by Gina Ciocca
I took the hot chocolate from him. “What? What happened?”
He scooted onto the bleacher next to me and took a sip of his drink, then sputtered. “Shit, that’s hot.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Anyway, I got a text message, so I went around to the side of the Snack Shack to put my stuff down on one of the picnic benches and answer it. I’m standing there, minding my own business, and this kid says ‘I have the stuff here if you want it.’ I didn’t see anyone so I’m like, ‘What the fuck? Are you talking to me?’ Then I see this shadow around the corner and he goes, ‘Do you have the money?’ So I start walking toward him to see what the hell he’s talking about and he says, ‘My bad’ and freaking bolts—like, climbed over the fence and bolted. Fucking weird.”
A finger tapped Nick’s shoulder. “Um, did he bolt before or after you traded my cocoa for some crack?” Mindy asked.
Nick bent forward, searching the area around his seat. “Shit. I must’ve left yours at the Snack Shack. Be right back.” Mindy scooted in next to me while he trotted down the bleachers.
The next time he came back, he wasn’t alone.
“What’s she doing here?” Mindy asked.
I followed her gaze. Nick was walking toward us, holding Mindy’s hot chocolate in one hand and pointing in our direction with the other. Next to him stood a frantic-looking Kendall Keene.
“What the…” I murmured. “She’s supposed to be with TJ.”
Kendall broke away from Nick’s side the moment she spotted us and made a mad dash toward me. She literally tossed the blanket off my lap and almost pulled my arm out of its socket.
“Marisa, you have to come with me right now!”
“Holy—Jesus, Kendall, what’s going on?”
I barely had time to scoop my purse off the ground before she had me half sitting, half standing with my arm jutting out like a broken marionette.
“I’ll explain in a minute. Please hurry!”
I threw a confused glance at Mindy as Kendall whisked me away, briefly registering my brother pointing at Kendall while making Norman Bates–esque stabbing motions.
“What’s going on? I thought you were with TJ tonight,” I said as we scurried down the hill toward the parking lot.
“I was. We had dinner and I thought we were hanging out afterward, but he said something he ate didn’t agree with him. He’s full of shit, I know it, and I don’t mean that kind of shit.” She yanked at my coat sleeve, pulling both of us off the sidewalk alongside the school and behind a tree, and pointed into the distance. “I made him drop me off because I knew everyone was here. He didn’t even wait for me to get out of sight before he called someone on his cell phone. And look—he’s still sitting there! He’s going to leave and we have to follow him!”
I looked at her like she’d fully lost her shit, because no other reaction was appropriate. “Are you kidding me? I brought my brother with me, and I’m Charlie’s ride home. I can’t leave them here! And what’s this ‘we’ business? TJ can’t see you with me.”
She shook her head like she didn’t have time to worry about petty details. “Then you go, and I’ll think of something. Charlie’s parents are here, right? Maybe we can bum a ride with them.”
“They’re leaving at half—”
“Then give me your keys and I’ll follow him myself. He’s going to leave any minute!”
She’d gone from desperate to ragey in a hot second. Her voice had turned shrill and even in the shadows of the tree, I could see her cheeks flaming and her chest puffing as she held out her palm for my keys. One more second, and her eyes began to well. I couldn’t have her crying. This was the girl who, in third grade, had pushed Heather Upchurch’s face into the dirt for knocking me off my swing at recess. How could I let her cry?
“I’ll go, I’ll go. Get out of here before he sees you.”
Kendall exhaled with relief and sniffled. “Thank you.”
“Seriously, go. I’ll take care of it.”
“I’ll make it up to you, I promise,” she called over her shoulder as she jogged toward the field.
I turned away, mumbling under my breath that I couldn’t imagine how. Pulling my coat tighter around me, I slipped into Marisa Palmera, Private Eye mode and ducked between a row of cars. TJ had parked about ten spaces away from mine, and getting to my car unnoticed would be like making my way through the corn maze at his farm. I hoped he hadn’t seen or recognized my jalopy. A blinged-out rusty red heap isn’t exactly subtle. I made a mental note to put my Swarovski snowflake in the glove box for future stakeouts.
