by Saba Kapur
“What happened to ‘the more we find, the better it is,’ huh?” I placed my can on the countertop with more force than required.
“I take it back. I can’t be held responsible for your bad life choices.”
“My life choices are great, thank you very much!”
Jack opened his mouth to reply, but the sound of my phone vibrating cut him off. I looked at the caller ID that told me it was Brendan calling.
“Dr. D?” Jack said, snapping into action and leaning in close.
“No, Brendan.”
“Even better!” he said with a smile.
Unfortunately for me, Jack has fantastic reflexes. Before I could move, he snatched my phone of the counter and swiped the screen to answer the call.
“No! Jack!”
“Gia’s phone,” he chimed, taking a huge step away from me.
“Jack!” I hissed. I climbed off the barstool I had been sitting on, launching myself at him.
“She’s a little occupied right now doing . . .” he smiled. “Things. Can I take a message?”
My jaw dropped, which was clearly the reaction he had been hoping for because it only widened his grin. I pushed Jack against the fridge and wrestled him for the phone. He was obviously stronger than I was, but he finally let me have it after he was done laughing.
“Hello!” I practically yelled into the phone.
Oh great, I sounded breathless from all my fighting with Jack. This wasn’t rubbing salt on the wound; it was taking the wound and pouring a four-pound bag of salt over it, and then jumping on it as if it were a personalized, salty bouncy castle.
“Gia?”
“Yeah, hi. I’m here.”
“What’s going on?” Brendan sounded reluctant, as if he really just wanted to hang up and never think about speaking again.
“Nothing much, we’re ordering pizza. In the kitchen. Fully dressed and standing yards away from each other. In fact, I don’t even know where Jack is? Huh, what’s that? Is that you Jack? Nope, it isn’t!”
I slapped a hand to my forehead and glowered at Jack, who wasn’t even attempting to muffle his laughter, his head leaning against the fridge for support. Brendan must have been on some intense drugs at the hospital when he had given Jack all that information about the catering for the party. There was no way these two were ever going to get along if one of them wasn’t heavily sedated.
“Right,” Brendan replied. I could practically hear his frown through the phone. “Listen, we need to talk.”
“Oh yeah?” I said, trying to sound as casual as I possibly could. “What’s up?”
I knew what was up. I couldn’t have been the only thing feeling like things weren’t working out. Brendan wasn’t Einstein, but he was smart enough to realize that something was off base. Only, I had always figured I’d be the one to doing the breaking up. Jack had finally calmed down his laughter, but was still smiling widely.
“Not right now.” Brendan’s voice came through the receiver. “Tomorrow at school.”
“Okay.”
“Cool. See you then.”
I hung up without saying bye, releasing Jack from my death grip and taking a few steps back.
“What was that about?” Jack asked, adjusting his shirt.
“Why can’t you be nice to him?” I demanded, ignoring his question.
“I am nice to him!” Jack replied.
“No you’re not! You were implying that you and I were . . .” I trailed off uncomfortably.
“Doing what?”
“You know.”
“Do I?”
“Oh shut up.”
“Hey,” Jack said. “I said you were ‘doing things.’ If he has a dirty mind then I can’t help that.”
I felt my phone vibrate in my hand, and I looked down, expecting it to be Brendan calling back and dropping in a casual “Oh hey, I forgot to tell you that I think Jack is an ass.” But the screen read No Caller ID.
“Jack!” I said, showing him the screen. “What if it’s Milo?”
“Don’t you have his number saved?” he asked.
“Well, yeah. But maybe it’s on private.”
Jack shrugged and reached for his drink. “Then answer it.”
Easy for him to say, but much harder for me to do. If it really was Milo on the other end, then that meant he probably had answers for us, which was kind of scary. But more importantly, I needed to make myself sound sexy over the phone.
“Hello?” I said into my phone, my voice husky and low. I glanced at Jack who had his eyebrows raised questioningly.
“What are you doing?” Jack whispered, and I pressed a finger to my lips motioning for him to be quiet.
