After all, pretty much every EAROFO member company had an outpost in Buenos Aires. Hunter was in Buenos Aires. Thad was in Buenos Aires. And T.K. was in Buenos Aires.
At least, I told myself, Rafe was there, too, and maybe he really did have a black belt. He’d make sure my mother stayed safe, even with the various sharks circling around her.
Except as soon as I hung up with Brett, a text came through from Charley.
Madge’s neighbor?
Rafe on plane back; landing NY in AM
Which left T.K. without even the non-Rock-like presence of Rafe. And I knew she was in hiding and everything, and that Mark guy was probably with her, and there were thirteen million other people in the greater Buenos Aires area to shield them, but panicking seemed increasingly like a reasonable option.
Only twenty-four hours ago, Carolina had told me I had nothing to worry about. Rafe would take care of T.K., neither Thad nor Hunter was the Sagittarius, and Quinn was under a lot of pressure but not for the reasons I thought.
But every single thing I’d learned since then threw every single thing she’d told me into question.
And now I had no idea what to think.
Fifteen
I waited up for Charley, even though she didn’t get back until after midnight. It turned out she’d spent her entire day alternating between trying to locate Dieter and trying to figure out if he’d been harnessing the power of visual media in ways we had yet to discover. And while both his whereabouts and his rationale for papering the entire city with our images remained a mystery, she had learned he’d been using their production company’s credit card to pay for it all, from the billboards in the subway to Mister Softee. Unfortunately, she’d also learned he’d already maxed out the credit limit, which meant she couldn’t stop him by canceling the card.
So she wasn’t in the greatest mood to start with — when she walked in she didn’t even pause to put her bag down but just made directly for the freezer and pulled out every pint of ice cream we had — and none of the developments I shared with her did anything to improve her spirits, though she tried to act like everything was under control for my sake.
“It will be fine,” she said. “Your mother’s in a safe place, and Mark is with her. And when Rafe’s flight lands tomorrow morning he’ll be able to give them a heads-up to be on the lookout for Thad along with Hunter and everyone else.”
But the way she didn’t comment on Gwyneth’s love of Animal Planet or her secret eavesdropping closet combined with how she insisted I finish off the rest of the double chocolate peanut butter fudge, which I knew was her favorite, told me she was far more concerned than she let on, and that didn’t exactly help with my own anxiety levels.
For the second night in a row, I didn’t sleep well. You probably couldn’t even call what I did sleeping — mostly it was a lot of staring up at the ceiling while my thoughts raced around in a circle, skidding from one worry to the next and then around again after they’d completed a full circuit. But just as the sky was starting to get a little less black outside the window, I must have drifted off, because when the phone rang the noise jerked me awake.
It wasn’t my cell phone, or Charley’s, either. It was the landline out in the main room of the loft, the one only telemarketers and Patience ever used. And under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have budged — Charley could sleep through a symphony of jackhammers in her bedroom, so it wasn’t like the ringing would disturb her — but with everything that was going on I was out of bed and rushing to answer it without thinking twice about why anyone would be calling at such a strange time.
In the semidark, it took me a couple of rings to locate the handset on the kitchen counter, and I stubbed my toe in the process, so I had to hop around silently cursing for another couple of rings before I could pick up. “Hello?”
“Why are you not trusting what I tell you?” a voice demanded. “It is very discourteous.”
The green numbers on the microwave clock read 5:13 A.M., and I must have been more asleep than I’d realized, because it took me a moment to place the voice and remember the other person who sometimes called on this line. “Carolina?”
“I do not know why I bother to tell you things when you do not listen. In my country, the children have the respect for the elders.”
Apparently she was referring to herself as the elder and me as the child in this situation, which seemed like a stretch given she was only a few years older than I was, but it seemed unwise to point that out when she was already so riled up. “I do have the respect —”
“You ask for my help and then you disregard what I say. And you do very little preparation for the examen. You spend your time watching the TV with the sleepy cousin.”
“But —”
“I am not always knowing all there is to be knowing, but what I am knowing is always correct, is that not true?” “Yes, but —”
“I will still tell you what I must tell you, but I do not want you to be doubting me. It is very ungrateful.” “I don’t mean to be ungrate —”
“La Morena. We did not talk of La Morena before, we are thinking she is not important. But I see now, she is very important.”
“What’s a morena?”
“A lady with brown hair. Hers is like mine but not so long, and also she has the tan coat with the belt, cómo se dice, the trench coat, sí? She is in my dream, and when I wake, I know that she is very dangerous. Very red. It is possible she is the Sagittarius she is so red.”
“But —”
“That is all I am knowing in this moment. I will tell you more when I see more. But be keeping your eye on La Morena. Now I must go. I do not want to be late for sunrise yoga.”
I returned the handset to its cradle and limped back to my room — my big toe was still throbbing from where I’d smashed it into the leg of a chair — but I didn’t bother trying to get to sleep again. Instead, I went to sit on the broad sill of the window, watching as the sky turned from charcoal to a watery gray and thinking through what Carolina had said.
