The Sleepover (12 page)

“Ouch!” I cry when the end of it jabs me in the shoulder.

Achoo!

Veronica whispers, “Number seven!” Like
that's
what's important right now. I stick my hands up as if I'm under arrest, and shimmy out of the bushes. Paige and Veronica follow me, and the three of us stand in front of part of the Hillside Heights marching band, while I feverishly try to find a realistic-sounding excuse for our spy mission.

But in the end, the band kids speak first. Or shout, I should say. “It's you!” one accuses, pointing a finger at us.

I raise my eyebrow (singular). “It's you, who?” I ask.

“You! The ones who stole our float! You have some nerve coming here! Are you back to laugh at us? Where is he? Go get him right now!” This comes from a short girl carrying her flute like a weapon and looking supervillainy in spite of the tassels on her uniform buttons.

Paige's and Veronica's eyebrows (of course
they
each have two) are up in the air now also. “What are you guys even talking about? We've never seen you before in our lives.” Paige doesn't sound scared in the slightest, as per usual. The whole blood-on-her-back thing might have freaked her out, but a bunch of band kids definitely don't. I wish I could be half as calm—but I'm pretty much freaking out. The only
people I'm used to getting yelled at by are my parents, and even that doesn't happen very often. Mom is more of the low-voiced, guilt-trip type.

These kids are definitely yelling. “You came here last night, waited for us to be distracted, and then rolled our Hedgie the Havocking Hedgehog away! Give him back!” the girl with the flute screeches.

I'm pretty sure if I live to be a hundred and sixteen, I will never hear a more ridiculous sentence uttered. But what does it
mean
?

“
What
is a Hedgie the Havocking Hedgehog?” Paige asks.

A boy whose maroon uniform pants are so obviously too small that they show a strip of leg above his sock line answers her. “Hedgie is the giant hedgehog float we've been building all week. We were
supposed
to ride into the gym on it today for our half-time performance at the basketball game. That is, until
you
stole it.”

“We didn't steal your float!” I protest. Finally I'm getting some of my nerve back because no way am I taking the blame for something I didn't even do, and I'm not letting my friends get falsely accused either.

“A group of hedgehogs is called a prickle,” Veronica informs us.

The band kids' jaws drop open, though they quickly snap shut. Flute Girl steps forward, shaking her instrument at us.
But then she tucks it into one pant pocket (where more than half of it pokes out) and extracts a cell phone from the other. “Well, we're just worried about
one
hedgehog,” she says. “And if you didn't steal our float, then how do you explain
this
?”

Paige, Veronica, and I huddle around the phone as the girl presses play on a YouTube video.

At first all we can see is a giant hulking form in the darkness, rolling slowly.

“What is this, like, a surveillance video?” Paige asks.

“No! Be quiet and watch!” Flute Girl orders.
Um, bossy much?

On-screen, the shape passes under a light in the parking lot, and I gasp. On one end of a wheeled platform that holds a crazy-tall papier-mâché hedgehog shaking his fist are Paige and Veronica, pulling on a piece of rope. Pushing from behind is . . . me.

My stomach feels all hollow, and my mouth tastes like sandpaper. I can convince myself that we rescued the ducklings with good intentions and that “breaking in” to school today to return them was also for a legitimate cause, but we had zero reason to steal a hedgehog float. I really
am
a criminal.

I'm still trying to process this when the camera pulls back a little, and I can make out two people helping me to push.

Anna Marie!

And Jake Ribano.

“Anna Marie! She was with us then. This is a huge breakthrough!” says Paige.

“Jake Ribano,” I say breathlessly. Wow, Jake Ribano
was
with us last night, and now we have undeniable proof. I hug his sweatshirt tightly around me. I can't even wrap my head around this much information at once.

The girl with the flute snatches back her phone. “So, you can see we have all the evidence we need to prosecute you. You are
b-u-s-t-e-d
.” She spells each letter and practically spits the
d
.