“Guess who?”
The voice on the other end of the line was definitely not Milo, unless he had suddenly decided to get a creepy, robotic The Shining vibe about him.
“Hello?” I repeated, dropping my sultry voice. “Who is this?”
“An old friend,” the voice said.
I looked at Jack, who was giving me a quizzical look. He mouthed who is it, and I shrugged. The voice wasn’t clear at all. It was up and down, almost melodic in a strange way. Either the connection had decided to go crazy, or the voice on the line was auto tuned. Jack mouthed speaker to me, and I put the phone on loud speaker.
“Who is this?” I asked again, Jack coming up beside me.
“Oh I think you know, Gia.”
Jack and I looked at each other in realization. My eyes widened and looked back the phone with uncertainty.
“Oh my God! T-Pain? Is that you?”
Jack took a deep breath and turned around to face the fridge, making an action of banging his head against it in frustration. Clearly we weren’t on the same page about who the mystery caller was.
“Uh, no,” came the reply through the phone. “But good try. Let me introduce myself. My name is Dr. D.”
I clapped a hand over my mouth. Oh. My. God. He was calling me. He was actually talking to me in this weird, auto-tuned voice! It was definitely a guy; I could tell that much. Well, maybe. Probably. I looked at Jack nervously, and he nodded in reply, encouraging me to go on.
“W—What do you want?” I asked in a shaky voice.
“Oh, Gia,” came the robotic reply. “I don’t want much. But your dad took something from me, a long time ago. I think it’s time I got something back.”
“Like how long ago are we talking, here?” I said, eyes on Jack for validation. He gave me a warning look, but I ignored him. I was about to start babbling, and probably go British. It was too late to salvage the situation. “’Cause, if it was a really long time ago can’t we, like, just pretend it never happened and move on with our lives?”
Jack closed his eyes and took another deep breath. He had that look on his face again, the one that told me he was struggling not to strangle me. And fair enough, I was an idiot.
“No, I don’t think that’s going to work for me Gia,” Dr. D said. “Pretending won’t get us anywhere.”
The auto-tune was really starting to get on my nerves, but whoever this guy was; he was doing a good job of keeping his identity hidden. Even if I did know who he was, I’d never be able to recognize his voice.
“Right-o,” I said, watching Jack shake his head in disbelief. “Uh, so what exactly did you want?”
“Oh I’ll get to that eventually, Gia. But for now, my concern is April twentieth. Save the date.”
April twentieth? That meant nothing to me. Was he telling me his birthday? Even worse, was he inviting me to some twisted, psychotic birthday party?
“W—What’s on the twentieth?” I asked, scared that this birthday party may have a theme.
“I would suggest leaving the police out of this matter, Gia.” Dr. D continued, ignoring my question. “There’s no need for this to get m
essy.”
A part of me wanted to poop my pants but a very large part of me wanted to laugh. I couldn’t stop imagining T-Pain on the other end of the line, with his dark sunglasses and huge hat. I’d seen the guy on talk shows before and he was super nice. There was no way he was stalking me, but the image in my mind was hilarious.
Jack and I looked at each other as we waited for him to continue. There was an eerie silence hanging over us, as if we were all quietly waiting for the worst of it to come. A few seconds passed and I checked to see if we were still on the line. We were, but he just wasn’t talking.
“Hello?” I said, just to make sure he was still there.
“Here’s to getting what we deserve.”
And the line went dead.
Chapter Ten
I’ll be the first to admit, I am quite possibly the last person anyone would ever choose to go on a secret mission with. I mean, if by some miracle I managed to get into the CIA, I’d just be that one person who can’t be trusted with guns or top-secret weapons. Hell, I’d barely be trusted with a stapler. But due to the evident lack of James Bond-ish men in my life to take my place, I was forced to pursue Dr. D’s phone call alone. Well, not entirely alone, I had Jack and Milo after all.
