by Nancy N. Rue
“Sorry,” he said.
“That’s it?” I said. “ ‘Sorry?’ I was almost decapitated by a liter of Mountain Dew, Matthew. Not to mention the fact that you could have totaled his Jeep.” I looked at the top of Patrick’s head. “What are we talking — twenty, thirty thousand dollars?”
Patrick stood up and handed me my bag. Papers reached from every pocket like they were begging me to spare them the shame.
“We’re good, man,” he said to Matthew. “We better move — we’re blocking traffic.”
Horns had started to blow from all directions. One kid had his head sticking out of his sunroof, yelling obscenities.
Matthew nodded. “You getting in, Tyler?”
“You’re kidding, right? No, I am not getting in.”
I slammed the door, and Deidre immediately lowered the window.
“You’re not coming?”
“You are? Do you have a death wish?”
About six more horns blared, and Patrick slapped his hand twice on the top of Matthew’s car.
“You’re good to go,” he said.
Matthew nodded again, gave me one last I-don’t-get-you look, and swerved around Patrick’s Jeep and out of the parking lot. Deidre was mouthing something out the back window and gesticulating at me. She could do that even better than she could sigh.
“Can I give you a ride someplace?”
I looked at Patrick, who was backing toward his Jeep amid the jeers from all the drivers who had to swerve to avoid smacking into it.
“No,” I said.
“You sure? You were headed somewhere.”
“Not anymore. But thanks.”
He grinned at me. “I’m a better driver than he is.”
“Who isn’t?” I said. “I’m good, really.”
“Okay, well —”
“You better move that thing before somebody succumbs to road rage.”
His grin widened. “Can you say that again?”
“Why?”
“Because I like the way you talk.”
“Sykes!” somebody yelled from a pickup truck. “What the —”
“Going,” Patrick said. “Later, Tyler.”
I stepped up onto the curb and watched him maneuver his car through the motor mob like a sensible human being. He’d actually been pretty decent about the whole thing. But then, he was alone. I had to wonder how he would have acted if he’d had somebody else from the Ruling Class with him.
No, I told myself, I didn’t have to wonder that. It wasn’t worth my time. I had better things to do. Such as …
Yeah. Such as what to do now that my ride had taken off and I basically didn’t have a plan for the afternoon. I could just walk home and get some studying done — except that Sunny was there, and I wasn’t up to trying to have a conversation with her. Now that she was emerging from her room more, her being at our house gave new meaning to the word “awkward.”
Awkward wasn’t what I was feeling at the moment. What I was feeling was lonely, and I couldn’t ever remember feeling quite that way in my whole life.
“Hey, Tyler.”
I did some kind of spasm thing and turned around to see my cousin Candace standing there. She had her head tilted, looking at me in a way that made me want to check my nose for a booger.
“Something wrong?” I said.
“No. I just don’t usually see you standin’ there not doin’ nothin’.”
There was so much wrong with that sentence I didn’t even know where to start, so I didn’t. Candace shrugged bony shoulders, straining at the knit of a red sweater that looked several sizes too small for her. But, then, so did the black houndstooth microskirt and the black leggings that hit her at her skinny midcalves. If I wasn’t mistaken, the outfit was meant to look like it belonged to somebody three sizes smaller. Candace saw herself as quite the fashionista. She had perfect skin the color of a latte, and there wasn’t an ounce of fat anywhere on her, so she actually could’ve been a model. Except for the hair. It never looked anything but completely out of control.
“So what are you doin’?” she said.
“Uh, nothing,” I said.
“No way.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m taking the bus to the mall.” Her face brightened. “You want to come with?”
I would rather be taken out and beaten, actually. But she suddenly looked so hopeful, and it came to me that she was probably as lonely as I was. It would make my father happy, and it never hurt to score points there …
Okay, Valleri would definitely not think that was “nice.” You can’t say I didn’t warn you.
“Sure,” I said.
“Awesome!” She looped her arm through mine — a move I didn’t anticipate, or I would have found a way to avoid it, and pulled me toward the street. “We have to hurry. The bus’ll be here in — now!”
Still hanging onto my arm, she broke into a long-legged run across the schoolyard, and I really had no choice but to keep up. We clamored on board just as the driver was closing the doors. Candace didn’t stop laughing for the next two miles.
I had to admit, I wished anything was that funny to me.
Of course, by the time we had done two stores in the mall in East Greenbush, I was wishing I’d opted for loneliness. Candace never stopped talking, and yet she never seemed to say anything. I didn’t have to say anything beyond, “Really?” and “No kidding?” But that didn’t make up for the twenty minutes I spent at the earring display in rue21 while she agonized over whether to go for the gaudy green rhinestones or the gaudy blue rhinestones.
“Get them both,” I said when I was ready to flush both her and the jewelry down the nearest john.
Her eyes widened to the size of Frisbees. “I can’t afford both. You know what?”
“What?” Pray tell.
“I could get the same thing cheaper at Claire’s!” “Why don’t you yell that a little louder?” I said between my teeth.
“Huh?”
“Never mind,” I said, and nudged her toward the door.
