by Liz Miles
“What about a spy?” I saw a trace of weakness in her eyes. “A glamorous spy in a red evening gown. Carrying a concealed weapon in her thigh holster. She’s the only one Her Majesty can trust to track down the robot the Russians have sent into the country—a machine constructed to look like a gorgeous human boy, but with a heart of clockwork and ray guns built into his fingers. Rachel, the fate of England rests in your hands.”
“Sam, you are crazy,” Rachel said, but I heard the click of her shoes coming after me.
When we reached the front of the shop Possibly Dave had gone into, both Rachel and I stopped short in dismay.
“Aw, Claire’s?” Rachel said. “Honey, I think we might have another gleaming ass on our hands.”
A woman passing on the street gave Rachel a funny look. Passersby were always judging us.
“You don’t know that!” I told her and marched in. I heard her sigh behind me.
Unfortunately, Possibly Dave was standing pretty close to the entrance, talking to the lady who worked there. I was prepared to hate her on sight, but she was about twenty years older than me and reminded me of my old drama teacher, so I decided to absolve her of the intention of stealing away the boy I’d never actually spoken to and whom had no idea I existed.
“I’m looking for something for my sister,” he said. “She loves penguins, so I was thinking—little penguin earrings? Or something?”
Rachel and I were cowering behind a stand decorated with hairbands and hair ribbons. I couldn’t stop myself digging her in the stomach with a triumphant elbow.
“Well, that’s what any guy would say,” Rachel said in an unacceptably loud voice. “That’s what I’d say, if I was a guy. No boy is going to admit he wants tiny penguin earrings because he thinks they’ll look cute on him.”
“Once more your judgmental nature leaves me simply appalled, Rachel,” I informed her and peered through the peacock feathers on a headband at our quarry.
He had a lovely voice, actually. He sounded American. Maybe his name was Brad.
“Those would suit Jessica,” said Potentially Brad.
“See?” I whispered. “She has a name. Nobody names an imaginary sister! That would be crazy.”
“I bow to your greater experience in crazy,” Rachel said.
Once Could-Very-Well-Be-Brad had purchased the earrings for his definitely not imaginary sister and walked out, Rachel and I were poised to follow him when the shop lady said, “Excuse me.”
Oh, God. We’d been seen. I turned around and prepared for the inevitable, “Excuse me—but are you aware stalking is a criminal offense?”
“Excuse me, are you Samantha Armstrong?”
Oh, no, wait, even better! This was going to be, “Excuse me—but are you aware stalking is a criminal offense? Because I’m going to report your behavior to the police and your parents.”
I toyed with the idea of going, “No—oh my God, do I have a really law-abiding double?”
“Yes,” I admitted.
“It was all her idea!” said Rachel.
That quisling!
“Don’t you remember me?” said the shop lady. “I used to teach your drama class.”
“Oh,” I said. “Oh, right! Hi, Mrs. Nelson! Good to see you again.”
The relief was overwhelming. I did not give in to the temptation to cling to the headband stand and hyperventilate.
“Good to see you, Sam.” Mrs. Nelson regarded me fondly, which was very gratifying. “You look just the same,” she added, which was less so.
She’d known me when I was eight. When I was eight, I’d had a bowl haircut and tucked the ends of my tracksuit bottoms into my socks.
“Just the same except, you know, all elegant and grown-up,” I grinned.
Mrs. Nelson laughed a bit more than I would have preferred. “Do you remember how you used to wear your socks over your tracksuit bottoms?”
“No,” I said with great conviction. “No, I do not remember that at all.”
Mrs. Nelson laughed again. “The other kids used to call you Socks!”
If Mrs. Nelson only knew that Socks had grown up to be a dedicated stalker and menace to society. Speaking of which, all this hanging around chatting meant that my future husband Dave-or-Brad was getting away!
“You must be thinking of someone else. Um, wow, it was great to see you, Mrs. Nelson, but Rachel and I kind of have to be going. I’ll drop by again!”
