Sammy Keyes and the Wedding Crasher (16 page)

And then we pass by the mailbox.

“Urbanski?” I ask, my eyes bugging out as I read the faded letters on the side of the mailbox. “This is
Danny’s
house?”

“Shhh!” she says frantically. “Be cool! And keep walking!”

I grab her arm. “Marissa, how can you
not
be over him? After everything he’s done to you? He’s a liar and a sneak … and you hated him! Remember during the summer when you saw him kissing
Heather
?”

“I know,” she cries, her face crinkling up.

“Oh, good grief.” I pull her by the wrist. “I can’t believe you’re stalking him!”

“I’m not stalking him! He’s not even out of school yet!”

Which was true. The high school lets out forty minutes after we do.

So I stop and look at her and ask, “Okaaaaaay … so what
are
we doing? Stalking his
house
?”

“No!”

“Then … ?”

“I don’t know!” she wails. “I just can’t help it. He
lives
there. He
walks
here. He … he breathes this air!”

I shake my head and yank her along. “You’re obsessed, you know that?” I look at her. “How often do you do this?”

She shrugs.

“Like, every time I don’t walk home with you?”

She shrugs again, but there’s something more to it than just a Yeah.

“Wait … you come this way in the morning, too?”

She cringes. “Sometimes.”

I stop and turn to face her. “This is crazy, you know that.”

She nods.

“You have to stop it!”

“I know.”

“Is that why you took me this way? Because you wanted me to catch you stalking his house?”

“I’m not stalking his house! And no!” She marches on, muttering, “I can’t believe you even noticed.”

“Are you kidding me? An avalanche would have been more subtle!” I frown at her. “And if you
weren’t
trying to tell me, then I can’t believe you’ve been keeping this from me.”

“Me?” she says, her eyes popping. “What about
you
? I can’t believe you didn’t tell me Billy was the one who wrote on the whiteboard.
Billy
couldn’t believe you didn’t tell me!”

So, yeah, I totally bite at her subject-switching bait. I get all defensive and try to explain
again
why I didn’t tell her about Billy, but still, no matter what I say, she keeps coming back to how Billy is her friend, too, and how she had the right to know. And before we’ve even settled
that
argument, she gives me a defiant look and says, “So what other secrets are you keeping from me?”

“I’m not!” I snap, but then I remember.

Sasha.

Sasha and the phone.

“What?” Marissa asks, zooming in on my expression.

I blink. “Uh …”

She gives me a little shove. “Tell me!”

“Oh, maaaaan.”

“Tell me!”

“I promised I wouldn’t!” But this suddenly seems like a really lame excuse. I mean, it’s not like Sasha was my friend—she was actually kind of strange. And she’d been all huffy to me. Forget that—she didn’t even seem to be
talking
to me. Why should I keep the secret of some strange, huffy girl from my best friend?

Seeing the look on Marissa’s face did me in. “All right, all right!” But I’m hot and tired and just don’t feel like walking while I’m talking about it. So I diagonal over to the shade of a tree, plop down on the curb, dump my back pack and skateboard, and heave a sigh. “It’s about Sasha.”

Marissa dumps her backpack, too. “Sasha? That homeschooled girl who lives out in some farmhouse in Sisquane with six brothers and twelve cats?”

“What? How do you know all that?”

Marissa shrugs. “I have her in math. Preston Davis is always quizzing her about random things before class starts. She’s really smart.” She eyes me. “And a little … different.”

“Yeah, well, that can be a good thing, right?”

Marissa nods. “So what secret are you keeping for her?”

“I don’t know if I’m keeping it
for
her or
about
her. I just pinky swore that I’d keep it, and—”

“You
pinky
swore? With
Sasha
?”

“I know. Weird, huh?”

“How did
that
happen?”

So I tell her the whole thing. From the top. About Sasha sitting in front of me, about me trying to clue her in to the ways of public schooling, about her thinking I was a wimp for not standing up to Heather, and then finally about Heather falling on the ramp and losing her phone. “Heather swore someone tripped her, and of course she thought it was me … but it wasn’t.”

Marissa gasps. “
Sasha
did it?”

So I tell her how it took me a while to figure that out because she’d been so
smooth
, and I just didn’t expect that sort of thing from her.