“Look,” Paige says, dropping her arm from Veronica's shoulders. “I know you have this video and all, but you have to believe us: We don't remember any of what happened last night. None of it.”

The skinny boy with the baton snorts. “No,
you
have to believe
us
. We don't care. We want our float back, and we want it back now.”

Paige throws up her hands. “We don't know where your ridiculous float is. We wish we did, because we'd definitely make sure you got your, er, Hedgie, back safe and sound, but we don't and we can't. We're really sorry.”

“Oh no, blondie,” says the boy with the floodwater pants. “You may be sorry now, but you're not even close to how sorry you're gonna be if we don't have our float back in time
for the game. But I think we're gonna get it back way faster than that, don't you, guys?”

The other band members cackle. Flute Girl even rubs her hands together.

“See, we've been trying to figure out all morning how to contact you, which you made too easy by coming right back to the scene of your crime. You may have thought you could just sit in those bushes and laugh at all the chaos you caused, but we're the one's laughing now because we have something of yours. Something you
really
want—even more than we want our float, I'm guessing.”

I turn a puzzled face to Paige and Veronica, and then my eyes grow big. They have Anna Marie! “You have her?”

“And you're not getting her back until we have our float!” The boy wearing floods grins wickedly at us.

“But we don't know where your float
is
!” This is so not fair. They can't expect us to produce something we've never seen before (that we can remember), and they really, really can't keep Anna Marie hostage like this. We could call the cops!

Except I remember the video showing us committing a theft, so I keep my mouth shut.

The boy looks me up and down with scorn. “Well, I'd say you're sufficiently motivated to find it, wouldn't you?” His band friends giggle as they surround us, hands on their hips.

The one with the fancy baton speaks next. “You have
one hour. We'll be waiting behind the Dunkin' Donuts on Hillside Ave. We expect to see a Havocking Hedgehog roll up then.”

They turn and march away to the far end of the parking lot, where instrument cases lie in a jumbled pile. Veronica shakes her fist at their backs.

Paige and I grab hands. “We have to find it. We can't leave Anna Marie alone with those . . . those
band people
for even one second more than we have to!” I say.

“Do you know I can play the tuba?” Veronica asks.

“O
kay, so now, instead of searching for a missing girl, we're searching for a missing hedgehog?” I shake my head at how crazy this entire morning has been. Baby ducklings and Silly String and a shaved eyebrow and, seriously, could this day get any weirder? But at least we found Anna Marie.

Sort of.

We approach Anna Marie's house from the street behind it and creep through the yard to the Guerreros' back door, which opens into the basement.

I push open the door as softly as I can, happy to see it's as dark in there as when we left it. The pillows are still tucked into our sleeping bags to make it look like we're peacefully snoring inside. And, honestly, if Mrs. Guerrero had turned on a light and seen the disaster we'd made of the basement, she'd have yanked us straight out of our sleeping bags for a serious talking to. I mean, it's Level 27 Nuclear. The fact that
the pillows are still in place can mean only one thing: no one's been down here.

Phew! It's nine thirty, which technically could still be considered early by sleepover standards. I figure we probably have another hour, at least, before Mrs. Guerrero gets suspicious about how late we're sleeping in and comes down to investigate.

Except we have waaaaay less than an hour to find a missing hedgehog float. The walk/run back to Anna Marie's took us fourteen precious minutes. But at least we formulated a plan while we went. It's not elaborate. In fact, it's pretty supersimple, and it's called Ask Jake Ribano because he's basically our only hope at this point. According to the video the marching band kids showed us, he'd been front and center (well, more like back and center, since he was helping me push from behind) when we were stealing Hedgie. With his reputation, it was probably
his
idea in the first place. Either way, he helped us steal it, so he must know where we stashed it (where
would
one “stash” a giant hedgehog?). He
has
to know where it is now. He just has to.

If not, we're toast.

This time the door swings open before we even have a chance to debate who will push the doorbell. A very smiley Jake Ribano is on the other side.

