Finally the front passenger door opens, and I feel some relief. Cisco has a driver, who I suspect is really his partner because I know firsthand she’s one helluva shot with a Sig 9. She always drives and Cisco always rides in the back, so this can’t be him. That’s confirmed when I see a pair of feet emerge below the open door. They’re clad in orthopedic shoes and the putty-colored support hose worn by every old lady I’ve ever seen riding the bus, including this one. She’s a regular, usually already on the bus when I board. I don’t know whether to feel relief or foolish for being so scared in the first place, but after she takes a fair amount of effort to close the car door, I go over and offer her my arm and some help into the shelter.
“Thank you, honey,” she says. “Guess I should have worn my boots today.”
“I guess so. Maybe your ride should have taken you all the way to wherever you’re going, instead of just to the bus stop. It’s freezing out here.”
“Oh, that’s only my neighbor. She saw me leaving the house this morning and offered to bring me up here. Usually, I walk the four blocks to Center, but I was grateful for the ride this morning, even if she kept missing the stops.”
“Kept missing the stops?”
“I like to board at Ventnor Street, where I live. By the time the bus gets to Aurora Avenue, the seats up front are all taken. Young folk these days don’t give up seats like they used to. I kept saying, ‘Next stop is fine,’ but she kept passing them. Guess she finally heard me and stopped here.”
Once I help the woman inside the shelter, I step out to see if I can spot the neighbor’s car in traffic. It’s stopped at the light a block away. It’s pretty hard to see something so small from that distance, but I can swear there is a splash of neon green on the car’s rear bumper, so bright against the black paint.
“The bus is coming,” I announce to the old lady, hearing the fake, nervous cheer in my voice.
“I knew it would be late. Always is after a good snow. That’s what I told my neighbor. If she wants to keep me warm, may as well idle in front of the house since I’d be getting to the stop too early with her giving me a ride and all. Sure can’t idle on Center Street unless you want to be run over.”
The whole time the woman talked, I was staring at that neon-green bumper sticker until the light changed and the car drove away. It’s probably one of those My Kid’s an Honor Student at Lexington Middle School stickers. Their school color is bright green. Kind of like the rental car sticker on Cisco’s Cadillac.
“Ma’am, does your neighbor have a kid at Lexington Middle School?”
“Don’t think so. Too young for kids that age. But she only been my neighbor a few weeks. Don’t know much about her, ’cept she’s smarter than this old fool. Miss Golden warned me I might need my boots, but I didn’t listen.”
“Who?”
“Golden. Pretty, ain’t it? That’s my neighbor’s name.”
It’s also the name of the driver with one helluva shot.
Chapter 4
Golden wanted me to see the car, to know she and Cisco had returned to Denver Heights. How long have they been watching me? I’m guessing three weeks, at least. Since I’d been riding with Marco the last two, they must have learned my schedule before I began commuting with him. Golden knew the bus I caught and where, which is why she brought the old lady five blocks south of her usual stop. Thanks to her neighbor, Golden even knew the bus would be late because of the snow. But how did she know I’d be waiting for it? If not for the wreck Saturday night, I’d be in the Grand Prix, not standing on the corner of Center and Aurora Avenue.
Instead of boarding the bus, I should have gone back home, waited for Lana to return from her overnight shift, and told her all about Cisco. Like how he involved me in one of his undercover operations and almost got us both killed in the process. I should have told her when it all went down three months ago, but I found a thousand excuses not to, just like I did this morning when I followed the old lady onto the bus.
Now I’m sitting in the cafeteria on one of my favorite menu days—chicken picatta. There are a lot of things about Langdon Prep I don’t like, like most of my affluenza-stricken classmates, but the food isn’t one of them. I’ve been here nearly a school year and haven’t seen a cold tater tot or dried-out fish stick yet. In fact, there are only two things that make this school bearable: the food and seeing Marco every day. But I can’t make my whole academic existence about a boy and a lemon caper sauce, even if both are really yum.
Annette Park doesn’t seem to be enjoying her lunch as much as I am, or maybe she just isn’t enjoying her dining companion. She’s giving me the most evil of eyes.
“Would you please just go over there and sit with him already?” she says. “Believe me, my feelings won’t be hurt.”
“Marco and I carpool every day, well, we used to. We have lunch together, hang out after school. You know what they say . . .”
“I hope they say it’s rude to go on and on to your single friend about how close you are with your BF and ask her to spy on him when she’s trying to enjoy her lunch.”
“No, what they say is familiarity breeds contempt. I don’t want to be one of those clingy girls who doesn’t give a guy his space. So I’m conducting an experiment.”
“Well, I didn’t sign up to be part of it,” Annette says, clicking open her mirrored compact and checking her hair, or whether she has food in her teeth—I’m not sure—but it’s the second time since we sat down. Probably the hair. Annette’s a hair-tosser, like she’s a model at a photo shoot. She lets it fall forward just so she can swing it back over her shoulders. Constantly. She does have gorgeous hair, though. It’s impossibly shiny, made more so by the jet-blackness of it. Annette probably could be a model if she wanted.