Marissa thinks about this a minute, then says, “If I was surrounded by six brothers in a farmhouse out in Sisquane, I’d probably know some tricky moves, too. Just for survival.”

I nod. “True.” And for the first time, Sasha being a stealth tripper totally makes sense.

Then Marissa asks, “So when did she admit it? And how come a pinky swear?”

So I tell her about PE and how it had felt like performing some sort of delicate surgery to get anything out of Sasha.

“But she did admit it?”

“Well, sort of. That was weird, too. She didn’t actually come out and
say
she did it, but she did this demented laugh and a little nod and then made me pinky swear not to tell.”

“Good enough for me!” Marissa laughs. “And anyone who takes Heather on like that is a friend of mine.”

“Yeah, well, don’t be so sure.”

“What do you mean?”

So
then
I tell her about the whole you-do-the-downs-and-I’ll-do-across thing and how Sasha’s attitude totally changed after I wouldn’t go along with it, and how she’s basically not talking to me now.

Marissa thinks about this a minute, then says, “You’d think she’d be worried that you’d tell people she’s the one who put Heather’s phone in the Porta-Potty.”

“You’d think,” I snort. “But she can just deny it because it’s my word against hers. And what if she decides to turn it around on me and say that
I
admitted to
her
that
I
did it?”

“Wow …,” Marissa says, blinking at me. “And who would believe you over her, right?”

“Exactly. So I’m just gonna leave it alone and appreciate that she tossed Heather’s precious phone in the turd tank.” I grin at her and snicker, “Target practice!” and we both totally crack up.

Now, I guess we were kinda comfy sitting on the curb in the shade because we wound up staying parked there while we talked about everything from our teachers to our parents to what Billy had said about his dad to Danny to Casey—a subject I immediately shut down—to softball. “I don’t even think I’m going to play this year,” I tell her, re-tying the laces of my high-top. “Ms. Rothhammer says she’s not coaching, and ol’ Scratch ’n’ Spit
is
. It’s just not worth it.”

“I can’t believe how much things have changed,” Marissa says with a sigh. “Softball used to be so important to me, and I barely even care about it anymore.”

“That’s because of everything that’s going on with your family and living in limbo at Hudson’s and—”

She reaches for my wrist. “What time is it?” And when she sees, she bolts off the curb. “Quarter to
five
? How did it get to be quarter to
five
? Mikey’s going to be worried!”

I stand up, too. “Mikey is?”

“Oh, you have no idea,” she says, dusting off.

So we grab our stuff, and off we go to Hudson’s, where I figure I’ll call Grams and tell her why I’m late.

It turns out Marissa’s right—Mikey is waiting for us. He’s doing it by sitting smack-dab in the middle of the sidewalk in front of Hudson’s porch, and when he sees us coming, he jumps up and starts running toward us.

Running
.

I just stop dead in my tracks, because the idea that Mikey would jump up and run was outside the scope of, you know, Mike-ability.

Only it’s not Marissa he’s charging toward.

It’s me.

“Guess
what
?”

I blink at him a minute, ’cause his eyes are shining and his cheeks are glowing, and he’s … well, he’s just not the same old Mikey.

Or even the same
new
Mikey.

“What?” I finally ask.

“I spied on Captain Evil today!”

I blink at him some more.

“
You
know!” he says, jumping up and down a little. “Your teacher?”

“Of course I know who Captain Evil is.” I look over both shoulders and whisper, “Where’d you see him?”

“On my power walk!”

I raise an eyebrow at him. “Your power walk, huh?”

“Yeah. And he dropped this!”

He hands over a flimsy piece of paper.

It’s a receipt, crinkled and smudged.

Hudson has joined us now, and he says, “The power walking was Mikey’s idea. We started on Monday.” He winks at me. “But today we were apparently on a mission.”

“So what was”—I look both ways—“Captain Evil doing?” I ask Mikey as I hand him the receipt.

Mikey looks up at me, shocked. “Don’t you want that?”

Hudson gives me a look and a bouncy nod, which means YES! You want it!

“Are you sure I can have it?” I ask Mikey.

His head bobs up and down. “I can’t figure out what it’s for! Neither can Hudson.”

So I look at it more closely and try to decipher the faded type. There’s the SKU number and then “12×18mgntsn,” with a price of $19.95 next to it.

