The Truant Officer (16 page)

Darren’s head began to spin so fast that he thought it was going to fly off his neck. He wandered out of Brett’s room like a drunk looking for his keys and bumped his way down a staircase. He found the front door and rushed into the Arizona sun, needing air. The picture of Lilly and Brett Buckley together was the last thing he saw in his mind just before everything went black.

Chapter 34

Darren felt a sharp slap across his face. And then another. He heard a faint voice. It seemed to be coming from far away. “Wake up.”

He opened his eyes just in time to see the hand once again headed for his face. His reflexes responded in time to grab it before another slap connected with his throbbing cheek. He found himself in the passenger seat of his Jetta. They were no longer at the Buckley’s house.

“Any chance the last twenty-four hours was a really bad dream?” he asked in a hoarse voice.

“That’s what all the guys say when they wake up next to me,” Becks replied with a smile.

“What happened?”

“You passed out, so I dragged you to the car and brought you for help. BTW—you’re waaay heavier than you look!”

He looked around, unsure of his surroundings. “This sure doesn’t look like the hospital.”

“The hospital will kill you. Do you know how many germs and bacteria are in that place?”

“Where are we, Becks?”

“I brought you to Cholla’s. I figure a Cholla Burger and curly fries can cure any ailment.”

Now the neighborhood came into focus. They were in the parking lot of the popular hamburger stand on Chandler Boulevard, not far from Darren’s home. “How long was I out?”

“About twenty minutes, I guess. I really didn’t keep track. I thought you were trying to scam me into giving you CPR—that so wasn’t happening. Now let’s go,” she ordered. Darren wasn’t going anywhere.

Becks walked around to the passenger side and unhooked him out of his seat-belt. She then yanked him to his feet.

“I’m not really hungry,” Darren groaned.

“It’s a Cholla Burger and curly fries. What does hunger have to do with anything?”

He hesitantly followed her to one of the outdoor patio tables. Once he was seated, she took out a tube of 30-block and began smudging it on his scalp. “Don’t want you to be sorry in the morning—did you know the sun is the leading cause of sunburn?”

“You must have Mr. Fischer for science.”

“I was thinking about running away with him to get back at Brett.”

He smiled—he’d almost forgotten what it felt like. “He’s pretty spry for his age, you think you can keep up?”

“Tell me about it. Instead of teaching physics, physics should be teaching him,” she replied with a grin.

But the nice moment quickly waned. Darren figured that’s how things would be from now on. After ordering, they fell into silence. Lilly and Brett was their only common conversation piece, and neither of them wanted to discuss it anymore.

“Shouldn’t you be back in school?” he finally asked.

She looked at him like he’d said the most absurd thing ever. “Let me see—school—Cholla Burger—school—Cholla Burger. It was a tough choice, but I went with Cholla Burger,” she mocked.

“Be careful or they’ll send the truant officer after you.”

“The wha...?”

“Truant officers were a volunteer section of the local police force that rounded up kids who were cutting school—what they called truancy. My grandfather was a truant officer.”

Becks snorted a laugh. “I think they need to send one of those dudes after Brett and your wife. They are the ones cutting school today. Or maybe we should declare ourselves honorary truant officers for the day and drag their asses back here.”

He was impressed by her sharp wit, even if most of the humor was at his expense. But her face soured, and even the arrival of their food didn’t remove her frown. She sighed heavily. “I really thought it was meant to be.”

“What was?” Darren asked, confused.

“Brett and I. All the Barbies in school wanted him, and would always trash me behind my back or in those stupid chat rooms, but I was convinced they were just jealous of what we had.”

Darren nodded as he bit into his burger. Becks was right—it hit the spot. He couldn’t remember the last time he ate, which probably played a role in his passing out.

“We were inseparable,” Becks continued, still not touching her food. “People eventually accepted us. They called us Posh and Becks—how cute is that?”

“Posh and Becks?’

You know, like Victoria and David Beckham—the British supercouple. Brett was actually Posh because he was so pretty, and I was Becks, because, well, I’m Becks. But we were more than cute, we had a lot in common. We both moved here in the middle of our senior year, which BTW, really sucks.”

