The Tell-Tale Con

by Aimee Gilchrist

  “Well, that sounds…fun.” Parents everywhere were screwed up.

  “Yeah.”

  Despite the street noise, the silence hung heavy between us. I retreated back to politeness. “Well, anyway, have you taken any of the Percocet the doctor gave you?”

  There was another long pause, a hitch of breath, the slight turning of his head away from me. He was thinking of lying. But, for whatever reason, he didn’t. “No.”

  “Why not? Seriously. Go take it and go to bed.”

  “I…lost it.”

  “You lost it? It was, like, three hours ago. How could you lose it?”

  His jaw clamped down, his mouth pulling so tight he looked like Mr. Wong, about to go on a tirade. “I just lost it.”

  “I bet you could call the doctor, and they’d be able to give you some more.”

  “No!”

  Okay. Maybe he’d “lost” the prescription pain meds the same way a girl with an abusive husband “accidentally” runs into a door. Harrison didn’t want anymore so that the person abusing them wouldn’t have access to them anymore. I was putting my money on Van Poe, but who knew, really. People from all walks of life ended up addicted to pain killers.

  Sometimes I had to think that my life wasn’t so bad after all. “You should at least take some ibuprofen.”

  “I already did.”

  His voice was so quiet I could barely hear him. He was in pain. It was none of my business, and even if I was inclined to give sympathy, which I wasn’t, I wouldn’t have a clue how to go about it. Not sincerely anyway. I knew how to fake any emotion, but Harrison was hurting. He didn’t need my fake sympathy.

  “I hope you feel better soon,” I whispered. I hiked up my bags and headed across the street before either of us could say anything else that would only make it worse.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Rules of the scam #41

  Give people what they want. Unless you have to pay for it…

  At seven in the morning, I trudged across the street to The Library to drive Harrison to school. I had already decided that I wasn’t going to mention our conversation from the night before. Even if I wanted to, I had no clue what to say. Sorry your dad is an addict and he stole your pills? Yeah, probably not.

  Harrison was a lump huddled in the passenger seat of his car, back to wearing his familiar glasses and ugly T-shirts, the sharp looking guy of yesterday gone. I rapped hard on the driver’s side window before sliding in. He glanced up at me and nodded once. After I was securely fastened behind the wheel, I started the car and pulled in a deep breath.

  “You should know I’m not a good driver.”

  Harrison looked at me oddly for a second and then laughed. “I guess I should have asked that before requesting you drive me.”

  “I could have mentioned it before. I’ve never had a car. I ride the bus.”

  “That’s very environmentally conscious.”

  “Sure.” It was also very pocketbook conscious, but I was certain Harrison didn’t need a primer in the life of the poor.

  The drive between our houses and Metro High was short, so we were there in three minutes, even with me driving like a granny. As we pulled into the parking lot Harrison told me, “You know, my dad made a movie here once. Last year, actually.”

  “Really?” I maneuvered into a spot, barely paying attention to him.

  “Yeah. He had a real issue with that shop right there.” He pointed across the parking lot to a mechanic’s shop on the other side of the chain link parking lot fence, not far from where we’d been nearly mowed down. That got my attention because I remembered this was Harrison I was talking to, and not someone who told pointless stories.

  “What kind of issue?”

  “Someone from the shop was filming the set. Was Dad ever pissed. He sued the guy so he’d have to surrender his footage. His son goes here to Metro, you know. Hector Aguilar. You know him?”

  “Not well.” Honestly, for all I knew he could have the locker next to mine.

  “He’s the president of the AV club. Wants to be a cinematographer some day. His father, over the fence there, almost won the right to keep his footage because he was able to prove that Hector is always filming this parking lot. Twenty-four seven.”

  I went around the car and opened the door so that he could maneuver out his massive crutches and awkward air cast.

  “So there’s record of the car that hit us.”

  He nodded, pulling himself up on the crutches. “Very probably.”

