I’m smiling all the way to my bedroom. What a lucky break. Lana’s so sure she’s busted me trying to hide the flu that it will never occur to her that I’m trying to cover up something entirely different. So I’ll be on lockdown all weekend, but that’s better than for the rest of my life, and that’s exactly what would happen if Lana finds out about the bodega robbery and how I didn’t help the cops or the store owner.
Not long after Lana left for work this morning to continue last night’s stakeout, Bethanie called and asked if I wanted to hang. I had spent the last twenty-four hours waiting for the phone to ring, expecting some friend of Lana’s from Robbery Division saying they had surveillance tape of her kid witnessing a holdup. I hadn’t expected a call from Bethanie asking if I wanted to go to the mall, like what happened yesterday never did. We hadn’t said a word while she drove me home right after the robbery, nothing except “See ya” when she pulled up in front of my house.
Now I felt guilty just talking to her, but I’d also been in bed pretending to be sick for the last twenty-four hours and really needed a diversion. Tasha started training for her new job at the movie theater this morning, so I can’t call her. MJ and I still aren’t on regular speaking terms. So I told Bethanie to come by and pick me up. When she gets here, I’ll tell her Lana has me on lockdown with a fake cold and I can’t go shopping. If I’d told her that on the phone, she probably wouldn’t have come across town just to visit. Maybe it’s the guilt of not staying around for the police report, or it could be having had a gun pulled on me by a meth addict, but yesterday has messed with my head. I really need to talk to someone about what happened and she’s the only person who can know.
When I open my door, Bethanie doesn’t even greet me, just asks if I have her phone.
“Why would I have your phone? And why did you keep your car running? That’s not the best idea. You aren’t in Cherry Creek anymore.”
“It’s okay, I’m not coming in. I had my phone when I went into the store to get your stupid free tamales. I went to use it after I dropped you at home yesterday and it was gone.”
“It probably fell out of your bag with all your other stuff when Preppie tackled you to the floor.”
“He didn’t tackle me—he saved me. Anyway, that’s what I figured so I checked the bodega.”
“You went back there? We got out clean and now—”
“I’m not stupid, and I definitely don’t need the police in my life. I waited an hour to make sure the cops were gone, then sent someone else inside to look.”
“Who?”
“That’s not important—my missing phone is. The person I sent checked on the floor under the shelves and couldn’t find it anywhere, and the guy at the desk didn’t have it.”
“Well, neither do I.”
She looks at me like she’s not sure she believes me, then says, “Well, the guy at the desk wasn’t the same one who was there at the holdup. Maybe the first cashier has it. I’ll check the bodega again.”
“How do you know it wasn’t the same guy if you sent someone else?”
“I was there, I just didn’t go inside. I peeked in the door.”
“That might have been dangerous if the first guy had been there and recognized you. He could have called the cops and told them a witness had come back. He was probably at the police station giving a report, which is what we should have done.”
“Like you’re never going back in there for the free tamales.”
“You went back less than two hours after the robbery. By next Friday, that guy will have forgotten what I look like. Besides, he and your phone may never be seen again if he has it.”
“Why do you say that?” she asks, sounding a little frantic.
“I go to the bodega practically every day and I’ve never seen him before. If I get robbed my first day on the job, I’m never coming back.”
“I hope you’re wrong.”
“What’s your obsession with that phone, anyway? You freaked out when Ms. Reeves took it from you in class a few weeks ago. Now this. You may be scamming Langdon Prep, but I know you can just go buy another one. For that matter, you can probably afford to buy AT and T.”
“A phone is like an extension of yourself.”
“A phone is like a communication device.”
“Look, if you don’t have it ...” she says, turning to leave.
“Wait. I thought you wanted to hang out. You could have asked if I had your phone when you called. Maybe you really just want to talk about what happened yesterday.”
“No, I wanted to see your face when I asked about it. I know how you like to snoop. I wanted to know if you had it and whether you’d looked through it.”
