Sketchy Behavior

by Erynn Mangum

  Fabulous. Now I’m a juvenile delinquent and I have a trendy new nickname. Dad was going to make me memorize his calculus books for fear that I’m morphing into the next resident at the juvy hall near here.

  “Clever,” I said.

  “So, why’d you leave, Kate?”

  “Everyone is scared when I get there. All the parents are rioting. It’s better for me to just stay home.”

  “Oh, yeah, I heard about the parent thing. They asked my dad if he was going to go.”

  “Did he?”

  “Kate, considering he didn’t even make it to my junior high graduation, what do you think?”

  True. Bad question to ask. Maddy’s parents tend to use stuff to make up for their lack of affection. They missed junior high graduation and gave her the complete set of Friends DVDs. Her shiny brand-new Tahoe? She had been asking them for weeks to try and make it to the huge school debate that she was in, and both her mom and dad had promised to be there. Then they didn’t show.

  So, they gave her a car.

  Maddy rarely talked about it.

  Part of me figured that’s why she had such bad taste in boys.

  “Anyway, I had a dentist appointment this afternoon, so I’m sorry I didn’t come by. But I’m cavity free and the dentist said that for as straight as my teeth are, I should never need braces.”

  “Nice,” I said, looking at the TV. DJ had switched it from the news to a baseball game.

  “Yeah. And I didn’t finish there until almost four, so I just decided to come home instead.”

  “That’s fine,” I said. The pitcher had now thrown six pitches to the same batter.

  This is why I dislike baseball.

  Actually, sports in general. What’s the point?

  Answer — there is no point. It’s a bunch of grown men in weird costumes accomplishing nothing.

  I was never a big fan of those little-kid sports movies.

  “Maddy,” I said, before I forgot. “I think I’m going to stay home tomorrow, so could you bring my homework by after school?” Tomorrow was Friday. Maybe something drastic would happen over the weekend, and I could go back to school as just boring old Kate Carter. None of this Kate Escape business.

  “You’re staying home? This isn’t because of what those mean old parents were talking about, is it? Because, gosh, Kate, they are just being ridiculous.”

  I thought about Officer DeWeise getting out of the hospital today and shook my head. “Maybe not so ridiculous, Maddy.”

  “Whatever. I think it’s ridiculous.”

  “Anyway. Could you just gather up my homework for me?”

  “I guess. I still think you should just come to school. But yeah, I’ll get your homework. Need anything dropped off?”

  I knew I had a big math test on Monday, but maybe the policemen could get my teacher to let me do a makeup. He hated giving makeups.

  “I don’t think so. Not right now, anyway.”

  “All right. I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon then.”

  We hung up.

  Friday morning dawned bright and sunny, and my eyes popped open at six forty-five out of sheer habit.

  I was going to live to be one of those old people who couldn’t sleep in if someone paid them.

  I tried to roll over and go back to sleep, but my brain was already buzzing.

  What if someone had identified the sketch I drew? What if that man was in prison right this very minute? What if Detective Masterson was making pancakes again for breakfast?

  My stomach growled.

  I sighed and gave up on going back to sleep. There was a stack of calculus textbooks from Dad next to the bed.

  “I’m just worried that you’ll be bored at home,” he’d said last night at dinner.

  Because calculus is usually the first thing I turn to when I get bored.

  Mom had another option. “Why don’t you get out that journal I gave you a long time ago and start writing down some of your thoughts?” she’d suggested.

  That sounded about as fun as the calculus, considering my thought processes these days.

  She’d given me the journal back in the eighth grade, and I’d written in it once.

  Mom gave me this journal so I will grow up to be a healthy, active adult who cares about her psyche and her community.

  Yay.

  And that was all I’d written. I was pretty certain that journaling was not going to be my stress-relief method of choice.

  I finally got out of bed at seven and went to take a shower. DJ was already up — his air mattress was already stowed out of the way. He and Detective Masterson were alternating sleeping on the mattress in the hallway during the night.

