Crescendo (21 page)

“I know!” Vee said. “We could steal her diary!”

“The one she’s been carrying around since freshman year?”

“The one she swears would make the
National Enquirer
look tame,” she said, sounding strangely gleeful. “If something is going on between her and Patch, it’ll be in the diary.”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh, come on. We’ll give it back after we’re done. No harm, no foul.”

“How? Toss it on her porch and run? She’ll kill us if she finds out we took it.”

“Sure. Toss it on her porch, or take it during the party, read it somewhere, and put it back before we leave.”

“It just seems wrong.”

“We won’t tell anyone what we read. It’ll be our secret. It’s not wrong if nobody gets hurt.”

I wasn’t sold on stealing Marcie’s diary, but I could tell Vee wasn’t going to let it drop. The most important thing was getting her to agree to come to the party with me. I wasn’t sure I was courageous enough to go on my own. Especially since I couldn’t count on having a single friend there. So I said, “You’ll pick me up tonight, then?”

“Count on it. Hey, can we light her bedroom on fire before we leave?”

“
No.
She can’t know we were snooping in it.”

“Yeah, but subtle really isn’t my style.”

I looked sideways, eyebrows peaked. “No kidding?”

It was just after nine when Vee and I climbed the hill leading up to Marcie’s neighborhood. Coldwater’s socioeconomic map is easily determined by a simple test: Drop a marble on any street in town. If the marble rolls downhill, you’re upper class. If the marble doesn’t roll at all, you’re middle class. And if you lose the marble in a vapor of fog before you have a chance to find out if it rolls, you’re … well, you live in my neighborhood. The backwoods.

Vee pushed the Neon uphill. Marcie’s neighborhood was
older, with mature trees that spilled above the street, blocking all moonlight. The homes had professionally landscaped yards and half circles for driveways. The architecture was Georgian colonial; every house was white with black trim. Vee had the Neon’s windows rolled down, and in the distance, we heard the steady pulse of blaring hip-hop.

“What’s her address again?” Vee asked, squinting through the windshield. “These houses are so far off the road I can’t read the numbers over the garages.”

“Twelve-twenty Brenchley Street.”

We came to an intersection and Vee turned onto Brenchley. The music intensified as we cruised down the block, and I assumed it meant we were headed in the right direction. Cars were parked bumper-to-bumper down both sides of the street. As we passed an elegantly remodeled carriage house, the music reached an all-time high, vibrating the car. Flocks of people were cutting across the lawn, streaming inside the house. Marcie’s house. One look at it, and I had to wonder why she shoplifted. For the thrill of it? To escape her parents’ carefully and perfectly crafted image?

I didn’t dwell on it longer. A deep ache swirled in my stomach. Parked in the driveway was Patch’s black Jeep Commander. Obviously he’d been one of the first to arrive. He’d probably been inside alone with Marcie hours before the party started. Doing what, I didn’t want to know. I sucked in a deep breath and I told myself I could handle this. And wasn’t this the evidence I’d come looking for?

“What are you thinking?” Vee asked, her gaze also glued to the Commander as we rolled past.

“That I want to throw up.”

“All over Marcie’s foyer would be nice. But seriously. Are you okay with Patch being here?”

I set my jaw, tilting my chin up slightly. “Marcie invited me tonight. I have the same right to be here as Patch. I’m not going to let him dictate where I go and what I do.” Funny, because that’s
exactly
what I was doing.

Marcie’s front door was open, leading into a dark marble hall crammed with bodies gyrating to Jay-Z. The foyer merged into a large sitting room with a high ceiling and dark Victorian furniture. All of the furniture, including the coffee table, was being used for seating. Vee hesitated in the doorway.

“Just taking a moment to mentally prepare for this,” she called to me over the music. “I mean, the place is going to be infested with Marcie. Marcie portraits, Marcie furniture, Marcie odors. Speaking of portraits, we should try to find some old family pictures. I’d like to see what Marcie’s dad looked like ten years ago. When his dealership commercials come on TV, I can’t decide if it’s plastic surgery that makes him look so young, or just massive amounts of makeup.”

I gripped her elbow and yanked her flush against me. “You are not ditching me now.”

Vee peered inside, frowning. “All right, but I’m warning you, if
I see a single pair of panties, I’m out of here. Same goes for used condoms.”