It’s the first chilly day of fall, so I close the door behind me to keep the heat in and walk past her to sit on the top step of the porch. It’s clear she isn’t coming in, so maybe I can get her to talk out here while we inhale the fumes from her idling car.
“Puffing is illegal, you know.”
“What?”
“Letting your car run like that. Police will ticket you.”
“How do you know this stuff? Besides, in this neighborhood, I’m sure they have more serious crime to fight than me and my car. So you really don’t have my phone?”
“I told you I didn’t. You seriously thought you’d be able to tell if I was lying? There are people a whole lot more skilled than you who have tried and can’t figure out when I’m lying.” Mostly Lana, but there have been a few others. “What’s so important in your phone that you think I’d not only snoop but then lie about snooping?”
“Nothing special. Same as what’s in yours.”
“Somehow I doubt it. I’ve just got a few numbers—hardly an extension of myself. Let me guess—the secret formula for the cure to acne? Compromising photos?”
She looks at me like I’m stupid until I mention the photos. Then she turns slightly red.
“Oh no, Bethanie. Please tell me you haven’t been sexting photos of yourself. But if so, who to?”
“Don’t be an idiot.”
“Well, considering your concern about people snooping, you should put a password on it.”
“I did. Okay, I will if I ever get it back.”
“Since you’re here, you want to watch a movie or something? My mother thinks I’m sick because I came home smelling like puke.”
“Ew. Gross.”
“Yeah, well, that’s how I react to possibly getting shot. You know, like what happened yesterday?”
“We were nowhere close to getting shot, drama queen. Haven’t you ever been in a holdup before?”
She says it like a normal person would say, “Haven’t you ever been to Disneyland before?”
“Wow, you must have lived hard before that lottery ticket turned you into Paris Hilton.”
“Stop snooping, Chanti.”
“If you won’t have a sharing moment, at least keep me company for a minute. Lana won’t let me leave the house.”
“Who?”
“My mom.”
“You call her by her name? My mother would never play that.”
“She was a little squeamish about being sixteen and having a kid, so when I started talking she taught me to call her Lana, thinking it almost sounds like mama,” I explain. That’s one answer. The other is that it’s better if as few people as possible know Lana has a kid, considering her clientele are big on revenge.
“Well, just leave and get back before she does. How’s she gonna know?”
“She has her ways.”
If only my friends knew how good they have it with regular parents who don’t surveil and interrogate liars for a living.
“I need to go find my phone,” she says, even though she’s still sitting next to me on the step. “Let me ask you—what did you think of that guy at the bodega? Hot, right?”
“So the only thing you want to discuss about what happened yesterday is the hot guy?”
“I told you we were never in any real
danger. That meth-head just wanted a few dollars for his next fix.”
“Junkies are the most dangerous kind of thief. Besides, how would you know about that dude needing a fix, Cherry Creek girl?”
“You know by now I wasn’t always Cherry Creek, so stop trying to game me.”
Is she finally going to tell me what her deal is? I know she’s rich, and that she got all her money from the lottery even though her parents are trying to pretend they got it from being in the oil business. I know she wants Langdon Prep to think she’s poor until she can figure out a way to tell them she scammed her way into the school. I know she hasn’t been in Colorado as long as she claims because her accent has plenty of South in it no matter how she tries to hide it. I found out all of this on my own. But what I haven’t figured out is what she’s hiding behind all those lies.
“Sure, if you stop gaming me. I know you weren’t raised here. Where are you really from? Texas, maybe?” I always figured Texas since she came up with that family oil story. We have a few drills around Colorado, but nothing like Texas.
“See, that’s what I mean about you always trying to get in somebody’s business.”
We’re quiet for a second, watching two little boys who have come up to admire her car.
“What about that guy, though?” she asks.
“He was cute.” I don’t add that he was the one who almost got us killed, trying to act all heroic just when the perp was about to leave the store.
