by Meg Cabot
There was considerable murmuring about this. But not because people thought it was so out there or weird, as people have murmured over things my brother’s said in the past. There was a general note of approval in this murmur. Someone at the far side of the gym shouted, “Yeah!” while someone on the other side said, “We don’t want teenagers roaming around loose in our neighborhood.”
“Alternative doesn’t mean unsupervised,” Douglas was quick to point out. “State certification will be required of teachers wishing to apply to work at Pine Heights Alternative High School. And like any school, loitering on school grounds after hours will not be permitted.”
“But kids who go to so-called alternative schools,” a woman I didn’t recognize, but who evidently lived in our neighborhood, stood up to say, “are generally kids who’ve been expelled from mainstream schools. The troublemakers.”
There was a murmur of assent from the crowd.
“Not our school,” Tasha Thompkins stood up to say. “Our school will have strict admittance policies. Applicants will need to have references.”
Back and forth it went between the supporters of an alternative high school and those who felt it would cause real estate values in the neighborhood to plummet. I sat there, not so much interested in the fight than in the fact that my brother—my brother Douglas—was leading it. My brother Douglas, who years previously had been interested in comic books and keeping to himself, in that order. Now he was leading—really, leading—a charge for change in a neighborhood he didn’t even live in anymore.
And people were LISTENING to him. The boy who used to come home crying every day from school because some bigger kid had stolen his lunch money and called him a spaz. He was LEADING a group of citizens concerned about the direction their town was going.
And he was leading because he had a heretofore unknown—to me, anyway—talent for public speaking.
“The reason we’re even here,” he was saying, “is because the young people in our community can no longer afford to raise their children here. They’re being priced out for homes in this community by people who don’t even own businesses in this community, but choose to live here rather than in Indianapolis, the big city where they do business. Soon this town will become completely unaffordable to people my age. We’re losing young people to big cities like New York and Chicago because there’s no work for them here. Talented teachers are slipping away because there are no openings for them in our overcrowded public schools. Why not give us an opportunity to employ some of these people, pull them back into the local community, while at the same time, affording teens who might otherwise feel lost at the monstrosity that is our local public high school a chance to really shine?”
A few people clapped. Really, clapped, for something my brother Douglas said. It brought tears to my eyes. It really did. After the meeting ended—with an assurance by the city councilperson that both the proposed alternative high school and Mr. Whitehead’s condo plan would be thoroughly reviewed and a decision made by the end of the month, I turned to Douglas and said, struggling to keep my emotions in check, “That was good, Dougie. Really good.”
“Yeah,” he said, still looking angry. “Well, not good enough. I think I swayed a couple of them, but that bastard Whitehead—he really has them snowed about the property values and turning this neighborhood into the Beverly Hills of Indiana….”
“Don’t worry,” Tasha said, giving my brother a comforting rub on the back. “My dad knows the mayor. He promised to put a word in. I mean, after all, it’s his neighborhood, too. And it’s an election year.”
“It would just be so cool,” Douglas said, “if we could turn this place back into a school—the right kind of school, I mean. The kind of school you wouldn’t have hated, Jess.”
I laughed—not very easily—and then moved away as people came up to congratulate Douglas on his speech and strategize as to what the next step ought to be in their plan.
And I found myself standing not five feet away from Randy Whitehead, who was putting his dad’s model into a big white box.
Before I even thought about what I was doing, I strolled over to him, leaned down, and said, “Nice model.”
Randy glanced at me and gave me a big, capped-tooth smile.
“Thanks,” he said. “You new around here? I’ve never seen you at one of these community board meetings before.”
“You might say I’m new around here.” I smiled back at him. “You?”
“Just moved here from Indy,” he said. “Last year.”
“That must be quite a change,” I said. “Small town living, after life in the big city.”
“It’s surprisingly the same,” he said. “I mean, mostly work, very little play.”
I smiled even harder at him. “Come on,” I said. “A guy as good-looking as you? You must get LOTS of play.”
He ducked his head modestly, allowing some of his hundred-dollar haircut to fall over his eyes. “Well,” he said. “Now and then, I suppose. How about you?”
I tried to look surprised. “Me? Oh, I don’t have much time for playing.”
“Really?” He’d successfully wrestled the model into the box. “Why not?”
“I’m too busy finding people, usually,” I said.
“Finding people?” He regarded me with eyes that were the same color as Rob’s. But somehow I suspected Randy’s misty gray irises were the result of contacts. “What are you? A truant officer?”
“No,” I said. “I’m Jess Mastriani. Maybe you haven’t heard of me. I’m the girl who was struck by lightning a few years ago and developed the psychic power to find missing people.”
He stared at me for a full beat. Then recognition dawned.
“No kidding?” He looked delighted. “Hey, I watch that show about you, sometimes. The one on cable.”
“Huh,” I said, in a small-world kind of way.
“Wow,” Randy said. “It’s really cool meeting you. I had no idea you were so young. In real life, I mean.”
“Huh,” I said again, this time in a gee-whillikers way.
