Broken Trust

by Jill Williamson

  “Your OTMs will run until the end of July,” Mr. S said. “And every other Saturday in June and July we’ll continue our OST training courses. I’ve given you a list of the subjects. The trip to Alaska is the first two weeks of August. By the time we’re there, you will have all the training you need to survive alone in the forest. And you will. This is meant to be the culmination of everything you’ve learned all year. Consider it an inoculation against adversity.”

  Samantha raised her hand. “What about us new recruits?” she asked. “We didn’t get to learn as much as the others.”

  “You’ll learn enough to survive,” Mr. S said.

  “Are you just going to dump us in the woods with nothing?” Nick asked.

  “Read the briefing, Agent Muren.”

  I was halfway done with mine. We’d be taken into the woods separately, inside a private compound. Then we had to find our other group members and navigate our way back to camp as a team. No tents, no sleeping bags, no food … No watches, radios, cellphones. Only the clothes on our backs.

  Sweet. Sounded like one of those reality shows on the Discovery Channel.

  I leafed through the other packet. It was four pages long, one for each OST Saturday: two in June and two in July. We still had to learn Cordage, Edible Plants, Flintnapping, and Friction Fire. Learning to start fires should be fun, at least.

  Mr. S walked down the aisle and stopped between Gabe’s and my desks. “Agent Thomas missed out on a lot of training these past few months,” he said to Gabe, “so it’s up to you and your team to get her ready for Alaska.”

  “Got it,” Gabe said.

  My heart fluttered. “Grace is really coming back?” I asked, trying to sound like I could care less.

  From the edge of my vision, I saw Lukas turn to face me—could hear him thinking, You loooovvve her.

  “Yes,” Mr. S said. “Her mother asked that she be excused from League classes today so that she can get her school schedule in order, but she’ll be here tomorrow. She has a lot to make up before finals. Part of her re-training will fall on you, Agent Garmond, since you’ll be team leader this fall.”

  I nodded, my mind sifting through all the things she had missed. I was glad she’d been gone for the Big Bear trip. My body was a temple, but if a girl was going to see me in my underwear, I’d rather it not be in a snow cave.

  ****

  In room 401 after school, Mr. S let us cram for the final exam next week. The hour crawled by. When he finally released us and we waddled out of the room like a bunch of ducks, a gorgeous girl was waiting outside the classroom. I slowed down so I could stare at her face and legs and, well, everything. She had dark skin; thick, long black hair; and a tight dress that left little to my overactive imagination. But that wasn’t what caught my attention—seriously. I had seen this girl before. In a movie. Jolt II, to be precise.

  I was about to meet the pregnant actress from yesterday’s vision.

  Only she didn’t look pregnant. At all.

  Before I could figure out what to say, Nick pushed past, knocking into my shoulder.

  The actress smiled wide, reached out to him. “Hey, baby.”

  Nick grabbed her, twirled her around, and they started sucking face.

  Dang.

  As I was staring way too hard, I caught sight of faint Jolt grid marks up her right arm and forgot to breathe.

  Were those for real? Or was she just fangirling, like those Doctor Whovians with their pen-and-ink hash marks?

  Wait. Forget that. Nick’s girlfriend was pregnant!

  Or soon would be.

  My whole face burned at that thought. Mother pus bucket, what was I supposed to do now?

  The actress broke away from Nick and waved at Isabel, who had just exit the classroom. “Hi, Bella, girl,” she sang.

  Isabel smirked, real unfriendly like, said, “Hola, Kimatra,” and kept on going.

  That name—Kimatra—sent another memory rushing over me. Something Prière had once said.

  Nick and Kimatra relocated their make-out session to a nearby tree. I stared until Arianna exited the classroom and gave me a dirty look that brought me back to reality.

  I took off after Isabel, walking as fast as my crippled self could go. I caught up with her in the parking lot. “Hey, you know that girl Kimatra, right? Can I ask you some questions about her?”

