“Who, me? Superficial me? I’m sure you and the rocket scientist here can work it out.” Grace’s cheeks flushed red as she shoved the yearbook at me. “After all, everything was just fine before you met me.” Her braids flicked like whips as she pivoted on her heels and stormed back into her room.
Trista stared at the closed patio door, then back at me. She let her backpack fall with a thud. “Seriously?” she said. “An hour in a basement and you two fall apart?”
I sighed. The evidence bag containing Agford’s wig had ripped, leaking foul traces of her perfume, but that wasn’t why I felt nauseated. I turned to Trista.
“Oh, no.” She took a step back. “Haven’t I helped enough?”
I gazed back across the street. For a moment I thought I saw my reflection in one of Agford’s dark windows.
Standing alone in the shadow of towering trees, I looked like a tiny, little mouse.
Chapter Twenty-two
Hairtight Evidence
I walked home in a daze. Agford’s fake curls peeked from their plastic bag and rustled in the wind. Agford could have greeted me at the back door, plucked back the evidence, and sat me down for study hall, and I wouldn’t have even cared.
Jake stood in the kitchen, arm resting on the wide-open refrigerator door.
“You got another guinea pig?” he said, staring at Agford’s wig. “Mom’s going to be so pissed.” He glugged milk straight from the plastic jug and let out a moist belch. “And news flash: You can’t keep ’em in plastic bags.”
“Shut up.” I marched past him to my room, slammed the door, and cranked up Kai Li’s “Dragonrider.” So what if Grace thought I was a poseur? At least I revered a culture, not some government agency that had just been outclassed by a bunch of twelve-year-olds.
I pictured Grace as she slid her patio door shut. The thin, straight line of her mouth. Her empty eyes. Walking away was that easy for her. If she could walk away, so could I. She could go trade stupid celebrity gossip with “Joss” and Natalie when she wasn’t locked up with Miss Anita all day in her lucky house with all of her lucky animals. I’d never again have to watch her roll her eyes whenever her mom talked about things that really mattered, like what happens after we die or why people dream. So what if I had to spend every dinner listening to my father drone on about ball bearings in missile sheaths while Jake bopped his head to his hidden iPod?
I’d have to go to the police myself. What was it Trista had said after Trent’s pudding attack? You can do something about it. I could—and I would.
I couldn’t blame Trista for refusing to go to the cops in my place. “I’m not getting on their radar this early,” she’d explained. She pointed out that after the Beet Incident, chances were slim the cops would believe any kid rushing to them with evidence about Agford. “Give the FBI a chance, Sophie,” she said. “They’ve been on it, what, five days?”
I looked at the wig on the bed. Jake was right. It did look like a guinea pig, one of those with all the cowlicks that made it look like it had just woken up.
I had to hide the evidence somewhere while I figured out the next steps. It was study-hall time. Agford could waltz over to check on me at any minute. Could I tuck the stuff under my bed? Lame. That’s the first place anyone looks. Besides, it would block proper energy flow during sleep. In my closet? That wasn’t much better.
My eyes rested on the massive red elephant in my northwest gua. He stared back at me, trunk raised, a fierce gleam in his glass eye. I remembered the cheerful gong he gave when I tapped his side the day Mrs. Dr. Yang unloaded him on me. Red for fire—and better yet, hollow. He really was perfect.
My fingers found a seam near his neck. I discovered that his head twisted right off, and his sides could split apart. I nestled the evidence in his stomach and recapitated the poor beast. He stood with his head now slightly cocked, daring someone to so much as step in his vicinity.
If only I could send him down to the police station instead. At this point, they’d probably take a large, metal red elephant more seriously than me.
Grandpa finally came home from the VFW at dinnertime, smelling of beer and overly jolly about his canasta victories. He must’ve drunk a bottle or two—or three—to celebrate his freedom. He, Jake, and I sat at the kitchen table around our individual chicken potpies. I burned my mouth with the first bite. In retaliation I jabbed my fork into the top crust, all the way through to my plate.
Grandpa’s eyes widened. “Whoa there, soldier,” he said.
“Looks like someone had a bad day,” Jake said with a fake pout.
