A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty (27 page)

Roger pul ed out of the school lot as I dug in the bag and saw he’d also gotten me baked beans and a spork. I opened that up first and dug into it.

I said, “You’ve been a total douche al week,” with my mouth ful , then added, “You’re lucky Patti Duckins ate half my lunch today, or I probably wouldn’t even be speaking to you.” I kept my voice super casual, but I was watching him in my side eyes to catch his reaction.

There wasn’t one, though. It was like he didn’t even compute that I’d eaten with a Duckins. His were al bright, like he had a fever, and his cheeks had two pink spots in them.

He said, “Can you read while you eat?” He had a manila folder stuffed ful of copy paper in his lap, and he grabbed it and thrust it at me.

“Everything came clear when I was reading the old city papers.”

I ignored the folder until he set it on the seat between us so he could get his hand back on the wheel. I took a huge bite of the sandwich and said around it, real crabby, “Blahblahblah. You’re a douche, and P.S., Patti Duckins is making BFF noises at me. Hey, wait, where are we going?”

He’d turned the wrong way for my house.

“Try to keep up, Tardina Tardmore. We are going to the Richardsons’ house to interview Claire. You have to keep Claire busy taking pictures so I can sneak off and search Melissa’s old room. Did you forget to bring your mom’s camera?”

“I didn’t ‘forget.’ I just didn’t bring it.”

“Damn it, Mosey! Okay, you’l have to take the pics with my iPhone, then. It’s even more important to get into Melissa’s room now. Like, vital.

Which you would know if you would look in the fricken folder.”

When I didn’t bother to answer or reach for the folder, he blew air out his nose and stomped down on the gas, saying, “I’m trying to ease into this here, but you aren’t helping. I know where Liza stole you from, Mosey. I know who you are.”

I stopped chewing. I looked at his face, his eyes lit up, his cheeks burning, and I believed him. The hunk of sandwich in my mouth turned into a big glob of wet cardboard. He glanced at me, and then he put his blinker on and turned in to the first gas-station parking lot we came to. I spit the sandwich lump into a napkin while he shoved the car into park and flipped the folder open. He started pul ing out these printouts of old stories from the
Moss Point Register
, setting them down in a line on the dashboard. He had circled al these lines and highlighted others.

“Look at this, you were mostly right. Melissa did take the little sister to the beach. And she got high and the tide came in and sucked the baby away in the car seat. But she didn’t drop acid. She just smoked it up. No big, right? I’m sure she’d babysat plenty stoned before. Except this time the pot was laced with PCP. That’s some seriously bad shit. It’s amazing she didn’t pluck her own eyes out or pick up her car and start throwing it around.”

I didn’t see where he was going. “Who would do PCP while babysitting?”

“Nobody,” he said. “Nobody, right? Not on purpose. I bet she had no idea the pot was laced. Here’s where it gets weirder.” He pushed a printout at me. “Look here, this is an interview with the last people to see that baby. This couple, the Grants, were walking on the beach. It had been storming on and off al day. No one was there except Melissa, standing in the surf, barefoot, jeans rol ed up, holding the baby. It was asleep, and Melissa smiled at them and then set the baby in the car seat. She had a beach chair and umbrel a set up for herself, real close to the surf.

“The Grants headed back to get their car, like an hour later, because it looked like another storm was going to rol through. They saw the umbrel a getting sucked back and forth in the waves. The beach chair was gone. Then Mrs. Grant saw this thing, like a bright pink hump bobbing up and down way out in the water. Al at once she remembered that the baby seat had been pink, and this hump, it looked the right shape to be the car seat, if it was floating away out there, upside down. It doesn’t real y say, but if you read between the lines, it’s pretty clear the Grants kinda lost their crap about then.

“The man Grant wanted to swim out and get the baby chair, but it was a red-flag day, with a wicked undertow because of the storms. Not even any surfers. His wife started crying and wouldn’t let him. She figured there’s no chance the kid was alive by then. The car seat was upside down and way out there. Also, she thought maybe Melissa had the baby on a walk and the tide only got their stuff, and if her husband went out there, he could drown for no reason. She lost her shit and went tearing to the beach highway to flag down a car.”

“But where was Melissa? Who got the baby?” I said.

