Take Me There (35 page)

“Done,” Danny announces. He snatches the paper from the printer. “We’re in.”

“Let’s just get this copied and get out of here.”

“What’s the rush? Got a hot date?”

I glare at him.

At this Kinko’s, two out of the five copy machines are usually out of order. Like they are right now. Which of course would happen when we need them the most. Just my freaking luck. We should have gone to the other Kinko’s. But that one’s farther away and we didn’t really have time. And we can’t make the copies at Carl’s dad’s place, because his dad can’t know what we’re doing. There’s a chance we could sneak it in, but it’s not worth the risk. Even if he offered to do them for free.

There’s a middle-aged guy in a suit hogging one of the machines. Who should obviously be doing these copies at the office. The other two machines have girls on them.

Mr. Inappropriate Alert Guy should be here to tell everyone to get the fuck off the machines.

“Should we go to the other Kinko’s?” Danny asks.

“Let’s just wait. One of them should be done soon.”

The girls are laughing over some story they’re yelling between them. Which is making everything take way longer, because they’re not paying attention to what they’re doing. They copy a page, and then they’re all talking and laughing so they don’t notice the copy is done, and at this rate we’ll never get a machine. Plus it looks like they’re copying entire notebooks. As if that weren’t annoying enough, I notice someone else was waiting before us. He gives us a look like,
I was here first. So don’t even think about it.

I shift from one foot to the other.

“How many copies are we doing again?” Danny says.

“A thousand.”

“So that’s like . . .”

“A hundred bucks. I got it.”

“Since when? You’re Mr. PermaBroke.”

“Yeah well. Not today.” The truth is, I took the money out of my savings. Which is supposed to be exclusively for college. But drastic times and all.

I shift onto my other foot.

Now the girls are laughing so hard one of them drops her notebook. It smacks onto the tiles. Random pages spill across the floor. This makes them crack up even harder.

“Dude,” Danny says. “We need to stage an intervention.”

“Now would be a good time for that.”

The thing about Danny is that brainy chicks love him. When he goes into flirt mode, no girl with at least half a brain cell stands a chance.

It doesn’t exactly suck to be him.

I watch as he approaches the girl who glanced at him when we came over. His strategy is flawless.

As soon as he says something to her, she’s hooked. He has her laughing harder than she was with her friend in under ten seconds. Then he tones it down a little, moving closer to her. I see him touch her arm. A minute later, she moves over to the other machine with her friend. Danny waves me over.

The guy who was in front of us gives me the evil eye. I smile and shrug like I had nothing to do with it. He scowls. For a second I worry that there’s going to be some major confrontation. But then the suit finishes up on his machine, so we’re saved.

“Incredible,” I tell Danny.

“As always.” He lifts the cover of the copy machine and lines the note up evenly on the glass.

“What did you say to her?”

“Not much.” Danny pulls out the paper drawer. I hand him a ream of colored paper I bought before. “Just how you’re desperate to make a certain girl really happy. And how making these copies is essential for your somewhat questionable success.” He rips the cover off the paper. “And how it would mean a lot to me if she could help us out.” Danny looks over at her and winks. She giggles.

“Thanks, man.”

“Don’t mention it.”

The copies look great. With a thousand of these, we’re going to cover the entire school with no problem.

After we put the second ream in, the girl comes over. She goes, “Danny, right?”

“Right. Kim.”

“You remembered!” She giggles again. She attempts to pull her T-shirt down. Which is pointless since it barely covers her belly button.

“Of course I did,” Danny says, all smooth. “What do you think I am?”

“I don’t know!” She looks over her shoulder at her friend. Who’s trying desperately not to crack up. “Yeah so . . . where do you go?”

“Eames Academy. And this is James. He goes there, too.”

“Isn’t that the design school?”

“Yeah. Well, it’s supposed to be. You know how it is.”

“Totally. We go to Environmental Studies? And it’s
so
not for that.”

“Word?”

“Yeah. It’s
so
lame. There’s, like, two environmental electives and that’s it.”

“Drag.”

Kim looks over her shoulder again. Her friend apparently finds the whole thing so hilarious she can’t even look at us anymore. “Um, so, anyway . . . I’ll just . . . be over there.”

Danny’s all, “I’ll be watching.”

I check the screen. The copies are almost done.

“You interested?” I ask.

“In?”

“Kim, yo.”

“Nah. Just having fun.”

“She’s cute.”

“Yeah, but I think she has a boyfriend.”

“She told you that?”

Danny shakes his head. “Just a feeling.”

But I know the real reason. All he can think about is Nicole.

That’s the thing about being hooked on a girl. You see what else is going on around you. You notice other girls. But it doesn’t register the same way it used to. You only care about one thing, one goal. And sometimes, being so focused on what you want, you can’t see what everyone else does.

“I’m doing it,” Danny says. He tapes a copy of the note on the wall above the water fountain.

“Doing what?”

“Asking Nicole to the dance.”

“Nice.”

I tape copies on some lockers. Danny moves to the other side of the hall to get the lockers over there.

