Sammy Keyes and the Dead Giveaway (22 page)

Danny said, “Huh?” but Casey pointed out the window and said, “Cops.”

“Following us?” Danny asked.

Casey nodded, and we all scooted over so we could see.

“Oh no!” Marissa and I said at the same time.

“What?” Danny asked.

It was Squeaky and the Chick.

“Those cops are
idiots
,” Marissa and I said at the same time. Then we both busted up.

“How do you know them?” Casey asked.

Before I could answer, Marissa shook her head and rolled her eyes. “Don't even ask. Just believe us—they are.” Then she yanked on Billy's shirt 'cause his head was still sticking out the window. “Billy! Get in here!”

Squeaky and the Chick tailed us up Broadway, down
Main, down Miller, and along Cook. And when we neared a turn-in to the mall, Billy scrambled forward to talk to the driver. “Go in here!”

“Aye, aye!” the driver said, then cruised along to a passenger-unloading curb and said, “Shall I drop anchor, matey?”

“Aye!” Billy cried, and when we'd stopped, he added, “You are one cool dude,” and jumped out of the Hummer.

“Hey!” Danny called after him. “Where are you going?”

Billy ran toward the big glass doors of the mall, shouting, “Don't set sail without me, mateys!”

So while Billy disappeared inside the mall, Squeaky and the Chick left their squad car idling behind us and came around both sides of the Hummer.

“Evening, Officer,” our driver said, rolling down his window.

“Nice rig,” Squeaky said back. He looked in back at us, and we all sort of waved and smiled.

“Underaged minors?” Squeaky asked the driver, one eyebrow up.

“Hmmm,” the driver said. “They're minors, yes, sir. And that's just cider they have back there.”

Danny held up an empty bottle. “See?”

“Between you and I?” Squeaky said to our driver. “It would behoove you to keep them contained within the inside of the vehicle.”

“Uh, yes, sir.”

“Very good, m'man,” Squeaky said, trying to act hip as he gave the window frame a chummy pat. Then he and the Chick headed back to their squad car.

“Landlubbers,” the driver grumbled as he watched them in his sideview mirror. “Like I could contain you within the
outside
of the vehicle?”

All of us snickered. Then Danny said to the driver, “Leave the partition down, man. You're too funny.”

“Aye, aye, Cap'n,” he said back.

As we watched Squeaky and the Chick zoom off, Danny asked Marissa, “So how do you guys know them?”

Marissa took a deep breath, looked at me, took another deep breath, looked at me again.

“It's not a big deal,” I finally said. “There were these people stealing stuff out of the old Santa Martina Railroad Office and Marissa and I—”

“You, not me,” Marissa said.

“You were there, too.”

“I know, but I didn't knock them down with a shovel.”

“Wait,” Olivia said. “You knocked those two cops down with a shovel?”

“No! The people raiding the railroad office.”

“What railroad office?” Casey asked.

“You know—on the corner of McEllen and Hopper? It's all boarded up.” They just kind of stared at me, so I said, “Never mind. It doesn't matter. The point is,
we
wound up stopping the thieves, because those cops almost let them get away.”

“So where's the shovel come in?” Nick asked.

I shrugged. “We used it to block their escape route.”

“A
shovel
?”

“They could've gone under it, but they were looking over their shoulders so much they crashed right into it.”

“Wow,” Olivia said.

I shrugged again. “It was no big deal.”

Billy came out of the mall wearing an eye patch, a hook hand, and a fake parrot on his shoulder. He waved a skull-and-crossbones flag as he ran toward us. “Ahoy, sea doggies! Hoist the Jolly Roger!” He clipped the flag to the Hummer's antenna and scrambled back inside. “Here ye go, mateys!” he said, passing out eye patches and skull-and-crossbones bandannas.

Olivia looked at him like he was a few trinkets short of a
real
treasure, but Marissa and I shared a grin, then tied bandannas around our heads like do-rags. “Arg!” we said to each other. “Arg!” we said to the guys.

