He let out a dejected sigh. “So you call me then, okay?”
All of a sudden I’d had enough. Enough lying to him, deceiving him, enough just avoiding him. Here I was, stinky, burnt, flaky, and matted, and he still wanted my phone number.
What kind of amazing guy was this?
So I pulled him farther away from the others and said, “Can you promise me—and I mean really promise me—that my phone number will never wind up in Heather’s possession?”
“Heather? That’s what you’re worried about? I thought your mom—”
“Don’t ask questions, okay? It’s complicated and . . .and let’s just say that if Heather gets my number, it’s going to be a very bad scene.”
“Because you’re going to make her eat dirt again?”
I laughed, then said, “No, because she’d track me down and ruin everything.”
His eyebrows went up a little. “She has tried to follow you home, you know.”
“I know.”
“And she’s tried to squeeze information out of me, too.”
“Exactly! Which is why I’ve never told you anything that she could squeeze you for.”
He shook his head. “All this time I thought it was your mom.”
“Forget my mom, okay? Focus on this: you’ve got to keep my number away from your sister, okay?”
“No problem.” He was looking right in my eyes. And somehow he’d picked up my other hand, so he was holding on to both of them. “So?” he asked, and his eyes were kinda twinkling. And then he started leaning forward.
Closer.
And closer!
At first I didn’t understand, but then my heart panicked and my brain screamed, Your lips are a disaster! Run!
“Nine-two-two-eight-eight-four-seven!” I blurted, then broke away.
He grinned. “Nine-two-two-eight-eight-four-seven, got it.”
“And it’s top secret! Not even Cricket has it . . . !”
“Got it,” he said again.
So we tore down camp and cleaned everything up, which took hours. And then, while Quinn and Janey drove our packs down to Robin’s van, the rest of us hiked out. Downhill without a pack was a breeze! I couldn’t believe how fast we got to the parking turnout.
After we’d crammed everything inside the van, Quinn and Janey drove back up the mountain, and we drove down. We were packed in tight, too. All of us except Billy, who got to ride shotgun. “He stinks too bad to ride back here!” Bella said. “Keep him away!”
“It’s snake sweat!” Billy said back, blowing a whiff-of-jiff from under his arm. “I could sell this as an aphrodisiac!”
“Oh, right!” we all moaned.
So the ride home was cramped but fun, and since Cricket’s house was the first stop, I got off there with the excuse that I had to return stuff and, you know, get stuff.
Through the van window, Casey gave me the I’ll-call-you sign and smiled.
I smiled back and blushed pretty good, too. And after Robin drove off, I went into Cricket’s house, but there was really only one thing I wanted to get.
My high-tops.
I put them on and I’ll tell you what—my feet have never been so happy.
Then I asked, “Can we unpack tomorrow? I just want to go home and take a shower.”
Cricket laughed. “I’m all for that!”
So I headed home, and when I slipped inside the apartment, Grams jumped up from the couch and said, “You’re home a day early!”
At first she looked happy, but it didn’t take long for her face to fall and the questions to start: “Look how filthy you are! And sunburned! Didn’t you bring any sunblock? Where are your things? Oh, look at your poor lips!” And then finally, “What happened to you?”
I gave her a cracked-lip smile. “I’m fine, Grams. But I’m real glad to be home.” I looked around the tiny apartment. I’d never really appreciated how clean and tidy and bug-free it was. And the couch looked so, so comfy. I sometimes grumble about how living at Grams’ is like camping out because I sleep on the couch and live out of her bottom dresser drawer, but looking around the apartment, I realized that I hadn’t been camping out—I’d been living in luxury.
“But what happened?” she was asking. “And where are all your things?”
“I have to go over to Cricket’s tomorrow to sort through stuff and clean up. We were just too beat to do it tonight.” Then I smiled and said, “But I’ve got lots to tell you!”
