Sammy Keyes and the Wedding Crasher

  Music was drifting inside our little changing closet, and we could hear people’s voices out in the foyer. “You girls need to get dressed!” Debra said.

  So I triple-zipped Tippy and Brandi into their mountains of lavender, and then it was my turn. I kicked out of my jeans and was about to toss them aside when something fell out of a pocket.

  Now, if I’d known what it was, I would have just left it there, but I didn’t know what it was, so I picked it up, unfolded it, and came face to face with Spy Guy’s Jiffy Print receipt:

  12×18mgntsn … $19.95

  I blinked at it a minute, then crumpled it up and tossed it in the trash.

  “Get in this thing, girl, come on!” Brandi tells me, holding out my dress. So they zip me in it, and when I turn around, Debra is holding three silver chain bracelets, a little silver heart dangling from each. “Thank you for being my girls,” she says, and starts clipping them around our wrists. “I don’t know how I could have done this without your help.” She wraps mine around my wrist and smiles at me. “You have been a godsend, Sams.”

  “Way more helpful than Robyn,” Tippy mutters.

  “You can say that again,” Brandi says.

  “Way more helpful than Robyn,” Tippy mutters, and they all laugh.

  But then all of a sudden Debra’s looking around saying, “Oh no. The ring.”

  “What ring?” Tippy asks.

  “Gil’s ring! His weddin’ ring!”

  Well, while they’re figuring out who’s got the ring, I step into one toe-pinching, glass-beaded lavender high heel.

  “Don’t look at me,” Brandi says to Debra. “I sure don’t have it.”

  I step into the other toe-pinching, glass-beaded lavender high heel.

  “Neither do I,” Tippy says. “I never even saw it.”

  I feel like I’m on stilts with alligators nipping at my toes.

  “It was …” Debra’s eyes get enormous. “Oh no! It’s still at home! On my dresser! I was so worried about losin’ it, and here I forgot it! I can’t believe I forgot it!”

  “Calm down,” Tippy says. “I’ll drive right over and get it.”

  So Debra hands her a small ring of keys and Tippy tippy-toes out of there in her high heels to save the day. Trouble is, Debra’s car is blocked by a bunch of other cars, and no one seems to know who they belong to. And since the groomsmen’s cars are blocked, too, and Debra’s about to have a nervous breakdown, I grab my skateboard and say, “I can be back in five minutes.” I put out my hand to Tippy. “Let me have the house key.”

  “I’m sure we can find—”

  “Let me have the house key!”

  So she turns it over to me, and I hurry out the front door and down the church steps. Trouble is, there’s just no riding a skateboard in three-inch heels. So I peel them off and then I jet out of there, looking like a giant lavender sail on top of a skateboard as I hold on to my ridiculous high heels and push along in bare feet.

  Now, you’d think I’d be used to Mr. Vince’s SUV, but when I sail by his house, there it is, still parked in the middle of his driveway, still vandalized, and I don’t know—it’s like a gnarly car wreck or something—I can’t seem to look away.

  And again I notice the dust pattern. Or the missing-dirt pattern. Or whatever you want to call it. And as I’m rolling past it, I can hear Officer Borsch’s words in my head. Once you notice it in one of the pictures, you start seeing it in all of them.… It’s very uniform. Maybe a foot by a foot and a half.… Maybe someone held something up to the door to prevent leaving fingerprints.

  For some reason it keeps looping through my head. It’s like I’m trying to figure out a riddle without there actually being a riddle. I try to shake it off. I try to say, Forget it! You’ve got a ring to find! A wedding to get to! But it won’t stop looping through my head.

  Anyway, I get inside Debra’s house, no problem.

  I find the gold ring sitting on her dresser like she said it would be, no problem.

  And since I’m already carrying my bejeweled shoes and a skateboard and keys, and since the ring is way too big for even my thumbs, and since in all the miles of fabric around me there’s not one pocket and I’m afraid I’ll lose the ring or drop it and watch it roll down a sewer grate or something, I take off the heart bracelet, thread it through the ring, and latch the bracelet back around my wrist.

  No problem.