I knew exactly who Carolina meant when she talked about “La Morena,” not that I knew the woman’s name or anything else about her beyond what she looked like. But this woman was the only person I could think of who fit Carolina’s description, with brown hair down to her shoulders and a trench coat, though sometimes she pinned her hair up and she didn’t always wear the trench coat.
All along, we’d assumed she was merely another EAROFO puppet, like the “researchers” on the Polar Star. It hadn’t occurred to us that she might be a puppet master in her own right, pulling the strings herself. But now, as I added everything up, I realized it made perfect sense.
I’d seen this woman on a total of five occasions. The first time was a couple of weeks ago, when she’d walked past on the sidewalk in front of Prescott as I sat talking to Natalie before school. I’d seen her again on the afternoon of that same day, when I was with Quinn in Central Park, and then a few days later, in the ladies’ room of the theater where Quinn took me to see an off-off-Broadway production of Romeo and Juliet, though I didn’t put her together at that point with the woman on the sidewalk and in the park.
It wasn’t until the day after that, when I’d seen her leaving Navitaco’s offices, that I recognized her as the same person I’d been seeing everywhere else. And that had been on a Monday, and on the following Tuesday, she’d called my name and beckoned from across the street, hoping to lure me into the path of an SUV hurtling full-speed in my direction.
Looking back on the whole thing, I was surprised we’d all managed to pass her over as a serious suspect. We’d assumed that whoever was really orchestrating things would delegate the dirty work, like tailing me or conspiring to commit vehicular homicide, the way they’d delegated the dirty work of doing away with my mother.
Meanwhile, because we knew so little about her, we hadn’t tried to track her down ourselves — there was no obvious place to start. It wasn’t like with the original captain o
f the Polar Star, where presumably T.K. would be able to give us a name and other background information. This woman was entirely anonymous.
It didn’t help that she looked so normal. She’d blended in perfectly everywhere I’d seen her, and there was nothing about her appearance to suggest she was evil to the core. If anything, she was sort of pretty, about Charley’s age, with shiny hair and pert features and cat-shaped eyes, though Charley would have found her fashion sense lacking. Charley wore a trench coat sometimes, too, but hers was zebra striped.
And if trying to track this woman down before had seemed hard, now it seemed impossible. She’d completely stopped following me after the Range Rover incident — at least, I hadn’t seen her recently, and I’d actually been on the lookout. And while I knew that was probably something to be thankful for, I couldn’t help but worry about what she might be up to in her spare time now that she wasn’t busy shadowing me, and I also wished she’d left us with more to go on before she’d decided to leave me alone.
It would have been a lot easier if La Morena had let Charley style her. Because even if she was still in New York — which was a big if, since Buenos Aires seemed to exert a magnetic pull on evildoers — there must have been tens of thousands of other women with brown hair and beige trench coats around, and hundreds of thousands when you factored in the greater tristate area.
But there were probably only a handful of brown-haired women wearing zebra stripes.
Sixteen
That morning was cool and damp, and despite what I’d been told about New York being such a diverse and individualistic place, it seemed like every single person on the subway was wearing a beige trench coat.
Not Charley, of course. She was wearing her zebra print, but between the weather and our rotten moods, the striped material looked somehow less bold, like it would rather have been an area rug than a coat, so it could lie inside on a nice quiet floor instead of having to traipse around the city in the drizzle and mist.
Meanwhile, I was wearing my uniform, but it wasn’t by choice. I’d tried to convince Charley with what little coherence I had left after another sleepless night that today would be a really good day to skip school. And it wasn’t just that I wanted to be conveniently absent for Dr. Penske’s pop quiz, though that would have been an added plus. Instead, I wanted to go to the airport to meet Rafe’s flight, so he could tell us whatever news he had, we could tell him ours, and then he could return to Argentina and make sure none of the various bad guys converging on Buenos Aires could get anywhere near my mother.
Charley, however, refused to be persuaded by any of my extremely valid arguments. “I made a promise to Dr. Penske that you would pass this quiz, and you can’t pass if you’re not there to take it. And he pledged scout’s honor. I can’t renege.”
“But you’re not the scout. He is.”
“If one party of an agreement is a scout, that automatically binds every party of the agreement to the scouting code of honor.”
“I bet you don’t even know what the scouting code of honor is,” I said.
“No, but I think it’s safe to assume honoring one’s promises is part of it,” said Charley. “And also helping old people across the street.”
After some back-and-forth, we reached a compromise. I’d stay at Prescott until physics was over, but Charley would come up with an excuse so I could leave after and we’d go meet Rafe together.
Once that was settled, Charley insisted on spending the trip uptown trying to help me study. Unfortunately, I’d made the mistake of telling her how memorizing Natalie’s directions was like memorizing lines for a play, and Charley felt we should do a dramatic reading of the study guide, right there on the subway. At this point, we’d pretty much given up worrying about people staring — in fact, Charley’s attitude was that we might as well embrace it — so we ran through the mock quiz and everyone around us watched like we were insane. It was completely mortifying, though I had to admit it was useful for refreshing my memory.
