Scare Crow (19 page)

“It’s okay. I know you tried your best.” I unfolded the piece of paper that I had
been keeping in my pocket. It was the wrecking ball of evidence that I had been holding
against him. “I haven’t told anyone or made any copies. You can have it
back.”

Joseph peeled his eyes away from the screen for exactly two seconds before continuing
his obses
sion.

“I can find anything, anyone, anytime. I just don’t understand why I can’t find this
guy. Don’t you have any other information on him? Like just one extra phone digit
or letter of the alph
abet?”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll find another
way.”

“I’ve looked in about a million databases. Tried a million different scenarios. Looked
in deleted files. Not
hing.”

“You mean, you’ve hacked a million datab
ases.”

Joseph grimaced. Apparently the word
hacking
was taboo among hac
kers.

“I hope you got paid well for hack … getting into the library’s system,” I teased
as I lifted from my c
hair.

Joseph reached into a bag of candy corn and threw it in the air for Meatball to catch.
This also explained Meatball’s budding love handles and the hint of caramel on his
dog breath at the end of the n
ight.

“I do a lot of stuff for extra cash,” Joseph admitted. “But that one I did for pleasure.
My mom works part-time at the library. She rolls one of those carts around and puts
books away. The electronic library was going to put her out of a
job.”

This immediately made me feel like a jerk for having wallowed about losing my meaningless
job … and for having used the hacking evidence to blackmail
him.

“Your mom lives nearby then?” My voice had started out normal, but ended with a squeak,
as though I had just hit pub
erty.

“She lives in the Projects not too far away from
here.”

I knew the Projects well. A memory of Cameron sitting on a picnic table waiting for
me flitted across my brain. “That’s really close by. You don’t live with
her?”

“There are two ways to live in the Projects. You either get recruited by one of the
gangs, or you get shot and killed because you’re not in a gang. Sometimes both. My
mom doesn’t want me anywhere near all that stuff, especially since my brother’s already
a gangbanger and wants me to join. I’m the first one in my family to even graduate
from high school, let alone go to college. My mom works three jobs just to keep me
in col
lege.”

I was past feeling like a jerk and heading into Cruella de Vil
land.

“If she loses her job at the library, then she’ll also lose the tuition discount the
university gives to employees and their family. Even if my mom worked ten jobs, she
wouldn’t be able to pay for my tuition without that employee discount,” Joseph fini
shed.

Okay, I was the devil. “It must be hard not being able to go home when they’re so
c
lose.”

“I get to take my mom out to lunch every once in a while. When she’ll let me. Plus
she brings me home-cooked meals a couple times a week. Meatball really likes her meatb
alls.”

I hated the fact that Joseph and I had been living under the same leaky roof for over
a year and that because of my … issues, I didn’t know any of this. I could feel red
leopard spots creeping up my
neck.

While Meatball waited on the tiptoes of his paws for another treat, Joseph dug into
his drawer, pulling out a small stack of print
outs.

The first was an article on my father’s bail hearing. The second was from the
Callister City Standard
’s gleeful announcement of Victor’s key-to-the-city cere
mony.

He pointed to my father’s article first. “So you’re
that
Emily Shep
pard.”

My breath was shallow. “How did you get
this?”

“You left your Internet search history all over my computer.” He said this as though
I had just asked him what color his blue shirt was. “Can’t say I understand why you’re
broke all the time or why you even live in this shithole. But what really interested
me at first was why you had printed this article.” He pointed to Victor’s article.
“That is, until I saw
this.”

Joseph pulled out a third piece of paper—the article on the bum who had spray-painted
Victor’s car. “I recognized the color of the spray paint. Ruby Red. My signature graffiti
color, which has mysteriously gone mis
sing.”

So he was a regular Sherlock Holmes, or I was the worst lawbreaker in the w
orld.

The heat that had been creeping up my neck a few seconds ago was pushed down as the
blood left my face. I simply stared at Joseph blank-faced, knowing that he had everything
to destro
y me.

Joseph laughed, leaning back in his chair. “It’s funny how little you can know about
someone you’ve been living with for over a
year.”

My exact sentiment. “What do you
want?”

“What do you
mean?”

“In exchange for the information. What do you want to keep your mouth
shut?”

“Not everyone is an extortionist. Are you always this paranoid?” he wondered, crinkling
his forehead. “I might not understand it, but I think what you did was really awesome.
I hate that guy. When my brother was nine, he got caught by this same cop when he
was trying to sell allergy pills he stole from the pharmacy. This Victor guy beat
him up so bad that my mom didn’t even recognize him when his friends dragged him back
to our apart
ment.”

The feeling of relief was quickly replaced with an inflow of anger. “And you didn’t
report
him?”

“Report him to whom? Who would believe a street kid from the Projects over a hero
asshole
cop?”

I knew the feeling. Victor was untouchable. Almost untouch
able.

“Why’d you do it?” Joseph aske
d me.

My mouth stretched thin, and my brows ar
ched.

He shrugged, accepting my nonanswer. “I also guess that Griff doesn’t know anything
abou
t it?”

I bit the inside of my cheek. Griff had only seen me coming home soaking wet. If he
knew what I had actually been
up …

Joseph continued, “It’s probably best that you didn’t tell him. He hardly sleeps as
it is. His head shoots up from the pillow if you even move your big
toe.”

“Thanks” was all I could tell Joseph. He had done for me what I hadn’t done for him:
not use the information as black
mail.

“I’ll keep looking for that guy,” he told me when I was leaving his room, as if I
didn’t feel bad enough. “That kind of stuff bugs the hell out of me. Nobody should
be able to hide from me like
that.”