“What’s he doing now?”
She gives me a look like she’s considering punching me but instead says, “The same thing he was doing when you asked me five minutes ago—sitting with Dexter Faraday. Now they’re laughing about something.”
“They’re probably talking about how he won the game Saturday night with that buzzer-beating shot against Hart Academy, a three-pointer from the baseline, no less.”
“Um, who are you and what have you done with my sports-hating friend?”
It’s true. I had no idea Marco was Mr. All-Star when I first fell for him, which was immediately, so I wasn’t prepared to be a WAG (wives and girlfriends of athletes, according to Annette). Football season was just miserable. Sitting in ten-degree weather with the wind howling and my overpriced hot chocolate already cold before I make it back to my seat is not my idea of a good time. But I’m learning to like basketball. The fact that it’s indoors already makes it so much better.
“I have to be interested in at least some of the things Marco loves, and I failed completely when he tried to get me into football, Halo, watching old movies . . .”
“Old movies can be romantic. You’re together on the sofa in a darkened room, the only light is the flickering of Casablanca on the screen,” Annette says, actually emitting a little squeal at the end.
“But those movies are in black and white.”
“You’re hopeless, Chanti.”
“I know. That’s why I was on Wikipedia last night studying basketball. Figured I should at least have a clue if my boyfriend is so good at it,” I say, fighting the urge to turn around. “The season’s over, but they might be talking football. Dexter’s his favorite wide receiver.”
“I know who Dexter is,” Annette says, her expression changing, and I regret pointing out that fact. Of course she knows—he’s the guy who broke up with her at the end of sophomore year, before I came to Langdon. I guess that explains her mirror-checking obsession.
“Right. Okay, no more updates,” I say.
“What’s he doing there?” Annette says, still looking in Marco’s direction.
“Who? Doing what?” I ask.
“Brent Carmody just walked over to Marco and Dexter’s table.”
/>
“So what?”
“So that’s not a guy you want to see talking to your boyfriend. Or even your lying, cheating ex-boyfriend, for that matter.”
Brent must be very bad news if Annette is worried about him talking to the guy who dumped her in front of half the cheerleading squad. Every school has at least one well-known and documented badass, even Langdon Prep. That’s not to say the top dog at my old school wouldn’t make this guy seem like a Girl Scout in comparison, but by Langdon standards, Brent Carmody is supposed to be pretty serious. It’s killing me not to turn around for a look.
“Is he still at their table?”
“Yeah, he took a seat.”
“What do you think they’re saying?” I ask.
“Like I have bionic hearing.”
“You can tell a lot by body language.”
“Maybe you can.”
Annette’s right. The experiment is over when the school’s scary dude starts hanging out with my boyfriend. Well, hanging out is probably the wrong description. Marco and Dexter aren’t laughing anymore, that’s for sure. The vibe at that table has definitely grown more serious than Annette was describing to me a few minutes ago. Whatever Marco is saying, he pounds his fist on the table for emphasis, rattling his food tray. Dexter stands up and looks like he’s about to start some ish when two of Brent’s friends join the table. That’s when the group of boys on the other end of their row of tables clears out real quick, taking their trays with them.
Yeah, this has all the signs of a lunchroom fight about to happen, except at this point only the group that just cleared out, Annette, and I know what’s going on. I scan the room and it looks like no one else has noticed, including the two teachers assigned to cafeteria monitoring for the week: mousy Mr. Bean and Ms. Hartman, the chem teacher who cries if the Bunsen burners don’t flame on the first try. Could they have picked less intimidating teachers? Why couldn’t it be Coach Rickford or maybe even Headmistress Smythe?
“Annette, something’s about to go down.”
“Should we tell a teacher? Marco and Dexter are outnumbered.”
I’m about to go find a coach when as abruptly as this drama flared up, it dissipates. Brent and his friends suddenly leave the table and I realize why. Across the cafeteria, most of the basketball team just got into the food line. Marco’s potential backup just outnumbered Brent’s by triple.
“I wonder what that was all about,” I say.
“Don’t ask questions. Just be glad nothing happened.”
“I can’t wonder why my boyfriend was about to throw down with the allegedly scary Brent Carmody?”
“Not ‘allegedly.’ He’s the real deal.”
“Yeah? What do you know about him?”
“I have to go,” Annette says, suddenly in a hurry to leave when she was just complaining about me interfering with her enjoyment of the chicken picatta.
“Where to?”
“I forgot there’s a brown-bag cheer meeting.”
“You never forget anything having to do with cheer. It must not be that important a meeting.”
“Oh no, I can’t miss it. We have this really critical decision to make about . . . the future direction of the squad. See you in sixth period, okay?”
I’m pretty sure Annette doesn’t have a cheer meeting. Cheer is her favorite thing on the planet from what I can tell. I imagine Annette draws hearts around the cheer practice dates on her calendar the way other girls draw hearts around their date dates. She’s in such a hurry to get away from me and my questions about Brent, she doesn’t even clear her tray.
