Impostor (12 page)

Chapter Twenty-Two

I
n the hall, I spot Samantha stalking my way.

“This is all your fault,” she says.

“Shhhh,” I say. “Let’s go somewhere more private.” I grab her arm, but she shakes me off and heads toward the bathroom. I follow her, cringing. Once inside, I hold out the stack of notebooks she left behind in Mrs. Winger’s room. “Here are your things.”

Samantha snatches the pile of books and slams them onto a sink. A freshman girl comes out of one of the stalls, and Samantha gives her a look scornful enough to make the poor girl scurry out of the room without washing her hands.

After the door swings closed, Samantha begins whispering angrily. “So that cop totally thinks I pushed Scotch.”

“Did he say that?” I say, my heart sinking.

“No, but what else is he supposed to think? Scotch drove me home from the party on Thursday night. If he asks around, he’s sure to find out that Scotch spread those nasty rumors about me. It’s the only logical conclusion.”

I shake my head. “I don’t think that’s enough to pin Scotch’s fall on you. He’d need evidence that you were there that night. A witness, or something.”

Samantha stares stonily at me. “And what do you think Regina’s going to say when she’s called in for questioning?”

I lift my hands to my temples and try to rub away the headache that is steadily building. There’s only one way to fix this. I have to confess. “Samantha, I’ll talk to the cops. I’ll explain what happened. We didn’t mean—”

Samantha grabs my shoulders and shakes me. “No! All you were doing was trying to help me. I’ll be damned if you get in trouble for this. We’ll talk to Regina. I’ll make sure she doesn’t say anything. We have to stick together. Okay?”

I remember how Mattie begged me to stay quiet.

“Okay,” I say finally. “Okay.”

There’s something disturbing about watching Rollins crack up at Anna’s jokes. Even though I know they’re just friends. Even though I trust him completely. It’s like a tornado of jealousy inside me when I watch them together. Especially when Rollins and I are supposed to be alone right now. Instead, he brought Anna to eat lunch with us under the bleachers.

This is
our
spot. It may be littered with decaying leaves and candy-bar wrappers, but it’s
ours
. And now he’s desecrating it with Anna and her joke about Mrs. Winger and her addiction to computer solitaire. She’s not even funny.

Miffed, I take a giant bite of my Pop-Tart.

“So I’ve been thinking about my playlist for tonight,” Anna says, giving Rollins a serious look. “I want a nice mix of old and new, like something really cool. A little Emily’s Army mixed with some Nina Simone, maybe.”

Rollins looks thoughtful. “Totally agree. You just want to make sure it segues smoothly. I’ve got some ideas for you.”

She brightens. “Great!”

I cough. Rollins looks at me as though he forgot I was here. “Oh, shit, Vee. This has to be so boring for you. I’m sorry.”

Haughtily, I say, “I’m interested in music. Maybe I’ve got ideas, too.”

They both stare at me, waiting for me to go on.

I panic, trying to think of something cool to say. I see a kid in a tie-dye T-shirt walking into school. “How about some Jimi Hendrix?”

Anna blinks, and Rollins rubs my shoulder. “I don’t think that’s exactly the type of playlist Anna had in mind, Vee. She’s focusing on female artists, anyway.”

“Oh,” I say, popping the last bit of Pop-Tart into my mouth and standing up—well, standing up the best I can underneath the bleachers. Really, I’m more crouching than anything. “I’m done. I’ll leave you two to finish your discussion.”

Rollins looks from me to Anna. “Wait. Don’t go. We can talk about this later.”

“No, it’s fine,” I say, already shuffling away, kicking leaves as I go. “I’ll see you in Intro to Psych.”

I expect him to come after me. I mean, I know it’s pretty childish of me, but I really do. The fact that he
doesn’t
kind of rips me up inside. I stand outside the school, counting to a hundred, but he never comes.

So I go inside alone.

Between classes, Mattie catches my arm and pulls me into an empty doorway. Her face is serious. Immediately, I imagine the worst. Did Officer Teahen already question her? Are we all going to jail for our idiotic prank?

“What is it?”

Mattie looks around cautiously and speaks in a low voice. “Regina texted me. She’s not at school today. She went to visit Scotch at the hospital.”

My stomach drops. “He’s awake?”

“No, but she’s convinced she’ll be able to get him to wake up if she sits and talks to him.”

For a moment, I’m ashamed of myself for feeling relieved that Scotch hasn’t awakened. As long as he’s asleep, he’s quiet, making my life so much easier.

“Okay,” I say, trying to figure out what this means for us. “Okay.”

