by Meg Cabot
Dads. Seriously. They should just stick to handing out the allowance.
My mom was delighted to see me, but mad I hadn’t called first.
“I would’ve planned a barbecue,” she said. “A welcome home barbecue, and invited the Abramowitzes and the Thompkinses and the Blumenthals and the—”
“Yeah, that’s okay, Mom,” I said. “I’m here for a couple of days. There’s still time to plan something if you really want to.”
“We could have a brunch,” my mom said all gleefully. “On Saturday. People like brunch. And if they already have plans for the rest of the day, they can still do them, after brunch.”
“Douglas is at work?” I asked, after dumping my stuff off in my room and noticing that they’d converted his room, across the hall, to an office for my dad, who’d formerly done the books from the restaurants at the dining room table.
“Probably,” my mother said, as she fussed around, saying things like my sheets weren’t freshened up, and how I should have called so she could run them through the wash first. “Or one of those city council meetings.”
“What?” I grinned. “Douglas’s interested in politics now?”
My mother rolled her eyes. “Apparently. Well, not politics, exactly. You know they’re shutting down Pine Heights—” Pine Heights was the elementary school all of us had gone to. It was three blocks away—so close, we’d come home for lunch every day—a building constructed during the Depression by WPA workers, ancient enough that it still had two entrances, one for boys and one for girls.
At least according to the scrollwork over the doorways. No one, when I’d attended it, had ever paid any attention to the signs.
“There aren’t enough children in the neighborhood anymore to fill it,” my mother said. “So the school board’s shutting it down. The city wants to convert it to luxury condos. But Douglas and Tasha”—Tasha was Douglas’s girlfriend and the daughter of our neighbors across the street—“have some big idea about—well, he’ll tell you about it when you see him, I’m sure. It’s all he ever talks about anymore.”
“Maybe I’ll stop by the store and see him,” I said. “If you think he’s working now.”
“He probably is,” my mother said, rolling her eyes. “It’s all he ever does. Besides this Pine Heights thing.”
Which was funny, because just a few years ago, none of us would have believed that Douglas would ever do something as normal as hold down a job. It hadn’t been that long ago, really, that we’d all despaired of Douglas ever even leaving his room, much less supporting himself.
“Invite him for dinner,” my mother called as I banged out of the house. “Tasha, too, if she’s around. I’ll make your father grill some steaks.”
“Hey,” my dad yelled from his office-slash-Douglas’s old room. “I heard that.”
I left them squabbling and went down to the garage. Opening the barnlike doors—our house is a converted farmhouse, and almost a century old like most of the houses in our neighborhood—I went in and found what I’d been looking for: the baby-blue 1968 Harley my dad had bought me, as he’d promised he would, for high school graduation.
Not that I’d specified a year or color. Any bike would have suited me fine. The fact that he’d gotten me such a perfectly pimped ride had really been the icing on what was already some pretty delicious cake.
Still, with one thing or another—the war, and then my acceptance to Juilliard—I had only gotten to ride her a couple of times. I hadn’t dared bring her to New York, where she’d have been stolen in—well, a New York minute. She was a real beauty, the color of the sky on an Easter Sunday—not quite turquoise, but not exactly teal, either. I loved her with an affection that probably wasn’t normal. I mean, for an inanimate object.
But she was just so perfect, with her cream-colored leather seat and shiny chrome trim. My dad had gotten me a matching cream-colored helmet, which I put on after dragging her out from behind my mom’s trim paint cans.
A second later, I was gunning the engine. It rumbled like the finely tuned instrument it was. Four months of disuse had done nothing to dull this beauty queen.
And then I was out on the street with her, feeling the tension that had settled in my neck—around about the time I’d opened my apartment door to find Rob there—finally starting to dissipate.
There is nothing like riding a really finely tuned motorcycle to get rid of stress.
