The Classy Crooks Club

by Alison Cherry

  Concentrate on getting your feet free, I tell myself. You’ll think of another plan.

  Careful to stay under the blanket, I roll onto my back, bend my knees, and start picking at the tape on my ankles. It goes much faster now that I have full use of my hands, and before long, I’m totally free. For a moment, all I feel is pure joy, but then I realize I have no idea what to do next. I can’t exactly throw myself out of this speeding car and onto the highway. I hook the toe of my sneaker around the door handle and tug, figuring Betty will have to pull over if the open-door alarm goes off, but nothing happens—she must have the child locks on. I could lean over the front seat, grab the wheel, and crash the car into the median, but without a seat belt, I’d probably fly through the windshield. I’m not going to get very far with broken arms and legs.

  I need to play into Betty’s weaknesses somehow and make her stop the car. But what are Betty’s weaknesses? If the last hour has taught me anything, it’s that I don’t really know her at all.

  And then something so obvious occurs to me that I almost groan out loud.

  I am Betty’s weakness.

  It takes me a few minutes to come up with a solid plan. I practice each motion over and over in my head until I’m sure I can do them without hesitating, the way I sometimes review soccer plays before I fall asleep. I’m going to get only one chance at this, so I have to get it right.

  When I’m sure I’m completely ready, I snake a hand out from under my blanket, pop one of the tennis balls off the leg of Betty’s walker, and wedge it deep between the seat cushions, remembering what she told me about how hard it is to walk when it’s uneven. Then I start to cough violently, the way I used to when I was little and wanted to convince my mom I was too sick to go to school.

  Betty breaks off in the middle of a sentence. “Are you sure you’re all right, dear?”

  I wheeze like something’s caught in my throat. “Water,” I choke between coughs. “Help!”

  “Yes, yes, of course.” Betty sounds incredibly alarmed, and I hear the turn signal flip on. “You’re okay,  AJ. Don’t worry. Grandma’s here to help you.” My throat is starting to hurt, but I keep up the fake coughing until I feel the car pull onto the shoulder and roll to a stop.

  Perfect.

  Betty grabs a water bottle from her cup holder and opens the driver’s-side door. The minute I see her struggle into a standing position, I sit up and scramble into the passenger’s seat. My head swims and black dots dance at the corners of my vision—the drugs Betty gave me are probably still in my system—but I manage to grab the keys out of the ignition.

  “What the—” Betty starts to say as she notices what I’m doing. She lunges for me, claws at my shoulder, and tries to catch hold of my Coke-stained shirt, but her cotton gloves make it impossible for her to get a good grip. I twist violently and wrench the fabric out of her hands, then snatch her glasses right off her face. She cries out and tries to catch my wrist, but I grab her enormous handbag from the passenger’s seat and use it as a shield, and she rears up and bumps her head on the doorframe. Something tumbles onto the driver’s seat, and I seize it automatically—the more potential weapons I can take from her, the better. Then I throw open the passenger’s door, and in seconds I’m out on the asphalt on my own two feet, glorious open highway stretching away from me in every direction.

  Betty holds onto the hood of the car and makes her way toward me as quickly as she can. “Get back here!” she screeches. Her voice sounds incredibly strange all of a sudden, and when I look down at what I’m clutching in my sweaty, shaking fingers, I see why.

  Oh my God, I’m holding Betty’s dentures in my hand.

  My stomach lurches with disgust, and I shriek and throw them as hard as I can. They land in the middle of the highway, where an SUV runs over them and scatters individual false teeth all over the road. I throw the glasses next and wait until I see a car drive over them and snap them right in two. And then I run.

  When I look back over my shoulder, Betty’s trying to follow me, leaning on the median for support and moving faster than I would’ve expected. She must be running on adrenaline, like those mothers you see on TV who suddenly have super strength for the minute it takes to lift cars off their babies. “You ungrateful little—” she pants.

