I try to make it out unheard, but Grams spins around and spots me. Her lips curl into a wide smile. Then her eyes snap to the pill bottles. The smile falls from her face, crashes to the floor.
“High blood pressure,” she says.
I don’t believe her for a second.
Grams steps toward me, and I try to take what I hope is a subtle step backward. Get away. Get your sickness away from me!
She notices me backing up and stops. Hurt fills her blue-gray eyes. Before I can think of something to say, I turn and walk out the door.
I need to get away from this house. Away from Charlie and her big, trusting eyes. Away from Grams and the look she just gave me. What am I supposed to feel? Guilt? Shame?
No.
I won’t.
I am The Collector.
I walk to the closest pay phone and call the only cab in Peachville. When the driver picks me up fifteen minutes later, he asks, “Where to?”
“A car dealership,” I say. “The best you got.”
Chapter Seven
Pulling Weeds
At 7:45 a.m., I leave Wink Hotel and head for Charlie’s house. After a night of sleep and frivolous spending, I feel like myself again. Like Dante freakin’ Walker, the best damn collector on planet Earth.
I’m going to collect Charlie’s soul. I’m not going to feel bad doing it. It’s my job. It’s nothing personal.
This morning, I’m relishing the perks of working for the Underworld. I press my foot down on the accelerator, and the deep rumble of my candy apple–red Escalade growls. My new baby girl has black leather, Bose surround sound, and twenty-two-inch rims. Match.com couldn’t have created a happier couple.
Outside Charlie’s house, I honk once and wait. I want to see her face when she walks out the door. She’s going to like this ride as much as I do. Only lovers of red can truly appreciate this beauty.
As I’m watching her door, I feel something outside my window. I glance to my left, but there’s nothing there. At least that’s what my eyes say. But I can feel the collector watching me through his shadow. Watching and waiting for me to botch this assignment.
A tapping sound to my right sends a chill up my spine. Charlie is smiling through the passenger window. Her backpack is slung over both shoulders, and she’s dressed in dark jeans and a tie-dyed T-shirt. Tie-dye? Really?
She opens the door, and her wide gaze darts around, taking it all in. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I’m telling you, I’m not.”
“It’s so awesome!” she says through the hand over her mouth. “Where’d you get it?”
“It’s mine. Mom said she’d buy it for me if I moved to Alabama peacefully.” I wave my hand around the interior. “I chose peace.”
“I’d choose peace, too.” Charlie climbs into the passenger seat, then tosses her bag into the back. “Let’s name it.”
“Name my car? No.”
“Yes! Ooh, let me do it. How about Elizabeth Taylor? She was flashy and looked good in red.”
“You want to name my car Elizabeth Taylor?”
“Not want to. Did. It’s done.”
I pull in a long breath. “Can you just tell me where Liz needs to go?”
Charlie claps her hands together and tells me where we’re headed. I punch the address into the nav system, and twenty-five minutes later, we’re parked in front of Peachville’s ghetto. I was sure a city with the name Peachville couldn’t have a rough part of town, but I stand corrected.
Decrepit houses line the streets, barely a foot between them. Chain-link fences enclose weed-infested yards, and iron bars protect the windows. I watch Charlie from the corner of my eye. “You got a death wish?”
“Trust me, okay?” she chirps, even though it’s way too early for chirping. Charlie slides out of the car and waves at a yellow school bus parked near a crumbling curb. People start pouring out of the bus and heading toward her. They’re carrying paint buckets, flower pots, sod, and lots of tools murderers use.
“Charlie, can you please clue me in?” I ask, getting out and stretching my legs.
She opens the back door, grabs her backpack, and pulls out two long-sleeved T-shirts. I grab one as it flies toward me and read the bright, obnoxious logo: Hands Helping Hands.
“What does this mean?” I ask. Then it clicks. “Oh, no. Uh, huh. I don’t do manual labor. And I certainly don’t do it at 8:00 a.m. without coffee.”
