The Spy Who Totally Had a Crush on Me

by Michael P. Spradlin

  The guy was gorgeous; that was my first reaction. I mean totally hot. Like the-next-great-Hollywood-hottie-just-waiting-to-be-discovered-only-here-he–is-standing-right-in-front-of-me hot. He was tall and he was cut. He had cool-green eyes and light-brown hair with blond highlights. His clothes looked a little shabby, a Harley-Davidson long-sleeved tee that looked as if it’d been washed a lot and faded wrinkly jeans, like maybe he’d slept in them. But shabby was a very good look for him. He kind of smiled when he saw me in my pose, fists clenched.

  “Whoa, little sister,” he said. He held up both hands. “I surrender.” He was smiling as he said it, revealing a mouthful of the straightest, whitest, most-perfect teeth ever. These were the teeth used in dental schools across the country as example of what perfect teeth should look like.

  “I see you guys have run into Booker and his losers,” he said. “Booker tends to be a little antisocial. Takes things that aren’t his. He’s also cruel to animals and small children. He even litters occasionally. Don’t be too hard on him though; he’s from a broken home.”

  “Shut up, Rinteau,” Booker said. “I can gut you just as easy.” He brandished the switchblade. (I don’t really know what brandish means exactly except that when it applies to people waving switchblades in my general vicinity I know I really don’t care for it.)

  “Uh, no, you couldn’t—and besides, the mall’s neutral. You start working it and Juarez or the Raiders are going to hear about it. That’s trouble you don’t want.”

  “You ain’t a Bully no more, Rinteau, you don’t say nothin’!” Booker said. But I noticed that he closed the blade and put the knife back in his pocket. Clearly, he didn’t like this Rinteau person being around. It made him nervous. But he recovered quickly. He took a step back, sneering at Alex. He made like he was leaving, acting as if we weren’t even worth worrying about. His gang parted to let him pass.

  So far what I’d been able to discern was A) this Booker individual and this Rinteau person knew each other and B) it sounded like they were once part of a gang or something. I didn’t think it was a Boy Scout troop or church choir they were talking about. My keen deductive skills also informed me that they didn’t like each other.

  “You aren’t leaving with that money,” Alex said. Booker stopped, turning around to face us again.

  “Let it go, man. It isn’t worth the few bucks. If you try to get it back you’re going to have to fight him for it,” Rinteau said.

  “Whatever,” Alex said. “He’s not leaving with that money.”

  Now I was really confused. Something was going on here. I didn’t know what. But something. It just felt like in a few minutes everyone was going to be fighting. And there were knives.

  Booker just stood there staring. No one said anything. It seemed to me like time had stopped, as if we’d been standing in that hallway for hours. I knew it’d only been a couple of minutes. Somebody must have seen all the commotion out in the mall and noticed we had run down this corridor. Why hadn’t someone called the cops or the security guards? Or the Army? Can you actually call the Army? I mean not to join, but to come somewhere and beat someone up for you? I needed to check into that.

  Then it happened. With no warning, Booker took a run at Alex and sent a long looping punch toward his head with his non-knife hand. Alex blocked it easily at Booker’s wrist. He quickly grabbed his arm and twisted it so the elbow was facing up and the force of the move sent Booker to his knees. I could hear the sickening pop of his elbow dislocating and Booker screamed. The scream died in his throat as Alex kicked him hard in the stomach and he lost his breath with a whoosh of air. It quickly took the fight out of him, but not his gang. The young kid who’d stolen the purse and a few of the younger ones turned and ran, but that still left seven of them and five of us. Not good odds.

  Two of the guys from Booker’s gang launched themselves at Alex with a roar. They both hit him high in the chest and he went down underneath them. Brent jumped in and pulled one off of Alex and put the guy down with a palm strike. But two more waded in and Brent took a hard shot to the side of his head. Pilar yelled and jumped on one of the gang guys’ backs, and after that I couldn’t keep track because it just turned into a big dog pile, with people yelling and shouting and grunting and flopping around on the ground like a tuna on the deck of a fishing boat.