“It is a real honor to meet you,” Randy said, reaching out his right hand to shake mine. “I’m Randall Whitehead Junior.”
“I know,” I said, pumping his hand with vigor.
“You do?” He looked psyched to hear it. “Oh, right. Well, I mean, of course you do. You’re psychic!”
“Not that kind of psychic,” I said. “Actually, I know you through a friend of yours. Hannah Snyder.”
Randy was a smooth one, all right. He didn’t quit pumping my hand. But I felt it grow a little cooler in mine. And he blinked, twice, hard, at the name.
Then he said, “Snyder? I don’t believe I know the name.”
“Oh, sure, you do, Randy,” I said in the same warm voice. “She’s the underage runaway you were stashing in Apartment Two-T over at the Fountain Bleu apartment complex by the hospital. I found her there myself earlier today.”
Randy dropped my hand. Like it was hot.
“I…I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure, you do, Randy,” I said. And wondered what I was doing. My job was done. Why wasn’t I riding off into the sunset?
But something in me just wouldn’t let go. It was the only part of me, I suspected, that hadn’t come back broken.
“Tell me something, Randy,” I said. “Just between you and me. How many girls have you got living rent-free there, anyway? Two? Three? Or are there more? And how do you keep them all from finding out about each other?”
“I really—” Randy was shaking his head. “I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m afraid you do, Randy,” I said. “See, I know all about—”
“Hannah Snyder is a very disturbed girl,” Randy interrupted. “I’ll just say she lied to me about her age, if you try going to the cops. And that she came on to me.”
“Ignorance of the law is no excuse, Randy,” I sa
id. “If a person eighteen years of age or older engages in sexual intercourse with a person sixteen years of age or younger, it’s a crime punishable in the state of Indiana by a fixed term of ten years with up to ten years added or four subtracted for aggravating and mitigating circumstances.”
Randy blinked at me. “Th-there’s no proof, though,” he stammered. “Th-that it’s me in the videos. You can’t p-prove it’s me.”
Wait. What?
I smiled at him. “Oh,” I said. “I think we can prove it’s you, all right.”
What was he talking about?
“I—I have to go now,” Randy stammered. He’d gone as white as his dad’s model of Pine Heights Condos. Then he practically fell over himself in his haste to get away from me.
A few minutes later, Douglas and Tasha found me sitting by myself on one of the folding chairs, trying to remember my lines from The Lion and the Mouse and failing.
“Ready to go?” Douglas asked me. “Tash and I usually go out for a cup of decaf after meetings. Want to tag along?”
“No,” I said, standing up. “I thought I might go for a ride.”
“Oh,” Douglas said. But he was smiling. “Of course. You must really miss that, back in New York.”
“You have no idea,” I said. I wasn’t talking about the bike.
“Well, thanks for coming along,” Douglas said. “It was probably pretty boring for you, but, you know. I think it might have impressed a few people, seeing Lightning Girl sitting on our side.”
“Yeah,” Tasha said. “Randy Junior looked like he was about to barf after he got done talking to you.”
“Well, you know,” I said. “That’s what I bring to the table.”
“Shut up,” Douglas said.
But he was laughing.
It felt good, I was discovering, to hear Douglas laugh. It was a sound I could get used to.
Not that I intended to, though. I had done, I felt, enough damage for one evening. I headed back to the house…and to my bike.
Eleven
I don’t know what I was thinking. Maybe I just wasn’t. Thinking, I mean.
My bike just seemed to sort of drive itself to the Fountain Bleu Apartments. There was no conscious decision on my part to go to that part of town. It was as if I looked up, and I was there, pulling back into the same parking lot I’d vacated several hours earlier.
Only this time, there was something there that hadn’t been there before. And I don’t just mean a lot more cars, since most of the residents of the complex appeared to have gotten home from work, and were currently enjoying their evening repast and/or a situation comedy on a major network (some of them, possibly, might even have been enjoying the show purportedly about me. If they had cable, that is).
No, I was talking about one car in particular. And that was a newish black pickup parked well to the back of the lot, where it wouldn’t be noticeable, even though it happened to be in the exact spot I would have chosen, had I decided to perform any sort of recon on the place.
And since that’s exactly how I’d decided to spend my evening, this put something of a crimp in my plans.
Until I saw just who it was behind the pickup’s steering wheel.
That’s when I decided to tap on the driver’s-side window, having stashed my bike in the lot next door in an effort to remain unobtrusive.
Rob, startled, rolled down his window.
“What are you doing here?” he asked in some surprise.
But he couldn’t have been as surprised as I was. Because I could hear what he was listening to inside the pickup’s cab.
And it was Tchaikovsky.
“I thought I’d pay a call on the young lady living in One-S,” I said. Why was he listening to classical music? Did he even like classical music? I guess so. All this time, and I never even knew that about him. What else didn’t I know about him? “How about you?”
“I’m waiting for young Master Whitehead to get home,” Rob replied pleasantly. “After which point, I’m going to beat him senseless.”
“Hannah told you his full name?” I was surprised. I hadn’t thought she’d be so forthcoming with her half brother, who she must have suspected did not have Randy’s best intentions at heart.
