Gotcha (20 page)

“Run! Warren is going to tag you.”

I give him another push. He steps back, but he doesn’t leave.

That’s when I hear the footsteps behind me and see the alarm on Joel’s face. Now he does turn to run, but it’s too late. Before Joel even gets out of the doorway, Warren smacks his arm.

“Gotcha!” he declares. Then he turns to me, his hand in the air for a high five. I ignore it.

“Katie?” Joel asks, looking back to me.

“I’m sorry, Joel,” I say. I turn away so he can’t see my tears.

“Did you set me up?”

I open my mouth, trying to find words to explain, but Warren interrupts. “She sure did,” he says, putting himself between Joel and me.

“Why haven’t you tagged
him
?” Joel asks, even as Warren is pushing him out the door.”

I wanted to!
The words are screaming in my head, but nothing comes out of my mouth. It would require such a long explanation.

“Give me your beads, Joel,” Warren says. “And your victim.”

“Katie,” Joel calls, “was the whole thing a joke? Did we ever have a real alliance?”

I want to tell him the truth, tell him why I had to do it, but Warren is pulling him down the driveway, and Joel appears to be too stunned to put up a struggle. I move to the kitchen and watch from the window as Joel passes Warren his beads. Before he leaves, Joel glances back at the house one more time. When he sees me in the window, I mouth the words again. “I’m sorry.”

He just stares back, and I watch as his bewilderment turns to something much harder. He gets into his mom’s car and squeals away from the curb.

For the millionth time today, I lay my head on the table and wish I’d never heard of Gotcha.

I feel Warren’s hand rubbing that hollow space between my shoulder blades. My initial reaction is to shrug it off, but even that requires too much effort. I give up.

“He’ll get over it, Kittiekat,” he murmurs. “He will.”

“Whatever.”

“And we’re almost there.”

I raise my head and look at him. “I forget why you’re doing this, Warren. There’s no money, remember?”

“I’m doing this to get you back in school.”

“There must be an easier way.” There must be. I just can’t think of what it is right now.

“Listen. You stay put. I’m going to go nab a few more beads, but I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

I must be hearing things. “You’re going to
nab
a few beads? If it was that easy the game would have ended by now.”

“I have a plan.”

“And what is that?”

“I’m not telling, but it’s a good one.”

“If it’s such a good one, why haven’t you already won this stupid game?”

“Shh, Katie.” Warren puts his fingers to his lips and peers around the room.

“What?”

“The Gotcha Gods. You called the game ‘stupid.’” He glances over his shoulder. “They might be listening.”

I smack his arm. “Shut up, Warren!”

“We need all the help we can get right now.”

I roll my eyes but make a silent apology to the Gotcha Gods. Warren’s right.

There’s a creak in the upstairs hallway. We both glance at the ceiling. I hear the bathroom door shut.

“When you come back, just tap lightly on the door.” I glance back at the ceiling. “She goes to bed early.”

“Better yet,” he suggests, “text me.”

“I don’t have a cell phone.”

“Oh. Right. Then just call my phone when she’s gone to bed.”

I get his number and see him out the door. Then I turn on the computer and check my e-mail. Nothing. Has Dad really dropped off the planet?

Mom comes down the stairs and plugs in the kettle. “Did you have any dinner?” she asks.

“Yes,” I lie, not wanting to have a meal with her. “I made myself some eggs.”

She roots around in the fridge and pulls out a container with leftover casserole. She sniffs it. “How old do you think this is?” she asks.

I think about it. “Too old,” I say.

I watch as she scrapes it into the garbage and goes back to the fridge. There’s a slice of apple pie that she brings out, and then she reaches for the ice cream in the freezer.

“That’s your dinner?” I ask.

She gives me a look. “No comments from the school dropout.”

“I’m not a dropout. I got kicked out.”

“No you didn’t. You have choices.”

“And so do you,” I say, glancing at the pie. “They’re just not too appealing right now, are they?”

Mom gives me another look but doesn’t respond. I admit, in some ways she has better self-control than I do. She knows when to bite her tongue.

The kettle whistles and shuts itself off. Mom pours herself a cup of tea and takes her “dinner” to the living room. A moment later I hear the drone of the
TV
.