I was making a beeline for the couch, but she intercepted me and steered me toward the bathroom. “I’d love to hear, but first you’re going to take a shower! A long, hot shower. And while you’re doing that, I’ll fix us some dinner.”
So I took the longest shower ever. I soaked the athletic tape off my feet, which was slow-going and painful, I washed my hair four times, and then I just sat on the floor, letting the water rain on me. It felt so good.
By the time I was squeaky clean and dressed, Grams had dinner ready. “Trout?” I said, when I sat down at the table.
She flipped open her napkin. “I kept thinking about you being out in the forest. So today when I was at the grocery store and saw trout, I got the urge to have some.” She gave me a little smile. “I was picturing you and your friends maybe having a trout supper, too.”
I’d already started eating, so I said through a mouthful, “To catch a trout, you’d need a river. . . .” Then I launched into how the Phony Forest was dry and dusty and creeping with bloodsucking bugs, poisonous plants, and trees with sudden death disease. And then I rattled on about the Lookout, Gabby and Bella fighting, Gabby taking off into the canyon on her own, hearing gunshots, and my killer blisters.
Now, the more I talked, the slower Grams ate. But when I got to the part about bumping into Casey and Billy, she stopped chewing altogether.
I guess it’s kinda hard to eat with your jaw dangling.
“You ran into Casey . . . Acosta?”
I nodded. “And Billy Pratt.”
And even though she was trying to trust me, I could see little thoughts of doubt dancing around the edges of her eyes. So I pointed my fork at her and said, “Would I be telling you about this if I’d planned it?”
She shook her head. “No. No, of course not.”
“So?”
She started eating again. “So go on.”
So I went on, but I decided to skip over the part about getting stuck in the woods overnight. I compressed everything that happened into one day, because sleeping in the same tent as the guy who everyone tries to make into your boyfriend is not something you want to have to explain to your grandmother.
Or anybody else, for that matter.
Besides, Grams was way more interested in how we’d rescued Marvin, and especially how I’d met Grayson Mann, than she was in the details of time.
“You actually shook his hand?” she gasped.
I grinned at her. “I’d let you touch me, but his celebrity cooties have been washed down the drain.”
So avoiding the whole boys-and-girls-in-the-same-small-tent subject was actually easy with her. I’m just glad she wasn’t with me the next day when I was taking a shortcut through the mall on my way over to Cricket’s house.
It turned out to be a very dangerous shortcut.
“Hey, loser!” a familiar voice called as I passed by the food court.
I just kept walking.
“Hey, loser,” I heard again, and this time the voice was right behind me.
Now, it’s not that I like to acknowledge that name, but experience has taught me that facing someone who doesn’t mind stabbing you in the back is definitely the superior choice when defending yourself.
So I turned around.
Sure enough, it was the Gossip Grenade herself.
The one and only Heather Acosta.
I gave her a prim little smile, and in an English accent I said, “Such a pity. We were hoping you’d come back civilized, dear. Did being so near the royals have no effect whatsoever?”
“You shut up and listen to me,” she seethed. “When my dad finds out that you and my brother slept together—”
I laughed, but it was like trying to breathe when you’ve been slugged in the stomach. And it was almost impossible to keep the whole sophisticated-English-accent thing going with my brain gasping for air, trying to figure out how she’d heard this already, but I did my best. I shook my head and whispered, “High-class ladies do not let their minds race so freely to the gutter.”
She shoved me and sneered. “High class? What would you know about that, huh?”
I brushed off the spot where she’d shoved me and gave her another prim smile. “Apparently more than you.” Then I walked away.
“In your dreams!” she shouted after me. “And when my dad finds out that you slept with my brother—”
The whole food court seemed to fall quiet.
The whole mall seemed to fall quiet.
I held my head high and kept walking, but inside, I about died. Heather wouldn’t stop after dropping this one bomb in the mall. She’d drop them all over town! By tomorrow there’d be fallout everywhere!
She was going to annihilate me.
