Finding the Forger (14 page)

“Why didn’t you tell me that last night?” I said, grabbing the Frosted Flakes.

“I did, swamp thing.” He put his bowl in the dishwasher.

“Did not.”

“Did too.”

“Did not.”

We go in for sophisticated debate in the Balducci household.

After a few minutes of this back and forth, Tony told me I better be ready in five minutes or I was walking to school, then he vamoosed upstairs to brush his teeth. I snarled after him, but I don’t think he heard. When I finished my breakfast and cleared the table, I was about to put the milk away when those darn poetry magnets caught my eye again.

Right before going to bed the night before, I’d rearranged them to read:

Funky survivor

Cute groove

Stars wild

Kiss date

I thought it was pretty cool—all those short little sentences.

Now, someone had rearranged them to read:

Groove funky

Go wild

Kiss stars

Date freak

“Date freak”? What the hey did that mean? Tony had to be doing this. Nasty, mean-spirited Tony. I ran upstairs and almost collided with him in the hallway.

“What has Doug ever done to you, huh? He’s not a freak!” And I slammed the door on him as I ran into my bedroom to change.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, mutant woman,” he shouted as he walked downstairs. I took that as an admission of guilt.

At school, my mood did not improve. In fact, everyone’s mood seemed to be on the underside of happy. Doug barely said hello, instead giving me a quick, sulky smile that meant he was still steamed at my going off with Neville on Sunday. Kerrie was irritated because her locker lock was stuck for the umpteenth time this semester and she kept forgetting to get it replaced. And Sarah was in a funk because of Hector.

“I talked to Hector last night,” Sarah said. “And he was nowhere near that part of the museum when it happened. He said the security tapes would prove it.”

“You called him?” I asked. Was she tipping him off? Sheesh, Sarah!

“Well, he called me first. Remember?” she asked sheepishly.

Just then, the first bell rang and I could have screamed. I was choking on inner screams. I was beginning to feel like a model for that painting, “The Scream.” Sarah, a nut about being on time, ran off to her first class while Kerrie pleaded for help with her locker. As I twirled and pulled and repositioned the thing, the locker hall emptied out and Kerrie spoke to me.

“I keep thinking about what you told me last night,” Kerrie whispered. “About Neville and you.”

“What about Neville and me?” I asked. Finally, the lock came
free. Good thing. I was going to be late for Algebra.

“You know—what you told me. How you kissed.” Kerrie pulled books from her locker and arranged others on a stack. Her locker was arranged as neatly as a display for the locker company while mine was always a jumble. “How did it make you feel?”

The whole episode with Neville now seemed light years in the past, and as I looked back, I couldn’t quite figure out who that girl was who had let Neville kiss her, and why she had felt the crazy need to confess it to her best friend.

“I don’t know. It was strange.” I looked at the clock. I really had to get going. Kerrie slammed her locker shut and we walked out of the hall together. “I mean, I’ve never kissed a Brit before.”

I was about to add that Brit or not, kissing Neville had been a huge mistake since my boyfriend was Doug. I was going to make a joke about how, if she told another living soul about it, I’d have to kill her, when we rounded the hallway corner and ran into the only living soul from whom I wanted to keep this juicy piece of information—Doug.

That day, I had Algebra, History, English, and Music. And every time the teacher asked a question, the first answer that popped into my head was: “Doug, it’s not what you think.”

Boys might be Silent Sams, but they’re also pretty transparent. After he’d overheard the news that I’d kissed Neville, the look on Doug’s face couldn’t have been clearer. If I had been using poetry magnets to describe it, the verse would have gone something like this: “Boyfriend betrayed by silly steady/Crushed heart, bleeding hopes.”

To make matters worse, we didn’t see each other much that day. I hoped to run into him at lunch, but he was nowhere to be seen. To make matters even worse than that, Kerrie was the one who knew why he wasn’t there. He had a doctor’s appointment, she announced over lunch.

