Heather’s only a few people ahead of us so I say, “I’ll tell you when we’re sitting down.”
So we make it through the line and we’re just about to sit down at a table when the loudspeaker blares, “Mr. Caan, please come to the office for a telephone call. Mr. Caan, to the office, please.” I nudge Marissa and grin up at the loudspeaker and, she says, “What did you do?!”
So I tell her. And pretty soon she’s got a hand in front of her mouth and we’re both giggling and peeking over at Heather a few tables away.
A little while later, Mr. Caan comes steaming into the cafeteria. I kick Marissa under the table and say, “It’s show time.”
Now Mr. Caan was probably supposed to take Heather to his office and straighten things out with her there, but he didn’t. He found her and stood towering over her, yelling, “What do you think you’re trying to pull? Take that ridiculous tape off your face right now!”
Heather sputters, “But Mr. Caan! The doctor says—”
Mr. Caan’s looking like he’s ready to kill her. “Yes, I know what the doctor says! I just had a very enlightening conversation with Dr. Gant. I’ve spent the last ten minutes listening to him read me the riot act about how I’ve been forcing you to wear a bandage on your nose. I ask you again, Miss Acosta, what are you trying to pull here? Why are you wearing that ridiculous bandage when all you had was a simple nosebleed?”
By now the entire cafeteria is quiet. And I mean quiet. No one’s even breathing.
Heather turns as red as her hair. “But...but...”
“Take it off. Right now. All of it.”
Pretty soon all the kids are whispering and moving in, trying to get a closer look at Heather peeling athletic tape off her face. And when all the tape’s off her snotty little nose, Mr. Caan says very quietly, “Come with me.”
I don’t want to miss a minute of this so I say to Marissa, “Come on!” and we start following them outside.
But Heather forgot her purse, and when she goes racing back to her chair to get it, who does she see? Me.
All I do is give her a little smile. But it’s enough to make her figure out that I had something to do with the trouble she’s in. She comes after me saying, “You little—” and pretty soon she’s all over me, trying to scratch my eyes out.
Mr. Caan comes racing back, and while he’s trying to pull her off me, Heather tries to punch me in the face.
It was probably the first punch she’d ever thrown—it just didn’t have much experience behind it, if you know what I mean. Instead of coming straight at me, it came around from the side. And since I could see it coming a mile away, what do I do?
I duck.
And who does she hit?
Mr. Caan.
Now I don’t think it hurt him too much, but I do think it was like poking an angry bear with a fishing pole. Mr. Caan practically drags Heather out of the cafeteria and pretty soon everyone’s coming up to me, telling me “Way to go,” and stuff like that.
Then Danny Urbanski says, “Hey! What happened to all that money they were collecting for Heather?” and that starts everyone else saying, “Hey, that’s right! Where’s my money! I want my money back!”
And there’s Tenille, standing in the middle of the pack with her eyes darting around, looking for a way to escape the cafeteria before she gets mugged. But it’s too late. Somebody sees her and calls, “Hey, Tenille! Get back here! We want our money! Where is it?”
Tenille’s smile is as sweet as vinegar. “Heather has it—really!” Then she starts blubbering. “Oh come on, you guys...she made me do it! I didn’t know! How was I supposed to know?”
I call over to her, “Oh yeah, right! I bet you want everybody to believe you didn’t know she pricked me in the rear end with that stupid pin, either!”
Before Tenille can stop herself she says, “Oh, she told me that—she just never told me her nose wasn’t broken! Honest!”
I give her a little smile and all of a sudden she realizes what she’s done.
She says, “No, wait, I...That’s not how it happened,” but everyone’s already shaking their heads and leaving.
Then Danny Urbanski comes up to me and says, “I’m glad you punched her. She deserved it.”
Marissa grabs my arm. “Did you hear that? Can you believe it? Danny said he was glad you punched her.” She pumps her hand in the air. “Yes!”
