The instant they’ve left the room, I scoot Grams along so I can get out from behind the door, then I grab her hand and put my finger in front of my lips. “We’ve got to move fast,” I whisper. I pull her out of the bathroom, across the kitchen, and through the front door. Then I yank her back inside our apartment, flip around quick, and lock our door. “Good grief, Grams, what were you thinking?” She’s shaking like mad, so I grab her hand again and drag her into the kitchen. “You have to call Mr. Garnucci. Now.”
“Why?”
“Tell him you hear noises next door. Tell him you think Mrs. Wedgewood’s apartment is being ransacked.”
She just stands there, so I snatch the phone off the hook, dial, and stick the receiver up to her ear. “Yes, Vince?” she says when he answers. “This is Rita. I’m terribly frightened. It sounds like Rose’s apartment is being ransacked! Yes … yes, I’m sure! Can you please hurry? Yes … yes … I’ll stay right here.”
“Perfect,” I tell her when she hangs up the phone.
“How can you be so calm?” she asks. “We almost got caught!” Then she says, “I can’t believe they walked right inside someone else’s apartment! The nerve!”
I blink at her. “Hello? Like you didn’t do the same thing?”
“I had a key!”
“They did, too! I locked the door after I came in!”
“You did?”
“Yes!”
“How did they get a key?”
“I have no idea!” I fly around grabbing my backpack and checking for anything that might give me away, then head for her bedroom. “I’d better hide.”
Dorito’s already in the closet when I duck inside it. And I just sit there, in the dark, petting my cat for what seems like forever, until finally Grams peeks in and says, “He’s here!”
“It’s about time,” I grumble.
After a few minutes she pops back and says, “I’m going over!” Then after that she comes hurrying back every now and then to give me an update. “He caught them red-handed!” “The pillowcases were stuffed full!” “They’d disconnected her DVD player!” “They emptied her freezer! Her freezer.”
She was gone for a long time after that, and when she finally came back, she opened the door wide and said, “Everyone’s gone.”
“Everyone?”
“Well, I tipped off Gwenith and she took care that the rest of the building heard.” She hrmphs. “And they thought they could frame me!”
My legs are super-stiff, so I kind of groan as I stand up and say, “They weren’t going to frame you, Grams. They were just going to let everyone else assume it was you.”
She hrmphs again. “Same thing.”
I shake my head. “I thought you didn’t care what happened to Mrs. Wedgewood. Why would you risk going over there?”
“I didn’t think I was risking anything! How was I to know that Fran and Sally would trick Vince out of a key?”
“They tricked him? How’s that?”
“I’m not sure, but that’s what he was yelling at them. I’ve never seen him so mad! I hope he gives those two the boot!”
“But not you, right?”
“I wasn’t cleaning out Rose’s apartment! I didn’t go in there with pillowcases!” She rolls her eyes. “You should have seen those two! They looked ridiculous!”
All of a sudden I’m picturing them, blue-haired and beak-nosed, hunched over with their pillow sacks flung over their shoulders, wearing masks and stretchy suits—one yellow and one red—with thick black rubbery old-lady shoes on their feet and black gloves on their hands.
They have big screwdrivers.
In holsters.
And then Justice Jack appears in between them with his big Hefty sack flung over his shoulder and—
“Samantha?”
“Huh?”
“Did you hear a word I just said?”
“What’s that?”
“I was telling you about this.”
She’s holding a sheet of lined paper that had obviously been folded up quick because the creases are pretty crooked. It had also been ripped out of a spiral notebook, because there are little frayed ends poking out everywhere.
“What is it?”
She opens it better and hands it over. “I don’t know, but there were pages and pages and pages like this. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it.”
I study the paper, and she’s right—it is strange. It’s like lab notes with rows and columns of numbers, and lots and lots of little fraction exponents. Which would seem to make it some kind of scientific notes, but (a) Mrs. Wedgewood doesn’t seem like the scientific kind at all, and (b) there are also words. Words that have nothing to do with any kind of lab or science. Words like Tripteaser and Over-n-Out and Dusk Before Dawn and Inevitable and Just Kidding and Sexy Librarian.
I look at Grams. “Sexy Librarian? What is this?”
“Exactly.” She shakes her head. “It seems that there’s a whole side to Rose we know nothing about.”
I snort, “Hard to believe,” because after the number of times Grams and I have hoisted her back onto her toilet, after finding her upside down and backward and bare-bottom-up, I was sure we’d seen all sides of her.
But this was strange.
“Did you notice the numbers only go from one to six?” I ask her.
She looks over my shoulder and points to a bunch of big numbers in the margin. “What about this over here?”
“Yeah, I don’t know.”
The phone rings, and since we’re standing right by it, we both jump. But when Grams picks it up and says hello, she’s steady as can be. “Oh yes,” she says, winking at me. “Isn’t it scandalous? … Unbelievable.… You’re right—I can’t imagine doing something like that!”
I shake my head and roll my eyes.
My own grandmother.
Sneaky, sneaky, sneaky.