He was taking my search as his own personal treasure hunt, sudoku for hac
kers.

****

It turned out that I knew more about Pops than Griff did, even though I had only been
there once. I knew it was likely near a reservation. Pops had mentioned to me something
about tribal legends, though I couldn’t remember which tribe. I also knew it was within
a day’s drive of Cameron’s cottage. And there was that little hotdog stand we had
eaten at—the one with the waterfall, the one where I had offered to Cameron that I
join him in the
business
. He would be rolling around in his grave if he knew what I was u
p to.

The bad part was that there were at least ten different reservations that were within
a drivable distance for my station wagon, and while our search had turned up over
three hundred hotdog stands, none of them were located near a waterfall. In fact,
we couldn’t find the waterfall anywhere. I was sure, almost sure, I hadn’t just imagined
the water
fall.

It was exciting to be sitting at a computer with Griff, planning our weekends around
road trips to the country. His mood had picked up, and so had mine. Because I was
in the midst of exam season, there wasn’t much free time. I studied all week and should
have been spending my weekends studying … but I didn’t. I was pretty sure I had aced
my constitutional law exam, but my ethics exam had definitely been a bust. I supposed
this was evidence of my skewed morals as of
late.

Our first weekend out had been a bust, but only in the sense that we didn’t find Pops
or the hidden barn. We had packed a really good lunch. But Meatball ate the sandwiches
and the crackers when we failed to notice that the bag had fallen open on the backseat.
So we settled for the leftover soup and hot chocolate that Meatball couldn’t ge
t to.

Everything was different now in the countryside. The land had gone cold and hard.
Sunlit hours were few. This made playing
I Spy
really easy since everything was white or brown or pitch-black, but it made it difficult
for me to recognize any landmarks that Cameron and I would have cro
ssed.

On our way back, we bought a Christmas tree from a shady guy on the side of the road
who had just a few firs in the back of his pickup truck. The tree trunks had been
cut in many odd angles, with splinters coming out the sides. Wherever he had (illegally)
acquired these trees, they had been hastily cut. We got home, dragged the tree in,
and found a corner for it. And as Griff put his arm around me and we watched the black-market
tree, I realized what this meant. That Griff and I were going to spend the holidays
together. That this was going to be a happy Christmas. That I was starting to feel
happy a
gain.

I felt stronger with Griff at my side. Stronger than I did before he came to find
me, and definitely stronger now that he was looped into my world.
Most
of my world. It was as though I had grown two inches, or perhaps I was just walking
with my head held higher, my spine straig
hter.

We didn’t make much more progress the following weekend either. This time we had headed
northeast, but the drive was slow because of the thick snowflakes and because the
Roadmaster was starting to protest winter. When it took what seemed like its last
breath for the Roadmaster to climb a slight hill, Griff and I decided to pull over
to give the old girl a break before she gave up on life and left us out in the middle
of now
here.

We got out of the car and found a tree to sit where we could keep an eye on Meatball
while he burrowed his nose into the snow like a drunken groun
dhog.

We both leaned against the wood and sighed at the same time. There was a part of me
that wanted this moment to last. The other part knew that it couldn’t, for so many
rea
sons.

“This won’t last forever, you know,” I said. “Eventually we’ll find what we’re looking
for.”

“And then
what?”

“I don’t know. Things will ch
ange.”

He shrugged. “Things always change. You just have to roll with the punches, I guess.
Whatever happens, we’ll figure it out toge
ther.”

I watched Meatball throw himself into the snow, legs flailing skyward. I wished I
was
him.

“You’ve got a snowflake on your nose, Ginger.” Griff took his thumb and wiped the
snow off my
nose.

I hadn’t heard him call me Ginger in a long
time.

“When we first met,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest to keep warm, “you told
me that you were planning to get back to fighting as soon as you could get yourself
out of debt. You’re out of debt
now.”

“Didn’t you hear me earlier when I said that things always ch
ange?”

“I don’t want to be the one who makes you give that up, G
riff.”

“Nah,” he said, “that part of my life is good and
over.”

“You’re a hero to a lot of people. Hunter wets his pants when you say hi to him. You
were really good at it, and you seemed to enjo
y it.”

“Seemed. Past tense. I’m not going back to that, Em. I realize now that fighting had
taken me to a dark place. I don’t ever want to go back to being that guy in that w
orld.”

I knew I was being hypocritical. Because I was the one who was forcing Griff to stay,
who was forcing Griff to give up something that he had clearly once loved. The guilt
was starting to eat through my
skin.

“Is it so bad that I just want to be normal … with you?” he said t
o me.

“Okay,” I said in a tone that was sarcasm-heavy. He obviously had absolutely no idea
what normal
was.

Then Griff did something that I hadn’t seen coming. He leaned in and kissed me on
the m
outh.

And I did something I hadn’t seen coming. I kissed him
back.

It was a soft, freeing kind of kiss. The kind of kiss that makes you want to spread
your wings and fly up high and over mountains and above the sea and into the br
eeze.

But as Griff’s hands came to my face as naturally as they would come to hold my hand,
I pushed him back and shook my head, daring the tears that wanted to rear their ugly
head to stand
down.

I called Meatball over and walked back to the car. Griff followed a few minutes later,
and we drove
off.

His eyes flickered from me to the road as we sat in a silence that was so thick, so
pressured, it could explode us. At least half an hour had gone by before any words
had been uttered, until Griff piped up in the clearest voice I had ever heard, “I
love
you.”