  One of the gang guys came running toward me yelling really impolite things concerning both my personality and sexual orientation. I crouched and readied to throw him across my hip, but I never got a chance because this Rinteau guy flew out of my peripheral vision and hit the kid hard in the chest with a flying tackle. They both went down, but Rinteau sprang to his feet quickly, grabbing another gang guy off the pile and spinning him hard to the ground. Booker was screaming “My arm! My arm!” underneath the pile of bodies. Rinteau pushed through the pile until he reached Booker and jerked him to his feet with one hand, twisting the bad arm behind his back. Bodies were flying everywhere and Brent and Pilar were shouting and Alex was somewhere under the pile getting pummeled.

  Rinteau twisted Booker’s arm and he screamed again. “Call ’em off,” Rinteau hissed at Booker.

  “Owww! Owwww! Okay, stop, stop!” Booker screamed. Alex was still rolling on the ground with two of the guys, who were not stopping. He managed to flip one guy off him and Rinteau twisted Booker’s arm again. “Stop!” Booker screamed.

  They stopped.

  Everyone stood there panting and grunting. Brent was going to have a black eye and Alex’s nose was bleeding. With his free hand, Rinteau reached around Booker and pulled the cash from his front pocket. He let go of Booker’s arm and pushed him away.

  “Get out of here,” he said.

  “I’m going to kill you, Rinteau. I swear; you’re a dead man,” Booker said, his mangled arm hanging limply at his side.

  “Yeah, whatever, you’ve been saying that for years. Leave. Now,” Rinteau said.

  Booker made a very unkind remark about Rinteau’s mother and left, walking out through the loading dock with his gang following close behind.

  “You okay?” Rinteau said to Alex. Alex nodded, rubbed his neck, and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket that he then pressed to his nose.

  Rinteau picked up the purse still lying on the ground and dropped the cash back into it.

  “Everybody all right?” he said. We all nodded.

  “You just got to meet Booker. He’s a bad dude. Best if you don’t come back here again. Try the mall in Franklin or Portersville. He doesn’t ever go there. He won’t be so cooperative if he sees you here again. And he won’t forget. Nice meeting you all,” he said, and then headed back down the corridor toward the mall.

  “Where are you going?” Alex asked.

  “To find that lady and give her purse back.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Alex offered.

  But the thing about Alex is that he doesn’t always say things in the friendliest way. He made it sound like a challenge.

  Rinteau stopped, staring at Alex. It was a hard look, like he was sizing him up.

  “Don’t trust me?”

  “Well, I just met you. And I thank you for helping us out with those punks. But no, I don’t trust you,” Alex said.

  Great. Let’s get it all right out there in the open, shall we?

  “Alex, don’t be rude,” I said.

  Alex shot me a look and Rinteau switched his gaze to me and got a slightly bemused expression on his face. It was a really, really good look for him.

  “What Alex means to say is thanks and we appreciate your help. My name’s Rachel Buchanan. This is Pilar Jordan, Brent Christian, and Alex Scott.”

  He kept studying me for a minute, and then said, “Name’s Michael Rinteau.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking, where did you come from?” Besides heaven, I thought to myself.

  “The Gap.”

  Yes! Gorgeous and excellent taste!

  “I mean, how did you know we were back here and there was
trouble?”

  “You ask a lot of questions,” he said.

  “You don’t answer many,” Alex interrupted. Somehow, despite his really saving our bacon, Alex had taken an instant dislike to this guy. Boys. The instant clash of the alpha males. It was like standing in the middle of a nature documentary on the National Geographic Channel. I could almost hear the theme music in the background.

  “I was shopping. Saw the kid with the purse run by and recognized him. He’s a Fourth Street Bully. Where there’s a Bully, there’s always trouble. I saw all of you white-bread suburban geeks go running after him. Knew you’d be in over your head,” he said.

  “And you knew he was a Bully how, exactly?” Alex was interrogating the poor guy. Geez Alex, read him his rights why don’t you?

  “Because I used to be one,” Rinteau looked at me when he responded. Um. He was a gang person. Oh.

  “Used to be?” Alex kept it up.

  Rinteau looked at Alex and didn’t say anything. Then walked over to him and got real close to Alex’s face. “Did I stutter?” he whispered. They stood there like they were ready to go at it, until I stepped in between them.

