The Con Code

by Shana Silver

  My police-radar eyes scrutinize every person we pass and evaluate them on a scale from one to undercover cop. I guide him several miles to a Safeway parking lot, where a large charter bus idles at the curb. Puffs of exhaust fumes curl up into the sunny air, rendering everything in my view blurry. Faces peer out the darkened windows as if we’re approaching a museum attraction filled with caged animals. I stop in front and rap my knuckles on the glass door.

  “Listen, if the head counselor gives us a hard time about any of this, like the fact that we’re late—”

  His eyes widen. We would have been on time if we hadn’t had to stop for first aid. Or breakfast.

  “I need you to sweet-talk her into letting us on, okay?”

  “Wait, but—”

  The accordion door opens with a sticky squish, the entire vehicle sighing. An Asian woman trudges down the stairs, her dark hair twisted into a low pony. The clipboard pressed against her chest sums up everything: She’s someone to avoid. Her lips set in a thin line as she drags her gaze down to my extremely inappropriate skirt.

  “Hi.” I try to sound bubbly, but it comes out as flustered. “We’re—”

  “IDs?”

  We hand them over, and my pulse increases, a steady tick tick tick that she must be able to hear. For years I’ve been using fake identities for both crimes and good times at bars, but when I breeze up to those, I’m usually cool, calm, and collected. Here I shift my weight from foot to foot and try not to collapse. If this doesn’t work, we’re screwed. No other options. No other way to get my mom’s remaining clues.

  “Colton and Fiona,” she says and shoves the IDs back toward us. “You’re thirty minutes late.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that.” He gives her a sheepish chuckle. A line of concealer does a poor job of covering his new wound. “This one over here took forever getting ready.” He nudges me with his elbow, and then leans in toward the brunette. “Tell her she looks pretty—she’s always fishing for a compliment.”

  My enemy cheeks betray me by blushing, even though he’s just doing what I told him to do.

  Her stare hardens. “Consider this your warning. Next time, we won’t wait.”

  Colin ducks his head and nods, as if he’s just been reprimanded by the principal for acting out in class. “No problem. We’ll be good. I promise.”

  “I’m Abby Ito, head counselor.” She swings her arms toward the door. “Come on.”

  The dark bus swallows us whole, a sharp contrast from the bright sun baking our skin. Loud jabbers of conversation cease as eager faces spin forward, each one boasting some kind of trademark cliché: nose piercing, Mohawk, salon blowout, Burberry headband, natural makeup, glittery glam makeup, varsity jacket, and pentagram necklace. I’m pretty sure every teenage clique is represented here from stoners to rich bitches, goths to preppies. Each camper sizes us up, too, all their eyes roaming from Colin’s pretty face to his slight limp.

  Velvet seat backs promise more comfort than the squished interior of a commandeered truck. I march down the aisle, my eyes searching for Natalie and Tig, and though I spot Tig right away, Natalie’s nowhere to be seen. Panic shoots through my gut. Maybe she hasn’t arrived yet, either. The two planned to arrive separately just in case. Which means … there’s a chance the FBI got to her first.

  There are only two unoccupied seats on the whole bus, across the aisle from each other. Colin plops down next to Tig before I have a chance to. She’s wearing a purple fedora, large mirrored sunglasses, and oversize headphones. The fact that Natalie isn’t sitting next to her makes my stomach queasy.

  “Tig?” I whisper-shout, but the girl doesn’t budge.

  Abby clears her throat, instructing me to sit down. I have no choice but to plop next to a girl with a frizzy mop of dark curls that covers half my seat. Her giant nose attempts the same. She sets her big, unnaturally violet eyes on me and watches my every move with great interest. I turn away.

  “Tig?” I whisper over Colin again, but the girl still ignores me. Colin taps on her elbow, and she glances at us, but then turns back to the window, not humoring us further.

  The bus jerks into motion, and I leap to my feet. “Wait! We can’t leave.”

  “Fiona!” Abby snaps. “Sit down this instant or I’m going to have to—”

  I plop down faster than she can finish her sentence. Colin’s eyes close as though he no longer has a care in the world now that he’s safely ensconced in the bus.

