Trust Me, I'm Trouble (8 page)

St. Agatha’s is renaming the gym after Tyler. Honestly, I’m glad of it. I’d rather have that knife of guilt in my gut every day than have even one person forget him. He deserves better than that.

My chest grows heavy at the thought. I try not to think too much about Tyler when I’m with other people, because once I start, I have trouble stopping. And when I get too caught up in it, I start snapping at people. Poor Murphy caught the brunt of my rage during Skyla’s case, but Dani and Mike got their share as well.

I wish like crazy that I could bring him back. He may have been spying on me for Petrov from the beginning. He may have ruined my con, selling me out to Petrov in some misguided attempt to save me. I have no illusions about who should have died that day, and it wasn’t Tyler. But since I can’t bring him back, I wish instead that I could let him go. Neither seems to be happening, so I’m stuck in this weird limbo place of being chained to a ghost.

And just as I think that, a yearbook appears on the table just beyond my elbow. I look up at the silent intruder, a girl with long, chestnut-colored hair and shy brown eyes. She doesn’t look like Tyler, not really, but her hair and eyes are close to the same color as his. It’s almost as if his shadow is sending me a message. Hell if I know what it is, though.

“Thank you,” the girl I’ve never before talked to says in a heavy Ukrainian accent. I study her for a moment, and then notice out of the corner of my eye that the entire tableful of Ukrainian girls is watching me, waiting to see what I’ll do. I mean, it’s just a yearbook for crying out loud.

I fish around in my backpack for a pen, but the girl waves it away before clasping her hands together. Confused, I open the front cover of the yearbook and see this inscription on the title page:

Для Julep Dupree, Покровителя загублених дівчат

On the inside of the cover, there’s a wall of tiny words scrawled in different colored pens. Some of the words are in English, some in Ukrainian. But all of the blocks of text are addressed to me, as if this were my yearbook and the girls had all signed it.

“It is our wish to say
dyakuyu
…thank you.” Then she hastens back to her table, falling into the group of girls as a droplet is absorbed back into the sea.

Bryn and Murphy lean over my shoulder to look while Lily kneels in her chair to get a better view from the other side of the table.

“Wow,” Bryn says. “It looks like nearly all of them signed it. Good luck deciphering it, though.”

“Dani can help you,” Murphy says.

Lily doesn’t comment, but she’s staring at the book as if trying to make sense of a Rubik’s Cube.

“Look at this one,” Bryn says, pointing at an inscription in loopy, purple cursive. “It says she lost all hope after her sister died until the night you saved her. It’s like they think you’re Mother Teresa or something.”

Fantastic. If I’d felt guilty earlier, I feel ten times guiltier now. Yeah, I put those girls on the way to being saved, but I didn’t really
do
the saving, and I certainly didn’t pay the price. Tyler did. Sam did. My dad did. Pretty much everybody did
but
me.

“Why do you look like someone died?” Murphy asks.

I give him a withering glare.

“Oh, right. Sorry,” he mumbles.

I look back down at the book, brushing a hand along the cover’s edge. All these girls had lives before Petrov wrenched them away from everything they knew. My actions forced them into a system that, hopefully, will treat them well, but they’re stuck in it now. Whether they get deported or worse is not up to them. It’s up to a bunch of bureaucrats who have no idea what it’s like to have to choose between slavery and death. The girls’ lives are better, yes, but their choices are still not theirs. And here they are thanking me for it.

Lily walks out, leaving her tray on the table as if this were a four-star restaurant instead of a fourth-rate cafeteria. I barely notice.

“Well, on that note, I have a chem final to study for,” Bryn says, giving Murphy a peck on the cheek and fleeing almost as quickly as Lily did. At least she takes her tray with her. Murphy gets up as well, pulling Lily’s tray over so he can take it up with his.

“Wait, Murphy,” I say, coming back to the present enough to remember I have more to say to him. “Something else happened last night that I need to tell you about.”

He sits again, trays forgotten, as I lay out everything that happened with the contract killer. He leans forward and rests his forehead in his hands as I finish the story.

“You’re serious,” he says. “This is really happening.”

“I’m telling you because I want you to be careful, but I don’t want the whole world to know.”

“What can I do?”

“Nothing. Let me handle it. Just steer clear of the Ballou for a few days.”

“How many days?”

“As many as it takes,” I say, getting to my feet. “I have to go see the dean.”

“Now? After everything?”

“I have to do something, Murph. It’s what I can do.”

• • •

Dean Porter’s office is every bit as god-awful as it always was. Walking into the loud mishmash of floral and plaid patterns is an assault on the senses. I think longingly of my sunglasses tucked away in my locker. They probably wouldn’t help much, but some eye protection is better than none.

“The dean will see you now,” says her secretary. He’s new. Younger than the last one. Hopefully, he doesn’t wash out in one semester like all the others.

“Ms. Dupree, how nice to see your shining face.” The dean gestures me to a plump, too-bright chair. “I trust your mental health is improving.”

I smile to derail this below-the-belt comment. I’m not that easy to taunt. “One day at a time,” I say.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?”

She’s dressed, as always, sharp enough to cut. Her titian hair is just as severe as it was the day I started at St. Aggie’s. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d been born with its ends razored into the fine points currently brushing her shoulders.

Sadly for me, the dean has only one weakness, and that weakness is currently behind bars, serving who knows how many decades for conspiracy, trafficking, and really poor taste in associates. Nope, not Petrov. She had the hots for Senator Richland, Tyler’s dad—a fact Tyler exploited for my benefit on more than one occasion. But it’s not a weakness I can exploit at the moment. I have to find another way into the New World Initiative.

Maybe Bryn’s suggestion is worth trying. The direct approach.

