The Right and the Real (27 page)

“Sorry,” Krista apologized. “We…uh, I forgot my key. I didn’t think you were here.”

“Maybe knock next time,” he suggested.

As he said it, there was a loud thumping noise.

“Oh,” I said. “We forgot about LaVon.”

I opened the front door, and he stepped into the living room. George took one look at LaVon’s hulking figure and jumped up from the chair he’d just settled back into. “Who are you?” he asked.

“George, this is LaVon,” I said.

“Jamie’s uncle,” Krista added.

LaVon and I looked at her like she was crazy.

“Your uncle?” George asked. He was still standing, and he moved so the chair was between them. I never knew he was such a chicken! Maybe it was because he was still half asleep.

“By marriage,” I said, quickly.

“Yeah…by marriage,” LaVon said. I could hear the smirk in his voice.

“I’m making a uniform shirt for him,” Krista said. “For his new job. He couldn’t get one big enough.”

“I can imagine,” George said.

“We’ll be upstairs.” Krista led us away.

“In your room?” George asked. “I don’t know—”

“It’s fine,” Krista called back over her shoulder. “I told you, he’s Jamie’s uncle.”

“What is wrong with you?” I asked her as we went up the stairs. “You were supposed to say LaVon’s in a play and you’re making his costume.”

“I totally froze,” she admitted.

“Uncle, my ass,” LaVon muttered, laughing. It died on his lips when he saw Krista’s bedroom. “You gotta be kiddin’ me.”

“What?” she asked.

“You live in this room?”

I was so used to the hot-pink-and-deep-purple color scheme I hardly noticed it anymore, but seeing it with LaVon’s eyes made me smile. It
was
super startling after the bare rooms that he and I lived in. Plus, there were all the design sketches and pictures of eighties pop stars on the walls. It was actually kind of scary. When Krista and I got our apartment in New York, we’d have to set a few ground rules about decor.

“I love my room,” Krista said. She reached out and pulled LaVon inside. “Stand here while I get my stuff.”

I plopped down onto one of the beanbags. The look on LaVon’s face as he surveyed the room cracked me up. It was somewhere between bemused and nauseated. Krista came out of her walk-in closet with a huge red shirt and a pin cushion.

“Usually I put whoever I’m fitting onto this stool,” she said, “but I’m going to have to stand on it instead.” She dragged it over to LaVon, and he slipped on the shirt. “It fits pretty good,” she mumbled through a mouthful of pins.

“I’m stylin’, man,” LaVon said, holding out his arms.

We’d wanted to get three matching polos but we couldn’t find any
at the thrift store, and they were too expensive to buy new. Krista had a pattern for a simple bowling shirt and a large piece of red fabric she’d bought on sale, so she’d made us each a uniform last night. One thing about Krista, she can sew fast.

She tugged at the front. “That’s what I was afraid of,” she said. “I was going to mark where the buttonholes go, but I don’t think you’ll be able to do it up. I was kind of short on material. But you can wear a T-shirt under it instead.”

“Cool. I like it loose anyway,” he said.

“Well, I guess you can take it off, since I won’t bother with buttons. All I have to do is finish the hem.”

“Nice touch,” LaVon said, fingering where she’d embroidered his name on the front. Well, not his name, because we didn’t want to give anything away. Instead it said
FRANK.

“I think I’ll call you that from now on,” I joked.

He lifted up his silver shades and eyed me in his way, shaking his head.

I laughed. “Or maybe not.”

LaVon held the lobby door open for me, and I wheeled my bike inside, then stopped short, making him bump his bicycle into mine. Josh sat slumped in an orange vinyl chair in the corner, studying his chemistry book.

“Josh? Is my dad okay?”

“Oh, hey, Jamie,” he said, standing and stretching. “I was about to give up and go home.”

“Is he okay?” I asked again.

“He’s fine.”

“How’d you know where to find me?” I asked.

“Megan told me.”

“James,” LaVon said, “move outta the door so I can get inside.”

“Oh, sorry.” LaVon walked past us and went up the stairs. Josh gave him an inquisitive look, but I didn’t explain.

“I wanted to give you this,” Josh said. He handed me a silver key. “It fits the back door of your dad’s place. All the trailers have the same locks so the Teacher can visit unannounced.”

“How convenient. When’s your dad going to call and book us to clean?”

