Busted

by Gina Ciocca

  “Right?” Kendall said, apparently oblivious to my speechlessness. “My dad’s job transferred us back last fall. Arizona was amazing, and we met so many great people and did so many cool things, and Dad got promoted, like, three times, but we really missed our family.” She threw her hands up in a ta-da motion. “And here I am. What’s new with you?”

  Until she asked the question, it’d never occurred to me how little my life had changed since the last time we saw each other. Sure, my family had moved too, but two towns over, to a slightly larger house. My mom still taught kindergarten, my dad was still a manager at the Big M grocery store, and my brother had shot up to almost six feet tall but still hadn’t grown a filter between his brain and his mouth. I had no life-altering experiences to gush about.

  “Not much. Waiting to hear back from colleges, possibly planning a road trip across the country this summer with my best friend. Nothing terribly exciting.”

  That part was sort of true. Charlie and I talked about road-tripping all the time, but we never seemed to get further than what kind of food we’d need for the ride.

  Her eyes lit up. “Are you kidding? A road trip across the country sounds superexciting! Your parents are cool with it?”

  “Uh, yeah, so far.”

  “And your boyfriend?”

  The corner of my mouth turned up. “Nonexistent, so definitely.”

  Kendall slipped her hands behind her with a sheepish expression. “Sorry, dumb question. I’ve been with TJ so long that I forget some people are still single.”

  Normally my inner fifth grader would’ve reared her passive-aggressive head at what felt like an obvious jab, but my interest in the other thing she’d said overshadowed my defensiveness.

  “Do you mean TJ as in TJ Caruso? The new guy?” I pointed to the school like he was still standing outside, even though I knew he wasn’t.

  Something changed in Kendall’s expression, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what. It was like a wall had gone up, though I didn’t know why when she’d been the one to bring up the subject.

  “So you know him?” Her words sounded as carefully measured as a cup of sugar.

  “I wouldn’t say I know him. He’s on yearbook with me, but he’s pretty quiet, and we’ve only talked about school stuff. I didn’t even know he had a girlfriend.”

  She scraped the toe of her ballet flat against a loose piece of asphalt and muttered something that sounded like, “Of course not.” I couldn’t help but notice the braided, caramel-colored leather bracelet that wound around her ankle. If I hadn’t been so busy trying to figure out if this was some sort of strange dream, I would’ve been salivating over it.

  “So wait,” I said, slipping the remnants of my own bracelet into my bag. “If he’s here, then where are you going to school?”

  Her sunny smile returned and she kicked the chunk of asphalt aside, leaving me to wonder if I’d imagined her momentary funk. “Templeton Hall. I applied for the Hartley honors program. All the slots were full when I transferred, but they let me in anyway. Guess I got lucky.”

  Color me not shocked at all.

  “My friend goes there. I’m actually on my way to her house right now. Charlie, Charlotte Reiser—do you know her?”

  The expression that passed over Kendall’s face made me wonder if I’d said the wrong thing.

  “Charlie’s in a couple of my classes,” she said. “I’m working with her and Mindy Kishore on a history project, so I also know she’s not home. I’m meeting them at the library as soon as I leave here.”

  “Oh. Then can you tell her to call me when you’re done?”

  “No problem.” I took a step forward, thinking we were about to say our goodbyes, head to our respective vehicles—hers, I realized, must be the sleek black Volkswagen parked next to the aging gray Hyundai that must’ve belonged to TJ—and go our separate ways. Instead, she blocked my path and pointed to my bag. “So,” she said brightly, “you’re still into crafts, I see.”

  I fingered the heart-shaped pin attached to the front pocket. A familiar pang rippled through my chest as the memory of my and Jordan’s first kiss flashed through my mind. For the hundredth time, I thought about ripping off the pin and letting it rust in a smelly landfill, since I couldn’t do as much to Jordan without landing myself in jail.

  “It’s a hobby of mine. I mess around with making jewelry—earrings and necklaces and stuff. I have a ton of these pins, so I design and decorate them for people who, um—” Who what? Whose boyfriends cheated on them? I didn’t even know where to go with that thought. “—who like them.” Wow. So that’s what a total sentence fail sounds like. “I was on my way to give Charlie hers, but I guess it will have to wait.”

