Pretty Crooked (19 page)

“But they have everyday low, low prices,” she recited.
“No, wait, that’s Walmart.”

“Are you done now?” the driver asked.

“Keep going,” I said. I just wanted to make sure, and I had an instinct we would see more if we waited. “By my count, we have twenty-five minutes left on our clock.”

The driver sighed and pulled into the parking lot behind her.

“Don’t park really close. Maybe behind that truck,” I said, pointing.

It was hard to see from where we were, but my mom seemed to be leaning over, possibly looking into her purse. Was she looking for coupons? Did she have something to return? A prescription to fill? It was possible she didn’t know there was a closer Target. We were still new in town, after all.

Then she got out of the car, clutching her purse. We watched her walk a few spots over to a silver Nissan with California plates. A man in a suit climbed out of the driver’s side.

“Just what I thought. That’s why she’s coming to this Target.
Hell
-looo. The booty’s on special.”

I punched Cherise’s arm. “Shh.”

My mom and the man were huddled together talking. I couldn’t get a good look at him—we were too far away—but he appeared to be of medium build, a good head or so taller than her, with brown hair that was graying at the temples. He put his hand on her back, as if guiding her, and she got into his car on the passenger side.

Okay, that was it. I needed to get a better look and I wasn’t going to see squat from here. I opened the car door.

“Where are you going?” Cherise hissed.

“Wait here for a minute,” I said, tense with momentum, like a predatory animal about to strike. Only I was not at all graceful and I had no clue what I was doing.

I danced between parked cars, trying to hide myself as I moved closer. I settled behind a Ford Focus parked next to the man’s car, and I crouched down by the wheels. I peered up through the Focus’s windows and saw my mom nodding as the man talked. Their interaction looked familiar, as if they’d known each other for a while.

He was attractive in a bland sort of way. Dark eyes. Long thin nose. Not what I would have thought was my mom’s type, but then, if she was having an affair, I clearly didn’t know as much about her as I thought.

My breath was short and shallow, ripping through my lungs as I tried to listen over it. I wanted some kind of sign, some more information—anything.

Their conversation was getting louder then. I couldn’t make out words but I could hear the tone, which was strained and then angry. Were they fighting? Their voices collided and I could hear hers getting higher, as it did when she yelled at me.

Then, my mom opened the car door abruptly and stood up. She slammed the door, a sound that echoed across the parking lot.

She was leaving. And heading my way.

I needed to do something, quick, or she would see me. There was no time to think of anything clever. I had to just move and hope I didn’t catch her eye. I danced back around the cars as quickly as I could.

The cab pulled around and met me halfway. I jumped in.

“Go,” I ordered. “Go!”

The driver put the car in gear and steered us back onto the road.

“That was a close call,” Cherise said, patting me on the leg.

I put a hand on my chest to slow down my accelerated heartbeat. “Did she see me?”

“I don’t think so. She looked like she was deep in thought, like she had a destination. She barely looked up at all. So what happened?”

“She’s definitely got something going on with this guy, whoever he is.” I settled back into the vinyl seat, trying to put together this new information. There was someone in her life that I didn’t know, someone she was close enough to that she was fighting with him.

I started to rethink everything. Had she been lying to me this whole time? Was there even an art center or a co-op? Was there a volunteer job at all? Probably not.

It’s not like I never expected my mom to date again, but this was such a strange way of going about it. It would have been different if my parents were divorced
and I was close to my dad and she didn’t want me to feel bad. But I never even knew the guy. So why the secrecy?

“But why do you think they were meeting here?” Cherise asked, as deeply entrenched in the mystery as I was. “And why was she leaving?”

I didn’t have an easy answer. Nothing was making sense. “Maybe she just needed to see him briefly. Like this was the only time they could fit each other in.”

Cherise slid up to the edge of her seat with urgency. “Willa, I just thought of something. You think that’s why she moved you here? Because of this guy?”

Whoa
. The thought was a sock in the gut.

“I don’t know.” Could she have known him before somehow? It seemed more logical than the idea that she moved here and met someone right away. “If that was the case, I just don’t know why she didn’t tell me before.”