* * *
Kathleen Spencer was the office aide when Heather’s mother showed up to have a meeting with Mr. Caan, and she said you could hear Mr. Caan’s voice clear through his door and all the way down the hall. She also said that Heather spent the whole time before her mother showed up in the Box and that after the Acostas left the secretaries went crazy whispering about how Heather had been suspended for three days. They said that they couldn’t remember anyone being suspended for three days, let alone a girl.
When I got back to homeroom at the end of the day, sure enough, Heather was missing. Marissa comes running up to me saying, “Have you heard?” and pretty soon everyone’s running up to me saying, “Have you heard?” and telling me they never believed her in the first place. Right.
On our way home from school Marissa says, “You want to get an ice cream?”
I say, “Sure!” and when we get near the mall she points and says, “There’s Oscar!”
So we race across Broadway and when we get close we start slapping our feet on the sidewalk and making a bunch of noise. “Hi, Oscar!”
He stops and cups his ear, so Marissa calls, “Two Double Dynamos, please!”
He smiles and nods and pretty soon chinga-chinga-chinga he makes us change and we’ve got our drumsticks.
Now Marissa wants to sit right down in the grass and start on hers, but I say, “C’mon, I want to show you something.”
So we take our cones and go inside the mall, and as I’m taking her up the escalator she says, “Where are we going?”
I just smile and lead her over to the “Employees Only” door; then I latch on to her wrist and drag her inside.
She whispers, “Sammy, no! What are you doing? Isn’t this against the law or something?”
I keep on dragging. “C’mon, I know what I’m doing!”
That doesn’t do much to convince her, but she comes along anyway. When we get to the door to the roof, she peeks around it like she’s checking a stall in the girls’ room. “Are you sure this is okay?”
I disappear around the corner and she comes charging after me. And when she gets on the roof her eyes bug out and she says, “Wow! This is cool.”
I take her over to one side and say, “Look. You can see St. Mary’s and the Salvation Army and...” and then I tell her about everything I’d seen when I was up here before and how you can see so much more with binoculars.
She says, “Check it out. You don’t even need binoculars—this is awesome!”
So we run around the roof of the mall shouting at each other. “Look! Look!” until finally Marissa says, “I’ll bet I can see my house from up here.”
“I’ll bet you can’t. There are way too many trees in the way,” which is true. East Jasmine is like buried in trees. They probably have enough trees there to start a forest.
She looks, but she can’t see it and then all of a sudden she looks down at her drumstick and says, “Ooooh, yuck! This thing’s melting all over me!”
Both our Double Dynamos are oozing out of their wrappers, dripping all over us. So we sit down and slurp like crazy until we’ve got them under control.
And we’re sitting there, kind of roasting in the sun, licking away on our drumsticks, when Marissa says, “Do you think Danny’s cute?”
I work on my drumstick some more. “Yeah, he’s cute. But he ought to lose the ring.”
Marissa sits up a bit. “Lose the ring? The ring’s cool.” Then she goes on and on about how him wearing his ring on the index finger of his left hand is so significant and how if he ever gave it to a girl it would mean something. And you can te
ll—she’s spent hours thinking about Danny Urbanski’s ring and why he wears it where he wears it and what it would mean if he gave it to her.
I laugh and say, “He only wears it on that finger ’cause it fits there,” and we spend another ten minutes talking about Danny Urbanski’s ring.
Finally she takes the last bite of drumstick and says, “You don’t like him, do you?”
“Like him? No!” I’d never even thought about liking him. I mean, I’ve known for a long time that Marissa liked him so what in the world would I be doing, liking him?
She laughs and gives me her trash. “Want to go down to the arcade for a few minutes?”
I think about the twelve cents I’ve got left in my pocket. “Nah—I’d better get home. I want to tell Grams about what happened with Heather today!”
So off we go, down the stairs, and when we get back into the mall Marissa goes one way and I go the other.
