Bad to the Bone (2 page)

“All right!” Lydia shouted, and threw her arms around Esme. “You're going back to the Goldhagens' and you'll go to Bel Air High with us and—”

Esme held up a palm to stop Lydia midsentence. “Wrong. I'm not going to that tight-ass rich kids' school, ever.”

Kiley frowned. Esme was so smart. And her parents had sacrificed so much so that Esme could go to college and succeed—how could she possibly let them down by dropping out?

Esme squirmed away from Lydia, who had issues with
personal space in the sense that she didn't recognize that such a thing existed. Lydia's sensibilities had been honed in the rain forest among primitive tribesmen who were a lot more touchy-feely than … well, pretty much everyone. In fact, Lydia had related that the Amas cupped other males' scrotums when meeting them for the first time. It made Kiley glad to be a girl.

“But school,” Kiley began tenatively. “If you don't finish—”

“Why should I finish?” Esme interrupted. “I make more money now doing tattoos than I ever could, even if I went to business school, which I never would. What's the use of high school?” She said these last two words as if they were somehow polluted.

“Your parents won't be happy.” Kiley knew how much the Castanedas longed to have Esme finish her education.

“My parents don't have to live my life. I do. What about you, Lydia?” Esme turned to her blond friend. “How's high school so far? Broken any hearts lately? Has Billy called you? Or maybe I should ask if you've called him?”

Lydia laughed. “I just love how you cut right to the chase, Esme.”

“There's no time to screw around. We've got about three more minutes before we get out of here.”

“Oh poo,” Lydia scoffed. “High school is fine. Easy. Kat took the kids up to San Francisco for a while, so I've got the place to myself. And no. I haven't called Billy.”

“Has he called you?” Kiley asked. She knew Billy and liked him. Not only did he look like Tom Welling from
Smallville
, but he was also a true gentleman.

Lydia hitched up her red and white shorts, which bared
the tops of her hip bones and were much shorter than Esme's. With the shorts she wore a U2 T-shirt. Kiley figured the shorts were by some famous designer, as Lydia knew and cared about such things. Of course, her friend couldn't begin to afford clothes by famous designers, so she “borrowed” things from her aunt's closet.

“No phone calls in either direction,” Lydia continued. “And you know what? It's fine.”

“Really?” Kiley asked.

“Sweet pea, there are just too many hot guys in this town to be so limited. I mean, I've only had sex with two of them and one doesn't count.”

Kiley knew Lydia didn't want to talk about her very ill-advised one-night stand.

“I'll go out a few times with Flipper. Or maybe some other boys. I'm seventeen! I don't think I'm made to settle down.” She turned to Kiley with piercing green eyes. “Your turn. And don't dodge. What are you gonna do about Tom when he's in Russia?”

Kiley knew she had to respond. Her friends had been so honest about themselves, and she wasn't sure what was even going on with Tom. After a small part in the summer blockbuster
The Ten
, he'd been offered a major role in
Kremlin Cowgirl
, a Russian-American coproduction about a young Russian entrepreneur who opened the first country music honky-tonk in Russia. In the movie, Tom was to play a young cultural attaché at the American embassy who befriended Boris, the entrepreneur. Dolly Parton was also involved in the project, and Tom's love interest was Chloë Sevigny who played an American expatriate.

The problem was, Tom's departure for Russia kept getting postponed. Originally, he was supposed to leave the previous Monday. Then it was Wednesday. Now, his plane was to leave in two days. In some ways, this was worse than him just leaving in the first place.

“What I want to know is, are you and Tom going to see other people?” Lydia asked bluntly.

Esme nodded. “How long is the shoot?”

“Seventy days.”
Seventy days
, thought Kiley That felt like an eternity.

“Enough time to get into plenty of trouble,” Lydia observed. “I'd need about seventy minutes.”

“Not helpful,” Esme chided. The sun was a little lower in the sky now; she backed away from the rays, up the hill a little bit.