After the phone call we called Detective Reynolds immediately, unable to even touch a slice of pizza when it arrived, due to the butterflies in my stomach. Of course, I had snuck into the kitchen when everyone was asleep and had my share in secret, but that’s not the point. I had been so frantic on the phone, I had forgotten to sound sexy. I was too busy checking the cupboards in case Dr. D was about to jump out at any second and throw a spatula at me.
Luckily, Detective Reynolds had adhered to his promise of taking my case seriously. He had calmly explained that he was sending a police car to check outside my house, on the off chance Dr. D was somewhere close by. Now I’m not going to lie to you, I was a little disappointed that Milo and his perfect dimples were nowhere to be seen when the police finally showed up. Wasn’t this meant to be a good training exercise for him, or something? I was practically making his career here, and he didn’t even have the courtesy to stop by and make sure I was alive! Now that’s just plain rude.
But even after the police officer assured me that no one suspicious was outside the house, or inside it, I didn’t stop panicking. I had even considered asking Jack to sleep on my couch again, but then thought against it. I didn’t entirely trust what I’d do in my vulnerable state, and besides, Jack didn’t look like he could scare anyone away. He was more likely to attract them. If Dr. D was somewhere in the house stalking me from behind a shower curtain and wasn’t gay, one look at Jack would definitely send him swinging in another direction.
Mom and Dad obviously had to cut their dinner date a little short, which really set Dad off. He had pretty much banned me from going anywhere past our mailbox, including school, which admittedly wasn’t the worst possible thing that could have happened, even if it only lasted a few days. Hey, if he was giving me a few days off from my busy schedule, then I wasn’t going to complain. Dad had been absolutely no help when I had asked him what he had supposedly “taken” from the auto-tuned stranger. He just kept shaking his head as if he was trying to rack his brains for anytime he stole a doughnut or something off a friend.
But as it turns out, Detective Reynolds had found some answers on the Dumpling Hospital. As expected, the place was free of anything that could link the restaurant to my family, and apparently the food there really did suck, which I didn’t need reassuring about. They had also managed to find out a little more about the nametag. The mystery waiter, Ao Jie Kai, came to L.A. when he was in seventh grade and was now in his third year of college at UCLA. He was also a member of a fraternity, which was great and all, because at least now I knew my stalker was fairly socially accepted in society. Good for him. He had no previous criminal history besides a couple of minor parking ticket fines, and he’d been working at the Dumpling Hospital for about ten months. It was just he and his mother at home, no father. Detective Reynolds said he doubted that Ao Jie Kai was directly related to my stalking, but he was the only lead that they had. It wasn’t much, but it gave Jack and me a starting point.
After carefully devising a plan that was followed by lots of arguments and flat out refusals on Jack’s part, I finally convinced him to sneak out of the house with me and head off to UCLA to check out this Ao Jie Kai in person. With Dad in the shower and Mom at the spa, we had a small but perfectly timed window to make our escape. I was pretty certain Dad wasn’t expecting Mom to stay with us for as long as she was, which wasn’t helping his already high blood pressure, but she said there was no way she was leaving until things settled a little. Luckily for me, poor Anya had come down with some type of flu and was bedridden so she couldn’t play spy for Dad, and the rest of the housemaids didn’t care what I was doing as long as they were getting paid. Mike was too bothered with his own life to notice. Kenny was a slight problem because he was all buff and scary, but it turns out he was a sucker for Oprah reruns. The perfect distraction.
Of course father dearest wasn’t going to be too pleased when he got out of the shower, but by that time we’d already be long gone. Just in case, I’d left a note on the kitchen bench telling him that we’d gone to school to pick up some books for studying, promising to be back soon. We all knew that I was a massive liar, but at least I had been nice enough to leave a note with my fake story on it. Not many kids would do that, you know. I was basically Daughter of the Year.
