I look at him, then at Marissa, Holly, and Dot. None of them says a word, but they're all looking at me with their eyebrows up. “All right, Billy,” I say to him. “What's going on.”
“Waddaya mean?”
I dig out my peanut butter sandwich and shoot him a look. “I'm gonna start whacking my tail around pretty soon here.”
He makes an exaggerated hurt look. “Are you sayin' I'm bugging you?”
I squint at him and whisper, “I'm saying I'm not stupid, okay?”
He nods, and his eyes get a little shifty. Like he wants to check around but he's making himself not. “I know that.”
“So? You going to be straight with me?”
He shrugs and grins. “Just thought it might be fun to hang with you.”
But looking into his eyes, I can tell—he's lying. “You're talking turds, Billy.”
He laughs, then gets up, saying, “And here I thought you were cool.”
Then he blindsided me. I swear, I didn't see it coming, didn't in a million years expect it. I mean, one minute he's leaving, the next he's leaning over, smooching my cheek. I'm talking a mushy, gushy, air-sucking, high-decibel kiss. And then he's waving, laughing, “See-ya, Sammy!” over his shoulder.
I just sat there like a statue with bird poop on its cheek. And while I'm trying to come to grips with what's just happened, Holly's going, “What in the …,” and Dot's going, “When did you and Billy … ?”
But then Marissa says, “Wait a minute …,” and dashes to the end of the tables. And then Marissa—Little Miss Gross-out Germaphobe—starts digging through a trash can.
“What is she doing ?” Dot asks.
Holly shakes her head. “It's got to be important.”
We watch as Marissa flies through crumpled scraps, opening them up one by one until she finds what she's looking for. In a flash she's back at our table, smoothing out a paper in front of me.
And with one look I know—Heather Acosta is at it again.
SIXTEEN
“What is that?” Holly asked.
I took the paper from Marissa. “How'd you find this?”
Marissa asked, “Did you write it?”
“No!” I scanned the patio area and spotted Heather's wicked red head jetting away. “There she goes! That sneaky, creepy, mentally deranged … tarantula!”
“Oh, boy,” Marissa says, sitting down. “Oh, boy.”
“What is going on?” Dot asks.
“Here,” Marissa says, shoving the note her way. “I just saw Casey chuck this in the trash.”
“Dear Casey … Meet me at our lunch table on the patio. There's something I have to tell you. Hang ten, Sammy.” Dot looks at me all wide-eyed. “You didn't write this?”
“Me? Sign off ‘hang ten'? That chowderhead probably thinks that's something you do on a skateboard.”
“You think Heather wrote it?”
“Yes!”
“Whirling windmills!” Dot cries. “You've got to do something!”
Marissa nods. “Casey looked pretty upset, Sammy.”
“He saw Billy here?” I asked. “He saw the whole thing?”
“I think so.”
I slammed my fist on the table. “How does she do that? How does a person manage to pull something like that off?”
“But I don't get it,” Holly says. “Why'd she do it?”
I sighed, then looked at Marissa, then at Holly and Dot. And since Marissa's giving me the You've-Got-to-Tell-Them nod and Holly and Dot are just sitting there with big question marks on their faces, I break down and tell them. About Casey and the kiss, Heather and the fish, my skateboard coming back, and Billy Pratt. And when I'm all done, Dot jumps out of her seat and says, “You've got to find Casey and tell him!”
“I know,” I tell her, staying put.
“No! You've got to go now.”
“But if I track him down, he'll think I like him.”
All three of them lean in like a flock of buzzards. “Well, don't you?”
“You guys are crazy, you know that? What kind of mess would that be? How can you like someone and not give them your phone number? How can you like someone and not tell them where you live? How can you like someone if you can't trust them with really basic stuff?”
They were all quiet a minute, kind of shrugging and looking down. And finally Holly says, “So what you're saying is, you can't like anyone, right?”