  I had no idea how they still managed to carry on an intelligent conversation when they each only got about four hours of sleep every night. But I’d yet to hear them complain about being tired or even seen them yawn.

  Policemen are a different breed of males.

  I pulled on a pair of black track pants, white socks, and a white short-sleeve T-shirt after my shower. I ran the blow-dryer over my hair and decided to skip the straightening iron today.

  After all, it was just me and the cops stuck at home today. And when someone has seen you talking in your sleep, you just don’t have the same motivation to fix your hair as you did before that.

  I did put on a little bit of makeup, though, to cover the dark circles under my eyes. Apparently, I still wasn’t sleeping very well. I added some mascara and went to go see where everyone was.

  Mom and Dad were sitting at the kitchen table, eating breakfast. DJ was leaning against the island counter reading the paper, and Detective Masterson wasn’t around, which meant no pancakes.

  Lolly was sleeping on the kitchen floor.

  “Morning, Katie-Kin,” Mom said, smiling at me. “How did you sleep?”

  I shrugged, because that seemed like the safest answer.

  “See, Claire? Even when she doesn’t have school, Kate is up and ready to get to studying and increasing her knowledge. Isn’t that right, Kate?” Dad said.

  “Sure, Dad,” I said, because again that seemed like the safest answer.

  Since Mom had stopped buying me Crispix, my only choices for breakfast were Mini-Wheats or some weird granola stuff Mom liked.

  I sighed. Mini-Wheats had a weird texture to me.

  “There’s toast too, honey,” Mom said.

  It sounded better than my other choices. I put two slices of bread in the toaster.

  Detective Masterson walked in then, putting his cell phone in the pocket of his jeans. “Good morning, Kate,” he said.

  I nodded to his pocket. “Any leads on the sketch?”

  He just gave me a short laugh. “Any? How about four hundred and thirty-nine? Apparently, everyone and their grandmother has seen this guy around town.”

  Mom looked up from her section of the paper. “Well, that’s good then, isn’t it?”

  Detective Masterson shook his head. “Not really, ma’am. Whenever a well-publicized case like this is using a hotline, everyone wants in on the action. We can legitimately throw at least half of those tips into the garbage.”

  “Plus, since he was wearing sunglasses and a hooded sweatshirt, it makes it even more likely that we’ll have a lot of tips that are just no good,” DJ added.

  My toast popped, and I spread a healthy layer of peanut butter all over it. I carried it over and sat down at the table with Mom and Dad.

  “So the other half of the tips?” Dad asked.

  Detective Masterson said, “We’ve got men checking those out today. A team from St. Louis came up and has been assisting Deputy Slalom in this investigation. Missourians are ready to relax again when they leave their houses.”

  Mom and Dad finished breakfast and then left about thirty minutes later. I was sitting on the floor in the living room petting Lolly when they headed out the door for work.

  “Be careful,” Dad said in his new way of saying good-bye.

  “Journa
l,” Mom said. “Try to write in your journal. And I’ll call you later today.”

  They left.

  I rubbed Lolly’s silky ears, and she moaned like a cat. I reached over and pulled the remote off the coffee table. Surely something interesting was on TV at eight o’clock on a Friday morning.

  I flipped through the channels for ten minutes. Or surely not. There were old sitcoms I’d never heard of playing reruns, Regis and Kelly were cracking not-so-funny jokes to an audience who was probably paid to laugh at them, a show where women found out they were pregnant in the delivery room, which just sounded ridiculous to me, and then a few true-crime shows.

  I stopped on one of those, even though I knew I probably shouldn’t be watching this stuff right now.

  Detective Masterson came in before I really caught what was going on in the plot. So far, it was about an attorney who had a history of representing criminals who were most likely guilty and getting them off scot-free.

  “What are you watching?” he asked, frowning at the TV.

  I clicked the guide to see what the name of the episode was. He read it and immediately started shaking his head.