  “You made one for Charlie Reiser? Can I see it?”

  The instinct to clutch my bag against my abdomen and refuse kicked in immediately, like I expected her to run off with the pin and somehow claim credit for it. I nearly snorted out loud, silently chiding myself for being so childish. “Uh, okay.”

  I fished around inside my bag and placed the pin I’d made for Charlie in Kendall’s waiting hand. She held it close to her face, running her thumb over the tiny red and black crystals I’d arranged into alternating stripes down the length of the heart’s surface. Without taking her eyes off it, she said, “I heard you caught her boyfriend cheating.”

  “You did?” I blurted. I had to bite back the How? that threatened to fly off my tongue next.

  She traced a row of red crystals with a cream-painted fingernail. “Mindy mentioned it earlier today. Of course, I didn’t realize that she meant Marisa as in you-Marisa, but now it all makes sense.”

  Mindy. I loved Charlie’s “Templeton wife,” but sometimes she seriously needed a muzzle. The last thing Charlie would’ve wanted was for Jason’s cheating antics to be public knowledge, and I sure as hell didn’t want anyone knowing that I’d stalked him by hanging from the woodwork outside the house of his side dish.

  “I—well, yeah I guess you could say that. It’s kind of why I’m giving her the pin.”

  The way Kendall’s eyes snapped up toward me reminded me of a window shade that had been pulled too hard. “Do you give one to everybody you help?”

  I didn’t have a clue what she meant by that, and I had to make a conscious effort to keep my facial muscles out of WTF formation. But she was obviously waiting for an answer, so I plucked the pin from her palm and said, “I make them, but it’s because I like to. Going all To Catch a Cheater isn’t really a hobby of mine, so I think the ‘help’ part is a onetime thing.”

  “Wait, I can give the pin to her if you want,” she protested as the heart disappeared into my bag.

  “No, that’s okay.” I hoisted my bag behind my hip. I didn’t know why I was suddenly picking up an ominous undertone in this conversation, but I was ready for it to be over. “I see her all the time.”

  Kendall’s hands twisted near the hem of her skirt. “Then maybe we can hang out sometime? I’ve always hated that we drifted apart. It would be great to start with a clean slate. Like, maybe grab dinner one weekend with Mindy and Charlie? They’re in some of my classes, but I don’t know them very well. I’d like to change that.”

  I immediately felt like an ass for suspecting Kendall had an ulterior motive. We weren’t in fifth grade anymore. Why did I always have to assume the worst of people?

  “Sure, we could definitely get together sometime.”

  And really, there was no reason we couldn’t. We’d had a lot of fun together when we were younger, when we weren’t being petty, and we’d both grown up since then. I found myself thinking I might really like getting to know Kendall again. Everyone deserved a second chance, right?

  I didn’t realize I had a smile on my face until I got into my car after Kendall and I exchanged numbers. As I drove home, my mind wandered back to the time I had gone to Myrtle
Beach with her family. We’d spent a week collecting shells along the shore, trying and failing to eat Popsicles before they ran down our hands and arms in sticky, melted messes, and laughing like everything we did was the funniest thing ever. The scenes were still playing in my mind like old movies when I walked into the house.

  “Hey, Mom.”

  I kissed my mother hello as she stood at the stove making soup.

  “Hi, sweetheart.” She kissed me back, then cocked her head and studied me. “Everything all right?”

  Mom Vision. Never failed.

  “I’m fine.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Are you sure? Did something happen at school?”

  “Remember Kendall Keene?”

  “Of course I do. What about her?”

  “She’s back from Arizona and she goes to school with Charlie. I saw her today.”

  My mother’s eyes widened and she blinked a couple times. “Oh,” she said. “That’s…nice?”

  I smiled and shook my head and headed toward the stairs. “Yes, Mom. It’s nice.”