EIGHTEEN
When I got to Cricket’s house, she whisked the door open and said, “Good news! Marvin’s going to be all right!”
It was good news, but at the moment I was having trouble caring. I had bigger problems to deal with than a blasted bird. I’d been blasted by a bird of a different kind. The sharp-beaked, razor-taloned predatory kind.
That Heather Acosta is one mean chick.
I walked past Cricket and said, “I ran into Heather in the mall. She’s announcing to the world that Casey and I slept together.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“Casey wouldn’t have told her that. . . .”
“If he did, that’s it—I’m done talking to him forever.” I marched into the kitchen. “Can I use your phone?”
“Sure. But . . . you’re going to call him?”
I punched in his number, leaned against the wall, and waited.
One ring.
Two rings.
Four rings.
“Hello?” The voice was mumbly. Sleepy.
Well, I was gonna wake him up quick!
“It’s Sammy. Did you tell Heather about the camping trip? Because she just announced to the whole mall that we slept together.”
There was a moment of silence and then a mumbly, “Casey . . . ! For you . . . !”
My eyes got huge and I almost slammed down the phone.
“What’s wrong?” Cricket whispered.
“That was his dad . . . !”
“I thought his dad was gone!”
“So did I . . . !”
Casey was on the phone now. “Sammy?”
For the second time in half an hour, I wanted to curl up and die. And the really stupid thing is, I’d done something like this once before when I’d called his house. I’d gone on and on confessing something at lightning speed . . . to his dad.
“Sammy, are you there?”
“Did you tell Heather about the camping trip?” I choked out.
“Haven’t seen her. She’s at my mom’s. Why?”
“She knows we slept in the same tent and she’s making it sound really . . . bad.”
“How the . . .” There was a moment of silence and then, “I’m calling Billy. I’ll get back to you.”
He was about to hang up, but I wedged in, “I’m at Cricket’s. Call me here,” and gave him the number.
“Wow,” Cricket gasped after I’d hung up. “How embarrassing.”
I slid down the wall and held my head. “I can’t believe this. I just can’t believe it.”
“Hey, what’s up?”
I looked up and saw Gary. Porcupine hair matted on one side. Acne in full bloom everywhere. My head drooped back into my hands. I was not in the mood to talk to Butterfly Boy.
He, apparently, was in the mood to talk to us. “Man! I still can’t believe you guys rescued a condor.” He pulled the milk jug out of the fridge and poured himself a monster glass. “No one can believe it. People are all in awe.”
My head clicked up a few notches. “People? What people?”
He stuffed half a Twinkie in his mouth and drowned it in milk. “People I chat with.”
“On the computer?” I asked, and yeah, I was starting to get worried.
“What else,” Cricket muttered, but she was grinning at him. Like they’d had some sort of brother-sister breakthrough while I’d been gone.
“How much does he know?” I asked Cricket.
She shrugged. “I told him the whole story.”
“Everything? And he’s posted it on the Internet?”
“It’s not like we did anything wrong. . . .”
“Yeah,” Gary said, milky Twinkie oozing between his teeth as he grinned. “It’s not like you did anything wrong. . . .”
“I know that, you know that, but—”
“Don’t freak. I’ll show you the thread if you want.” He shrugged. “It’s an awesome story. I’d be proud if I were you.” Then he turned to Cricket and said, “Mom would be real proud.”
Tears sprang into Cricket’s eyes, but before she could say anything, the phone rang. She snatched it off the wall, listened, then handed it to me and gave her Twinkie-toothed brother an enormous hug.
“Billy told Danny,” came Casey’s voice. “So I called Danny and found out Heather called him last night.”
I groaned. On top of everything else, I knew that when Marissa found out that Heather was ringing Danny’s bell, she was going to be crushed. She has a thing for Danny, and worm that he is, he makes like he’s got a thing for her, too.
Casey must have picked up the vibe, because he said, “Don’t be too hard on him—he wasn’t trying to sabotage anyone. He thought the story was a riot, because, you know, Billy told it. And don’t worry—I’ll take care of Heather and her twisted interpretation.”