But instead of turning towards downtown, where Douglas’s comic-book store was, I turned Blue Beauty—yeah, okay, so I’d named my bike. I think we’ve already established that I’m a freak—towards the newer part of town, over by the big, multimillion dollar hospital they’d finished a few years ago. New apartment buildings had sprung up all around it to house the several thousand people who worked there.
Not the doctors, of course. They all lived in my neighborhood. The orderlies and nurses lived in this one.
Hannah Snyder, as I’d learned from my dream about her, was crashing in Apartment 2T at the Fountain Bleu complex just behind the Kroger Sav-On, right next to the hospital. I was surprised to see that there really was a fountain at the Fountain Bleu apartment complex. It was kind of a lame one, but it bubbled away in front of the complex in a somewhat soothing manner. All it needed, really, was a couple of swans, and it would be like the real Fountain Bleu it was named for, over in France. Or wherever.
I parked the bike and stored my helmet in its carryall. Then I strolled across the parking lot and thumped once on the door to 2T.
“Who is it?” a girl’s voice asked.
“Me,” I said. “Open up, Hannah.”
She had no idea, of course, who I was. Not yet, anyway.
Still, I’ve found, over the years, if you answerMe whenever anybody wants to know who it is, they’ll nearly always open the door, thinkingthey ’re the dumb one for not recognizing your voice.
Rob’s little sister stared at me a full five seconds before she realized I wasn’t the “me” she’d been expecting.
But she definitely recognized me. Even though we’d never had the pleasure of making each other’s acquaintance before. I guess she was up on her local history. Either that, or Rob had a picture of me somewhere.
Okay, probably she recognized me from TV.
She said a very bad word and, looking panicked, tried to slam the door in my face.
But it’s hard to slam the door in someone’s face when they’re holding a motorcycle-booted foot against the door frame.
Seven
“Better let me in,” I said.
Hannah made a face.
But she let go of the door.
“I can’t believe this,” she was grumbling as I pushed the door all the way open and invited myself into a stark white, fairly small living-room-dining-room-den combo. The paint still smelled fresh, and all of the furniture—a cheap leather set that reeked of no-payment-down—looked brand-new.
“He said you two were broken up.” Hannah looked hot-cheeked and accusing.
“Yeah,” I said. “We are.”
I noticed a large-screen TV against the wall. She’d been watching Dr. Phil’s most recentFamily in Crisis . I wondered if she’d noticed any similarities between their lives and her own. I found the remote on the couch and flicked it off.
“Where is he?” I asked her.
“Who?”
Hannah had started to cry. Not because she was unhappy, I didn’t think. I think because she was frustrated. And maybe a little scared. It’s no joke when America’s foremost psychic hunts you down. Especially when she’s wearing motorcycle boots.
I guess Hannah doesn’t read the papers much or she’d have known—you know. That I hadn’t exactly been in top form lately.
I thought about telling her that she ought to be gratified that I’d found her at all. She was my first find in over a year. That had to be an honor, of some kind.
Except that to her, it probably wasn’t.
“You know who I’m talking about,”
I said to her. “Where is he?”
“My brother?” Hannah sniffed. “How should I know? At the stupid garage, I suppose.”
“Not your brother,” I said. “Your boyfriend.”
Hannah’s mascara-rimmed eyes widened in an unconvincing attempt at looking innocent.
“What boyfriend?” she asked. “I don’t have a—”
“Hannah,” I said, “I didn’t come a thousand miles to listen to lies. Somebody’s paying the rent on this apartment. So tell me where he is, or I swear to God I’ll have Child Protective Services here in five minutes flat.”
I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket to illustrate the seriousness of my intent. Although truthfully, I didn’t exactly have the number for Child Protective Services on my speed dial. I’d stolen that line fromJudging Amy , one of Ruth’s favorite TV shows, which she makes me watch in syndication at least five times a week. It is oddly addictive.
Hannah seemed to realize she was up against a force greater than her own, since she said with a defeated sniff, “He’s at work. He’s very important, you know.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet,” I said sarcastically. “What does he do?”
