by Gwenda Bond
What is up with him? He’d barely paid any attention to Maddy before the last day or so.
“Oh, hey, Lois,” Dante said as he walked up next to me. “You’re not here for Maddy, are you? We were going to grab a coffee.”
“I remember,” I said. “Taking time off from the mural?”
But there was a splotch of red paint on his arm and on his jeans, so maybe not. He saw me looking, and said, “I finally have the right concept. I worked on it before school today.”
Unsaid was, “So I could meet Maddy for coffee after school.” I was officially on board this ship.
“She’s all yours after just a sec,” I said. “I’m meeting James.”
“What’s the deal with that guy?” he asked. “I must have done something to offend him.”
But I didn’t have time to answer, even if I could’ve. James and Maddy were the last ones out of the classroom, and greeted the sight of us with varying degrees of excitement. By which I mean Maddy beamed at Dante and then dimmed her smile for me. James scowled at us both.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, the question directed at Dante.
“Where are those golden boy manners that were bred into you since birth?” I asked, teasing. Mostly.
“Sorry,” he said. “Hi, uh…”
C’mon, James. You know his name by now.
“Dante,” Dante said, barely glancing at James. He had eyes only for Maddy. “You ready to go?”
“Still need that one sec,” I said, and gave Dante an apologetic grimace for leaving him with James. To James I said, “Behave,” while I towed Maddy away by her arm. She looked amused, and so here was hoping our friendship wasn’t dead to her after lunch.
“What’s the deal with James?” I asked when we were well out of the boys’ earshot.
She frowned, puzzled. “What do you mean?”
She hadn’t noticed his attention? Maybe I was imagining it. I didn’t think so, but I dropped it for the time being.
“Never mind,” I said. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay and not mad. You know… at me.”
“I’m not mad at anyone, not about lunch. Melody used to have a flair for the dramatic and I see she’s still got it.”
Now it was my turn to frown.
“That doesn’t really seem fair. She was upset—she’s going through a lot.”
“And yet still she managed to turn it around on me.” Maddy heaved a breath and continued. Just like the other day, once the words started, they kept on coming. “It was my fault she got herself into this mess, because I like the same band as her? And she felt like she had to keep going to their concert a secret for that reason alone? That it’s somehow my fault, instead of asking our parents for the money she went and sold her DNA to some creepy doctor? How is putting that on me fair?”
I thought about Lucy saying there was nothing that could drive us apart forever. “But she’s your sister.”
“Yeah, and ever since we were kids, she was the prettier one, the more perfect one. When we were close, I didn’t see it, that people looked at us that way. That our parents did. But when we got older, when I… fell out of step with her, tried to get out of her shadow… She never forgave me. What’s funny is, I never minded being in her shadow, really. Until I did. I just felt like I had to have some things of my own, or I’d end up with nothing.” She’d said all that barely taking a breath, and she sucked in a gulp of air.
James and Dante watched us intently from a dozen feet away. They were definitely not making polite chitchat with each other.
“Until you did mind—when you were twelve?” She’d given that much away before lunch when I’d asked about their relationship. “What happened?”
She shook her head, lips tight.
I could tell she wanted me to stop pushing, to leave this alone. And I didn’t know whether it was smart not to—whether pushing was what a good friend would do or if it would simply drive her away. But I was her friend, and so I couldn’t make this decision based on not stepping on her toes. That wasn’t the kind of friend I could be.
“Maddy, tell me.”
She hesitated. “We took piano lessons together. I loved this piece by Gershwin and I tried out to do it for this big recital. She knew how much I wanted it.”
Oh no. I could see where this was going. “What happened?”
“She auditioned the same piece, and she was better than me. Way better. You heard her the other day. So she got to do my piece. I know it’s stupid, but I just wanted to play music I loved. She wanted to show me up and she did. I quit lessons after that. And, after that happened, I saw her doing it all the time. Taking the last of my favorite ice cream, even though there was plenty left of hers. Getting Mom to buy her a dress I’d picked out, while I was in the dressing room trying it on. It was endless. And when you’re a twin, there’s so much pressure to be the same—but I could never measure up. So I decided it was time to get things of my own, things that she couldn’t steal. Things she wouldn’t even like.”
Things of my own, things that she couldn’t steal.
Based on what Melody had said at lunch, she deeply regretted how she’d acted back then, that it had changed Maddy—and that she’d lost her relationship with Maddy because of it. So much that she wasn’t willing to risk taking something from her again, even something as small as a band she liked. Given how much Maddy’s identity was tied up in the music she listened to (and the imaginary bands she made up names for), it made me think that Melody understood her sister far better than I’d assumed.
Our friendship was new, but we were friends. My kind of friends told each other the truth.
“Don’t hate me for saying this, but I think you need to cut Melody some slack. That was years ago. Think of it from her POV. She had this awesome twin sister, who all of a sudden seemed not to want to be with her anymore. It had to hurt.” When Maddy started to protest, I added, “Even and maybe especially if she did a bunch of things to cause it. From what she said today, it’s clear she regrets that.”