  “Boys! Boys! Please let’s not quarrel.”

  “No quarrel from me,” Rinteau backed up. “It’s your boyfriend here who’s got the problem.”

  “Boyfriend? Oh no, no, no. Alex is not my boyfriend; he’s just a big fan of law and order. I mean law and order in the philosophical sense, not the TV show. You know, truth and justice and all that? Alex, just relax, okay?”

  “I am relaxed,” Alex never took his eyes off Rinteau while he spoke. “I’m also making sure that lady gets her money back. We don’t know this guy—maybe he was part of it. Maybe he walks out of here thinking he’s keeping the money. Putting one over on us. So he wants to give the lady her money back, fine, but I’m going with him.”

  Rinteau looked at Alex again, and then nodded. “Fair enough. You come along. We’ll see she gets it back.”

  But we never got the chance to return the money, because right then, the cops finally showed up. And they arrested all of us.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Déjà vu All Over Again

  FOR THE SECOND TIME in less than four months I was being held in a police station. I sat there wondering what my parents, Charles and Cynthia, would think if they could see me now. If I knew them, which I did, they would probably figure I hadn’t changed much.

  We’d tried to explain everything to the cops. We hadn’t stolen the purse, and were on our way back to return it to the lady. But they weren’t listening. We were loaded into squad cars and taken to a nearby station. When we got there and got our phone call, we called Mr. Kim. While we waited for him to arrive, they brought the woman who had been robbed in from the mall, and she explained that Alex and Brent weren’t the ones who’d stolen her purse. The cops said that that didn’t let us off the hook, because the lady hadn’t seen Pilar or me and for all they knew it could have been us who’d taken it. “Some kind of scam,” they said. The lady tried to explain that it was a young boy who knocked her down and grabbed her bag, but the police just kept telling her that they would get it “all sorted out, soon enough.”

  And there was a real problem with Michael Rinteau. It turned out he was very familiar with the cops. The cops said he had a record, in fact, and been in a lot of scrapes. And that made it real difficult for the police to believe us. I mean, they caught us with him and the purse. Well, they caught him with the purse, technically, but that just made the whole situation worse. Pilar and I tried to explain it to the policeman who interviewed us, but it was no use. We finally just told him to wait until Mr. Kim got there. The cop wasn’t happy, but he put us in the lobby of the station to wait. I don’t know where they had Michael Rinteau. He must have been in an interview room, probably being worked over with a rubber hose. I hoped they didn’t damage his face. Or those teeth. That would be a tragedy.

  Mr. Kim came walking into the station with some tall guy with gray hair and glasses. He was wearing a sweat suit and looked like he’d come from the gym or something. For some reason, when the guy entered the station with Mr. Kim, all the cops starting acting real nervous and busy, picking up the phones on their desks and straightening papers, like they hoped the guy wouldn’t notice them.

  Mr. Kim spotted us and came over to check us out while the guy in the sweat suit started a conversation with one of the cops who had interviewed us. The poor guy looked very uncomfortable.

  “Are any of you injured? What happened?” Mr. Kim asked. He had a very worried look on his face. It always made me feel good that he was so concerned about us.

  “A few bumps and bruises,” I said, “but otherwise okay.”

  We filled him in on what happened. After hearing our story, he told us not to worry, and that he would take care of everything.

  “But there’s more, Mr. Kim. The police are holding this kid who helped us. I mean, it sounds like he was in some scrapes before, but this time he didn’t do anything. If it weren’t for him, we’d have been in a real mess. We need to help him,” I said. I tried telling myself I was only interested in the truth. I was correcting an injustice and just had a soft spot in my heart for people who had once been in trouble but were now unjustly accused by the police, like myself. I wasn’t sticking my nose in because the guy was devastatingly cute. Yep, that’s it, Rachel Buchanan, crusader for social justice. That’s my agenda. Cute guy has nothing to do with it. Nothing.