“I agree. Because I don't know what to do.”

Kiley felt anxiety well up in her throat. Tom was a great guy. If you took away his amazing looks—his chiseled chin, blue eyes, tousled sandy hair, and a body like a professional athlete—he was just a boy from Iowa whose parents grew wheat and corn and who was used to waking up before sunrise to care for the cows and horses. But taking away his amazing looks was like taking the smile away from the Mona Lisa. That was to say, impossible.

“Well, don't fret, Kiley. You'll figure it out,” Lydia assured her. “And if you don't you can always pass Tom over to me. I swear, he's the hottest guy I've—”

“Attention, attention!”

A metallic voice, obviously amplified by a bullhorn, boomed out over them.

“Shit,” Esme said. “Why did I ever listen to you, Lydia?”

The sinking feeling in Kiley's stomach reached oceanic depths. There could be no doubt who was responsible for the bullhorn voice. But if there was, the next sentences confirmed it.

“Attention, attention! This is the Los Angeles Police Department. You are trespassing on city property. Come out immediately, with your hands up!”

“What do we do?” Kiley hissed, frantic.

Esme's eyes met hers. “We do what the man says. We do it slowly, and we do it now.”

Kiley watched as Esme held her hands high over her head and started back up the narrow dirt path to the hole in the fence. Then, she did the same, with Lydia following.

There had been a lot of firsts for her here in Los Angeles, and now she was about to rack up another one. Her first arrest.

Esme eyed the two young cops. The scowls on their faces said they meant business. One was tall and blond with high cheekbones and thin lips; the other was a few inches shorter, with dark hair and the square jaw of a superhero, or, this being L.A., an actor who played a superhero. If one had been Latino, maybe Esme could have done the “Yo, homey” thing in Spanish, and tried to talk them out of arresting her and her friends. But they were both gringos, so she didn't stand a chance.

Why had she let Lydia talk her into something as stupid as going inside the fenced-off area? Her life was a series of near misses with law enforcement. She'd taken a stupid chance. And for what? To prove that she wasn't chickenshit? Just when she'd finally made the decision to go back to the Goldhagens'.
Just when her tattoo business was taking off. Everything would be ruined over this stupid, stupid decision. Plus, her parents were going to kill her.

“Did you girls not see the signs?” the shorter of the cops barked. “No Trespassing means no trespassing!”

“We're really sorry,” Kiley whispered. It was clear to Esme she could barely get the words out of her mouth.

“Save it,” the taller cop snarled. “Sorry is no excuse. You girls are in big trouble.”

Double shit on a shingle. Well, Esme was not about to crawl. Whatever happened, happened.

“Is it a felony?” Kiley squeaked.

“What, you think this is some bullshit little misdemeanor thing like jaywalking, missy?” the gruff cop spit.

Lydia blew her shaggy blond bangs off her forehead with a puff of air. “Dang, it's hot out. So wait, a misdemeanor is the not-so-scary one and a felony is like real, real bad? Because I always get them mixed up. Like felony and fun start with the same letter? So I always think that's the one that isn't some big-ass deal.”

The shorter cop glared at her. “Are you effing with me? Because you do
not
want to eff with me.”

“She's not from around here.” Esme defended Lydia automatically, although she didn't know why she was being so charitable. This was all Lydia's fault.

Meanwhile, Esme saw that Kiley was shaking like a fault line during a temblor. “Please don't arrest us. We'd lose our jobs and get kicked out of school and—”

The superhero cop was unmoved. “Should have thought about that before you flouted the laws of this great city. Now
I'm reading you your rights. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of—”

“Oh officers,” Lydia trilled. “There must be something we can do to kind of fix things?”

Then, very slowly, she reached down to the bottom of her U2 T-shirt and began to lift it, inch by inch.

