SCOUT

by Sanjiv Lingard

  “You’re kidding me?”

  “It was just like the FBI. Turns out the house nearest to the Franklins’ is on the market, and the captain’s wife is the realtor. So we set up camp inside, dressed as carpenters and painters, and waited it out. I’ve been working double shifts, living on coffee and not much else.”

  “From The Bean Counter?”

  “The Chevron by Vermillion Creek is closer, but the coffee tastes like dishwater. What I’d give for a proper Kenyan.”

  “Next time you’re in, it’s on me.”

  “With a pecan Danish?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Thanks, sweetie, though the fact is we owe you. Mrs Franklin must have been spooked by something, because at about three this morning she made her move. She took out the minivan and parked it so that we couldn’t see what she was doing. I could tell through the ‘scope that she was going out back, but those houses are built for privacy so I could see nothing else. She was collecting something.”

  “Oh God,” I whispered. I could hardly bear the tension.

  “We intercepted her before she left the estate. She started blubbing, and had no explanation of what she was doing. So we searched the van. The girl was under some golf bags in the rear footwell.”

  “Please, Molly – don’t tell me.”

  “She was alive, Scout! I didn’t believe it! The little girl was asleep, but healthy and well-fed. She’d been doped and gagged to keep her quiet, but little Skyler is alive!”

  So that was her name – ‘Skyler’.

  “The Franklin woman pretty much crumbled after that,” continued Molly. “The whole thing had been her idea – the husband had been kept in the dark. Turns out the move to Rolling Hills had been a big mistake. There weren’t many takers for his coaching business. You may not have noticed, but half those houses are empty, and no one can afford the green fees anymore. Franklin used to be a pro golfer, but his star’s faded, so he was earning nothing whilst the mortgage was sky-high. And then Mrs F came up with this scheme to put him back on the map.

  “She was going to kidnap her own daughter, drug her and keep her quiet. The plan was to have Skyler disappear for a few weeks, during which time Mrs F would turn on the waterworks on local TV. And then, just as the interest was waning, she would take Skyler out and drop her on the interstate. The girl would be found by a passing motorist – and, like magic, she would be reunited with her parents. Cue lots of TV coverage, at the national level, with pics of the family happily reunited. Play their cards right, and they could even appear with Oprah. Imagine how that would resurrect Franklin’s golfing career?”

  “But how did she do it? Where was Skyler all that time?”

  “You may well ask,” replied Molly, with an enigmatic smile on her face. “She was just where you led me, Scout. She was in the fallout shelter.”

  “But that’s impossible! You said that you’d checked it.”

  “We had, but no one thought that there might be an inner chamber. The guy who designed this house was double-paranoid; maybe he was worried about a zombie attack as well as nuclear war. He’d built a little Anne Frank cubbyhole right at the back, sealed by a great knot of concrete. Radar couldn’t penetrate it, and the dogs couldn’t sniff through it. Mrs F took us back there and explained how she had discovered the hole when they first moved into the house. It wasn’t on any plans. I think she was kinda proud about how clever she had been to figure it out.”

  “She must have been desperate to come up with something like that,” I said.

  “She’s a greedy bitch, Scout. They could’ve swallowed their pride and sold the house. What the hell did they need three garages for? They only had the one minivan.”

  Headlights swung across the front of the house, and a car door slammed.

  “That’ll be dinner,” said Molly, brightening. “I’m starving.”

  *

  There was crispy sesame chicken, fiery kung-pao, calamari tempura, springs rolls, hamachi tacos, three types of noodle, and Mike Forrester.

  Molly had sent him to the Golden Happiness, apparently with an order to buy the entire menu. From the way he hurried to unload the food, it was clear that he was as hungry as his mother. If Mike noticed that I’d tidied up, he didn’t say.

  It wasn’t until the food was laid out, the cartons opened, and steam rising into the overhead light that I realised how long it had been since I had sat at the table to eat. Normally, food was snatched in front of the TV, or at the kitchen counter. It had been years since anyone had sat in our house and eaten a meal with us.

  “Are you alright, honey?” asked Molly.

  “Yes, yes,” I lied, blinking back a tear. “I just can’t help thinking about that poor girl.”

  “She’s with people who love her.”

  My tears were, partly, for Skyler Franklin, whose mother cared so little about her that she could bury her in a hole. And partly the tears were for family dinners that had never been, for Thanksgivings and New Years that had never been celebrated at this table.

  And partly my tears were for the kung-pao, which lived up to its name and was truly fiery.

  “Whoa!” shouted Molly after biting into the spicy meat, and poured herself a huge glass of soda.

  “Hey, Scout,” said Mike. “This is for you.”

  And he threw a fortune cookie down the length of the table. I caught it one-handed, which for me is the equivalent of hitting the basket from the three-point line. My co-ordination is laughable, and I fumble and drop just about everything. If you were a customer – sorry, ‘friend’ – in my first week at The Bean Counter then you probably have the stains on your clothes and first-degree burns to prove it.

  Yet I plucked that cookie out of the air and didn’t crush it into a handful of crumbs.

  “What does it say?” Mike asked. Molly nodded encouragement over her pitcher of soda, as she was still fire-fighting the kung-pao.

