Sammy Keyes and the Hotel Thief Sammy Keyes

  The girl looked like an eighth-grader, and from the way she was talking with the guy standing next to her, she seemed real comfortable being in a tidal wave of students. So Marissa was right—she probably knew exactly where B-2 was. I just would never have picked her because she looked, well, snotty. Partly it was the color she’d dyed her hair. Partly it was the earrings—she had five studs in each ear and a group of rings looped over the tops. Mostly, though, it was the way she looked at us when we walked over. Like we were kicking sand in her corner of the beach.

  I almost grabbed Marissa and suggested we find someone else, but before I knew it she was saying, “Excuse me. Do either of you know where B-2 is?”

  At first Firehead just snubs us, but then she notices my shoes. And she laughs. “High-tops? What are you, straight from elementary school?”

  I stare at her a minute and can feel my face getting really hot. How can someone who decorates her ears like a Christmas tree have the nerve to make fun of my high- tops? And I’m about to tell her to keep her snotty thoughts to herself when the guy she’s standing next to says, “Hey...aren’t you Brandon McKenze’s cousin?”

  Marissa smiles at him. “Yeah, I am. Who are you?”

  “I’m Taylor Briggs. My brother and him are best friends. You don’t remember me? I was at his pool party this summer.”

  Marissa blinks a bit, then says, “Sorry, there were so many people there…”

  “That’s all right.” He takes her schedule and says, “What room are you looking for?”

  “B-2. It’s our homeroom.”

  Now while Taylor’s talking to Marissa, Firehead’s getting real roasty around the collar. And when he’s done telling us how to get to B-2, she glares at us, then throws her nose in the air and goes back to talking to Taylor.

  When we’re far enough away I say, “Wow! She was scary!”

  Marissa laughs. “You’re not kidding!” And we hurry off to find B-2.

  Our homeroom teacher, Mrs. Ambler, was already in the classroom, rearranging things on her desk. The bell rings and she looks up at the clock, then smiles at us and says, “We still have one more bell. Go ahead and find yourselves seats.”

  We find a couple of seats near the back, and I say to Marissa, “I’ve been wanting to tell you about what happened yesterday.”

  Marissa checks out the people around her. “Oh yeah? What?”

  Kids are piling into the classroom, and since I don’t want anyone else to hear, I whisper, “You know the Heavenly Hotel?”

  Just then the tardy bell rings and Mrs. Ambler calls, “Find a desk. You’ll have assigned seats by the end of the week, but for now sit where you like.”

  So we’re looking around at everyone scrambling for a seat near the back, when who walks in the door? Firehead.

  I nudge Marissa. “Look!”

  At first I thought she was there to deliver a message or something, but when she sits at a desk kitty-corner from me it hits me—she’s no snot-nosed eighth-grader. She’s a snot-nosed seventh-grader.

  I must have been staring, because she turns around and says, “What are you looking at?” Then she eyes my shoes and says, “You freak.”

  Mrs. Ambler calls, “Settle down, class. Let’s begin.” And as she’s welcoming us to our first day of junior high school, explaining the rules for homeroom, Firehead leans back and says, “Taylor says you look like a fourth-grader.”

  Now maybe I’m kind of skinny and maybe I don’t wear makeup or get all decked out to go to school, but there’s no way I look like I’m in the fourth grade.

  Mrs. Ambler asks the class to stand so we can pledge the flag, so I stand up and say, “Bug off, would you?”

  Firehead pulls a face like Oh, I’m so scared and then leans over again and says, “Whatcha gonna do? Kick me with a high-top?” She puts her hand in front of her mouth. “Ooooh…I’m petrified!”

  I roll my eyes and keep on pledging, but I’m thinking, What’s your problem?

  Now Firehead’s not saying the Pledge. She’s got her hand on her heart but her eye on me. And when we’re just about done, she leans back and says, “Oh, you say the Pledge so good. Did you spend the summer practicing?”

  Mrs. Ambler looks straight at her. “Young lady, what is your name?”

  Firehead looks around a bit, then points to herself and asks, “Me?”

