Full Ride

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  Can Mom and I ever live that peacefully, once we carry this off? Will we ever be able to stop glancing over our shoulders all the time?

  Maybe I flick my eyes to the right a little too obviously; maybe the couple is too loud scraping out their chairs. Mr. Trumbull spins around and looks at them, then he turns back to glare at Mom and me. It’s like the three of us are having an argument with our eyes. From Mom and me: Hey, we followed the instructions! It’s not our fault that couple chose to sit so close when they had thirty other tables to choose from!

  From Mr. Trumbull: Well, this is not acceptable! We have to move to another table! And we have to make it seem natural, not forced!

  I’m about to say, loudly, “Is anybody else having a problem with the sun being in their eyes?” when the woman in the couple behind Mr. Trumbull complains, “Oh, no! Didn’t you see how dirty this table is? We can’t sit here!”

  They move one table back, and Mr. Trumbull looks satisfied. Mom picks up the envelope.

  “I have to check to be sure,” she says, not even pretending she trusts him.

  “Everything’s in order. You’ll see,” Mr. Trumbull says confidently. “I even gave you passports this time, like you asked. Though the pictures I had to use . . . you’re not really the looker you used to be, are you?”

  He’s actually saying this to Mom. The man is just mean.

  Mom blinks rapidly, as if the jab hit its target.

  “I didn’t mind losing my looks so much,” she says softly. She gazes pointedly at Mr. Trumbull. “That’s not as bad as someone throwing away his morals.”

  You go, Mom! Way to fight back!

  Mr. Trumbull just rolls his eyes.

  “Oh, please,” he says. “Spare me the sanctimonious bullcrap. You lived with a criminal for twenty years.”

  “I didn’t know,” Mom whispers.

  “And what you’re doing now?” Mr. Trumbull asks. “Blackmail is a crime, you know.”

  “Shouldn’t you have thought of that before you started blackmailing Excellerand?” I ask. My voice rings out a little too loudly. It makes Mr. Trumbull glance back toward the couple two tables behind him. They seem oblivious, hunched over something on an iPad. It could be baby pictures or a business report or architectural designs—ordinary things for people with ordinary lives. Unlike Mom and me.

  Or Mr. Trumbull.

  “What I want to know,” I tell him, “is how you could have done this to us. We trusted you! Did you ever think about how we’d feel when we found out? Did you even think of us as human beings? Or were we just pawns to you?”

  Mr. Trumbull glances at me in a way that makes my skin crawl. Something in my bra itches, but there’s no way I’m touching my breast to scratch it. Not in front of Mr. Trumbull.

  “I saw you both for what you were three years ago,” he says. He points at me. “You were a spoiled brat, whose daddy had always given you everything you wanted. He never told you the bill always comes due.”

  “I found out,” I mutter. “Just like you’re finding out now.”

  “Touché,” Mr. Trumbull says, and he laughs as if I’ve truly amused him. He turns to Mom. “And you . . . you were stuck in that small-town mentality of being ashamed of what the neighbors would think. You were so pretty back then—you were magazine-cover ready! You stole millions from my firm, not letting us negotiate media deals for your story.”

  “It was my story, not yours,” Mom says, with more feistiness than I’ve seen her show in three years. “Mine and Becca’s. I had to protect my daughter.”

  Mr. Trumbull smirks.

  “You’re going to have to remember to start calling her Sarah,” he reminds her. He spreads his hands wide, a courtroom gesture I remember him making whenever he pretended to be conciliatory. “Anyhow, didn’t I give you exactly what you wanted three years ago? You wanted to run away and hide. It was win-win. I got the evidence I needed to convince Excellerand; you got to skulk away into exile.”

  Mr. Trumbull reaches out and touches Mom’s scarf.

  “Look at you. Three years down the road, fifteen, twenty miles outside of downtown Atlanta—and you’re still hiding,” he says. “You’re still cowering in fear.”

  Mom shoves his hand away.

  “Three years isn’t long enough for people to forget,” Mom says. “I could still be recognized.”

  “But three years was long enough for us to change what we wanted,” I say. “I stopped caring about the secrets so much. I really did start feeling ready to tell people we could trust.”