Practically pushing Jack out the door, as I tried to gain control over my excitement and nerves, we finally set off. It was just past noon when we were sitting in his Jeep in one of the many University of California campus parking lots. I had seven missed calls from Dad, two from Veronica and three from Aria. If my life didn’t revolve around my phone, I would have run over it myself. Brendan had sent me just one text, asking why I wasn’t at school for his little “talk.” Not only did our absences make Jack and I look extremely sketchy to my boyfriend, I was pretty certain Meghan was going to be responsible for spreading ridiculous rumors about what we were doing instead of coming to school.
“This doesn’t seem like a great idea,” Jack told me uncertainly, watching students walk past, clutching books to their chests.
“You always say that.”
“Yeah, because your ideas always suck.”
“Well then why did you even agree to come?”
Jack leaned his head back against the headrest with a sigh. “Our freakin’ deal. The sooner we find out who Dr. D is, the sooner our lives go back to normal, remember?”
“Oh,” I said, crossing my hands over my chest. “And here I thought it was because you enjoyed my company.”
“I don’t know about that, but I am going to enjoy the paycheck your dad hands me when all this is done.”
Gee. He really knew how to give a girl the warm and fuzzies with his overwhelming sensitivity and affection. I’ll admit, I was a little offended. I mean, sure, Jack and I weren’t exactly besties for life. But I wasn’t that bad was I? It wasn’t a comforting thought that Jack’s mind was only on the money when I spent about eighty percent of my time trying to figure out ways to get him to love me.
“Well,” I said, holding my head up high. “I’m not leaving here until I find some answers.”
And with that I practically kicked the car door open, climbing out and slamming the door shut behind me. Jack took a few seconds before doing the same, probably doing some mental reasoning with himself not to have a breakdown. A group of girls walked by, their conversation almost coming to a stop as they eyed Jack slipping the car keys into his jeans pocket. Inevitably, their gaze drifted to me, standing with a smug smile on my face and shiny Tom Ford heels on my feet. They raised judgemental eyebrows as they continued on their way, no doubt wondering how and where they were going to find a guy like that.
Jack wasn’t paying attention to my little victory. Instead he ran a hand through his hair, which was sexier than I thought it would be, and turned to face the campus ahead.
“Shall we?” Jack said, squinting in the sunlight.
“Give me a sec.” I unzipped the leather jacket I was wearing and shimmied out of it. “Can you unlock the car?”
Jack nodded, eyes still on the campus. He glanced at me as he pulled the keys out of his pocket, doing a double take as he sized me up.
“What?” I said, looking down at my outfit.
Okay, I knew what.
“What the hell are you wearing?” he said, eyes scanning me in alarm.
I had kind of been hoping the outfit was hot enough to give Jack one of those electric shocks I always got around him. He definitely looked like he had been electrocuted, but not in the way I had hoped. I had opted for some casually tiny denim shorts and the hideous Lakers jersey that Jack had given me when we were disguised as gangsters. Only I had cut it that morning to make it a crop top, revealing my belly button. Basically, I was barely dressed, but had been using the jacket to keep some suspense.
“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” I asked him innocently, sliding my phone into my tiny shorts pocket.
Jack looked at me as if I had told him I was running away to herd sheep for the rest of my life. “I’m not going to take you around campus like that!” he exclaimed. “You’re not even wearing clothes!”
“Jack,” I began impatiently, folding the jacket across my arm. “We’re going to go talk to frat houses. No one’s going to talk to us if I’m dressed like a nun.”
“So nun and stripper were the only two options that came to your mind?” Jack exclaimed, taking the jacket and draping it across my shoulders, attempting to cover as much as he possibly could. “What about dressing like a normal person?”
Well jeez. Put a bunch of leggy supermodels in angel wings and lacy underwear, and the boy had no problems. But the moment I wanted to wear a crop top and shorts it was like, alert the feds! He was so focused on trying to cover me up; he was missing the brilliance of my plan. If I showed up to a frat house with Jack, who was of course an attractive male, the boys would presume that he was my boyfriend. We’d never get any information out of them that way! But if I was minimally dressed, then they wouldn’t care if he was my boyfriend. They’d be too busy ogling at me to notice my relationship status. Pretty damn clever, if I may say so myself.