  Mrs. Ambler snaps, “Yes, you.”

  She gives her an innocent little look. “Heather. Heather Acosta.”

  “Well, Miss Acosta, maybe your elementary school teachers allowed you to talk during the Pledge, but you’re in junior high school now and we expect a degree of maturity from you. I’d like to try it again, only this time I’d like you to come up here and lead us.”

  All of a sudden homeroom is dead quiet. And while everyone’s busy thinking there’s no way they’re ever going to talk during the Pledge in Mrs. Ambler’s class, Heather’s eyes move from side to side like she doesn’t quite believe what’s happening to her.

  Finally she moves to the front of the class, and by the time she’s done leading the Pledge, her face is as red as her hair. And when she gets back to her chair she gives me the wickedest evil eye I’ve ever seen, and I can tell she’s thinking that somehow this is all my fault.

  I can also tell that Heather Acosta is going to find a way to get me back. And when she does, it’ll be in spades.

  FIVE

  The morning took forever. Ms. Pilson sat us in alphabetical order and then spent the rest of the period giving us “a taste of things to come” in her English class. She read poems in Old English, which was like listening to someone read in Greek or Russian.

  In math, Mr. Tiller sat us in alphabetical order and then tried to get us fired up about the “concept of variables.” We all just kind of stared while he and X danced around the chalkboard.

  In history, Mr. Holgartner thought he’d be real tricky and sat us in reverse alphabetical order. Then he told us we’d be watching a lot of films in his class and proceeded to pop in a video of an ancient black-and-white movie about settlers of the West. It might have been an okay film, but the narrator’s voice kept warbling around and the tracking kept going off. I wanted to put my head down, but Mr. Holgartner was working on something right next to me, so I had to sit there and pretend to be interested.

  When lunchtime finally rolled around, I was already tired of being in junior high.

  Marissa ran to get a hot lunch while I staked out a table on the patio. When she finally came back, she unwrapped her hamburger and said, “So what were you trying to tell me in homeroom this morning?”

  I take a bite of my peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich and say, “You’re not going to believe what happened yesterday—” Then I see Heather heading straight for our table. I nudge Marissa with my foot. “Uh-oh. Here comes Scarlett O’Hair.”

  “Who?” Marissa turns around to see, then whispers, “She’s not coming over here, is she?”

  Well, sure enough, Heather sits down, right next to Marissa.

  Marissa dips a French fry into her catsup and tries to ignore her.

  Heather says, “Hey, that looks really good. Can I have some?”

  Now the hamburger and fries do not look good. They look shriveled-up and greasy. Marissa looks at her and says, “Where’s your lunch?”

  Heather lets out a pathetic little sigh. “Mom sent me to school with no lunch money. She wanted me to brown-bag it.” She looks at me. “Like I want to be associated with nerds who do that.”

  I pull an apple out of my lunch sack. “Why don’t you go ask one of your friends for a loan?”

  Heather gives me this catty little smile, then does something really weird—she moves over to my side of the table, gets right in my face, and says, “Was I talking to you?”

  I stare right back at her. “Maybe not, but I’m talking to you. You don’t even know us and you’re trying to mooch food?”

  She gives me that smile again, then says to Marissa, “I just need a few bu
cks for lunch. C’mon, you can afford it.”

  Marissa looks at me and what she’s thinking is, Oh no! Not already! Because when we were in the sixth grade everyone was always asking her for money, and she could never just tell them to get lost.

  Marissa whispers, “Taylor.”

  Heather smiles and says, “Yeah. He tells me you’re loaded.”

  I say, “Just bug off, would you?”

  Well Heather doesn’t bug off. What she does is she gives me another catty little smile; then she sticks me in the butt with a pin.

  I yelp and jump about three feet off the bench. Heather laughs, and as she’s leaving she says to Marissa, “You gotta dump the deadweight if you want to get anywhere around here.”

  For a second there my mouth is hanging wide open, and I’m dancing around because my butt is burning and I can’t believe what’s just happened.

  Marissa glances over her shoulder at Heather and then back at me. “What happened? Sammy, what did she do?”

