And the text—Heather sent it!
And Heather spying on us through Hudson’s window—she hadn’t followed us home, she hadn’t even been at school that day. She’d done a reverse lookup after Marissa had left Casey a message!
“Oh my God,” I mumble. “Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod!” I jump up. “It was Heather! Heather stole his phone! Heather sent that text! Heather forged that note. It was Heather!”
My mother looks shocked. “Are you sure?”
I snort. “Oh, I am so sure.”
“But … I have to say—she’s been very nice to me.”
“Well, watch your back.”
Grams nods. “That girl is vicious, Lana. You have no idea.”
“Well,” my mother says, “regardless of how it happened, if this is all some big misunderstanding, you need to call Casey. Call him right now.”
Trouble is, he has a new number, and I don’t know what it is. So Mom tries to call Warren to get it from him, but his phone rolls over to voice mail.
She leaves a message, but after fifteen minutes of him not calling back, she takes a deep breath and says, “I’m loath to call Candi”—then she looks at me—“but I will.”
“Really?” It seemed a very brave thing for her to volunteer to do. And believe me, my mother does not do brave well. Or often. “You have her cell number?”
“No, but let’s try their house.” And after looking it up, she very calmly punches the number into her cell phone.
Too bad for her, Heather’s the one who answers.
“Good morning, Heather,” my mom says sweetly. “Does your brother happen to be around?”
She shakes her head at me, relaying that Heather said no.
“How about your father?” Then she adds, “Or your mother?”
Another shake, and then, “Do you have your mother’s or brother’s cell numbers? Maybe I can reach them that way. It’s pretty important.”
But of course Heather’s not about to give them up, so after another short minute, my mom says, “Well, thanks anyway,” and clicks off.
“Of course she knows them!” Grams snaps.
“And now she knows yours, too,” I say, looking at my mother.
My mom gives me a puzzled look. “Is that a problem?”
I snort and shake my head. “Oh, you have no idea.”
But at the rate things were going, it wouldn’t be too long before she did.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Casey’s dad still hadn’t called by the time I had to leave. And since my mom had been dropped off at the Senior Highrise, and since my grams doesn’t have a car, I grabbed my skateboard and made for the door.
Trouble is, Grams steps in the way. “Wait a minute,” she says. “Why don’t we call Hudson to give you a ride?”
“Because I’m already late!”
“You can’t ride a skateboard there,” my mother says. “Your hair will be completely ruined!”
“It’ll be fine. It’s, like, shellacked.”
And, really, Mrs. Tweeter would be happy, ’cause I have, like, helmet hair. But my mother produces a red silk scarf and whips it over my head. “There,” she says as she ties it under my chin. “That will keep it from blowing away.”
“I am not wearing this!” I tell her as I try to untie it. “I look like Red Riding Hood!”
“Oh, you do not!” She smiles her movie-star smile. “Red Riding Hood did not wear jeans, and she did not ride a skateboard.”
“Well, she should have,” I grumble, fumbling with what is now a knot under my chin.
Grams hurries in with my sweatshirt. “Here,” she says. “Put this on over.”
“It’s hot outside!”
“Just wear it,” Grams says, and before I know it, she has my arms in and the hood up over the silk scarf. “Just tie it, and no one will even notice.”
Both of them are blocking the door, and I know I’m not getting out of the apartment without protecting my foo-foo hairdo. So I grumble, “Oh, good grief,” and tie down the hood. “There. You happy? Now can I please go?”
They step aside, and after we’re sure the hallway’s clear, I zip over to the fire escape door, slip outside, then charge down the steps and out of there.
I actually thought about going by the Acostas’. I mean, knowing Heather, Casey was at home. Probably in the room right next door to where she’d been lying to my mom through her teeth.
My ridiculous hair is what stopped me.
That and the fact that I was already half an hour late.
Anyway, when I get to Debra’s, the door’s half open, so I put my skateboard on the porch and walk right in. And since I’m hot, the first thing I do is dump my sweatshirt.
