Notable (Smith High) (9 page)

T
here’s no easy way to break the news that you accidentally stole a Buddha full of drugs.

But maybe blurting it out wasn’t the best approach.

Houston skewered me with an arch look that said I’d better not be joking. So I waggled my fingers, letting some of the powder disappear against the ceramic whiteness of the bathtub.

“The drugs aren’t missing anymore.”

“Holy shit.”

Yeah, that nicely summed up what I was thinking too.

He grabbed my arm and dragged me out of the bathroom, which I might have considered, you know, kind of caveman-ish and sexy if it hadn’t
hurt
.

“Hey!” I protested. “I’m not the drug lord here!”

But Houston ignored me, switched on the hotel room light, and used his significantly more muscular arms to force me to sit on the edge of a bed.

“Turn off the light!” Liz muttered. “I can make you wish you were never born.”

Well, that was comforting.

“Wake up,” Houston ordered. “Now. It’s important.”

“And in a few hours you can tell me all about it.” She nestled her face farther into her pillow. “Until then, keep it to yourself.”

“Chelsea ran off with cocaine from a Cambodian drug cartel.”

And I thought
I
had been too blunt.

“I didn’t do it intentionally! And it might not be cocaine!” Houston shot me a withering
get real
look and I raised my chin defiantly. “It could be heroin.”

“Well, in
that
case we have nothing to worry about! Everyone knows that drug cartels only notice when their
cocaine
goes missing.”

Okay, he had a point. “I’m just saying that we don’t have all the facts yet. All we know is that my Buddha is leaking white powder.”

“Who is leaking white powder?” Ben sat up in bed, making the blanket slip down and exhibiting a nicely chiseled set of muscles. Okay, so he had a bad habit of hitting on every girl within a ten-block radius, but that didn’t make him any less ridiculously hot.

“The statue in her bag,” Houston explained as he began pacing the small room. “It should’ve been so
obvious!
I can’t believe it took us this long to figure it out.”

“Right,” I quipped, rolling my eyes. “Because when guys with guns are chasing after me the very first thing I think is
Hm, I bet they’re after the fat man in my purse
.”

Amy shook her head. “You know that’s religiously disrespectful, Chelsea.”

“You’re right. I’ll try to be more politically correct. The full-figured gentleman? I’d call him big-boned, but I don’t think that explains his waistline.”

Amy kept shaking her head but failed to repress her smile.

“So wrong.”

“So sue me. Or shoot me. Oh wait, we’ve already got people trying to do that!”

Houston didn’t stop pacing, which might explain how he stayed in such good shape. If he strode around every time he got stressed, then an uptight guy like him had to be clocking in serious mileage every day.

“Everything makes sense now.” Houston still looked disgusted with himself. “They came for the statues, only saw one, and started pummeling Neal. At least until Big Mouth over here started screaming and they spotted it sticking out of her goddamn bag.”

Just like that I was the screwup again. If I hadn’t taken the statue, none of us would have been in this mess. All I’d had to do was drop my freaking bag and let the thugs reclaim the white powder. Then they would’ve had no reason to keep pummeling Neal.

It was all my fault.

Nobody said it, but I knew they were thinking it. Just like I knew they expected me to flip back my long blond hair while they tried to clean up my latest mess.

“Okay, so I think it’s safe for us to assume that they want it back.”

“Nah, they only care if it’s cocaine, and we might have heroin.”

Okay, even by regular Houston standards, that was way too heavy on the snark.

Liz pounded a fist against her mattress. “Will both of you please shut up!
I want to sleep!
”

“Dude.” Ben shook his head while Amy cleared her throat.

“Maybe this isn’t a bad thing.”

“Oh yeah?” Houston forced himself to sit down. “How do you figure that, exactly?”

“Well, now we know what they’re after and exactly where it is.”