The phone rings and I pick it up.

“Hello?”

“Katie?”

“Hey, ’Riah.” Uh-oh.

“Katie! I heard what just happened. How could you do that to Joel?”

“I didn’t want to, ’Riah, but I had to. Warren has a plan to get me back to school, and that was part of the plan.”

“You trust
Warren
?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Because he rescued me at Tyson’s, and I think he can do it again.”

“I wouldn’t trust him.”

“Hey, I didn’t see you sticking up for me at the Gotcha party.”

The connection appears to go dead. I wonder if she has hung up.

“Joel is super-upset,” she says finally. “He came straight here after Warren tagged him.”

“Is he still there?”

“No, but Katie, he was hurting, bad.”

Oh man. “I feel terrible about it, ’Riah, but I had to do it. You’ve got to believe me.”

“You’ve blown it with Joel.”

My heart sinks even lower. “You don’t understand.”

“What don’t I understand?”

“Just...something that happened.”

“And what was that?” She sounds skeptical.

“I can’t tell you.”

“Why not?”

“’Cause you’d hate me.”

“I wouldn’t hate you!”

“You might when you hear what I did.”

“Is it worse than what you did to Joel?”

“Yeah.”

“But Warren knows?”

“Uh-huh.”

“So you trust Warren more than you trust me?”

“It’s not that. It’s because he promised to help me out of my mess.”

“So did Joel and I!” Mariah is getting steamed. “We don’t make promises we can’t keep, but we were trying to help as best we could.”

“I know.” I do.

“So what was it that you did?”

There’s nothing else to do but tell her. “I lost the Gotcha money.”

There’s a long pause. “You lost it?”

“Uh-huh. I lent it to someone, and now I can’t get it back.”

“How could you do that? It wasn’t your money!”

“I thought I’d get it back, plus a lot more.”

“Katie,” Mariah says very quietly, “this does not sound like something you would do.”

“Well, I did.”

“There’s got to be more to it that you’re not telling me.”

I cannot bring myself to tell her who I gave the money to and why. It’s so pathetic. How could a father do that to his daughter? “That’s all I can tell you, Mariah. And Warren swears he can bring this game to an end tonight, with me being the winner so that I don’t have to give anyone the money. And that’s why I had to set up Joel.”

“Why would Warren do that?”

“I don’t really know. But he said he would.”

“I still don’t trust him. And I don’t think you should either.”

“I have to, ’Riah. It’s my only hope.”

I hear the click as she hangs up on me.

I have just swooshed out of the waterslide chute and crashed onto the jagged rocks. My friends, my dad, my self-respect, gone. I’ve been kicked out of school, and I won’t graduate. And now I’ve put all my trust into an untrust-worthy person.

How did I get to this place?

Before Mom goes to bed, she drags herself back to the kitchen. I think she’s planning to give me another lecture, but when she sees the shape I’m in—head resting on the table, face blotchy red and the floor littered with sodden tissue—she changes her mind.

“Sometimes things look better after a good night’s sleep,” she says.

I try to nod. “Thanks, Mom.”

I hear the toilet flush in the upstairs bathroom, and when I hear her cross the hall to her bedroom, I call Warren’s cell.

“She’s in bed,” I tell him when he answers.

“Good,” he says. “I’ve got them, all but one.”

“You do? How could you?” He’s only been gone a couple of hours.

“I do.”

“Come on over.”

I let him in and we sit at the kitchen table, talking in hushed voices.

“You don’t look so good, Kittiekat,” Warren says, studying my face.

“I don’t feel so good either.” He runs a finger down my cheek, but I bat his hand away. “How did you get them all, and so fast?”

“Easy,” he says, unperturbed by my rebuff. “First of all, we were down to eight players anyway.”

I nod.

“And since the game went underground, there’s been more confusion about who has whose name.”

“Right.”

“And do you remember who wrote out all the names on the scraps of paper?”

“Wasn’t it Paige?”

“No, it was me.”

“So, what does that have to do with anything?”

“When I left here, I went home and cut up some more scrap paper, exactly like the originals.”

I can only stare at him.

“And I wrote the name of each of the remaining players on those pieces of paper.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope.”