  My spare burner phone is in the backpack in the back of the truck. I have no way to contact Natalie and see if she’s okay. Tig ignores me entirely for no real reason. And my new seatmate’s intensely staring at me, her face hovering only an inch away from my cheek. Her surplus of hair brushes against my cheek, forcing me to swat it away. “Can you give me some space?” I turn back to the aisle. “Tig!” I hiss.

  My seatmate continues to study me as she pushes sheets of curls away from her face, securing them behind her ear for a futile three seconds before the hair pops back into place. Silver rings glint in the dim light, pierced through her lips and eyebrow.

  She gives herself a satisfied nod. “Success.”

  Her voice is a little too high-pitched, as if she’s speaking entirely in falsetto, but there’s a hint of something familiar encased in her voice. Too fast, too clipped. I squint at her, this time the one doing the staring.

  “Say that again.”

  “Success.” Her high-pitched voice notches down a few octaves to sound exactly like a voice I’ve listened to in my earpiece for years.

  I grip the girl’s arm, pulling her upright. She rolls her ethereal eyes at me. “Finally.”

  Up close, caked-on makeup conceals putty-sculpted cheeks and a prosthetic nose. The faint gray ring around her irises gives away the telltale colored contacts. An ornate swirling tattoo stems from the giveaway heart-shaped birthmark on her inside wrist. My protégé. My partner in con. “Natalie! I thought you missed the bus.”

  She poofs her wig with her palm and bats her false eyelashes. I tackle-hug my best friend so hard, we both tumble into the window. “I was wondering how long it would take for you to figure it out. I’ll consider this my best disguise yet.”

  “Why is Tig ignoring me?”

  She lowers her voice. “After you changed Colin’s name, we started to worry her name was just too unique, so we lengthened it. She’ll only respond to Teagan now.” Natalie purses her lips. “Well, maybe not respond with actual words, but, you know, with a glance or two.”

  I clamp a hand over my mouth to stifle my laughter. “Teagan? There’s nothing about her that screams Teagan.”

  “I’ve been calling her T in public, and she does this cute little smile when I say it.” Natalie lets out a swoony sigh. “Except of course she didn’t want to sit with me, so maybe I’m reading her signals way wrong.”

  “Maybe she just wanted to save the seat for Col … um … Colton?” I say in a hopeful way. That maybe Tig’s rebuff wasn’t a sign of disinterest but all part of the job she agreed to.

  “Maybe.” Natalie bites her lip.

  I rush to change the subject. “What did you end up telling your parents, anyway?”

  When I left her to get Colin, we’d told her parents that my aunt (who doesn’t actually exist) had arrived at my house to become my guardian. (Hallmark, here’s your next movie plot). Natalie was still trying to figure out how to disappear for a month without her parents suspecting mischief.

  Natalie jerks her thumb toward her oversize backpack stuffed into the overhead compartment. “Backpacking through the motherland.” For Natalie, the motherland is actually Canada. French Canada. Montreal, specifically. “They were really happy I was taking an interest in my heritage, and since I’m already eighteen, they couldn’t exactly stop me. Tig helped photoshop one hundred pictures and schedule them to post on Instagram throughout the summer.” She scrolls through a burner phone and shows me photo after photo of her having the time of her life in poutine country and kissing
a girl with supermodel bone structure.

  “I see you found yourself a stock-photo girlfriend on this fake trip.”

  Natalie beams down at the picture. “Well, the whole trip is a fantasy after all.”

  Abby stands up and claps her hands. “Listen up, people!” She introduces the other counselors, two males both named Dave, one who is cute, with muscles for brains, and the other who seems to have taken a firm stance against anything related to cuteness or muscles.

  After the pleasantries, she gives an over-rehearsed speech about all the fun we’ll have this summer on C2C tours, although all the rules she follows that with say otherwise. “No leaving your room past curfew. On location you must check in every two hours with a counselor. No drugs, alcohol, or other illegal substances.”