You cannot be serious
, Esme thought. Lydia was about to offer sexual favors to two of L.A.'s much-less-than-finest, in return for dropping the charges. Not only was it unbelievably stupid—the LAPD had come a long way since the ignominies of the Ramparts division scandal years ago, when this kind of maneuver would have worked—but it made her want to puke. She'd rather be arrested a hundred times over than go that route. “Don't,” she muttered. “Just don't.”

If she'd thought her words would have any effect, she thought wrong. Lydia continued undeterred. Another inch of tan, slender abdomen came into view Back in Amazonia, Lydia—of the full and perky perfect breasts—barely ever wore clothes, much less a bra. Soon that perky perfect pair would be bare to the world. And they'd still get arrested. Esme knew from experience: you did not mess with the LAPD.

“Lydia, stop,” Kiley pleaded.

“You want this on your permanent record?” Lydia replied as her shirt rose another inch. “What's Scripps going to think? What are you going to put on your college app when you get to the question ‘Have you ever been—’”

That was all Esme heard. Because the end of Lydia's sentence was suddenly drowned out by very loud recorded music, booming from a wooded area twenty or thirty feet away
from the clearing. She recognized the song—it was on the radio all the time. Who was in the woods blasting music while she and her friends were about to be arrested?

It was just bizarre. But not nearly as bizarre as what happened next.

“Oh man, I love this song,” the blond cop announced, and began to bop his head to the beat.

“Yeah. It's hot,” the shorter cop agreed.

“So hot,” said the superhero cop.

“Totally, totally hot.” The short one nodded. Then, he began swaying his hips to the music, his nightstick knocking into his meaty thigh. To his left, the tall cop unclipped his handcuffs from his belt and started waving them overhead, thrusting his pelvis as he did.

Suddenly, Lydia—as if she was some kind of entranced, arrested zombie—started dancing toward the cops, her body writhing sensually, her hips swaying at least as suggestively as the two policemen.

“Lydia! Get back here!” Kiley was aghast.

“Lydia!
Basta!”
Esme shifted unconsciously to her native Spanish.

It was to no avail. As if this was some sort of bizarre and twisted dream, Lydia started dancing with the two cops. Then, to Esme's shock, the taller cop danced right back over to her, tossing away his nightstick, handcuffs, and cap, and unbuttoning his standard-issue cop shirt. He had a chiseled and hairless chest underneath. The shorter cop opened his own shirt in three quick movements and joined his partner in the dancing.

That was when Esme put her hands down. No way was
she staying in the “You're under arrest” position with two asshole rogue cops stripping. She glanced down at her cheap pink espadrilles and cursed her decision not to wear sensible shoes to meet her friends. Running from these insane cops in espadrilles was going to be damn tough. Kiley, she noticed, had on her usual Converse All Stars.

“What's going on?” Kiley implored.

“Damned if I know,” Esme replied. “Don't move till I do. But put down your damn arms. They don't care.”

Now the cops were unzipping their pants, and Lydia was clapping and catcalling as if she was in a strip club. “Take it off, baby!” she yelled. “Take it all off!”

Esme had had enough. “Let's go!”

She tugged Kiley's arm; together, they started to sprint for the trees. But at that same moment, a third cop moved out from the grove of trees, laughing and pointing a video camera at the dancing cops and Lydia. The music cut off; the cops and Lydia stopped dancing and froze in their exact positions.

Esme and Kiley stopped running—because the two cops and Lydia were now doubled over in laughter, and so was the young policeman with the video camera. He had spiky black hair, intense blue eyes, and the cut, trim body of a competitive swimmer.

“Ohmigod,” Kiley breathed. “I know that guy.”

“Who?”

“The so-called cop.” Kiley pointed to the third policeman. And then, inexplicably, she started to laugh too.

“What's going on?” Esme demanded.

Kiley could barely get the words out. “I think we've just been—”

“Punk'd!” Lydia pointed a finger at Kiley and then at Esme. Meanwhile, the policeman with the video camera kept filming.

“That's her friend from school, Flipper,” Kiley filled in, nudging her chin toward the guy with the camera. “This has to be a joke.”