  Isabel’s sculpted eyebrows wrinkled up at me. “I gotta get to the salon, Es-pensor,” she said. “Call me? Or you can meet me there?”

  “Sure.” I glanced back at Nick and his girl toy, who were now walking hand in hand down the sidewalk toward the main entrance to the school. “I’ll swing by.”

  ****

  I gave Drew and El McDub a ride to Drew’s house, then drove the banana beast to Peluqueria Rodriguez, the salon run by Lukas and Isabel’s mother.

  I parked on the street in front of a DVD rental store, paused to admire a Jolt IV poster of Brittany Holmes, and headed next door to the salon. My knee still felt tight, and it took concentrated effort not to walk with a limp.

  Inside Peluqueria Rodriguez Lukas was standing at one of the chairs, cutting some woman’s hair. As he threaded his fingers in her thick brown curls and snipped like Edward Scissorhands, I couldn’t help but feel jealous—though I also couldn’t fathom how to do such a thing without balding the chick. I swear, Lukas would make a perfect spy. He excelled at everything. He didn’t even speak with a Spanish accent like the rest of his family—unless he was fighting with his sister, or course.

  “Es-pensor, come sit.”

  I turned my focus toward the sound of Isabel’s voice and spied her behind one of the three manicure tables in the corner. She motioned to the chair across the table from her. I sat down, and she patted the tabletop.

  “Put your hands up here.”

  I kept my hands where they were. “You’re not painting my fingernails.” Girls, anyway.

  “I not gonna paint your nails, tough guy. Male manicures don’t have polish.”

  Male manicures sounded made up. “I don’t want a manicure. I just want to ask you some questions about Nick’s girlfriend.”

  “I got to be working. If Mamma comes in and sees me sitting around, I get in trouble.”

  “Fine.” I banged one hand on the table so hard the little jars of paint rattled.

  Isabel rolled her eyes. She moved a silver dish of water onto the table, took my hand in both of hers, and put it in the water, which was warm.

  I lifted my hand up out of the bowl and watched the water drip off my fingers. “What is this?”

  She pushed my hand back into the dish. “A soak. It softens your cuticles so I can work on them.”

  “My cuticles are fine.”

  She pumped out a glob of green goo from a standing bottle and rubbed it over my hand until it made a thick lather. It was gritty, like lotion filled with sand. I felt like a girl. Yet at the same time, the hand massage was kind of nice.

  “So, you want to talk about Kimatra Patel?” Isabel frowned and worked the lather between my fingers.

  I committed that name to memory. “She’s the one who came looking for me after Moscow, isn’t she?” Prière had told me about it, though I’d never actually seen the girl since I’d been at basketball practice every time she’d come by.

  “That was over a year ago.” Isabel attacked my fingernails with a tiny pink brush. It tickled and I jerked my arm.

  “I’d forgotten all about her until you said her name. Then I remembered what Prière told me in that briefing last year. That Nick was ‘dating a girl meant for me.’ ” Right after I found out Katie Lindley had stolen my iPhone.

  Isabel dunked my hand back into the water and washed off the gritty soap. “Stay away from her, Es-pensor. She is trouble.”

  I’d figured out that much on my own. “I just want to know why Kimatra was asking for me back then.” If she’d originally come looking for me, why’d she give up? And why she was hanging around Nick now?

  T
he fact that Prière knew Kimatra Patel was shady and I’d connected her to MacCormack and the Jolt movies strengthened my case. She was definitely up to something.

  Isabel lifted my hand onto a folded towel, like I was incapable of moving it myself. She put my other hand into the bowl of water, then started drying my first with the towel. “I don’t know what she wanted with you. I was dating Neek then. For my assignment. I got mad when Neek flirted with Kimatra. He told me he was only trying to make you jealous, but you were dating Katie Lindley and didn’t even know Kimatra was alive.”

  “I was never dating Katie,” I said. “We just went to Homecoming together.”

  Isabel picked up a pointed stick and started pushing at my cuticles. I moved my hand in surprise. “But then Kimatra went away.”

  “Until today.”

