Don't You Trust Me?

by Patrice Kindl

  To my amazement, I realized that Emma was actually in tears over this situation. I admit I didn’t get it, but I was growing bored with the drama and the whole scene, so I decided to get some actual results.

  “Wait here,” I said, and climbed out of the car. I walked up to the last house we’d gotten a bag from and rang the doorbell. This time of day, four p.m., was a bit of a toss-up. Everybody might still be at work, or, on the other hand, not. However, I could see a car in the garage, so I figured it was worth a try.

  Eventually my patience was rewarded.

  “Yes?” The door opened wide enough so that I could see a late-forties-ish woman peering out at me.

  I produced a winning, confident smile.

  “Hi! I stopped to pick up your donation for the food pantry. We appreciate your generosity.”

  The woman’s gaze dropped to the doorknob where the bag had been five minutes ago.

  “But—but didn’t you see the bag there on the knob?”

  I made my face look confused: wrinkled brow, worried eyes.

  “Well . . . yeah, I thought I did when we drove to the other end of the street. That’s why I stopped. See, we parked down there, and we’ve been working our way back this way, picking up donations. I thought maybe you brought the bag back in to add some more stuff to it?” I smiled hopefully.

  “No . . . no, I didn’t. There wasn’t much, just some soup my husband hates and some kind of Alfredo sauce that I never used. But I thought I saw somebody picking it up a minute ago. Somebody was on the porch, anyway.”

  This time my face crumpled with dismay. My whole body sagged. My mouth dropped open, and I willed moisture into my eyes.

  “You mean—you mean somebody stole it?”

  The door opened a little wider.

  “I’m sure nobody would steal a bag with two cans of soup and a jar of Alfredo sauce. It was probably another of your helpers, and you didn’t notice.”

  I shook my head. I pointed at Emma’s car, two houses down the road. Emma and Brooke obligingly stuck their heads out the windows and looked at me with puzzled expressions, not sure what I was up to. Their faces were little more than pink ovals from here, so the woman wasn’t about to recognize either of them.

  “None of us took it. Oh, that is so awful! People can be so awful!” I wailed. I allowed my voice to crack a little on the last “awful.” “You can’t trust anybody!”

  “Well, what a shame. You poor thing! Here, why don’t you come in for a moment?” She stepped out onto the porch and waved reassuringly at Emma and Brooke. I also turned and smiled at them before being ushered into the house.

  “Look, I’m sure I can rustle up some more things for you. Really, I’m a bit ashamed I gave so little. When I think about you girls out on your own time doing volunteer work like this—you are volunteers, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, ma’am. We’re students at the high school. We want to do our part for the community. There are people our age who won’t have anything to eat for dinner tonight. I think about that when I’d rather hang out with my friends or go clothes shopping, you know?”

  The woman, who was dressed like she did plenty of shopping herself, looked stricken. “Honestly, you’re making me feel absolutely terrible. Here, I think I have a cardboard box we can use. Come into the pantry. Let’s see what we can spare. Look, there’re lots of things, now I consider it. Hmm . . . these cans of salmon and tuna would be good, wouldn’t they? And here are some wonderful soups. I love the lobster bisque and the mock turtle, myself. Oh, and do you think anyone would like some smoked oysters? It’s kind of an acquired taste, I suppose, but it is protein, isn’t it?”

  Once we had decimated her stock of canned goods, we moved on to cereals, pancake mixes, macadamia nuts, and evaporated milk. Soon I was staggering under the weight of the groceries, and my new friend guided me back to the front door.

  “Oh! Can you wait a second? I’d like to give you a check, too. Let’s see, I should make it out to—”

  It was actually probably a good thing that at that moment she spotted the handout Emma had left a few days ago and used it to copy down the proper name on the check. Otherwise I might have been tempted to divert the funds to myself. I mean, I did get all that food for the poor starving children. I deserved something for my trouble, right?

  She tucked the check in under one of the cans and waved me off cheerfully as I stammered my thanks.