I grabbed Rachel’s hand and ran. When we were outside the shop I shielded my eyes with my hand and scanned the streets. There was no sign of him.
“There, he’s going into McDonald’s,” Rachel said, pointing.
I knew she’d been sucked into the thrill of the chase. I was, too. And even if I had gone crazy and was chasing a total stranger around the town, it beat standing by the hummus at parties.
Turned out crime was fun.
“Suddenly I’m feeling very hungry,” I said.
Rachel sighed. “Oh, if your drama class could see their little Socks now.”
• • •
I hadn’t been lying, I was hungry. I never lie about food.
“We have to be ready to follow him,” said Rachel, future spy extraordinaire. “Maybe we should just get milkshakes.”
“Double cheeseburger,” I said. “Oh, and a chocolate milkshake. Good idea. Oh, and fries.”
“Okay, two fries,” said Rachel. “And a strawberry milkshake.”
As the one who’d ordered the cheeseburger, I was in charge of the tray while Rachel was in charge of finding a table where we could sit and watch Brad-Dave-Chris at our leisure and from a safe distance.
The only problem was that she couldn’t locate him at all, let alone find a table.
“What if he just popped in to use the bathroom and left while we were buying food?” Rachel asked.
“Nobody uses the bathrooms in McDonald’s except drug addicts—they’re disgusting.”
“Well, he could have gone to the bathroom to do drugs,” Rachel said. “It’s not like we know him all that well. In fact, you’re attracted to the dangerous type. Look at Twizzler.”
I scanned the circular tables and the expanse of yellow tiles. There were a ton of kids, laughing around circular tables over crumpled wrappers and greasy boxes, but none of them was the man I was quite literally after.
“Don’t talk like Twizzler was the guy I married who sold me for crack,” I said. “Twizzler was the guy I talked to by the hummus whom you later told me had a close personal relationship with glue. The arts and crafts cupboard was more his girlfriend than I was. And maybe Brad just went upstairs.”
“You made up a name for him?”
“You made up a drug problem for him,” I reminded her and marched up the stairs.
Upstairs there were booths. I looked around for our quarry in every one, squinting to make out individual faces among the squashed-together groups until people started glaring back at us.
“I don’t see him!”
“I don’t see him either,” said Rachel, chewing on her bottom lip. She looked really annoyed. She had Colin—she didn’t have any interest in this new guy, but Rachel didn’t like to fail at anything, even at pretending to be a spy.
Besides, she’d felt the same rush I had, giggling and running in pursuit, having a break from the Sunday afternoon boredom. It was a bit deflating to have it all end like this.
I looked down the stairs, leaning against the rail, to the floor below.
Then I saw a head of really nice-looking brown hair.
“There he is!” said Rachel. “But is he coming up, or is he going to sit down there?”
“He seems undecided,” I said, leaning out further.
He had a tray with him and was sort of bobbing about the place. I leaned out against the railing as far as I could go in case he made any sudden moves. Silently, I ordered him to make up his mind—all this wavering about was unmanly. He should be more decisive. What I needed was a man of action!
A
s if he could hear my psychic berating, he started suddenly up the steps.
I wasn’t expecting this. I was leaning too far over the railing.
I flinched.
The moment stretched out, as if time itself had slowed to savor my unbelievable humiliation. Endless seconds passed as the tray slid from my hands: there was the moment when its weight was still against the sweaty tips of my fingers but it was already irredeemably lost; the moment when the tray was flipping, its red plastic bright in the fluorescent lights; and the moment when I fully realized what was going to happen and felt my stomach turn in a slow churn of horror.
There was the moment when the boy whose name I didn’t know looked up, just before the tray hit. His eyes were wide and bright blue, narrowing. He saw me.
Then the tray hit in an explosion of food and milkshakes.
Rachel hit the ground beside the railing, hiding herself from view. I looked down at her in frozen horror—she had her face buried in her knees.
I had a very strong urge to hide, too. Only the boy had seen me when he looked up, and he knew exactly whose tray had hit him. Hiding would just be like putting my head under a blanket and pretending I was invisible.