  I’m feeling pretty secure about it, too.

  Like I’ve just handcuffed the perp.

  No way this little gold ring is gonna get away from me!

  So I hurry and lock up the house, then take off toward the church. The problem happens when I turn from Elm Street onto Constance and something in my brain goes click. It happens so loud and so fast that I actually gasp and go, “No!” as I’m rolling along. It seems so crazy, so out there, so impossible, but all of a sudden a bunch of other pieces start clicking into place. “No!” I gasp again, and my mind is now going click-crazy.

  In science last year we did a lab on measurements. We learned why a foot is twelve inches, why horses are measured in hands, and how you can get a fairly close measurement of most things if you know (a) how long your stride is and (b) how many inches it is from the tip of your pinky to the tip of your thumb when your fingers are spread apart.

  My stride is three feet.

  My hand spread is six inches.

  Almost exactly.

  Anyway, as I’m remembering this, I’m telling myself it’ll only take a minute.

  Half a minute, really.

  I mean, Officer Borsch had just guesstimated, but now I want to know exactly.

  Or as exactly as I can.

  All of a sudden it matters.

  So when I get to Mr. Vince’s house, I leave my skateboard and lavender high heels at the fence near the sidewalk and tiptoe my little bare feet up to his SUV.

  Up to the scratched driver’s side door.

  Then I measure, from the edge of the “clean” spot over.

  It’s three hands wide.

  Inside my mountain of lavender, my heart starts hammering away.

  I measure from the base of the clean spot up.

  Two hands.

  Exactly.

  “Holy smokes!” I gasp, and then I start looking inside the SUV’s windows.

  The front seats are a mess. There’s trash on the floors and junk all around.

  I don’t see what I’m looking for, so I move back a window.

  The rear windows are slightly tinted, but it’s still easy to see inside, and what I discover is more junk. Sweatshirts. Binders. Store flyers. Tennis shoes. An umbrella. A dash protector.

  And then all of a sudden I think I spot it—on the floor behind the passenger seat, lying there like a floor mat.

  I pull up the back door handle.

  It’s unlocked.

  So I open the door and reach over, still not quite believing that the thing on the floor is what I think it is. Only I can’t reach it, so I lift up my skirts and get one knee inside the SUV and stretch.

  So there I am, in a big, poufy lavender dress, halfway inside Mr. Vince’s SUV, when I hear something scary.

  Something with a deep, very powerful growl.

  Something that’s getting closer.

  Fast.

  Something that I’m afraid is about to turn up the driveway and catch me breaking into Mr. Vince’s SUV.

  I tell myself I’m crazy.

  I tell myself that everything’s okay.

  I tell myself to just be cool—that there are no biker gangs in Santa Martina.

  But my gut is screaming RUN, and since it’s way too late for that, I do the next best thing.

  I pull in my skirts, close the door, and hide.

  THIRTY

  I’ve barely had a chance to close the door and duck when, one by one, three motorcycles dip and roll into Mr. Vince’s driveway.

  One’s dark orange with flames painted across the gas tank.

  And one??
?s royal blue with screaming eagles.

  One’s a blackish purple with laughing skulls.

  It’s the three guys from Cheezers, all right—Bones, Flash, and Gargoyle. And even though it’s got to be eighty degrees outside, they’re all decked out in black leather and wearing black half helmets that look like they’re straight out of World War II Germany.

  “Oh no!” I whimper, because I’m surrounded. Two of them have come to a halt on the left side of the SUV, and one is on the right. And the window tinting isn’t dark enough to keep them from seeing me if they looked.

  So I stay low while they’re out there revving up their motorcycles. It’s like the call of the wild, only they’re letting their Harleys do the howling.

  I keep one eye on them as I reach for the thing that had lured me into the car in the first place.

  A magnetic sign.

  It’s like the one on the Bloomies van, only this one has been spray-painted blue—the same color as Mr. Vince’s SUV.

  My hand is shaking as I measure it, and sure enough, it’s twelve by eighteen.