He continued to devour his burger, half-listening to her teenage tangent.

“And Chandler is like totally the worst place. The guys are a bunch of suburban wangsters and the girls are all tanorexic backstabbers.”

“Where did you move here from?” Darren asked as he whisked a curly fry through a mound of ketchup and slung it into his mouth.

“Boston. My father got a job out here and chose the scrilla over his daughter’s sanity.”

Darren perked up, feeling the connection. “I’m from Framingham.”

“Wicked awesam,” she replied, displaying a heavy Boston accent. “I guess we have more in common than our sig-ohs being a couple of cheating louses. I got accepted to BC, so hopefully I’ll be heading back in the fall…if I graduate, that is.”

“I left when I was eighteen and don’t get back much, unless I’m flying into Logan. My parents both passed about ten years ago and I lost track of most of my childhood buddies. But I do miss the old neighborhood.”

“That Paul Revere thing musta been pretty cool,” Becks said with a smirk that resuscitated him.

“I’m not quite
that
old, but I lived there when the Red Sox were the cursed team that lost every year.”

“That was way before my time, but I’ve read about those teams,” she said. Her smile faded and she stared forlornly at the traffic on Chandler Boulevard. “Do you think we are just setting ourselves up for failure?”

“What do you mean?” Darren asked, washing down his burger with his diet soda.

“No offense to us, but we we’re playing OOOL here.”

“OOOL?”

“Out of our league. My boyfriend and your wife are serious hotties. I’m nerd-sexy enough to be a rock star at a Harry Potter convention, but I can’t compete with your flirt-in-a-skirt wife.”

Darren took a close look at her. And despite the ketchup dripping from the side of her lip and her light skin losing the battle against the sun, he thought she was selling herself short.

“And you…” she continued.

“And me, what?”

“You’re not exactly a lollipop. There’s a reason it’s Angelina and Brad, and not Angelina and some follicley-challenged boring guy from Arizona.”

“When you get older you’ll learn that it’s not all about looks. It’s what’s on the inside that counts.”

“Thanks for the backseat mothering, but I’ll take that a little more seriously when Tom Brady dumps Giselle for Madam Curie.”

“I heard Mr. Fischer and Madam Curie once had a steamy affair,” Darren tried to joke a subject change.

Becks didn’t laugh, but seemed in favor of the shift in topics. “So what’s your deal?” she asked.

“My deal?”

“I told you my sad tale, and my parents taught me not to eat Cholla Burgers with strangers. Tell me about yourself and then you won’t be a stranger anymore. So far, all I know is that you’re boring, your baseball team never won, your grandfather arrested kids for not going to school, and you have bad taste in women. The story has nowhere to go but up.”

Darren shrugged. “Not much to tell. Grew up in the Boston area, Irish Catholic, so I have lots of guilt to go with my boringness and bad taste. I went to the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, and was an officer for ten years before joining civilian life. Flying planes is what I did, so flying commercial seemed like the logical step. And that’s when I met Lilly.”

Becks burst into laughter.

“What’s so funny?” Darren asked, rankled.

“It’s so ironic,” she said through chokes of laughter, “our lives are exactly like those Greek tragedies we studied in your wife’s class. Things are going along and then one wrong turn and things come crashing down.
And then I met Lilly,
cue the horror-film music.
”

She shook her head in disbelief, unable to stop laughing. “I guess ya gotta either laugh or cry.”

So Darren cried.

Chapter 35

The red light flashed on and Jessi Stafford sprung into action. She was about to deliver another in her exclusive reports on the teacher/student scandal.

The case was already a screenwriters dream. It included: the abduction of an attractive woman, forbidden romance, and a tear-jerking plea by a distraught husband to strum the heartstrings. But it now added a few more elements that made America weak in the knees—weddings, gambling, and Elvis. And the best part for Jessi was that since Channel-6 was an unaffiliated station, they were able to syndicate her reports to the national outlets. She was getting nationwide coverage!

“I am reporting to you live from the Little Church of the West in Las Vegas. Where, after a night of reckless gambling, fugitive couple Lilly McLaughlin and Brett Buckley were last seen trying to get a married without a proper marriage license.”