  I guess it’s a good thing she said only substances are illegal and made no mention about crimes.

  CHAPTER 12

  The bus speeds down the freeway for several long hours. Each time we pass through a toll, Colin and I duck low in our seats, expecting the FBI to swoop out of the booth and wrench our hands behind our backs. A quick glance at Natalie’s burner phone reveals the trucker found the discarded backpack at a rest stop in Reno, Nevada, but police are combing both Nevada and Northern California in search of us. Both of us.

  Colin O’Keefe is expected to be traveling with Fiona Spangler after she was caught on home security footage leaving the scene of house arrest with the suspect.

  I stroke my necklace and shut my eyes to try to calm down. The image of my mother’s face forms against my lids, her dark blond hair spilling over her thin shoulders, her wild eyes searching mine as she presses the same necklace into my palm. I made it especially for you.

  The whole memory overtakes me. I’m ten years old again, hugging the necklace to my chest, mouth parted in awe. “But it’s not my birthday for another four months and twenty-three days.” She loves me, I think.

  “It’s not a birthday present.” She stands up, her face dissolving into stoicism, all traces of emotion sucked back into her stare. “Remember that,” she says, turning the gift into a warning.

  A few days later I discovered what the warning was about: her departure. It wasn’t a birthday present. It was a farewell gift.

  The cacophony on the bus draws me out of the memory. The other campers spend the ride jabbering in a desperate attempt to one-up each other. Tidbits and brags are traded like hot commodities: a pre-college class taken at MIT over winter break, a coveted scholarship, a horseback-riding prize, Miss California, and one whose claim to fame seems to involve tying a cherry stem with only her tongue.

  “Hey!” A perky girl with long dark hair expertly curled into luscious waves hovers over us, her voice so peppy I can practically see the extra exclamation points tacked onto her words. “I’m Lakshmi Kumar, and I’ve taken it upon myself to be a welcoming committee around here.” She giggles, but when Natalie and I don’t react, her pink-lipped smile wavers. “Anyway, I thought it might be fun to do a little get-to-know-each-other icebreaker. Two truths and a lie. Ready?” She sucks in a big breath, and I brace myself as her words come out in a rush. “One: I’m on track to become valedictorian. Two: I turned down an internship at the White House to go on this trip. Three: I can speak five languages.”

  I yawn. “All true. Although computer languages don’t count, so you can really only speak four.”

  Her smile flatlines on her face. “How did you—?”

  I shrug. “I’m good at reading people.” And eavesdropping on her earlier conversations.

  Her pep returns in full force. “Okay, then. Your turn!”

  I supply a one-sentence entry into her makeshift contest: “High school dropout.”

  It’s not true yet, but it will be as soon as I don’t return to Amberley in the fall. When I say nothing more, and Natalie makes a grand show of pretending to sleep, Lakshmi shuffles along to her next victim: Tig. When Tig refuses to even look at her, and Colin is legit snoring, she sighs and moves to the row ahead of us.

  The bus finally arrives in Anaheim, where palm trees sway in the distance, the sky bans all clouds, and people in powerful business suits and bulging arm muscles march down the street. We stop in front of a conference hotel a few miles away from the land of thrills and stomach drops. Natalie hands Colin and me new burner phones, his number already saved into mine in case I’m hankering to hear his snark at 3 a.m.

  The other campers stroll out of the bus, stretching and yawning, but my legs zing with adrenaline, amped and ready, like they should still be on the run. I scan the crowd, searching for anyone staying in one spot, pretending to be blending in when they’re really undercover. As my feet land on the pavement, Abby hands me a scowl and a key card folded in a little white packet with a room number on it—354. “We’re all meeting in the mall food court next to the hotel for mandatory dinner at six. There are meal vouchers waiting for you in your room.”

  I clutch the key card in a tight, overprotective fist. It’s a key to my room, but it offers me so much more than that. An alibi. Sanctuary. A place to finally breathe. Natalie, Tig, and I are all assigned to the same room, which will give us a safe place to plan our next steps. There was no way to get Colin into our room, too, without a full-on makeover of the drag-queen variety, so he’s unfortunately (or fortunately, depending if you’re me) stuck with random roomies.