I hoped friends told each other the truth, anyway. I expected her to argue, direct some bristle my way, and I braced for it.
She was quiet. So I asked, “Has she done anything like those bratty things she did back then to you lately?”
“No,” she said, and sighed. “Not for years. She mostly avoids me and… I avoid her back. And I never thought about her wishing she hadn’t done those things.” Before I could be relieved, she added, “Fine, I’ll consider cutting her some slack. But I have to go. I have a…” She smiled, making fun of herself. “A date.”
Well, the two of us must be okay, at least.
“With a very cute boy,” I returned.
She smiled wider.
We walked back to the waiting, silent boys, and the very cute Dante offered her his hand.
After a moment’s hesitation, she put hers in his, and they left us standing there.
“You ready to take me to the ex-leader?” I asked James. I was ready to move on to the next stage. We needed a plan. Which meant I needed to know the former mayor’s secrets, the ones he thought I couldn’t handle because they were too dangerous.
“James?” I asked when he still hadn’t responded.
“Oh, of course,” he said. “This should be interesting. Pretty sure Dad thought he was sui generis.” He raised an eyebrow and added, “That means one of a kind.”
Just when I was feeling sorry for James, he assumed I didn’t know something. “Actually, the literal translation is just ‘of its own kind.’ But, yeah, let’s hit it.”
The sooner we got done with this, the sooner I could be nervous about that night’s meeting with TheInventor.
CHAPTER 19
A gargoyle grimaced down at me as James unlocked the door to the Worthington manse and admitted us both into its dark, cool interior. It occurr
ed to me this was what real money smelled like, old wood that barely creaked when you stepped on it and a hint of cleaning supplies. No dust, no must, and no messiness in sight either.
The contrast to my own home, which almost always smelled of delicious food when I came home and was always tidy but not immaculate, was striking.
“Who cooks for you?” I asked. “Your mom?”
James snorted. “Mom’s not what I’d call domestic. We used to have a full-time housekeeper. Mom had to go back to her accounting firm after… after. So me, mostly. I’ve gotten a lot better. Or we order Chinese.”
Everyone was bringing out the hidden depths today.
I knew we couldn’t speak freely, in case of the likely bug-planters listening in, but I extracted my notepad and pen and scrawled: We’re going to make it right.
I tried to believe it.
James nodded, but I could tell he was more uncertain than me. That probably went along with your dad being away in prison for a year. He’d never said so, but I suspected that James had idolized his father growing up. Couldn’t have been easy to watch him tumble off his pedestal.
Especially since it turned out he never deserved the fall.
“And, hey,” I said, out loud. “I guess one good thing about house arrest is we know your dad will be here. If only all interview subjects were so easy to track down.”
“What a silver lining,” James countered dryly. “Don’t tell him it’s an interview, or he’ll refuse to talk.”
“Oh, no way. Politicians always love to chat about their glory days.” I was writing as I said it, and I held up the note to show James: More like a police interview. An interrogation of sorts.
James’s eyebrows lifted, but he continued up the hall. Music crescendoed from the room we’d used the other day, stormy classical rather than mellow pop. This must not have raised any red flags or been unusual, given James’s lack of reaction to it.
Inside the dimly lit room, James’s dad sat on the leather sofa, his head tipped back and eyes closed. I wasn’t sure if he was napping or soaking in the tempestuous tunes. I spotted a dimmer switch on the wall and twisted it to full brightness.
His head popped up. Awake, then.
“You can turn down the music,” I said to James.
“I was going to,” he answered.
His dad was frowning at me in a spooky mirror of what it looked like when James frowned at me, only a few decades older. James had been sleeping well enough the last two days that the dark circles had left his eyes, but they’d apparently taken up permanent residence under his dad’s. Of course he’d be troubled, with the visit from the police and my questions about Boss Moxie and Ismenios Labs. I owed him for giving us Dabney Donovan’s name, even if the man was a ghost as far as Google was concerned.
But off balance wasn’t an unwelcome state to find Mayor Worthington in. I expected resistance.
It was too bad for him that he’d never met my dad. The former mayor was bound to underestimate my ability to stand up to him.
“Hello again, Mr. Mayor,” I said, not too sweet and not too angry. My voice was neutral. “I thought I’d do that post-jail interview, let everyone know how you’re doing now. An exclusive for the Scoop that will be worthy of the Planet too.”
And if he went along with me, it might even convince those listening in that he was no threat. While we transformed him into a much bigger one.
“I have a headache, Miss—” he paused. “What was your name again? I’ve always had trouble keeping track of James’s little friends.”
He was trying to insult me. My eyes narrowed.
“This is Lois,” James said, playing at peacemaker. “You should talk to her. It’s good for us to get you on the record.”
His dad wasn’t going to be cooperative, I could tell from the sour lemon face he pulled next. But he scooted forward on the sofa, no longer in napping posture.
“Now,” I said, my boots sinking into the thick carpet as I made my way over and onto the buttery leather couch next to him. I placed my bag between us and poised my notebook and pen on top, so he could feel free to grab it when he wanted to communicate. “Where should we start? How about when you knew you were going away? Was there anything you did to prepare? Matters to put in order?”