“There was no baby. That’s my whole point. Are you fol owing me? The cops find Melissa naked in the dunes, wonked out on PCP, shivering and crying and not making any kind of sense. They take her to the hospital, and the coast guard goes out and finds the car seat, and there’s no baby in it. The straps aren’t even buckled.”

“Wait a minute,” I said, and now he had every bit of my attention. “You’re saying they never found the baby’s body? Like, not ever, ever?”

“Not ever, ever. The Grants only saw Melissa, alone on the beach that day. So everyone thinks the tide grabbed the car seat and the undertow sucked that baby way out to get eaten or wash up in—I don’t know, Cuba. But come on, that kid was only a month and change older than you. They never found a body, and then here you are? Come on.”

I blinked at Roger’s earnest face, because I understood what he was saying, in my brain. My brain got it, but it didn’t make any sense anywhere else. It was like he was tel ing me about some movie he saw a long time ago, one ful of actors I didn’t like. Nothing to do with me. Nothing I’d even pay to see. But I heard myself say, from real y far off, “Right, because if I’m not a misplaced, inbred Duckins, I
must
be the royal Richardsons’

missing princess.”

I thought my try at sarcasm came out pretty hol ow, but he laughed and said, mock solemn, “Oh, yes, Anastasia. How freaky would that be? You could make Claire buy you a car.”

I shook my head, because it was too unpossibly unpossible and also vile, to think that I could be a Richardson. I exhaled and said, “No way, Roger, because how did I end up with Liza?”

Al at once Roger looked shifty. “This is the part you won’t like.” His eyes went so wide that I could see whites al the way around, and his voice dropped low, and he talked real y fast. “We know Melissa and Liza hated each other after Liza got knocked up. And I bet lacing pot was one of your mom’s best life skil s by then. What if Liza gave Melissa that pot and took the ba—”

I interrupted, “Bul shit.” My voice sounded real y loud in the Volvo. “Liza’s not evil. And why would she take Melissa’s sister? She was stil pregnant then.”

“I’m not saying she’s evil, but come on. They never found a body. And here you are.”

I knuckle-punched his arm, hard as I could.

“Ouch,” he said. “You done?” I wasn’t. I hit him again, same spot. “Ouch! Okay, I get it. You don’t like it. But how can we at least not check it out?

How can you not want to know?” He waited, but I didn’t hit him again. I stared at him, panting, and final y my head moved itself in a little bob like half a nod. Instantly he put the car back in drive and pul ed out, heading for the Richardsons’. I sat beside him, feeling like every breath of air I pul ed in was made of cold shards of glass. It couldn’t be true. Liza would never. I would not let it be true.

“This is why you’ve avoided me the whole week,” I said, and my voice sounded hol ow and real y far away. “Because you were finding al this out, and you thought I’d freak.”

“Wel , yeah,” he said, eyes forward. “And here you are, freaking.”

“I’m not freaking, because it’s total bul shit and my mom isn’t like that,” I said, too quavery for even me to believe myself.

I blinked this real y long blink, it seemed like, and then we were pul ing up in front of Claire Richardson’s square, white house with its Tara’d-out slaveholder-style pil ars. I thought it looked like pure ass, but it was the biggest house in Immita, right near the downtown on a short street lined with wil ows.

Roger turned the car off and rummaged in the glove box for his iPhone and handed it to me. “While you take the shots, I’l pretend I need to pee and then try to find Melissa’s old room.”

“Oh, my God,” I said. Roger was already getting out of the car. I fol owed, unable to help myself, but my legs felt thick and heavy. Stil , my blocky feet moved forward, and there we were, on the porch.

Roger pressed the doorbel . It made this long, fancy ringing in that same tune Big Ben plays right before it bongs the hour. A breath later, Claire Richardson swung the door wide, a huge smile already plastered over her face. She had it aimed at Roger, and then she caught sight of me and it curdled up and al but disappeared.

One eyebrow twitched, and her nostrils flared. She said, “I thought this was for the
Calvary High Herald
?” She was looking at me, but it was pretty obvious she was talking to Roger.

Roger said, “It is. Mosey came along to take some pictures.”

Roger nudged me and I held up the iPhone, but I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t stop thinking about this book Big used to read me al the time when I was little. This baby bird fal s out of the nest and he goes al over, asking things if they are his mother. He asks a dog and a cow and a dump truck, Are you my mother? Are you my mother? Standing here looking at Claire’s flared nostrils and cold eyes, that book made perfect sense to me, in a way it hadn’t since I was three. Right then, if a dump truck had pul ed up, I’d have asked it if it was my mother and cried with relief if it had nodded.