“No,” he said. “I Googled who owns the Fountain Bleu apartment complex, and found a pic of Randy Junior. I was going to kick his ass tomorrow, after Hannah’s mom got here to pick her up. But Chick volunteered to keep an eye on her while I was gone, so I was able to change my plans.”
“You’re not going to let Hannah stay?” I asked.
Rob made an incredulous noise. “Are you kidding me? I’m clearly the last guy who should be raising a teenage girl. She snowed me as easily—well, as you used to snow your parents.”
I chose to ignore that.
“So what’s the plan?” I asked him. “You’re just going to wait until he pulls up, then have a blanket party?” I was referring to the age-old Hoosier tradition of throwing a blanket over a victim’s head, then beating him with a baseball bat, or bars of soap slipped into the end of a sock.
“No,” Rob said mildly. “I’m skipping the blanket. I was thinking I’d like to see his face as I grind it into the pavement.”
“Right,” I said. “Well, good luck with that. I just saw him at a city council meeting, where I told him I was onto him, so he’s probably either already been here to pick up his other girlfriend and left, or is going to stay far away from this place for the time being.”
Rob looked crushed. “Are you kidding me?”
“I’m not,” I said. “Sorry. But you can still make yourself useful.”
He lifted a quizzical brow. “Really. How?”
“Honk if the cops show up,” I said with a wink.
Then I turned to head towards the apartment complex.
As I’d expected, behind me, a car door opened, then slammed shut. A second later, Rob’s voice sounded just behind me.
“Mastriani,” he said, sounding suspicious. “What are you doing?”
“Oh,” I said with a shrug. “Randy mentioned something that made me want to come over here and check the place out. That’s all.”
“What do you mean, check the place out?” Rob demanded. It was quiet in the Fountain Bleu apartment complex. Except for the burbling of the fountain and the trill of crickets, that is. Even the swimming pool was empty. The only other sounds were our footsteps, as we headed towards Apartment 1S.
“Just something Randy said,” I told him. “It could be nothing. Or it could be something. But I’m pretty sure you’re not really going to want to be a party to what I’m about to do, since it will probably involve some breaking and entering. And with your police record…”
“I don’t have a police record,” Rob said. “I have a juvenile record. And it’s sealed.”
I don’t know why he added this last part. What did he think I was going to do, log on to some kind of government computer and try to look up his file to see what it was he’d done so long ago that had gotten him into so much hot water? Because of course I’d already tried that, and gotten nothing.
“Fine,” I said. “Then you can be the lookout.”
“Lookout nothing,” Rob said. “I’m in this, Mastriani. You’re not shutting me out. Not this time.”
I stole a glance up at his face. His jaw was set, his brow lowered with irritation. Me, shut him out? Wasn’t it the other way around?
But I didn’t ask the question out loud. Instead I said, “Fine. But if you’re going to tag along, you have to do things my way. And my way doesn’t involve anyone getting beat senseless.”
Rob actually looked surprised. “Now you really are kidding,” he said.
“Actually, I’m not. I don’t do violence anymore.” I was careful not to look at him as we headed towards the door marked 1S. “I’ve learned there are more effective ways of solving problems than ramming your fist into your adversary’s face.”
“I’m impressed.” A glance at his face show
ed me that he wasn’t being sarcastic. He was smiling a little. “Mr. Goodhart would be proud.”
I thought about my high school guidance counselor, and his efforts to curb my quick temper—and fists. None of his suggestions had been as effective as seeing for myself, firsthand, the kind of devastation a too-hasty decision to act first and ask questions later could cause.
“Yes,” I said, thinking fondly of Mr. Goodhart. “He would, actually.”
Then I reached up and thumped on the door to the apartment Randy apparently shared with the dark-haired girl I’d seen him kissing earlier. When, to my surprise, no one answered, I tried the knob. Hey, you never know.
But it was locked.
“This where you found Hannah?” Rob wanted to know.
“No,” I said. “Hannah was in Two-T.”
“Oh. So, what now?” Rob wanted to know, even as I was digging in my back pocket for my wallet.
“Now it’s time for a little B and E,” I said. “Try to look casual. Hey, you got a credit card on you?”
“That you can destroy trying to open that door? No.”
“Never mind,” I said, finding a card I could use in my wallet. “I’m good.” And I slipped the card between the doorjamb and the knob. It was a trick that would never have worked on our apartment in New York, where we had a dead bolt.
But who needs a dead bolt in a sleepy town like this one?
Unless, of course, you’re Randy Whitehead, and you’re up to the kind of things I suspected Randy was up to.
“Hey,” Rob said softly, when he saw the card I was using to push the lock back. “Aren’t you going to need that in the fall?”
I looked down at the photo of my own face, staring back up at me from the front of my Juilliard ID card. You’d have thought, seeing as how the day I’d had that picture taken, I was starting a whole new life, at a school I’d always wanted to go to, where I’d be doing what I loved best to do in the world all day long, that I’d have looked excited and happy in my photo.