  I threw my bag on the bed and walked over to my closet. On the top shelf sat a beat-up shoe box of keepsakes: awards, trinkets, my earliest attempts at sketches and crafts, one of which was a necklace I’d made from the shells I’d scavenged in Myrtle Beach with the Keenes. I lifted it from the box with a wistful smile, memories hitting me like the ocean waves. Sure, the trip had started with Kendall opening her suitcase and brandishing an exact copy of my brand-new bathing suit, but when I looked at that necklace with its pearlescent pinks and stark-white swirls, I remembered all the happy memories we’d made on that vacation and how much fun we’d had.

  As I replaced the lid and hoisted the box back into my closet, I was suddenly glad for the random turn of events that had brought us face-to-face again.

  Maybe they hadn’t been so random at all.

  3

  About an hour later, my brother and I were sprawled on the sectional couch doing homework in our sweats when Charlie and Mindy walked in.

  They wore matching Templeton Varsity sweatshirts, a testament to their cheerleader status, not to mention the awesomeness of Charlie’s parents. Technically, she belonged at Herring Cross High with me, at least according to planning and zoning in Herring Cross, Pennsylvania. But she’d been one of the few students from our region to test into Templeton’s elite Hartley Honors program, and even though they had to pay to send her to an out-of-district school, Mr. and Mrs. Reiser had ponied up without hesitation.

  When I’d broached the subject of attending Templeton to my parents, strictly out of curiosity, my dad had belly laughed and said, “Repeat after me: free is the way to be.” That had been the end of that discussion, even though I applied to the honors program anyway and got accepted.

  Four years in a row.

  “Hey, Charlotte,” Nick said, propping himself up on his elbow and flashing a grin. Then, because he loved to give Mindy a hard time, grumbled a cursory, “Kishore.”

  “Nicholas,” Charlie drawled back. “You’re looking dreamy today.”

  Nick’s crush on Charlie was the most obvious thing in the world, but I could never tell if Charlie actually enjoyed flirting with my brother or if she got a rise out of seeing the giant dope it turned him into. I opted to believe the latter, because thinking about my best friend coming on to my younger sibling kind of grossed me out.

  I reached over and pushed Nick’s head. “He looks like an ape, same as every other day.”

  Nick shoved me back. “You look like a dog-faced beast and have the breath to match.”

  “Hey, don’t talk that way about my hero.” Charlie flopped onto a free cushion while Mindy squeezed in next to her. “Your sister saved me from making a whale-sized ass out of myself, or didn’t she tell you?”

  “The only one who’s a whale-sized ass is a guy who’d cheat on you.”

  Mindy groaned and I rolled my eyes. “Nice one, Slick.”

  “Um, speaking of asses?” Mindy said, sitting up straighter and fixing a razor-sharp stare on me. “You know Kendall Keene?”

  I pushed my books aside and sat cross-legged on the cushion. “We were friends a long time ago. I take it you’re not a fan?” So much for the idea of all of us hanging out sometime.

  “How could you be friends with her?” The pitch of Mindy’s voice rose so fast that I half expected my mom’s china to start shattering in the dining room hutch. “I almost died when she got put in the group with us. I don’t think she knows other people are even in the room half the time because she’s so in love with herself.”

  I opened my mouth to divert, my normal course of action when Mindy’s snobby switch flipped to activate—especially since it seemed to feed an ugly side of Charlie’s personality that I hadn’t thought existed and was more than happy to keep dormant. Except I wasn’t fast enough, and Charlie chimed in before I got the chance.

  “She eats lunch with a mirror propped up on the table in case she gets crumbs on her face. Like that’s not why napkins were invented.”

  “And she threw the hugest tantrum when she thought there was no room for her in the honors program,” Mindy added.

  “Wait a minute. Are you talking about Kendall as in Kendall’s-a-Shitty-Friendall?” Nick asked incredulously.

  Charlie burst out laughing. “Is that what you call her?”

  “She’s back,” I confirmed, shooting Nick a look. “And that’s what he calls her. But she seemed perfectly nice when I talked to her today.”