  I don’t hear what Betty calls me over the sound of the semi that rushes by on my right, so close that the wind it creates hits me like a wall and almost knocks me over. I scrape my shin as I scramble over the concrete median, and blood trickles down my leg. But I put it out of my mind; I can deal with that later, when I’m safe. The pain actually makes my mind feel sharper.

  There’s a glowing green gas station sign on the other side of the highway, no more than half a mile away, and I set my sights on it. At the best of times, I could run that distance in three minutes flat, and even semidrugged, I should be able to make it in less than ten. I’m sure I’ll find someone there who can help me.

  It’s amazing how many cars are on the highway this late at night—there’s a pretty steady stream of traffic in all three lanes. But the speeding cars feel far less dangerous than the woman behind me, who’s now screaming, “Annemarie, I love you! Don’t leave me! ” When I glance back, she has her walker out and is plowing toward me as its uneven legs totter and tip. Her blue-tinted hair whips around in the cars’ slipstream, there’s a deranged fire in her eyes, and one of her bony hands is outstretched toward me like a zombie claw.

  The moment there’s a break in the cars, I rush out onto the highway and sprint for the barrier on the other side. I’m a little woozy, and my adrenaline barely carries me across before a blue van speeds by behind me, tossing a few stray pieces of gravel into the backs of my legs. It lets out a loud honk as it passes. “Thank you,” I whisper to the traffic gods as I press my hands against the cool concrete barrier.

  When I turn around to check on Betty, she’s still on the other side, standing under a streetlight. She looks so helpless and frail that a small part of me actually feels bad for her. But a much larger part wants to get as far away from her as possible.

  I climb over the barrier and fly toward the gas station as if my life depends on it.

  20

  I start yelling for help when I’m a block or so away from the gas station, hoping someone filling up their tank will hear me and rush to my rescue. But nobody comes, and when I finally arrive, panting and sweaty, I realize the station is closed for the night. There’s not a single car at the pumps, and the little convenience store is dark and empty. I push on the glass door with all my strength, just to make sure, but it’s definitely locked. A sign in the window informs me that it’ll open again at six in the morning.

  Good thing a locked door has no power to keep me out. I’ve been preparing for this exact moment all month.

  I’ve got seven lock picks left, and one of them is the squiggly tipped one used for raking the pins. My hands tremble as I fumble the pick and the tension wrench out of my pouch, but I hear Edna’s voice in my head telling me I’m a hollow reed, that I should look inside the lock with my third eye and politely ask it to open. “Please,” I whisper into the little silver keyhole. “I really, really need to get inside and use the phone.” I feel completely ridiculous, but there’s nobody here to see me, and I’m desperate.

  And maybe there really is something to it, because for the first time ever, the pins seem eager to pop into place. After I rake them a couple times, four of the five bounce neatly up into the cylinder. Number five is trickier, but in less than three minutes, I get that one, too—a personal record. I wish I could tell Edna. The wrench turns in my hand, and I’m through the door and inside the cool, quiet store, which smells like gasoline and coffee. I can’t turn the overhead fluorescents on without giving away my location, but everything glows softly in the light of the humming drink coolers along one wall. I slide the dead bolt into place, and it makes me feel a little safer.

  Then again, Betty can probably pick locks too.


  The clock above the counter reads 1:18 a.m., only a little more than an hour from when Betty and I started driving, and I’m relieved that we can’t be that far out of town. I know from watching movies that there are sometimes silent alarm buttons in gas stations, but I can’t find anything like that behind the counter, so I grab the grimy beige handset instead. There are oily orange smudges all over the receiver, as if the clerk had been talking on the phone while eating Cheetos.

  I’m about to dial 911, but then I think about the story I’ll have to tell them when someone answers. My grandmother’s crazy old-lady friend who can’t even walk drugged me with a Slurpee and tied me up with duct tape and tried to take me to a secret cabin in the woods, but I escaped and ran across the highway and picked a lock on a convenience store. Nobody’s going to believe that. If I were a 911 operator, I wouldn’t believe it either.