Roger stepped forward, crowding her, but she stood firm. “Don’t you think a Calvary student should take the pictures.” It wasn’t a question. Not real y. It didn’t curl up on the end. “It counts as extra credit for the kids who have journalism as their elective.”

“I didn’t think of that,” Roger said, al guileless, pressing forward. “And Mosey’s here now.”

If he nudged up toward her again, he’d be standing on her feet, because she wasn’t budging. Not an inch. “No need to waste her afternoon. You can send someone to take the pictures another day.”

The message was flat clear: No Slocumb trash was coming over her doorstep, which real y ought to have put paid to Roger’s crazy theory right then. Because if I was Claire Richardson’s kid, wouldn’t she somehow know it? Wouldn’t she sense it, if only a little bit in her scaly, Sleestak heart, and not be such an enormous bitch to me?

Watching her lip trembling with the effort it took not to let her mouth twist into a more truthful shape with al her teeth bared, I could tel she felt no twinge of doubt or hope when she looked down at me. To her I was just only Liza’s, and she blamed Liza for getting Melissa into drugs, and drugs had kil ed her baby and made Melissa run away. Easier to blame Liza and drugs than Melissa, I guess, and now here I stood on her porch, feebly waving an iPhone like I wanted her to say cheese for me.

Roger said, “Okay. But I’m Mosey’s ride, so she’s kinda stuck here.…”

Claire Richardson final y looked away from me to him. She made a tut noise. “Wel , that’s too bad. Maybe you can come back and do the interview another time.” She started to close the door.

Then I heard my own voice talking. “It’s fine. Go ahead in and get your story.” Roger kicked my foot, because if he went in alone, he wouldn’t get a chance to escape Claire. Too bad on him. “I have things I need to do at home anyway, and it’s not that bad a walk.”

“Al righty, then,” Claire said, brisk, like everything was settled and everyone was pleased. She swung the door wide, and Roger shot me a furious look and walked through it to spend the next three hundred years listening to Claire warble and coo about her prime genes and al the Glorious Dead in her lineage. She wheeled to fol ow Roger, pushing hard at the door as she spun. She meant to slam it in my face.

I watched the door swinging hard toward me, and my arm shot out like it was someone else’s arm. Chuck Norris’s, maybe, flying through the air in slo-mo. The door banged into its frame at the exact second that Claire’s outsize crystal knob smacked into my hand like a basebal . I caught it perfect. The door was a hair away from closed, but the lock hadn’t caught. I could feel it hanging in its frame, unlatched, my elbow and shoulder flashing pain at the impact.

I realized I’d been holding my breath. Oh, my God, that woman hated me. I final y breathed out, and if my exhale sounded a little bit like saying,
Bitch
…oh, wel . I meant it, too, even if I was her kid. Genetical y. Because inside I was total y Liza’s. Big was only tricked into having me. Liza had taken me on purpose, so I was hers no matter what. And right now I was damn wel doing exactly what Liza would do. I’d caught the door, and that was way too cool a move for me. Liza-level cool, for sure. I gave them two minutes to get out of the foyer, and then I swung that door wide open.

If I’d been trying to bust into Big’s house, the hinges would have creaked and squealed on me. Claire’s ritzy-ass door glided open al polite and silent. Sometimes it sucks to be rich. I stepped inside and eased it shut behind me, my heart hammering so loud I was surprised that Claire didn’t come running back to see who was pounding nails into her gleaming hardwood floor.

There was a fancy chandelier hanging over my head and one of those vomity-looking rugs with the fringe and al the colors on the floor. The air conditioner was real y cranking. It felt like you could take your time eating ice cream with no danger of it melting and plopping off the cone.

I’d never been in this house before, but I could hear Claire talking somewhere off to my left, so I went right, into a hal way. The wal s looked like leaf skeletons had been ironed one by one into pale gold paint and then glossed over with some kind of shiny top coat. I came to a closed door and tiptoed past with my mouth ful of spit. My throat had closed up so tight I couldn’t swal ow. I kept picturing Coach, home already and right behind that door, flipping through his secret stash of old
CosmoGirl
magazines and touching himself.