“Maybe she thought you wouldn’t understand.”

“But I would have.”

Cherise cocked her head to the side. “Would you have, though? You had to leave your life so she could have hers? It seems pretty unfair to me.”

It
was
unfair when Cherise put it that way. Somehow, though, I felt like I could forgive my mom, especially if she was in love with this guy. It had been a long time since she’d met anyone. She deserved to be happy, didn’t she?

But that brought up another question. Was she actually happy? It didn’t seem like it, at least not from what
I’d seen the past couple of weeks.

“Maybe the guy’s married,” Cherise said. “And maybe she didn’t know if it was going to work out. He could go back to his wife.”

I shuddered. “That’s gross.”

“It happens all the time,” Cherise said matter-off-actly.

“It does,” the cabbie said.

“Okay, whatever.” I could do without the commentary. It disturbed me to think of my mom as some guy’s midlife crisis. “I just wish she would tell me the truth.”

“You should ask her point-blank.”

I looked at her head-on. “I’m going to have to, aren’t I?”

So much for our “investigation.” I was leaving with more questions than answers. My head hurt from all the guessing, all the theories, all the competing feelings swooping around like dive-bombing birds. I didn’t know whether to be angry at my mom for keeping something from me, or sorry that she was alone in dealing with it. She needed me, didn’t she? All I knew was that this thing, this secret, was making her miserable.

That had to stop.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I WAS IN the bathroom after second period when the harp sounded for morning break. From inside the stall I could hear the door open, and then two girls talking, their voices low and conspiratorial.

“So what are we doing this weekend?” Voice One said.

“The usual,” Voice Two answered. “Why?”

“Shane Welcome just asked us to his party. And I think we should go.”

As they talked, they definitely sounded familiar but it wasn’t Kellie or anyone Glitterati-related. I could tell by their tentative tone and nervous giggles.

I opened the stall door and Sierra and Alicia turned around, apparently startled by the sound. I almost jumped out of my shoes myself.

“Hey, guys,” I said, flustered.

They were standing in front of the mirrors, lipsticks in hand. Sierra was wearing the new shirt, and the silvery
color brought out the shine in her eyes. I took a moment to commend myself on the choice.

“Hey,” Sierra said, and she actually sounded friendly for once. She even smiled at me. Then she did her usual thing of pretending I didn’t exist and turned back to Alicia. “So do you think you can make it?”

“Ugh. I have to work.”

I went to wash my hands and looked at my own reflection.
Yeah yeah yeah. Blond hair blah blah blah
. I was more interested in the other girls—my eyes kept wandering over to Sierra, taking in the new look.

“Get out of it,” Sierra commanded.

“Sierra, you know I can’t do that.” Alicia flicked at her hairline, studying herself in the mirror at different angles. “I need the hours. Maybe Mary can go with you.”

They snapped their purses closed and angled for the door.

“But I want all of us to go. It’s all of us or nothing.” Sierra was still giving Alicia the full-court press as I followed them out of the bathroom and back into the hallway. Then she tried a lighter, teasing approach. “Jed Sampson will be there.”

“I can’t. Don’t try to tempt me. Besides, I have nothing to wear,” Alicia said. They broke into Spanish then, and it was the last thing I could hear before they turned right to head for the courtyard for break.

So they were invited to a party. Nice one. I cracked my knuckles with satisfaction.

Kellie and Morgan Whitney were standing by their lockers around the corner and as soon as I was in grabbable proximity, Kellie pulled my arm. “Do you
see
that?” She gestured toward Sierra and Alicia. “Something crazy is going on around here.”

“What is she wearing?” Morgan spat through her thin lips. “I mean, I almost bought that shirt myself.”

“They’re, like, going to the courtyard now,” Kellie said, affronted by the mere possibility. “They
never
hang out in the courtyard for break.”

The courtyard was exactly what it sounded like, a pretty shaded place where people held court, usually the most popular kids who sat on the six-foot adobe walls and dangled their expensive shoes over the people walking by. It was the territory of the Glitterati and all of its social equivalents in other grades.