  “No, thank you! It cheers me up to see such outstanding kids in my neighborhood. Bye! Bye-bye, girls!”

  Brooke and Emma got out of the car to help stow the carton in the trunk. Wide-eyed, they goggled at the check, which was for two hundred dollars.

  “What did you say to her?”

  Mentally I reviewed the conversation. It is my principle to try to tell the truth where possible.

  “I thanked her for her donation,” I said. “I told her how much we appreciated it. She asked if we were volunteers. Then she thought she might have some other stuff in the kitchen, so we went in and looked around in her pantry. Do you think the homeless will eat smoked oysters?”

  Brooke was elated at my cleverness. “Oh, Morgan, how wonderful! It’s true, you should be a lawyer. You could talk a jury into anything!”

  Emma was slightly more restrained. “So . . . you mean, what you did was, you walked up to her door like Oliver Twist with his empty bowl of gruel and said, ‘May I have some more, please?’ ”

  I considered this. “Yeah, basically,” I agreed.

  “Wow.”

  I smiled. “I could do it again, I bet.” I said as they turned to me with hopeful faces, “No, not right here. How about driving a few blocks over to where we picked up some bags a while ago?” When they looked perplexed at this, I explained, “It needs to be the right kind of house and we need to see a car in the driveway or the garage so we know somebody’s home.”

  They nodded, satisfied. Actually, I just didn’t want Ms. Generous to look out her window and see us hitting up her neighbors the same way I’d hit her up.

  In the end we got three more big boxes of food, two more checks, and two twenties (which I pocketed). I didn’t use the “somebody stole your donation” line every time, for fear they’d know one another and compare notes. No, sometimes I pretended that I couldn’t believe that absolutely nobody on their road had had the common decency to give unwanted canned items to charity and threatened to blubber all over them, while expressing my heartfelt belief that they were the only decent people in the whole neighborhood. None of the results were quite as spectacular as the first house, but they were solid donations.

  Not a bad afternoon’s work, and I was the unquestioned heroine of the hour.

  Saturday morning, and we were up at dawn again, wending our way out to the stables. I had taken care to research cantering and galloping online beforehand. I thought I could manage them, being sure to blame any awkwardness on the fact that I was riding English style for the first time. The weather wasn’t quite so idyllic this trip; there were ragged clouds racing across the sky, and the air felt damp with promised rain. Coming from the dry state of California, the dampness in the air felt good; I could feel my skin plumping up with moisture. Summer was gradually giving way to autumn, and the tips of the leaves were turning color.

  Still, it stayed dry for our lesson. Amazingly, Brooke only required one stable hand to get her up on her horse. Bounce had offered her a pony, but she turned down the suggestion, sure she would succeed this time. Once again she wobbled around in the saddle (Bounce wasn’t going to push her into an English saddle for a while yet) but managed a soggy trot several times around the ring as we watched and applauded. I tried my canter while Bounce was working with Brooke, and found it actually easier and smoother than the trot. It was faster, which I liked too.

  Chessie had not been overjoyed to see me but had apparently decided that I was relatively harmless so long as she appeased me with strict obedience, which was precisely what I wanted. She seemed familiar wit
h the canter, and as soon as I clucked at her and dug my heels in, she broke into a nice rocking rhythm that carried us rapidly around the ring.

  “Great job!” bellowed Bounce from her position aiding Brooke.

  The next day when I woke up, I was hardly sore at all.

  And that was pretty much how that whole week had gone. I wasn’t only managing to avoid detection and expulsion; I was making an enormous success of my new life.

  10

  MY FAME AS A FUND-RAISER spread like a forest fire up a parched hillside. When I returned to school on Monday, it had preceded me.

  “Excuse me, but are you Morgan Johanssen?” A dark girl with glasses and an intense expression stepped out in front of me as I walked toward my locker before homeroom.

  I was about to reply in the affirmative when another girl, this one with lots of red hair and makeup, dressed in a weird outfit that looked like it had been formed out of black duct tape, cut in.

  “Serena Jones, don’t you dare! You know perfectly well it was my idea to talk to her about raising money for the art festival!”

