Sammy Keyes and the Cold Hard Cash (15 page)

TWENTY-EIGHT

“Isn’t that
Marissa’s
suit?” Dot asks when she hears me gasp. “She showed it to me on the way over!”

And I’m sorry, but my own advice about ignoring Heather was now out the window. I got immediately
fried
over Heather’s unbelievable nerve. I mean, stealing someone’s swimsuit and faking like it’s yours might be insane, but for Heather it’s a typical stunt. And good luck getting it back. She’ll just sneer at you and whisper, “Got a receipt, loser?”

So while I’m getting madder and madder and my mind is flashing with all the dirty, rotten,
unbelievable
tricks Heather has pulled on
me
in the past, another cabana door opens.

An identical lime green bikini comes walking out.

And this time, Marissa
is
inside it.

My jaw drops.

My eyes pop.

Dot whispers, “Whirling windmills! They’re wearing the same suit!”

Now, if this had been two
guys
in the same swim trunks, no one would have cared or even noticed. And if the swimsuit had been, you know, some happy Hawaiian print or something, maybe it wouldn’t have been so glaring. But this suit was neon-bright and not exactly risqué but kinda…
daring.

And on top of not wanting your fashion statement stolen, who wants to be twins with Heather Acosta?

Not Marissa, that’s for sure. The minute she realized what was walking a few yards ahead of her,
her
jaw dropped, and behind the movie-star glasses she was still wearing, I’m sure her eyes popped.

Heather must’ve picked up on the fact that something weird was going on, because she looked over her shoulder through
her
movie-star glasses and instantly skidded to a halt.

Holly summed up the situation nicely: “Uh-oh.”

We were around the pool and at Marissa’s side in no time, but Heather was already facing off with her, pointing at the cabanas. “Go back in there and take that off right now!”

Marissa just stood there.

“Why would you
want
to wear it?” Heather said, looking her up and down. “You must be so embarrassed!”

And then does she follow up by saying something about looking like twins or even copycatting?

No.

She wobbles her head and says, “It looks
so
much better on me.”

Which was a big steamy pile of manure—it actually looked way better on Marissa.

Holly steps forward. “Get over yourself, would you, Heather?”

“Stay out of it, would you, Trash Digger?”

Well,
I’d
been trying to stay out of it, but this was too much. “Go back to your sticky little web, Heather. So you guys have the same suit. So what?”

Heather sneered at me, then turned it on Marissa. She pulled the sunglasses down low on her nose. “Why don’t we ask Danny who looks better, huh?” Her sneer grew bigger. “Oh, never mind. I
know
what he’ll say.” She gave an evil grin. “He
kissed
me, you know.”

This was obviously meant to light Marissa’s fuse, but before Marissa could react, I rolled my eyes and said, “Yeah, yeah, we know.” I snorted. “And then you dumped him out the window into the mud and made him crawl home. Must’ve been some kiss.”

Well, that totally lit
Heather’s
fuse. Her firecracker eyes sparked as she tried to figure out how we knew about her little kissing calamity, and the conclusion she jumped to did not happen to involve us spying through her window.

“That sneak!” she snarled. “I’m gonna
kill
him!” Then she stormed off, most likely in search of someone
I’d
been kinda looking out for since we’d arrived.

Casey.

I tried to push him from my mind, and I focused on Marissa. “Now will you
please
go put on your one-piece? We’re here to play water hoops, not fight the Great Bikini War.”

“I didn’t even bring my one-piece,” she whimpered. And as we followed her back to her lounger, I could tell she was about to break into tears. “First Danny, then my suit?”

“You look way better in it than Heather,” Dot told her.

“Way,” Holly confirmed.

“But you’d be having way more fun in the water,” I said. “Come
on,
Marissa. Take off those glasses, get in the water, and just be you!”

Just then Brandon hoisted a megaphone and called, “Time to do battle! If you’re playing, come on over here!” He slung his arm around a very tan, very blond guy, obviously also a high school swimmer. “I’m Red leader. Andrew here is Blue leader. To make it fair, we’ll pull players by age—youngest first.”

I tried to drag Marissa down to the gathering, but she refused to go. “Maybe later,” she finally said, shaking me off.

So the rest of us went over, and after the dust had settled, Holly and I were on Brandon’s team, and Dot was on Andrew’s.

As usual, we were the youngest players.

And three out of only five girls willing to get wet.

The rules of McKenze-style water hoops are easy—anything goes. The exact number of players doesn’t matter, as long as it’s pretty even. There are no timed periods—you play until you’re exhausted or famished or both. There are no “handling” rules—you can move the hoop. You can
submerge
the hoop. You can even get out of the pool, just as long as at least one foot stays in the water.

What you’re
not
allowed to do is hold on to another player. Latching on to the
ball
while another player is holding it is fine. You just can’t latch on to the player.

So there’s basically just one rule: Don’t drown or cause to be drowned.

Anyway, all the players strapped on team caps and got in the water, and then Dr. McKenze came out for his annual water hoops toss-up. “You kids ready?” he called, holding out the squooshy purple ball.

“Ready!” we all roared.