Future stakeouts? How many times did I plan on doing this?
Pushing the question to the back of my mind, I concentrated on closing the distance to my car. That is, until I became distinctly aware of the sound of footsteps behind me. I cursed under my breath as I realized this was probably the first trickle of the halftime exodus, and ducked against the tire of a huge black Hummer, trying to hide both the sound of my breathing and the frosty mist it made in the air. The scuffle of shoes continued past my hiding spot and I started to maneuver my way to the front of the vehicle to peek around the bumper, only to scurry back a second later when the sound of giddy giggling and shuffling feet sent my heart rate through the roof.
I called the three girls every name in the book, in my head of course, as they took their sweet time getting into the car on the opposite side of the Hummer, cackling away as they argued about whether or not one of the football players had been flirting with them.
“Did you see him take his helmet off and smile? OMG, I wanted to die!”
I could arrange for that.
“He was totally looking at Flora James when he did that. Get your head out of your ass, Mel.”
Excellent advice, Mel. Get a jump on that.
I crouched lower, contemplating whether I’d get myself killed if I tried to crawl around their car, when I heard something that made me stop cold.
“He’s such a player anyway. What do you expect when he hangs out with Mrs. Pace’s son? Jordan doesn’t even go to school here and he’s hooked up with half the student body. Did you see him? Who was that girl with him?”
Mrs. Pace’s son. Jordan was at the game, and I hadn’t even been there long enough to spot him because I was too busy squatting behind the wheel of someone’s Hummer. Not only that, he was at the game with a girl. My heart stopped midbeat.
“Who knows?” Mel answered. “If you’ve seen one bimbo with Jordan Pace, you’ve seen them all.”
My butt hit the ground with a despondent thump as the slamming of car doors muted the rest of their blathering.
I knew Jordan had been around before he and I got together. He was a flirt, and despite the way my whole body took flight when he turned his attention to me, I’d told myself not to fall into his trap. I had no intention of being a forgotten conquest. But then, after weeks of playful banter at our lockers, he’d pulled me aside at last year’s homecoming game and asked me to follow him. He’d led me by the hand to his car and opened up his trunk, where a box of heart pins sat open inside.
“My sister works at Prints Charming,” he’d said. I didn’t know it then, but she’d eventually hook me up with my job there. He poked the side of the box containing the pins. “They kept marking down the inventory on these, but they still had a ton. I thought you could make something nice out of them.” Then he hooked his fingers around mine and pulled me a little closer. His other hand moved to my waist. Our eyes locked. His voice was low when he spoke again. “I’m pretty sure you could make anything look good.”
He kissed me then, the most mind-melting kiss I’d experienced in my life. That was the night I went home and created the pin that captured every explosion of color I’d seen behind my eyes in the sheer rapture of that moment. The same pin that was probably still sitting at the bottom of his locker, forgotten and unappreciated.
Like the girl he’d stayed with longer than any other girl ever. The girl he’d still dumped once the “fun” was over. Me.
I had wanted to believe I’d changed him. I wanted to believe that he’d had the decency to not cheat on me. Both notions seemed all the more ridiculous now.
The sound of another car door slamming reminded me that I hadn’t plopped down on cold asphalt for the fun of it, and I forced myself back into action. Jordan sure as hell wasn’t losing sleep over me, and I had a job to do. A job I realized I’d probably botched big-time as soon as I peeked around the hood of the Hummer.
TJ stood beside his car, leaning through the window of the vehicle next to him. One of his hands moved from inside the car to his back pocket, like he was slipping something inside.
But had the person in the car given it to him? And if so, what was that about?
I remembered Nick recounting his run-in at the Snack Shack. Had the boy in the shadows mistaken him for TJ? Could Snack Shack Guy and Hood Boy be one and the same? And if so, what was he selling? Was it drugs? Or was TJ’s hand cold and my imagination was working overtime for nothing?
