Sammy Keyes and the Showdown in Sin City (12 page)

“Fine!” I tell her, sitting back. “I was just feeling sorry for your mom, okay?”

Candi eyes me in the mirror. “Why’s that?”

“ ’Cause you’re obviously still in love with him.”

“You are
so
out of line,” Heather says. “And stupid!” She looks at her mom. “Can you
believe
her?” She vultures around at me. “Now stop talking to us!”

“Fine.” Then I mutter, “But your mom’s still in love with your dad.”

“Stop it!”

“Fine.”

But even when I’m quiet, Heather can’t seem to let it go. She stays vultured and finally points at me and says, “Stop it!”

“What? What am I doing?”

“Stop thinking that!”

“What am I thinking?!”

“You know what you’re thinking and so do I, so stop it! You don’t know anything about anything!”

Now, this whole time Candi hasn’t said a word, but she has glanced back at me in the mirror.

Like six times.

Which is a lot, considering how she’s darting through traffic.

But what’s really weird about the whole situation is that what I said seems to be news to Candi, too. Like she really thought she was here to stop her ex from marrying the mother of her daughter’s archenemy for her
daughter’s
sake.

And then we’re squealing through a parking structure, going up, up, up, until Candi finds a slot she likes and nose-dives into it. “Let’s go, girls,” she says, flying out of the car and over to the elevators.

The Miracle Mile Mall is huge—like an enclosed little city of shops. But Candi’s jaw’s not dropped like mine. She beelines for a directory, and when she finds Oyster Annie’s, she says, “Come on!” And as she hurries ahead, I hear her hiss, “There’s no stopping us now!”

The main corridor of the mall is like a shiny wide esplanade, with big fountains and park benches and enormous potted plants decorating it. It has shops on both sides and gradually curves to the right. And as Heather and I try to keep up with Candi, I start feeling like this shiny wide esplanade is a track and I’m in some crazy race where I’m somehow stuck in last place. Sure, I’ve got my backpack and a skateboard weighing me down, but not being able to keep up with a woman in heels?

So I’m kind of relieved when Candi comes skidding to a halt, looks around quick, then heads back toward a little cul-de-sac of shops off to the side. “There it is!” she cries, and charges toward Oyster Annie’s, where a girl in a skimpy sailor dress is standing behind a hostess podium. But when we’re about thirty feet from the restaurant, Candi sort of sputters to a stop and just stands there, staring.

“Mom? Do you see them?” Heather asks, and we both scan the little groups of tables set up outside the main part of the restaurant, trying to spot our wayward parents.

The tables are roped off by fishing nets with fake crabs and seagulls and red-and-white buoys. It’s supposed to
look like outdoor dining, because there’s a splish-splashy, tugboat-tooty sound track playing, only we’re standing inside a mall on a shiny floor under fluorescent lights, so something about the whole setup is … weird.

“Mom?” Heather says. “Where are they?”

Candi’s head sort of shivers. “What?” She looks at Heather. “Oh.”

“Mo-om! What is wrong with you?”

“You girls go in. I’ll wait here.”

Heather squints at her.
“What?”

“Go on,” Candi says. “It would look bad if I … if I … went in.”

“But—”

“Come on,” I tell Heather, and hurry for the entrance because Sailor Girl has just gone inside to seat another party and it’s the perfect time to sail in right behind them.

“Wait!” Heather says, yanking on my sleeve.

“Be cool,” I tell her back, and once we’re inside, I split away from the group that’s being seated. “Just act like you know where you’re going.”

“Don’t tell me to be cool,” she says through her teeth, “and don’t tell me how to act!”

“Fine. You go that way,” I say, pointing into a separate area of the restaurant, “and I’ll go this way.”

“And don’t tell me where to go! There’s no way I’m letting you find them first!”

“Oh, good grief,” I mutter.

“That is the stupidest expression. And you use it all
the time! That and ‘holy smokes.’ They don’t
mean
anything!”

I stop short and turn to face her. “Could you give it a rest for just one minute and help me look?” I start moving again. “And do you know what you’re going to say when we find them? We should have a plan, don’t you think?”

“A plan,” she says, like it’s the stupidest thing anyone’s ever said. “You think us being here doesn’t say it all?”