  She started trimming my nails. “No. Until prom. Neek took her to prom.”

  “He did?” I had skipped prom. It was no place for a dateless cripple.

  “Last month, Prière asked if I would try getting close to Neek again,” Isabel said, shaking her head. “I told him no. Missions of the heart are too difficult for me.”

  Missions of the heart? With Neek? Ew.

  “Plus Gabriel wouldn’t understand.” She meant Gabe. She had Gabe had been a couple for almost a year now.

  She started filing my nails with a fat file, all in one direction, brushing the dust away with her thumb, then filing some more. I watched her work, wondering why I had never been assigned a mission of the heart, but considering my blunder with Keiko and Kozue in Okinawa, Prière and Mr. S had likely banned me from such things.

  Probably a good idea.

  “Es-pensor…” Isabel squeezed my hand, and I looked up into her dark eyes. “Do not be jealous of Neek. You don’t want a girl who is only using you.”

  “I wouldn’t mind. Did you see her legs?”

  She yanked my hand close to her. “Don’t be estúpido. You’re a better man than Neek.”

  True. But that wasn’t saying much.

  “Besides, Grace is back and I think she likes you.”

  I stared at Isabel, thoughts completely derailed. “She said that?”

  “No.” She squirted another glob of green goo from the standing bottle and started rubbing my other hand. “Just got a feeling. But if you go chasing around Kimatra Patel, Grace isn’t going to like that one bit.”

  ****

  I went straight from the salon to C Camp, the Mission League’s private gym in Pilot Point where I had learned League Combat Training. No combat training for me these days, though. I came here daily to work with Mario Garza, the Mark Sanchez look-alike who was the physical therapist helping me rehabilitate my knee.

  “One of the key things we need to work on is your balance,” Mario said. “As we talked about before, when the ACL is torn, the balance fibers leave with it. So now we need to retrain you on how to balance.”

  So I was a toddler again? Great. I had wanted to do my recovery in a day, but I’d learned over and over that that was not how things worked. Physical therapy done right was te-di-ous.

  “The first thing we’re going to work on today is for you to balance on one leg. Keep your knee lined up over your toes. Control it. Stay up tall, stomach strong. Then you’re going to kick the other leg back and forth like you’re kicking a soccer ball.”

  Once I saw how hard it was to do the thing right, my pride crumbled. Still, I gave it my all. After that I had to stand on one leg and pump my arms, like I was running. Then I stood on a mini trampoline to practice jumping.

  Ah, physical therapy. Good times.

  But PT gave me a lot of time to think. And my thoughts bounced between Kimatra and Nick, and me and Grace. And by the time I headed home, I had decided to do two things: 1) Investigate Kimatra in a completely platonic way to find out what she was involved in and what that had to do with Nick; 2) Try and get Grace to go out with me.

  ****

  That night I texted Grace and offered to give her a ride to school the next morning.

  This had seemed like a good idea at the time, but it was a gutsy move for me. Some girls made these types of things easy by texting first—by texting all the time. But Grace hadn’t texted me in ages. And when she didn’t answer, I lay on my bed, holding my phone, stomach churning with worry that I’d made a huge mistake. She probably wasn’t texting back because she didn’t want to hurt my feelings. Or maybe she was ticked that I had asked her at all, and she didn’t want to be friends with me anymore. Grace was moody like that sometimes. It was hard to know how she might react.

  I shouldn’t have texted her.

  Why was I so stupid? I mean, she’d only been back two days, and already I was texting? She’d think I was stalking her again. And this time I didn’t have prophecies as an excuse. I hadn’t had a prophecy about Grace in months.

  I just wanted to be around her.

  I was pathetic.

  When my phone finally dinged, I couldn’t look. It was probably Gabe, wanting to study for finals. Or Lukas asking something about the car.

  I was such a coward! I had to look.

  I picked up my phone and peeked at it with one eye opened.

  Grace! My heart flipped as I read her reply.

  kk shur what time?

  I fist pumped the air and texted back: 5:45

  gota nu car?