None of it felt real. Because Houston was right; the full extent of our crisis sounded like a joke straight off the pages of a worst-case scenario handbook. Freeing our professor while avoiding one seriously pissed-off drug cartel in a country known primarily for its history of death, destruction, and land mines? Yeah, if it hadn’t been my life at stake, I might’ve enjoyed waiting for the punch line.

“Correction: They’re coming after
me,
” I said coolly, as if the thought didn’t have me breaking into a cold sweat. “They saw
me,
they saw
my
bag.
I’m
the target.”

“Maybe we could hand it over to the government while we explain about Neal.”

“And you called me naïve, Amy? How do you propose we explain that one?
Yes, sir, I brought this Buddha full of cocaine for you. I want to trade it for the American you’ve got on drug trafficking charges. He didn’t do it. How many pounds of coke am I carrying? Gee, I dunno!
”

Ben broke the resulting silence by whistling. “Okay, it’s official. Chelsea definitely has to make her mark in Hollywood.” He grinned. “You deliver one hell of a monologue.”

“I also have a point. You guys aren’t involved. If any of you want out, leave now.”

“If they leave, can I
sleep?
” Liz snarled. “At the very least someone should have the decency to make me some coffee.”

Houston released a tense breath. “None of us are ditching, Chelsea. We just have to figure out a plan that doesn’t include death or incarceration.”

“We could always contact the Cambodian embassy once we’re safely in Thailand,” Amy suggested.

“No way. We can’t risk getting caught with the drugs.”

Somehow her eyes managed to widen. “We’d leave those here, of course!”

“We can’t just abandon our only source of leverage.” I lifted the Buddha dramatically, only to lower it quickly when my aching shoulder muscles complained. “This is all the protection we’ve got if things go south.”

“You know you can always come to me if you’re worried about
protection,
Chelsea. . . .”

I stared at Ben in disbelief. “
Really?
You think
now
is a good time for your stupid pickup lines?”

He shrugged. “I thought you might need a distraction.”

A pillow smacked his face with impressive force considering that Liz’s head had been buried under it only seconds earlier. She forced herself into a sitting position, glaring at all of us equally.

“Here’s what we’re going to do.” Her voice still sounded rusty with sleep. “We’re going to find an Internet café and let our families know we’re okay. Then we’re going to contact Lewis & Clark so that they can handle the Neal stuff.”

That actually sounded like a pretty good plan except—

“How are they going to free Neal?” I demanded. “It’s not like the dean of a liberal arts college has much pull in
Cambodia
.”

“Yeah? Well, neither do
we!
” Liz snapped. “And since I’m rather fond of my body parts, forgive me for not wanting to go on a suicide mission. Time to move on.”

“So you want to ditch him.” I couldn’t believe it.

“No. I want you to get it through your very thick skull that we’re not bulletproof!”

It wasn’t fair for me to expect them to risk their lives for Neal. Especially since I still wasn’t sure I could handle standing in the line of fire. That kind of stuff might look cool in action movies, but I still remembered the heat radiating off the bullets Backup had sent in my direction. The smartest move was to dump the drugs and flee the country.

Which meant that all the whispers about Chelsea Halloway were right. Pretty girl but not very bright. Doesn’t have two spare IQ points to rub together. No wonder Logan chose Mackenzie Wellesley over her; he probably wanted to have an intelligent conversation for a change.

Screw it.

I didn’t care.

Not when it came to helping the one person who’d ever treated me like I was more than my looks.

So yeah, maybe the brilliant Mackenzie would have cut her losses and played it safe. But instead Neal had Smith High School’s most reckless idiot determined to free him—alone, if necessary.

Lucky him.

I
t was surprisingly easy to ditch the group.

I waited for them to leave for the Internet café before I packed in the bathroom, making sure I took all the essentials: a few shirts, my shortest skirt, and my sexy black heels, along with some smaller items like my iPod, passport, wallet, laptop, cosmetics, oh, and a Buddha full of drugs. No way was I letting that out of my sight. At least not until Neal was back where he belonged.

Then, before I could chicken out, I faced myself in the mirror and pulled out a pair of very sharp-looking scissors I’d swiped from Amy’s needlepoint bag.