“Hands Helping Hands is a charity,” she says. “I do this every Saturday morning. It’s so much fun. You’ll see.”
It will not be fun. And I will not see.
I notice Blue and Annabelle walking toward us carrying shovels. Blue’s eyes narrow when he sees me. Annabelle squeezes his arm as if to calm him and says, “She got you, too, huh?”
“Apparently.” I take the shovel from Annabelle and turn to Charlie. “So what are we doing, and how long are we doing it for?”
She pulls the long-sleeved Hands Helping Hands shirt over her tie-dyed embarrassment. “Some people on this street want to improve the appearance of their homes. And we’re here to help do that.”
She points to a minuscule house with peeling blue paint. “For that one, we’ve agreed to strip the paint off the front patio and repaint it.” She nods toward a home right next to us. “This one will get yard work: weeds pulled, flowers planted. That kind of stuff. There are five houses in all, and we’ll work in teams to help get everything done. You’ll be with me, Annabelle, and Blue. We’re going to be doing this house.”
Charlie limps toward the house with the defunct yard. I run my hands through my hair and have the urge to rip out a fistful. I yank on the long-sleeved shirt that announces I’m a chump and head after her, dragging my shovel behind me on the pavement.
As the Three Stooges act a-fool, I work in silence. I’m not sure how this is fun to them, and I’m not sure how I let this happen. Charlie and I should be doing terrible, soul-sealing activities. Instead, she somehow swindled me into volunteering. The word has a bad aftertaste, and I’d kill for a beer to wash it down with. Still, as much as I despise this, there’s a part of me that admires Charlie’s sudden take-charge attitude. If she could only learn to use that same confidence at school, she might not be such an outcast.
Then again, this confidence of hers has me doing crap I don’t want to do.
I jam the shovel into the dirt and wipe the sweat from my brow. “Why do you guys do this?” Charlie, Blue, and Annabelle stop what they’re doing and watch me, but no one says anything. “Any answer will do.”
Charlie takes a few steps toward me. She knows I’m not happy. And why should I be? She tricked me into wasting my Saturday morning helping people too lazy to help themselves.
“Dante…” She glances over her shoulder at Blue and Annabelle. The pair pretend to inspect a fire-ant mound, but I know they’re eavesdropping. “I like doing this. These people need our help. And it makes me feel good. Doesn’t it make you feel good?”
“No, it doesn’t,” I answer honestly. I jab my thumb toward the house. “Why doesn’t the person in this house get off their ass and do this themself?”
Charlie’s eyebrows pull together. “Because the person in that house is eighty-eight years old and restrained to a wheelchair.”
Great. Now I’m the ass. I’ve got to be more careful if I’m going to get this girl to come to the party tonight. I’ll give her the day, but tonight…tonight it’s my turn.
I relax the muscles in my face and chest. “I guess that’s good. Helping people who can’t do things themselves.”
“But they do things themselves. They do!” Charlie’s mouth tugs into a smile. “See, we call it Hands Helping Hands because the people we help agree to help others. Like, for example, this lady we’re helping today, she’s agreed to work as a suicide hotline volunteer from her home. It turns into this great system of people helping each other.”
Something flutters in my stomach. “Charlie, who started this organiza
tion?”
She shuffles her feet and brushes dirt off her hands. “Uh, we all did.”
“Whatever, Charlie, you started it,” Annabelle yells, then resumes her pretend fire ant inspection.
“That true?” I ask. This isn’t good. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I’m wondering if this is the reason Boss Man wants her. But it’s a tiny operation. This wouldn’t make a dent in his numbers.
“I guess.” Charlie pushes her glasses up her nose, then pulls her wavy blond hair into a ponytail. She’s fidgeting, and I’m not sure why. “We started this—er, I started this—because there were so many people out there being helped who wanted to repay the favor.”
She and I have very different worldviews. I think most people receiving help have no desire whatsoever to do crap for anyone else.