TJ’s fingers had barely left his pocket before he got into his own driver’s seat and started the engine. I jumped up and dashed to my car as the other vehicle peeled out of its parking space. I couldn’t see the driver, or even the color of the car, but I saw the Templeton decal on the back windshield as clear as day. Whether it was the same car that had parked in front of TJ’s house the other night, I couldn’t be sure, and I didn’t have time to worry about it. The car I needed to follow would get away if I didn’t move fast.
Somehow, even with my bumbling mitten hands, I managed to shove my key into the ignition and get onto the street before I lost sight of TJ. We wound through road after road, and when the surroundings became increasingly familiar, my breathing finally started to slow down. We were headed toward Maple Acres.
He was going home.
When TJ pulled into his driveway, I kept driving and looped back around, so I could park in the same spot that had served as my and Charlie’s observatory. TJ’s car still sat outside, as dark and lifeless as the starless sky above the barn. I turned off my car and waited.
And kept on waiting.
As the minutes stretched, I found myself rationalizing again. So what if TJ had called someone from the car after he dropped off Kendall? He’d said he felt sick—maybe he hadn’t felt well enough to drive and had been trying to get a ride. Or maybe his mother called, for crying out loud. Kendall always assumed the worst. As for the person he’d been talking to in the flesh, it very well could’ve been the same guy who’d visited the barn last time. If he was a Templeton student and a friend of TJ’s, it made perfect sense that they’d be talking. And the connection to Nick and the Snack Shack… Well, I was reaching, at best.
The crickets chirped, the minutes stretched, and I still had absolutely nothing worth reporting to Kendall.
I picked up my phone and typed in a text: Any chance TJ’s a druggie?
The phone started to ring, sounding extra loud in the stillness of the night.
“Kendall?”
The sound of muffled laughter met my ears.
“Marisa? Want to tell me why you’re using ‘TJ’ and ‘druggie’ in the same sentence?”
I sighed and slumped in my seat. “I don’t know. I saw him talking to someone in the parking lot after some guy tried to sell Nick drugs at the game tonight.”
This time she full-out belly laughed. “I’m sorry. I’m not laughing at you, but there’s no way Mr. My-Body-Is-a-Temple-Save-the-Freaking-Whales was buying drugs. And no offense, sometimes your brother is whacked. Someone probably tried to offer him a damn hot dog.”
I brushed off her comment about Nick. She was no fonder of him than he was of her. “Thought so. I’m not staying much longer but I’ll call you if anything happens.”
I drummed my fingers against the base of the window and started my car as my thoughts turned back to the other conversation I’d witnessed tonight, the one between that girl Mel and her friends. When the last window in TJ’s house went dark, I drove away with no evidence that Kendall had been played for a fool. Me, on the other hand…that was a different story.
8
As if the night hadn’t been degrading enough, I had to go back to Templeton to pick up everyone after the game. Apparently I’d become a spy service and a chauffeur service, all wrapped up in one big, loser package.
To make matters worse, Kendall spent the entire car ride making Nick and Charlie swear they wouldn’t tell a soul about the “work” she had me doing for her.
“It doesn’t matter that we’re at different schools. You never know who’s talking to who.” She motioned to Charlie and me to illustrate her point, then looked from Charlie to Nick and back again. “You guys swear you won’t say anything, right?” It had to be the eightieth time she’d asked since we’d started driving.
From the way Charlie’s fists were clenched in her lap, she was ready to seal her oath with a backhand.
Kendall unbuckled her seat belt and scooted forward, sticking her head between the driver’s and passenger’s seat. “Pull up there, Marisa. It’s the one at the end of the cul-de-sac with the Corvette in the driveway.” She slid back. “Anyway. You guys promise, right?”
“You know she’s not finding the hidden city of frigging Atlantis for you, right?” Charlie snapped.
