloud if Rod liked me back, and she’d shot me a strange look. “Why don’t you just ask him?” she’d said. A second later she was explaining how the game designers of Covenant totally ripped off H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds.
Trista continued, pointing at the paper. “See, only certain letters matter in a null cipher. Every second letter, every third, that kind of thing. Without software, a code like this would have taken hours.”
He might’ve spent hours on the code? Hours leaning over his desk, carefully penning those Asian references in neat all caps . . . only to blow me off the next day? Grace claimed guys weren’t complicated. What did she know?
Trista pulled a mechanical pencil from her back pocket. “You want me to decode it?”
“That’s all right,” I said. I slid back the paper and tucked it into my hoodie pocket.
“It’s for the best.” Trista jerked her head toward S.M.I.L.E. They’d since cleared away the poo-cano centerpiece and were huddled deep in conversation, shooting occasional looks our way. “The last thing you need is Agford knowing you’re running around with spy codes.”
I felt queasy as I looked down at my fries. I thought of the blue car.
“Speaking of Agford . . . ,” I said.
“Yeah?”
I hesitated. “Did you know she wears a wig?”
“Hah!” Trista laughed and waved away a seagull lurking in hope of snagging some of my fries. “I knew something was up with that hair.”
Encouraged, I continued. “It’s kind of weird she drives a convertible then, isn’t it? I mean, the wind . . .”
“Not really,” Trista said, cubing her chicken breast into tiny pieces. “A lot can change after you buy a car. Alopecia, say.” She answered my puzzled look. “Hair-loss disease some people get? Like the nice bald dude with no eyebrows who works at the gas station?”
I trailed my curly fries in ketchup as I tried to wrap my mind around Trista’s logic.
“She’s not going to buy a new car just because it’s better for wig wearing. But . . . ,” Trista continued, “it is strange her Mustang’s such a recent model. It can’t be more than two years old. The retro styling, the xenon headlights, the cold-air induction system to reduce drag.”
Leave it to Trista to miss the point and fixate on the specs of Agford’s car. Sometimes I wondered if she spent her nights memorizing technical dictionaries.
“Wait . . .” I finally realized what she was saying. “Agford moved here two years ago. Since then she’s had precisely no hair-helmet changes, so that means she’s worn the wig the whole time.”
Trista sucked on her fruit smoothie and nodded. “Exactly. The wig can’t be less than two years old. And, unless she’s a crazy woman who slaps down Gs for a new convertible when she wears a wig, she probably only started wearing a wig just after she bought the car. At least, based on those Mustang specs. It’s not certain, though.”
“Grace and I think it could be part of some disguise,” I whispered.
Trista raised her eyebrows. I pushed further and told her about the phone call and the way Agford tried to discover what I’d heard. “We think she might be on the run from something,” I said, sounding as breathless as Grace would. “There’s this car . . .” I hesitated, realizing how crazy I sounded. “Someone’s following us.”
Trista looked at the horizon and slowly shook her head. The lunch crowd was thinning. It was quiet enough that I could hear the waves hitting the shore below the bluffs.
“Sophie, a few days ago you thought a woman cutting vegetables was a murderer.”
“I know, but—”
“Now she’s a fugitive because she wears a wig?”
My Dog of the Sea looked even sillier now as it teetered over my ketchup-soaked fries. I scrambled to explain. “She was talking about ripping out people’s throats if they find her—what else would—”
“Is that what you think, or is that what your friend Grace thinks?”
My cheeks felt hot. Is that how Trista saw it? I just went along with Grace no matter what? I never should have told her that it hadn’t been my idea to spy on Agford in the first place.
“Of course it’s what I think,” I said, my voice rising. I didn’t sound at all convincing. “What are you implying?”
“I’m not implying anything. I asked a question.” Trista pursed her lips. “A disguise is one explanation. Not the only one. It’s strange you both jumped to the exact same conclusion.”
“I don’t think it’s strange,” I said. It was easy enough for Trista to shoot everything down. She hadn’t seen how Agford had acted in the first therapy session. “I mean, we are being followed,” I pointed out.
Trista folded her arms. “Why would Agford need to follow you? She’s around you all the time.”
“Maybe it’s whoever was on the phone that night. They—” I hesitated. “They could be planning to do something.” It had sounded more believable when Grace had said it.
“Something?” Trista made a face. “Are you saying Agford’s going to have you killed because you
overheard a phone conversation?”
“No—I don’t know. But I’m not making it up.”
“I didn’t say you were. But I could go out to the parking lot right now and a quarter of those cars are going to be some shade of blue. That doesn’t mean they’re following you. There’s always more than one explanation for something, Sophie. You know that.”
I grew quiet. Trista sounded so reasonable. “Better safe than sorry,” I mumbled.
But as Trista placed her silverware neatly across her plate and snapped her plastic container shut, I knew she was right.
Chapter Eight
Stranger Danger
It would have been hard to miss Grace waiting outside school for me that afternoon. She stood astride her vintage ten-speed, dressed entirely in black: black pants, black sweater set, black sunglasses—even a black chiffon head scarf that made her look like a fifties movie star. Her watches rattled on her wrist as she waved. Kids on the way to the bus shot looks toward her. I found myself hoping that Trista didn’t see us. What would she think of Grace’s getup?
“Going undercover?” I joked. Grace’s scarf ruffled in the breeze.
“It’s best to be stealthy these days,” Grace said, looking behind her. She was dead serious. “But I had to celebrate my freedom. Miss Anita went home sick. If she hadn’t made me work all day when I was sick last month, maybe I’d feel bad.” She shrugged. “Want to go to the Seashell for some fries?”
“I don’t want to die before I’m thirty,” I said.
“Okay,” Grace said uncertainly.
“Inside joke.”
“With yourself?” Grace asked. “Maybe they’re right about that Psycho Sophie business.” Before I even had time to glare, she grinned and bumped her shoulder against mine. “Home it is.”
“I’ve got study hall with Grandpa.” I sighed.
“Oh.” Grace cringed. “Right.” She pushed her bike ahead quietly. “Maybe get him talking about interrogation techniques?” she offered. “I hear you can actually hypnotize a confession out of someone.”
As we made our way up the hill toward town, the sun cast a glow across the hills of brush beyond Luna Vista’s neat yards and red-tile-roofed houses. It was definitely fall now—Southern California fall, at least. The sky was bright blue, and the smell of manure rose up from freshly seeded lawns, attracting crows looking for easy food. The first Halloween pumpkins and decorations were starting to pop up. I was surprised Agford’s house wasn’t fully mummified in fake cobwebs yet. She’d gone so overboard for Flag Day, we were positive she’d hauled out a Ouija board and conjured up Betsy Ross to consult on the project.
The Wig in the Window Page 6