“So here’s my angle. Tomorrow night’s all about doing this like a casual thing.”

“Copy that.”

“And after I blow away the entire school with my unbelievably impressive speech, I’ll be getting some definite attention.”

“Affirmative.”

“But I won’t push it too far. You know, keep it real light. See if we can hang as friends first. And then we’ll get back together.”

We tape up more copies.

Danny’s like, “And I’m calling that chick from Millennium for you.”

I stop taping. “No.”

“Dude. What’s the problem?”

“I told you I didn’t want to be fixed up.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t want to get into a whole thing with some other girl right now.”

“But that’s such a lame reason.”

I glare at him.

“She’s hot,” he says. “You’ll see.”

“No I won’t, because you’re not calling her.”

“Why not?”

If I just come right out and tell him I asked Rhiannon, he’ll still want to set me up. But there might be a way to work this so Danny drops it.

“You’re playing this off like a casual friends thing, right?”

“Yeah . . .”

“So what if you ask Nicole as a group thing?” I say. “Then it’ll be even more legit.”

“I feel you. But then who else is in the group?”

“Okay well, me. And . . . it can’t be that girl you want to set me up with.”

“Why not?”

“Because then it will look like a double date. You setting me up? The four of us going together?”

Danny nods. “Okay. So who else?”

“Rhiannon,” I tell him.

“Sweet. Let’s do it.” He scans the hallway for a surface we didn’t cover. There are none.

We stand there, surveying our work. The copies are everywhere. Karmic retribution is almost complete.

I see the swirling ambulance lights from all the way down the street. I start running. When I get to my building, there are EMT people and a couple police officers on the stoop.

“What’s going on?” I ask everyone in general.

An EMT turns to me. “Do you live here?” he says.

“Yes.”

“What floor?”

“Third.”

“Do you know Mrs. Schaffer?”

My heart stops beating entirely. Then it starts again, extra fast. “Yes.”

“It seems she had an accident.”

“Is she okay?” This is the one thing I’ve been so worried about lately. Mrs. Schaffer hasn’t been herself. I’ve been afraid that one day I’ll come home and she’ll be gone. Permanently.

“She’ll be all right,” the EMT says. “But apparently she fell.”

“Is it serious?”

“Hard to say. She may have fractured her hip. We won’t know until she’s taken in.”

A police officer comes over to me. “James Worther?”

My mouth gets all dry. “Yes?”

“Will you be riding in the ambulance? Or would you rather ride with me?”

“Uh.” How do they know my name?

“I’m afraid you’ll have to come with us. She’s in no condition to fill out the necessary paperwork at the hospital and”—he consults his tiny notebook—“do you have a copy of her insurance card?”

Why would I have a copy of her insurance card? “No. I—why would I?”

The officer analyzes my face. “Are you aware that Mrs. Schaffer has you listed as her In Case of Emergency contact?”

My mouth gets even drier. She never told me that. Did she? “Uh . . . no. I didn’t know that.”

“My apologies. It shouldn’t take that long. We just need you to answer some questions at the hospital.”

“Questions?”

“A social worker will be meeting us there. We need to determine if Mrs. Schaffer is healthy enough to live in an unsupervised setting.”

“Are you—do you mean like putting her in a nursing home?”

“It’s a possibility.”

I can’t believe this. Mrs. Schaffer would die if she had to live in a place like that. And it’s not like she has money. If you’re a regular person, you can’t get quality care. And she’d be all alone. At least here she has me.

“I don’t think she’d like that,” I tell him.

“I’m sorry, son. But it’s not up to her.”

THE PA SYSTEM
broadcasts, “Rhiannon Ferrara to the principal’s office.”

That’s my cue.

I cough.

Mr. Martin is waxing rhapsodic about the importance of air and light in stimulating worker productivity. Which is why you have to design office spaces with as much air and light as possible.

I cough some more.

Mr. Martin stops. He zeroes in on me, the source of this rude interruption of his profound thought process. He asks, “May I help you, James?”

“Can I get some water?” I gasp.
Cough, cough.

“I don’t know,” he says. “Can you?”

It’s one of those ancient teachers’ jokes they all think is still hilarious ten generations later. I wonder if they’d still tell those jokes if they knew how tired we think they are. Probably.

“May I? Please go get some water?”

Mr. Martin has this smug expression. “You may,” he informs me.

I walk calmly across the room. But the second I hit the hallway, it’s showtime. I zip down the halls, round corners at lightning speed, and hurl myself into the main office. The secretary barely looks up. She’s seen it all.

“He called me,” I tell her.

She nods me in. Doesn’t even question me. Because why would someone voluntarily show up at the principal’s office and want to go in?

I burst through Mr. Pearlman’s door. Rhiannon’s already sitting there. They both stare at me.

I say, “I did it.”

They’re shocked.

“You?” he says.

“Yes.”

“
You
did it.”

“Yes. I take full responsibility.”

He turns to Rhiannon. “You’re free to go, Ms. Ferrara.”