  Mindy snorted. “Yeah, she’s fine until you beat her on a test. And don’t bother trying to hide your grade; you have a better chance of smuggling the freaking Precious past Mordor.”

  “I know, I know, she has a competitive streak. But think of it this way—you’re pretty much guaranteed an A on your history project.”

  “Forget history.” Mindy collapsed against the backrest and started swiping through her cell phone. “I need all the help I can get with chem. Mrs. Pace is such a bitch.”

  “Anyone thirsty?” Charlie asked, shooting off the couch. “I’ll get some root beers.”

  I appreciated her effort, but it didn’t stop me from wincing. Mrs. Pace, the chemistry teacher at Templeton High, also happened to be my ex-boyfriend Jordan’s mother. It was hard enough to keep my mind off him without direct mention of his name, but Charlie’s disappointment in Jason had hit a very familiar nerve in me, and my brain was taking way too many detours into Jordanville as a result. And Charlie knew it.

  “I’ll get them.” Nick stood up. “Sit down, Char.”

  “Aw, you’re sweet.”

  She threw a pillow at his butt as he left the room and Mindy teasingly called, “I could go for a sandwich!”

  I eyed Charlie. She’d slumped into the couch as soon as Nick was out of sight, and the corners of her mouth had settled into a frown. Mentioning Jordan must’ve reminded her of her own cheater. As the bearer of bad news, I felt guilty all over again.

  “How are you today, Char?”

  One shoulder lifted slightly. “Eh, I’m okay. I’m so over it. Sort of.”

  Total lie. Cue another rush of guilt. “Are you mad at me?”

  Charlie’s dark eyebrows drew together. “Why would I be mad at you? You did me a favor.”

  “A favor you never asked for. You know I never wanted to hurt you, right?”

  “Of course she knows!” Mindy squawked. “If you really wanted to ruin her life, you could’ve kept your mouth shut and let her sleep with the asshole.”

  I gasped. “Oh my God. Were you going to?” Charlie had never been the kiss-and-tell type, but since she’d barely copped to dating the guy, this was news. To say the least.

  “Were you going to?” Mindy echoed. “More like, did you?”

  “No!” Charlie tucked a strand of hair behind her reddened ear and shrank a
gainst her seat. “Jesus, Min, way to give everyone a coronary.”

  “Speaking of coronaries.” A heart problem reference was a weak segue at best, but Charlie was withering in the heat of the sex spotlight, so it would have to do. I pulled my book bag off the floor and dug around inside. “I have something for you.”

  Charlie gave me a quizzical look as I reached out, extending the heart pin I’d made in my open palm. A smile pulled at the corners of her lips as she took it, running her thumb over the sparkling red and black stripes. “I love it. Thank you.” Her fist closed around the pin. “For everything.”

  “Hey,” Mindy said, poking Charlie’s arm. “We have something for her too, remember?”

  “Oh, right!” Charlie bent to retrieve her own bag on the floor, then handed me a photocopied piece of paper from inside it. “Our English teacher gave this out today. You were the first person we thought of.”

  “Story Break Magazine’s High School Essay Contest,” I read aloud. “Topic: For Love of the News: How Far Would You Go to Get the Story?”

  “They want nonfiction,” Mindy said, twirling her black hair around her finger. “You scaled a freaking house to catch a cheater. You’d be a shoo-in for an award.”

  “Are you kidding?” I held up the piece of paper. “This is a journalism contest—”

  “The subject you’re going to study in college,” Charlie cut in.

  “They’re looking for kids who went to foreign countries and did relief work or…or stopped a bank from getting robbed,” I sputtered, ignoring her comment. “Not tales from Marisa Palmera’s Idiot Files.”

  Mindy raised an eyebrow, unfazed. “Did you see the prizes?”

  I scanned the paper again, and my mouth dropped. First, second, and third prize were all scholarships—for $2,500, $1,000, and $500.

  “We thought you’d like that part,” Charlie said smugly.

  Hell yeah I liked that part. Shopping for a college education on my parents’ budget was proving to be way more torturous than trying to barter for my choice of high school had ever been.