I snap, “Yeah, so it's a good thing I don't like him, okay?” But to tell you the truth, what she said sank in heavy. Sank in hard. No, my living situation wasn't temporary. Grams wasn't going to marry Hudson and move into his big house, like I'd started daydreaming might happen. His porch would always be his porch, not our porch. And I knew my mother wasn't going to sashay home anytime soon. To her, life on a soap opera was way more meaningful than life in Santa Martina. No, things were the way they were, and they were going to stay that way for as long as I could see.
“You okay?” Marissa asked. “Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine.”
“You've got to talk to him.”
“I will.” I folded the note and put it in my back pocket. “Later.”
Heather was her usual smug and hateful self in science. And I really wanted to let on that I was wise to her, but I made myself keep quiet. The less she knew about what I knew, the better. But believe me, by the time I got to art, I was in a really bad mood. And one look at Miss Kuzkowski just made it worse. She was standing in front of her “Art Teaches Nothing, Except the Significance of Life” poster, wearing her beret and holding her precious wooden palette in her left hand while she poked paint onto a canvas with her right. Jab-jab-jab. Whoosh-whooshwhoosh. Jab-jab-jab. Whoosh-whoosh-whoosh. The class was piling in, but she didn't stop. She was into it, shuffling all around her easel. Jab-jab-jab. Whoosh-whoosh-whoosh. And her punches and slashes of brown and yellow and purple made me understand that it was true—she was definitely the Splotter's disciple.
When the tardy bell rang, she took a break from her jabbing and whooshing and said, “Hey, gang! Your reports are still due on Friday, but as of today, we're back to projects.”
Who cared? Right then I wanted nothing to do with art or paint. I just wanted to go home.
But as she explained what the new project was, well, I began to get an idea. A very bratty idea.
See, our assignment was to paint joy.
That's right, joy.
She didn't care what medium we used—watercolors, oil paints, acrylics, colored pencils—she didn't care. She just wanted joy. “Get to it!” she cried, then went back to punching on purple splotches.
So while everyone else is thinking and talking out their ideas, I get up, get a recycled canvas, splot out some red and white oil paint on a sheet of waxed paper, mix them into pink, and thin it out with turpentine. Then I get to work.
Tony Rozwell's in the back, singing, “La-la-la-laaaa! Lala-la-laaaa!” and someone shouts, “Knock it off, Rozwell, you're annoying!”
“La-la-la-laaaaa! La-la-la-laaaaaaaaa!”
Miss Kuzkowski calls, “Tony!”
“Just trying to feel joy, Miss K! Looking for my inspiration! La-la-la-la-laaaaaa!”
“Tonyyyyyy,” she warns.
“Turn on the radio, Miss K! That'll shut him up!”
Emma watches me and says, “How do you know what to do? How can you be painting already?”
I just smile at her and keep on going.
“I have no idea what to paint. How come everyone else always knows what to paint but me? I am so lame at this.” She looks at my canvas. “What are you making?”
“Joy,” I tell her. “Don't you feel it?”
She looks at the ridiculous circles I'm painting, one around the other, around the other, all in pink. “Nu-uh,” she says. “They're just circles.”
I smile at her again and say, “Oh, no, Emma. This is joy.”
“Miss Kuzkowski!” she calls, her hand shooting in the air. “I don't know what to paint!”
“La-l
a-la-laaaaaa! La-la-la-laaaaaaaaaaaaa!”
“Somebody turn on the radio!” Brandy calls from the back of the class. “Or I'm gonna have to burp!”
Miss Kuzkowski lets out an impatient sigh and cranks on some music. Then she comes over to Emma, whose hand is flagging around like crazy, and says, “Okay, Emma, how can I help you?”
“Sammy says that's joy. Can we do that? Just paint anything and call it joy?”
“Hmmmm,” Miss Kuzkowski says, watching as I paint the next, bigger circle. “What's your plan here, Sammy?”
“Plan? How do you plan joy?”
She blinks at me.
I blink at her.
Then I move on to the next, bigger circle.
“But …” Her eyes narrow down on me. Her beret seems to grip on tighter. “You're not being facetious, are you, Sammy?”