I stood up, dumped the pie in the trash with a thud, and walked back to my room.
“Nah, leave her alone,” I heard Jake say just before I shut my door. “It’s probably that time of the month.”
Back in my room a moment later, I stood at my window and gazed out. The neighborhood looked peaceful. White houses glowed against the dark sky. Swept driveways welcomed mothers and fathers home from work. Rows of trash cans stood sentry in front of each house except mine. (You don’t even want to think about what leaving trash in front of your house overnight does to your chi.)
Across the street at Agford’s, a light clicked off in an upstairs window, and a TV sent its ghostly blue flickers across the plastic tombstones on her lawn. Agford was probably fluffing up her backup wig as she tuned in to Dr. Phil reruns. Meanwhile, somewhere in Texas, parents shuffled off to bed past empty rooms where their kids had once slept.
Until I noticed I was tracing the outline of the yin pendant around my neck, I had forgotten I was still wearing it. I resisted the urge to yank it off and throw it away. Grace had never worn the other half anyway. I’d order a new pendant from Feng Shui Planet—a complete yin/yang circle. It wasn’t good to be running around off-balance anyway.
The skin on the roof of my mouth had begun to peel where I’d burned it on the potpie, exposing a tender layer of flesh. My tongue poked at it; I couldn’t leave it alone, just like I couldn’t stop thinking of Grace. Right then she was probably lounging on her bed, doodling on her binders and chatting with Natalie. Maybe she was dotting her face with her stupid acne cream. I hoped the musty basement air had clogged her precious pores. If there were any justice in the world, a pus-filled zit would have exploded its way to her forehead’s surface with all the fury of Marissa Pritchard’s Mount Etna.
But there wasn’t any justice in the world. Deborah Bain was sitting across the street watching TV in a house paid for with embezzled money and the lives of innocent kids. If I did nothing, and the FBI failed, she’d sit there forever, floating through life buoyed up by her balloon boobs and pretending she had a clue how to help middle schoolers deal with life.
A shadow twitched along the side of Agford’s house. Her motion-activated light burst on, illuminating the bulky frame of none other than Agent Unibrow. He blinked in the unexpected spotlight. If the FBI hired jokers like this, it was no wonder we had beaten them to the punch.
The agent lumbered to the street toward his white pickup, then pretended he was out for a pleasant moonlit stroll. I was annoyed to find myself thinking how right Grace had been about FBI surveillance agents. Unibrow’s ripped gray sweatpants and jacket really did make him seem like just a regular guy out for a walk.
I looked back at Mrs. Dr. Yang’s elephant. I could give it time, like Trista said—but how could I be sure I had time? Agford was desperate. She wasn’t going to stop at fake counseling visits to the Yangs and humiliating assemblies.
I heard Jake shuffling around his room next door. Grandpa was in the family room upstairs watching TV. Outside my window Agent Unibrow was nearing his pickup. In a few seconds he’d be gone again. But there was something I could do. There was something I had to do.
I ran to the front door, flung it open, and strode down the front walk. Unibrow, the genius, didn’t notice me until I stood right behind him.
“Hey,” I called out.
Startled, he jumped back. His muscles stayed tensed
, even once he’d seen it was miniscule me standing in front of him.
“You filling in for Ralston while she’s away?” I asked.
He looked at me, lips parted. Either he was a mouth breather like Officer Grady or he was very bad at hiding surprise. It was probably both.
“Yup.” He hitched up his pants authoritatively.
“You can get in touch with her on a secure line?” I asked, hoping that was the lingo. I needed to sound like I meant business.
“Yup,” he said. I wasn’t even sure if the man could say anything else.
“You tell her we have everything we need for a positive ID on Bain. One hundred percent match.”
“You have evidence?” The agent gave a little snort as his single bushy eyebrow shot up. Of course. I was just a dumb little kid with cute freckles. What did I know about evidence?
“I said I did,” I snapped.
His eyes flitted to Agford’s front door. “Good,” he said. “Meet me at the end of the street in five minutes with it.” His Adam’s apple bobbed as he spoke. He reminded me of a fat, squat bullfrog. “We’ll want to move fast.”