And I’m in the middle of putting our napkins and wrappers in the trash when a shiver runs down my back. I stand there a minute with my hands halfway in the trash can, then I pull the napkins back out and sit down, right there on the floor. And the longer I stare at the napkins the colder I feel, until finally my whole body is shivering.
I whisper, “No...it can’t be,” but Hudson’s voice keeps echoing through my brain: “My dear, things are not always what they appear.” And the more I think about it, the more I know.
I know who the hotel thief is.
SEVENTEEN
To prove it, I need money. Serious money. None of this twelve cents stuff.
I thought about running home and asking Grams, but I knew she wouldn’t give me a bunch of money without me telling her why I needed it, and if I did tell her why I needed it, you can bet she wouldn’t give it to me at all.
Then I remembered Brandon. I raced back down the corridor, dodging people left and right, and pretty soon I’m at the counter of Juicers panting, “Is Brandon here?”
The girl who’s working says, “Yeah, hang on,” and goes to get him.
Brandon pops out from the back room and smiles. “Hi, Sammy! What’s up?”
I practically got down on my hands and knees. “I need to borrow some money—ten dollars? Twenty dollars? I promise I’ll have it back to you tomorrow—maybe even today. Please?”
He checks his wallet. “I’ve got like four dollars on me. That’s it. You’re welcome to it, but that’s all I can do.”
My brain’s racing. Four dollars is not going to do it. A five-dollar bill, maybe, but not four singles, no way. I lean as close to him as I can and whisper, “It’s an emergency....Can you lend me some from the register?”
He whispers right back, “What are you, trying to get me fired? No way I can do that.” He straightens out. “Why don’t you ask Marissa?”
“I would, only I don’t know where she went!”
“If it’s an emergency, why don’t you have her paged?”
I blink at him for a minute, feeling really dopey; then off I go to have Marissa paged.
Only I never make it to the security office. I’m running down the mall, when all of a sudden right in front of me is Marissa. And standing next to her is Heather. That’s right. Heather.
Now I should’ve gotten Marissa by herself and explained the whole thing to her, but I was in such a hurry I didn’t. Instead I interrupt and say to Marissa, “I have to borrow some money—”
And I’m about to tell her it’s an emergency when Heather starts laughing real mean. She crosses her arms and wobbles her head back and forth, saying, “‘Sammy never asks me for money. Sammy wouldn’t think about asking me for money....Sammy’s my friend.’” She laughs some more, “Well, Marissa, I guess that shows you, doesn’t it?”
Marissa looks at me like I’ve just punched her in the stomach. She digs in her pocket, pulls out a wad of money, and throws it at me. “Here, take the stupid money!” she says, then she runs off crying.
And I’m standing there feeling horrible, looking back and forth from the money on the ground to Marissa running toward the escalator, and I’m about to go chasing after her to explain everything when Heather reaches down and snags the wad of bills.
Well, there’s no way I’m going to let Heather walk off with Marissa’s money. No way. I say, “Hey! Give it back!”
She snickers. “You’re dreaming.” And she starts running away.
I don’t care how much fun Heather Acosta’s made of my high-tops, she was wishing for a pair right then. She saw me gaining on her, and I think her nose was starting to remember what happened the last time she tried to mess with me because all of a sudden her stupid grin disappears and she yells, “Help! Help!”
People are staring but that doesn’t stop me. I chase her all the way to the escalator and tackle her so that she winds up with her face a little over the edge of the top step. I get on top of her, grab her hair, and say, “Give me Marissa’s money!”
“No!”
I know I don’t have much time before some security guard comes and hauls me off, so I push her face down toward the moving steps and say, “Give me Marissa’s money!”
There go those steps, thunk-kathunk-thunk-kathunk, just skinning her nose, and all of a sudden she’s very quiet.
I let her get a good whiff of the escalator and then I lean down and whisper, “I’d love to grind that snotty little nose of yours completely off, Heather. It’s your choice—your nose or Marissa’s money.”
A second later her hand comes around and opens up. She chokes out, “Get off of me!”