  “Nope, nope. Sorry, Kate. You have enough nightmares as it is,” he said, yanking the remote from my hand and turning the TV to Regis and Kelly.

  Fabulous.

  The day passed by very slowly. I watched mindless TV, painted my toenails, played tug-of-war with Lolly, and organized my bookshelf.

  When I finished with my bookshelf, I looked at the clock, expecting it to be at least almost three and Maddy on her way here.

  It was eleven. In the morning.

  I sighed. I would never make it under house arrest. There was probably a good reason my parents never had to ground me. This was awful.

  I went back out to the living room. Detective Masterson was reading something from a three-ring binder, and DJ was on the phone in the kitchen. Lolly sat with her head resting on the detective’s feet. She would probably miss them when they didn’t have to live here anymore.

  “Bored out of your mind yet?” Detective Masterson grinned at me when I walked in and slumped on the couch.

  “I don’t understand why people skip school on purpose,” I said. “There is absolutely nothing to do here.”

  “You could start on those calculus books,” he said, grin widening.

  “I haven’t reached the suicidal stage of boredom yet.” I looked around, thinking. I had no homework, there was nothing on TV, and I couldn’t concentrate long enough to read anything.

  “Any new leads?” I asked, hopefully.

  Detective Masterson smiled at me. “Give them time, Kate. They’ll find him.”

  I sighed.

  He looked at me for a long minute and then closed his three-ring binder. “All right. What do you want to talk about?”

  “What?” I asked.

  “You’re just going to sit there until Maddy shows up with your homework, aren’t you?”

  I shrugged. “I’ll probably eat something in there too.” I looked over at him. “This is what causes childhood obesity, huh?”

  He grinned. “Witness protection?”

  “House arrest.”

  “Considering the rise of childhood obesity and the few people every year who are put under protection, I’m thinking it’s probably not the sole cause of it. Personally, I blame Xbox.”

  I’d never been a fan of video games. There were the kids at school who played them nonstop, and I’d always thought they were very strange people. They came in wearing their Darth Vader could totally take Frodo shirts, with their hair all straggly and their eyes all bloodshot.

  Dad said that the effects of playing video games had to be similar to having a drinking binge the night before. He called it the “brain cell murderer.”

  “We aren’t allowed to have an Xbox,” I told the detective. “Dad thinks it ruins your brain cells, and Mom said it prohibits healthy family communication.”

  “You have smart parents,” Detective Masterson said.

  At noon, I turned the TV back on. Miss Congeniality was on and I watched the rest of it, snacking on deli meat and cheeses in the meantime.

  Finally, the phone rang at two thirty. It was Maddy.

  “So, Kate, about this whole bringing you your homework thing,” she started.

  I tried not to sigh too loudly, because that was Maddy’s way of saying that she wasn’t going to do it after all.

  “Tyler asked if I wanted to go watch his football practice, and things are kind of on a slippery slope for us right now, so I really feel like I need to go do that if I’m going to make this work,” she said.

  “Didn’t you guys just get back together yesterday?” I asked.

  “No. Wednesday night.”

  “And things are already on a slippery slope?” I asked.

  “We just have communication problems,” she said.

  Sometimes, Maddy and Tyler’s problems seemed like they belonged more to a couple who had been married for ten years. I could just see them going to counseling for this.

  “Well,” I said. “Okay.”

  “Yeah, but don’t you worry about getting your homework. I’ve already given it to someone else, and they’re coming by.”

  It was probably Allison Northing, and I’d have to listen to her chatter mindlessly for an hour before she’d leave and let me get to studying.

  Even though mindless chatter was totally welcome at this point in my house. Detective Masterson was back to reading from his three-ring binder, and DJ was again on the phone.

  “Okay,” I said. “Have fun at the practice.”

  “Thanks, Kate! Have a fun day at home! You are so lucky you got to stay home all day, by the way.”

  “Not really,” I said. “Bye.”

  Detective Masterson looked over at me when I hung up. “No homework?”