Right. I was going to hand over evidence to a half-wit who couldn’t even stake out Agford’s house. I wouldn’t have trusted that guy to blow his own nose. I resolved to take it over Ralston’s head, if I had to. I could call the Austin field office.
“Um, Agent . . .” I waited for him to fill in the blank. He didn’t. “You are Agent . . . ?”
He cleared his throat. “Stone,” he said. “Agent Stone.”
“Agent Stone, I hope you’ll understand. I only deal with Ralston,” I said, hating how high and babyish my voice sounded. “Our email link has been compromised.” I supposed that was one way of describing a confiscated laptop and a destroyed friendship. “So if she can’t meet in person, she should send instructions using the same code as last time. I need to know I’m dealing with Ralston directly.” I crossed my arms and pushed up on the balls of my feet, hoping it made me look a little bigger.
Unibrow sighed. He might as well have rolled his eyes at me. “And what should I tell her that you have?” he asked.
“Airtight evidence,” I said. “That’s all she needs to know.”
As I walked back, I cast a glance toward Grace’s. The two protective fu dogs at her front door glowed in the warm light flooding from the family room windows. I couldn’t help thinking they belonged at my front door instead.
Chapter Twenty-three
Questionable Assumptions
“How was the doctor?” Marissa greeted me as I came into first-period science Thursday morning. She wore her blond hair in a strange updo that made her look middle-aged.
“Great.” I stepped to the side to clear my path.
She moved in front of me again. “You said you were going to the dentist.”
I shrugged. “Doctor, dentist. Whatever.”
Marissa narrowed her eyes. “Have you heard of pathological lying?”
“Oh, I’m very familiar with it, Marissa,” I said. “And it looks like it’s contagious.”
Marissa’s mouth hung open as I pushed past her. It wasn’t until I took my seat that she finally collected herself. She sat down behind me. I felt her eyes on the back of my head.
Ms. Gant wrote on the whiteboard in red: “Reminder: Science Fair, Monday 4:00 p.m.” I was going to trot out the same experiment I had done in fifth grade. I’d soaked my baby teeth in orange juice, water, and Coke for three weeks and charted the effects of decay. Trista was trying to build a solar panel that would harness the power of a panel twice its size. God only knows what Marissa was planning. Probably teaching rats to smile and tap-dance.
Someone poked my shoulder. I turned around to scowl at Marissa, only to see Rod smiling back from the desk across the aisle.
“What’s your project?” he whispered. With the sun streaming in from the windows, his hazel eyes almost looked green. Even my fight with Grace seemed far away for that second.
“Still thinking about it,” I whispered back. No way was I going to bring up my baby teeth. “What about you?”
Marissa butted in. “Ms. Gant is trying to start class,” she said as loudly as she could. Ms. Gant didn’t react. Marissa sighed so heavily, her bangs fluttered. Rod rolled his eyes. I rolled mine back.
“How to fight ocean pollution.” He jerked his head toward Marissa. “But I should have done something on the dangers of cloning.” I stifled a laugh. I could almost remember how life was before we’d spied on Agford, when the most I had to worry about was whether he really liked me.
“Okay, class, in your seats,” said Ms. Gant.
As Rod turned back and everyone settled down, I suddenly felt overcome with exhaustion. During the few hours of sleep I’d managed to get, I’d dreamed I was back in the basement again, only this time it had filled with water up to my chin. Grace and Agford stood at the top of the stairs, watching calmly as the water rose over my head. When I tried to swim, I discovered I was paralyzed from the neck down. I woke up with a jolt just as the water lapped at the thick cable of exposed wiring above my head.
I had put out the trash that morning and checked the mailbox for a code from Ralston. Empty. I had checked again after breakfast. Still nothing. I had even turned down Jake’s rare offer to drive me to school, figuring that riding my bike would make it easier for Agent Stone to approach me. I could have saved myself the trouble. In the end I decided to give Ralston until dinnertime to contact me.
Ms. Gant cleared her throat and rolled up the sleeves of her crisp button-down shirt. “Let’s see . . . who’s absent today?”
