Sammy Keyes and the Wild Things (16 page)

EIGHTEEN

When I got to Cricket's house, she whisked the door open and said, “Good news! Marvin's going to be all right!”

It
was
good news, but at the moment I was having trouble caring. I had bigger problems to deal with than a blasted bird.
I'd
been blasted by a bird of a different kind. The sharp-beaked, razor-taloned predatory kind.

That Heather Acosta is one mean chick.

I walked past Cricket and said, “I ran into Heather in the mall. She's announcing to the world that Casey and I slept together.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“Casey wouldn't have told her that. . . .”

“If he did, that's it—I'm done talking to him forever.” I marched into the kitchen. “Can I use your phone?”

“Sure. But . . . you're going to
call
him?”

I punched in his number, leaned against the wall, and waited.

One ring.

Two rings.

Four
rings.

“Hello?” The voice was mumbly. Sleepy.

Well, I was gonna wake him up quick!

“It's Sammy. Did you tell Heather about the camping trip? Because she just announced to the whole mall that we slept together.”

There was a moment of silence and then a mumbly, “Casey . . . ! For you . . . !”

My eyes got huge and I almost slammed down the phone.

“What's wrong?” Cricket whispered.

“That was his
dad
. . . !”

“I thought his dad was gone!”

“So did I . . . !”

Casey was on the phone now. “Sammy?”

For the second time in half an hour, I wanted to curl up and die. And the really stupid thing is, I'd done something like this once before when I'd called his house. I'd gone on and on confessing something at lightning speed . . . to his
dad
.

“Sammy, are you there?”

“Did you tell Heather about the camping trip?” I choked out.

“Haven't seen her. She's at my mom's. Why?”

“She knows we slept in the same tent and she's making it sound really . . . bad.”

“How the . . .” There was a moment of silence and then, “I'm calling Billy. I'll get back to you.”

He was about to hang up, but I wedged in, “I'm at Cricket's. Call me here,” and gave him the number.

“Wow,” Cricket gasped after I'd hung up. “How embarrassing.”

I slid down the wall and held my head. “I can't believe this. I just can't believe it.”

“Hey, what's up?”

I looked up and saw Gary. Porcupine hair matted on one side. Acne in full bloom everywhere. My head drooped back into my hands. I was
not
in the mood to talk to Butterfly Boy.

He, apparently,
was
in the mood to talk to us. “Man! I still can't believe you guys rescued a condor.” He pulled the milk jug out of the fridge and poured himself a monster glass. “No one can believe it. People are all in awe.”

My head clicked up a few notches. “People? What people?”

He stuffed half a Twinkie in his mouth and drowned it in milk. “People I chat with.”

“On the computer?” I asked, and yeah, I was starting to get worried.

“What else,” Cricket muttered, but she was grinning at him. Like they'd had some sort of brother-sister breakthrough while I'd been gone.

“How much does he know?” I asked Cricket.

She shrugged. “I told him the whole story.”

“
Everything?
And he's posted it on the
Internet
?”

“It's not like we did anything wrong. . . .”

“Yeah,” Gary said, milky Twinkie oozing between his teeth as he grinned. “It's not like you did anything wrong. . . .”

“
I
know that,
you
know that, but—”

“Don't freak. I'll show you the thread if you want.” He shrugged. “It's an awesome story. I'd be proud if I were you.” Then he turned to Cricket and said, “
Mom
would be real proud.”

Tears sprang into Cricket's eyes, but before she could say anything, the phone rang. She snatched it off the wall, listened, then handed it to me and gave her Twinkie-toothed brother an enormous hug.

“Billy told Danny,” came Casey's voice. “So I called Danny and found out Heather called him last night.”

I groaned. On top of everything else, I knew that when Marissa found out that Heather was ringing Danny's bell, she was going to be crushed. She has a thing for Danny, and worm that he is, he makes like he's got a thing for her, too.

