In Too Deep (18 page)

“It’s all about preparation,” he said. “Mental state. See, Annie, I told you I was listening.”

I looked down at the dress. If I could have run right then, I would have. Fairy godmother be damned. I would have sprinted back to my little cottage before the dress turned to rags. Coach into a pumpkin, white stallions into mice. It was midnight somewhere.

T
he pictures had hit the Internet with a vengeance. Everybody knew; everybody had seen them. TMZ ran the headline
DADDY’S LITTLE GIRL MEETS HER MAMA’S BOY
over a picture of Mimi and Josh in mid-kiss, Mimi with her heel kicked jauntily up behind her. Wherever I went, like the background soundtrack in a horror movie:
Did you hear? Did you hear? Did you hear?
Yes, I heard.

In Alvarez’s class, Katy—of all people—leaned over and said, “That show she was in was just stupid. Where’s the comedy in growing up in a bar? And what was up with the laugh track? What are we, in the eighties?”

“It’s not what you think,” I said, feeling at the same time defensive about a friend who had only done what I’d asked her to do, appreciative of Katy’s gesture of solidarity, and suspicious of the motivation behind that very gesture. It was too much.

“The pictures speak for themselves,” Katy said. “A thousand words, you know?”

“Ladies,” Alvarez said, “do you have something to say before we begin?”

I shook my head. Katy grunted. Alvarez flipped off the lights and showed us a presentation from his computer.

He was different now, better, as though he’d turned a corner. He wasn’t the same old Alvarez, but he no longer looked like he wanted to shoot himself in the face. And he’d moved the class focus from Spanish and Portuguese galleons to what he called the underappreciated riches of sunken Chinese junk ships.

“I know porcelain and copper coins don’t seem as flashy as gold bullion and silver pieces of eight,” he said, directing his laser pointer to a slide of a replica of a Chinese junk, its three square-sailed masts all at different angles. He touched the keyboard, and a picture of stacked blue-and-white bowls filled the screen. “But take the Vung Tau wreck off the coast of Vietnam. Millions of dollars’ worth of dishes and vases, coins dating back to the time of Emperor Kangxi in the late sixteen hundreds.”

He went on and on about how fascinating it all was, even going so far as to try to engage me in some reciprocal eye contact, which made me wonder whether this newfound disdain for all things gold was just him protesting too much.

Craft service was the worst of all. Without the busywork of a class to distract me from the rumors, I had to sit and take it. I was trapped in a fishbowl, but I wasn’t even the fish. I just had to share the bowl with her.

When Mimi sat down, I told her I didn’t want to talk about my weekend until Gracia got there, which was good for me because I knew Gracia wasn’t coming.

“There’s something weird going on with her,” Mimi said.

Too many secrets, I thought.

I had my own stuff, Gracia was off somewhere with Baldwin and she hadn’t told Mimi about it, and Mimi couldn’t—or wouldn’t dare—tell anyone that she and Josh weren’t actually an item. After she drizzled vinaigrette on her salad and gave it an aggressively self-satisfied mix, I couldn’t take it anymore.

“You didn’t have to kiss him,” I said.

Mimi said, “He kissed me too.”

When Josh appeared at our table, it was as though all conversation in the cafeteria stopped. There they were, the new power couple, and the rest of the school now had the chance to see it in person. Mimi let it get to her, batting her eyes, twirling her hair, even pursing her lips.

“Mimi,” I said.

She got herself under control. Josh nodded at her and smiled at me, and I knew what he wanted. I grabbed my backpack and excused myself from the table, leaving poor Mimi in a puddle of disappointment.

All eyes were on us, but neither of us said anything until we were outside the pavilion doors. “I hope you haven’t given up,” Josh said as I followed him to a bench near a replica of
The Thinker
. “We can still find the Jaguar; I know we can.”

“You know the kid with his face pressed up against the window of the candy store? With tears in his eyes as he watches the kids on the other side of the glass take down Milk Duds and Skittles and Tootsie Rolls the size of his arm? That kid is close, too. But he knows he’s not getting the candy.”

“There’s something I need to show you. I was going through my research—”

“You’re not listening,” I said. “We could stay at it for the rest of our lives and never get to the other side of the glass, because the fundamental difference between us and them remains the same. They have whatever they found, and they have the resources to go after whatever else is out there.”

“I want you to close your eyes,” Josh said.

“What? I’m not closing my—”

“It’s cool. My therapist does this all the time. It’s called visualization.”

“And I’m visualizing with my eyes closed?”

“If you have your eyes open, you’re visualizing me instead of visualizing what matters.”

Oh, the irony. Barf, barf, barf.
I closed my eyes.