“Gar!” they said back at us with eye patches on.

“G'on, wench!” Billy said to Olivia. “Or we'll make ye walk the plank!”

So Olivia laughed and tied on a bandanna. “Arg!”

“All right then, mateys!” the driver said. “The Black Pearl is set to sail. Where to, Captain?”

Danny looked around at the rest of us. “Where do you want to eat? We'd talked about going to the Grill, but—”

“Arg!” Billy snarled. “And leave the Black Pearl? I say we get a bucket o' bones and sail the seven seas!”

“Aye!” we all cried, so Danny laughed and told the driver, “Set sail for Crispy Chicken, matey!”

So that's what he did, and on the ride over Billy lifted his cup and said, “Another round of grog!” and when we all had more cider, he started singing, “Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me!”

Casey actually knew some of the words to the song, so he
threw in: “We're rascals and scoundrels and villains and knaves. Drink up, me hearties, yo ho. We're devils and black sheep —really bad eggs. Drink up, me hearties, yo ho!”

Then we all joined in, singing, “Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me!”

“We're beggars and blighters and ne'er-do-well cads. Drink up, me hearties, yo ho! Aye, but we're loved by our mommies and dads. Drink up, me hearties, yo ho!”

“Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me!”

The Hummer couldn't make it through the drive-through at Crispy Chicken, so the guys all jumped out and brought back two big buckets of chicken legs. No other parts, just legs. Which, of course, we had to eat like a bunch of ravenous pirates, ripping the meat off the bone, going, “Arg!” and “Gar!” and tossing bones back in a bucket.

Meanwhile, the driver cruised around town whistling the yo-ho song. And even though we all would have been perfectly happy
not
to go to the dance, that
is
where we were supposed to be going. So we headed for school, and by the time we arrived there was no doubt about it— crazy or not, we were going in as a jolly band of pirates.

Arg!

So at our school dances they don't let you into the gym until a certain time or
after
a certain time, and then once you're in, you're not allowed to leave until the dance is over. It's Mr. Caan's way of controlling the situation, and believe me, he's big on control.

Even though there were only about five minutes left before they closed the gym doors, there were still a whole bunch of kids outside when the Black Pearl sailed into the drop-off zone. I guess that's the thing about being controlled—you avoid it any chance you get, even if that means shivering outside when you could be inside out of the wind.

There were also two other limos ahead of us—both white. Heather, Monet, and Tenille were just getting out of one of them, and they were all wearing dresses. I'm talking spaghetti straps, wraps, jewelry, updos, the whole nine yards. I nudged Marissa and whispered, “Do you wish you had gone with them?”

“Are you kidding?” she whispered back. “This is the most fun I've had in my entire life!”

I grinned. “Me too.”

Anyway, as we eased into the drop-off zone, all the kids
shifted their attention from the white limos to the Hummer. It was a total teen magnet.

Danny made us wait for the driver to open a door for us, and when he did, we all piled out, going, “Arg!” and “Gar!” and “Ahoy there, matey!”

Real classy, huh?

Everyone laughed, especially at Billy, who was carrying the bucket of chicken bones, going, “Don't cross us, landlubbers, or this be yer fate! Arg!” as he shook a bone. Then he snatched off the Jolly Roger flag and led us all to the gym, saying, “Come along, buccaneers! Come along, wenches! Time to walk the plank!” So a whole bunch of kids followed the seven of us as we marched toward the gym, singing, “Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me …”

Now, as we were waiting in line to have our student ID cards checked, Marissa nudged me and cocked her head toward the parking lot. “Look at her,” she whispered in my ear. “She's in a rage already.”

Sure enough, Heather was talking to Tenille and Monet, hands clenched, face pinched into a frown. Then some girls behind us started gossiping about them.

“Why are they dressed like they're going to the prom?”

“Why'd they get a limo? Aren't they all seventh graders?”