  My heart pounds as I glance outside the door, half expecting to see Betty out there. Taking her keys and glasses would’ve slowed her down for sure, but I’m willing to bet she knows how to hot-wire a car, and any good criminal would keep a spare pair of glasses in her purse. It’s only a matter of time before she peels into this Citgo station and finds me.

  I can’t call my grandmother, since she doesn’t have a cell phone, and I don’t know Cookie’s or Edna’s numbers. The only numbers I do know are my parents’ and Ben’s—all useless—and Maddie’s cell number, which seems like my best bet. She won’t be able to help me herself, but if she wakes up her parents, I’m sure they’ll come get me. I hate to ask Maddie for help, considering how our last conversation went, but I know she’ll see that what’s happening right now is much more important than our fight. Plus, I can’t think of any other options.

  I swallow my pride and dial.

  But Maddie’s phone just rings and rings and rings. I call her five times before I realize she must’ve put it on silent before she went to sleep. Every time her voice mail message starts playing and I hear her happy, giggly voice telling me to leave a message, it feels like I’ve been kicked in the stomach. What if I’ve lost her for good and Go call your new BFF Brianna if you want someone to listen to you is the last thing she ever says to me?

  Wait a minute. Brianna.

  The invitation is still there in my pocket, folded into a tight square and embossed with her address and phone number. She can actually get in touch with my grandmother, who’s probably sitting right outside her house in her big black van.

  I pick up the phone again and dial. If this doesn’t work, I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do. I guess I’ll have to hide behind this convenience store counter all night and try to get the clerk to help me in the morning. Five hours seems like a ridiculously long time to wait.

  The phone rings six times and goes to voice mail. I’m sure Brianna’s sleeping too, but I slam down the phone, pick it up, and dial again. On my fourth call Brianna finally answers. “What?” she snaps, croaky and hoarse and super annoyed.

  I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to hear someone’s voice. “Brianna!” I shout. “It’s AJ.” When she doesn’t say anything, I say, “AJ Johansen?”

  “Yeah, I know who you are. What do you want? What time is it?”

  “Listen, I know it’s late, but I need you to do me a really, really big favor. I’m in trouble, and I really need to talk to my grandmother, and I need you to get her for me.”

  “Wait, what? Why are you calling me? Don’t you live with your grandmother?”

  “Yeah, but I’m not with her right now. She’s actually . . . um . . . this is going to sound strange, but I think she might be sitting in your driveway in a van, a big black one. Do you think you could keep me on the line and take your phone out to her?”

  Brianna’s silent for a minute, and I picture her struggling to wake up. “Is this some kind of joke?” she finally says.

  “No,” I say, and my voice comes out desperate and pleading. “Come on, please? This is really, really important.”

  “Why would your grandmother be in my driveway?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I say. “Brianna, I’m hiding in a gas station from someone who tried to kidnap me, and I need help. I need to talk to my grandmother. Can you please get her? Please?”

  “Someone kidnapped you?” I hear the rustle of blankets.

  “Yes! Can you help me?”

  “I should probably get my dad,” she says. “I’m not going out there alone in the middle of the night. Hang on a second, okay?”

  “That’s fine,” I say. My grandmother will have trouble explaining why she’s on the Westlakes’ property at one in the morning, but that’s not my problem. I told her not to go.

  I hear Brianna’s voice say, “Dad? Dad?” but then all I hear is a lot of mumbling—she must have her hand over the microphone. After a couple of horrible, tense minutes, she finally comes back and says, “Are you still there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “My dad and I are going outside, okay?” She sounds scared, but against all odds, she’s actually taking me seriously and doing her best to help. I never thought Brianna had it in her.

  “Thank you so much,” I say.

  There are more muffled sounds, and then Brianna says, “I see the van. Oh, they see us, too—wait, they’re backing up. I think they’re leaving. AJ, what is even happening right now?”

  “Run!” I shout. “Please, catch her. Just you, not your dad. Hold up the phone and yell that I’m on the other end and that I need help!”