“Okay, so I want you to imagine the Golden Jaguar. Everything you know about it. See it like it’s a movie and you’re zoomed in close. Imagine the places you’ve been searching for it, and think about the men who must have put it there. I want you to imagine yourself standing next to it. How tall would it be? Now touch it. What does it feel like?”

“Why are you doing this?” I said.

“What does it feel like?”

“It feels smooth,” I said. “And warm, as though it’s absorbed heat from the sun. It feels alive. Can I open my eyes yet?”

“Now this. Imagine a pile of cash the same size as the Jaguar. A hundred million dollars, at least—”

I opened my eyes. “It’s not about the money.”

“Sure, sure. It’s about the thrill of the hunt, about being a part of history, et cetera. But it can be about the money, too. Eyes closed.”

“Okay,” I said, doing as I was told. “Lots of cash.”

Of course I’d daydreamed about this before, but there was something different about it after going through Josh’s visualization. First the Jaguar, then the money. It felt more real than ever before, so all the things I could use it for felt more real, too. The Marine Park Conservancy Fund, the shop, ridiculously awesome dive gear. I could even pay my own Pinedale tuition so my dad wouldn’t have to teach if he didn’t want to. I couldn’t help but laugh.

I put my hand on top of my backpack and scooted it closer up against my leg. It was a reflex more than anything, but Josh seemed to notice.

“You have the folder in there, don’t you?” I said nothing. His jaw dropped when he figured it out. “You’re going to tell Alvarez. I can’t believe you.”

“We can’t do this on our—”

“Why are you the one who gets to tell him?” Josh said. “Why are you the one who gets to decide what we do?”

His sudden irritation took me by surprise. “Why am
I
the one? I found it.”

“And I got us to Molokai. So, were you just using me? How am I supposed to feel about that?”

“How is this about you?” I said.

“How is this about
you
?” he said.

“Are you serious?”

We were silent for far too long. I didn’t know what to say, and I didn’t want to hear what he had to say, either. I stood up and shouldered my backpack and told him I’d see him later.

“What just happened?” I overheard him ask himself as I walked away.

A
fter school let out, I planted myself in the middle of the Wozniak Family Computing Center’s second-floor hallway. “Gracia!” I yelled. “I know you’re in here. Don’t make me knock on all these doors.” I waited a moment and yelled her name again.

Five seconds later, the third door on the left creaked open a sliver. I went to it.

Gracia was at a computer, and Baldwin was sitting in a chair next to her. “Hey, Baldwin,” I said.

He blushed. “Hi, Annie.”

Though a bit gaunt for my taste, he was cute; I had to give Gracia that much. He wore his patented white T-shirt and black shorts.

His blush gave way to a worried expression. “Gracia promised you wouldn’t tell anyone about us.”

“We have reputations to protect,” Gracia said. “Both of us do.”

“Both of you?”

Baldwin shrugged. “My friends would think I’m a sellout.”

“They wouldn’t be happy for you?” I said. “I mean, look at her.”

“Nah, it would shake their world to its core. Intelligence and social success are supposed to be on opposite ends of the same spectrum. The more you have of one, the less you get of the other. We complain about not going out on many dates, but at the end of the day, it’s a trade-off we’re all willing to make.” He whistled and shook his head as if dreading some catastrophic future event. “But for me to be smarter than everyone
and
get the girl? That’s not supposed to happen.”

“Out of respect to your friends’ worldview,” I said, “my lips are sealed.”

Baldwin looked relieved. Gracia winked at me.

“What are you guys doing?”

“It’s not what you think,” Baldwin said.

“He was just teaching me how to program in Objective-C.”

“I’m sure that’s supposed to mean something to me.”

Baldwin puffed out his slender chest like a proud sparrow. “She said she wanted to make some mobile apps,” he said. Gracia clenched her teeth as her eyes widened just a fraction. I got the message:
Drop it.

“Okay,” I said. “Can I steal her for a second?”

Gracia kissed Baldwin on the cheek and followed me down the hall into an empty room. We closed the door behind us. I said, “Mobile apps? Don’t you already know how to do that?”

She shrugged. “He gets to think he’s showing me new stuff, and we get to hang out. It’s a win-win. The hard part is not correcting him when he makes mistakes.”

“You’re duplicitous.”

“And it was working, too. We were just about to make out before you barged in. Oh, and by the way:
I’m
duplicitous? Does that mean you already blocked Mimi’s return to tabloid heaven out of your mind?”

“I have to tell you something. No, that’s not true—I have to tell you
everything.
” I motioned for her to sit down. The look on her face went from confused to surprised to skeptical until it finally settled on something I couldn’t quite read.

