Moxie and the Art of Rule Breaking (20 page)

I was
not
going to talk first.

We stared at each other for what felt like twenty minutes. She finally broke the silence.

“Little late for you to be out alone, isn’t it?”

I shrugged, hoping that I looked more calm and collected on the outside than I felt on the inside, where my stomach was a washing machine on spin cycle. “And that’s your business?”

That predatory grin slid across her face.

“Of course it is, sweetheart,” she purred. She straightened,
then laced her fingers together and stretched her arms over her head. Her knuckles cracked, loud pops in the silent church. A clichéd thug move on her part, but still, my heart sped up.

“What do you have for us? Sully is getting…” She paused. “Anxious. And we both know that the art is here, don’t we?” As she spoke, she reached into her jacket pocket. I flinched, thinking she had a gun, but she withdrew a cell phone instead.

A cell phone with a totally recognizable map of the world case.

Ollie’s cell.

I swallowed hard, fighting fear and anger. What had this psycho done to him? Also, a shred of my brain held on to her question: Maybe she hadn’t seen the mess behind me yet; maybe she didn’t know where the art was. Or that I’d called the police.

“Tell me where my friend is, and I’ll tell you where the art is,” I tried. Deals like that always work in books and movies, right?

“Your friend?” She cocked her head at me. “Oh, the pudgy, sneezy one?” She shrugged, mimicking me from earlier. “I have no idea.”

“Then I have no idea where the art is.” I crossed my arms. How could I get out of this? And where was stupid 911, anyway? Shouldn’t there have been sirens and police cars outside by now?

A little muscle in the side of her jaw twitched.

“We both know that’s not true. Tell me.”

“I think I’ve told you enough already today,” I responded. “Tell
me
where Ollie is.” Hello, standoff.

“Where he is won’t matter if you don’t give Sully what he wants.” The cell disappeared into her pocket. She stepped forward. “I’ll just have to get it myself.”

The answer was in my hands. I raised my bike bag, which was easily big enough to hold the flagpole topper and ku, not to mention the sketches.

“Not if I don’t give
them
to you.” As soon as I got the words out I dropped to the floor, barely noticing the sparkles of pain on my skinned knees, and slid under the nearest pew.

Instead of roaring or yelling or swearing—all things I expected—The Redhead just let loose her bone-freezing cackle.

“Seriously, Moxie? Amateur move. You can stay there all night for all I care. I don’t have to chase you because there’s only one way out.”

While she was speaking I inched back, pushing with the heels of my hands, silently slipping from one pew to the next. If I remembered the layout of the gallery, there was an open window on my right, about halfway down the row. Too high to jump from, but it might help me scare The Redhead.

When I gauged that I was at the right point, I took a deep breath, rolled out from under the seat, and hopped up. If The Redhead, at the other end of the room, was surprised that I’d crossed so much floor space, she didn’t show it. She just raised her head and looked at me as though I were an insect pinned in a museum case.

In two steps I was at the window. They were huge—almost touching the ceiling—and the bottom panels opened to let in air. Not big enough for a body to squeeze through, but perfectly sized for my bike bag.

Holding the bag by the straps, I stuck my arm out the window, dangling it like you’d hold a toy over a cat’s head.
That
got The Redhead’s attention. She went rigid, like an electric shock passed through her, and took two huge steps in my direction before I could even react.

“Come closer and I drop it,” I growled. “And you don’t want the oldest artifact from the museum to end up in pieces all over Salem Street, do you?”

She froze. I was betting that she hadn’t done her research—the ku is made of bronze, so even if it
were
in the bag, it would dent and (maybe) crack, but wouldn’t shatter (at least I didn’t
think
metal could shatter)—and it seemed I was right. She was afraid it would break.

And finally—sirens coming toward the North End.

“Where’s Ollie?”

She brushed off the question like she was swatting a fly. “If you drop that bag, Sully Cupcakes won’t waste any time, or care that you’re a kid, or show you any mercy. You don’t want that. And there’s nothing I can do to stop him.”

“Not like you’d try, anyway,” I sneered.

She shrugged for the bazillionth time. “I’m not feeling very inclined to at the moment. Give me the bag,” she said, and called me a name that I’d used for Jolie Pearson many times. I was under her skin, for sure.

The sirens were closer. I didn’t want to be here when the cavalry arrived. I shook the strap. “Let me leave, and you get the bag.”

She cocked her head, considering my offer. I pulled it halfway back into the room, fished around inside, and snagged my keys, cash, and busted cell phone. Stuffing them in my pocket, I noticed a latch on the window frame. Quickly, I looped the bag’s strap over it, letting it hang over the alley at the end of Salem Street. The Redhead had stayed where she was. I put my hands up, palms out, in a “surrender” gesture.

“All yours. You take the outside aisle, I get the inside”—we’d keep the double row of pews between us this way—“and you get the bag and the stuff in it. Deal?”

She gave a curt nod. The sirens were outside the front of the church now, and although she couldn’t be sure why they were there, I didn’t think she wanted to spend any more time in the building either.

I hit the deck again and rolled under both sets of pews. When I got to my feet, I booked it toward the door, seeing a flash of red hair out of the corner of my eye heading the other way. I was on the staircase when I heard her furious squeal. I bounced down the stairs, jumping over two or three at a time, her footsteps pounding above me, and took a flying leap about five steps from the bottom. I crashed into a table holding flyers and meeting notices, pain flaring across my hip, but I didn’t stop. The Redhead was halfway down the flight, fury twisting her features.