  Mr. Kim nodded and strode over to the guy in the sweat suit. They stepped away from the cop and Mr. Kim spoke to him very quietly. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, which wasn’t going to work, so I nonchalantly walked up behind them. I needed to brush up on my eavesdropping skills, anyway. In a moment, Mr. Sweat Suit (again, putting my nicknaming skills to use) returned his attention to the cop. I crept closer.

  The cop told Mr. Sweat Suit that the “Rinteau kid” had been in a lot of trouble before, and that his story didn’t hold up. Mr. Sweat Suit said it didn’t matter, because Mr. Kim would personally vouch for him, and the “Rinteau kid” was to be released immediately into Mr. Kim’s custody.

  The cop got really uncomfortable—kind of sweaty and twitchy—and informed Mr. Sweat Suit that the Rinteau kid had already been booked and was on his way to Central Processing, where he was due to be arraigned that afternoon. He would probably be “bound over” for a hearing with the juvenile judge on Monday. And he was “really sorry, Chief.”

  Did he just say Chief?

  “Chief” got kind of frustrated, muttered a few comments about how he hoped the cop would enjoy his time directing traffic from now on, then told Mr. Kim the best he could do would be to call the judge before the arraignment. Mr. Kim looked disappointed, but nodded.

  Mr. Kim thanked “Chief” (only he called him Darrell). Darrell said he needed to get back to his racquetball game with the mayor. As they shook hands, “Chief” said, “it is my honor, Sabum nim; you always know I’m at your disposal.” He bowed slightly as he said it. The Philly police chief was a former student? Wow. That Mr. Kim! He knows everyone.

  In the end, the chief got the judge to release Michael Rinteau to Mr. Kim’s custody. We just had to pick him up at the jailhouse.

  And that’s how it went down: the beginning of how Michael Rinteau became a student at Blackthorn Academy.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Boys! Boys! You’re Both Handsome!

  AT THE COURTHOUSE, Mr. Kim and the four of us were taken back to the holding area where Michael Rinteau was sitting on a bench with his back against the wall at the rear of his cell. He was alone, his hands cuffed in front of him, but sat there with an almost serene expression on his face and a very relaxed posture. He had a look like being in jail was no big deal and it was something he was quite familiar with. Which, according to the police, he was.

  He looked up when we approached his cell and smiled at me. At least, I’m pretty sure it was me he was smiling at. It was in my genera
l direction and it was a very dreamy kind of smile and he certainly wasn’t doing the dreamy smiley thing at Alex. When he saw Mr. Kim with us, his expression changed, becoming a little guarded.

  “Remember us?” I asked.

  “How could I forget?” Already he was telling me that he couldn’t get me off his mind! This was working out really well for me.

  “This is Mr. Kim. He’s the headmaster at our school, Blackthorn Academy,” I said.

  Michael nodded at Mr. Kim.

  “Anyway, Mr. Kim spoke to the chief of police who spoke to the judge and everything is all cleared up, so you don’t have to stay here.”

  “Is that right?” he said.

  “Yeah, Mr. Kim is like totally connected to everyone and he got it all straightened out. Right, Mr. Kim?”

  Mr. Kim smiled and nodded. The bailiff who accompanied us back to the holding area opened the cell door and unlocked Rinteau’s handcuffs. The bailiff left, but Rinteau stayed sitting on the bench.

  “I wish to thank you for helping out my students,” Mr. Kim said to him. “Rachel tells me that you are very brave.”

  “Does she, now?” he said. He looked at me with that smirky, bemused expression. I was totally hoping he wouldn’t notice how red I was turning and he certainly couldn’t have noticed my knees were getting all squishy. It sure was warm in jail!

  “Yes, I understand you were quite helpful and I appreciate it. And Rachel is correct. You will have no record of this incident and you have been released to my custody. Is there somewhere I can take you? May I call your parents or drive you to your home?” Mr. Kim asked.

  “If it’s all the same to you, I’ll just head back to the Galleria. My shopping was interrupted.” He stretched his very long legs and yawned.

  Mr. Kim bowed slightly and smiled at Rinteau. “With all due respect, I’m not sure returning there is a good idea. I believe you indicated to my students that this ‘Booker’ and his gang have vowed to get even with you. Might not they show up there looking for revenge?” Mr. Kim asked.