It’s the only item on the receipt, and the receipt is from a place called Jiffy Print.

Probably something the Vincenator had to get printed for school.

So, yeah, what I’m holding is garbage. But what I say to Mikey is, “Hmm. I’m going to have to try to crack this code,” and then I slip the receipt in my pocket.

He nods, super excited to have handed over this invaluable piece of evidence.

“So where’s Jiffy Print?” I ask, but Hudson cuts in with, “We saw Captain Evil at the motorcycle shop on Main Street.”

“He was trying on
chaps
,” Mikey giggles.

I look at Hudson. “Chaps?”

Hudson holds open the screen door, and as we file in, he says, “Leather overpants. They protect against asphalt scrapes better than jeans.”

“They had fringe!” Mikey says. “He tried on a jacket, too. With fringe!”

“Lots of fringe,” Hudson says, giving me a secret roll of the eyes. “Michael and I spent our walk home discussing fringe.”

“It looks like hairy armpits!” Mikey says. Then he blurts, “Captain Evil has hairy armpits!” and totally busts up.

I laugh and tell him, “It’s a good thing you’re getting yourself into superhero shape, ’cause I don’t know if your sister and I can handle Captain Evil by ourselves. Not if he’s gonna start running around with hairy armpits.”

“Yes!” he cries, and he actually jumps a few inches off the ground as he pumps his fist in the air.

“Looks like we’ve got a sidekick,” Marissa whispers as I go to use Hudson’s phone to call Grams. And as I’m dialing, it hits me that six months ago Marissa would have
been desperate to get rid of Mikey, but now she seems happy.

Happy and
grateful
.

So I’m feeling pretty good … and then I talk to Grams.

“Where have you been? You don’t have softball practice already, do you?”

“Uh …”

“Why doesn’t anyone call me to let me know what’s going on? Did Gil find Lana? Are you still in trouble at school? Why did they think you were making crank calls?
Were
you making crank calls?”

“No! And everything’s fine. I’m at Hudson’s now, and—”

“Why didn’t
he
call me?”

“We just got here!”

“So they held you after school this whole time? Was your mother there?”

I take a deep breath and say, “You know what? I’ll be right home. Just stop worrying, okay? I didn’t do anything wrong, and I’m not going to jail.”

She lets out a big breath and says, “Well, that’s a relief.”

“Grams!”

“Well, it is! You have no idea where my mind has traveled these past few hours.”

“Okay, well, you can dock it in Reality Station now. I’m on my way home.”

And I’m just about to hang up when she says, “Oh! Holly called. Apparently, she has news about Casey.”

I put the phone back to my ear. “About Casey? Like what?”

“Do you think she’d tell
me
? But she did sound quite keyed up, so when you get home, remember to give her a call.”

I hung up and grabbed my stuff, wondering what in the world Holly knew about Casey.

I didn’t wait to get home to call Holly.

Actually, I didn’t call her at all. I went straight to her house.

Well, it’s not a house like you’re used to thinking of. She lives in an apartment over the Pup Parlor, which is a dog-grooming business that her adoptive mom and grandma own. And it turns out I didn’t even have to go up to the apartment. Holly was downstairs, sweeping up dog hair.

“Hey!” she said when I walked in.

It was after five and she was alone, so I jumped right in with, “Grams told me you had some news about Casey.”

She stops sweeping. “He was hanging out by the school. Like, right after school.”

“So … ?”

“So I think he was looking for you.”

I heaved a sigh. “Aw, c’mon.”

“I’m serious! He just had that … that
look
about him.”

“Holly, please.” All of a sudden I’m so tired that I just want to collapse. This wasn’t “news.” This was my stupid little hopes getting dashed, and I felt like a total idiot for
letting any hope creep in in the first place. I plopped on a grooming table and sighed again. “I’m sure he was looking for his sister.”

“But he wouldn’t cut school to—”

“Who says he cut school?”

“They let out forty minutes after we do!”

“So maybe they were on half day or something.”

She eyes me. “Yeah, well, I thought the same thing, so after I couldn’t find you anywhere, I went by the high school, and guess what? Parking lots all full. PE classes out on the fields.…” She starts sweeping again. “He cut school.”