Casey must have picked up the vibe, because he said, “Don't be too hard on him—he wasn't trying to sabotage anyone. He thought the story was a riot, because, you know, Billy told it. And don't worry—I'll take care of Heather and her twisted interpretation.”

Casey's voice had been getting quieter and quieter, and it sounded like he was moving into a different room so he wouldn't be overheard. “I'll tell you what, though—my dad's roasting me pretty good. Especially after the way I had to fast-talk him into letting me and Billy go solo.”

“I'm so sorry,” I said, but then added, “At least you'll get to explain it to him before Heather does.”

“True,” he said, and then, as if my life hadn't spun out of control enough for one day, he drops his voice even farther and says, “Guess who my dad ran into at that audition in L.A.”

So I say, “Who?” but it's a real disinterested
Who
because I'm still stewing about Heather and, really, I'm not into movie stars so I'm not going to know what celebrity he's talking about anyway.

But then, on the wings of a whisper, he drops the bomb. “Your mom.”

Bubble brain engulfs me.

“Sammy? Did you hear me?”

I couldn't move, I couldn't breathe, I couldn't
think
.

So I did the only thing I
could
do—spaz out.

“I've gotta go!” I choked out, and hung up. Then I slid down the wall and just held my head. And it did flash through my mind that Casey was bound to get fed up with all my weirdy-o-syncrasies and drop me, but how was I supposed to act
normal
when my mother makes it so hard? I mean, living illegally with Grams is one thing. It's stressful, but I don't want to go live with my mother in Hollywood. My friends are here, my
life
is here. And even if Santa Martina is a freak-fest of a town, it's
my
town. I know my way around. I know which cops to avoid and which shortcuts actually work.

And who'd want to live in Hollywood? Talk about a
real
freak-fest! The whole town's a walking, talking, living,
breathing
Barbie-and-Ken convention.

What could be scarier than that?

But the
point
is, even though it's not the best situation, living with Grams is manageable. Grams keeps the secret. I keep the secret. . . . We're good at it. So if my mother would just quit interfering, I'd only have the little stresses in life to deal with. Little stresses like how to ditch someone who's trying to find out where I live. Or how to get in and out of the apartment without being seen. Or how to avoid being blackmailed by a neighbor with supersonic hearing.

Little stresses like that.

But my mother
has
been interfering, and when she does, it causes me
huge
stress. She just doesn't seem to think things through. Like at my birthday brunch when she met Casey's dad for the first time and
flirted
with him. That right there was enough to make me want to crawl under a rock, but she was so thrilled that he recognized her from TV that if I hadn't jumped in and said, “Nah—that's not her, she just
looks
like her,” she would have told him the truth.

See? What was she thinking? If she and I live in Santa Martina like everyone is supposed to believe, how can she be a soap star in Hollywood?

And now Casey's dad went to L.A. for an audition and he
saw
her? Where? Was it
at
the audition? Was the audition for a part on her soap? What man in his right mind would want to be on a
soap
?

Then again, what man in his right mind would marry Candi Acosta? I've had a few run-ins with her, and let me tell you, that woman is even more psycho than their daughter.

Of course, he
did
divorce her. . . .

So maybe he and my mom just bumped into each other on the street? Or at a restaurant?

But what did she say to him? Since I wasn't there to jump in and remind her that telling my vindictive, gossipy, bloodsucking archenemy's father anything that might kick the feet out from under the lie we'd been living for
years
was not a good idea, she might have blown everything!

I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what to say. I didn't know how to act. Which is why I'd spazzed out on the phone and was now just sitting on Cricket's kitchen floor, holding my head, trying not to explode.

“Are you all right?” Cricket whispered, putting a hand on my shoulder. “What happened?”

I shook my head. “I'm just stressed out.”

“Because of Heather?”

I nodded. It was a lie, but then, it wasn't really. These days, all roads seem to lead back to Heather.