“Who is this Edward person?” she asked after we’d finished the final Edward-referencing question and acknowledged the applause from our audience.
“Some guy from Dalton. Natalie thought he was her soul mate, but then Gwyneth told her he’s a player, so now Natalie’s figuring out if she can sue him for fraud or misrepresentation or something like that.”
“Natalie the genius prodigy is taking relationship advice from one of the Monkeys?”
“It wasn’t really advice — more like data. Natalie did her own analysis and interpretation.”
“That’s it,” said Charley. “I know what I’m doing after Dieter is dead. There’s clearly a massive demand for my services.”
“Which services?”
“Young love advisory services. The youth of America need me. They’ll be so much less mopey and whiny once I’m finished with them, and the entire country will be grateful. I’m seeing the Presidential Medal of Freedom and possibly even a Nobel Peace Prize in my future. What do you think?”
“Definitely the Nobel,” I said.
When I arrived at Prescott, Natalie was waiting out front, holding an umbrella patterned with the Copernican model of the solar system (at least, that’s what it said on the umbrella). “I was hoping I’d catch you before school started,” she said.
I assumed she wanted to cram in more physics prep — she probably didn’t trust that I’d done any on my own, which wasn’t so far from the truth. “I did study,” I said, trying not to sound too defensive. “Really.”
“That’s great,” she said, like she was proud of me. “You’ll find it makes the quiz-taking experience far less traumatic. But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.”
She pulled out her iPhone and began dialing into voice mail. “This came in last night, but I had the phone turned off — the cellular signal interferes with the experiments I’m running on nanowave frequencies in a fixed optic environment — so I only received the message this morning, when I switched the phone back on.”
“Is it from Edward?” I asked, thinking maybe she had another data point and wanted my help with the analysis.
“No,” she said, with a noncommittal shrug. “I’m still working on that. Here.”
Natalie handed me the phone, and an automated voice announced she had one saved message, sent yesterday at 9:34 P.M. from a local caller, though I didn’t recognize the number.
Then another voice, a real one, began speaking, and after a two-and-a-half-day absence, it was good for a quick spasm of brain paralysis.
Uh, Natalie. Hi. This is Quinn. Quinn Riley. From Prescott.
I felt the uncontrollable smile spreading across my face. Did Quinn really not understand he needed no introduction? Everyone at Prescott knew exactly who he was, from the littlest kid in pre-K all the way up to the most ancient member of the faculty.
Sorry to bother you, but I don’t have, uh, access to my phone, so I don’t have Delia’s number on me, and I can’t remember the last few digits right — numbers aren’t really my thing — and her aunt’s unlisted, and I’d call her other aunt but that’s sort of tricky, and then I found you in the Prescott directory — I only have last year’s and Delia’s not in it — anyhow, I was hoping you could give me her number. But you’re not there. And you can’t call me, because this isn’t my phone and I’ll need to put it back soon. And now I’m rambling. Sorry about that. But maybe you could give Delia a message, if it’s not too much trouble? Would you mind telling her —
He paused, as if he was trying to figure out how to word his message. And then, in the background, there was a sudden creaking noise, like the hinges of a door opening, and a woman cried out.
The recording ended with an abrupt click, before Quinn could say what he wanted Natalie to tell me. But I guessed Fiona had found her cell phone.
Knowing that Quinn had been trying to reach me didn’t solve any problems, but it did make me feel less like the world was coming to an end. Even if he was in serious
trouble, I could put any concerns about him losing interest to temporary rest, and there was something totally endearing about how awkward he’d sounded. I spent most of my morning classes replaying his words in my head.
And then physics rolled around, leaving only the quiz standing between me and freedom. I tried to act surprised when Dr. Penske told us to put everything away except our pens and calculators, though he actually winked at me as he distributed the xeroxed copies. And as soon as I turned the paper over I saw Natalie had been right — the quiz was almost identical to her study guide, just without the Edward parts. I didn’t even feel completely lost as I worked my way through the problems. Of course, Charley’s dramatic reading had included tributes to the entire 90210 cast, so I kept hearing Luke Perry and Tori Spelling in my head as I tried to remember which steps to take.
Either way, when Dr. Penske called time, I was pretty sure I’d at least passed. And then it was like Charley was tracking our status remotely, because a hall monitor came in with a note for me to report to the office.
Except it turned out Charley had nothing to do with it. Mr. Seton had called me in there all on his own.
I arrived fully expecting to be told Charley would be picking me up for a forgotten doctor’s appointment. And even when the receptionist said Mr. Seton wanted to see me personally, I only thought maybe he’d decided to use the occasion of my passing through his office for a quick headmaster-to-student chat.
But once I’d been ushered into his inner sanctum, he gestured for me to sit in one of the chairs opposite his desk, and then he sat down in his own chair, steepling his fingers beneath his chin.
“Miss Truesdale, as I’m sure you’re aware, it has recently come to the attention of the administration that several members of our senior class have engaged in an inappropriate business venture, and, in doing so, abused Prescott’s facilities and resources.”
And Then I Found Out the Truth Page 9