Charlie twists her hands together, and I know there’s something else she’s not saying. “How’d it start?” I ask.
Her eyes find mine, and I know this was the question she didn’t want to answer. “It started with a group home, a place for kids under state guardianship.” Charlie glances at Blue and Annabelle, then back at me. “I was, uh…I was one of those kids. My parents died in a fire when I was twelve.” She pauses, but I stay quiet and let her finish. “I was the only one who got out of the house. Because I didn’t have any living relatives, I went to live at the home.” She points to her hip and tries to smile. “The way I walk is a souvenir from that night.”
“So your grandma…?” I ask gently.
“Isn’t my grandma. She adopted me three years ago. One time I told her she was like the grandma I never knew. She loved it so much that I just kinda started calling her that. I think it helps avoid questions from people we meet.”
“So this organization you started, it helps you?”
“Yeah, I think it does. When I was at the home, there were so many wonderful people who helped me recover. Most of them were volunteers. It made me feel grateful, but it also made me feel indebted. I asked around, and a bunch of other kids felt the same way, so we decided to do something for other people.
“We started doing things during our free hours for people within walking distance. The only thing we required was that the people being helped agreed to help someone else.” Charlie waves toward today’s volunteers. “And now, three years later, over two thousand people have received help or helped someone else.”
Two thousand? Two thousand? What if she keeps doing this? She’ll never accumulate enough seals to be collected. What’s more, every second these people spend helping someone, they’re neglecting the important business of collecting new seals for themselves.
Still, I’m relieved. For a moment, I thought this might be the reason Boss Man wants Charlie. And while two thousand is a lot of shiny, happy people, it’s not enough to do serious damage. Which brings me back to my original question: Why her?
Charlie picks up a plastic sleeve of yellow tulips and sticks her tongue in her cheek. “You good with all this self-revealing?”
“I’m glad you told me.” I squeeze her hand, then pick up my shovel and follow her back to the garden we’ve created.
For the next two hours, I don’t complain when the temperature drops. Or when Blue mumbles. Or when Annabelle talks about old black-and-white movies ad nauseam. All I can do is pull weeds. They are never-ending, and for that, I’m thankful. Because it keeps my mind off the image of Charlie being pulled out of her burning home while her parents are on the inside—dying.
I wonder if she cried when it happened. I wonder if she screamed so loud, she sounded like someone else entirely. I wrap my hand around a weed and tear it from the ground. Then I do it again. And again. This I can control. But these thoughts that tick away in my head, I can’t.
Because they hit way too close to home.
Chapter Eight
What the Eff?
Charlie is unusually quiet as I drive back to her house. For the first time since I met her, I hate the silence. I need her to talk, to say something. Anything.
Then I wonder if she needs the same from me.
I glance over at her. She’s staring out the passenger window, watching houses blur past us. The sky is overcast, making her sucks-to-be-a-teenager pimples less visible. I open my mouth, then close it. Then I open it again. “Want to listen to music?”
Charlie glances over at me like she forgot I was driving this tank. I turn on the stereo and flip through radio channels until I find a Nirvana song. It seems right. Dark, haunting, tortured…something we can lose ourselves in.
“You like?” I ask, turning it up.
She nods at first. Then she decides to be honest, scrunching her nose up and shaking her head with a barely there smile. I flip to a Beyoncé song and pause.
Another small head shake.
“What’s your favorite station?” I ask. “Maybe there’s something that’ll get us in the mood for tonight.”
Charlie laughs and lets her head fall back. “You’re not going to let it go, are you?”
“Nope. So you might as well pick out a party dress.” I nod toward the radio. “And a party song.”
Charlie studies me for a moment, then reaches for the radio and flips it off.
“This is my favorite.”
“Off?” I ask.
Charlie rolls down the window. She lays her head on the open window frame. “I like the sound the world makes.”