I wrote my corollary question down: We know you refused to cooperate w/ Boss Moxie’s agenda. Did you have anything on him? Why were you such a threat?
It didn’t make sense to me that Moxie would have gone to such extremes over a simple refusal to play dirty pool. My instincts told me there was more. More that would be useful to us.
Mayor Worthington read the notepad and shook his head slightly.
“Let me think back for a minute. I try not to rehash painful memories,” he said.
“I understand,” I said. “But this is important.”
James cleared his throat.
“So the readers can understand your state of mind. Take your time.” I extended the pen to him, turned the pad around to face him.
He shook his head again. Then he accepted the pen and in sharp strokes wrote: NO.
“You must remember something,” I said, undeterred. “What did you do with all your paperwork? Did you have to archive anything?”
His eyes went wide. Only for a few seconds, but I saw it.
“The mayor doesn’t archive his own papers. I wasn’t around when they were taken care of. I don’t know what happened to them,” he said. “I’m feeling that headache coming on again.”
Fine. Time to shock him. Because with that weak denial he’d as much as admitted he had some documentation and it remained somewhere—not destroyed. He was likely the only person who knew its precise location.
Proof was what we needed. I wasn’t about to give up.
“Just breathe. There’s a pressure point right here.” I tapped a spot above the thumb. It was actually true. My mom used it to get rid of tension headaches. “Then we’ll start.”
He ignored my pressure point advice.
“You don’t give up easy,” he said, almost admiring. Almost.
“True.” I busied myself writing on the pad, and then I flipped the sheet and wrote a little more, pen scratching on the paper. Hopefully, the sound of my writing was too quiet for the bug to pick up. I doubted the tech the mobsters had was as good as Dad’s and the military’s, but you never knew. After all, they’d found a mad scientist capable of producing a duplicate mayor.
Flipping back, I showed James and Mayor Worthington the first page I’d written on.
You remember the guy I showed you the picture of—the one the cops thought was you? You want to know what he is?
The ex-mayor nodded.
I flipped the page to show him more: He’s an exact clone of you, made by that scientist Dabney Donovan to set you up. You had to have something on Boss Moxie for him to go that far.
His mouth opened and shut. I waited, with no way to estimate how long it would take to absorb that kind of news. But I respected how fast he grew calm enough to engage with it. Being mayor probably presented its share of surprises too, not least landing in the sights of a mobster.
He grabbed the pad and scribbled: What is this?
“Just the truth of the matter is all I want, Mayor,” I said. “It’s what the people of this city deserve.”
He wrote again. A clone? You expect me to believe that.
I nodded. “Maybe I should give you a short time to think. But not too long. You don’t want news getting stale—I think it will really put people’s minds at ease, make them feel safe to have your side,” I said.
He looked from the pad to me and back again.
“People believe what they want to believe,” he said. “Thinking you can change their minds is crazy.”
“Call me crazy, then.” I took my notebook back from him. “Because I thin
k I’m up to the task. I can help you… get your side across to them. Trust me. Look past seeing me as James’s ‘little friend.’ You know James has been working at the Scoop, helping around the house, and getting good grades while you’ve been gone? You should give him more credit too.”
“Lois,” James protested, though more in surprise than anything else, I thought. He never revealed much. I recognized these defense mechanisms, because I sometimes employed them myself.
“It’s okay, you can thank me later. You too, Mayor Worthington. We’ll try this again. Soon.”
He waved for me to give him back the paper and pen. He wrote: I’m sorry, but no we won’t. You and James are just kids. Too dangerous.
“You’ll find out I’m a lot harder to get rid of than a headache,” I told him. “See you soon.”
He shook his head, annoyed, and James escorted me to the door. “That went terribly,” James said.
“You keep an eye on him. Let me know if he… changes his mind about anything.” I paused, then spoke louder, for the benefit of any eavesdroppers. “I want this interview.”
“And what Lois Lane wants, she gets,” James said.
“From your lips to the front page of the Scoop. I’ll show myself the rest of the way out.”
As soon as I was outside, safe from prying ears on the stoop, I texted James: In case it wasn’t clear, I want to know any calls he makes, anything strange. Watch him. Don’t let him know, but make sure you keep an eye on him.
James texted back immediately: What if he’s right?
I didn’t dignify that with an answer. Instead: Keep working on him. And let me know right away if he does something risky.
*
When I got home, there were takeout containers on the kitchen table. Thai food.
I thought of James learning how to cook, and wondered whether he was even telling the truth about delivery being a heavy part of the rotation. Maintaining that address and a once-a-week cleaning lady couldn’t be cheap, not if they’d taken such a financial hit that his mom had needed to go back to work.
My culinary skills extended to excellent ordering, beyond-excellent eating, and the ability to heat up pizza and boil water to make pasta. When I was on my own, I’d live near good restaurants, that was a given. No sketchy takeout like many of the places we’d lived before we came here.