FOURTEEN
That night I had a dream that old biddies were rappelling down the side of the Highrise on fat ropes, wearing stretchy suits and masks and capes. They had empty pillowcases clamped between their teeth, and came to a stop outside our window and started trying to break in with a screwdriver and credit card.
Then all of a sudden Justice Jack appears inside the apartment and tells me to hide. So I squeeze under the couch, where I’m all hot and smooshed. Like a grilled cheese sammich being flattened with a spatula.
“Be gone!” Justice Jack cries through the window at the old biddies, and just like that, poof, they’re gone.
“Beware, young one,” he says, hanging upside down to look at me under the couch. “Evil is out to destroy you!” And then, poof, just like that, he’s gone, too.
But I’m still stuck under the couch, and can’t seem to move. And I get this total panic attack where I’m struggling like mad to get out from under the couch but I’m not getting anywhere and I can’t breathe.
And then, just like that, poof, I’m sitting up, gasping for air.
Awake.
Grams is standing over me holding Dorito, shaking her head. “We really need to do something about this cat sleeping on your head.” She looks up and down the length of the couch and tisks. “You can’t even stretch out anymore, can you?”
“It’s fine, Grams,” I tell her, but she’s right. The couch seems smaller every night.
And Dorito’s sure not helping.
Anyway, maybe it was all the feeling boxed in, I don’t know, but I was actually happy to be on my way to school. Happy to be free and moving.
The great thing about a skateboard is, you can pump hard, just cruise, or mix it up. Normally, I ride hard to school because I’m late, but I do like to mix it up. It feels good to really push yourself, and then go, Ahhhhhh, and enjoy it. And since for once I wasn’t running late, I had a lot of fun riding to school.
All that feel-good goes away, though, when I shuffle up the school steps and run into Billy. “Hey, Sammy,” he says, and it sounds really flat. Like he’s been steamrollered and can
’t peel himself up.
I tell him hey back, and after standing there a minute, I blurt out, “Look, Marissa may be my best friend, but she’s crazy and she’s wrong and she’s stupid when it comes to this.”
“I just don’t get it,” he says as we walk along together. “I thought everything was fine.” He looks at me. “I thought everything was good.”
And that’s when it hits me.
He doesn’t know about Danny.
And I realize I have to make a decision.
Am I Billy’s friend, too?
Or just Marissa’s.
Does this drag out until he finds out the hard way?
Or do I rip the Band-Aid off and just get it over with.
Holly’s always telling me to listen to my gut, so that’s what I do. “She got a call from Danny, Billy.”
“What?”
He looks shocked, so I snort and say, “Yeah, exactly. But what’s stupid is, she’s falling for his smooth-talking apologies and she thinks he deserves a second chance.”
He’s quiet for a long time, and finally he says, “So they’re going out?”
“No. He’s just snowed her into thinking there’s a chance they’ll go out.”
He shakes his head. “So we’re back to the top of the slide.”
“Yeah. We had a big argument about it. I think she’s being an idiot.” I give him a little shove. “We might have broken up over you.”
He stops walking and squeezes me with a hug. And when he finally lets go, he seems to be more like his old self. “So why didn’t you?”
I grin. “You can thank Justice Jack for that.”
“Justice Jack,” he chuckles. “That dude is awesome.”
“Yeah, well, he was handing out ‘Justice Jackets’ to the homeless at the police station when Marissa and I were walking by fighting about you, and it sorta distracted us.”
“Justice Jackets?” He full on laughs. “That dude is righteously awesome.”
So I felt better about Billy’s state of mind when we split up to go to our homerooms, but later when we converged outside of history, he was back to being bummed out.
“Aw, Billy.”
He gives a little shrug and is about to say something, but then all of a sudden Lars is there whooshing his hair, hovering, making everything totally awkward. “Hey,” he says, then just stands there.
“What’s up?” I ask him.
Whoosh.
Then he looks down and says, “Sasha says thanks.”
My eyebrows take a little stretch. And I want to say, Oh, really? because Sasha isn’t exactly the thanking kind. But for some reason what comes out of my mouth is, “So everything’s okay?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know what to do. She’s trapped and her parents are, like, jail keepers. She cries all the time.”
He’s actually not being annoying or condescending. At that moment he just seems like a guy who’s miserable and kinda desperate. So I ask, “How do you know? Do they let you talk on the phone?”
He pulls a mini-book of folded papers out of his back pocket. “We write notes.” He unfolds the papers and shows us. The writing is scrawled, single-spaced, and double-sided. “This was just from this morning!”
“I wouldn’t call that a note,” Billy says. “And how did she get it to you?”
“We have a secret rock. I rode out there before school.”
I look at Lars. “So, like, at six-thirty this morning you rode out to Sisquane?”
He nods. “My parents think I’ve joined the cycling team.”
The bell rings, and as we start filing up the ramp, I ask, “Have you tried talking to her parents? Like maybe you could get, I don’t know—supervised visits, or whatever?”
He snorts. “Just like jail.” And suddenly he’s back to being Lofty Lars, acting like he’s smarter than everyone around.
“What could it hurt?” I ask, but he just shakes his head like it’s the stupidest idea ever, and with another head whoosh he bolts up the ramp ahead of us.
