The Classy Crooks Club (5 page)

I crouch down in front of the china cabinet (seriously, who has a cabinet this big to display
dishes
?) and peek underneath. The ball is under there, way back against the wall. “I think I'm going to have to get something to fish it out,” I say. “Do you know where the brooms are?”

“The legs on this cabinet are awfully tall, dear. Do you think you might be able to scoot underneath and grab it?”

“Yeah, okay. I can try.” I lie down flat on my stomach and start pulling myself forward with my arms the way my baby cousin used to do before she learned to crawl. It's a little dusty under the cabinet, but Betty's right—there's enough room for me to worm my way all the way under.

“Got it!” I call as I grab the ball and start inching backward. I'm careful not to bang my head as I squeeze back out, and when I stand up, Betty's looking at me all misty-eyed, kind of like Maddie looked when she unwrapped her Xbox on her eleventh birthday.

“Oh, Annemarie,” Betty breathes. “You're just perfect, aren't you.”

Betty already seems to like me a lot more than my own grandmother does. “It's no big deal,” I say as I squat down and reattach the ball to her walker. It fits pretty tightly, so I have no idea how it managed to fall off in the first place.

“It's a very big deal to me,” she says. She gives me a watery-eyed smile, and then she shuffles back into the parlor.

When she's gone, I creep after her and lurk next to the doorway, eager to hear Betty tell Grandma Jo how wrong she was about me. “She squirmed right under there like a little eel, Jo,” I hear her saying. “Cookie's right, she's the answer to our prayers.”

“I said
no
,” Grandma Jo snaps.

“Don't you think I should have a say in choosing my successor?”

“Betty, you've proven you are not to be trusted in matters like these.”

“There's no need to bring that up, Jo,” Betty says, and she sounds hurt. “I dealt with the consequences of my actions. Haven't I proven that kind of behavior is all in the past now?”

What kind of behavior could she possibly be talking about? I've only known Betty a few minutes, but she seems so sweet and wholesome. I can't imagine her doing anything worse than eating cookies in bed. Then again, according to my grandmother, almost
everything
counts as bad behavior. Betty probably walked in one of her flower beds or used her phone during a bridge game or something.

“This isn't about Betty,” says Cookie's voice. “This is about AJ. Give us one good reason why she's not suitable.”

“She's twelve years old! There's no way she can handle this level of responsibility. Do you honestly trust her to keep a secret of this magnitude? She hasn't been brought up to be decorous or discreet. She's even more unpredictable than Betty.”

I bristle at that—I'm
great
at keeping secrets. When Ben planned a surprise party for my parents' twentieth anniversary, I didn't slip even once. But I
hate
it when people keep secrets from me, and if someone doesn't clue me in immediately about what my grandmother's friends want to use me for, I feel like my head might explode.

“I'm sure she can handle it,” says Betty. “You never know until you try.”

“All kids are a little unpredictable,” says Cookie. “It doesn't mean she's immature.”

“I was wild when I was young,” says Edna's faraway voice.

“Betty's still wild,” snorts Cookie.

“Cookie, be fair.” Betty sounds super exasperated. “I
told
you that would never happen again.”

“In all seriousness, Jo, we
have
to use AJ,” Cookie says firmly. “We can't do it alone anymore, not with Betty's hip the way it is. We either include her or we're done. Is that what you want?”

Everyone's quiet for a minute, and I stand there motionless, holding my breath and dying of curiosity. “Of course that's not what I want,” my grandmother finally says.

“Then it's decided,” Betty says.

“We'll discuss it later,” Grandma Jo says. “Now, quiet. Do you want her to hear you?” And to my dismay, their talk turns away from me and toward “trumps” and “redoubles,” whatever those are.

I tiptoe back to the table and start working on sewing my first
N
, but my mind is spinning so much I can barely pay attention. Most of the ladies seem to want to share this mysterious secret with me, and that means my time living at Grandma Jo's house might not be as boring as I expected. Then again, if my grandmother gets her way, it sounds like I'll be sewing useless stuff all summer, totally clueless about what's happening on the other side of the wall. How dare she dismiss me without even giving me a chance, just because I'm not like
her
, obsessed with dresses and tea parties and bridge! Sure, I like to have actual fun once in a while, but that doesn't mean I should be kept in the dark.

Whatever they're hiding, I want in. It
has
to be more interesting than cross-stitch.

T
he moment the clock chimes six, there's a burst of rustling and creaking from the other room as the ladies push back their chairs and gather their things to go. I was hoping they'd stay for dinner so I wouldn't have to be alone with Grandma Jo, but it looks like I'm out of luck.

My grandmother comes in and watches me sew for a minute after they're gone. I'm less than halfway through my name—the thread got so tangled during the
E
that I had to totally undo it and start again—but I think I have the hang of it now. Grandma Jo peers down at the little fabric circle, making that horrible squinty face I hate, and for a second I'm sure she's going to tell me I have to start over. But instead she nods, and I almost fall over in a dead faint when she says, “You're making good progress, Annemarie.”

“Thanks,” I say. It's not exactly the over-the-top praise Betty gave me, but at least it's not a blatant insult.

“Of course, your stitching could be neater here and here,” Grandma Jo says, pointing out a couple of mildly messy spots. She must catch the expression on my face, because she says, “Don't roll your eyes at me, Annemarie. A lady strives for perfection. What's the point of doing anything unless you do it as well as you possibly can?”

“I'll fix it tomorrow,” I grumble, and she nods, satisfied.