Casey’s voice had been getting quieter and quieter, and it sounded like he was moving into a different room so he wouldn’t be overheard. “I’ll tell you what, though—my dad’s roasting me pretty good. Especially after the way I had to fast-talk him into letting me and Billy go solo.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said, but then added, “At least you’ll get to explain it to him before Heather does.”
“True,” he said, and then, as if my life hadn’t spun out of control enough for one day, he drops his voice even farther and says, “Guess who my dad ran into at that audition in L.A.”
So I say, “Who?” but it’s a real disinterested Who because I’m still stewing about Heather and, really, I’m not into movie stars so I’m not going to know what celebrity he’s talking about anyway.
But then, on the wings of a whisper, he drops the bomb. “Your mom.”
Bubble brain engulfs me.
“Sammy? Did you hear me?”
I couldn’t move, I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t think.
So I did the only thing I could do—spaz out.
“I’ve gotta go!” I choked out, and hung up. Then I slid down the wall and just held my head. And it did flash through my mind that Casey was bound to get fed up with all my weirdy-o-syncrasies and drop me, but how was I supposed to act normal when my mother makes it so hard? I mean, living illegally with Grams is one thing. It’s stressful, but I don’t want to go live with my mother in Hollywood. My friends are here, my life is here. And even if Santa Martina is a freak-fest of a town, it’s my town. I know my way around. I know which cops to avoid and which shortcuts actually work.
And who’d want to live in Hollywood? Talk about a real freak-fest! The whole town’s a walking, talking, living, breathing Barbie-and-Ken convention.
What could be scarier than that?
But the point is, even though it’s not the best situation, living with Grams is manageable. Grams keeps the secret. I keep the secret. . . . We’re good at
it. So if my mother would just quit interfering, I’d only have the little stresses in life to deal with. Little stresses like how to ditch someone who’s trying to find out where I live. Or how to get in and out of the apartment without being seen. Or how to avoid being blackmailed by a neighbor with supersonic hearing.
Little stresses like that.
But my mother has been interfering, and when she does, it causes me huge stress. She just doesn’t seem to think things through. Like at my birthday brunch when she met Casey’s dad for the first time and flirted with him. That right there was enough to make me want to crawl under a rock, but she was so thrilled that he recognized her from TV that if I hadn’t jumped in and said, “Nah—that’s not her, she just looks like her,” she would have told him the truth.
See? What was she thinking? If she and I live in Santa Martina like everyone is supposed to believe, how can she be a soap star in Hollywood?
And now Casey’s dad went to L.A. for an audition and he saw her? Where? Was it at the audition? Was the audition for a part on her soap? What man in his right mind would want to be on a soap?
Then again, what man in his right mind would marry Candi Acosta? I’ve had a few run-ins with her, and let me tell you, that woman is even more psycho than their daughter.
Of course, he did divorce her. . . .
So maybe he and my mom just bumped into each other on the street? Or at a restaurant?
But what did she say to him? Since I wasn’t there to jump in and remind her that telling my vindictive, gossipy, bloodsucking archenemy’s father anything that might kick the feet out from under the lie we’d been living for years was not a good idea, she might have blown everything!
I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how to act. Which is why I’d spazzed out on the phone and was now just sitting on Cricket’s kitchen floor, holding my head, trying not to explode.
“Are you all right?” Cricket whispered, putting a hand on my shoulder. “What happened?”
I shook my head. “I’m just stressed out.”
“Because of Heather?”
I nodded. It was a lie, but then, it wasn’t really. These days, all roads seem to lead back to Heather.
Gary pounded the rest of his milk, put the glass in the sink, and left without a word. And who could blame him? The drama of it all was just so . . . teen chick. I hate feeling that way. I hate acting that way. Why does everything get so intense and emotional and out of control? Why can’t it just be . . . calm?