“He told me to set it up, so you’re good,” Josh said. “He was actually pretty relieved by the idea. I’ve added you to the guards’ list for Saturday at ten
A.M.
Don’t forget, no cell phones, and they’ll search the car before you go in.”

“What are they looking for?”

“Mostly cameras, which is why they don’t want you taking in your phones.”

“But I always used to take mine into the church,” I said.

“You weren’t a stranger,” he explained. “Whatever you do, don’t lose the key. They’re numbered, and that one will lead back to me.”

“Okay. Thanks, Josh.”

He went for a hug, but I sidestepped him, and he brushed his hair with both hands, like he hadn’t reached out for me. I went up the stairs without looking back.

ON SATURDAY MORNING, I SKIPPED DANCE CLASS
for the first time since I’d had the flu in tenth grade. Liz had borrowed the red station wagon from her aunt again and brought it over to Krista’s, where we’d filled it with brooms, mops, a couple of orange buckets, a vacuum cleaner, and some rags. And one expertly hidden package of cell phones.

We made sure all the cleaning equipment was easy to see, sticking up, so we looked like an authentic maid service. Then we added a sign Krista had hand-lettered to the driver’s door.

ANGEL CLEANERS
BECAUSE CLEANLINESS IS NEXT TO GODLINESS

Krista stopped at the gate. The guards wore brown servant robes, which made LaVon snicker. I was glad to see I didn’t recognize either of them. Because the R&R had close to a thousand members, I hardly knew anyone, mostly only the ones who chaperoned the dances and youth Bible study.

The blond one, holding a clipboard, stepped up to Krista’s window. “Bless you, sister,” he said.

“Uh…you too.” She took her fake paperwork from me and scanned it like she wasn’t sure where we were supposed to be going. “We’re here to clean number eight.”

The guard leaned over and peered into the car. Krista had tucked her hair up in a scarf to hide the color, and she had the name
KELLY
embroidered on her shirt. By the time she’d gotten to mine, she’d run out of time, though, and
NICOLE
was handwritten in Sharpie pen above my pocket. I also wore one of Krista’s fashion wigs, a long black one with bangs, and I stared out the passenger window, in case the guard recognized me after all.

“You’re a cleaner, brother?” the guard asked LaVon. He sounded a bit like he wanted to laugh, but he held back.

“You got a problem with my choice of vocation,
brother
?”

“No. I most assuredly do not,” the guard said soothingly. “God shows us our path, and He has chosen you to be a servant like me. Who am I to judge?”

“He moves the furniture for us,” Krista said before LaVon could get huffy about being called a servant. “Where do we go?”

“First, we must check the vehicle for devices of Satan,” he said. “Please, step out of the car.”

We all got out, and LaVon lit a cigarette. You could tell both the guards were itching to tell him not to smoke but didn’t have the nerve once they saw how big he really was.

“I am Samuel,” the blond one told us, “and this is Peter.”

Peter looked wiry and maybe a bit hungry. They stuck their heads inside the car, rummaged in the glove compartment, and asked Krista to open up the back so they could look through our cleaning supplies.

“It is God’s will that you empty your pockets and lay everything on the hood of the car,” Samuel said. “If you ladies have handbags,
the Teacher respectfully requests that you allow us to see what’s in them.”

“We were told not to bring cell phones,” Krista said, using a falsely sweet voice. “Was there anything else we’re not supposed to have?”

Samuel smiled serenely at her. “What a woman carries with her tells us about her character. Only people of high moral standards are allowed through these gates.”

“So, what,” LaVon asked, “you’re looking for condoms or drugs or somethin’?”

“We’re good girls,” I said, intervening and smiling at the guard, but keeping my eyes down. “Praise God.”

“Indeed,” he said. “Praise God.”

We handed him our purses and watched while he rummaged through them. Not finding a cell phone or anything else he didn’t approve of, he gave them back.

“Seems like ya’d search us on our way out,” LaVon said, dumping out his keys, change, and wallet. “Not on our way in.”

“But don’t you see, Frank?” Peter said, reading the name off LaVon’s shirt. “We’re establishing a friendship now. Once we trust you enough to go into our homes, then we have no reason to search you on the way out.”

We got back into the car as Peter unlocked the big metal gate and swung it open for us. “Number eight’s around the bend in the road,” Samuel said. “On the left. The front door’s open for you. Please be finished in one hour.”