“That’s cheating!”

“Show me where in the rulebooks it says you can’t do that.”

“Warren!”

“So, one by one, I tagged the remaining players, except for one. None of them realized that I didn’t really have their names. ”

“I can’t believe you’d do that.”

“Really?” He regards me coolly. “And I can’t believe you’d give the Gotcha money away.”

I feel my face flush.

“I could have done it the legit way, just tagged them one at a time and kept taking their beads and their names, but this sped the process up because I could tag them in any order.” He gave me a searching look. “And as you know, Kittiekat, we don’t have much time.”

“But they’ll figure it out eventually, when they start talking.”

“Probably, but I’ll just feign innocence. Tell them I had each of their names, which I did.”

“I think they’ll kill you.”

“Me? Warren MacDonald?” He laughs. “Not a chance.”

Hmm. I wonder if even Warren has that much immunity.

“How did you get close enough to tag them? No one trusts anyone right now.”

“Except me. Everyone trusts me.”

Even me. I’m such a fool. “What exactly did you do?” I ask.

“I dropped in on each of them to discuss important school business.”

“Important school business? They bought that?”

“Of course. You see, there was a strong possibility that you were going to blow the whistle on each of us and get us suspended, so we had to have a Gotcha Game Time-Out to discuss what we were going to do about the situation.”

“A Gotcha Game Time-Out?”

“Yeah, clever, don’t you think?”

“And each one of them fell for it.”

“Each one of them did.”

At first I don’t believe him, but then I remember his seductiveness, that hypnotic voice and the acting skills. Maybe it really was that simple.

“And then you just tagged them.”

“Just like that.”

“Didn’t they go crazy and accuse you of cheating?”

“No, I think they were too stunned by what had just happened.” He grins. “Aren’t I clever?”

I have to smile. I honestly can’t believe the nerve of this guy.

“So who is the one person you didn’t get?”

“Tyson. And Tyson has your name.”

Just as I’d figured. “That one’s not going to be so easy to get.”

“Oh yes it is. I have a plan.”

“Another one.”

“Yes.”

“And does this one require cheating too?”

“Oh no. We’ll tag Tyson fair and square.”

I sit back and listen while Warren fills me in.

Apparently Tyson was surprisingly calm when Warren phoned and told him that we were the final three, but that I was going to blow the whistle on them unless they handed me their beads. Tyson called me a bitch, but agreed, reluctantly,
that it was better to give up the game than get suspended. He said he’d meet us at the park to do the exchange, but said he couldn’t get there for another hour.

“Why the park?” I ask. There’s something wrong with this picture.

“I’m not sure,” he answers, frowning. “But then again, why not? Too many parents hovering about anywhere else.”

“Phone him back. Tell him I’m not going to the park. We can take his beads right here in my driveway.”

“Don’t sweat it, Kittiekat. It’s just Tyson’s way of being a big shot. We’ll be together, we’ll stay linked, just in case, and it’ll be no big deal.”

“Forget it,” I tell him. “I’m not going to the park. That’s way too creepy. He must be up to something.”

Warren sighs but punches Tyson’s phone number into his cell phone. I hear him tell Tyson that I refuse to meet him in the park.

“Is the parking lot with the drive-through coffee place okay then?” Warren asks me. He’s holding the phone to his chest.

I think about it. It’s wide open. Not much could go wrong there, unlike the park, where anyone could be lurking in the trees, even the Gotcha Gods...I still think it’s odd that Tyson won’t just come here, but I’ve trusted Warren this far so I might as well go the full ride. I nod.

Warren and I wait in his truck, drinking coffee. I think back to the afternoon that Joel and I sat in this same parking lot. I thought things were bad for me then. I had no idea how much worse they had yet to get.

Warren keeps checking his watch, and his foot is twitching nervously.

“Is something wrong?” I ask him.

“What could go wrong?” he says, smiling brightly, but he can’t mask his agitation.

“I didn’t ask if anything was going to
go
wrong. I just wanted to know why you seem so tense.”

“I’m good,” he says, taking my hand and squeezing it. “We’ve got this nailed.” Then he checks his cell phone to see what time it is. “He should be here any time now.”