Things I’ll Never Say (18 page)

“B.J.,” Bertolucci says causing Kit to cringe, “I want to talk to you about the guidance department. I'll give you a pass to class when we're done.”

Out in the hallway, it's mayhem. Bodies rushing everywhere. Slamming lockers. Garbled talk from every direction. Three girls squealing and jumping up and down like they thought they'd never see each other again. And they probably saw each other yesterday, and the day before that, and pretty much every school day for months.

“Ya mind?” Goth girl. Bad wig. Nice piercings. “That's my locker,” she tries again, less sure, like she isn't used to being stared at. I smile and step aside but make sure to note her locker combination. Might come in handy.

Let's see who Hannah will be.

The morning classes are boring but nothing I can't simper through. No one will expect much of Hannah until next week, at least. If I play this first week well, pour on the overwhelmed-doe look, do enough homework to get by, maybe I can stretch that to a month. With any luck, I'll be out of here before anyone starts pushing for effort.

Lunch is the usual stench and humiliations, but at least here the lunchroom is comfortable and they sell plenty of prepackaged stuff. In between lunch periods one and two, I hide out in the bathroom down by the library, planning to plead first-day jitters if I'm caught.

Once passing time is over, I emerge from my stall. I perch my book bag on the radiator and step back, turning, watching how it looks when I slouch, shift my weight, lean. This is the part I love, how the subtlest shifts in body language make all the difference. The contacts are bugging me, but I don't dare take them out to rinse them, not when there's any chance someone might come in and see my green eyes. It really would have been better if I had brown eyes. Less memorable. Even if Sienna says they're gorgeous. I smile in the mirror, a very non-Hannah smile, thinking about Sienna. I wonder what scam she's in the thick of today. Maybe she's spending the afternoon gathering pocket money on quick changes so she can splurge on a decadent dinner. No one's better at the quick change than Sienna. It's her smile — the cashier is so swept up in the flirt he can't keep up with the back-and-forth math. Or maybe she had a good run, and today she's just wandering the Louvre, lost in the art.

“Oh,” a girl says, banging the door open and stopping short. “Hi.”

“Hi,” I say, just friendly enough to put her at ease but looking down, shy. I add drops to my tired eyes and then touch up the liner that keeps them looking narrower than they are.

She looks around the shelf near the paper towel dispenser, the floor, the sink. She pretends to check her hair in the mirror, but she's still looking. She wants me to leave. I could have a little fun, practice my cold-reading skills to figure her out, but then I might have to give up my newest treasure. Instead, I wait just long enough to make her eager for me to leave, and then sigh as if I guess I have to go to lunch now. She's so relieved I'm leaving, she doesn't even look at me.

After lunch I go to my fifth-period class and find it empty except for the teacher, as expected. I stand in front of the door, staring at the schedule clutched in my hand, mouth turned deliberately down, until the teacher looks up.

“Where are you supposed to be?” he asks, one of those teachers who tries to be a pal.

“I'm not sure. I thought I was supposed to be . . . here?” I look tearfully around the empty room.

“You wouldn't by any chance be Hannah Evans, would you?”

“Yes, sir.” I gulp for effect.

“Yeah, you were supposed to be here for fifth period.”

“It's not fifth period now?”

“No, now it's sixth.” He motions me over to his desk. “Where were you after lunch?”

I look down and shuffle my feet. “The bathroom,” I say, adding a bit of quiver for good measure.

He clears his throat. “It's okay.” He smiles and reaches for my schedule. “Let's just get you to the right class now, and tomorrow you need to pay better attention to the schedule or ask for a pass, okay?”

“Okay,” I whisper.

He hands me back my schedule and takes the pen from his chest pocket and reaches across the desk, but he stops, and his mouth puckers in confusion. “Huh.” He pats his pockets, looks around the desk, then lifts a book and a notebook.

I stand there, waiting, until he swears under his breath and tears a piece of paper out of the notebook. “Here's a pass to your sixth-period class. Go straight there.”

“Thank you, Mr. Sweifert. I promise I'll do better tomorrow.”