“Go wash your hands,” she says. “Dinner will be served in ten minutes.”

Dinner is really awkward at first. At home, our meals are super casual—my parents and I are always laughing and teasing each other and making terrible jokes, and Snickers usually runs around under our chairs with his tongue hanging out, hoping for falling scraps. Not all of our forks and spoons match, and sometimes we use paper towels as napkins. But here everything is so quiet I can hear the clock ticking on the mantel in the next room. There are a whole bunch of forks next to my plate, and when I randomly choose one to eat my salad, Grandma Jo acts like I've mooned the queen of England and points out the “correct” one. I really don't see why it matters; all forks do the same thing. But I let her explain to me about salad forks and dinner forks and dessert forks, and it seems to make her happy. At least it's better than uncomfortable silence.

When Grandma Jo starts talking about how one of our future etiquette lessons will involve learning to set a proper table, I cut in and change the subject. “Hey, Grandma Jo, what do you like to do with your free time?” I figure if I catch her off guard, maybe she'll slip and tell me what she and her friends are really up to.

Grandma Jo pats the corners of her mouth with her napkin even though there's nothing there. “I do this and that,” she says.

“Do you and your friends play cards every day, or do you do other stuff sometimes? Do you like to watch movies? Or go to baseball games? Or . . . I don't know, hike?”

She looks at me like I'm insane. “I certainly do not
hike
,  Annemarie.”

This is clearly going to get me nowhere. “What's your animal rescue league working on right now?” I ask.

My grandmother looks startled. “How do you know about the league?”

“Stanley mentioned it,” I say, wondering if I've gotten my new friend into trouble. “He said you won some sort of award? That's really cool.”

Grandma Jo relaxes when she hears that, and she spends the whole main course (steak and mashed potatoes) and dessert (
insanely
delicious chocolate cake) telling me about how tons of people buy exotic snakes and lizards and birds on a whim, even though they don't know how to care for them properly. I think about telling her I know how to kill an anaconda, but I decide against it.

Debbie comes in to clear the table, and my grandmother gets up, leaning heavily on her cane. “That steak was quite acceptable,” she says. “I have things to attend to now, Annemarie. You are to stay out of the hallway at the back of the house so you don't distract me.”

On a normal summer night, I'd run straight over to Maddie's after dinner for Xbox or bike riding or our complicated version of badminton. “Actually, I think I'll take my skateboard out for a while and explore the neighborhood,” I tell Grandma Jo, hoping some exercise might distract me from how much I miss my best friend. “I'll come back in before it gets dark.”

Grandma Jo's eyes bug out so much I think they might pop out of her head. “Absolutely not. I can't have my granddaughter hurtling around the neighborhood on that infernal plank. What would everyone think?”

They'd probably think,
Hey, there goes a perfectly normal kid having a good time
. “Come on, Grandma Jo, please?” I say. “Nobody cares anymore if skating is ladylike or whatever. Lots of girls do it.”

She sniffs. “The fact that it's
popular
doesn't make it okay. Lots of girls put piercings in their faces and smoke cigarettes, too. Is that the kind of person you want to be, Annemarie?”

“That's not the same thing at
all
! And how do you expect me to entertain myself if I'm not allowed to watch TV
or
play video games
or
go outside?”

“You might consider exercising your brain,” she says. “This house has a lovely library, and you're welcome to take all the books you want up to your room. Your parents may let you run around like a savage, but while you're under my roof, you will learn discipline and decorum.” With that, she turns and leaves the room.

There's a pressure building in my chest, and for a second I'm sure I'm going to explode. I've been trying so hard to be polite and cooperative all day, and I've done everything she asked, including sewing that stupid sampler. But none of it matters at all, and she's still treating me like I'm a wad of chewed gum on the bottom of her shoe. What is her problem? Did she seriously call me a
savage
? Good behavior clearly isn't getting me anywhere, and I suddenly want to break every single one of her rules as fast as I can.

I push my chair back so it scrapes against the nice wood floor and sprint around the dining room table a couple times. Then I open and close the china cabinet with a loud
bang
and watch as all the plates rattle, but that doesn't make me feel any better. I go into the living room and move all the stupid china figurines around on the shelf my grandmother called a “credenza”; I even arrange a wolf figurine over a knocked-over shepherd girl so it looks like it's going to eat her face. I think about smashing a vase on the floor, but Grandma Jo would probably make me clean it up, and that's seriously all I need right now.

There's nothing else to mess with in the living room, so I go outside and walk through some of the flower beds, then make sure to track dirt across the floor as I stomp upstairs to my room. I grab my cell phone out of my soccer bag and send Maddie a bunch of angry texts.

i hate it here so so so SO much
.

my grandmother is totally evil.

im so bored.

save me.

But she doesn't even reply. She's probably off riding her bike or playing Xbox without me. I slam my door and throw the phone at the bed, hoping it'll make me feel better, but it doesn't.

I don't know what Grandma Jo does for the next two and a half hours while I stew in my room, but at 9:25 on the dot, I hear her making her slow, stately way up the stairs—
clomp-click-rustle, clomp-click-rustle
. “Lights out in five minutes, Annemarie,” she calls from outside my door. “I trust I won't have to remind you again.”

“Whatever,” I grumble.

“What was that?”

“I said
fine
.”

She's quiet for a minute, and I wonder if she's going to feed me some lie about how she's glad I'm here. But instead she sighs and says, “Good night, Annemarie.”