It’s amazing what a few strategic snips can do to alter someone’s appearance. Instead of flowing down my back, my hair now barely dipped below my shoulders. Okay, so maybe my own personal transformation required more hacking than snipping. Whatever. It still looked good and I wasn’t finished yet. I rummaged through Liz’s bag until I came up with her hair dye.

I’d never pictured myself as a redhead. Then again, I’d also never imagined I would have to alter my appearance to evade a drug lord. And given the option of going red, blue, purple, or
dead,
ginger was definitely the winner. I might be on the run, but I still didn’t want to look like a Smurf.

Still, it was weird checking myself out in the mirror post-transformation, because the girl who gazed back looked . . . badass. I imagined everyone’s reaction to the change: Ben would probably make some stupid crack about redheads burning up the sheets; Liz would yell at me for pawing through her suitcase; and Amy would carefully choose her words to sound vaguely complimentary, like, “Well, it’s certainly a change.”

As for Houston . . . at most he’d raise an eyebrow before refocusing on the task at hand: getting everyone safely back to Oregon.

Everyone except for Neal.

Which was why I’d decided to make a plan of my own—one that didn’t involve sticking around an empty room waiting for everyone to return from the Internet expedition that they had decided was too dangerous for me. Houston had practically ordered me to sit and stay in the room like a disobedient puppy, while he updated
my
dad on the situation. He claimed it was because between the two of us, I was more likely to catch the eye of a criminal. I thought it was far more likely that he wanted to control the narrative and make sure that my parents received the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

But this time his overbearing impulses worked to my advantage.

Their excursion gave me enough time to work my makeover magic and write a note before I began strolling down the streets of Siem Reap.

Nobody looked at me twice.

Okay, that’s not exactly true. Plenty of eyes lingered on the way my distressed jeans emphasized my legs and my tight, clingy shirt highlighted my other, um . . . assets. I’m used to getting
those
looks, though.

That’s the nature of high school. At least for me.

Still, I had to keep fighting the urge to double-check that no one behind me was loading their gun for round two. It took all my years of ballet training to create a deceptive air of nonchalance as I sauntered through the bustling crowds until I found an Internet café far enough away that I knew I wouldn’t be running into any familiar faces. I handed over a few dollars to a guy behind the desk, sat down at an abused-looking computer, and logged on to my email account. Then I quickly deleted all the stupid Facebook notifications cluttering up my inbox so that I could concentrate on the handful of important messages waiting for me. My dad’s email was painfully abrupt; the subject line (
I hope you made it safely to Cambodia!
) said it all. My mom’s was significantly longer, but only because it was packed with suggestions for possible college essay topics she wanted me to consider.

Ignoring both of them, I focused on the emails from my friends.

I knew exactly which photos Ashley wanted me to send—the ones that ensured that Steffani would never speak to me again if they leaked. The ones I had no business taking in the first place . . . or using as insurance in case she ever considered trying to overthrow me as the most popular girl at school. The whole thing twisted my stomach, partly because it was a crappy thing to do . . . but mostly because the pursuit of scandal was the only reason Ashley had bothered writing to me.

I had no qualms about leaving her message unanswered and moving on.

I clicked reply and got down to work.

I sent the email and felt a jolt of satisfaction as it disappeared into cyberspace. Maybe help wouldn’t arrive soon enough to save Neal . . . but at least now I had the smartest person I knew working on it. That had to count for something.

Although I had a feeling the rest of the group wouldn’t see it that way. In fact, I half expected to see Houston barge into the Internet café and drag me outside so he could yell at me. Sure, I had left a note in the hostel, but I doubted that would diminish anyone’s anger over my disappearing act. Obsessing over their reaction wasn’t doing me—or Neal—any good. If Houston caught up with me, I was fairly certain he’d try handcuffing me to a bedpost . . . and not in a sexy way either.

Still, I could worry about that later.

I had researching to do.