  She does, and I hear the sound of screeching tires and my grandmother’s incredulous voice. “Annemarie’s on the phone? Where is she? Why did she call you?”

  “She says—”

  “Give me that.” I hear a small scuffle, and then my grandmother’s on the line. “Annemarie, where are you? What have you done to Betty? I warned you that you were not to interfere with—”

  “Grandma Jo,” I say, cutting her off, “I really, really need your help.”

  She must hear how serious my voice is, because she stops yelling. “Tell me what happened,” she says.

  I spill out the whole story, and she listens without interrupting. When I’m finished, she says, “Oh heavens, not again. I knew we shouldn’t have let Betty have so much contact with you. That woman has no self-control.” I hear an exasperated sigh. “Where are you now, Annemarie?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “A Citgo station on the highway, but I was unconscious while Betty was driving, and nothing looks familiar.”

  “You’ve disabled Betty?”

  “I took her keys and smashed her glasses, but I’m not sure how long that’s going to stop her. She might have extra glasses, and she probably knows how to hot-wire a car, right?”

  “No matter,” Grandma Jo says. “Our headsets have GPS; we can track her.”

  “She threw her headset out the window before she drugged me,” I tell her.

  “Of course she did.” Grandma Jo sighs. “Look around behind the counter,  Annemarie. Do you see anything with an address on it? An inspection certificate or something?”

  I don’t know what an inspection certificate looks like, but there are a few shelves behind the counter, so I start digging through them. There’s a stained University of Illinois hoodie, a single Converse sneaker, a couple pencils with teeth marks in them, a baseball cap, a half-melted chocolate bar covered in lint . . . and a pile of junk mail.

  “I found something!” I shout, and I read off the address to her. I’ve never even heard of the town I’m apparently in, and I hope it’s not too far away.

  “Cookie, map this on your phone,” Grandma Jo says.

  “Roger that.” About thirty seconds pass, and then I hear Cookie say, “Got it. She’s right here, see?”

  “Good, that’s not so far,” says Grandma Jo’s voice. “We’re coming for you,  Annemarie.”

  My knees go weak with relief, and I sink onto the filthy gas station floor. “Thank you, Grandma Jo. Thank you so much.”

&nbs
p; “Let’s go, Cookie!”

  “Roger!”

  “Hang on, that’s my phone, you can’t—” comes Brianna’s voice.

  “Let go, you ungrateful child. Can’t you see I need it more than you do?”

  “What is going on here?” shouts a man’s voice. “Are you trying to steal my daughter’s phone? And why are you even—”

  “Drive, Cookie!”

  There’s a loud screeching sound, an enormous crash, and the sound of several people screaming. “What’s going on?” I yell.

  “Who are you?” shouts Brianna’s dad. “What are you doing on my property? I’m calling the police!”

  “I thought the car was in reverse,” comes Cookie’s mournful voice. “I’m still not used to this dang van. Now it won’t even—”

  “Give me my phone!” screeches Brianna.

  “Annemarie, we’ve hit a little snag over here,” Grandma Jo’s voice says, totally calmly. “We’ve also hit the Westlakes’ garage. I’ll tell the police to track down Betty and pick you up. Stay hidden and don’t go anywhere.”

  “Okay,” I say. I pull my knees up to my chest, suddenly aware that I’m shivering, even in the warm night air.

  “And Annemarie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m sorry about what happened tonight. You’ve been very brave. I respect a girl who puts her skills to use and does what needs to be done without making a fuss.”

  Before I can respond, Grandma Jo hangs up.

  • • •

  I spend the next half hour huddled behind the counter, jumping at every sound. On an endless loop inside my head, I picture Betty throwing a brick through the glass door and barging into my safe little hiding space with her toothless mouth and uneven walker, ready to whisk me away to a place where nobody will ever find me. For every endless, uneventful minute that ticks by, I grow more nervous, more sure nobody’s actually coming to help me after all. Maybe Brianna’s dad had my grandmother and her friends arrested before they could notify the police. I wonder if I should call 911 myself and try to explain the situation after all.