Debra sees me and does a double take. “Sams?”
“Yeah, it’s me,” I grumble, wrestling with the knot under my chin. “Can you undo this thing?”
She comes over and has it off in a flash. “Wow,” she says, taking me in. “I was not expectin’ this.”
“Blame my mother,” I grumble.
“Oooh, I like your mother!” she says with a laugh, then calls, “Tippy! Brandi! Come here!”
The other two bridesmaids appear and start making a fuss. And with their blond hairdos and the way they’re clucking around me, I feel like I’m cornered by a scary bunch of oversized chicks.
“Hey!” I tell them, backing away. “It’s just hair!” I look around. “Isn’t there work to do?”
“There sure is,” Tippy Toes says. “We are behind on everything!”
Debra checks the clock. “Someone’s got to get over to the church. The flowers and cake are supposed to be delivered any minute.”
“I still need to redo that broken nail for you,” Brandi says.
“And I’m still tying ribbons on the favors,” Tippy Toes says.
I look at Debra. “So that leaves me. What do I do?”
“Just go down there. The cake goes in that little back kitchen—make sure it’s nowhere near the window—and the florist’ll know where to put the flowers. I’ll just feel a lot better knowing they’ve arrived.”
So off I go on my skateboard, down Elm to Constance Street, where I hang a right and head for the church. And really, I’m taking it easy. I mean, there is wind in my hair, but I’m making sure it’s not, you know, gusty or anything. And because I’m not going very fast or having to focus too hard on what’s ahead of me, I’m able to do a little looking around. And what I see as I roll past the second house on Constance Street is an SUV in the driveway.
A dirty blue SUV with three faded oval stickers on its chalky, dinged-up bumper.
Now, I don’t exactly fall off my skateboard, but I do slow waaaay down. I mean, running into your teachers around town is plenty strange enough. Especially when they’re wearing do-rags and sucking down beer with a bunch of bikers. But even when you run into normal teachers, it just throws you to see them someplace besides school. It’s like they’re haunting you. Spying on you. Reminding you that you have homework.
Of course, they always act like they don’t want to see you, either, so maybe it goes both ways.
Anyway, running into a teacher in the mall or in a store is one thing.
Finding out where they live?
That’s just … weird.
So I’m not quite believing that this house I’m cruising by is where ol’ Scratch ’n’ Spit actually lives, but the SUV is the only car there, and it’s parked smack-dab in the middle of the driveway like it owns the place. And as I pass by and look over at the driver’s door, it’s easy to read the DIE DUDE that’s scratched into the paint.
I come to a stop and just stare at it. Sure, I’d seen the scratched door on Officer Borsch’s computer, but seeing it in real life made it seem even more, I don’t know, vicious.
Anyway, as I’m looking at it, I notice the area around the DIE DUDE that Officer Borsch had pointed out on the computer. Maybe it’s the way the sunlight is hitting it, but the patch over and around the DIE DUDE is very visible. Not obvious,
but definitely there. It’s rectangular and slightly darker. Cleaner. Like someone’s vacuumed off every third particle of dirt or something.
But I’m supposed to be checking on flowers and cake and stuff, so finally I make myself get going.
When I reach the church, I start up the steps, only before I get to the little front porch, a lady in jeans and a polo comes hurrying out. “You in the wedding party?” she asks, checking out my hair. I nod, and that’s good enough for her. She hands me a clipboard and a pen and says, “Sign right here.”
“What am I signing?” I ask.
“Just that I delivered the flowers,” she says. “They’re right inside.”
Now, I’ve never signed for anything before, but I can’t image she’s lying about delivering the flowers, so I take the clipboard and sign away.
“Thanks!” she says, and hurries off.
So inside the church I go. And I do find a bunch of flowers—some are in little clear plastic boxes, some are in vases, and there are all sorts of bouquet-y things—but they’re just kind of stacked on and around the table where the donuts had been the night before.