“His dad owns this place,” Hannah said with a flicker of In-Your-Face-Girlfriend ’tude. “The apartment complex, I mean. He helps run it.”
Well, that explained the apartment, anyway.
But not the rest of it.
“So you picked a real winner, there,” I said. Again with the sarcasm. “If he’s such a catch, how come your mom didn’t approve? And don’t even try to tell me she did. Is it because he’s too old for you?”
“She’s such a bitch,” Hannah said from the little ball she’d curled herself into on the leather couch. She was wearing jeans and a tie-dyed T-shirt. Between the shirt and her hair, which was still dyed to resemble spumoni ice cream, she was a veritable rainbow of color. “I mean, she brings home a different guy every week practically. But I tell her about Randy and she completely flips!”
I went to the window and pulled back the curtain liner. I could see the other side of the complex. There had to be over a hundred units altogether, making up Fountain Bleu Luxury Apartments. In the center of the complex was a pitifully small, kidney-shaped pool. A young mother sat beside it, as her kids paddled around in the shallow end.
“Where’d you meet him?” I asked, dropping the curtain and turning back towards Hannah. “Internet?”
She nodded. “A manga chatroom,” she said. “Randy’s a big manga fan. You know what manga is?” The look she darted me was sly.
“Japanese illustrated novels,” I said. I wasn’t about to mention that my brother had one of the foremost manga collections in southern Indiana. “Go on.”
“Well, he asked me to meet him in a private chat room, so I did.” Hannah was picking at the threads in a hole in the knee of her jeans. “And he was just…everything I’ve ever dreamed of. He asked me to spend the weekend with him, but when I asked my mom, she was like, no.”
“So you told your newly discovered big brother, who is unfamiliar with the lengths teenage girls will go to get what they want, that your mom’s boyfriends were putting the moves on you.” I didn’t need psychic powers to tell I’d hit the nail on the head. The truth was written all over her face. “And Rob believed you and invited you to stay with him on a trial basis. And you ditched him for this Randy guy the minute you got the chance.”
She had the grace to look ashamed.
“I wanted to tell Rob where I was,” she said. “Really, I did. But Randy said—”
“Oh, wait,” I said, holding up a hand to stop her. “Let me guess what Randy said. Randy said your big brother wouldn’t understand. Randy said your big brother would try to make something dirty out of it and maybe call the cops.” Though most likely, Rob would have just beaten the guy to a bloody pulp. “Randy said that a love like the one you and he share is a sacred thing, not easily understood by us mere mortals. Did I leave anything out?”
Hannah blinked at me, looking hurt.
“You don’t need to make fun of it,” she said. “Just because things didn’t work out between you and Rob, leaving you a bitter old maid, is no reason to assume every guy is a jerk.”
“Oh,” I said. “I see. Hannah, how old is Randy?”
“He said you’d ask that,” Hannah said, getting up suddenly to go to the kitchen to get a glass of water. But I know she’d only gotten up so she wouldn’t have to meet my gaze. “Well, not you, exactly, since I never thought—I mean, Rob said you were broken up. But Randy said people would try to make something dirty out of it, just because he happens to be a few years older than me—”
“How much older than you, Hannah?” I asked in an even voice.
“He’s twenty-seven,” she said, plunking down her water glass on the imitation granite counter. “But Randy says age doesn’t mean anything! Randy says he and I knew each other in a previous life. He says we’re destined to be together—”
“Hannah,” I said in a hard voice. “You are fifteen. He is twelve years older than you are. His having a sexual relationship with you is actually illegal.”
“Randy says the laws of man don’t recognize a love that is as true as ours—”
“Hannah,” I said. “If you tell me one more thing Randy says, I am going to smack you back into last week. Do you understand?”
She blinked at me, a little taken aback, but mostly still defiant. At least she was meeting my gaze now, though.
I leaned on one hip and said, “Look. You aren’t stupid. You can’t be, because you’re related to Rob. So why are you acting like such a world-class sap?”