  And now I know for sure—“12×18mgntsn” stands for a twelve-by-eighteen magnetic sign, the same dimensions as the clean spot on the DIE DUDE door. And since Mr. Vince had bought the magnetic sign the day before his car got keyed, Mikey’s little receipt was proof—Mr. Vince is the missing piece.

  He could have done all of it.

  Plant the rat.

  Use Billy’s phone to call in the Die Dude threat.

  And key his own car—something he must’ve done at home the night before, then concealed with the magnet until he got to school.

  And with all his fainting and freaking out, plus the viciousness of the threats, he was also the one person no one would ever suspect.

  After all, what kind of person keys their own car?

  The revving outside quiets to a loud purr, and when I take a peek, I see Mr. Vince coming out from under his opening garage door.

  Gargoyle calls, “Curveball! Yo, man! Are you ready?”

  Mr. Vince has a duffle bag in one hand and is holding a helmet in the other. Seeing the helmet is a relief because I figure he’s going to get on the back of one of his friends’ bikes and ride away, leaving me free to escape the SUV and get down to the church. But instead, he motions Gargoyle—who’s one of the two guys on my left—to park his bike inside the garage.

  That leaves one bike on each side of me, so I’m still stuck. But when Vince and Gargoyle come out and close the garage door, it looks like they’re each going to get on the back of the other two bikes. Vince is walking to the left side of the SUV, and Gargoyle is heading to the right.

  Only they don’t stop at the motorcycles.

  They come toward the car.

  “Oh no!” I gasp, then grab my lavender skirts and crawl around the middle seats as fast as I can, hiding behind them. And I’ve barely got my dress smashed down and out of sight when both doors open and Gargoyle and Vince get in.

  “See you there!” Vince calls out his window. Then he fires up the SUV and backs out of the driveway.

  Now, I’m not just worried that they’re going to find me, or that they’ll see my shoes and skateboard parked by the fence and say, What’s this? and then find me.

  I’m worried about messing up the wedding!

  I’ve got Officer Borsch’s ring!

  And I promised I’d be right back!

  I feel like such an idiot. I mean, why couldn’t it have waited? Why couldn’t I have just gone back to the church and told Officer Borsch what I was thinking, uncrumpled the receipt, and let him take care of things?

  Why did I have to get inside a car that was now going who knows where?

  “You stoked, man?” I can hear Gargoyle asking.

  “Hell, yeah!” the Vincenator says. “I am free, man. Free.”

  “So they bought it?”

  Vince laughs. “They’re so confused, they’ll never figure it out. I’ve got ’em going in ten different directions.”

  Gargoyle laughs, too. “You keyed your own car, man. That’s pretty extreme.”

  “That was the whole point! It had to be something no one would think you would do to yourself. And the beauty of it is, insurance will cover it, so it’s no skin off my nose.”

  Then Gargoyle says, “Remember—don’t get cocky. You gotta keep up appearances. It’s the number one thing.”

  “Why do you think we’re doing this whole park-at-your-place thing, man? I’m tellin’ nobody.”

  Gargoyle laughs. “Although since you’re going for a psychological disability, you could make the case that gettin’ a Harley’s therapy, man.”

  Mr. Vince laughs. “Yeah, but no way am I riskin’ it. Unless I’m on the road, I am layin’ low.” They’re quiet for a while, and then Mr. Vince says, “I could never have done this without you, man. You went way above and beyond by calling in that fire.”

  “Hey, it was a phone call. Got your go-time text and did a little ring-a-ling-ling. No biggie. Besides, Bones helped me set up my disability, and Flash helped him set up his. Just doin’ my civic duty of payin’ it forward. Besides, you’ve been hatin’ on that job for waaaay too long. It’s about time you ditched it.” He laughs. “And it’s about time you got a Harley!”

  While we’re driving along, I can hear Bones’ and Flash’s motorcycles growling down the road ahead of us. And as we’re driving away from the church, I’m wishing more and more that I had a cell phone.

  In my head I’m screaming, WHY DON’T I HAVE A CELL PHONE?

  I could text Officer Borsch right now.

  I could let him know what’s going on.

  I could maybe even save my own life!