  We crossed the parking lot and headed for the door to the school. Metro High was an enormous, three-story stone and gray brick building, constructed back when people cared how buildings looked. A plaque near the door told anyone who cared to look that the building was a historic landmark, built in 1931. We struggled up the massive stairs to the wooden double doors that had clearly been intended for giants. People hurried past us as though we were an inconvenience, instead of an injured guy and the person trying to help him.

  “So if you ask him, will he let you look at the footage?” We navigated the crowds as we made our way through the labyrinth of halls where the lockers were kept. The thing about Metro was, it wasn’t only a giant building, it had a giant population of students. Numbering in the thousands. My school in Los Angeles had been smaller, and that was saying something.

  “Maybe.” Harrison handed me his crutches as he leaned against the wall of lockers and spun his lock. “If he didn’t hate anyone with the last name Poe.”

  “Wow, that must make Ms. Wilson’s class hard.”

  To my surprise, he laughed. Most people didn’t acknowledge my obscure and stupid jokes, let alone laugh at them. Ms. Wilson was an English teacher with an obsessive love for the works of Edgar Allan Poe.

  “He might be willing to make a deal with me. But I have no clue what he’d want.”

  I slammed his door while he was pulling up his backpack and spun the lock. “Well, only one way to find out.”

  Hector Aguilar looked exactly like the president of the AV club would look in a bad movie. Plaid pants, glasses with thick lenses and thin frames, too big for his slim, sallow face which was surrounded by a shaggy mane of curls. He took me in with naked appraisal, the way polite people don’t look at each other, sizing up who I was and what I could do for him. It was like having a conversation with my parents.

  “I’ve seen you in the hallway. With Yvonne Maldonado.”

  Had he? I didn’t have any idea who Yvonne Maldonado was. Like not a guess. I just shrugged.

  Hector turned back to Harrison. “Hey, Poe. I heard you got yourself hit by a car yesterday.”

  He said it like Harrison had been hanging out on the corner waiting for a car to drive by that he could jump in front of. Unperturbed, Harrison shrugged. “Something like that.”

  “Let’s cut to the chase, Poe. What do you want? Because you wouldn’t have sought me out if you didn’t need me. Oh, wait. I think I figured it out. You want to see the part on my tape, at thirty nine minutes and twenty seven seconds, where a red Honda Civic pulled directly past my camera and headed your way without ever stopping?”

  “We just want to see the license plate.”

  “Why not call the cops?” Hector asked.

  He was seriously starting to piss me off. Hector was a creep and he was jerking us around. It was time to do what I was getting paid for, get to the bottom of this. “Alright, that’s enough. Tell us what you want to let us look at the tape and then we’ll tell you if you can have it. We don’t have time for this crap.”

  Hector eyed me again, this time with much more respect. “Alright, let’s deal. How well do you know Yvonne?”

  It took me a second to remember who Yvonne was in this conversation. “I don’t know her at all. But I think I know someone who does.”

  Harrison’s eyebrows pulled together and then shot up into his hairline. “Seriously, Hector. You’re smoking crack if you think Talia can get you a date with Yvonne.”

  He
ctor smiled, one of the most scheming smiles I’d ever seen in my life. “Oh, Talia just needs to get me an introduction. I’ll handle the rest on my own.”

  His expression made me long to ask if this plan involved a date rape drug of any kind. But instead I shrugged. “If I get the introduction, when do we get to look at the tape?”

  Hector grinned again, his teeth so shiny they didn’t look real. “Right after school, Talia Jones. You’re a lady I like doing business with.”

  Ugh. As long as business was all he wanted with me, we would be okay.

  Sam shut her locker door between second and third period and jerked back in surprise when she discovered me on the other side. “Talia, jeez, where have you been? I called your house like a million times yesterday.”

  “I didn’t get the message.” Which wasn’t a shock. My mother wasn’t known for her valuable note-taking skills. “I was at the hospital for a long time. And then I was asleep.”