“Rock of Loooove,” Billy snickers like a lounge lizard, and for that instant he seems like the old Billy again.
And then Heather rushes by to beat the bell. There’s still actual cigarette smoke coming out of her mouth as she turns and says to Billy, “Your girlfriend’s two-timing, you know.”
I wanted to shove her over the guardrail. What kind of person gloats about something like that? But she was already at the door, so I just called, “Your life’s an ashtray, Heather.”
Whatever that was supposed to mean.
Anyway, I was really glad that I’d followed my gut and told Billy about Marissa and Danny. It hadn’t even crossed my mind that Heather would knife him with the news, but of course she did.
That’s just Heather.
During class I kept trying to catch Billy’s eye and give him a smile or whatever, but Sad Billy was back and by the end of class he looked like Eeyore with a dark little cloud hanging over him.
I tried to give him a pep talk between classes but he didn’t want to hear it. Then at lunch he didn’t show up at our usual meeting place, and since Holly and Dot were in the dark about Marissa’s little relapse, lunch was small-talky and awkward, with Marissa being a little too chatty and cheerful and me being quiet and glum.
Finally Holly asks, “What’s going on?” because obviously something’s not right.
I stand up and collect my garbage. “Ask Marissa.” Then I take off. And since Billy’s in both my classes after lunch, I got to see him sit through them all quiet and bummed.
Got to watch his little cloud get heavier and darker.
Unfortunately, Heather is also in those two classes, so I got to see her be all smug.
Got to watch her eye Billy and sneer.
And because Marissa is in sixth period, too, I got to watch her act like nothing was wrong.
“You’re being just like your parents!” I finally hissed at her.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she hissed back.
“Their whole world is falling apart because your dad has an addiction, and they try to pretend like nothing’s wrong!”
“I don’t have an addiction, and the world isn’t falling apart!”
“Yes, you do, and Billy’s world sure is!”
Well, she didn’t want to hear about that, so she huffed off and never came back. And after school she just cut out a side door.
So I ended school the way I’d started it—on the steps with Billy and my skateboard. “You meeting up with Casey?” he asked, but it sounded all choked. Like he was trying really hard not to break down.
“I’m thinking I’ll hang with you for a while.”
He stops moving and his head wobbles a little, and then he just sits down. Right there in the middle of the school steps, he just sits down. “She didn’t even say hi.”
So I sit down next to him, and, really, I don’t know what to say.
She’s a jerk?
She’s an idiot?
You deserve way better?
Finally I say a real lame “I don’t think she handled it very well, that’s for sure.”
He just gives a dejected shrug.
“Look, I don’t understand it, but she’s stuck on Danny, and I don’t see her getting unstuck.”
He shakes his head and stands up. “I need to go do something.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know.” He thumps down a few steps and says, “I wish I could find Justice Jack. I’d get in his sidecar and ride.”
And that’s when it hits me that I know something that’ll totally take Billy’s mind off of Marissa.
Something that’ll have him jumping up and down with excitement.
Something I know I should absolutely not tell him.
But he’s my friend.
And totally miserable.
So I do.
FIFTEEN
“You know where he lives?” Billy squeals. “Can we go?”
“I don?
??t know, Billy,” I tell him, trying to build up the suspense. “It’s top-secret.”
Billy drops his voice. “So how do you know?”
I drop mine, too. “I can’t tell you.”
He turns on the puppy-dog eyes. “Take me to the secret hideaway, please, please, pleeeeeeease?”
I frown at him. “You’ve got to swear to secrecy.”
“Cross my heart and hope to die-aye-aye!” he says, making a great big X over his heart.
In the back of my mind I am having doubts, but I try to block those out. I mean, what can it hurt to take a peek, right?
After all, he’s crossed his heart and hoped to die-aye-aye.
“Okay,” I tell him, and then ask him to get a message to Casey to call Billy’s cell when the high school’s dismissed so I can let him know that I won’t be meeting him at the graveyard. But also, since I’m on kind of a reckless roll, I’m thinking maybe he can meet us at Justice Jack’s secret hideaway. For one thing, I want to see him, but I’m also thinking that it might be a good idea to hand Billy off to him afterward so Billy’s not alone when he comes crashing down again about Marissa.
Getting ahold of Casey is really complicated because his mom decided she could keep us from talking to each other by taking away his phone. So now we have this elaborate relay system, which includes people Billy knows at the high school, code names, and pay phones.
Anyway, after a few minutes of texting, Billy closes his phone and says, “Done!” Then he looks at me with happy eyes. “Lead me to my leader!”
I cock my head. “Doesn’t that make me your leader?”
Billy thinks a minute. “Very well, then. Leader, lead me to the supreme leader!”
“He’s not my leader,” I grumble. “And we’re only going to his secret hideout, not him, got it?”
“Got it! Now lead on!”
So I set off, saying, “I’m trusting you, okay? No sharing this with anyone anywhere anytime.”
He gives me a snappy salute. “Your wish is my command!”
“I don’t know if you’re going to like seeing it, Billy.”
“Why?”
“Well … what do you think his secret hideaway’s like? A cave? A hidden underground laboratory with a thick steel door? A penthouse suite?”