“Thank you,” Krista said. She gunned the motor, and we were inside. I watched in my mirror as they shut the gate, locking us in. We’d already passed my dad’s single-wide trailer before I remembered to check it out.

“That was surreal,” Krista said.

“I thought LaVon was going to get us in trouble,” I said.

“I was just making conversation.”

I rolled my eyes, but he couldn’t see me.

“Back into the driveway,” LaVon told Krista. “And leave the keys in the ignition.”

“Yes, boss,” she said.

We all got out, and Krista and I ran up to the front door. Sure enough, it was unlocked.

“What?” LaVon called after us. “You think I’m carrying all this shit in myself?” He opened the back of the station wagon and began unloading our supplies.

We ran back to help him. “Sorry.”

Looking around to make sure no one was watching, I reached under the bumper and pulled out the padded envelope with the cell phones.

Inside the trailer, we all staggered to a stop. “It smells like something died in here!” Krista said, pinching her nose. Empty chip bags, pop cans, and fast-food containers covered every flat surface. Laundry—clean or dirty, we couldn’t tell—was draped over the couch in piles. Papers seemed to be randomly thrown all over the living room, and my shoe was glued to something sticky in the entryway.

LaVon pulled out a huge pair of pink rubber gloves. “Don’t give me any shit,” he said, when we laughed. “Only color they had.”

“What are your hands made of? Gold?” I teased.

“I know what’s in my own toilet,” he said. “I ain’t stickin’ my bare hands in no one else’s.”

“You’re not really going to clean the toilet, are you?” Krista asked.

“Hell, yeah, I am. That’s what the man’s payin’ us for.” He grabbed
the fifty-dollar bill off the table where Mr. Peterson had left it for us. “You two better get goin’,” he said. “We got less than an hour to get outta here.”

“You’re not coming with us?” I asked.

“I thought we was clear,” he said, looking at me like I was a dummy, “there’s this little thing called parole that I’m not gonna screw with.”

“You’re on parole?” Krista asked, her eyes bugging out. “What for?”

“You got fifty-two minutes,” LaVon said, ignoring her. “You goin’, or what?”

“But why did you come along?” I asked.

“I’m your cover,” he said. “And I’ll make sure we get out. Don’t try and bring your dad all the way back here. Just get him outside and call me on my cell. We’ll figure it out then.”

“But—”

“Come on,” Krista said, pulling me out the back door.

Each yard had a small blue shed in the back, and we ran from one to the next, but for the most part, we were out in the open. All the disciples and their families were
supposed
to go to Assembly on Saturday, but there was no way of knowing if they really had gone. We just had to run through the backyards, hoping no one had stayed home and would spot us. At least we knew Mira wasn’t home. It wasn’t safe for Josh to text us, so Liz and Megan had gone to Assembly with him, and they’d sent Krista a message, letting us know she was at the church.

When we got to my dad’s shed, we leaned against it, panting. I think I was short on breath more from fright than exertion.

“Can you hear that?” Krista whispered.

“Yeah.”

The gate was so close to my dad’s trailer that from where we stood the sound of the guards’ mumbled voices floated back to us. We couldn’t see them, though, and we had a clear line to the rear door.

“Ready?” I asked her.

“I’m gonna text LaVon to let him know we’re going in.”

When she was done, we hurtled ourselves across the tiny backyard and up to the door. I thrust the key in the lock, and it turned easily. We stepped into the dim kitchen and looked around. Cheap cabinets, mini appliances, and a laminate countertop framed a spotless Formica table. The kitchen literally sparkled, it was so clean. We crept down a narrow hallway, carefully opening each door and peering in. Bathroom. Closet. Master bedroom. And finally, near the front of the trailer, a locked door.

“He’s got to be in there,” I said. “What if someone’s with him, though? Like a guard?”

“I’m guessing they would’ve heard us whispering by now,” she said. “This door is one of those cheap, flimsy kinds.”

She was probably right. And then, from inside, we heard a cough.

“That’s him!” I said.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. He’s my dad! I would know his cough anywhere.” That wasn’t actually true, but who else could it be?

“Give me a hairpin,” Krista said.

I pulled one out of the wig. Five minutes later, the door was still locked and I’d searched all over the trailer for a screwdriver to pry the knob off, but hadn’t had any luck.