“How about the way he protected me when the meth-head pointed his gun my way?”
“At us. He pointed it at us, but your hero only tried to save you.”
“I know. Isn’t that romantic? Too bad I never got his name.”
Only Bethanie could recall a near-death experience and regret not getting some guy’s number.
“Don’t you feel bad about not sticking around to talk to the police?”
“Please. The cops never did anything for me.”
“Not so much to help them, but to help the owner, and all the other owners that dude might rob next.”
“Grow up, Chanti. We’re all in this for ourselves. The bodega owner knows that. I know it. You’re the only one who seems not to understand how it works. Living around here, I’d think you’d know. Those kids probably do,” she says, pointing to the boys still checking out her car.
She’s right about that. If they were old enough to see over the steering wheel and reach the gas pedal, I’d be concerned they were doing more than admiring the car. Even then, you never know if they might be casing it for someone old enough to drive. Bethanie must realize the same thing.
“I gotta bounce,” she says as she gets up from the step. “See you in school Monday.”
“Maybe. If I’m over my illness.”
“I thought you weren’t really sick.”
“I wasn’t, until now.”
It was true. As I watch Bethanie drive away, I actually do feel sick—about running from the scene of a crime, about lying to Lana, but mostly about the uneasy feeling I get whenever Bethanie and I spend more than a few minutes together.
Chapter 3
Monday morning, Lana deems me well enough to go to school, which I expected because I was never really sick. I didn’t miss Langdon, but I definitely missed Marco Ruiz. He’s the one who gave me the kiss that I’m sure I could subsist on forever ... well, along with water and Reese’s cups. But I wouldn’t know because we haven’t kissed again since that first time. It happened in the days right after the burglary ringleader almost killed me. He almost killed Marco, too, so his mother has forbidden him to date me, even before we’ve gone out on a single real date. Something about how I’m a menace to her son’s well-being and leading him down a dangerous path. Blah, blah. She even called my mom and got her in on the plan. Lana says I’m a catch for any guy, but I have to respect his parents’ wishes. It doesn’t matter that I saved Marco from jail and worse. I suppose Mommie Dearest could say he wouldn’t have been in trouble if he didn’t know me, and she’d have a point.
The thing I won’t admit to anyone is that I’m kind of glad Mrs. Ruiz doesn’t like me and wants to keep me away from Marco. Before we kissed, I must have imagined it happening a thousand times, and when we finally did, it was pretty much perfect. So I’m not averse to it happening again. The problem is what comes after. If Marco and I go where Mrs. Ruiz doesn’t want us to go, he’d be my first real boyfriend. Outside of a couple of bad dates, I’m a complete amateur when it comes to boys. Being younger than all the kids in my class does nothing for my confidence, either. Marco’s seventeen and I’m not even sixteen yet. I bet his old girlfriend isn’t the complete noob I am. What if he compares me to her? Unless he needs her to solve a case for him, I’m sure I’d lose that contest.
Fortunately, Marco’s the kind of guy who respects his parents and their wishes. I know—I picked the one guy on the planet who actually stays away from what his parents forbid instead of running to it like smelly freshmen boys run to a bottle of Axe body spray after PE. But he’s still a guy, and even if he won’t officially date me, he tries everything else he can in the limited time and space we have together. He’s thinking I’ll eventually win his mother over and we can pick up where we left off a few weeks ago with that kiss in the library. I’m hoping by the time his mother changes her mind, I’ll have a clue what pick up where we left off actually means.
For now, I have an excuse not to get too close. Marco and I used to work together at a moving company, but we both quit that job since we didn’t get along so well with the owner’s kids. Mostly we just text and talk on the phone, which he figures is not the same as dating me, and his parents specifically said no dating. They didn’t say anything about no communicating. I give good talk and text because they’re done at a distance and perfectly safe. But what to do when he wants more? Worse—I imagine all this almost-dating is creating anticipation on his part that I absolutely won’t be able to manage when and if Mrs. Ruiz decides she loves me.