I opened my mouth, then snapped it shut. The chances of seeing both were fairly high, and it was in my best interest not to officially accept her terms.

I was saved from further discussion by Marcie, who sashayed out of the darkness holding a punch bowl. She divided a critical glance between us. “I invited you,” she told me, “but I didn’t invite
her
.”

“Good to see you, too,” Vee said.

Marcie scrutinized Vee slowly, head to toe. “Didn’t you used to be on some stupid color diet? Looks to me like you gave up before you even started.” She turned her attention to me. “And you. Nice black eye.”

“Did you hear something, Nora?” Vee asked. “I thought I heard something.”

“You definitely heard something,” I agreed.

“Could that be … a
dog fart
I heard?” Vee asked me.

I nodded. “I think so.”

Marcie’s eyes thinned to slits. “Ha, ha.”

“There it went again,” Vee said. “Apparently this dog has real bad gas. Maybe we should feed it Tums.”

Marcie thrust the punch bowl at us. “Donation. Nobody gets inside without one.”

“What?” Vee and I said at the same time.

“Do-
nay
-shun. You didn’t really think I invited you here without
an agenda, did you? I need your cash. Pure and simple.”

Vee and I eyed the bowl, which was swimming with dollar bills.

“What’s the money for?” I asked.

“New cheerleading uniforms. The squad wants ones with bare midriffs, but the school’s too cheap to spring for new ones, so I’m fund-raising.”

“This should be interesting,” Vee said. “The term Slut Squad will take on a whole new meaning.”

“That does it!” said Marcie, her face darkening with blood. “You want in? You’d better have a twenty. If you make another comment, I’ll boost the cover charge to forty.”

Vee poked me in the arm. “I didn’t sign up for this. You pay.”

“Ten each?” I offered.

“No way. This was your idea. You pick up the tab.”

I faced Marcie and pulled on a smile. “Twenty dollars is a lot,” I reasoned.

“Yeah, but think how amazing I’ll look in that uniform,” she said. “I have to do five hundred crunches every night so I can trim my waist from twenty-five to twenty-four inches before school starts. I can’t have an inch of fat if I’m going to wear a bare midriff.”

I didn’t dare pollute my mind with a mental image of Marcie in a promiscuous cheerleading uniform, and instead said, “How about fifteen?”

Marcie cupped a hand on her hip and looked ready to slam the door.

“Okay, calm down, we’ll pay,” said Vee, reaching into her back pocket. She stuffed a wad of cash into the bowl, but it was dark and I couldn’t tell how much. “You owe me big-time,” she told me.

“You’re supposed to let me count the money first,” Marcie said, digging through the bowl, trying to recapture Vee’s donation.

“I just assumed twenty was too high for you to count,” Vee said. “My apologies.”

Marcie’s eyes went slitty again, then she turned on her heel and carted the bowl back into the house.

“How much did you give her?” I asked Vee.

“I didn’t. I tossed in a condom.”

I lifted my eyebrows. “Since when do you carry condoms?”

“I picked one up off the lawn on our way up the walk. Who knows, maybe Marcie’ll use it. Then I’ll have done my part to keep her genetic material out of the gene pool.”

Vee and I stepped all the way inside and put our backs to the wall. On a velvet chaise in the sitting room, several couples were tangled together like a pile of paper clips. The center of the room was filled with dancing bodies. Off the sitting room, an arched entryway led to the kitchen, where people were drinking and laughing. Nobody paid Vee or me any attention, and I tried to rally my spirits at the realization that getting inside Marcie’s bedroom unnoticed wasn’t going to be as hard as I’d thought. Trouble was, I was beginning to think I hadn’t come here tonight to snoop through Marcie’s bedroom and find evidence that she was with Patch. In fact, I was dangerously
close to thinking I’d come because I knew Patch would be here. And I wanted to see him.

It looked like I was going to get my chance. Patch appeared in the entrance to Marcie’s kitchen, dressed in a black polo shirt and dark jeans. I wasn’t used to studying him from a distance. His eyes were the color of night and his hair curling under his ears looked like it was six weeks past needing a cut. He had a body that instantly attracted the opposite sex, but his stance said
I’m not open to conversation
. His hat was still missing, which meant it was probably in Marcie’s possession. No big deal, I reminded myself. It was no longer my business. Patch could give his ball cap to whoever he wanted. Just because he’d never loaned it to me didn’t hurt my feelings.