I raced into the main part of the church, hoping to make it
to the open window, and as my sneakers squeaked against the hardwood floor, a deep pounding came from the main doors.

“Boston police! Open up!”

I didn’t stop, but The Redhead’s footfalls paused for an instant.

Two feet away from the window, I jumped, reaching for the sill.

Got it! Score!

I heaved my body through the opening and dove headfirst into the alley, landing hard on my side and adding a fresh scrape to my arm and leg—tights even more torn. But I was on my feet in a flash, racing through the alley toward the back of the church, breath burning my lungs. A narrow street to my right. I turned down it and kept running, sweat streaming down my face, until I got to Unity Street, where there were more people. I slowed to a jog, trying to catch my breath, refusing to look behind me, and crossed the Paul Revere Mall to get to Hanover Street, where the crowds were thick and I could hopefully make it back to the T station—and home—in one piece.

Not that it mattered much. After all, The Redhead knew where I lived.

By the time I reached the Haymarket T station, my breathing had returned to normal, but I couldn’t stop shaking. My arms and legs were jelly-filled bags. And when I finally caught a glimpse of a clock, my heart nearly stopped. It would be close to eleven by the time I got home! The entire ride back to Jamaica Plain, I kept thinking that my escape from The Redhead would mean nothing if my mom killed me as soon as I walked in the door.

When the train stopped at Forest Hills I unlocked my bike and pedaled home, hoping mom wasn’t cruising the streets looking for me. At our house, Nini’s lights were off, but that didn’t mean anything. She sometimes watched the Sox post-game coverage in her bedroom, falling asleep to the analysts’ discussion of every pitch. Upstairs, the living room light in our apartment was on; Mom’s car was in the driveway. A small splash of relief hit me—if they knew I’d snuck out, the whole house would be lit up and Mom would be frantically calling my cell. I locked my bike to the back porch, then addressed sneaking in.

The stairs were not going to happen. Even if Mom had
fallen asleep on the couch watching TV, it was too dangerous—I’d have to open the door, creep past the living room, and then make it up the (very) creaky steps to the third floor. My luck would never hold. But the longer I stood outside, the more danger I was in—The Redhead would want revenge.

Seeing my bike locked to the porch railing gave me an idea. I climbed onto the rail, balancing like a dirt-covered circus performer, and found that if I stretched I could just reach the edge of the porch roof. Muscles still aching, and silently hoping I had something left in me to pull this off, I hopped, reached, and grabbed the roof with both hands. The shingles were rough and still warm from the day’s heat.

For a moment, I just hung, too tired to pull myself up. Then I swung my legs back and forth, used the corner post to kick myself up and over, and I was on the roof.

Our porch roof sticks out from the back of the house, and it’s nearly flat. The problem is that my mom’s bedroom and her bathroom window look out over it. I kept low and crawled to the blank wall between the windows. I’d never been up here before, and was surprised at the stickiness of the shingles. They made crackly sucking sounds under my sneakers.

I had to get to the third floor. There was a tree outside my bathroom window, and it looked like I might be able to climb up, scoot out along the branch, and get in that way. I’d left it open, but the screen was on it.

Time for the big-girl pants, Moxie.

I pushed through the leaves and branches that crowded the porch to get as close to the trunk as possible. I stepped
onto a sturdy branch, and after a few arm-heres, leg-heres, I was even with the bathroom window. The branches were thinner at this height, and I worried they wouldn’t hold my weight. As it was, the treetop swayed in the slightest breeze. I took a deep breath, legs straddling the branch, and slid toward the window. The branch dipped. I gasped and tried not to look down.

It held. Gripping the branch as tightly as I could with one hand, I leaned forward, stretched out the other, and barely touched the screen. I needed to get closer.

A scootch or two more, and I was there. The branch dipped and swayed like a boat on a rough sea—an image of the Rembrandt flashed through my mind—instead of a stuck-in-the-ground immoveable piece of nature. Mouth dry, I leaned forward again. I touched the screen, no problem. There were grooves at the bottom of the frame, and I slid my fingers in to raise it. It squeaked, but slid right open.

Disco.

Hands on the sill, another heave-ho and I was off the branch, body half in, half out of the bathroom. My feet clacked against the side of the house. I pushed myself in, pulling a leg over the sill, bent double, and stepped on the toilet seat. A second later, I was through.

I’ll be honest: I collapsed on top of the toilet for a little while. My body was exhausted to a degree that I’d never experienced before. I seriously fought falling asleep in the bathroom.

Finally, I managed to stand up, close and lock the window,
and brush my teeth. I thought I’d looked bad this morning. Now, with my hair matted with sweat, wide eyes rimmed with dark circles, face pale, and scratch scabbed, I looked like “death warmed over,” as my mother would say.

Seeing as she worked in a funeral parlor, she would know.

I cleaned the fresh scrapes on my arms and legs and finished getting ready for bed. Just as I opened the door to the hallway, my mother’s sleep-muzzed voice floated up the stairs.

“Mox…Dat you?”

“Yeah,” I called.
Please don’t come up here, please don’t come up here
…

“Feel better?”

I mumbled something in reply and headed straight to my room. Tights buried in the garbage, sleep shirt and shorts on, I dove under the covers.
Please don’t come up here, please don’t come up here…

But she didn’t.

And although my body hurt all over, and all I wanted to do was close my eyes, I couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened at the church. Had the police found the paintings? What would that mean for Ollie? Would The Redhead take her fury out on him?

And I realized that by placing that 911 call, The Redhead and Sully Cupcakes knew that I had no intention of handing over the art.

And that meant
everyone
in my family was in big-time danger.