We made three more stops at stores she couldn’t afford before we at last reached Claire’s, at which point I was ready to climb back into a car with Matthew.
“I need to make a phone call,” I said. “I’ll wait for you out here.”
“I could be in there a while,” she said.
“No kidding?” I said.
She scampered into Claire’s like a squirrel in search of the perfect rhinestone nut. I sank onto a bench and thought how it was truly incredible that I was related to this person.
Just so I wouldn’t be lying to her, I called my dad’s cell phone and left a message to let him know where I was. I didn’t mention that this little shopping trip should fill my quota of extended family time for pretty much the rest of my natural life.
I then set myself to the task of repacking my bag, which still bore the mark of Patrick’s organizational skills. When I was done, it seemed to me that Candace should have made a decision by now. The Louisiana Purchase didn’t take this long. One thing was for sure: I was not going in there.
I did look from the bench, though, hoping to see her standing at the cash register. But she was still over in a corner, by the window, holding up two pairs of dripping-glitter earrings that I could tell were identical even from where I was sitting. It was all I could do not to yell, “Pick one already!”
Until I saw her drop both of them into her purse.
I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them again. I did not just see that — did I?
I did, because Candace looked over her shoulder and scooped a matching necklace into the bag too. Looking guiltier than anybody on death row, she stitched her way among the displays and headed for the opening out into the mall. I met her at the hair bows and put my lips next to her ear.
“Put them back, Candace,” I whispered.
“What?”
“The jewelry. Put it back.”
“I don’t —”
�
�Yes, you do.” I thrust my hand into her purse and hit cold metal with my fingers. Grasping frantically, I pulled out both sets of earrings and dropped them among the hair bows while I fished for the necklace with my other hand. Candace stood there like she’d fallen into a coma as I yanked it out and threw it into the bow bin with the earrings. She didn’t come to life until I dragged her out into the mall. It was, of course, her mouth that regained consciousness first.
“Are you gonna tell on me?” she basically shrieked at me. “’Cause I ain’t never done nothin’ like that before — I swear — and I’ll never do it again. Just don’t tell Mama.”
“I think ‘Mama’ is the least of your worries right now,” said a deep voice behind us. “Stop right there, ladies.”
Candace gasped and whirled around. I didn’t have to. I already knew it was probably the biggest security guard in the state of New York.
Chapter Five
I was wrong. He was the biggest mall cop in the northeastern United States. Surely this job was only temporary until he got his big break in the WWE.
That’s what I would have thought if my brain hadn’t been frozen in fear. As I looked up into his suspicious face, anxiety surged through every vein. The more his eyes twitched, the more certain I was that I would die within moments.
“Were you just in Claire’s?” he said. His voice had gone even deeper.
Candace shook her head, and I shook her, by the arm. “Yes, we were, Officer,” I said. Candace whimpered.
“Did you take anything without paying for it?”
“Did we take anything out of the store?” I said. “No, sir.”
His eyes narrowed at Candace, who was now weeping as if he’d slid bamboo shoots under her fingernails. “How about you?” he said. “Did you take anything out of Claire’s without paying for it?”
“No!” she cried. “I put it all back!”
I closed my eyes and wished for that death I’d feared moments before. I hoped Candace hadn’t considered spy as a possible career choice.
“You put it back,” he said. “Were you planning to remove items from the store?”
“I wanted to buy them, but —”
I stepped between them. “Like she said, Officer, everything went back. I think you’ll find the items in question in the hair bow bin.”
His lips also twitched. That happened a lot when adults heard me talk for the first time. They usually went from there to either mild amusement or the assumption that I was being a smart aleck. He chose a different route.
“All right — would you ladies mind if I looked in your bags?”
“Not at all,” I said. I looked hard at Candace. “You wouldn’t either, would you?”
Once again she whimpered like a wet cocker spaniel, and my life in a jail cell took shape in my mind. What had I not dug out of the bottom of her purse?
She finally shook her head and handed it over. The officer nodded for us to sit on the bench and then went through the thing, lip gloss by glitter pen by pack of chewing gum. She must have had every flavor known to mankind in there. When he pulled out a battered leather book and leafed through it, Candace flung herself into my arms and wailed. The cop looked at me, eyebrows raised.
“She’s a little bit of a drama queen,” I said.
He frowned at the book and stuck it back into her purse. By then I was perspiring from places I didn’t even know had sweat glands, but when he finally reached the bottom of the bag, he looked at Candace and gave it back to her.
“May I see yours?” he said to me.
On TV, people always said things like, “Not without a search warrant,” or “I want my lawyer present,” and I’d always told myself I would be that protective of my rights if I were ever a suspect in a crime. Yeah. I handed him that plaid bag so fast, even he looked surprised. Meanwhile, Candace was peeking at him between her fingers and muttering what sounded like some kind of prayer. She was going to need prayer when I got through with her.
Mine evidently proved to be more of a chore because I had everything in zippered bags and Velcroed pockets. He inspected every one of them like I was under suspicion of terrorism instead of shoplifting. With Candace now in the clear, I was relieved enough to want to say things like, “If I were going to steal something, it wouldn’t be from Claire’s. You couldn’t even pay me to wear that stuff. I mean, do I look like the zirconium chandelier earrings type? I barely wear a watch.”