  She clutched her books to her chest and we headed for English, a class we shared. “I heard about that. It was all over school. That is so crazy.” I thought she was talking about the accident. A reasonable thing to assume. “What were you doing with Harrison anyway? You did ask for his number so you could ask him out, didn’t you?”

  “Seriously? I was with Harrison because he lives across the street from me. He was giving me a ride. This is what you focus on when you hear I’ve been almost hit by a car? Who I happened to be with at the time of the accident?”

  She put her hand on my arm. “I’m sorry. That was horrible, wasn’t it? I was just shocked to hear you were with Harrison. Do you need anything? I mean, can I do something for you?”

  And there it was. I didn’t even have to beg. “Funny that you should ask. There is something you can do for me.” I glanced at the names I’d written on my hand. For a second it was touch and go since I couldn’t read his last name anymore. “Do you know Hector…Aguilar?”

  “Sure. He’s in charge of the AV club. Why?”

  “I need something from him. He wants to make an exchange for an introduction to someone he saw me talking to in the hallway. She was talking to me either because I stepped on her foot or because I was with you. But I’m guessing she’s a friend of yours.”

  “Okay, who is this girl he’s so hot to meet?”

  “Do you know,” I consulted my hand again. “Yvonne Maldonado?”

  Sam laughed like I’d told the funniest joke she’d ever heard. “Uh, yeah. She’s the head of the JV squad.”

  Of course she was a cheerleader. But Hector’s ability to score this chick was not my problem. Just the introduction. “Yeah, well, you don’t have to try to set them up. I only need to make sure they meet. Can you help me?”

  She thought for a second and nodded. “Yeah. Bring your guy up to the third floor. Mr. Walton’s class, after seventh period. I’ll keep her there talking. Ya’ll can walk up and act real casual. I’ll do the rest.”

  Getting through the rest of the day was such a pain when I wanted to get this introduction over and see what Hector had captured on tape. Between classes, I hunted Harrison down to see if he needed any help, but generally he seemed to have it under control. In fact, only once did he request my help and that was to transfer a large and awkward lit book from his locker to his backpack.

  I was neither popular nor unpopular in the sea of humanity at Metro High. In fact, I was pretty much a nonentity. In a school as big as ours, it was easy to get lost in the crowd. That suited me fine because I enjoyed being invisible. I was good at it. Sam sometimes made it hard. She wasn’t popular in the classic sense, but she was certainly well known and well liked and everywhere we went people greeted her by name. In ten years she’d no doubt be a successful politician.

  But even standing next to Sam it was easy to melt into the crowd because everyone’s focus was on her chatter, her smile, her immaculate wardrobe and impressively shiny hair. But as the day progressed, and I headed up and down the halls with Harrison, I noticed a phenomenon I didn’t care for at all.

  Harrison wasn’t a nonentity.

  And being with him made me worth noticing too.

  Not that he was inherently so cool, but his father was Van Poe, and everyone thought that was interesting. How annoying did that have to be? Everywhere we went there were openly curious stares and whispers. People had no clue who I was, but they were noticing me now. They wanted to know who I was and why I was cool enough to be with the son of a big shot Hollywood producer.

  I hated it. Harrison either didn’t notice the speculation or he simply didn’t care. Frankly, knowing Harrison, I was going to put my money on didn’t care. By the end of seventh period when we gathered up Hector and headed to the third floor, I was seriously on edge.

  Hector was like a puppy, hopping around the hallways, practically, and sometimes literally, bouncing off the walls. Finally, we reached the assigned room where Sam was standing near the doorway casually chatting away to a girl I didn’t recognize, though we’d spoken before. She was dark-eyed, dark-skinned and dressed in a cheerleading uniform. Her eyes were enormous in her face, like some anime girl, except without the schoolgirl uniform.

  Sam acted as though we’d come from nowhere, and it was such a surprise. “Oh, hey. Yvonne, do you know Talia, Harrison and Hector?”

  Yvonne gave us a bored look. "Oh. Hi."