Not that it wasn’t tempting. I have never been so embarrassed in my whole life.
“Oh, wow,” I called down feebly. “I’m really sorry.”
There was a napkin dispenser on the table by the stairs. I took a paper napkin from it and wandered hopelessly down.
The boy had dropped his own tray when my tray had hit. His chicken nuggets had spilled out and were lying in a heap with Rachel’s food and mine, reproaching me.
“Wow, I am really, really sorry,” I repeated, just to stress this important point, and cringed with every step down.
“You said that already,” said the boy I didn’t know at all, had been stalking, and had now assaulted. He didn’t sound angry, just dazed.
Then again, he had just been hit on the head with a tray.
There were fries hanging on his shoulders like decorations. His T-shirt and his hair were splashed with sludgy brown and pink, and when he blinked I saw that there was milkshake stuck in his eyelashes.
“That’s because I am really, really sorry,” I said and waved my napkin like a tiny paper flag of truce. I reached out and dabbed ineffectually at his T-shirt, because wiping his milkshake-stained face seemed invasive.
Whereas stalking him had been totally acceptable behavior.
“Um,” he said. “Thanks.”
I lowered the now soggy square of brown and pink. “You’re welcome.”
“Could you, uh, give me a hint on where you found that napkin?” he asked. “I think I could use just a few more.”
“Yeah, I can totally cut you in on some napkin action,” I said.
Okay, he wasn’t yelling, and he hadn’t accused me of dropping the tray on purpose, which would have been a horrible lie, or stalking him, which would have been a horrible truth. Things were not so bad.
“You look very familiar,” he said.
“I have one of those faces!” I yelped. “It is just one of those things! One of those faces … things.”
At that unpromising moment, a voice behind him said, “Sam?”
“Oh, God, Colin,” I said. “I mean. Colin, great to see you!”
There he was, in the flesh and at the worst possible time—Rachel’s maybe-boyfriend Colin, standing in McDonald’s looking tall, handsome and even more puzzled than usual.
“Oh, hey, I didn’t see you there,” said Colin, who had obviously gone mad and was babbling nonsense. “Uh, has there been some kind of accident?”
“McDonald’s: its vengeance strikes from above,” said the boy. “Could you point me to those napkins?”
“Right,” I said. “Follow me.”
My victim followed me, and so did Colin, as if it was any of his business. Some of McDonald’s staff, who had been busy staring at the horrible spectacle with fascination, came over to clear up the mess I’d made, and I was at the top of the stairs before I realized that I’d led the boys straight to Rachel.
“Look who it is!” I shouted immediately. “COLIN! That’s who it is! Right here!”
Rachel got up so fast she kind of wobbled as she rose. “Hi, Colin! Good to see you!”
Colin regarded her blankly. “What were you doing on the floor?”
When a guy is dating a girl, he thinks he owns her, I thought with passionate resentment. What right did Colin have to ask such a personal question?
“Oh, I dropped something,” Rachel said, quick-thinking as a future spy should be. “But I have it now. In my pocket. So that’s all right.”
“What was it?” Colin asked.
“Er … gum,” said Rachel.
Colin kept smiling, but the boy I’d stalked gave Rachel a very doubtful look.
“Here are your napkins!” I said and shoved a big mass of them directly in his line of vision.
“Um … thanks,” he responded, and took them.
A few dabs of the paper against his face showed that the milkshake had dried a bit too much. Unfortunately the strawberry one had scored a direct head hit—he had a stiff, vaguely pink widow’s peak.
“I think maybe I need to go to the bathroom,” he said eventually. He caught his reflection in the metal of the napkin dispenser. “Is my hair pink?”
“Slightly pink,” I told him. “In a manly and stereotype-defying way.”
“I’m definitely going to the bathroom,” he said, draping the napkin over his hair like a veil. “In a manly and stereotype-defying way.”
He sloped off with the napkin still on his head. There was a good chance he might be crazy.
Of course, I hunted strangers through the streets, so who was I to judge?