I shrugged at their outraged faces and smiled as sweetly as I could muster, though I felt a much less innocent smile threatening to pop through. “I don’t know, Kellie. Maybe they just felt like a change.”

It was like clockwork. For the third morning in a row, I watched Morgan Whitney get out of her BMW, beep it locked, and drop the key in the side pocket of her leather jacket.

That was something you learned right away as a thief. Everyone had their patterns, their rituals. Take Cassidy Greene, for instance. Right now she was hopping out
of her mom’s Saab. Every day she took fourteen steps to the front door. Every day she smoothed the front of her blazer before going into the building. (She was the odd Prep student who opted to wear what looked like a school uniform even though we didn’t have one.) And every day she seemed to mumble something to herself—a chant or an affirmation of some kind, I couldn’t be sure.

Even Aidan had his routine. I couldn’t help but notice that he always had a cup of coffee in his hand as he came out of the driver’s side, and he chugged the last of it standing by his car. Then he crumpled up the cup and shot it into a trash can on the edge of the parking lot. When he made it, he cheered for himself, which I found kind of cute.

Okay, it was absolutely, straight-up adorbs.

When Morgan was far enough away, I made my way toward her car and peered in. She’d left her aviators on the passenger seat, along with her iPod touch. A bunch of change and singles were stuffed into the cup holder between the front seats. And there was still a Gucci double-G scarf wedged between the front passenger seat and the door. She must have tossed it off her neck at some point, and it dangled tantalizingly. Somehow, for three whole days it had gone unnoticed, leading me to conclude that she probably didn’t really need it after all.

I was three weeks into my equalizing mission, but this would be my first official car break-in. In preparation,
I’d consulted with Tre at the park earlier in the week.

“I need to go deeper,” I told him. “I need to get into a car.”

He put his hands on his knees and shook his head. “You’re getting crazier by the day, Willa.”

“Seriously, I need to know,” I pleaded. I had to help Alicia and I needed more tricks to do it.

Tre’s advice was to do it the old-fashioned way. “I can show you how to shimmy the lock with a coat hanger, but that’s for a 1990 Hyundai parked on the street. If you’re going for a more expensive car, there’s no way you can get around the alarm,” he’d said. “You’re gonna have to pick the key out of a pocket. It’ll take more observation on your part, but trust me, it’s the best way.”

Nabbing Morgan’s key would be fairly easy for me at this point. She walked around with her chest so prominently pitched forward that she seemed to leave her pockets behind. Plus, I’d had some pickpocket experience with Nikki, and that had gone swimmingly. And I had one very significant tactical advantage: As a sophomore and a new kid, I was relatively invisible to Morgan. She talked to Kellie but she still had yet to truly acknowledge my presence.

On my way into the building, I saw Aidan pulling up in his Mercedes, head-banging to the strains of doom metal blaring through the windows. Sure enough, when the engine was cut, he got out, stood up, and gulped down his coffee. I eyed up his G550 longingly—I knew
he had to have some good stuff in there. Cherise told me he drove around with at least six computers in his car, in varying stages of functionality. And it was obvious he had tons of cash.

Tempting, but no. He was too close. I could never pull it off—not with the way my body reacted every time I got a whiff of his soap. I was bound to screw it up somehow. Besides, I remembered what he’d said about Mary. He might have been Glitterati by birthright, but he was on the right side of things when it counted. I smiled a little to myself as I watched him from afar—he had no idea, but he was off the hook.

At lunchtime, I prepared to make my move. Morgan never ate, and maybe that was why she was so pissy all of the time. I followed from a distance and watched her enter the library with Caitlin Jordan, a model-like waif with a light-brown shag haircut. They usually sat there and pretended to do work, paging through fashion magazines tucked in their notebooks. Morgan took off her jacket and hung it on the back of her chair. I made my own way inside, sat down at a nearby carrel, and waited. They were whispering and giggling to each other.

C’mon
, I thought.
I don’t have all day to watch you guys gossip
.
One of you needs to get up. Bathroom. Water. Anything
.