  “Hey.” Hector’s waggling eyebrows and the nod of his head suggested this was a smooth pick up line.

  I decided to give Hector a freebie to insure his cooperation once we got to his place. “Hector is a filmmaker.”

  He shot me a grateful look and then smiled at Yvonne, who brightened like I’d told her that Hector was made out of puppies and butterflies. Her eyes got bigger, her lashes incredibly dark and long. “Ohhh. Hiiii.” She carried out every word like it was an entire sentence all in itself.

  We stepped off to the side and let them talk for a few minutes. Neither of them seemed to notice us crossing to the other side of the hall. Well, this was certainly playing out differently than expected. Hector had obviously known what sort of person he was dealing with when he told us he wanted an introduction, and he’d handle the rest.

  Sam gave Harrison a look and then turned on me. “What are you guys doing?”

  My first instinct was to tell her nothing. But Harrison didn’t share the same instincts. “Hector has video of the person who hit us. We’re trying to get a look.”

  “Oh, that’s so cool. Call me when you see it. Maybe it’s someone we know.”

  Good grief. “This is something best kept on the down low.”

  “Ohh, right.” Sam nodded. “I’ll call you instead.”

  I had no idea how that helped, but at least it absolved me of the responsibility for calling her. She whipped out her phone. “I don’t have your cell number. What is it?”

  Ugh. “I don’t have a cell phone.”

  “How can you live without a cell phone?” She asked, like a cell phone was the same as breathing and water. I was so not going to explain that there were times that we didn’t have a regular phone.

  “I make it through.”

  Harrison glanced between us. “She does have a cell phone. Just use the one I gave you.”

  Sam’s expression changed, her eyebrows shooting up into her bangs, her mouth making the easily recognizable O of a girl who was trying to convey how significant something was. As though Harrison offering his extra cell phone as a way to communicate with me was tantamount to a proposal of marriage.

  “I don’t know the number,” I said.

  Harrison pulled the twin out of his backpack. “It’s all good. They’re bundled in packs of two in the office. Whatever mine is, yours is the other.” He flipped it over. “1652. So yours is 555-1651.”

  This was so weird and awkward. Like many mega-rich people I’d met, Harrison didn’t realize there was anything strange about giving someone a cell phone to use when you barely knew them. He didn’t care. There were dozens l
ike it in his father’s drawer.

  “I wouldn’t want to add minutes to your father’s bill,” I muttered, wishing I wasn’t being forced to have this conversation.

  Harrison appeared slightly perplexed by the argument. “Like he’d ever notice. Do you know how many of these things he has?”

  My father was a stickler for every dime. He always knew where each penny he stole was. He’d notice if I made one long distance call he wasn’t expecting, let alone added an entire phone line. Maybe Van Poe was more like my mom. She was a financial black hole. Money slipped through her fingers, and then she was always confused by the fact it was gone. I guess my parents made a decent couple in that respect, but now that Dad was in prison, I got to be the lucky one in charge of all the cash. I wasn’t the best at it, but I would notice a whole new phone line.

  “Harrison, I don’t think…” Even if Sam hadn’t cut me off, my argument would have fallen on deaf ears.

  Sam held up her phone with my number now programmed in. “Got it. I’ll call you later.”

  “Okay, fine.” There was no point in arguing right now. I would slip the phone into his backpack later or something.

  I saw that Hector was doing something to his phone as well, and I figured that he’d already managed to weasel those seven digits. I had to admit I was impressed. It was so non-cliché for the head of the AV club to be doing so well with the head JV cheerleader. They were going to destroy the very fabric of the high school hierarchy if they didn’t watch out.

  “Hey, Hector. We’ve got somewhere to be,” I reminded. I considered my interruption as saving the world as we knew it, not blocking the dude’s moves.

  He seemed shocked to discover we were still there, like introducing him to Yvonne was some kind of public service, and we’d forgotten about the video. Or maybe he’d just forgotten we existed, drowning in Yvonne’s baby Disney animal eyes. “Oh. Sure. Right.”