“His physical. So he can play varsity tennis,” she said, digging into a taco salad while I stared at my whole wheat and mozzarella. How did Kerrie know his intimate, personal schedule when I didn’t?

Sarah came to the table, her tray holding a milk and her bagged lunch. When she sat down next to Kerrie, I should have been happy. They were speaking to each other again. Instead, I just moped.

Sarah was moping, too. As soon as she sat down, she started talking about Hector.

“The art gallery is looking into his past,” she said while opening her milk. “They think he might be involved in this art theft thing.”

Ouch. That meant Connie was looking into Hector’s past. Maybe that’s what she’d been doing on the Internet the night before. What else wasn’t she telling me?

“What art theft thing?” Kerrie asked, after which I told her what I knew.

“Hector’s a guard, right?” Kerrie asked.

“He’s also an art student,” Sarah volunteered, and she and I exchanged looks which, when translated, meant: okay, let’s not tell Kerrie about the painting incident last night.

Sarah sipped some milk through a straw. “That’s why they’re looking at him. And because he was around. When it happened. When the works disappeared.”

“Are the police questioning him?” Kerrie asked.

Sarah shook her head “no.” “The museum is keeping it quiet.”

“How come?” Kerrie asked. “Don’t they have a responsibility to turn this information over to the police?”

Sarah’s color faded, and she was pale to begin with. The way Kerrie had said “turn this information over to the police” sent chills down my spine, too. It was as if she was really saying “turn Hector over to the police.”

“Just because Hector’s an art student doesn’t mean he’s a forger,” I jumped in. “Why zero in on him?” Funny I should be sticking up for Hector. I kind of suspected him, too.

Sarah didn’t say anything, but Kerrie did. “Does Hector have a record?”

Sarah slowly nodded. “But it was a long time ago. Two years. He was picked up with some boys who’d stolen a car. He was let go.”

“How’d he get his job with a record?” Kerrie asked. “I mean, I thought you couldn’t get hired for a security job if you’d had a run-in with the law.”

Sarah looked down.

“He didn’t tell them!” I surmised. Sarah nodded her head.

“You mean he lied,” Kerrie said in a “he’s getting what he deserves” kind of voice.

Sarah’s head shot up. “He wasn’t sure it mattered. He was just a high school kid at the time.”

Kerrie shrugged as if to say it did matter. Her indifference sent pink into Sarah’s cheeks. “He’s trying to make a living to put himself through college. His mother is on disability. He doesn’t even know his dad.” Her voice quivered and her eyes grew watery. Sarah had had her own “run-in” with the law recently. She’d been
connected with an identity theft ring until Kerrie’s dad helped bail her out of trouble. So it was only natural that she was sympathetic to others in trouble, particularly if one of the “others” happened to be a fellow she liked.

While Sarah’s background certainly illustrated that one should not automatically be considered a criminal because of a shady past, I wondered about Hector. I mean, who’s to say he wasn’t up to something, especially if he did have cash worries? He might be looking for a way to make a quick buck. And if he, as a security guard, had access to art works worth thousands of dollars, temptation might overrule good judgment. As Connie would have said, he had motive and opportunity. And if he was an art student, he had know-how, too. I felt sick for Sarah.

But I kept those thoughts to myself, which is a good thing, because Kerrie voiced them for me.

“I know you like Hector,” she said to Sarah in a voice supposed to sound sympathetic but instead sounded condescending, “but if he does have money problems, selling some valuable paintings on the black market would certainly be a way of fixing them.” She reached over and patted Sarah’s hand, but Sarah immediately withdrew it and turned an even deeper shade of red.

“Hector is not an art thief!” she exploded, loud enough for some kids at a nearby table to turn our way. She lowered her voice. “He’s being unfairly targeted. Why don’t they look at all the other guards? Why just him?”

Kerrie smiled. Well, actually, it was more like a smirk. “Maybe because he’s a part-time art student, too?”