“I’d really like your permission to—”

“No.”

“But I didn’t even finish—”

“It’s not necessary for you to finish. Whatever you are asking for, I am positive you have an underlying motive I would not approve of. Therefore, no. You cannot have my permission.”

“But, Dean Porter, if you just—”

“As a rule, I am bound to grant every student who requests one an audience. I have given you yours, and I have answered your question. Have a good day, Ms. Dupree.”

“But—”

She gives me a look like she’s daring me to continue, so I click my jaw shut and stand to go.

“Thank you for your time,” I say as I pull my books to my chest. I can admit defeat. Temporarily, at least.

I walk out of the dean’s office into her waiting room, my head spinning and discarding con after unlikely con. I can’t figure out how to get around her. This may be the one time I can’t find a way to get something I need. She’ll be suspecting something now, but maybe I can use that to my advantage somehow.

As I step into the hallway, I nearly trip over Lily, who is sitting just outside the door to Dean Porter’s office. She looks up at me, frowning.

I open my mouth to ask her what she’s doing here, but she cuts me off. “No luck, huh?”

“No—”

She pushes herself to standing, and then brushes past me into the office. She’s gone for two full minutes before coming out again.

“What’s going on?”

She looks at me, her expression hard. “It’s done,” she says. “You’re in.”

Then she walks away.

A
fter school, Dani drives me back to the Ramirezes’ house. Since Angela’s not there, Dani comes in with me. She rarely sets foot in the house, too close to a cop for comfort, probably. Even when Mike and Angela aren’t around, Dani usually just drops me off at the door. I guess having a contract out on me changes things.

“What did she say to convince Dean Porter to agree?” Dani asks.

“She didn’t tell me. She just walked off. I don’t know what leverage Lily could possibly have over the dean that would get her to give up any leverage she has over me. She’d never cave willingly, and certainly not that quickly. It must be huge, whatever it is.”

“So you’re really going through with this, even though someone is trying to kill you.”

I sigh. “Do you have any leads on who put the contract out on me?”

“No, which is all the more reason for you to stay where you know it’s safe.”

“No, which means there’s absolutely nothing I can do about that situation right now, so I might as well work on something that I
can
move on.”

Dani’s expression turns stonier than I’ve seen it in a while. I forget how much her demeanor has softened over the past few months until she gets irritated at me. Then I remember what it was like in the beginning, when she was running me off the road and dragging me out of warehouses and trying to force me across state lines.

Time for some misdirection to soothe the savage enforcer.

“I do have a favor to ask, actually.” I try to sound as insecure as I feel to help nudge her out of her bad mood.

Her eyebrow lifts, changing her frown from forbidding to receptive. Looks like my cunning vulnerability worked.

“I was hoping you could translate something for me,” I say, pulling the yearbook the Ukrainian girls gave me out of my backpack. I open the cover and point at the inscription on the first page. Для Julep Dupree, Покровителя загублених дівчат.

“Pokrovytelya zahublenykh divchatok,”
she whispers, her voice sending a shiver up my spine. “ ‘For Julep Dupree, patron saint of lost girls.’ ”

I lean against the bar in the kitchen, absorbing the words like a blow. It’s worse than I thought. The idea of me, of what I did, has become completely twisted in their heads.

“Can you talk to them?” I ask Dani, grasping at straws. “Make them see I’m not who they think I am?”

She looks at me, her eyes unreadable. “Why would I do that? They have hope. Is it wrong for them to hold on to that for a while at least?”

“I didn’t really save them, Dani. They’re better off, yes, but they’re still shackled to the system. They’re still not free.”

Dani stares at me for a long, silent moment. See? This is why I felt insecure when I asked her to translate the inscription for me. I knew it was going to get awkward.

She edges a step closer like she can’t help herself, though she’s careful not to touch me. “You grifters value your freedom above all other things,” she says. “But freedom is not the only gift there is. These girls appreciate you for the gift you gave them, not the gifts you could not.”

I wish I had the luxury of looking at it that way. I’m not a good person, much less a saint. Letting them believe that I am feels like a lie I can’t live with. Which is saying something, since I live with a lot of lies.

My gaze flicks up to Dani’s and is caught like a fly in honey. I have the strangest feeling just north of my solar plexus, like a cross between a magnetic pull and a spike of adrenaline. I can’t tell what she’s feeling, as usual, but there’s something about her, something different. Her short blond hair and white skin are practically glowing in the sunlight that’s streaming through the bay window, which makes her look the part of saint much more convincingly than me. But that’s not what’s causing my breath to stutter, to stop. That’s not what’s drawing us toward a cliff, not touching but barely an inch apart. I wish—

“Hello, girls.” Angela’s voice comes from behind a couple of paper grocery bags. “Help me with the rest?”

And just like that, the connection snaps. My heart starts pumping again, faster to make up for lost time. I move past Angela at a pace just shy of running.

Later that night, I’m circling the drain of studying for my environmental science exam when I finally give up and chuck the book at the unfortunate desk chair. I can’t get that scene with Dani out of my head. What the hell is wrong with me? Didn’t I learn my lesson with Tyler and Sam? Caring too much is a one-way ticket to graveyards and good-byes.

Tomorrow is the vigil for Tyler, and still, after seven long months, I’m not sure how I feel. Did I love him? Honestly, I don’t know. I loved the idea of him. I could easily have fallen in love with him if I’d had the chance to get to know him without bullets and bad guys dogging us at every turn. Mostly, I feel the lack of him where he should have been. I should have been able to yell at him for betraying me. I should have gotten to key his car and frame him for some petty theft so he’d have to spend a night in jail. I should have had months to get over my anger and forgive him, to hear him explain. Instead I had minutes. And then anguish. And then nightmares.