Kendall shrank. “Just making sure we’re clear,” she replied through gritted teeth. She told me again that she’d make it up to me as she got out of the car, to which Charlie yelled, “Fudgie’s gift card!” as the door slammed, trapping a breeze of almond-and-anise perfume in its wake. Before I could pull out of the Keene’s circular driveway, Charlie looked at me in disbelief.
“Seriously, how were you ever friends with her?”
In the back seat, Nick fake choked and fanned his hand in front of his nose. “I think I’m high from her ten gallons of eau de spaz. No wonder her boyfriend won’t go near her. She’s hot but you need a damn gas mask.”
“Come on, guys,” I said. “Kendall’s a drama queen, but she’s not a bad person. She’s going through a tough time.”
“Be a dear and pull up to my mansion,” Charlie said in a high, mimicking voice. “Farther up, please, my quarters are in the east wing. And careful not to sideswipe Daddy’s ’Vette on your way out.”
“Her dad refurbishes cars as a hobby. Having fancy sports cars in the driveway is the norm for the Keenes.”
Kendall’s dad used to take us for rides around town in his latest projects, and we thought we were the coolest kids on wheels.
Charlie rolled her eyes. “One, that was not a refurb. Two, no one does that for a hobby without some serious cash to spare. And three, holy God complex living in a house like that! It had turrets, for Christ’s sake!”
My hands tightened around the wheel. “You know it’s her parents’ house, not hers, right?”
Charlie might’ve had her reasons for disliking Kendall, but she was being downright unfair. I was half tempted to ask if hating people because their parents had more money was something she’d learned in her fancy honors program. Because if Charlie’s parents had paid to send her to Templeton when mine couldn’t, did that mean I was supposed to despise her for it?
She ignored the question I’d asked out loud. “Damn, I should’ve told her to get you a gift card to Prints Charming. That’s way more you, but she probably wouldn’t be caught dead in there.” Prints Charming, in addition to being my summer job, was also my favorite craft and fabric store, one I’d dragged Charlie to on many an occasion. I usually made it up to her by letting her pick out beads and charms for her next Marisa specialty. She gave me a pointed look. “If she’s really your friend, she’ll figure out the best way to say thank you herself.”
Nick scoffed. “Fat chance, Char.
Don’t you know this is Planet Kendall? The rest of us are just taking up space.”
I started to open my mouth, ready to defend Kendall again, but it seemed pointless. Once upon a time, I’d felt the same way. And I still wasn’t entirely sure I’d been wrong.
• • •
My eyes felt like someone had switched out my contact solution for sulfuric acid when my alarm went off on Monday morning. I knew little red threads branched out from the brown of my irises like tiny tree roots without even looking in the mirror.
As I fumbled with my alarm clock, I shot a dirty look in the direction of my makeshift craft table in the opposite corner. The top was strewn with sketch pads, pencils, strands and boxes of beads in all sizes, bottles of colored glitter, and a handful of heart pins, most undecorated or half-decorated. Those pins used to represent how much Jordan cared, how well he knew me.
Now they’d become sorry-your-boyfriend-sucks consolation prizes. Ironic and appropriate at the same time.
I’d stayed up way too late the night before finishing Kendall’s pin. I must’ve felt guilty about the whole car-ride experience, and maybe I felt a little guilty that I hadn’t turned up anything on TJ too. Not that it was my fault or for lack of trying. And maybe it was that guilt that nagged me to talk to him, though it might’ve been me just itching to know what his deal was. He still hadn’t mentioned having a girlfriend, and I still didn’t understand his bitterness toward his old school. Nor did I know if I needed to be concerned with the decaled car that kept popping up wherever he was.
Not that I was being nosy. My curiosity was strictly professional, of course.
My interest in his gorgeous leather jewelry, however, was all my own. I’d been eyeing his pieces ever since I noticed the bracelet he had on the first time I’d semi-grilled him. He had it on again today, a thick band of deep, rich color, like burned wood, lined with silver studs. It gave me the perfect excuse to pull up a chair next to his computer.