And then I get a bright idea. “Hey! What if we act like we’re here on our own?”

“You mean … like my mom isn’t with us?”

“Yeah! They’d have to take, you know, parental responsibility, right? You can’t just let your kids wander around Las Vegas alone. It’s like … reckless abandonment or child endangerment or …” I laugh. “Or something!”

Heather’s face doesn’t light up like,
Brilliant
, or anything. But her sneer doesn’t show up, either. She just
stares
at me a minute, then snaps to and says, “Whatever. Let’s just find them.”

So we cruise through the restaurant, which sort of horseshoes past a long bar and into another section and back to the front of the restaurant.

“They’re not here,” Heather snarls. “Your tip was bogus!” Then she grabs me and spins me around. “Who is that guy, anyway?”

“What guy?”

“That guy who calls you! Are you just making him up?”

“How could I be making him up? You talked to him!”

“Yeah, but he’s probably just one of your dorky friends!

There’s no way
you
have some informant in Las Vegas. And how convenient that he ‘spotted’ them. You don’t just happen to spot someone in Las Vegas! You’re probably making this whole thing up!”

“Why would I do that?”

“So you could torture me!”

I roll my eyes and head for Sailor Girl, who’s back at the podium. “Believe it or not, I’ve got better things to do than come up with ways to torture you.”

“Yeah, like what?” she says, grabbing me again.

“You’re serious?”

“Yeah! I think you’re making this whole thing up!”

I yank free and shake my head. “Oh, good grief.”

“See! There you go again with that stupid saying!”

We’re at the podium now, so I swing off my backpack, pull out my mother’s picture card, and hand it to Sailor Girl. “I’m trying to catch up with my mother.… Was she just here?”

Sailor Girl takes the card and breaks into a smile. “Yes!” She hands it back and says, “Your dad—”

“He’s not her dad, he’s
my
dad!” Heather snaps.

Sailor Girl’s mouth goes into a little O, and after a short hesitation where she seems to be sizing up the situation, she says, “Well, lucky you. He’s handsome
and
charming. A real gentleman.”

“Do you know which way they went?” I ask, trying to get back on track. She shakes her head and gives a little shrug, so I hitch my backpack back on my shoulder and say, “How long ago did they leave?”

“Maybe ten minutes?”

“Thanks!” I tell her, then jet over to Candi, who’s looking like she’s trapped in some invisible cage.

“Well?” Candi asks.

“We just missed them,” I tell her.

“So now what?” Heather says, sneering at me like it’s all my fault.

So I say, “Well, we came in that way and didn’t see them, right?” but Heather shuts me down by snapping, “I’m not asking
you
, loser!”

“Heather,
stop
,” Candi tells her. “Sammy’s right. We would have seen them, so they must have gone that way!”

Heather wobbles her head at her mother. “Oh yeah? What if they went inside a store? We would have walked right by them!”

Now, the way she said it was so snotty that I didn’t want it to be true, but she was right—we could easily have just not seen them. “So what do you want to do?”

“Split up,” Heather says. “You go that way, we’ll go this way.”

“Okaaaay,” I tell her. “But you’ll have to lend me your phone.”

“There’s no way I’m lending you my phone!”

“So … what if I spot them? How will I tell you?”

“Find a pay phone!”

“When’s the last time you saw a pay phone? No, if I find them, I’ll talk to them myself—is that what you want?”

“No!”

“Right. We’re supposed to be working together. So can you quit hating me long enough to get this done?”

She gives me one of her hard stares until Candi says, “I agree we should split up, but unlike
some
parents, I’m not letting my daughter wander around Las Vegas by herself.” She turns to Heather. “You and Sammy go that way, I’ll go around the other way. We’ll text or call each other to stay in touch. Just stick together!”

Heather tries arguing, but finally her mother snaps, “It’s the only thing that makes sense, so just do it! We’re wasting time!”

So we head out, hurrying along the shiny esplanade, looking in windows. But I’m feeling like we’re both way behind where they might be and that we’re doing a lousy job of checking out stores. Plus there are shops on both sides of the walk, and jetting back and forth is not very efficient. So I finally tell Heather, “If you take that side, and I do this side, it’ll go a lot faster.”