Jenn Martin, a girl I’d had math with freshman year, was talking to Patch, but he looked distracted. His eyes circled the sitting room, watchful, as if he wasn’t about to trust a single soul there. His posture was relaxed but attentive, almost like he expected something to happen at any moment.

Before his eyes made it around to me, I shifted my gaze. Best not to be caught staring with regret and longing.

Anthony Amowitz smiled and waved at me from across the room. I automatically smiled back. We’d had PE together this year, and while I’d hardly said more than ten words to him, it was nice to think
somebody
was excited to see me and Vee here.

“Why is Anthony Amowitz using his pimp smile on you?” Vee asked.

I rolled my eyes. “You’re only calling him a pimp because he’s here. At Marcie’s.”

“Yeah, so?”

“He’s being nice.” I elbowed her. “Smile back.”

“Being nice? He’s being horny.”

Anthony raised his red plastic cup to me and shouted something, but it was too hard to hear over the music.

“What?” I called back.

“You look great!” A goofy smile was plastered on his face.

“Oh boy,” Vee said. “Not just a pimp, but a smashed pimp.”

“So maybe he’s a little drunk.”

“Drunk and hoping to corner you alone in a bedroom upstairs.” Ugh.

Five minutes later, we were still holding our position just inside the front door. I’d had half a can of beer accidentally sloshed on my shoes, but luckily, there’d been no vomit. I was about to suggest to Vee that we move away from the open door—the direction everyone seemed to run moments before spilling the contents of their stomach—when Brenna Dubois came up and held a red plastic cup out to me.

“This is for you, compliments of the guy across the room.”

“Told you,” Vee whispered sideways.

I stole a quick glance at Anthony, who winked.

“Uh, thanks, but I’m not interested,” I told Brenna. I wasn’t very experienced when it came to parties, but I knew not to accept
drinks of questionable origin. For all I knew, it was tainted with GHB. “Tell Anthony I don’t drink from anything but a sealed can.” Wow. I sounded even dumber than I felt.

“Anthony?” Her face twisted with confusion.

“Yeah, Anthony Pimp-o-witz,” Vee said. “The guy who’s making you play delivery girl.”

“You thought Anthony gave me the cup?” She shook her head. “Try the guy on the
other
side of the room.” She turned to where Patch had been standing only minutes ago. “Well, he was over there. I guess he left. He was hot and wearing a black shirt, if that helps.”

“Oh boy,” Vee said again, this time under her breath.

“Thanks,” I told Brenna, seeing no choice but to take the cup. She faded back into the crowd, and I set the cup of what smelled like cherry Coke on the entry table behind me. Was Patch trying to send a message? Reminding me of my flop of a fight at the Devil’s Handbag when Marcie had doused me with cherry Coke?

Vee pushed something into my hand.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“A walkie-talkie. I borrowed them from my brother. I’ll sit on the stairs and keep watch. If anybody comes up, I’ll radio.”

“You want me to snoop in Marcie’s bedroom
now
?”

“I want you to steal the diary.”

“Yeah, about that. I’m sort of having a change of heart.”

“Are you kidding me?” Vee said. “You can’t chicken out now.
Imagine what’s in that diary. This is your one big chance to find out what’s going on with Marcie and Patch. You can’t pass that up.”

“But it’s wrong.”

“It won’t feel wrong if you steal it so fast that the guilt doesn’t have time to soak in.”

I gave her a pointed look.

“Self-talk helps too,” Vee added. “Tell yourself this isn’t wrong enough times, and you’ll start to believe it.”

“I’m not taking the diary. I just want to … look around. And steal Patch’s hat back.”

“I’ll pay you the eZine’s entire annual budget if you deliver the diary to me in the next thirty minutes,” Vee said, beginning to sound desperate.

“
That’s
why you want the diary? To publish it in the eZine?”

“Think about it. It could make my career.”

“No,”
I said firmly. “And what’s more, bad Vee.”

She heaved a sigh. “Well, it was worth a try.”

I looked at the walkie-talkie in my hand. “Why can’t we just text?”

“Spies don’t text.”

“How do you know?”

“How do you know they
do
?”

Figuring it wasn’t worth an argument, I tucked the walkie-talkie into the waistband of my jeans. “Are you sure Marcie’s bedroom is on the second floor?”