No one has told me how Brent earned his reputation, but I’m going to trust that the legend is true. When I first arrived at Langdon, I assumed that even though I’m generally a wuss, I was at least tougher than everyone here by virtue of where I come from—North Denver Heights, home of the second worst crime stats in all of Metro. But I spent last semester learning the hard way that everything is not what it seems at Langdon Prep, and assumptions can get you killed.
Chapter 5
Since my lunch date has blown me off, I decide to use the time before next bell to find out what almost went down at Marco’s table, but not before finishing off the last of Annette’s roasted fingerling potatoes. As I dump both of our trays into the bin, I come up with the perfect excuse for joining Marco that won’t make me seem like the snooping, worrying girlfriend he already knows I am, but by the time I turn around and head for his table, he and Dexter are gone.
We haven’t been together very long, but Marco can still read me like CliffNotes. He knows I saw the whole Brent Carmody thing, that I’d already interrogated Annette on who, why, and what for, and that he’d have to wait until I wasn’t looking if he had any chance of escaping without a few questions from me. I don’t want to run off the most perfect BF I’ve ever had—the only boyfriend I’ve ever had—with my “spy routine” as he calls it, but when I see a friend in danger, especially Marco, I can’t help myself. It’s what I do.
Danger might be a strong word in this case. When I saved a friend from a murder charge or myself from being killed by, well, any number of people, that was real danger. I’m pretty sure Marco can handle any Langdonite, even the supposedly scary ones. My man once tackled a gangster holding a gun on me, so why am I even worried? I try to put the whole cafeteria scene out of my head and start making my way over to Main Hall and my next class.
But you know what happens to good intentions. My mind is saying “next class,” but my feet are telling me to head for the quad and the big cottonwood tree with a bench beneath it. It was where Marco and I first met, and we’ve spent a lot of time in that spot since that day. It isn’t much for privacy, but on a cold day like this, Marco would have the place to himself.
“I had a feeling I’d find you here.”
“I have a feeling you’d find me anywhere, girl detective,” Marco says.
“Would you rather be alone?”
“No,” he says, taking my hand. “Here, you can sit on my chemistry book. This bench is like ice. Just what I need to cool off before my next class.”
“Oh yeah? Are you upset about something?” I ask, playing dumb.
“We both know why you came looking for me.”
“I’m here because I haven’t seen you since Saturday night and I kinda miss you. A girl might think you’re avoiding her.”
“Things are crazy right now,” he says, letting go of my hand. “It’s just . . . I’ve got a couple of papers due Friday that I haven’t even started. And since the playoffs began, coach has extended practice an hour. I’m on the bus until my car is fixed and the commute is taking away from study time. Then there’s my dad . . . I’m just so screwed.”
I decide my interrogation can wait. Brent Carmody might be the least of Marco’s problems.
“Is there something wrong with your dad?”
“Nothing a job won’t fix. He’s still out of work, and things are tight on just my mom’s salary.”
“I don’t know how to fix that problem, but I can tell you the bus is one of the best places to study. Learn to tune out everything and you’ll get a bunch of reading done because there’s nothing else to do. The papers you can handle because you’re brilliant and you’ll have me to help. As for the Sweet 16 game tomorrow night—I think what’s really stressing you is how you’ll perform.”
Marco looks at me like I just read his mind. “How did you know?”
“Observation. It’s my thing, remember? I bet you’re worried about your jump shot being off.”
“You think my jumper is off?”
“Especially your three-pointers. I was looking at your stats since the beginning of the season and your field goal percentage has been declining, just a percent or two a game, but it adds up.”
Marco smiles like he’s amused I’m critiquing his game. “Someone’s been studying.”
“I may have done a little Googling. Gotta know what I’m talking about when I brag about my boyfriend,
the best point guard Langdon Prep has ever seen.”
“So what’s wrong with my jump shot?”
“I’ve gone to every game this season and I spotted something different lately. You’re releasing the ball too late.”
“Really?”
“Maybe you’re nervous because we’re in the playoffs now, and you’re just over-thinking it. The same thing happened during football season, remember? The Knights made the playoffs not long after you came off the bench to replace the starting quarterback. You were stressed out just like you are now.”
“I forgot how good your memory is,” Marco says, sounding as though he’d rather I’d forgotten football season. “We weren’t even really together then.”
“I was still paying attention to you because I . . . because I cared about you. Just like I paid attention during Saturday’s game, when you kept passing to your weaker forward.”
“Because my strongest forward was never open. Defense usually does that—keep the opponent’s best man off the ball,” he explains, still sounding amused.
I’m sure if I were a guy who actually knew something about the game instead of his girlfriend who didn’t know a zone coverage from a man-to-man defense two weeks ago, Marco would not be smiling like he is. I’ve learned that unless it’s their coach doing the critiquing, athletes don’t like having their game called out. But he is smiling like that and it makes me glad I stayed up late into the night watching ESPN Classic.
Guys, Lies & Alibis Page 2