  Well, my heart’s pounding and my palms are starting to get all sweaty, and before I can stop myself I’m off the bench, chasing after Heather. I push through a crowd of people and when I get up to her I turn her around by the shoulder and punch her. Right in the nose.

  Blood gushes all over the place and she starts screaming at the top of her lungs. And what do I do? I walk right back to our table and take a great big bite of peanut butter and jelly.

  Heather’s across the patio, screaming like crazy, and there’s a bunch of kids around her trying to get a better look at all the blood running down her face. Marissa says, “What happened?”

  “She stuck me in the butt with a pin so I punched her in the nose.”

  Marissa’s eyes bug right out. “You did what?”

  “I punched her in the nose.”

  Marissa’s still dumbfounded and I’m still gnashing away on my peanut butter and jelly when this man in a suit and a scuba watch shows up. He says, “The kids tell me you’re the one who punched Heather in the nose. Is that right?”

  Now the man looks like he could be a professional wrestler if he’d let his hair grow out and get a suntan. And it seems kind of dangerous lying to him, so I swallow the last bite of sandwich, then nod and say, “That’s right. But I only did it because she stuck me in the butt with a pin.”

  “Mmm-hmm. Come with me.”

  As he’s marching me away from the patio, I look over my shoulder and ask, “What about Heather?”

  “The nurse is attending to her. I’ll have a talk with her when I’m done with you.”

  So I follow him to an office with a big brass plaque on the door that reads: MR. CAAN, VICE PRINCIPAL. We go inside and it’s finally dawning on me that I’m in some pretty serious trouble.

  Mr. Caan sits me down and tells me how nobody saw Heather do anything to me but that everybody saw me pop her in the nose. He lectures me about maturity and “brawling” on his campus, and when he finally asks me if I have anything to say for myself, I say, “Yes!” and tell him how Heather’s been picking on me the whole day. And when I’m finally done and he’s still looking like he doesn’t believe me, I stand up and offer to show him the spot where Heather tattooed me.

  He stutters a minute and winds up saying no, that won’t be necessary. Then he hurries me out of his office, straight to the Box.

  The Box is a room that’s even smaller than Grams’ closet. It’s got nothing on the walls but paint, nothing but a light on the ceiling, and in the middle of all that nothingness is a rusty metal chair. That’s it. Basically it’s just a big box where they stick you when you’ve been bad.

  Mr. Caan didn’t call it the Box, though. He called it the Reflection Room. What he said was, “Samantha, I think you should spend a little time in our Reflection Room thinking about what you’ve done today. Spend some time reflecting on why hitting Heather was not a good solution to your problem with her.” When I stepped inside he said, “I’ll be back for you in a little while,” and then closed the door tight.

  I spent some time looking around at the cinder-block walls, wondering how in the world I could’ve gotten into so much trouble on my first day of junior high. Then I started thinking about Heather. I mean sure, I’d punched her in the nose, but I wasn’t the one who’d started it. Why was I “reflecting” in the Box when Heather was out roaming around? And what kind of lies was she out there telling about me? And why did they believe her and not me?

  The longer I sat there, the more positive I was that a punch in the nose was exactly what Heather Acosta had coming to her. I decided that if it ever happened again I’d punch that snotty little nose of hers all right, only this time I’d do it twice.

  When Mr. Caan finally came back he stood there, kind of tapping the face of his watch. Finally he says, “Samantha, I’d like you to come back to my office for a few minutes. There are some things I’d like to discuss with you.”

  So I follow him to his office, thinking that it’s going to be really hard for me to tell him I’m sorry about hitting Heather when I’m not.

  Trouble is, he doesn’t ask me anything about Heather or the punch in the nose. What he does is sit me down in his office and say, “Samantha, I just got off the phone from a very strange conversation…”

  All of a sudden I really am sorry that I punched Heather in the nose. All of a sudden I’m feeling kind of sick to my stomach, wishing I could go back in time and take it all back. I know exactly what he’s going to say. It’s all over—Grams couldn’t take it anymore and wound up telling him everything.

  But what comes out of his mouth is “...with your mother.”