If Regina is visiting Scotch at the hospital, it’s only a matter of time before it comes out that she’s the one who was with him that night. And when the cops find her, she’ll lead them to us. Samantha is going to freak when she finds out where Regina is.

“Shit,” I finally say. “This isn’t good. Were his parents there?”

“No. She told the nurse she was his sister. I think she feels guilty for what happened. She keeps talking about what a tough life Scotch has. How she wants to be there for him.”

My mind is racing. “We’ve got to get her out of there before Scotch’s parents—or worse, the cops—show up.”

Someone touches my arm. Rollins.

“What’s wrong?”

“Rollins, could you give me a ride to the hospital? Regina’s there, visiting Scotch. I’m afraid she’s going to say something stupid.”

Rollins nods. “Sure. I didn’t really feel like going to Psych today anyway.”

“Can I come?” Mattie looks at me hopefully.

“No. You stay here. If we get caught, I don’t want both of us to get in trouble. Okay?” I put my hand on my sister’s shoulder. She nods reluctantly and then heads toward her next class.

I watch my sister sulk away, her cell phone close to her ear. Regret floods through me. She shouldn’t have to be dealing with things like this. She should be able to giggle and talk to Russ and daydream about what color her prom dress will be.

I shake my head sadly and follow Rollins toward the exit. As we’re ducking out, I see Officer Teahen at the other end of the hallway. My heart pounding, I grab Rollins by the sleeve and pull him out the door.

“What was that all about?” Rollins asks when we’re safely inside his car. “You just about yanked my arm off.”

I frown. “Officer Teahen is here at school questioning people. I was going to tell you at lunch, but Anna was there.”

Rollins gapes at me. “Holy shit. Did he talk to you?”

I shake my head. “He pulled Samantha out of English. She said she got a ride home from the party with Scotch on Thursday night but didn’t tell about our little plot to get back at him. It’s only a matter of time, though. If the cops talk to Regina, it would be bad.”

Turning the key in the ignition, Rollins says, “Sorry about lunch. Anna kind of ambushed me.”

I shrug. “No biggie.”

“Really? I got the impression you were a little pissed.”

“Well, maybe a little.”

We pull out of the school parking lot. I keep my eyes peeled for any policemen, but there’s no one.

Rollins reaches over and squeezes my knee. “I’ll make it up to you. That’s a promise.”

The warmth from his fingers radiates upward. It’s almost enough to make me forget that Regina is at the hospital right now, about to completely blow our cover.

Almost.

Chapter Twenty-Three

T
he intensive care unit is on the fourth floor. I tap my foot, willing the elevator to travel faster.

Second floor.

Third floor.

The doors slide open, and a pretty nurse with red hair pushes a wheelchair into the small space in front of us. She gives us a suspicious look, probably wondering why we’re not in school. Or maybe I’m just being paranoid.

My father works on the sixth floor, and I’m banking on the fact that he spends most of his day behind steel doors, carefully working to make sick babies well again.

Finally, we reach the fourth floor. The nurse pulls the wheelchair sideways to let Rollins and me get off the elevator. We walk into a waiting area. There’s a desk off to the right side. Beyond that, the hallway that leads to the patients’ rooms.

“Wait here,” I say.

I’ve been at the hospital enough times to know that you can go almost anywhere, as long as you act like you have a right to be there. The only place security is really tight is in the maternity ward, where the guards are constantly watching out for baby snatchers.

I give the lady behind the desk a bright smile and start to walk past her, toward the hallway.

“Who do you need to see, sweetie?” she asks.

Crap. Of course I run into the one nurse who follows protocol.

I stop in my tracks. “Hi, um, I’m a friend of Scott Becker’s sister. Her phone is off, and I have something urgent to tell her.”

The nurse gives me a strange look. “His sister isn’t here. She left about twenty minutes ago. His parents are here, though. I can call them for you. . . .” The nurse lifts the phone from its cradle and poises her finger, about to dial a number.

“Oh, no. That’s okay. You say she left? I’ll go find her.”

The nurse frowns at me. Before she can say anything else, I turn on my heel and head toward Rollins.

Go!
I mouth at him. He turns back toward the elevator and jabs the down button with his thumb.

“Miss?” I hear the nurse call behind me.

I pretend not to hear.

The elevator doors open up. Rollins and I hop in, and I hurriedly press the button for the lobby. As the doors close, I risk a look back at the desk. The nurse, annoyed that I ignored her, is glaring at me. But there’s someone else standing beside her—another nurse, with her hair pulled back into a bun.

My heart races when I recognize who it is.

Diane.