  “She sent it with Allison Northing. Remember the girl who sat next to me in art class?”

  He didn’t do a very good job at hiding his wince.

  “Yeah. Just be prepared,” I said, sounding an awfully lot like Scar in The Lion King.

  Fifteen minutes later, my doorbell rang. DJ answered it, since I was not allowed to answer the door alone.

  I steeled myself, waiting for Allison’s loud voice.

  I didn’t hear anything. A second later, DJ walked into the living room followed by Justin Walters.

  I was a little bit shocked. Or a lot bit.

  “Hi, Allison,” Detective Masterson greeted him, grinning. “You look different outside of school.”

  Justin smiled confusedly at the detective. “I’m Justin Walters. I have Kate’s homework,” he said, like he was being interrogated.

  “Sure you do,” Detective Masterson said, still grinning. “I’ll just go get something to drink. DJ, you want something?”

  DJ was standing behind Justin and looking at me. “What? Oh yeah. That sounds great.”

  They both left, leaving me and Silent Justin standing in the living room.

  Lolly wagged over to Justin, and he petted her ears. “Pretty dog,” he said, though I wasn’t sure if it was directed to me or Lolly.

  “Thanks for bringing my homework,” I said after a minute. First, Justin doesn’t talk to me for three straight years — well, almost — and now he’s bringing me my homework.

  It was a little awkward, to say the least.

  “Sure, no problem,” he said, handing me a stack of papers.

  “Miss Yeager’s homework is to pick one of the careers we talked about and draw something for that career. She said you didn’t have to do it, though.”

  I frowned. “How come?” Suddenly I’m not only not welcome at school but I can’t even do the homework?

  I felt like a homebound invalid. Next thing we knew, someone was going to be calling that traveling meal service to come feed me.

  Justin must have seen the anger, because he immediately stopped petting Lolly and put both hands up. “Just because she said th
at you had already done it,” he said quickly, in a soothing voice. “She said you’d already done it at least twice, which was all the rest of us were required to do.”

  So Miss Yeager had recognized my work on TV again.

  I sighed. “If it’s an assignment, then I’m going to do it too.”

  “Fine by me,” Justin said.

  “What are you going to do?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. I kind of like restaurant and commercial art. Honestly, it’s just a hobby.”

  This was the most he’d ever talked to me, so I tried to keep the conversation going. “What do you want to do then?”

  Another shrug. “I’m good at math. I’ve thought about engineering.”

  I just looked at him.

  What is with me and this apparent magnetic force I have toward engineers? My dad. My brother. Now Justin.

  Justin is the only one of those three, though, who appreciates art. My dad and Mike think art is a waste of time and a ridiculous use of pencil lead.

  “Oh?” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  “Yeah. And with the art background, I’m kind of interested in something along the lines of architectural engineering.”

  “So you want to design buildings?”

  He shrugged. Yet again. “I don’t know. Maybe. It’s a thought, anyway. I still have two years to decide.”

  “Well. A year and a half.”

  “Yeah.” He finished scratching behind Lolly’s ear and looked at me. “So, what do you want to do?” Then he grinned. “That might be kind of an obvious answer, huh?”

  My turn to shrug. “I don’t know.” I sat down on the couch. “Do you think that if you are good at something that’s a sign you should do it?”

  He thought about it for a minute and sat on the recliner. Lolly scrambled over to lay her head in his lap.

  “Not necessarily,” he said. “Like, my sister is good at cooking but she’s a finance major at Missouri State.”

  “You have a sister?”

  He nodded. “And a younger brother. He’s nine.”

  So much I didn’t know about this guy. It was amazing that we’d been sitting next to each other in classes for the entire last year.

  I looked over at him. “How come you don’t talk like this at school?”

  “I don’t know. Allison talks enough for the entire class. And I like to just concentrate at school.” He leaned back in the recliner. “So does that mean you don’t really want to be a forensic sketch artist?” he asked, going back to my earlier question.