  In spite of everything, Mr. Court actually did fit in that category, I think. And of course Oscar, Jala, Rosa, and Stuart . . .

  I’m hit with a pang of missing my friends. They all drove back to Ohio last weekend. In the end, they did go without me. It seemed like an eternity that I was here alone, waiting for Mom to drive down to meet me, to set Daddy’s plan in motion.

  “Three years was long enough for us to be ready to heal,” Mom says softly.

  Mr. Trumbull narrows his eyes at us.

  “You think you’re going to be happier as Evelyn and Sarah Smith?” he asks. “When you have to keep even more secrets? You can’t tell a soul now. You know that, don’t you?”

  We’ve talked ourselves into a trap. If Mr. Trumbull pursues this, our whole story could unravel. I’ve got to think of some sort of distraction, some . . .

  “Lying on a beach in the Caymans could make up for that,” Mom says with a teasing grin.

  Mr. Trumbull was starting to turn toward me, but now he jerks his attention back to Mom.

  “What?” he erupts. “You mean, that husband of yours really does have an offshore account? And all this time he’s been lying to me . . .”

  He’s incoherent in his rage at not being able to get his hands on any last remnant of Daddy’s stolen funds.

  Mom smiles angelically and says, “Gotcha.”

  Wow, Mom, I marvel. Didn’t know you had that in you. Well played!

  But it’s my turn now. I have to strike while Mr. Trumbull is still thrown off, still looking back and forth between us like he’s not sure what to believe.

  “What I want to know,” I say, “is why it even mattered to you what we did or where we went. Maybe I’m too stupid to see how it all fit together, but . . . you had all the evidence from Daddy. You had him believing you’d taken it to the FBI. That FBI ‘agent’ he met with three years ago—who was that, really?”

  Mr. Trumbull grins at me, and I realize I’ve struck the perfect tone. He’s an egomaniac, and I’ve just invited him to brag.

  “Oh, so you figured out that part of it?” Mr. Trumbull says. “Harlan is an actor friend of mine. I hire him every now and then. He thinks of it as improv.”

  I squint the same way I do in calculus when the problems on the board seem unsolvable.

  “But why didn’t you just do what Daddy expected?” I ask. “Why didn’t you bring in real FBI agents, do everything honest and aboveboard?”

  Am I laying it on too thick?

  “There would have been no advantage in that,” Mr. Trumbull says carelessly. “Your father’s evidence wasn’t enough. The FBI would have just patted him on the head and said, ‘Yeah, right. Come back when you have something real.’ ”

  “Excellerand must have thought the evidence was enough,” I say, the puzzled squint still on my face. “If they were willing to pay to keep it secret.”

  “Excellerand thought it was almost enough,” Mr. Trumbull says. He’s leaning in close, and I can tell he wants us to understand how a lesser strategist would have just given up at that point. But not him. Oh, no. Not him.

  “I took the information to Excellerand in secret,” he says. “And I could tell they worried about it, but they were already calculating who they could fire to make it seem like it’d just been an isolated incident, something that appalled the upstanding, morally righteous executives. Before I was halfway into my presentation, I could tell they’d already planned their damage control
and their spin, and they thought they’d still come out smelling like roses. They’d look like the good guys for cracking down on government fraud.”

  “So you changed your story,” Mom says.

  Mr. Trumbull glances her way appreciatively.

  “Oh, so you did learn something from living with Roger all those years,” he says. “Of course I changed my story. I made it up on the spot. I told Excellerand those were just some of the documents Roger had. I said there were more—more papers, more computer files, more incriminating evidence—but his wife was holding it hostage until he gave her access to his offshore accounts. There’s nothing like the wrath of a trophy wife scorned and humiliated and cut off from any chance of ever buying another BMW—”

  “I was never a trophy wife!” Mom protests. “Roger and I are the same age!”

  I kick her under the table. How could she interrupt Mr. Trumbull now?

  Mr. Trumbull doesn’t seem to care. You can tell he’s having a lot of fun telling his story. And, really, we’re the only ones he can tell it to.

