As for personal preparations, I psyched myself up. I wanted to play it cool. I would try to be witty and inviting, but not too inviting. I assumed one of the security guards would be taking the password, and as long as I could get by, then I could stay under the radar inside.
I practiced faces in the mirror, working on an expression that hopefully said, Feel free to tell me all your secrets.
“What are you doing, Pipe?”
I jumped and turned at the same time. My dad was standing behind me, watching me make faces in the mirror.
“Nothing,” I said, short of breath. “Why?”
“You look like you’re somewhere between very confused and very hungry.”
I sighed. “I was going for trustworthy.”
“Ah. Try a little less frown. And not quite so much squint in your eye.”
I adjusted my look.
“There. That’s a little less constipated looking.”
“I thought you said ‘confused and hungry’?”
“Yeah, I meant constipated. Why are you practicing a trustworthy face?”
I bobby-pinned a clump of my hair up to keep it from falling into my eyes. Must stay sharp and not obscure my vision!
“I got invited to a party at the Spanish embassy.” I didn’t tell him I was using the term “invited” loosely. “This, Dad, is where I get the scoop.”
He smiled. “I’m glad you have your fire back. I’ll leave you to practice your faces.”
“Thank you.”
I started singing along with the song on my playlist. Michael walked by. “Stop singing,” he said. “You’re ruining everything.”
As he walked away, I smiled. At least I’d never have to wonder what he was really thinking. I worked on my facial expressions again, focusing on the changes my dad had suggested, frowning a little less and widening my eyes. Once I’d settled on a face a nation could trust—I dubbed it the “Walter Cronkite”—I texted Charlotte again.
Me: I’m ready! Recording devices set, facial expressions mastered, notebook in hand.
Charlotte: Great! What are you wearing?
Crap! I glanced up from my screen and looked in the mirror again.
Me: Hello Kitty T-shirt. Jeans. Sneakers . . .
She texted me a “grrrrr” emoji.
Charlotte: You don’t want to repel your assets, do you?
Me: Ack! No! What should I wear?
Charlotte: Wear your jeans, those black boots with the silver thingies, and the shirt we bought that one time when your finger got caught in the dressing room door.
Everyone needs a best friend who can say, Wear that one thing from that one time and you know exactly what they’re talking about.
I rifled through my closet until I found the outfit, changed into it, and took a mirror pic to send to Charlotte.
Perfect. Now get that piece of lettuce between your teeth.
I pulled my lips back from my teeth and, sure enough, there it was. What would I do without her?
I drove my car to the Spanish embassy. I was pretty sure I was the only one who’d driven their own car. The lot was jam-packed with long black sedans and drivers leaning against doors, drinking coffee and smoking.
I pulled up to the gate. A man in a blue security uniform strode out of a guard station and over to my car.
“Yes?”
“Um . . . Luchar contra el hombre?”
I’d looked up the phrase at home. It roughly translated to “fight the man.” Whatever that meant to someone like Raf.
The guard nodded. “Reason for visit?”
To uncover and expose the underground network known as “diplomatic immunity.”
“A party?”
He frowned. Then he asked for my license, and after looking at it, his frown deepened.
No way was I going to be turned away at the gate. What would Christiane Amanpour do?
She’d say something in Arabic that would be just the right thing that would convince the guard to let her through. Because that was her specialty.
What could I do here?
I could speak in Spanish.
“¿Dónde está la baño?”
He looked up from my license, and as he handed it back, he said, “There are twenty-two bathrooms inside. I’m sure you’ll find one to your liking. And it’s ‘el baño.’ Not ‘la.’”
I could feel the heat reach my cheeks. “Right. Thank you. I guess you’re not available for Spanish lessons?”
He didn’t even acknowledge that I’d spoken again. He just pressed a button, and there was a buzzing noise, and he opened the gate.
I parked my old Toyota behind the sea of black sedans. When I got out, a man in a tuxedo approached me and asked for my keys. I handed them over and he started to walk away.
“Wait, don’t you need my name?”
He held the keys up with just his thumb and forefinger and said, “I think I’ll remember the girl with the Toyota.”
I went to the door and looked up at the ornate knocker. The gold in it could’ve paid for my college tuition, I was sure. Maybe instead of going for the Bennington, I should just steal the knocker.
Okay, Pipe. Slip inside and blend in. Slip and blend. Slip and blend.
Unexpectedly, the door flew open. Even more unexpectedly, it was Raf. My heart did a little twitterpation, and I considered diving into the bushes, but at this point in our relationship, that would be cliché.
“Pip?” he said, looking confused.
“I . . . uh . . . I . . .” Crap. What could I say? “I followed a . . . dog.”
“A dog?”
I shook my head. “A car. I thought I knew it?”
“The car?”
“The driver.”
He narrowed his eyes.
“And I thought it was my cousin. Who has been missing.”
“Your cousin’s missing?” he said, true concern on his face.
I shook my head. “No. He was found. I just forgot.”
Raf scratched his forehead. “Do-over.”
Before I could say, Huh? he slammed the door shut. I just stood there. I raised my fist to knock, but before I could, the door swung open again.