“It's fine, Hannah.” He hands me the folded handwritten note. “See you tomorrow.”

After school, I watch the morons make their way to the buses and cars and bike racks.

“Hey, Hannah, need a ride?” Todd from English asks, shuffling his feet. Todd from freshman English.

“You drive?” He is cute, in a white-bread kinda way. All squishy moldability, no nutritional value or substance whatsoever. Still, a boy might be nice this time. Especially one unlikely to cause any lasting impressions.

“Yeah. We moved a lot when I was little. So, uh, I'm sixteen.” Red blush races past his hairline. Definitely cute.

Hannah is nice, nicer than Liv. Liv would rock his world. “I know how that is. If Mom hadn't homeschooled us, I'd have been behind, too.” Nice-girl smile to cement the cover. And maybe more? I'd have to play him carefully. Experience would scare him away. Hannah would have to be overwhelmed by his sweetness. Maybe not. I hate playing the virgin. “Thanks, but my brother's gonna give me a ride.”

“Okay, well, see ya tomorrow?” Todd says, walking away slowly, like I might change my mind.

“See ya!” A smile. A nod. A wave good-bye. Nice. When we move on, he'll remember that Hannah was nice.

“Hey,” B.J. says, appearing from nowhere. I hate when he does that. “Already?” he asks, scowling. “I thought we agreed no complications while we're lying low.”

“Uh, no worries. Just being nice. Let's go.”

I'm barely buckled in before he has the car in gear and is pulling away.

“So,
B.J.
, rough first day?”

“Ben.”

“Huh?”

“I changed it to Ben. No way am I going another day as B.J.”

“Oooh, unauthorized name change. Not sure how Mom's gonna feel about that one.”

“Well, Mom can bite me. I went through the whole day with blow-job jokes, on top of the usual crap.”

“I love first days.” I ignore his grunt and stretch my back, anxious to get home and change into my own clothes and work out some of the kinks. Being Hannah with her shuffles and slouch has my body all tied in knots.

I run back through the prospects. Todd's off the list, but there were other contenders. Brice, quiet, studious Brice from Bio. He was cute. And goth girl, once she got past the locker confusion, was actually pretty hot. She'd have to take that hook out of her lip, but I'd be all in favor of the tongue ring.

I've got to do something to keep from being bored to death while waiting for the all clear. Mom and Kit are both distracted enough not to notice, if I keep it casual. Bet goth girl would be up for some easy fun.

He's still brooding.

“Was it really that bad?”

“No.” He flexes his hands on the steering wheel, cracks his neck. “I'm just tired. New name, new place, new life.”

Same fear.

“And I'm starving. I missed lunch.”

I noticed. “Let's go to the mall,” I say. “We should check it out, and I could eat.”

“I'm broke until Mom breaks out the emergency cash.”

“My treat. I made eighteen bucks today.”

“Made?” He pulls to a stop at the light.

“Yes, made. I didn't lift any of it. All freely given.”

“Do I even want to know?”

“Hey. I'll have you know these are good people in a good town. No way any of them were gonna let the poor formerly homeschooled girl go without lunch simply because her mom didn't know she had to have money.”

I give him my innocent look.

“Eighteen dollars in one lunch? How'd you —?”

“Pshaw. One lunch.” Amateur. “I went to every lunch. Why not?”

“Liv . . .”

“Hey, no one caught on. I went to the class I missed later and explained I got confused. No big.” I shuffle the bills, turning the faces to line up. “And it's Hannah, my unfortunate named-after-a-sex-act brother.”

“Look. You can't mess around. You have to go to your classes and do your homework and not screw around.”

“Why? It's not like any of this matters.”

“But —”

“I bet Daddy's already finished the bait and switch. All he has to do is detour to wash the cash, make some contacts, and we'll be gone. A month. Maybe two.”

“You can't know —”

“And,” I cut him off, “if things went south, we'd know by now. He got out. If he got the full payout, you know Mom will insist on some downtime, and not in any suburban beigeland.” Not a minute longer than necessary. “We could all use some downtime. Maybe Europe.”