  I mean, who knows what’s going to happen to me if Gargoyle and his gang discover that Vince has got a stowaway? If they’re all doing some kind of get-paid-for-not-working scam, are they really going to risk letting me blow the whistle on them?

  No!

  They’re going to tie me up in biker chains and throw me in the lake!

  Okay, so we don’t have a lake. But at this point I’m one big, freakin’-out pile of lavender, and my head is spazzing with some really bizarre thoughts.

  Like, I don’t want to die with Officer Borsch’s wedding ring handcuffed to me.

  I don’t know why I’m thinking that, but I am.

  And I don’t want Debra to hate me forever. Here she’s waited forty years to get married, and it’s going to be totally ruined ’cause I’ve gone missing. They’ll find my skateboard and shoes, but who knows if they’ll ever find me wrapped up in biker chains, buried in a lacy lavender coffin at the bottom of some lake somewhere?

  But mostly I’m thinking that if they wrap me in biker chains and throw me in the lake, I’ll never see Casey again.

  And I really, really, really don’t want to die without seeing Casey again.

  So there I am, in the middle of freaking out about dying, when all of a sudden we stop. It’s not at a stoplight, either, because Mr. Vince cuts the motor, and the Harleys go quiet, too.

  “Let’s do it!” Gargoyle says, and a second later both doors are slamming, and I’m all alone again inside the SUV.

  “Oh, thank God!” I whisper, but then I start wondering if there really is a God, ’cause when I peek out the window, there’s Bones and Flash just hanging out on their bikes, real near the SUV.

  We’re at the Harley-Davidson shop, and I don’t know why they’re not following Vince and Gargoyle inside, but they’re not. And after a few minutes of willing them to go inside, I’m deciding that I just need to make a break for it. I mean, they won’t know who I am. And what are they going to say to Vince? Hey, dude, an oversized purple fairy just flew out of your car?

  So I’m just reaching for the door handle when something buzzes.

  Then it stops buzzing.

  Then it starts buzzing.

  It takes another stop and start for me to realize that it’s Mr. Vince’s cell phone vibrating in the cup console bet
ween the front two seats.

  I sneak forward and grab the phone, watching Flash and Bones the whole time. They may be off to the side and a little forward of the SUV, but one glance over their shoulders and I’ll be wrapped in chains and heading for the lake.

  Lucky for me, they don’t do any glancing, and by the time I’ve grabbed it, the phone’s stopped buzzing. So I duck back and punch in Officer Borsch’s number.

  It never even crossed my mind to call anyone else.

  After one ring, I hear his voice. “Borsch here.”

  It’s intense.

  Commanding.

  Worried.

  I whisper, “It’s me.”

  “It’s Sammy!” I hear him call over the phone.

  “Listen,” I tell him, keeping my voice down, “I’m really, really sorry I’m messing up your wedding, but it was Vince. The whole time it’s been Vince. He did all that Die Dude stuff to himself so he could get a psychological disability! The phone call, the rat, the scratched-up car—he did it to fake a nervous breakdown! It’s why he didn’t want Foxmore to think it was Billy and me. Oh, he loved torturing us, but in the end he wanted people to think he was in real danger! And you were right—the fire alarm wasn’t a coincidence. One of his biker friends called it in! And that clean spot on his car door? It was caused by a door magnet! You know, one of those big ones that people use for businesses? Like Bloomies? When they delivered your flowers, the sign was on all crooked, and—”

  “Sammy! Stop talking! Where are you?”

  “Uh, trapped inside the Die Dude Mobile at the Harley shop on Main Street.”

  “He kidnapped you?”

  “No! Well, not on purpose. I … uh … I accidentally stowed away.”

  “How do you accidentally stow away? And on my wedding day!”

  “I know! I’m sorry! And I do have the ring! But I’m stuck, ’cause I’m surrounded by bikers who are probably gonna wrap me up in chains and toss me in the lake when they find out I’m here!”

  There’s a second of silence. “What lake?” And then, “Never mind! Hold tight. I’m on my way.”

  So I hold tight.

  And I sweat bullets.

  Pop, pop, pop, out they burst, one at a time.