  “All the Excellerand executives have trophy wives,” he says. “Very high-maintenance trophy wives. So they fell for my story hook, line, and sinker.”

  I frown, like a serious student just wanting all the puzzle pieces to match up. I’ve had three years of experience plastering that expression on my face, so I’m sure it’s convincing.

  “I don’t understand,” I say. “Did Excellerand think they were paying you to keep Daddy quiet? Or to keep Mom from revealing the evidence she supposedly had, which would have set Daddy free?”

  Mr. Trumbull positively beams.

  “That’s the beauty of it,” he says. “It was an all-of-the-above situation right from the start. They were paying me to keep your mother furious at your father, so she wouldn’t just give in and help get his sentence reduced. They were paying me to convince your father his case was hopeless, and so he should keep all the money for himself, for ten years down the road when—once he’s out of prison and living it up in the Caymans—why should he care about turning in Excellerand? And, to prevent your parents from ever comparing the stories I’d told them, Excellerand was indirectly paying me to keep you and your mother from visiting him, because your mother was too poor and terrified to come to Atlanta, er—California, should I say?”

  His smirk is infuriating.

  “But . . . you had no proof of any of that,” Mom stammers.

  “Of course I did,” Mr. Trumbull says. “Your letters, back and forth. Let’s just say that I did some judicious editing, but . . . Excellerand loved it that you were so terrified of them, that I had you so convinced that they were out to get you. They loved it that Roger was so forlorn, begging you to come visit him in Atlanta, begging you to tell him where you really were.”

  Excellerand actually saw some of the real letters, I realize, the handwritten ones that truly did sound like Daddy. And, of course, just as Mr. Trumbull kept Mom and me from knowing where Daddy really was, Daddy never saw the parts of Mom’s letters describing where we were.

  Even when Daddy got out of prison, he would have had no way of finding us.

  “You are a thoroughly evil man,” I say.

  I decide that Mr. Trumbull has finally answered one of my original questions: He didn’t see us as human. We never were anything but pawns to him.

  “Oh, and you and your mother are saints?” he asks sarcastically. “You’re not even eighteen yet, and your father’s already taught you so well, you’re trying to manipulate one of the top lawyers in Atlanta!”

  Should Mom and I worry about that one word, “trying”?

  “You wouldn’t have known anything if my receptionist hadn’t screwed up,” Mr. Trumbull continues.

  “You didn’t fire her over this, did you?” I ask. I’m partly just trying to buy some time. But it strikes me that poor Tria was a pawn in all this too.

  Mr. Trumbull ignores my question. I take that as proof that he did fire Tria, and he hasn’t given her a single thought since.

  This does not surprise me.

  “You know,” Mr. Trumbull says, “when you called Monday and said you and your mother were both in Atlanta, I was almost afraid that you’d gone to the authorities. I should have remembered I was dealing with a criminal family. I should have known your first thought would be blackmail, and you’d try to turn the situation to your own advantage no matter what.”

  He’s right, I think. That is where Daddy’s brain went first.

  But there’s that word, “trying,” again.

  Mom’s face has gone pale.

  “You really think we’d be able to withstand another media firestorm, if all this came out?” she says.

  “And what proof did we have?” I ask. “It would have been our word against yours. It’s not like anybody else knew you’d told us Daddy was in California. It’s not like Mom kept copies of the letters she sent Daddy, that you intercepted. And who’d believe Daddy, anyway?”

  “So it actually is win-win, this time around,” Mom says. “You get to keep blackmailing Excellerand. We get to escape with new identities. And Becca—I mean, Sarah—gets to apply for college.”

  I keep my eyes down, so Mr. Trumbull doesn’t see any emotion in my eyes about abandoning my Deskins friends. I reach across the table and pull out one of the smaller papers from the envelope in front of Mom. It’s a bank check, a special kind that Mr. Trumbull couldn’t double-cross us by canceling.

  Special or not, I’ve never seen any kind of check with so many digits after the dollar sign, before the decimal.

  “And I get everything I need to pay for college, all the way through a PhD, if I want,” I say. I make myself grin. “Or just a lot of really good spring breaks.”