If Sienna's still in Paris by then, we could have some real fun. A target-rich city full of unsuspecting rich boys who would love to wine and dine some wealthy American tourists, maybe advance us some cash or cover a weekend in Italy. We could get lost for weeks in Venice or Florence on one weekend's take in Paris. I'd have to full-out ditch Mom and Daddy. Mom would never let me go by myself, and Daddy says Sienna's persona non grata since our little side job in Oregon. Daddy was spit-flying mad. Called Sienna a “feckless dilettante,” which just made his ranting even funnier. Like he never has a little something going on the side. He got all bent over the age difference, but that wasn't his real issue. It was Sienna, that she has game of her own and won't just be his shill, playing some small stooge in his con for whatever cut he deems fair. That we pulled our own job, with our own payoff, right alongside his own, without asking his permission. If he only knew how many modified glim-drops, badger games, and lottery proxies Sienna and I have pulled on the side of his grand schemes. Sure, it was our first fiddle game, but it went exactly as planned.

Kit clears his throat, his signal that he's about to offer brotherly advice he knows I'm unlikely to follow but can't help himself from giving. I wait for the second throat clear, turn my head so he can't see my smile when he completes the ritual with the third and final guttural stall. “Don't you want to actually learn something?” he asks. “Maybe actually work your way through school?”

He's serious. He's actually serious.

“The next time a job requires a high-school cover, I'll probably be a freshman again. I'll go to my classes then. Even ‘Life Skills.'” Like they can teach me anything I'll need in
my
life.

“If you screw this —”

“Give it a rest! No one will care if I miss some classes or blow off my homework. Frankly, they'd probably be more suspicious if Hannah
didn't
have some trouble adjusting. I'm good at this, Kit.” He looks over before turning onto the main road. “I'm really good at this.”

“You weren't so good at it in Toledo.”

I was so good in Toledo he didn't even see the real con. He doesn't even suspect. None of them do. That's how good I am. But I pretend to be hurt and ashamed for his benefit.

“Sorry,” he says when my act gets to him.

“Why'd you miss lunch?” I ask, like I'm accepting his apology.

“Because it was the only time the guidance counselor had open.”

“Guidance?”

“Playing the part,” he says too fast, with the too-practiced tilt of his head and that partial squint that gives it away when he's trying too hard.

“Does B.J. want to go to Harvard or Yale?” I laugh. He doesn't.

Oh. My. God. “Don't be stupid, Kit.” He grits his teeth, which makes me want to knock some sense into him. “Whose name is going on the applications? Where are you getting records of your grades? Who are your parents? Whose Social Security number are you going to use?” He looks ready to cry. Unbelievable.

No trip to the mall. No more advice. Instead he turns toward the house, fighting not to show me how upset he is, and thereby giving it all away.

I take a deep breath to rein in my urge to explain just how unbelievably delusional he's become, and let a little truth through. “If you want out, fine.” He jerks the steering wheel and then overcorrects. “But you better get real about what that means. And fast.” Like ripping off a Band-Aid. “You can't just go off to college.” Not without risking all of us. “At least not right away. Not until you've been clear for a while, established a plausible identity with sufficient depth to survive the scrutiny of an application process.” He used to know this, and the fact that I have to remind him makes him all the more dangerous.

As soon as we get to the house, he stomps up to his new room, slams his door, and cranks his music. Settling in for a long, hard sulk. At least the music is always the same.

Dinner isn't much better. When I come downstairs, Mom and Kit are both radiating I've-got-it-worst-of-all vibes. I can't wait for Daddy to get back. At least then we'll know where we stand, and at least he'll make sure there's decent dinner, instead of mac and cheese, again, and not even the good kind.

“You can both save the looks,” Mom says. I raise my hands in surrender and grab the milk from the refrigerator. “Here's a crazy idea: maybe one of you could make dinner once in a while.”

“Mac and cheese is fine with me,” I say, grabbing a plate.

“Whatever,” Kit snipes.

“I don't know what's crawled up your butt,” Mom says, “but I'm tired of the sulks. We all have to —”

“What is my name?”

“What?” Mom asks, irritated. I can't feel the plate in my hand. I can't feel my hands.