But she won’t. And I don’t get why. I also don’t get why she stays like half a pace behind me the whole time instead of leading. It’s like she’s my shadow, and talk about being afraid of your own shadow—you do not want Heather Acosta sneaking around behind you! Plus, her being back there is reminding me of the times she’s tried following me home from school or the mall. It really bugs her that she doesn’t know where I live, but luckily the times she’s tailed me I’ve been able to ditch her.

Her knowing I live with Grams would be a disaster.

Anyway, not only is her being a few steps behind me really inefficient, it’s also making me a little nervous. So after zigzagging between stores a few more times, I finally
say, “I’m not going to ditch you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“About you ditching me?”

“Yeah. Like when you try to follow me home?”

Her cheeks flush. “Why would I follow a loser like you?”

I give her a casual shrug. “Because I’m
not
a loser, and you’d probably like to torch my house.”

“See how stupid you are?”

I stop and face her. “So you tell
me
, then.”

She crosses her arms. “I’ve never followed you home.”

“I know,” I laugh, “because I’ve ditched you!”

“I’ve never followed you at all!”

“Oh, please.” I shake my head and say, “Look, why can’t you just tell the truth? Why can’t you just say something like, I don’t think it’s fair that you know where I live and I don’t know where you live! I don’t think it’s fair that you can knock on my window on Saturday morning and wake me up, but I can’t do that to you!?”

“Yeah!” she cries. “Exactly!”

I smile. “See? I get that. I wouldn’t like it, either.”

First she just stands there blinking at me, then she sputters, “So?”

“So, what?”

“So, where do you live?”

I laugh again and start walking. “How about I just forget where you live and we’ll call it even.”

“You can’t magically forget where I live! It’s in that stupid little brain of yours, and it’s not coming out!”

I raise an eyebrow at her. “It’s not a stupid little brain,
Heather.” Then I add, “But see? I do get it. What I
don’t
get is why you can’t just
say
that. Why do you have to lie and deny and be so mad all the time?”

She’s walking beside me now and says, “Because it’s not fair.”

I look at her and ask, “What’s not fair?” because it seems like she’s talking about more than just me knowing where she lives.

“Any of it.”

I kind of do a double take at her because her voice sounds so … small. And in all the time I’ve known Heather Acosta, if there’s one thing her voice has never even come
close
to sounding, it’s small.

But before I can figure out what to say, she snaps, “Quit staring at me and start looking for your mother! And why aren’t you showing people that picture of her? We’ll never find them at this rate!”

“Right,” I say with a nod. “How about I show my mom’s picture around on this side of the mall and you show your dad’s picture on that side?”

“Fine!” she snaps.

“I promise I won’t ditch you!” I call after her, and typical Heather, she flips me off.

After that we hurry along, looking inside stores and showing our pictures to anyone who looks like a good target—salespeople hanging outside their shops or standing near the door, random tourists sitting on benches, the guy selling pretzels in the middle of the walkway—anyone who looks like they’ve been in one place for a while. Trouble is, we are totally striking out.

And then I step inside a jewelry store.

“May I help you?” a woman in a sky-blue blouse and heaps of jewelry asks.

Now, this is more a jewelry/
art
store, and I can tell she’s worried about some ragamuffin girl with a skateboard knocking something over. So I hold out the photo card and say, “Just looking for my mother.”

“Your …” And then she sees the card. “She was just in here!”

“She was?”

“Yes! She was with a man, admiring the Umber.”

“The Umber?”

“The glass cascade statue in the window?”

I turn, and there in the window is what looks like a big, scraggly wig made out of strands of glass.

“She didn’t stay long,” the lady tells me. “Just a quick question about price. I sensed they had somewhere else to be.”

“How long ago were they here?”

“Ten minutes? Maybe less?”

“Do you happen to remember what she was wearing?”

“Hmm. Nothing that really stood out. A gray tunic? But he had on a maroon leather jacket with fringe and beautiful tooling. Never seen one like it.”

“Thank you!” And I’m about to leave but at the last minute I stop and ask, “Did you notice any jewelry?”

She laughs. “I do pay attention to jewelry. She wasn’t wearing much. A long silver locket, a few bracelets—nothing of any value. He, on the other hand, had a heavy platinum chain on his wrist and Louis Vuitton sunglasses.”