Up went the ball. “Let the games begin!” he roared back.

I held back while Andrew and Brandon battled it out for the toss-up, and when I saw that Andrew had possession and was making a break for the net, I did a move I’ve perfected over the years—I dived down and came up
inside
the hoop pyramid, sticking a fist straight up through the net.

Sqooosh
went the ball right on my fist, and it punched back out.

I came up, gasping for air, and heard Andrew sputter, “What!” while Brandon whooped and cried, “Way to go, Sammy!”

That was it for me. I didn’t think about Casey, I didn’t think about Heather, and since Holly and Dot were playing, I didn’t really think much about Marissa. I just
played.

And yeah, maybe that wasn’t very nice of me, but the rapid-fire pace of the game just sort of blasted away everything else.

Besides, Holly was great at receiving passes and moving the ball forward, and Dot turned out to be a fierce competitor. At one point it was her and me wrestling like mad with the ball, and she flipped me completely upside down and
over,
and when we came up for air, she said through gritted teeth, “Give up, Sammy. I’ve got
brothers,
” and around we went again. I finally got water up my sinuses and just let her have it.

People subbed in and subbed out as they got tired or hungry or whatever, so I didn’t really notice the new person on my team until we collided going after the ball. “Casey?” I said, letting him have the ball. “When’d you get here?”

“Just now,” he said, panting a little. “Billy couldn’t find his suit.”

“Billy?” I asked, but I wasn’t thinking about Billy.

Or the ball.

Or the game.

I was just soaking in Casey: His hair curling out from beneath his cap and out of the ear holes. His lashes, so long and clumped together with water. His teeth, so shiny and…smooth. His shoulders, so surprisingly muscular….

And then he was gone, passing the ball, shouting, “Billy! Under! Under!”

It was the most breathless I’d felt the whole game.

And after months and months of running from it or fighting it or thinking the time wasn’t right, I finally couldn’t deny it any longer.

I really wanted to kiss Casey Acosta.

TWENTY-NINE

When Casey took a break to eat, I took a break to eat. When Casey sipped a soda and watched the game from the sidelines, I sipped a soda and watched the game from the sidelines. And even though Holly and Dot and Billy and Danny were doing the same thing, I felt like a little shadow. Like a pathetic little puppy dog shadow.

I acted like the same old Sammy, but I didn’t
feel
the same.

And the awful thing is, I wasn’t the only one who felt different—Casey did, too, but in the opposite way. Oh, he talked to me, but there was a distance. An uncomfortable, stomach-squeezing distance. From the outside everything probably
looked
normal, but inside I could tell he was pulling away from me. He was way more interested in joking around with Billy and Danny than he was in talking to me. Here I’d finally fallen right out of my little security tower of caution, or fear, or whatever, only he wasn’t there to catch me.

I felt like a giant splat of regret.

Why had I held back for so long?

I tried to act like nothing was wrong. I laughed and talked with the group and listened to Holly and Dot whisper about Heather and Marissa, but it was like an out-of-body experience. Like I was floating through the motions of having fun.

And while I was having this out-of-body experience,
in
my body I was feeling small and alone and dorky. I probably looked like a drowned rat with my hair all matted, a towel wrapped around my shoulders. I started feeling totally self-conscious. About
everything.
Casey probably thought I looked like a scrawny little kid.

Then to cap off my self-confidence crisis, Heather sauntered over. “Hi, guys,” she said, all sweetness and light, looking revoltingly stylish in her lime green suit. She sat down next to Danny and gave him an adoring smile. “What a bunch of monkey boys you were out there!”

Danny smiled, but it was a kinda uncomfortable smile.

Like he was afraid of being found out.

Afraid of being
caught.

I gathered my garbage and stood up. “I’m ready for round two!”

“Me too!” Holly and Dot said.

Then the guys stood up, and pretty soon we all had our caps on and were back in the water. “Marissa!” I shouted. “Get
in
here!”

She nodded and finally,
finally
took off the sunglasses and got up. “We’ve got Marissa!” I called, but Andrew protested. “No way! We’re down two players—she’s ours!”

Now, maybe most high school swim stars wouldn’t have cared what side a gonna-be-eighth-grade girl played on, but Andrew’s team was losing 18–26, and a lot of that was because he’d kept underestimating what scrappy dogs we junior high schoolers were in the water. So he demanded Marissa, and for the first time in all the summers I’d been playing water hoops, Marissa and I were on opposing teams.

And two-piece or not, she was on me like white on rice.

Like green on beans!

We wrestled and charged and dived and battled for the ball, laughing and panting and half drowning, then clung to the side next to each other, catching our breath and just smiling at each other.

I didn’t have to say it.

She didn’t have to say it.

It was there like the sunshine, like the happy laughter of summer—no matter what happened, no matter what
guys
came into the picture or left the picture, we were friends.

Forever.

“To the death!” she panted, and dived back into the game.

Now, because the ball sinks, Marissa and I have learned to do underwater reconnaissance. By the time other players have done their little dive to get under the surface, we’ve snagged the stray ball and are moving away from the center so we can pass to someone near the goal.