I even catch a break at school. Marco and I have a couple of classes together and share one-minute conversations in the hall between bells, but nothing more than that because the hallways have eyes—namely those of Headmistress Smythe. She’s had it in for me since I started Langdon, so she has no problem honoring Mrs. Ruiz’s request to keep an eye on Marco and me to make sure we don’t get together. I figure it’s only a matter of time before I somehow win Mrs. Ruiz’s heart, get over my first-boyfriend jitters, improve my woefully inadequate skills of seduction, and take Marco down that path of sin his mother is so worried about. If only she knew I’d need a GPS, a map, and a tour guide just to find the path, much less navigate it.
“How was your weekend?” I ask when I find him at his locker.
“All right. Better when I was thinking of you.”
Oh man, does he know what to say. I wish I did.
“Any change on the home front?” I ask, keeping up the charade that I’m as eager as he is to move beyond hallway dates.
“Not yet. But she’ll come around. Just give it some time, okay?”
He puts his hands around my waist and looks at me that way he does and I forget about everyone around us and even how nervous the whole boyfriend thing makes me ... until I hear my name—my full name—being yelled at me from across the hall, in a completely fake British accent.
“Chantal Evans! In my office, now.”
Where did she come from? I swear, I need to put a bell on her.
“Headmistress Smythe, wait—I’m as much to blame,” Marco says in my defense.
“Oh, I doubt that. Get to class, Mr. Ruiz. Miss Evans, come with me.”
I follow her, wondering what story I might give to keep her from calling Lana. Oh yeah. She won’t be calling Lana because Smythe thinks my mother is in jail doing time. For what, I don’t know. All I’ve been able to figure out is that Lana was able to get me accepted into Langdon by calling in a favor, and the favor has something to do with Smythe. Which means Smyth
e had something to do with a crime that occurred while Lana was undercover as whatever criminal Smythe thinks she is. Of course Lana won’t give me the dirt, not that I haven’t tried to get it out of her. Having that kind of information could make my life at Langdon so much easier.
“Chantal, can’t you stay out of trouble for more than a week?”
“Headmistress Smythe, with all due respect, I really haven’t been in trouble for at least two weeks. Besides, I solved those school thefts and got the real thieves arrested, didn’t I?”
“Well, yes.”
I can tell that admission was as painful as if I’d asked her to admit that she really isn’t British, her hair really isn’t auburn, and that she really did something illegal enough to make her owe Lana a favor.
I try to reason with her. “This thing going on between Marco and his parents—it’s just a classic misunderstanding, like the Capulets and the Montagues in Romeo and Juliet, except one-sided.”
“And we know how that turns out, don’t we?” she says.
I could stand there and argue with old Smythe because I like a good debate, but I hate confrontation. There’s a fine line between the two and I don’t plan on crossing it. At least now I get to see Marco a little bit. If I push too hard, his mom might send him back to North High and far away from me.
“You’re right, Mrs. Smythe. Marco and I will do what his parents want.”
“I’m glad you’re being sensible.”
That’s me, sensible. That’s all I ever am, but it still doesn’t seem to keep me out of trouble.
After school, Bethanie is hanging out with me near the gym entrance where I hope to catch Marco on his way to football practice. I got a message from him last period that maybe we could hang out for a few minutes between last bell and the start of practice. When I tried to text back, the teacher caught me and took my phone until the end of class. So I couldn’t answer until a few minutes ago, but I haven’t heard back from him. I feel a little like a groupie, but I don’t care. As pathetic as my love situation is, Bethanie’s is worse, which is why she’s willing to wait with me until he shows, if he shows. I think she’s living vicariously through the barely there relationship Marco and I have. Or through Romeo and Juliet, which we’re currently reading in English Lit. Now that story is tragic, and makes pathetic look not so bad.
Creeping with the Enemy Page 2