  “The animal shelter needs the money a lot more!”

  Now Emma was approaching, with a look of thunder on her face.

  “No poaching, Serena, Melanie. Morgan is collecting money for the food pantry!”

  “I hear she already did! Why can’t you share the wealth, Emma?” demanded the duct tape girl, who must have been Melanie.

  “Well, hello, ladies,” drawled a voice coming from somewhere near the ceiling. I looked up. Sandy hair, blue eyes, a lazy grin, all attached to a male body that just wouldn’t quit. He must have been at least six foot five, I decided, and every inch of him was a tribute to good nutrition and keeping fit. Craning my neck, I smiled up at him. I was the only one doing this, however. The other three “ladies” were looking annoyed.

  “The basketball team sure doesn’t need a fund-raiser,” Melanie blurted out. “The taxpayers give you guys a free ride, practically.”

  Blue Eyes lifted his eyebrows. “A fund-raiser? Sorry, not sure what you’re talking about. I stopped by to say hello to the new member of our academic community. Morgan, isn’t it? The name is Brett Elway.”

  “Hello, Brett,” I said, looking at him from under my lashes. My, but he was tall!

  “I suppose you’re after money for away-game transportation and uniforms,” Melanie said bitterly. “In art club we have to pay for every little thing. Why can’t your parents chip in? Or why can’t you get a job after school to pay for that stuff?”

  Brett turned and regarded her with a wondering gaze. “And miss practice? What would be the point in that?”

  “Notice he’s not denying it anymore, Morgan,” said Emma. “They’re all of them after you for one thing, so don’t think it’s because they like you!”

  I said nothing but gazed at her, wide-eyed. She blushed.

  Brooke had been hovering near us, listening. Now she burst in with, “I’m sorry, Emma, but I think you all are being . . . being—” Brooke halted, thwarted by her inability to say anything even slightly critical to anyone. She tried again, and put her back into it this time.

  “Here Morgan is, brand-new to our school, making a huge effort to help out and do good in a community where she just moved. And what do we do? We act like she’s a commodity that one of us can gain a monopoly over. Poor Morgan! How do you think this is making her feel?”

  Poor Morgan was feeling like she had never in her life been so popular and so in demand.

  However, the girls in our group were looking a bit abashed at this extremely mild tongue-lashing. Only Brett seemed unfazed by Brooke’s scolding. He went on smiling his sunny smile and regarding me with big blue eyes. Undoubtedly this tactic had worked his whole life and he saw no reason to alter it now.

  “Maybe,” I said, smiling around at my circle of admirers, “I can help you all.”

  This charity scheme was wonderful. Not only was it going to help me achieve my goal of being admired and respected, but I got to rake off any cash donations into my own pocket. Sure, some people might have gotten greedy and wanted a larger cut of the take, but I figured that since my basic needs were being catered to so well by Brooke’s family, I didn’t need a lot of money. Janelle’s parents had apparently given Aunt and Uncle some funds for a weekly allowance for me. It was three times the amount my own parents used to dole out. What with that and a twenty here and a twenty there from my charity work, I would be doing quite well.

  On the other hand there was my future to think about. It wouldn’t do to be too generous.

  “The important thing,” I explained to my friends-in-philanthropy at lunchtime, “is that we don’t want a particular neighborhood suffering from donor-fatigue, so we can’t squeeze anybody too hard. The image we are projecting is of a bunch of kindhearted, well-intentioned teenagers collecting for a good cause.”

  Emma narrowed her eyes. “We are a bunch of kindhearted, well-intentioned teenagers collecting for a good cause,” she pointed out. “Or at least Serena and Brooke and I are. Brett and Melanie want somebody to underwrite their after-school activities.”

  I waited for Melanie’s furious riposte on the deplorable state of the arts in America to die down before responding.