  “With my…mother?” I say, and then for once in my life I shut up. I mean, did he think Grams was my mom? Did he get Grams to give him my mother’s number in Hollywood? Did Grams pretend to be my mom? I didn’t know what to think. Grams had told me that if anyone ever called the apartment looking for my mom she would just tell them she was taking care of me while my mother was visiting her sick sister. My aunt Veronica...or was it Victoria? I can’t remember. Lady Lana doesn’t have a sister, so it doesn’t really matter; it’s just that that’s what Grams told me she would do. And since Mr. Caan was sitting there behind his desk playing with his diving watch, not saying a word about anyone’s sick sister, I didn’t know what to think.

  He studies the band of his watch. “Yes, Samantha, your mother. She sounded a bit...odd. Is she ill?”

  Ill? How am I supposed to know? I don’t even know who he talked to. I look down. “Ummm...some days are better than others.”

  He “hmmm”s and “uh”s for a minute and then finally says, “Is it serious?”

  “Well...she doesn’t really like to talk about it.”

  “I see.” He goes back to studying his watch. Finally he says, “What do you suppose she had to say about what happened here today?”

  I look down at my high-tops and say, “It depends. Did you tell her about Heather sticking me with a pin? Or”— I look up at him—“did you only tell her about me hitting her in the nose?”

  He just sits there playing with his watch some more, so I plow right ahead. “Besides, I didn’t even hit her that hard—”

  He looks straight at me. “Young lady, Heather was in such pain that they’ve taken her to the doctor.”

  His voice is getting a bit loud, but does that stop me? “Well, I’d rather be at the doctor’s than stuck inside that stupid box for an hour!”

  That does it. He stands up and says, “It is obvious that you haven’t spent enough time reflecting on why hitting someone is never a solution to a problem. Your mother has been informed that you will be suspended tomorrow, and when you come back to school, you are to shake hands with Heather and put this whole incident behind you. Is that clear?”

  I stare at him. “Suspended?” I mean, I haven’t even been in school a whole day. How can he suspend me? People get suspended for starting fires in the bathroom or for passing out cigarettes. But me? Suspended? For this? “You’ve g
ot to be kidding!”

  That makes him even madder. “This is no joke! And when you come back, I’d darned well better see an attitude adjustment, young lady!”

  He practically pushed me out of his office, and then he made me sit in the front hallway for the rest of the day. When school was finally over, I didn’t even bother to go back to homeroom for my backpack. I just ran home.

  * * *

  I’d gotten clear over to Maynard’s Market when Marissa caught up with me. She swings off her bike and pants, “Sammy! Sammy, why didn’t you wait?”

  I shrugged. “I was too mad.”

  She walks next to me, pushing her bike, and I don’t know why but she whispers, “Everyone’s saying you got suspended!”

  “Yeah.”

  “Cool!”

  I stopped walking. “Cool? What do you mean, cool?”

  “You don’t have to go back to that zoo tomorrow. You get to do anything you want—that’s cool!”

  I rolled my eyes. “Right. I’ll probably get grounded or shipped off to live with my mother. Real cool, Marissa. If you think being suspended’s so cool, why didn’t you punch Heather in the nose?”

  “Aw c’mon, Sammy. She didn’t stick me with a pin...” Then she says, “But I did go in and talk to Mr. Caan after school. I told him everything that happened.”

  “And...?”

  She looked down. “And he says it doesn’t matter who started it, you’re not supposed to go around hitting people.”

  I just shook my head and punched the “Walk” button on the stoplight.

  Marissa says, “Hey! Let me buy you a Double Dynamo.”

  Now normally I would’ve just said, “Nah, that’s okay.” I don’t like Marissa buying me stuff, even though she tries to do it all the time. But I thought about it a minute and decided that, yeah, she could buy me an ice cream cone. It was hot, I was hungry, and it was on account of Marissa’s not being able to tell Heather to bug off that I was in so much trouble—well, sort of anyway. So we turned around and walked into Maynard’s Market.

  And standing at the counter, with her mountain of hair looking extra shellacked, was the lady from the Heavenly Hotel.