“Facetious? Miss Kuzkowski!” I hold out my painting, which now looks like the ugliest psycho pink eye you'd ever want to see. “Don't you feel joy from this?”
She cocks her head, then very slowly starts to shake it.
“Miss Kuzkowski!” I point to the center dot. “This is how joy begins. As a little warm spot in your heart. That's why I chose pink. Then it radiates outward, filling the world, the galaxy, the universe with jubilance, warmth, delight! It's like a pebble tossed into a pool, where the ripples go out, out, out, changing the … the landscape, the mood, the perspective on existence!” I look at her with wide eyes. “Don't you see it?”
“Wow,” she says, taking the psycho pink eye from me. “Samantha!”
Emma is squinting away, shaking her head. “So that right there is joy? We can turn that in and get credit?”
“No,” Miss Kuzkowski says, turning to face her. “Sammy can turn this is. This is her joy. You come up with your own joy.” Then she smiles at me and hands back my psycho pink eye. “Very nice.”
When she's gone, Emma shakes her head and says, “I hate art.”
“Me too,” I tell her. “Me too.”
I did look for Casey after school. Sort of. When I headed for the bike racks to meet up with Marissa, I kept one eye on the buses waiting at the front of the school, but didn't see him.
Not that it would have done any good anyway, but I was feeling pretty bad about what had happened. Bad and sort of responsible. I mean, maybe I wasn't the one who had made things such a mess, but still, I was the one who could fix them.
Or, with the way things had been going, make them worse.
The whole situation just made me frustrated and mad and confused and … irritated. And it didn't help matters any that I was being whipped around in the wind, waiting for Marissa, who was just not showing up.
Finally I couldn't take it anymore. So I crammed a “Gotta get out of here—catch up” note under her bike's brake grip, then tore off campus.
I had a tailwind, so I flew down the sidewalk even faster than I had the day before. I hopped curbs. I blasted down one driveway and blasted up the next. I didn't slow down for anyone or anything. And when I heard the buses growling in the distance behind me, I pumped even harder. I wanted to get away from school, but the buses gaining on me made me feel like I was being chased by it. Chased by wicked diesel-spewing schoolhouse demons in ugly yellow trench coats.
They roared past me anyway, and when they did, I finally let up. And at the corner of Broadway and Cook, I waited a few minutes for Marissa, but then decided it would be better for her if I just headed home. Even after a hard ride, I was still too dangerous to be around.
Boy, was I crabby!
So, it turns out, was Grams. I swear, she made me seem sweet as Snow White. I found her sitting on the kitchen floor, ripping pots and pans out of a cupboard, thumping and bumping, muttering and hrmphing, steaming like a pressure cooker.
“Hi, Grams.”
Grumble-grumble.
“I take it you saw Hudson today?”
Grumble-grumble-grumble.
“Showed him the fishy papers?”
She looked at me from around the cupboard door. “Micro-fiche, Samantha! It's a type of film, not something from a seafood market.”
I couldn't help grinning. “But he didn't find anything, uh, fishy about them?”
She burrowed back into the cupboard. “Very funny. And no, he didn't.”
“Are you looking for something or just cleaning?”
“Organizing,” she says as she yanks out more pots and pans. “Making sense out of years of accumulated clutter and debris.”
I dropped my backpack and sat down on the floor, too. “So what did he say?”
Bang, clank, thwonk. “He told me it's who you evolve into that matters, not the missteps you've taken along the way.” She eyes me over her shoulder. “I don't know why I bothered.”
So there she is, surrounded by pots and pans, baking dishes and muffin tins, about to say something more, when all of a sudden her eyes get real big and she freezes. Then I swear her ears perk up. Like a bunny that senses a fox near the meadow.
“What, Grams?”
“Shhh!”
Before I can hear a thing, Grams is up and out of the kitchen, on her way to her bedroom.
I chase along behind her, and that's when I hear it, too.
Brum-bum-bum-bum-bum.
Grams already has her binoculars out from under her bed and is heading for the window.
“Grams, it's probably just a—”
“No, it's not,” she snaps, then points. “There he is.” She puts her binoculars up to her glasses, but I don't need them to know she's right. I watch as the bike growls up Broadway, and even from five floors up, I recognize the rider.