Candace stopped crying by the time he’d done everything but test my wallet for gunshot residue.
“All right, ladies,” he said. “I can’t charge you with anything, but I suggest you stay out of Claire’s.”
“Oh, not to worry, Officer,” I said. “We’re leaving the mall.”
“Good plan,” he said, and then stood there like he was waiting for us to flee.
I curled my fingers around Candace’s now-wilted arm and pulled her off the bench and down the mall.
“I’m sorry!” she said over her shoulder.
“Candace,” I said in her ear. “Shut up.”
Miraculously she did, until we got outside to the bus stop. Then the mouth came open again.
“I was so scared! I thought he was gonna arrest me for sure, and my mama would kill me!”
“Arrest you for what?” I said. “I put the stuff back. The only reason he went through our bags like that was because you were acting so guilty.”
“I was scared about that book thing.”
“What book thing?”
Smacking the newest tears from her cheeks, she plunged into the purse and pulled out the leather book I’d last seen in Mall Officer’s hands. She plunked it onto the seat between us.
“What is this?” I said. “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know? It was in your purse.”
“I found it when we were on the bus and I took it.”
I could feel my eyes bulging. “What are you, Candace, a kleptomaniac? Do you just rip off anything you want?”
“No! It was there on the seat and I opened it and it said if I found it I should take it. So I did.”
“When did you do that? I was sitting right next to you the whole time.”
“When you were lookin’ out the window not listenin’ to a thing I was sayin’ like you always do.” She jutted out her negligible chin. “You always treat me like I’m nobody.”
“Oh — so was that me treating you like nobody back there in the mall when I saved you from being dragged off to jail? If I hadn’t caught you, that cop would have, with a handful of tacky jewelry in your purse. If I thought you were nobody, Candace, I wouldn’t have bothered.”
The chin quivered, and I rolled my eyes.
“Okay,” I said. “I don’t listen to everything you say. Nobody can. You never stop talking. My brain has to take a break now and then.”
“I know,” she said, bony shoulders shuddering. “And I ‘pre-ciate you doin’ that for me.”
I gave a sigh that would have put Deidre to shame and nodded at the approaching bus. “Come on, I’ll ride home with you.”
“Maybe we should put that book back when we get on,” she said.
“Give it to me,” I said. “I’ll do it.”
She picked it up off the seat and handed it to me with index finger and thumb, pinky extended like it was crawling with lice. I tucked it into my bag for the moment and ushered her onto the bus, where she slunk into a seat and hugged her purse to her chest.
“It’s over,” I said as I sat down beside her. “You learned a lesson, not gonna happen again, done. Move on.”
But she shook her head until the bun she’d fashioned somewhere in her hair sprung and went haywire on the top of her head.
“What?” I said. “Come on, dish. I promise I’ll listen to everything you say this time.”
“How am I gonna look like somebody at the prom with no jewelry?” she said.
I lifted her hand, which bore a ring on every finger. “What’s this?”
> “This is cheap stuff. I can’t be wearin’ this to no prom.”
I bit back the obvious reply, which was that jewelry didn’t get much cheaper than Claire’s. There was something truly pained in her voice.
“Quinn wants to take me —”
“Who’s Quinn?”
She turned her once-again-running-over eyes on me, and her voice went up into the stratosphere. “My boyfriend — from Schodack. That’s who I was talkin’ about all the way to the mall. See, you wasn’t listenin’.”
“I’m sorry, okay? Seriously. So — Quinn wants to take you.”
“Yeah. And he wants it to be special. He’s gonna get me a corsage and borrow his uncle’s car — he’s got him a nice Camaro.”
“Okay, then, it’ll be special.”
“’Til I walk in there with ol’ nasty jewelry and some ol’ tired dress, and all them rich girls start lookin’ at me and laughin’.”
A part of my heart caved in. “Are you talking about Alyssa Hampton and Hayley — that crowd?”
She nodded.
“Why do you even care what they think?”
“You do!” “No, I do not.”
Candace’s neck rose like E.T.’s. “Then why did you look like you was gonna start cryin’ when they put your name up for prom queen?”
I started to shake my head, but she nodded hers harder.
“Maybe nobody else seen it, but I know because I ain’t never seen you look like that before. You always look like you got everything handled — and you didn’t that time, now. You look like somebody done stabbed you with a knife.”
We stared at each other, probably longer than we’d ever shared a look over a Thanksgiving turkey or an Easter ham. I was the first to turn my eyes away.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll concede that the Ruling Class can make you feel like you shouldn’t even be breathing the same air as them.”
“You got that right.”
“But you can’t let them control you. I mean, seriously — have you ever tried to steal something from a store before?” “No!” she said, voice shrill again.
“And you wouldn’t have this time if you weren’t trying to keep up with them.”
“I know. Maybe I just won’t go. I’ll just tell Quinn to forget it.” “Then they really do win,” I said. “So what am I supposed to do?”