I look inside the main part of the church and see Reverend Doyle up near the altar. He’s not wearing a sweater, so at least that’s good. “Hey,” I call over to him. “Do you know what’s supposed to be done with these flowers?”
“Uh … no,” he says as he walks toward me. And then when he sees the heaps, he raises his eyebrows and says, “Not good.”
“What do you mean?”
“Usually, the florist positions them. At the end of the pews, up by the altar … that sort of thing.” He looks out the front door. “Has she left already?”
I run outside in time to see a van peeling out of the little side parking lot. It’s got a crooked sign on the sliding door that says:
BLOOMIES
YOUR FAST AND FRIENDLY FLORIST
Well, obviously, the delivery lady is taking the “fast” part of their motto seriously because she roars up the street and around the corner before I can yell, Hey, wait! So I hurry back inside and tell Reverend Doyle, “She’s already gone.”
“Hmm,” he says. “Well, I guess you’d better get busy.”
Then he walks away.
Now, I don’t know where the flowers are supposed to go, but how hard can it be? Plus, I sure don’t want to go running to Debra like a little kid and ask. So after the cake gets delivered, I start putting the flowers around the church where I think they look good. Trouble is, after about fifteen minutes Reverend Doyle sees what I’m doing and says, “Uh … you might want to get some help with that.”
I look around. “Am I doing it wrong?”
He eyes a statue near the altar. “I don’t think the bride’s bouquet is supposed to go around Jesus’ neck.”
Oh.
So I hop on my skateboard and head back to Debra’s, and after I explain the situation, there’s five frantic minutes of discussing what to do. And finally they decide that Brandi will walk back to the church with me while Tippy and Debra load the dresses and party favors and who knows what else into Debra’s car.
“This is craziness,” Brandi grumbles as we head back to the church. “I told Tippy we’d need a car, and here were are, needin’ a car.”
She’s acting pretty stressed, so I tell her, “It’s not far.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” she says, eyeing me on my skateboard. “You just roll along and it’s nothing! That’s like one of those movin’ walkways at the airport. And I’m like the fool walking alongside.”
“You want to ride?” I ask, jumping off and offering her my board.
“And break my neck?” she laughs. “That’s all Deb needs.” Then she notices the Vincenator’s car and stops dead in her tracks. “Would you look at that!” she gasps.
“Yeah,” I say, taking in the DIE DUDE again.
“Do you have biker gangs around here?”
I cock my head at her. “Biker gangs? Why’d you ask that?”
She starts walking again. “The Sturgis stickers.”
I get back on my board. “I don’t even know what Sturgis is.”
“Oh,” she says with a laugh. “Well, if you were from South Dakota like I am, you’d know that it’s a biker rally. Sturgis is actually a town, but when you see stickers like the ones on that bumper, it’s referrin’ to the rally. It happens the first week of August every year. The whole Black Hills area is crawlin’ with bikers. Half a million of them come to town. It’s ridiculous, but good for business.”
“So … bikers have gangs?”
“Well, sure. Although it’s not like it used to be. Seems like every man over forty owns a Harley now, but biker gangs used to be very dangerous. My brother, Duane, got caught up in one for a while, but he’s mellowed out a lot.” She laughs. “Not that he’s given up his Harley. His big thing now is Hogtoberfest.”
My head snaps to look at her. “What is that?”
“It’s another rally, but bikers stretch it out for the whole month of October. They start from everywhere and meet up with other bikers along the way, road-rallying across the country. By the time they roll into Texas, which is where they all meet, they’re dominating highways and whole cities. Then they have their week of drunken debauchery and all ride home. My brother lives for Hogtoberfest. He works his whole life around it.”
I was so busy listening to her I almost rolled right past the church. “Hey, we’re here,” she said, laughing. “Let’s go figure out those flowers.”
So I picked up my skateboard and followed her up the steps, but my mind wasn’t on flowers. It was on Mr. Vince.