  “And you two moralists don’t feel any guilt about engaging in blackmail yourselves?” Mr. Trumbull asks.

  “Of course not,” I make myself say. “I’ve learned a lot from you and Daddy. This is how the world works. We’re just getting what we deserve.”

  Mom holds out her hand to me, and I give her the check. She tucks it back into the manila envelope along with all the paperwork “proving” our new identities: two new birth certificates, two new social security cards, an entirely fictional high school transcript, and a copy of SAT scores that are even better than the ones I really got. (Hey, if you’re going to cheat, why not go whole hog?)

  Mom puts the envelope in a messenger bag she’s been carrying and pulls out a thinner envelope to hand to Mr. Trumbull. I know there are twenty letters in there, which I’ve watched her write out by hand over the course of the past week. The last one in the pile tells Daddy she’s never going to communicate with him again.

  Mr. Trumbull tucks this envelope into his briefcase without opening it.

  “You’re not even going to make sure I did what you wanted?” Mom asks.

  Mr. Trumbull shrugs.

  “This is only insurance,” he says. He grins wickedly. “I’ve gotten Excellerand to trust me over the past three years. They’re not looking that carefully anymore. But, if need be, I can always forge your handwriting. I’ve done it before. Even Roger was fooled.”

  I hate this man. For a moment I can’t even see straight.

  “Wh-what if . . . ,” I sputter. “What if someday we decide to tell? What’s to stop us?”

  Mr. Trumbull keeps grinning.

  “Oh, I’ve got insurance against that too,” he says. He begins fiddling with his tie clasp. “Amazing, isn’t it, how technology can make cameras that fit into such a thin strip of metal? And that it’s so easy to edit raw video? So I don’t look guilty? Believe me, I’ll keep this video of you two confessing to blackmail for a very, very long time.”

  I’ve been so engrossed in watching Mr. Trumbull that I haven’t been paying attention to any of the other people around us. But I suddenly realize that the two yoga moms from the side table are standing beside us now.

  “FBI—you’re under arrest,” one of the women says. She flashes
a gold badge in a leather case. Even from across the table I can read the words “Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

  A split second later the cinnamon-roll couple from behind Mr. Trumbull pull out FBI badges, too, and a pack of men in FBI jackets swarm in through the front and back doors shouting, “FBI! Don’t make a move!”

  We’re surrounded.

  Mom and I freeze. Mr. Trumbull looks startled for only an instant, then his face smooths out and he’s as calm as ever.

  “Oh, yes,” he says loudly, with just as much confidence as he always showed in court. “I’m glad you’re here. These two women are trying to blackmail me. All the evidence is right here.”

  He taps his tie clasp.

  “Nice try,” the woman says. “And we will be using that evidence. But you’re the one we’re arresting.”

  And then both women grab Mr. Trumbull.

  Now—

  relief

  Beside me, Mom starts tugging at her bra. She digs down and pulls out a wire.

  “Okay, if this is standard procedure for the FBI in sting operations, why haven’t they come up with listening devices to put in women’s bras that don’t itch?” she asks.

  “Good point, ma’am,” one of the “yoga moms” says. “I totally agree. Allison and I will bring that up with our superiors.”

  The “yoga moms” are actually Special Agents Allison Moritz and Toni Bitters, members of the FBI team Mom and I started working with after Daddy told me to go talk to the federal prosecutor who’d sent him to prison. (This is where Oscar’s computer skills really helped: He’s the one who found the prosecutor’s home address last Saturday. And my taping Mr. Trumbull in his office helped, too, to prove I wasn’t lying. It’s just a shame it wasn’t enough evidence to arrest him.) The FBI team rehearsed and rehearsed and rehearsed with Mom and me, all week long, so we’d know exactly how to get Mr. Trumbull to reveal everything—or as I thought of it, to set him up, then bring him down.

  Mr. Trumbull struggles against Allison and Toni’s grip, even as other agents grab on to him too.

  “You don’t understand,” he protests. “You have it backward! I was just making up a story to get these two criminals to confess! They’re the ones you should arrest!”