Jessi smiled into the camera. It wasn’t one of the smiles she’d had to fake this past year—this one was full of joy. The joy of a possible return to New York and spreading the gospel of kiss my ass.

“Since Lilly McLaughlin is already married, we can add bigamy to the laundry list of charges,” she continued.

She sneaked a smirk at her cameraman, Byung. Always the skeptic, he actually thought coming to Vegas was a bad idea. Another reason why he would spend his whole career behind the camera in that Arizona cowtown.

She turned to a man who had witnessed Lilly and Brett in the chapel, and had agreed to go on the air with her. He featured a large pompadour haircut, and wore a sequined jumpsuit unbuttoned to his navel, oversized sunglasses, and disco boots. As if this wasn’t enough of a circus already, her eyewitness was an Elvis impersonator.

Interviewing Elvis was actually more along the lines of the career she thought she’d have while growing up in Kissimmee, Florida. She wasn’t sure exactly what she would do with her life, but knew it would take place in front of a camera. She never thought about the news, and frankly the idea bored her—if you’ve witnessed one crime or political scandal, you’ve seen them all—entertainment was where the real stars were made.

Following the interview with Elvis, Jessi received a phone call. More good news. Her source informed her that Lilly McLaughlin was spotted at McCarran International, and had purchased a ticket on a flight to Mexico City.

She practically dragged Byung to their rental car and made a dash for the airport. Not wanting to take time to park, she told Byung to drop her off at the terminal. But she had a hunch, and changed her mind. Instead, she directed him to go to long-term parking.

And sure enough it was there. The McLaughlins’ Lexus SUV. She had Byung film a shot of it for her next report, and then they returned to the terminal.

Jessi hightailed it into the airport, but when she did, the winning streak came to an end. She learned that the flight to Mexico City had already taken off.

Byung was much less devastated. “We gave it our best shot. But since they’re no longer here in Vegas, and we don’t have the travel budget for Mexico City, I’m going to hop the next flight back to Phoenix.”

For once, Jessi agreed with him. But something was bugging her, and she said, “Go ahead—I’ll catch up with you later. I just need to take care of something.”

He looked strangely at her for a second, and then headed toward the domestic flights.

Mexico was too obvious, Jessi thought. Using the credit card, being seen at the wedding chapel, and now leaving the car in plain sight. If they were actually this stupid, they wouldn’t have gotten this far. Something was fishy.

She went to the Air Mexico counter and demanded the flight manifest, along with any security video of the passengers getting on the plane.

“And you are?” the attendant asked.

“I’m Jessi Stafford from Channel-6 News in Phoenix, and this is related to an important story I’m covering.”

“Sorry, we are not allowed to give that type of information to reporters.”

“Are you aware of the Freedom of Information Act?”

“I am, and it is not related to your request.”

Jessi figured that this was above the attendant’s pay grade, so she requested to see her supervisor. When she refused, Jessi began to make a loud scene. Squeaky wheel gets the grease. But all she got was an escort out of the terminal.

A cab driver came up to her as she stood curbside. “You need a ride?”

Jessi shook her head without looking at the man, pondering her next move.

“You were right, you know.”

This got her attention. “Right about what?”

“The runaway teacher and her student. They didn’t get on that flight.”

“You saw them?”

“I gave them a ride out of here.”

Jessi could feel a rush of excitement as the man handed her his card. Then he took out a piece of paper and wrote something on it.

He handed the paper to her. “Here are my rates for the ride you want to go on.”

She looked at it—it wasn’t even close to being within their budget. And how did she know he wasn’t lying? She was just about to make a counter offer, when her phone rang. She hoped it was more good news from her source.

It was Brandon Longa. Uh-oh.

“Hey, baby, funny thing happened when I got out of the shower. You were gone. I was worried sick that you were taken in one of those gang abductions.”

“I’m sorry, Brandon, I was called into an emergency at work.”

“Yeah, I saw your reports from Vegas. You must have been in a hurry because you forgot to shut off my computer, and hide the fact that you broke into my phone to steal police evidence with intent to broadcast it.”