“Pip! What a surprise.” His face showed everything but surprise. “Come in.”
He was wearing black jeans and a button-down white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows.
He looked really good. He gave me a smile that reached from my eye sockets to my kneecaps. I couldn’t imagine a happier reaction to a party crasher.
“Hi,” I said. It was about all my heart could manage.
No, not my heart. The heart was about love. What was the part of the body associated with simple physical attraction?
Loins.
Ugh. Why was that the first word I came up with? Stop thinking about loins!
“Are you doing that thing again where you’re having a conversation in your head, and I am merely an intruder?”
“How did you know I did that?” I said.
“Well, it’s either that or you have indigestion.”
“It’s indigestion.”
I put my hand in my pocket and felt for my phone. I wanted to keep it at the ready.
“Follow me,” Raf said, starting to look unsure as to why I was there and what he was supposed to do with me.
We started to walk out of the opulent entryway when a man appeared from one of the several hallways surrounding us. He looked like an older version of Rafael.
“Did I hear that somebody has indigestion?” he asked. Before either of us could answer, he motioned to a pretty woman in a dark suit who was following him. “Lidia, could you get some club soda and that powder Mrs. Amador swears by?”
For someone who was scary and had a history of getting people fired, he seemed pretty nice.
Lidia nodded curtly, made a note on the clipboard she was carrying, and rushed off.
My cheeks flushed. I could feel them burn. There was no way I was going to yell and stop her and try to explain
I didn’t have indigestion.
Raf didn’t stop her either, although I’m sure he knew I didn’t have stomach problems.
“Papa. I’d like you to meet Pipper Baird. She’s new at our school. Pip, meet His Excellency, Leon Gabriel Amador, the Spanish ambassador to the United States.”
Whoa. Quite a title.
Raf’s dad held out his hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Baird.”
“The pleasure’s mine. Your . . . Highness.”
Raf stifled a laugh, but his father merely smiled bigger.
“‘Mr. Amador’ will do. Especially for friends of Rafael’s. After all, you should’ve heard the names his mother called me as Rafael was being born.”
“Papa!” Raf said, looking embarrassed. I’d never seen him look embarrassed. It was adorable.
“It’s true. That’s why his middle name is—”
“Papa!”
“Leandró. It means ‘lion man.’ She was sure she had given birth to something the size of a lion.”
Raf looked to the ceiling. “Oh God,” he mumbled.
“Do you have a middle name?” his dad asked me.
I smiled a little. “Lily. It means, like, the flower.”
“And what do your parents do?” he asked.
“Um, my dad works for the Power and Light Company.”
“Ah.” Mr. Amador looked confused, maybe because he didn’t realize I was a scholarship student. “And your mother?”
“She takes care of me and my younger brother,” I said. “And she works nights in a bakery.”
Mr. Amador’s face lost all traces of his former smile. “Well, I’ll let you two get to it.”
Raf put his arm on my back and started leading me away. “Okay, Papa.”
We walked down a series of hallways and parlors and sitting rooms and drawing rooms. Faint music grew louder the closer we got to what I assumed was the “great room” of the house.
“I don’t think your dad likes me very much,” I said.
“He’s like that with everybody,” Raf said. He wasn’t very convincing.
We kept going in silence.
“Are you going to kick me out?” I asked.
He smiled. “I’m not the type. Besides, you must have gone to great lengths to get here. Maybe it involved stealing phones and such.” He gave me a knowing glance.
I looked away, heat filling my cheeks again.
“If you wanted to be friends so badly,” he said, “all you had to do was ask.”
I doubted it. Besides, this wasn’t about making friends.
The music became clearer, but I didn’t recognize the song. It sounded like it was in another language. German maybe? And it had a techno beat. Suddenly I imagined a giant orgy in the great room. I’d read about them in articles about the lives of the foreign privileged elite. Orgies. Drugs. Hallucinations. Sex. Cool Euro club clothing. Maybe something really weird like gnome bongs or Oompa Loompa limbo.
We were getting close to the room. What would I say if someone propositioned me?
No thanks, I have the clap?
Honestly, I didn’t even know what the clap was, but it did not sound pleasant.
Before I could come up with a respectable rejection, we turned a corner, revealing the largest room I’d ever seen.
18
It wasn’t as big as Carnegie Hall. I guess that was the only place I could really compare it to. Except for the room under the dome at the Capitol Building. But as for houses, I’d never seen anything like it.
It looked to be the length of half a football field.
The walls were covered in tapestries and paintings, and there were a dozen chandeliers overhead, but none of them were lit. The room was rather dark, except for the swirling lights from the equipment of the DJ.
The music itself seemed like an additional presence in the room. It filled the empty spaces and pressed into my ears like it wanted to bypass the eardrums and go straight to my brain.
There had to be about a hundred people inside, most dancing to the music, many drinking from clear plastic cups. I recognized a bunch of them. Mateo Lopez, Franco, Gabriel, Katie, two other girls from the paper, Pat Bagley—son of a Scottish diplomat—and a few others. A lot of faces were unfamiliar.