Sarah opened her mouth to reply but didn’t have time to respond. Our student government president, no-nonsense Bethany Christopher, was at the cafeteria mike making some announcements
about food drives and drama club meetings and the Mistletoe Dance. I zeroed in on that last nugget of info.

“Tickets for the Mistletoe Dance are now on sale in the school office before and after school. Because we’re holding the dance in the cafeteria this year, fire regulations say we can only accommodate 1,100 people, so get your tickets fast or you’ll be left in the cold.”

Kerrie groaned. “The cafeteria? I thought they’d gotten Martin’s West for the dance. That’s where they have it every year.”

“Somebody screwed up the reservation,” Sarah said. “And when they realized it, all the dates were booked.”

At that moment, I didn’t really care where the dance was being held. My stomach started flip-flopping into knots as a new problem presented itself. Would Doug buy dance tickets in time?

It’s not that Doug is a procrastinator. No, he’s just a normal guy. And any other time, he would probably zip on down to the office to snag the tickets so we wouldn’t be “left out in the cold.” But after this morning, when Doug had overheard me talking about kissing Neville, would he still want to go with me to the dance? Would he still want to be my boyfriend?

No longer hungry, I wrapped up the rest of my sandwich and threw it back in the paper bag. Kerrie started talking about the dress she was going to wear to the Mistletoe Dance—the black velvet number she’d tried on at The Limited—and how she was going even if she didn’t have a date.

But I was lost in my own thoughts, staring into space and wondering how I’d managed to lose my boyfriend in such record time. Sarah seemed to be lost in her thoughts as well, probably of Hector and his problems with the museum.

Eventually, Kerrie noticed neither of us was paying attention to
her chatter and threw in a line designed to grab our thoughts.

“I thought I’d dye my hair orange to go with the dress,” she said nonchalantly.

“Sounds nice,” Sarah said.

“Huh?” I said.

Kerrie laughed. “You both were in la-la land,” she said. “Bianc, why don’t you call me tonight and we’ll talk about your Doug problem.”

“What Doug problem?” Sarah asked.

Kerrie turned to her. “Oh, nothing.”

I let out a quick sigh. Or maybe it was more of a snort. Rule Number One of Friendships: don’t hint at secrets in front of other friends. Sarah might as well know.

“Neville kissed me, and Doug found out,” I said.

“What!?” Sarah looked at me as if I had three heads. “And how’d Doug find out?”

I was about to tell her he’d heard it from the horse’s mouth, then neigh like a pony, but the bell rang, ending lunch period. “I’ll explain it later,” I said to her, and left.

My afternoon was as gloomy as my morning, maybe even gloomier. I managed to foul up an Algebra test pretty badly by failing to check my work, and I knew Mom would not like that since she’s always telling me to check my work so my smarts don’t get ahead of my brain. And Doug was nowhere to be seen because he
obviously
was out of school early for his physical, and I hadn’t even had a chance to ask Kerrie how she knew that, and I didn’t know what I would say to Doug if I saw him anyway.

I had to go home alone that day. Kerrie was staying after school to work on the literary magazine, and Sarah was going to her internship. As I stood at the bus stop shivering in my lightweight
blazer, I saw a familiar car wending its way through traffic in front of the school—Connie’s. Connie was coming to pick me up! What parallel universe was I living in?

“Glad I caught you,” she said after I got in. “I was coming by this way and thought I’d see if you needed a ride.”

Who is this woman and what has she done with my real sister?

Connie never gives me rides if she can help it. She could have an appointment scheduled with my principal at the end of the school day and she’d still let me ride the bus home, making up some excuse about why she couldn’t commit to bringing me home.

As she maneuvered through traffic, she asked me what I was getting Mom for Christmas. We talked about pooling our money so we could get her a nicer gift, maybe a day at a spa or something. Then Connie finally got around to the real reason she was being nice to me.