And in years past it’s worked really great because we worked together. But now suddenly I was battling against her and it wasn’t working at
all.
One of us would get the ball, and instead of bringing it out for a pass, we’d be stuck wrestling the other one for it. So I finally decided to let her have the deep end—I was going to work the shallow end.

It didn’t take long for Danny to make a move toward the deep end. And forget about them being on the same team; to me it was obvious he was there to hang with Marissa.

She was all smiles.

He was, too.

And part of me was happy for Marissa, but most of me was ticked off.

Danny Urbanski is like the charmer and the snake packaged as one.

“Oh boy,” Holly said, noticing it, too.

“At least she’ll be happy,” I said with a frown. “Until he breaks her heart.”

The ball came flooping through the air, so I jumped up, snagged it, and called to Billy, who was wide-open. Billy called, “Case!” after he’d caught it, then flung it at Casey, who was near the hoop.

Immediately about six strappin’ blue-capped guys dived on him like sharks on a baby seal. One of them came up with the ball and dunked it.

“Twenty-
four,
twenty-six!” Andrew crowed. “We are makin’ a comeback!”

Casey looked at Brandon. “Sorry, man.”

Brandon laughed, “Like you had a chance?” He put his hand in the air and called out to another red cap. “Scuffy! Over here!”

But Casey swam out of the thick of it, and I could tell he was feeling kind of defeated, so I worked my way over to him and said, “That’s why I don’t play the net. They’re hard-core!”

He nodded, then smiled at me, and a crack suddenly appeared in the wall he’d put up. I could see it in his eyes.

“I’m sorry things are weird,” he said.

I was so relieved that he was saying things were weird and that it wasn’t just my stupid paranoid imagination or something that I reached over and touched his arm. “Me too.”

Now, I’m not a gooey-eyed person. Touching
hands
makes me nervous. So facing someone and going gooey-eyed is definitely not part of my repertoire.

But there I was, totally gooey-eyed.

How embarrassing is that?

Especially since he didn’t exactly go gooey-eyed back. He just said, “I’ve got to go redeem myself—we’ll talk later, okay?” and swam off.

So okay, fine. I slapped my gooey-eyed self upside the head and joined the game, this time doing what Marissa and I call the Crocodile Creep. It’s where you get right up behind someone on the opposite team and just sort of hover with only your eyeballs above the water, and when someone passes them the ball, you snap forward and intercept it. They don’t know you’re there, their teammate doesn’t know you’re there…you just sort of lurk and wait and then attack!

Marissa and I are big fans of the Crocodile Creep.

So that’s what I was doing around the pool—trying to find a good lurking prospect. I tried Dot, but she was onto me, and besides, it’s more fun to surprise a larger opponent. So I lurked behind Andrew for a while, but he was too much in the middle of the action, where lurking is not really possible.

And then it hit me that it would be really funny to sneak up behind
Marissa.
I mean, she and I are the Crocodile Creepers. How funny would it be if I did, like, a Creeper double cross?

So I head for the deep end and sneak around the fringes of the action, searching blue-cap faces for Marissa, but I can’t find her.

So I figure she’s probably busy doing some underwater reconnaissance, waiting for the ball to plunge down in the deep end. So I dunk under and look around for her, but all I see are legs treading water.

Only just as I’m bobbing back up for air, the corner of my eye catches something.

Something way down at the bottom of the pool.

Something lime green.

I take a quick breath and bob back down, and sure enough, it’s Marissa at the bottom of the pool, curled up like a ball.

I come up long enough to shout, “Help!” and take a deep breath. Then I swim down as fast as I can, my heart pounding in my ears, my ears screaming from the change in pressure as I go deeper and deeper. All I can think is, Marissa! Oh God, no! Marissa!

When I reach her, I grab her by the arm and push off the bottom of the pool, but she’s heavy. So heavy.

And then I realize that she’s holding on to
me.

At first I’m ecstatic.

She’s alive!

But all of a sudden it feels like she’s going to drown
me.
She’s pulling on me, digging her nails into me, trying to
climb
me.

And I know she’s panicked and out of air and afraid of drowning, but now
I’m
panicked and out of air and afraid of drowning!

So I struggle with her and somehow manage to grab her wrist and twist her arm behind her back. I crank it up hard so she can’t get away or try to latch on to me again, then kick like mad to get us both up to the surface.

When we pop through, I screech in air, Marissa coughs and sputters and gasps and hacks, and all of a sudden we’re surrounded. Brandon’s there, Andrew’s there, Casey and Billy and Danny and Holly and Dot and all these high school kids are there, and people are helping us over to the edge of the pool, going, “What happened? Are you all right?”

I hang on the edge, panting for air as Brandon pulls Marissa so she’s half in and half out. Marissa’s head is turned away from me, resting on the cement as she coughs and sputters and gasps and hacks.

Brandon asks me, “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” I pant out. “She was at…the bottom…of the pool.”

And then, from behind me, a voice says, “Sammy, are you all right?”

It’s a voice I’d know anywhere.

A voice I’ve been sharing secrets with since the third grade.

My head whips around, and there, looking right into my eyes, is Marissa McKenze.