“So
that
was the woman who gave you a ride home after your accident?” Rollins asks, steering his car back toward the school. “Strange that she just happens to be working in the same part of the hospital where Scotch is being kept.”

“Yup,” I reply. I’m lost in thought, trying to figure out what the hell she was doing there. It doesn’t compute. Could it really be a coincidence that I met her the same night I got into an accident, on the same road that Scotch was driving on only minutes before? It just doesn’t make any sense.

“It’s almost three thirty. Do you want me to just drop you off at home?”

I snap to attention. “What? Crap. Lydia’s supposed to pick me up. If she sees us, she’ll know I skipped school and will report back to my father. He’ll be even madder at you than he already is.”

Rollins taps the steering wheel with his fingertips. “I could drop you off at the back entrance. Then you can go in and get your books and come out the front.”

“Yeah, let’s do that,” I say.

Rollins pulls up to the curb at the back of the school. Distracted, I lean over to give him a quick kiss.

“Don’t forget to call me tonight,” he says.

“I won’t,” I promise.

I slam the car door shut and hurry into the school.

Sure enough, Lydia’s yellow car is waiting outside the school for me at three thirty. She’s got sunglasses propped up on her forehead, even though the sky is overcast, and I notice she took the time to swipe on some bright red lipstick before leaving the house.

“Hey, honey. How was your day?” she asks when I open the passenger door and scoot inside. She sounds chipper, like she’s playing the part of a mother in some sitcom from the fifties. I get this creepy feeling, like a house centipede has curled up on the back of my neck.

“Super,” I say. “Another day in paradise.”

My sarcastic remark dampens her cheer. She starts the car. “Come on, Vee. I could do with a little less attitude. How can we have any fun together if you’re pouting the whole time?”

I stare at her as she pulls out of the parking lot. She doesn’t make any sense. First, she swirls into our lives like a hurricane, out of nowhere. Then she spies on me until she finds some dirt. She tries to get on my good side by swearing she won’t tell my dad I snuck out of the house. And then she blabs and gets me grounded. For the life of me, I can’t figure out what the hell she wants from me.

“Do you mind if we take a detour?” she asks, signaling a turn that would take us downtown.

Something warns me to be careful about where I let this woman take me. After all, what do I know about her? She lied about her fiancé back in California. She was living her life with a false name. I caught her going through my father’s drawers. And there’s just something about her that gives me the creeps—something about the way she seems so desperate to fit into our family. Still, I can’t help but feel curious. Maybe this is my chance to find out more about her.

“Um. Okay?” I say finally.

She gives me a sideways glance and bursts out laughing. “Don’t look so freaked out, Vee! I just want to go grab some pie.”

She parks in front of a small diner. My dad used to bring us here when we were little, but I haven’t eaten here in years. It’s one of those faux fifties restaurants with a jukebox and all of the waitresses wearing poodle skirts.

Lydia plugs a few quarters into the meter on the sidewalk, and then I follow her inside. She drums her fingers on the little podium as we wait for someone to seat us, seeming a few degrees more nervous than she did in the car. I wonder exactly what she wants to talk to me about.

A girl a few years older than me sidles up and flashes a big grin. “Hi, ladies. Just the two of you?” I can smell the watermelon from her chewing gum. She looks familiar. Her long, blond hair is swept up into a high ponytail, and her face is fresh with only a dab of pink lip gloss. I realize she played Annie Oakley in the school production of
Annie Get Your Gun
when I was a freshman. Melody, I think her name is.

“Just the two of us,” Lydia says brightly.

Melody motions for us to follow her to a booth. She waits for us to get settled and then asks for our drink orders. I order a Coke and look at Lydia, who is sitting across from me, looking blankly at Melody.

“I’m sorry. What did you say?” Lydia asks. She must be planning on bringing up something big if she can’t even pay attention to the waitress.

“Would you like something to drink?”

“Just an ice water,” Lydia says.

Melody nods and then heads behind the counter to prepare the drinks. I grab one of the menus, staring but not comprehending.

“So there’s a reason I brought you here, Vee,” Lydia says. Her voice is tight.

“Nostalgia for a golden age?” I ask, not able to look her in the eye now that I’m sitting across from her.

“Nope. That’s just a perk. I have something to give you.” Lydia plops her purse on the table and starts going through it, searching for something. Finally, she pulls out a red velvet box. I’d recognize it anywhere. It’s the box my dad keeps my mom’s wedding ring in.

She offers it to me, the fancy box sitting in the palm of her hand. For a minute, all I can do is stare at it. Since my mother died, I’ve never seen it outside the context of my father’s bedroom. This whole situation is surreal.