“This is lucky,” said Colin, settling with Rachel in the nearest booth and stretching out both arms to get one around Rachel’s shoulders.
“It sure is. And not at all suspicious!”
Rachel laughed a little hysterically. Colin, a simple soul, looked at her and then laughed politely too.
This was going to be my punishment, then. I was going to have to spend the afternoon with a boy I’d ambushed and assaulted, witnessing the spectacle of Rachel romancing Colin, the so-dim-he-was-flickering bulb.
Well, I deserved it, and I would have to accept it. I slid round to the other side of the table.
“What have you guys been doing all day?” Colin asked amiably.
“Nothing!” Rachel yelped.
“All day,” I added with great firmness.
“Sounds boring.”
“Yes, that was our day,” I proclaimed. “Very, very boring. Tedious. Almost unbearable, really!”
Rachel proved she was one day going to rival Mata Hari by stretching and murmuring, “Missed you,” in his ear just when Colin was starting to look a bit suspicious.
Of course, that meant that Colin started nuzzling her and murmuring to her. They started rubbing their heads like seals in love, and I wondered if I had done something terrible in a past life to deserve this, before recalling that I had actually done something terrible to deserve this only ten minutes ago.
“So I might go down and get something to eat,” I said, staring at the fascinating wall behind them.
“Want me to get it for you?” asked Colin’s friend.
He had returned. He’d returned damp.
It was a good look on him. He really did have excellent shoulders.
Not that I really noticed. Shoulders were a delusion and a snare. Shoulders had been what got me into this mess.
There was a small pause. Not that I was staring. I was thinking deep thoughts.
“It’s no trouble,” he added. “I’m getting a Coke myself.”
“I’ll get you a Coke,” I said. “And new chicken nuggets. Least I can do.”
He smiled at me. It was a crooked, brilliant smile.
“I’m a bit off milkshakes just now,” he added.
“Ray,
this is Sam,” Colin said. “Sam, Rachel.”
Rachel and I exchanged looks. Hers was tolerant, mine not so much.
“Yes, thanks, Colin, we’ve met!”
“Sorry,” said Colin ridiculously. “I didn’t know.”
“Er,” said the boy. “I think he means me.”
Rachel and I both looked at him. “Uh?” I said intelligently.
“I’m Sam,” said the boy.
“You can’t be Sam,” I said.
He smiled again. “Please don’t make me say it.”
“Say what?”
“Don’t make me lower myself by saying the old Dr. Seuss line. You know. Sam I am. Oh, well, there I go. Sorry about that.”
“Don’t be sorry,” I said. “Dr. Seuss is a classic. And Sam I am, too.”
“What a coincidence,” said Sam.
“Her name’s Samantha really,” put in Rachel, in a noble effort to make me sound more feminine and alluring.
“Even more of a coincidence,” said Sam. “Well, the thing is, my mother wanted a girl.”
“Really?” Colin asked.
We all gave him pitying looks.
“Yes, Colin,” said Sam, straight-faced. “I had to wear pink until I was four. Also, I had the sweetest ringlets.”
I couldn’t help it, I laughed.
Sam’s eyes turned back to me. “So, fancy a Coke?”
“I think I do,” I said.
“Cokes all around,” Rachel commanded, nudging her true knight in the ribs. Colin sprang to obey. “Well, well,” Rachel said, as the boys went down the stairs. “What have we learned today?”
“Er,” I said, stealing another dazzled glance at Sam’s excellent shoulders and wondering if this counted as narcissism. “Crime pays?”
I hoped that this wasn’t going to lead to some lifelong stalking compulsion. I had a picture of myself in ten years’ time, still making my move by buying binoculars and following guys while wearing a ski mask.
If I hadn’t gone over to talk to him, though, none of this would have happened. Possibly it was time to be less shy.
But not more criminal.
“We’ve learned that I am always right.” Rachel smiled like a cat. “Like a leopard on an antelope, baby.”
Lost in Translation
BY MICHAEL LOWENTHAL