Um, weird.

Jake is usually all silent, bad-boy broody, not grinning like a kid who just adopted a puppy. What is going on here? Of all the strange things we've seen so far today, this is possibly the strangest of all.

“About time!” he says, smiling right at me. I take a step back and crash into Paige, who also stumbles and practically falls off the porch.

“Hi! I'm Veronica,” she offers.

Jake crinkles his nose in confusion and says, “Um, yeah, I know. Hi.” He looks over her shoulder at me and, I swear, it's like his eyes soften. Um . . . “Hey,” he says gently, almost
shyly
.

I would be completely busy dying if I weren't so consumed with trying not to hyperventilate over how cute Jake looks in his flannel button-down shirt and corduroys. Neither of which are black, I note. This day gets weirder still. Is it possible this is all one reallllllly long dream?

Nightmare. Dream.

Well, nightmare, because my best friend is missing, but definitely dream when Jake looks at me—
me!
—like he is.

“Ah . . .” But that's all I can manage, because my brain and mouth somehow refuse to connect. I can't look away either, so I just stand there, gaping like a fish.

Paige clears her throat, and both Jake and I blink.

“So sorry to bother you, Jake,” she says, “but we're a little confused about some things that may or may not have
happened last night, and we were, uh, hoping you could shed some light.”

He grins at us some more. “Yeah, I stopped over as soon as I got home from Saturday mass, but it was all dark in the basement, and I didn't want to knock on the front door. I figured you were still asleep.”

“You—you did?” I basically cannot wrap my head around the fact that I am actually standing on
Jake Ribano's
front porch.
Talking to him!
And did he say
mass
? Jake Ribano goes to
church
? A breeze catches the back of my neck, and I shiver, pulling my sweatshirt tight around me. Wait. Not my sweatshirt. Jake Ribano's sweatshirt. Oh! Does he think it's strange I'm wearing his sweatshirt? Should I give it back? I start to unzip it.

“What are you doing?” Jake asks.

“Oh, um, giving you back your hoodie,” I mumble, slipping it off and passing it over. If only the floor could swallow me now.

Jake looks confused, then . . . Hold on, does he look hurt?

“You changed your mind?” he asks, and he even
sounds
hurt. What is happening right now?

“What? Changed my mind about what?” I ask.

Jake ties the sweatshirt around his waist, then leans against the doorway and studies our faces. After blinking a few times, he says, “Okay, so you guys seriously don't remember
anything
about last night?”

Veronica is clearly not as awed by Jake as I am. She picks a flower growing in a planter on the porch and begins pulling off the petals one at a time. “Duh. That's what we've been saying.”

“Whoa.” He scratches his cheek and then calls behind him, “Mom, I'm heading out for a little bit!” before stepping onto the porch and pulling the front door closed behind him.

“Follow me,” he gestures. He leads the way to a jungle gym in his side yard and plops down on one of the swings. I breathe a sigh of relief that we're blocked from view of Anna Marie's house by a row of trees. The last thing we need is Mrs. Guerrero looking out the window and spotting us.

I know the clock is ticking on our find-the-float-and-return-it thing, but I'm pretty much mesmerized by the fact that I'm having a real live conversation with Jake Ribano. I sit down on the bottom of the slide. Paige leans against the metal support beam, and Veronica settles down on the lawn and picks a blade of grass she then holds in cupped hands up to her mouth. She lets out a whistle with it that I'm betting people three states over can hear.

“Veronica!” Paige yelps. Veronica drops the blade.

“Okay, so tell me what you do remember,” Jake says, his feet trailing in the dirt as he swings gently back and forth.

He's looking at me, but I'm too tongue-tied to answer. Paige jumps in with, “We had this hypnotist at the party last night. Veronica's
present to Anna Marie. We don't remember anything past her telling us to breathe deeply and relax our whole bodies. I think maybe she did something to give us amnesia. Veronica, where did you find her anyway?”