  I cracked open the cookie and scattered the pieces on the table. Does anyone ever actually eat their fortune cookie? I wondered. Inside was a small scroll of paper, and like everyone else I imagined that this piece of paper had been prepared especially for me, not printed in a factory in Guangdong.

  I unrolled the scroll and read what was inside:

  *

  Molly went out onto the porch to take a call, leaving me and Mike to root through the cartons. We chased down every scrap. Mike must’ve been at a training session, because he went into cartons that I am sure had been scoured clean. The chilli did not seem to bother him, but I avoided it in case it made me any hotter. It wasn’t every day that I sat with a varsity star, and I didn’t want to risk breaking out in a sweat.

  “Thanks for staying with my mom the other day,” I said, just to break the monotony of chomping.

  “She’s sweet.”

  Sweet? I hadn’t ever heard Eileen called that before.

  “But the music?” I asked. “I’m sorry about that.”

  “I kinda like it. It’s retro – but in a cool way.”

  “In a what way?”

  “Cool, like phones the size of refrigerators, and shoulder pads. Cool like Dynasty.”

  “That’s not cool at all.”

  “Exactly!”

  Then he laughed – his face cracking into a huge grin. He leant forward, as if to share a confidence.

  “How d’you think Molly gets the bad guys to cough up?” he asked. “Her technique’s tougher than going three rounds with Iron Mike. She plays them ‘Rio’ by Duran Duran and even the most hardened gangbangers fall apart.”

  “That’s an abuse of human rights!”

  “It’s torture.”

  “They should ban it,” I said. “By United Nations charter.”

  “Like waterboarding?”

  “It’s worse!”

  And there I was, laugh
ing with ‘Woody’ Forrester. Though I had been a senior to his junior, I had always been beneath him and his crowd. If you think segregation ended in the 1960s, you haven’t been to a high-school cafeteria. Each strata of school society has its table. The geeks and the weirdos, in which both categories I qualified, were consigned to the least optimum area – out of sight. ‘Woody’ and his sporting pals were with the popular girls, by the counter. Once they got their food they had no distance to walk, and their cavorting echoed off the concrete ceiling, drowning out all the others.

  Now here I was, finishing a meal with Mike, and he was asking about me like he was interested.

  “How did you help Molly?” he asked. “She wouldn’t say.”

  “It’s a girl thing,” I replied.

  “So I wouldn’t understand?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Just intuition?”

  “Something like that.”

  “That only makes me more curious. You see, she’s not slept for the forty-eight hours since I babysat your mom. I’ve never seen her so excited. And finding the girl alive, well, that’s gonna boost her career. They’re talking about promotion.”

  “Right.”

  “That’s good, isn’t it? A pay rise’ll mean more money for the college fund. That’s something special you’ve done for us both.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re a mystery, Scout. An enigma.”

  I wondered if that was a good thing – to be called an ‘enigma’? Somewhere I had read that boys like the allure of a mysterious woman. She is a locked cabinet that they are curious to open. Just hearing him say the word made a shiver pass down my spine.

  Oh God, please don’t let me flush!

  I reached for the glass of soda and tried not to gulp the cold liquid. I’d only spill it down my front.

  “Hey, listen, Scout,” Mike said, sliding along the bench towards me. “There’s a Halloween party Friday night. You wanna come?”

  “Who’s party?”

  “Who cares. I’m inviting you. What do you say?”

  Well, what could I say?

  Chapter 9

  “I’ve got a dress,” I told him.

  “A dress?”

  It was first break on early shift, and Moyheddin was standing beside me on the stoop, wreathed in a cloud of tobacco.

  “For the date?” he asked.

  “It’s not a date.”

  “Well, ‘Breaking News’, a boy asks you out – so in any language that’s a date.”

  “I worked with his mom.”

  “Yeah, yeah. So – show me the dress.”

  “It needs your help—”

  “Show me!”

  I ran to the lockers, and when I came back, with the dress still in a sheath of plastic from the cleaners, Moyheddin was standing in the parking lot, looking up at me like I was on stage.

  “Come on then, catwalk girl,” he said, taking a lungful of smoke. I held the dress against me, smoothing the skirt against my thighs, and rocked from side to side.

  “It’s your mother’s? Yes?”

  I nodded.

  “I like the colour.”

  It was teal. Very 1980s, but unlike much from that decade it wasn’t garish or glossy. There was an understated class to the fabric, and I could only give kudos to Eileen’s younger self for having good taste.

  Moyheddin plucked at the shoulder.

  “These sleeves – puffs - yech! This still goes for stylish in Riyadh, but it won’t do here. And this – ”

  He pointed at a fabric corsage on the neckline.

  “ – too Molly Ringwald.”

  “I thought the ’80s were fashionable again?” I asked.

  “To a point,” he replied.

  “I’ve got something else,” I said, and shoved the dress into his arms. A moment later I came back with the treasure I had found at the top of Mom’s closet.

  “Wow,” Moyheddin said.