I grab the money, step right over her, and go flying down the escalator. And when I turn around to look back, there are all these people standing around just staring. The whole escalator’s practically surrounded by people with their mouths open.
I raced around looking for Marissa, but I couldn’t find her so I ran outside and looked for her there. Still no Marissa.
What I probably should’ve done was call the police. Or at least go over to the station and tell them what I thought. Trouble is, they would’ve called in Officer Borsch and I would’ve been stuck talking myself blue in the face to someone who wasn’t about to believe me. Not unless I could clobber him over the head with some proof.
And maybe I was crazy thinking I could prove who the thief was, but I had a plan. So I didn’t go to the police station. I went straight to St. Mary’s to get my proof.
St. Mary’s Church is on a corner and has big bushes with yellow flowers along the sidewalk. And if you go up the brick walkway, there’s a nice fat hedge around a statue of the Virgin Mary in the front courtyard. The hedge and the statue are up in this tall planter, so when you’re walking into church, there’s Mary, way up high, protected from kids scribbling on her legs by a nice fat hedge.
Between the hedge and the statue is the perfect hiding spot. You can sit right down on Mary’s feet and have a real good view through the hedge of what’s going on from the middle of Church Street, clear up and around the corner, halfway down School Street. And no one would ever think to look inside the hedge to see if somebody was there. I mean, it’s Mary’s spot, y’know?
About half a block from St. Mary’s walkway I slowed down and pulled Marissa’s wad of money out of my pocket. There were three ones, a five, and a ten. I took the five and the ten and scribbled on them to mark them.
So I’m at the walkway, about to make a dash for the hedge, when Father Mayhew decides to take his dog for a walk. The last thing I need is for Father Mayhew to catch me camping out with Mary, so I just sit tight. Pretty soon the bell tower chimes and there goes Father Mayhew, around the corner and out of sight.
Then I see him—the hotel thief—turning onto Church Street, way down by the mall. I crouch down by the bushes along the sidewalk, keeping an eye on him as he gets closer and closer. Part of me’s saying, Plant the money and hide! and part of me’s saying, No, no. Wait until he’s a little closer. And while they’re battling back and forth, I’m just kind of frozen there
behind those bushes feeling my heart beat faster and faster.
Then I hear a bike clicking along School Street. I look over my shoulder and can’t believe my eyes. “Marissa!” I whisper as loud as I can.
She practically falls off her bike screeching to a stop. I put a finger up to my lips to stop her from saying anything, then I run over and make her get off her bike.
She says, “What are you doing?”
“Sssh! Come here!” I haul her bike back up the street and stash it behind some bushes.
“I was just on my way over to your apartment to tell you I was sorry for being such a jerk back at the mall.”
“You weren’t a jerk. I was being a moron! I should’ve gotten you away from Heather and explained.”
“Well, what’s going on?”
“Come on! I’ll show you.” I hurry her over to the statue; then I run toward the sidewalk and peek down Church Street. There he is, all right, about a block away.
I back up the brick walkway a little and put the ten- dollar bill down, face up, looking like a gift from God. Then I take a few steps back and put down the five. First I leave it wide open too, but I decide that’s too obvious so I fold it in half and move it a little closer to the statue.
By now Marissa’s doing the McKenze dance, biting a nail, dying to know what I’m doing with her money.
All I say is, “Quick! We’ve got to hide back here. Don’t say a word!”
When Marissa sees that we’re going diving in bushes she pulls back and says, “No way!”
“Come on!” I shoot her a you’re-dead-if-you-don’t look, and before you know it she’s right there next to me, sitting on Mary’s feet.
And when he reaches the walkway, my heart starts beating so loud that anyone coming by right then would’ve thought it was a miracle and the statue of Mary had come to life.
I whisper, “He’s the hotel thief—I’m almost positive!”
“Who?”
I point to the end of the walkway. “Him!”
EIGHTEEN
Marissa looks at me like my marbles have just completely shattered. “Oscar? He can’t be. He’s blind!”