Plus, Grams was right—nothing sounds quite like that Harley.
“What's his name again?” Grams asks from behind her binoculars.
“Lance, I think.”
“That's right, Lance.”
We watch as he flips a U-ie. Across four lanes of traffic, right there in front of the highrise, he does a U-ie and pulls up to the curb of the Heavenly Hotel across the street. Then he snaps down his kickstand, peels off his helmet, and saunters inside.
Grams lowers the binoculars. “He's staying at the Heavenly?”
Now, the Heavenly is the seediest hotel in town. I know—I've been inside. So whether he's staying there or just visiting someone there doesn't really matter. As Grams says, it's a safe house for unsavory characters.
'Course there are also nice people at the Heavenly. Like my friend Madame Nashira. And André—the guy who runs the front desk—he's okay, too. So it's not like I'm afraid of the place. I just don't hang out there much, is all.
Anyway, Grams is practically rubbing her chin, going, “I wonder what he's doing there…. Mizz Lizz has got plenty of room, so why isn't he staying with her?”
I almost told her what Mr. Moss had said about him and Diane having a “row,” but I didn't really want to get into why I'd been over there again. Not just then, anyway. So instead I said, “You want me to cruise over and check it out?”
“No!”
“Why not? I'll just go in, ask André if the guy's staying or visiting, and come back.”
“No. You know how I feel about the Heavenly.”
“I also know how you feel about Diane Reijden.” “Hrmph.”
“Okaaaaay, Grams, then you go.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you.”
“But—”
“Or, we could go together … ?”
She looks at me. Then the Heavenly. Then me again.
Then my grams does something I've never known her to do.
She giggles.
And with that, we're off to the Heavenly Hotel.
SEVENTEEN
Not only did Grams decide to go to the Heavenly Hotel with me, she decided to take the fire escape. “It's certainly more direct,” she said.
“But not exactly made for pumps,” I told her.
“Look, Samantha. Quit it about my shoes, would you? I've worn pumps my whole lif
e, and I'm not ready to give them up yet.” She clanked along behind me. “Would you rather I wore shoes like Rose's?”
“Oh yuck, Grams!” I said, 'cause Mrs. Wedgewood next door wears the world's most revolting shoes. They're rubbery and black, and her ankles balloon out over the tops.
“Well then quit making fun of my pumps.”
I started saying something about some happy middle ground, but she caught my eye from half a flight up. “I said, quit!”
“Okay, okay! I'm just worried about you tripping on nothing again and having to haul your broken bones to the hospital—”
“I did not trip on nothing!”
“Well then—”
“Stop it!”
I rolled my eyes. “Whatever.”
When she joined me on the ground, she snorted and said, “See? I managed just fine,” but then she wouldn't jaywalk across Broadway. Not because she was afraid of getting a ticket—no, she was afraid she couldn't cross fast enough to make it without getting hit by a car. So we had to go clear up to Main, cross at the light, and then walk back down to the Heavenly.
She might as well have taken the elevator.
The minute we stepped inside the Heavenly, Grams' nose started twitching. And I knew she was thinking that the place reeked, because it does. Like giant moldy potatoes have been hanging around the lobby smoking cigarettes.
I put a hand on her shoulder and whispered, “I know it stinks, but check out the furniture and stuff. It's really pretty cool.” I pointed to the fuzzy green high-back chairs. “Don't you love those?”
She wrinkled her nose. “They look like the pope's hat.”
I laughed, “Exactly!”
André was in his usual spot—sitting behind the check-in counter, chomping on a cigar and leafing through the paper. He does a double take when he sees me, then pulls the cigar out of his mouth and says, “Saaaaaay, Sammy! How ya doin'?”
“Doing all right.” I motion to Grams, saying, “This is my grandmother.”
He leans over the counter and shakes her hand. “Nice to meet you. You after a room?”
“Heavens no!” Grams says, then clears her throat and takes it down a notch. “I live right across the way. In the highrise.”