“Trent Spinner’s still suspended, Ms. Gant,” Marissa said in a singsong.
As Ms. Gant nodded and called roll, I thought about next period. Instead of going to second-period orchestra, I would have to trudge upstairs to Agford’s office for our therapy session. My hands began to sweat. There’s nothing Agford could do to me at school, I told myself. Not with this many witnesses.
“I’d like to offer some words of caution as you finish up your science-fair projects,” Ms. Gant began. “All projects require my approval. That means if you changed your project, you need to see me again. As a reminder, no projects involving flames or other combustible materials are allowed. While we’re lucky Joe McDougal lost only his eyebrows and eyelashes last year, I think we all agree it could have been much worse.”
Marissa’s eyes widened. Someone snickered.
A tiny, balled-up piece of paper rolled across my desk. I looked around, irrationally hoping Ralston might have managed to lob something through a window. Or maybe it was from Rod? I felt a flutter in my stomach as I unfurled it. Smiley faces peeked out among vines of dainty cursive, reading: “S.M.I.L.E. Brown Bag Lunch today. Be there or be sad! ~ Marissa ☺” Nothing like a smiley face to accompany a threat of sorrow. I guess Marissa was trying a new approach. Either that or her science project involved cultivating multiple personality disorder.
“Also, please—Sophie, am I boring you?” Ms. Gant interrupted herself.
My face burned. I shook my head.
“I’m glad to hear that. As I was saying, as you arrive at your final conclusions, you need to question your underlying assumptions. What variables haven’t you considered yet?” Ms. Gant threaded her way through the rows of desks as she continued her lecture. “Let’s take for example a project from a few years back entitled ‘What’s My Dog’s Favorite Color?’”
“Dude, that’s, like, one step above ‘Where Does My Dog Like to Take Dumps?’” Trent’s friend Matt called out. His face lit up. “Hey, can I change my project?”
“Don’t dogs see in black and white?” Rod interrupted.
Marissa’s soprano chimed in behind me. “Actually the canine visual spectrum ranges from blue to bright yellow.”
Rod coughed to cover his fake gag. He and I traded a look.
“Raise your hands, please,” Ms. Gant said. “But you are all touching on a critical issue. First,
the experiment operates under the assumption that dogs perceive as we do. It privileges our way of seeing over all else. But that wasn’t the real fatal flaw in this experiment.”
“No kidding,” said Matt.
Ms. Gant turned to the whiteboard. She drew two overlapping circles. She labeled one Things My Dog Likes and the other The Color Yellow. She tapped the circles. “My dog likes squeaky toys,” she said. “Some squeaky toys are yellow. Does that mean my dog likes all yellow things? Of course not. So what went wrong?”
Marissa raised her hand and grunted her usual oo, oo! As I looked at her, her eyes shining, leaning out of her seat as she waved her hand, I almost felt sorry for her. How were she and the rest of S.M.I.L.E. going to feel when they realized a fugitive had been using them all along?
Ms. Gant ignored Marissa and answered herself. “The student made an assumption. He didn’t consider other possible reasons for his dog’s attraction to a color and, as a result, he reached the wrong conclusions. Sometimes we only see evidence that confirms our opinions.”
Ms. Gant’s words settled over me like stones. The red circles she had drawn on the board blurred and crossed together, reminding me of yin/yang symbols. I don’t know how I hadn’t seen it before, but my entire friendship with Grace had been based upon one wrong conclusion after another. Grace spent time with me. That did not mean Grace really cared. I thought of Grace as my best friend. That didn’t mean she felt the same way about me. I drew one circle in my notebook and labeled it Young. On the other side of the page, separated by the harsh red margin line, I drew another and labeled it Yang.
“So check your conclusions,” Ms. Gant said. “Could the facts suggest other possibilities? Are there leaps in your logic? You can trust instincts when you first develop your hypotheses. But remember to be open to change if you find contrary evidence. Until several different avenues of evidence support it, you know nothing for sure. Always question your assumptions.”
I reached for the place my yin pendant used to hang as Ms. Gant’s words echoed in my head. Always question your assumptions.
The Wig in the Window Page 16