I shrug, roll my window down, and listen when we come to a red light. I hear a mockingbird singing and a man raking leaves. I hear a dog barking and a plane flying overhead. There’s even a low rumble of a lawn mower in the distance, and I somehow hear that, too. Personally, I’d take Nirvana. But as I watch Charlie listen to her favorite station, I realize she has something most never will—peace.
I pull up in front of her house, and Charlie opens the car door. I grab her arm before she can get out. “Pick you up at nine?”
She puts a hand on top of her head like she’s thinking. Then she says, “My grandma will want me home by midnight.”
Score! “Cool. See you tonight.”
“I can hardly wait.” Charlie rolls her eyes, grabs her backpack, and heads for the front door.
I’ve got to get this chick more excited about tonight. She needs to be in the right frame of mind to do things she never would before. I drum my fingers on the steering wheel and watch Charlie let herself in her house.
And then I have it.
I back out of the driveway and head to Peachville Mall, where one sexy red dress awaits my credit card.
…
James Dean meets me at the entrance of Neiman Marcus. He’s about to give me a big excited welcome when he realizes it’s me. He does the thing where he acts like our confrontation never happened, and I’m totally down with that. Whatever gets us to not have a conversation.
I grab the red dress in size anorexia and head to the counter. The cashier behind the register asks if anyone helped me out today. I shoot a glance at James Dean, who is busy avoiding eye contact, and say, “Nope.”
She nods and tells me it’ll be $140.89, and I hand over my limitless Amex Black. The cashier raises an eyebrow and takes the card from me like it’s made of explosives. She turns it around in her hands, and I have an urge to throw my arms up and scream, “Pow!” Some people say the Amex Black card is a myth. Those people are also referred to as poor. Even thinking the word makes me itch.
Cashier Lady puts the dress in a garment bag and hands it over with the receipt. “I don’t need a receipt,” I say. “It doesn’t matter.” I like the look on people’s face when I say this. It’s a mixture of envy and detestation and makes me feel like a gangsta, like Biggie Smalls.
I’m heading out the door when curiosity stops me. I swivel around the garment bag slung over my shoulder, and flip on James Dean’s soul light. I’d like to see if it’s time to bring him in.
But wait one effin’ minute. I inspect his soul light…and I see glittery pink seals atop the other ones.
What the hell? No one, and I mean no one, would seal souls with sparkly pink seals.
I take a step closer, but of course they’re still there. What’s more, I can see soul light filtering through the pink seals. It’s like these new seals are breaking down the old ones.
My eyes fall to my feet as if they’ll help kick-start my brain. I can’t think of a single thing that can destroy our seals. We sure don’t have the ability to do it ourselves. So where did this come from? What changed?
James Dean is crossing and uncrossing his arms. I’m no doubt making him nervous. I steal one last glance at those pink seals and leave the store. Then I locate the bench Charlie and I sat on only yesterday.
I’ll be damned if I’m going to let someone destroy my work. Why did that chump even get those pink seals? For being good? If that’s the case—and this isn’t an isolated incident—this could be the reason my numbers have slipped. It’s not like I sealed any fewer souls before my assignment.
My assignment.
Charlie.
I raise my head and pull in a quick breath. It’s her. This is the reason Boss Man wants her, the reason he’s had Peachville on his radar. He’s been searching for her. I’m positive. Charlie was here with me yesterday. She must have done something to that guy. Did she do it on purpose? Has she been playing me this entire time?
Oh, crap, does she know who I am? Or what I’m here for?
No way.
The dress bag lies across my lap. It doesn’t feel good in my hands anymore. I want to toss it in the closest garbage can, but I need to continue as if nothing has changed. Because it hasn’t. Charlie’s soul must still be collected. Once that’s done, I’ll get promoted, and my numbers will go back to normal.
Now that I’ve got the big, dramatic mystery that is Charlie figured out, I’m feeling good. I’ve got the upper hand again, and I’m sure from here on out, everything will be hunky-freakin’-dory.