Raf leaned over and shouted something in my ear, but I couldn’t make it out exactly. Did he say, Grab a drink?
Giselle emerged from the crowd on the dance floor, carrying an extra clear plastic cup. She handed it to me with a smile and then she seemed to register my face. She gave me a confused look.
Hi? I was sure she shouted, but it looked more like she just mouthed the word.
I took the plastic cup and mouthed, or shouted, Thank you, even though I couldn’t hear which way I’d said it. I was glad the music was too loud for her to ask any questions.
Giselle rejoined the party in the middle of the floor, and I was suddenly alone, holding a cup, so I took a drink mostly because I was feeling awkward and deserted.
Whatever was in the clear plastic cup, it was stronger than my regular juice, and a tad sparkly.
As my ears adjusted to the decibels, a girl with brown hair came up to me.
“You’re in my chemistry class,” she said.
I had no idea how I was able to make out a single syllable she’d said. Maybe I was getting used to the music. Maybe I’d killed all the fragile ear hair thingies and now I was partially deaf.
“Yeah, I’m Piper.”
“I know,” she yelled. “Thank you for getting school out early! I’m Hillary!”
“I didn’t do it!”
“What?”
“The fire. I didn’t . . . Never mind!”
She sat there, smiling, waiting for me to say something else. Why would anyone want to make small talk in all this noise? It would be like aliens came to blow up your city on Independence Day, and during the explosions, you asked your neighbor if they’d read any good books lately.
I tried to think of something, anything, we might have in common.
“Loud music, huh?” I said.
“What?” she shouted.
“Loud music . . . Never mind.”
“Huh?”
This was really pointless. I put a finger against a crack in my cup and tapped it and Hillary smiled and nodded in an oh, I get it kind of way, even though I had no idea what I’d meant. All I knew was, I wasn’t going to get a story by trying to talk over the music.
As I walked away, apparently to the emergency cup repair station, I sipped my drink and tried to check out everyone around me without looking too suspicious.
THINGS I WAS LOOKING FOR:
1. Drugs. Drug paraphernalia. Drug deals. Manila envelopes being exchanged. Joints being lit.
2. Prostitutes.
3. Cops looking the other way.
As for number one, I couldn’t find anything that looked like rolled joints, or under-the-table deals, or a bong. I’d seen enough television shows to know what a bong looked like.
Number two, there were several girls on the dance floor about whom one could make the argument that they were dressed like prostitutes. But they really looked to be about my age, and their clothes were designer and tailored. No safety pins or hand-me-downs there.
As for number three, I knew there wouldn’t be literal cops in the room, looking the other way. But what about the security detail? Where were they while their subjects were partying hard?
I glanced at the walls. Oh. There they were, their dark suits blending against the unlit walls as they stood back and watched their charges.
What, were they going to just stand there while their teenage charges . . . did . . . their thing?
Actually, the thing most of the people in the room were doing was dancing. And sipping responsibly from their cups.
I took another swig, the music sounding twice as loud as it had been before. Wasn’t it supposed to sound softer as the tiny hairs in your ears became permanently damaged? What were those ear hairs called? The on
es that registered sound waves. Stereo-cilia?
I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to see Raf. He leaned toward me and put his lips on my ear. On my ear.
“You seem miles away!” he shouted. “Are we not entertaining you?”
I used my pointer fingers to make circle motions in the air.
Raf nodded. Loud.
He motioned toward the DJ lights and the music went down one decibel. Then he took my wrist and raised the hand holding my cup and poured some more pink sparkly stuff in it.
“Sangria!” he said. “From Spain. My family makes it.”
I heard him better this time. “It’s delicious!” I took another sip. “Does it have alcohol?”
He wrinkled his eyebrows. “Yes. It’s like sparkly wine.”
“Ah. I’ve never had the alcohol!”
His eyes went wide, and he went to grab the cup from my hand, but I yanked it away, the liquid sloshing a little over the sides.
“It’s not because I haven’t wanted to! It’s because my dad used to participate in the ‘Not a Drop before Twenty-One’ neighborhood campaign.” It was a small campaign, consisting of the houses in our cul-de-sac.
Raf still seemed uneasy—or maybe he just hadn’t heard my infallible reasoning over the music—and looked like he was ready to pounce on my cup again, but right then, Giselle came up and put her arm around his neck, kissing him on the cheek. At least, I think it was supposed to be a kiss on the cheek, but she ended up very close to his lips. Where was Raf’s security guy when I needed him?
I mean, when Raf needed him.
“Dance with me!” she said.
He smiled and nodded, but before he left, he quickly switched my cup with his. His had less of the . . . what was it called? Santaria? Santa Maria?
I didn’t like the idea of someone else dictating what I could and couldn’t drink, even though I guess technically the law did that. But I was in Spain. It was no longer my law. And when in Spain . . .
I switched my cup with the cup of the guy standing next to me. His had more in it. He gave me an annoyed look, which was weird because all the cups looked alike, and he could just go get more of the drink whenever he wanted it. Who was this guy?
“Who is this guy?” I shouted at him.
He looked side to side and then pointed at himself. “Who am I? As in, what’s my name?”