  “Of course we are,” I agreed. “And we don’t want anybody to get any other ideas. What I want to do is a kind of charitable carpet bombing. We six descend on a neighborhood, fan out, and hit every house. If you see people in their gardens or yards or garages, go and talk to them. It should be on Saturday, not a weekday afternoon, so people are home. We can make it after our horseback riding lesson, Brooke. We should try a different neighborhood this week and not go back to yours, Emma, until we’ve extracted everything we can get from the other developments. And don’t forget—guilt is an important motivator, and donations from upper-income families are likely to be bigger, so I want the most affluent streets first.”

  “Hmm,” said Emma. “Why do I feel like we’re planning to rob a bank instead of carrying out a fund drive?”

  However, when Melanie and Serena pointed out that she didn’t have to participate if she didn’t want to, she grumbled a bit but made no further objections. “Morgan is just being practical,” they said. “She is absolutely right.”

  We decided that Brett should drive, as he owned a large minivan appropriate for the task. He had been paying little attention to our discussion, occupied as he was with shoveling huge amounts of meatloaf and mashed potatoes into his mouth with the mindless concentration of a backhoe digging a foundation, and, in his spare moments, waving at a brunette in a pink sweater at another table. He was therefore unaware that he had been elected to provide the transportation, until Melanie joggled his elbow.

  “What?” he said. “Okay, I guess. But Helena will expect to come too.” He made us a present of one of his huge smiles. “I can’t drive you beautiful young women around without a chaperone.”

  “Helena is his girlfriend,” Emma informed me. She seemed determined to drive a wedge between me and Brett. I had already figured out that the pink-sweatered girl believed herself to have some claims on him, but I felt certain I could pry him away from her, given half a chance.

  Helena was one of the elite, a glossy creature from a fashion website. She stared at us with unbelieving eyes as we piled into the back two seats of Brett’s car the next Saturday. She leaned over and whispered something into his ear as he turned the key in the ignition, and he laughed. The back two seats listened in resentful silence.

  Once we arrived at our target neighborhood and the girls started fanning out to tackle different sections, I thrust a collecting can at Helena.

  “Here,” I said. “I know you’ll want to help Brett, so—” I pointed to the far end of the street. “You can start all the way down there at the corner and work your way back.”

  Her eyes widened. “Me? I wasn’t planning—”

  “You’re a senior, aren’t you?” I asked. She nodded. “Have you got y
our volunteer hours completed?”

  Her perfectly made-up face grew sullen. “No,” she admitted.

  I went on smiling and holding out the collecting can. After a pause she took it.

  “Brett,” she said, raising her voice, “you have to come with me. I’m not doing this alone.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “We have to optimize our little team. No doubling up. Anyway,” I added as she began to look mutinous, “you are both such great draws, it would be a shame to waste either of you.”

  She cocked her head, not understanding.

  “Oh, I just mean that Brett is a basketball star, and you, of course, are totally gorgeous,” I said. “Naturally anybody would want to give either of you a donation. Go up there and sell them on the basketball team! Make them understand why we need money for new uniforms! I’m sure you can do it if you try.”

  “Oh.” She nodded as if this made perfect sense. “Okay, I suppose. Yeah,” she said thoughtfully. “I imagine I could, if I tried.”

  I lowered my voice. “If there’re any guys home, they’re the ones for you to go after. I mean, what guy wouldn’t be happy to give, when you’re asking them? Know what I mean?”

  She actually returned my wink, and sashayed down the road with her collecting can front and center.

  I had reserved the finest, richest hunting grounds for myself. As the last of my team dispersed, I removed from the van a small bag I’d brought along and fished around inside it. Let me see. . . .

  I slicked my newly shorn hair back with gel and secured it to my head with a tightly bound scarf. Examining myself in a compact mirror, I rubbed a little blue shadow under my eyes and cheekbones and then powdered my face to a sepulchral pallor. My collecting can was labeled with a bland, unspecific agency name. Satisfied, I approached my first house.

  “Collecting for cancer? Oh dear, I suppose so,” sighed the lady at the door. “Hang on a minute, let me get my purse.”

  I sagged suddenly against the screen door. “Sorry—so sorry! I’m just a little dizzy,” I said.