  Abby hands a key card to the girl behind me, then taps my shoulder again like an afterthought. “Lights out at nine tonight,” she tells me. “Understand?”

  Translation: The other counselors will be checking to make sure you’re in your room promptly at nine. And probably several times throughout the night as well.

  Translation: You’re probably going to be up to no good.

  Translation: Watch out.

  Snarky comebacks bubble to my lips, but Colin subtly shakes his head at me before I get a chance to engage in a verbal battle with my new second worst enemy. How does he know me so well?

  “I know we’ve got shiny hotel rooms for tonight.” Colin flashes his key card. “But we could find another truck to sleep in if you want. For old times’ sake.” He raises his brow a few times.

  “It’s no gas station bathroom, so hard pass.”

  Nearby, the bus driver heaves colored luggage onto the sidewalk, and campers grab the retractable handles, eliminating my options one by one. Natalie loops her arm through mine and leads me toward a pair of suitcases, side by side, as if even our bags are in this together. Her foot nudges me toward the one covered in multicolored glitter, so stuffed it leans onto Natalie’s chic gray one for support.

  I raise my brow. “Glitter? Really?”

  “It matches your disguise.” She plucks the strap of my too-revealing tank top. “Sorry, lady, but your old style of ripped jeans and clever T-shirts didn’t work for me.”

  “Hey, my style was actually deconstructed school uniforms as an eff you to the faculty.”

  She shrugs. “Now you have some girly flair to work with.”

  I groan. She’s always trying to get me to dress to impress … boys, that is. In my case, anyway. “I hope your intent is for me to be mistaken for an underage prostitute.” I smooth the skirt over my butt, trying to cover as much ground as possible.

  “Hey, the way I figure it, might as well put the ho in last hoorah.” She pats me on the back. “Besides, it could be worse. That gaudy leopard-print bag over there belongs to your bathroom buddy.”

  An oversize pink leopard-print suitcase complete with Hearts for Vandals stickers covering the front leans against my black guitar case. I chuckle, because Hearts for Vandals is the biggest boy band on the planet right now, with a screaming fan base of eight gazillion twelve-year-old girls and a music video so saturated with neon colors that it makes my eyes bleed. One of the girls shrieks with delight when she spies the sticker on Colin’s bag and starts prattling on about how swoony the lead singer, Jackson, is. Colin gives us a death glare.

  In our room, N
atalie slides open the curtains as if she’s parting the Red Sea. Sunshine floods the room, dust particles dancing in the beams. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. The short black bob with sharp angles at the front makes me gasp. The style Colin coiffed for me actually looks pretty good, not that I’d ever tell him.

  Tig hustles to the far bed and starts unpacking various pieces of electronics equipment. I heave my suitcase onto the closest crisp white bed, the entire mattress sinking under the weight. “What did you put in here, a dead body?”

  Natalie bites her lip, her gaze shifting between my bed and Tig’s. I nudge her toward Tig’s bed with a quick jut of my chin. After all, we both win in that scenario, since this way I can sprawl out diagonally across the queen-size bed. Natalie hesitates for one more second before setting her stuff on the other side of Tig’s bed. They share a quick glance and then focus back on their own suitcases. I can’t tell for sure, but I swear I can see the corners of Tig’s lips quirking upward.

  The lid on my suitcase flops open to reveal more uncomfortable and inappropriate clothes, all made of lace or sparkles. “I hate you. I hope you die in polyester pants and cotton underwear.”

  “Don’t hate me too much. You haven’t seen everything I packed for you!” Natalie tosses the top layer of clothing aside to reveal my skull-prop forgery carefully wrapped in gauze and Bubble Wrap.

  I start to peel off the layers of gauze to check for damage. We’ve got eight hours at the amusement park tomorrow to make the swap, and if anything’s amiss with the skull, I won’t have much time to fix it.

  “There’s a false bottom beneath your clothes.” Natalie juts her chin. “All the art supplies you asked for and then some!”