Pretty soon a lot of people in line were talking about them, making the typical cutting junior high remarks.

Now, part of me was surprised by this. From the way
I'd
been processed through the gossip machine for most of the year—thanks to Heather—I figured kids just bought what she sold.

But now here I was listening to the machine turn on
her
, and I couldn't help feeling a little … sorry for her. And Casey. I mean, he was standing right beside me and could hear all the acidic remarks, too. And even though he always acts like Heather is a pain, she
is
his sister, and how could you
not
be embarrassed by what everyone was saying?

But when I looked at him like, Ouch! he just rolled his eyes and said, “I tried to warn her, but you know Heather.”

Then he looped an arm around my waist and smiled. “You're the last one who's supposed to be feeling sorry for her, y'know?”

I tried not to jerk. Tried not to look totally freaked. But his hand was warm. And heavy. And all of a sudden it felt like everyone was watching and whispering about
us
instead of Heather.

But then we were in the foyer and it was our turn to show our IDs, so his hand dropped away.

The people checking IDs and handing out yearbooks turned out to be Mrs. Ambler and Vice Principal Caan.

“There you are!” Mrs. Ambler says to me, but when she sees who I'm with, her eyes sort of bug. She recovers quickly, though, and says, “Well!” as she checks a list. “Sammy ordered a yearbook,” she says to Mr. Caan, “and Mr. Acosta …gets one, too.”

So Mr. Caan hands over two yearbooks and two pens and says, “What's with the pirate theme tonight? I had to confiscate Mr. Pratt's hook hand and his ‘bucket o' bones.’”

“We sailed in on the Black Pearl, sir,” Casey tells him.
Then he hitches a thumb toward the parking lot and says, “Courtesy of Danny's mother. Check it out when you get a chance.”

“Well, have a good time,” he says, then eyes me with a sigh. “And promise me you'll stay out of trouble tonight, all right?”

“Arg!” I say with a little squint, then laugh and add, “Of course.”

So into the gym we went. The lights were off except for a disco ball in the middle of the room, some light-up palm trees, and spillover lighting from the foyer and the locker-room hallways. There were chaperones posted at every exit, and balloons, streamers, and painted butcher-paper signs that said FAREWELL
8
TH
GRADERS and HAVE
A
GREAT
SUMMER decorated the walls. Music was thumping through speakers on either side of some tables where a DJ had set up, but no one was dancing—they were all gathered in little groups off to the sides, poring over their yearbooks.

Billy had already attracted a covey of girls and was entertaining them by pretending to converse with his parrot, while Marissa and the others were standing near a light-up palm tree, checking out their yearbooks.

“Come on!” Casey said with a smile, then grabbed my hand and led me over to the others.

Now, Casey
has
held my hand before. Actually, he's
kissed
my hand before, but that was at a Renaissance faire when he was playing the part of some Renaissance guy. It didn't mean anything, but my hand was freaked out about it for a week anyway.

So what I'm confessing here is that my hand is real
good at making a huge deal out of nothing. Like one time Brandon McKenze let me borrow his catcher's mitt, and my hand thought it had died and gone to heaven.

Stupid, sweaty appendage.

And now with the way Casey had grabbed it and was pulling me along, well, you'd think that I'd stuck it in an electrical outlet or something. There it was, spazzing away, while the rest of me was too paralyzed to yank it free.

Luckily, you need two hands to look in a book, so once we were with the others, our hands just sort of went their separate ways. We all wound up sitting on the floor in a circle, checking out our yearbooks, laughing at the wacky collage pictures and how dorky we all looked in our beginning-of-the-year photos. Then we passed our books around, signing each other's, which was easy for me to do in Nick's and Olivia's because I barely knew them:

But Danny's was harder 'cause what I really wanted to say was, Don't trifle with the affections of my best friend, dude, or there'll be hell to pay, but I knew that Marissa would kill me if I did. So I made some dopey comment about how lucky he was to be getting out of junior high jail before us and just passed it on.