  I laughed out loud. Man, this girl could not spell.

  It runs, I texted back.

  No reply. Still. I was going to pick up Grace Thomas in the banana beast tomorrow morning and drive her to school. We would be alone together in my car.

  That night I slept like it was Christmas Eve. Visions of sugarplums and all that.

  REPORT NUMBER: 3

  REPORT TITLE: I Get a Pretend-O-Job

  SUBMITTED BY: Agent-in-Training Spencer Garmond

  LOCATION: Grace’s Residence, 780 S. Pine Street, #107, Pilot Point, California, USA

  DATE AND TIME: Tuesday, May 22, 5:47 a.m.

  The Meadowside Apartments—affectionately known as Ghettoside by the under eighteen crowd—consisted of eight one-story fourplexes, split between the northern corners of S. 8th Street and Pine Street. Grace’s family lived in number 107, which was on the west side of Pine. The next morning, I parked along the sidewalk and texted her.

  I’m here.

  She answered: not redy yet. come 2 back windo with purpel kurtans

  I grinned at her atrocious spelling. Are purpel kurtans some kind of mythical beast? Or did you mean: purple curtains? ;-)

  To which she replied: :-D

  All righty then. I got out and crossed the grassy lawn. It was wet and made the cuffs of my school uniform pants heavy.

  I didn’t see any purple curtains in the front of the apartment, so I walked around the side. There were three windows, and only the farthest one back had the lights on inside, making the window coverings glow bright purple. Bingo.

  The curtains were tied back with pink plastic Hawaiian leis. I glanced toward the street, feeling like a perv for creeping around Grace’s place like this. I saw no one, so I leaned toward the glass and glanced inside.

  Grace was brushing her hair. Her long, curly, golden hair that glowed just a little bit in the overhead light. She was wearing a white tank top and jeans and looked like a model. She tossed the brush on her bed, snapping me out of my daze. I tapped my knuckles on the glass.

  She jumped and looked at me. And when she smiled… That was what I wanted: for Grace to smile every minute of every day for the rest of her life with me there to witness it.

  She got up and came toward me, slid the window to one side. “Hey, Stalker.”

  Her familiar nickname for me sent a little thrill through my gut. “Hey.”

  “Help me. Which shirt should I wear?” She walked to her bed, and I couldn’t help but admire the fact that she could wear jeans to her school while everyone at Pilot Point Christian had to wear ugly pew-niforms.

  She picked up two ha
ngers and tucked one under her chin. The shirt was deep purple with long sleeves and a see-through lacy band across the neckline.

  I nodded. “That one.”

  “Wait and see the other one first.” She traded the shirts, holding the second hanger up so I could see. This shirt was printed pink and white flowers on a purple background. Thin and flowy fabric that cinched around the waist and laced up the front like some kind of medieval dress.

  “That one’s better.”

  She laughed, tossed the solid shirt onto her bed, then proceeded to pull the printed one on over her tank top.

  I suddenly felt very hot, so I made myself look elsewhere. Her room had been painted purple. She even had a collection of pillows on her bed in various shades of purple. One had a white insert on the front that showed a picture of One Direction.

  Please, no. “Is that what I think it is?” I asked, pointing.

  She picked it up and turned back to me, hugging it across the top and bottom.

  I started to snicker, let it increase to a cackle, and pretended to laugh so hard I sank below the window, holding onto the frame with one hand.

  When her fingers touched mine I popped back to my feet.

  She was standing at the window, looking at my hand. “Nice manicure.”

  I tucked my hands behind my back. “Isabel told you?” Girls, I swear.

  She reached out. “Let me see.”

  “It was only to get information.” I gave her my hand and she took it. I tried to act like her touch didn’t light every nerve in my body on fire.

  “Looks good, Spencer.” She dropped my hand.

  I held up my other. “Want to see this one too?”

  She took hold, and I waited, loving the way she ran her thumb over my fingertips. She finally dropped my hand. “Don’t make fun of 1D. Harry is amazing.”

  “Harry Potter?”