And Sturgis.
And motorcycle gangs.
I may have seen him in a do-rag, but I still couldn’t picture Mr. Vince as a biker. I mean, come on—he’d fainted at the sight of a dead rat.
What kind of bad-boy biker does that?
And he may have the stickers to prove it, but I still couldn’t picture Mr. Vince going to a biker rally.
A fart rally, yeah.
A Scratch ’n’ spit rally, yeah.
A biker rally? No.
Which got me thinking … maybe Mr. Vince bought the SUV from someone who was a biker and had been to Sturgis. Maybe those stickers weren’t his at all.
Still. What about his biker friends at Cheezers? They all had tricked-out Harleys—were they in a gang?
And that’s when it hit me that maybe they weren’t friends with Mr. Vince at all. Maybe he’d been arguing with them the day we’d seen him at Cheezers.
Wow. That was a whole new thought.
Were they the ones who had done all the Die Dude stuff?
And that’s when I remembered about the pay phone that was used to call in the fire alert to our school.
It was at the mall.
Right near Cheezers.
I could feel goose bumps spreading across my back.
But … how could the guys from Cheezers be behind the Die Dude stuff? They couldn’t get into school and leave a rat in his drawer! How would they even have heard about Billy’s little prank so they could run with the whole Die Dude thing?
I mean, it just didn’t make any sense.
Still. I couldn’t stop trying to find a way to make it make sense. The whole time Brandi was sorting through the flowers and telling me what to put where, I played with all the little pieces in my mind, trying to find some way to fit them together. I kept trying to find a place for Heather. Or Lars and Sasha.
Was one of the bikers Sasha’s dad?
Lars’ dad?
A biker uncle?
Did Cisco know any of them?
Were they connected to Heather somehow?
I felt like I had little chunks here and there, but I couldn’t find a way to connect them, and it was driving me crazy.
What was I missing?
What piece was I missing?
TWENTY-NINE
It’s a good thing I was wearing my high-tops and not my foo-foo shoes
, because for the next hour I ran around like crazy trying to get everything ready. First there were the flowers, then we had to unload Debra’s car, and I don’t know why, but somehow I got elected gofer while Brandi and Tippy “took care of things” in the changing room.
I didn’t really mind, because the changing room was tiny. So going back and forth to the car was way better than listening to them complain about the “cramped quarters” and cluck around like worried chickens. But after all the dresses and shoes and gloves and makeup cases and mirrors and bows and hair spray were inside, Debra started dispatching me to “check on” things. “Oh, Sams! Could you check on the DJ?” and then “Oh, Sams! Could you check on the cake?” and “Oh, Sams! Have you seen the photographer?” and “Oh, Sams! Could you check on the weather?”
The rest I just walked around and brought back an “Everything’s fine,” but the weather? She was obviously having a nervous breakdown. “What do you want to know about the weather?”
“It’s awfully warm! Do you think we need fans out there?”
“No, but we could sure use one in here.” So I got Reverend Doyle to lend me a portable fan from a little office in back, and when I had it plugged in and blowing air around the changing room, Debra started up with the dispatching again. I put out the guest book. I spread wedding-bell confetti on the tables that had been put up out back for the reception. I put the little candy almond favors in place. I laid a DEB & GIL, NOW & FOREVER wedding-bell napkin at every setting.
By the time I was finally done running around like mad, Debra’s carrot face was caked over with makeup, and she was cinched into a high-collared white dress that had long sleeves with buttons from the wrists all the way up to the elbows and a train that looked like it was longer than the church. There was also a veil attached to her beaded headpiece. It was folded back, but if she was going to wear it forward, she would be totally covered in white.
My first thought was, You look like the Matterhorn! but what came out of my mouth was, “You wanted to be tan because … ?”
Lucky for me, they all thought that was funny, and after they laughed, Debra asked me, “Are people arriving? Have you seen Gil?”
“Yup and yup,” I said. “I think everything’s set.”