“It’s okay if you’re mad,” I said when I finished. “I should have told you the second we got back from Mexico.”

“You should have. Can I see it?”

I turned the lock on the doorknob and unzipped my backpack. Gracia took the folder and sifted through the full-page color printouts I’d made of the disk. She leaned down and squinted at them in her lap; she held them up one by one, as if seeing the pictures from a different angle made any difference.

“How do I know this is real?” she said, so I took out my phone and showed her the picture of me taking a nibble of gold.

She yelped a laugh and looked up. “You’re not really going to let some boy get in the way of you and the treasure, are you?”

“I don’t know what to do.”

“Well, then, I guess there’s just one thing you need to ask yourself.” She took a meaningful, overly dramatic pause and said, “Are you Dorka the Explorer, or aren’t you?”

“Gracia—”

“Seriously. You’ve been going on and on about buried treasure, sunken treasure, hidden treasure, lost treasure ever since I met you. Treasure treasure treasure.” She held a picture in my face as if giving me a red card. “And now you actually touch some and you want to let a
boy
stop you? Where’s your self-respect?”

“Says the girl in the midst of a secret computer-center love affair.”

“You either suck it up and get Josh on board, or you suck it up and make the decision to go on without him. Either way, this is happening.” She grabbed my hand and placed it on the picture as though it were the Bible. “Say it with me!”

“Say what?”

“I. Am. Scuba Girl!” She laughed when I did not say it with her. “Okay, fine. We’ll work on that. Now let’s go tell Alvarez.”

“Wait, what?”

“You said it yourself; that’s the next step. I’ll go with you. If Josh is out of the picture, you need a new sidekick.” She laid on the twang. “And I do believe I fit the bill?”

“What about Baldwin?”

She bit her lip. “Mo-niques before geeks?”

“That doesn’t even make any sense.”

“You know what I mean. Anyway, he won’t mind if I leave him in there.” She pointed her thumbs at her chest and said, “He’s got two good reasons to get over it.”

The quad had completely emptied out by the time we left the computing center, but Alvarez usually stayed a couple of hours after school, so I figured we could still catch him.

“Will you please let me do the talking?” I said.

“What could I possibly have to add to this?”

“Something. You’ll add something, and we both know it.”

I shifted the strap of my backpack. The closer we got to Alvarez’s classroom, the heavier it felt on my shoulder. I realized that I was looking forward to telling him, just as it had been a relief to tell Gracia. With the
should I
or shouldn’t I
resolved, we’d be able to focus on the next step. I reached for the front door, but it swung out to me just before I could grab the handle.

It was Wayo.

“
Señorita
Annie,” he said.

I stumbled backward, bumping into Gracia as he took a step outside. I even threw up a little bit in my mouth when I recognized the man who came out the door behind him.

Mr. Pockmarks.

I tried to act normal, but my brain was about to explode. So many thoughts buzzed in my head—realizations that hit me one after the other—there was no way my skull could hold them all.

First off, Pockmarks and Wayo knew each other. That meant Pockmarks was keeping tabs on me every time he’d come into the store and that he was probably part of Wayo’s original betrayal back in Cozumel.

Second, the two of them were still talking to Alvarez, which must have meant they were all still involved together.

And third, there was the little matter of all my research shouting at me, “Tell-Tale Heart”–style, from my backpack.

“You must be Wino,” Gracia said, steadying me with a hand on my shoulder. “Or Wayo, or whatever.”

“I have a reputation?”

“I hope you’re proud of yourself,” Gracia said, her voice cracking and rising as though at the brink of a full-on breakdown. “You took the one thing Annie loves. She hasn’t even been in the water since Cozumel.”

“I am very much doubt that,” Wayo said.

Gracia looked at me like a trainer checking his boxer for signs of life, but I had nothing for her. I wanted to get out of there.

“And
you
,” Gracia said, pointing to Pockmarks as she stepped ever so subtly between me and them. “I’ve seen you before. You were at her store. You were
stalking
her. Ewww. You’re a pervert! I bet you’re not even allowed to be within two hundred yards of a school, are you.”

Her voice became louder and louder with every word, until the smug bad-guy look on Pockmarks’s face was replaced with one of discomfort. He shook his head and brushed past us.

Gracia wasn’t done, not by a long shot. She called out after them, “I bet if we checked the registered-sex-offender database, we’d find your picture!”

By the time she got to that part, they were both out of sight.

I staggered over to a pine tree and collapsed against the trunk, hugging the backpack tight against my chest. “Thanks for that.”

“The pizza-face guy was totally casing the joint, wasn’t he. Checking you out.” I nodded, and Gracia sat next to me, tucking her heels to the side. “I guess that means we’re not telling Alvarez, huh?”