Her mouth fell open to reply, but I cut her off.
“You know all that stuff about the two of you meeting in another life is a load of bull. You know this Randy guy is after you for one thing. That’s why your mom didn’t approve, because she knew it, too. And you know the only reason you like Randy back is because he buys you things and pays attention to you and lets you live in this cool apartment where you can watch TV all day. Speaking of which, it’s a beautiful day outside. Why aren’t you at the pool?”
“Randy says—”
“Randy told you not to go to the pool, because someone might see you and start asking questions. Right? Doesn’t that tell you something right there, Hannah? If this Randy guy really loved you, he’d have tried to get in good with your mom, not steal you from her. He’d have waited for you until you were legal, then asked you out, not hide you away in some apartment his dad’s paying for. Sure, things are great right now. You can lounge around and do whatever you want. But what about when school starts in the fall? Are you just going to drop out? Be Randy’s love slave for the rest of your life? That’s a worthy aspiration for a girl of your intelligence.”
She raised her chin at my sneering tone. She had spunk, anyway. I’d give her that.
“I hate high school,” she said sullenly. “Everyone there is such a phony. Randy said he’d help me get my GED online—”
“Oh, right. And then what? Online college?”
“Randy says—”
“Oh, listen to yourself,” I snapped. “Randy says this, Randy says that. Don’t you have a mind of your own? Or do you just automatically do whatever Randy says?”
“Yes,” Hannah said. She was crying openly now. And not from fear or frustration.
“Yes, you have a mind of your own? Or yes, you automatically do what Randy says?”
“I can see why my brother broke up with you,” Hannah said with sudden venom. “You’re really mean!”
“Oh,” I said, smiling. “You think this is mean? I haven’t even gotten STARTED yet. Get your stuff. Now. We’re leaving.”
She stared at me, dumbfounded. “What?”
“Get your stuff,” I said. “I’m taking you back to your brother’s house. And then I’m calling your mother, and we’re all going to have a little talk about what is REALLY going on back at her house. And I’m betting she’s going to sa
y none of her exes ever hit on you. And guess what? I believe her.”
Hannah looked about as shocked as a person who has grown totally used to getting her own way could look, upon suddenly finding things not going her way.
“I—I’m not going anywhere,” she cried. “You try to drag me out of here and Randy—Randy will kill you!”
“Hannah,” I said. “Let me tell you something. I just spent a year working with U.S. Marines, whose only job was to track down and detain men who’d trained at terrorist death camps. Compared to that, some twenty-seven-year-old pimp named Randy who doesn’t even own his apartment is NOTHING to me. Do you understand? NOTHING.”
Hannah’s lower lip quivered. Her gaze darted around the apartment, as if she were looking for something to throw at me. I regarded her calmly, however, from the front doorway, which I was guarding in case the ever-fabulous Randy happened to come in unexpectedly.
“Randy’s not a pimp” was all she could come up with.
“Not yet,” I said. “Give him time. I’m sure, with the love of a girl like you behind him, he’ll live up to his potential.”
“I—I HATE you!” Hannah screamed at me. “You are such a BITCH! My brother is so WRONG about you! He goes on about you like you’re some kind of PRINCESS. Did you know he keeps a SCRAPBOOK about you? Yeah, he does. Every time anything about you appears in the paper or some magazine, he clips it out and SAVES it. He’s got like ten thousand pictures of you—God, he never even misses an episode of that STUPID TV show about you. He even made ME sit and watch it. All he ever talks about is how great and brave and smart and funny you are. I wasdying to meet you someday, even though you totally ripped out his heart and stomped on it. And now I finally do meet you, and I find out you’re nothing but a huge, giant, überbitch!”
I could only blink at her, stunned not so much by her outburst—okay, not at ALL stunned by the outburst—but by its content. Rob keepsscrapbooks about me? Rob watches the TV show about me? Rob thinks I’m brave and smart and funny? She thinks I broke ROB’S heart?