Gary pounded the rest of his milk, put the glass in the sink, and left without a word. And who could blame him? The drama of it all was just so . . . teen chick. I hate feeling that way. I hate acting that way. Why does everything get so intense and emotional and out of control? Why can't it just be . . . calm?

“What happened?” Cricket asked again. “You look wiped out.”

I took a deep breath. “
Billy
happened. Billy told Danny. Danny told Heather.”

She let out a soft whistle. “That was quick.”

Then from down the hall Gary shouts, “Hey, Cricket! A contact of mine in India wants to know if you guys are eligible for marriage!”

“Shut
up
.”

“I'm serious! Come here!”

Cricket looks at me like, What do you think? And since anything's better than sitting there stressing about the impending doom that is my life, I get up and head for the dungeon.

Sure enough, there's a posting from some guy named Pryze that says,
These wilderness women are eligible for marriage, yes? I have mansion in India. Will pay transport.

Cricket grunted and said, “Will pay transport? What are we, cows?”

I snickered. “Some guy named
Pryze
—like he's a real
prize
? What a joker.”

Gary turned to face me. “Oh, he's for real. He's on here all the time.”

“But how do you know he's not really a guy named Harry from Santa Martina? He could be living on Broadway at, say, the Heavenly Hotel.”

Gary turned back to the monitor. “You get to know these guys after a while. Pryze is for real. And he's loaded. He bought a marsh fritillary from a guy in Wales for almost six thousand pounds—which is like ten thousand dollars!”

“What's a marsh fritillary?” I asked.

Cricket rolled her eyes. “A butterfly. What else?”

“For ten
thousand
dollars? What is it, luminescent?
Gold?
”

“Actually, it's very ordinary-looking,” Gary said. “A lot like the common monarch butterfly. But the population of the marsh fritillary fluctuates madly, and right now it's real low.” His shoulder twitched in a halfhearted shrug. “Bad investment, if you ask me, but he paid it, and he'll pay a lot more than that for a four-eyed viperwing.” He eyed his sister. “Which is why I'm investing my time in this, okay?” He scrolled through the last few postings in the chat room, then grinned at Cricket. “Hey, too bad it's not the old days when the men bargained off the women. I could probably get big bucks for you, you wilderness woman!”

Cricket snorted. “Thanks a lot. And it was the other way around, wasn't it? It was the girl
and
a dowry.” She turned to me. “Right?”

But I was thinking about the marsh fritillary and the four-eyed viperwing . . . rare flying creatures that a guy in India was willing to pay small fortunes for.

“Gary? Can you do a search for
condor
and
will pay
?”

Cricket said, “Huh?” but Gary's fingers rattled like a hail shower across the keyboard. “Forty-five thousand hits,” he said. “What are you looking for?”

“I'm looking for a reason someone would go out and bait a condor. I mean, if someone's willing to pay ten
thousand
dollars for a little butterfly, there's got to be someone out there willing to pay a
million
for a condor.”

“But it's illegal to own a condor!” Cricket said. “You'd get thrown in jail.” She shook her head and muttered, “What Grayson Mann said about those developers makes a lot more sense.”

“I'd agree with you, only what we saw in the woods does not mesh with that theory. Plus, it seemed really
small
-time.”

She shrugged. “Maybe they hired a small-time guy.”

“Like a condor hit man?” I asked.

She laughed. “I don't know! What do I know?” She shrugged. “Could be, right?”

I couldn't help laughing, too. “I guess so. But remember what Gary said about the dodo?”

Gary nodded. “A dodo would be worth a bundle.”

“So let's say the condor is like the present-day dodo—”

“But it's not!” Cricket cried. “The condor is not extinct; it's coming
back
.”

I eyed her. “Well, if you believe the developer angle, then it makes sense that they're out to kill them all.”

Gary was back, rattling his fingers across the keyboard. “Man. That is one chilling thought.”

Cricket gasped. “All the condors on earth are either in a cage or wearing a transmitter. They could slip them poison in the zoos! They could track down every one in the wild!” She started for the door. “I've got to call Quinn!”