“Take it,” she says.

Shaking, I reach across the table and grab the box out of her hand. I hold it in my lap, enclosed in both hands, as if it might grow wings and fly away from me.

“Aren’t you going to look inside?”

“I already know what’s inside,” I say coldly.

My icy tone doesn’t register with her. Melody brings us our drinks, not seeming to notice the tense vibe at our table, and asks what we’d like to eat. Lydia orders a piece of banana cream pie. I say I’m not hungry.

When Melody leaves, Lydia says, “You don’t know. Open it.”

I force myself to look her in the eye. There is a challenge in her expression. So I muster up the strength and crack the box open and see—

“What the hell?”

A gorgeous necklace is nestled at the bottom of the box. With one hand, I lift the thin silver chain and examine the pendant. Set in the center is a beautiful diamond surrounded by rubies in the shape of a heart. It takes me a minute, but then I realize the diamond is the same one that was in my mother’s ring.

“What is this?”

“It’s a necklace,” she says with a teasing smile.

“Uh, yeah. I see that it’s a necklace. Where did you get it?”

“Your father told me he’d been considering having the ring made into a necklace for you. I begged him to let me design it. He’s a man. He doesn’t know about jewelry. Do you like it?”

I remember the day I found her in my father’s bedroom, fingering my mother’s ring. Is it possible she was examining it to design this necklace? I honestly don’t know what to believe anymore.

“It’s beautiful,” I say flatly, dropping the necklace back into the box.

“You don’t look happy,” Lydia observes. “I thought you’d love this.”

“Well, you thought wrong,” I say, thinking that I really would love the gift, if only my father had given it to me.

Melody sets a piece of banana cream pie before Lydia and returns to the front of the restaurant to wait on a couple of little old ladies.

“I think I know what your problem is,” Lydia says, stirring the ice in her water with a straw.

“Oh yeah?” I challenge her.

“Yeah. I think you’re mad at me because I dated your father in high school. But you don’t have to worry about that. It’s ancient history. Any feelings I had for him died long ago.”

My mouth falls open.

Lydia dated my
father
?

Does that mean that he was the one my mom and aunt were fighting over? I feel myself getting nauseous.

“Is that why you’re angry?” Lydia looks at me expectantly.

“Can I get you guys anything else?” Melody’s voice causes me to jump.

“Could we get the check?” I ask.

I have to get out of here.

Now.

When we get home, Lydia says she has a headache and goes upstairs to lie down. I find Mattie sitting at the kitchen table, eating a bowl of cereal.

“Where were you guys?”

“At that old diner Dad used to take us to. Mattie, I have something to tell you about Lydia. Something you’re not going to like.”

I expect Mattie to look worried or upset. Instead, she takes another bite of her Lucky Charms. “I bet I already know what you’re going to say,” she says, her mouth full. “Dad dated Lydia in high school, right?”

“How did you know?” I stare at her.

Mattie swallows. “She told me.”

“How could you
not
tell me?”

“Um, because I knew you’d freak out? It’s really not a big deal. It happened ages and ages ago. Besides, it’s not like she still has feelings for him. She has a fiancé back in California.”

“You knew about that, too?” I stand up, my cheeks growing warm with anger. Suddenly, I want to tell Mattie something she doesn’t know about Lydia. I need to show her that she doesn’t know our aunt as well as she thinks she does.

“Did you know that Lydia has been going by a different name in California?”

Mattie looks confused. “What are you talking about?”

“I went through her suitcase one day after school when she was out. I found her wallet. There were credit cards and an ID with the name Lila Harrington on them. I was able to find her fiancé online by Googling her fake name. I called him, and he doesn’t even know where she is. If Lydia is as trustworthy as you think, why would she leave her fiancé without telling him where she was going?”

Mattie shakes her head. “She must have a good reason for not being truthful. Maybe he was abusive or something. Maybe she’s hiding from him.”

I throw my hands up in the air. If Mattie still trusts our aunt, even with the evidence that she’s been lying to the people closest to her, I don’t know what to say.

“Did she give you the necklace?” Mattie asks.

“I can’t believe this. You knew about the necklace too?”

A smile plays upon Mattie’s lips. “Isn’t it pretty?”

I don’t respond. Instead, I stalk out of the kitchen. It kills me, the fact that Mattie and Lydia are acting like besties out of nowhere. Brushing each other’s hair. Talking about Mom. Discussing my private business.

Mattie’s
my
sister.

I’m
supposed to be the one she shares everything with.

And I was.

Until Lydia came along.