  I held in my hand a pair of silver stilettos, slingbacks with a three-inch heel. The previous night I had stolen them from Eileen’s closet and walked around the living room, trying to get my balance. The effort of standing upright pushed my body out in places that I didn’t know existed, but it was kind of sexy. I tried to imagine Eileen wearing them back in the day, but I would never know who she was trying to impress, and how good it made her feel.

  Moyheddin’s eyes widened into a smile.

  “Scout,” he said, “you’re going to the ball.”

  *

  Friday passed in a blur. I wasn’t myself at The Bean Counter. ‘Friends’ got hazelnut syrup instead of almond, and a platoon of the Moms’ Brigade got full-fat instead of skinny. ‘Caff’ was switched for ‘decaff’, but no one complained, which I took as a sign that all would be well.

  At lunchtime a horde of seniors, in Halloween fancy dress, crowded into The Bean Counter. In my paper hat and uniform I was invisible. I wondered who amongst them would be at the party tonight, and whether they would be shocked to realise that the girl who served them hot chocolate and ham and cheese melts had also been invited.

  All day, I thought of the dress. This was me, Scout, who threw on the most practical clothes and never gave a thought to her appearance. I was so obsessed I wondered if I was coming down with a fever.

  The dress, the dress!

  Moyheddin’s boyfriend, Riley, had been altering it overnight. He worked in the autoshop but was trained as a tailor. Riley dreamt of doing something big in fashion, but there wasn’t much use for his skills in this prairie town so he made his living draining sumps.

  When I got home the tension was even worse. Eileen was watching SpongeBob and, though normally I would laugh along, today the trials of our square-panted hero seemed shrill and humourless.

  I took a bath and drank camomile tea.

  A little after eight, I heard the rumbling of Riley’s diesel. I ran outside, and Riley was bustling from the tow truck, all tattoos and biceps.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said, and for a moment I thought that something terrible had happened whilst he was cutting off the puff sleeves.

  “There was a smash on the interstate,” he explained. “That’s why we’re late. They asked me to tow some of the wrecks.”

  “So it’s not the dress?” I asked.

  Teenagers are selfish creatures, and I didn’t give a moment’s thought to anyone caught up in the accident.

  “Your dress,” replied Riley, proud of himself, “is a work of perfection.”

  Moyheddin appeared from the other side of the cab, the teal fabric draped across his arms. Riley swept an oil-stained hand towards it, as if introducing the Emperor to his new clothes. You would not imagine that those beefy fingers could hold a delicate needle, but Riley was a magician. I kissed him on the cheek before snatching the dress and running into the house.

  I laid the dress on my bed.

  Riley had transformed the piece. Though the material appeared similar, I was not even sure that it was the same dress. Where once sleeves had ballooned, there were tapering shoulder straps, and where a flowery roundel of fabric once threatened to obscure my face, there was an elegant neckline.

  My hands trembled as I reached for the fabric.

  *

  Riley and Moyheddin were sitting with Eileen, chatting over the sound of the TV. They never had a problem with her vacant stare, or the fact she could not remember their names even though she saw them at least once a week. They were happy to share their gossip and tell her about their lives. She chuckled when they mentioned something risqué, and in those moments I saw a flash of Eileen as a younger woman. I loved it when she laughed.

  She was smiling when I came in, but froze when she caught sight of me. I was trying hard to stay elegant, balanced on those silvery heels. The teal dress clung to me like a se
cond skin.

  Moyheddin and Riley sighed in unison. Eileen continued to stare at me, her jaw slack, as if trying to fathom what it was that she was seeing.

  The moment held. The boys looked fearful of what she might do next, not wanting to prompt her one way or the other.

  And then Eileen clapped her hands and laughed.

  “Scout!” she shouted, as if she had not seen me all day.

  Moyheddin was up on his feet, and he braced me by the shoulders, his face split into a huge grin.

  “My God, Scout,” he said, taking me all in. “You’re beautiful. If I ever return to Saudi, perhaps you could be my second wife?”

  Eileen’s gaze had drifted back to the TV, but for an instant – just an instant – she had appreciated me and congratulated me. And that is all a child wants from a parent, isn’t it?

  I don’t think I will ever be as happy as I was in that moment.

  Chapter 10

  Mike couldn’t keep his eyes on the road.

  I didn’t mind if we crashed and I died right then in his Toyota. Mike Forrester was snatching so many glances at me I wondered if my skirt was tucked into my underwear, or a sheaf of bathroom tissue was stuck to the sole of my shoe.

  “Shit!” he yelled, and pulled the car back over the line just as a truck roared past, lights flaring in the windshield, the horn blasting like a clarion.

  “You must think I’m an idiot,” he said, his face suddenly flushed.

  “No, not really.”

  “’Not really’? That’s good, I suppose. ‘Not really’ an idiot means that, probably, I am.”

  He took another look at my legs, and this time I didn’t try to pull the skirt down to cover them.

  “Man! Are they gonna freak when they see you!”

  “Don’t tell anyone who I am,” I pleaded.

  “Why ever not?”

  “Would you recognise Scout Mann tricked up like this? Scout, the mousy girl who hung on the back table with the geeks and gamers and Goths?”

  “Of course I wouldn’t - you always wore those combat pants, and a hat.”