Wanted (10 page)

I don’t move. Listen. Wait. I’m ready to push open the door when I hear, “Hey. What are you doing?”

I freeze, pressing my head against the door, feeling the cool metal against my flushed cheek. The only sound I can hear now is my heart throbbing in my ears. But I’ve got to find an excuse for being here—a reason.

“Michal?”

I turn and slump to the floor. “Josh?” The blood rushes so fast to my head, I feel a little fuzzy.

“What are you doing?”

“What are
you
doing?” I ask.

“Following you,” he says as if it were an acceptable answer.

“You practically gave me a heart attack. Like right here, right now, my heart ceased function and for a second I thought I would enter the realm of—”

“The pearly gates?” Josh asks, and grins.

“Geez,” I say. “Get in the office.”

I fumble with my glasses, push them on, and follow Josh.

“I have to put the knob back on. Can you give me some light?” Absentmindedly, he flicks on a light and the place is flooded with blinding whiteness. I practically dive to turn it off, the fluorescent bulbs sputtering on the ceiling.

“Sorry,” he says. “Stupid.”

I toss him my flashlight and fiddle with the knob, doing a pretty decent job of putting it back together. It’s loose, but it’ll do. I tap my fingertip to my lips and listen. The wind howls outside, but the windows don’t rattle, absorbing the beating, moaning just as the gusts leave, as if relieved. I listen to the distant traffic, the
tick-tick-tick
of the heating system, low hum of a generator, and the way the lonely building takes noises and throws them back and forth between its metal lockers and open spaces.

“Why are you following me?” I ask.

“Nah. I think you owe me an answer first.” He crosses his arms in front of his chest and cocks his head to the side. “Well?”

“I’m just—” I think for a second. “I’m just leveling the playing field. Now. Your turn.”

“I
knew
you wouldn’t let things be the way they were this morning. I
knew
you’d do something. What’s the plan?”

“You leave. I finish here. And I owe you. Big-time.”

Josh shakes his head. “We’re in this together now. You can’t just blow me off like that. I’m in.”

I roll my eyes. “Well, make yourself useful and find the ski trip stuff.”

We search through the office, trying to keep everything as organized as possible. Mrs. Martinez, the student council advisor, has shelves covered in photos—years of dances and pep rallies. The bottom drawer of her desk is locked. I search for a key and find one in the top drawer.

It doesn’t fit.

I get a heavy-duty paper clip and am twisting it to get it to the right size. Josh interrupts me, squeezing my shoulder. I nod. There’s a light clack of heels on tile. The footsteps get louder until they’re right outside the door.

My head pounds in the place right above my right eye. Like somebody’s striking it with a ball peen hammer. A phone rings. “Hello? Yeah. Just came back to make sure the office is closed. Uh-huh. Yes. It’s closed. The kids are so excited. The ski trip is tomorrow. They’ve worked so hard. Uh-huh.” Mrs. Martinez laughs. Keys jingle.

Josh motions to her desk. He crouches underneath, then I do, miraculously folding myself into his lanky arms and legs, my knee screaming in pain from the position. We soundlessly pull her chair toward us.

The door opens. I can hear how the knob is wobbly. Mrs. Martinez keeps talking. “Yep. It was closed. My OCD moment. Totally. Okay. I’m on my way.”

Her perfume floods the air—a kind of woody, floral scent. She flicks on the light, pauses, still “Uh-huhing” on the phone.

Please go now. Please, please, please go away. Please. Now. Please.

“Hello. Yes. I’m on the way.” She closes the door, jiggling the handle to make sure it’s locked. We listen to her convince whoever she’s talking to that she’s not obsessive. Her voice fades into nothingness, and the only thing I can hear is Josh mumbling something incoherent.

We lean forward, foreheads touching. “Okay?” I ask.

“Okay.” He touches his watch. “I don’t know how we’re gonna get out of here without triggering the alarm.”

How does he know about the school alarm system?
I look at my watch and shrug. “First things first.” I jimmy the lock on the desk drawer and take out the metal box that says
HEAVENLY
.

We count out over twenty-five hundred dollars.
Do these people know about banks?

“Are we gonna take the cash?”

I nod. “And we’re going to do one better,” I say. “Feel like going skiing tomorrow?” I grab the unsold tickets, taking out the ticket registry list, shoving it into my backpack. “It looks like tickets have gotten an awful lot cheaper.”

“Ahhh, somebody’ll want a refund.” Josh smirks.

“But who’ll know who bought the tickets?” I take out the registry list, hoping they don’t have one saved on a computer somewhere. I doubt they do. I point to the sign on the inside of the cash box:
CASH ONLY
. “Did you buy a ski pass?”

Josh grins. “Yes. As a matter of fact, I did.”

“Fancy that,” I say. “So did I.”

We close the lid, placing the box back in the drawer, and organize the office, wiping off surfaces with Kleenex from Mrs. Martinez’s desk. I have an urge to leave a message—tell them they all suck. But I can’t think of anything more creative than “You suck.” I have more style than that.

“Now. Let’s find a way to get out of here,” Josh says.

Antibullshit division reborn. Mission totally possible
.

Chapter 13

I CAN BARELY CATCH MY

breath. I squat down on the curb, ignoring the pulsing in my swollen knee. I inhale and close my eyes, feeling the jolt of excitement, letting the rush wash over me. Josh sits next to me. Silent. I wonder if he feels it, too.

“Michal, shall I escort you to my stealth getaway car?” Josh points down the street.

“I kind of have to get into my own, which I parked over at the Starbucks.” I look down Saliman Road and sigh, wishing I could teleport to my car.

“One: Your Buick is anything but stealth. Two: I’ll drive you. I parked over here, off Pinto.”

“So you weren’t just following me. You had something in mind yourself.”

“Great minds. Plus I spent the last two hours hiding out in the janitor’s utility closet. When I got out, I saw you and . . .
voilà
!” Josh pulls me to my feet, his warm hands wrapped around mine. He doesn’t unhold my hands as soon as I’m on my feet; he laces his fingers in mine. “You’re going to have to teach me your technique—breaking into an office without breaking a window. You’re much more polished.”

“Thanks.” I blush and pull my hands away, shoving them into my jacket pockets.

“I’ll drive you to your car, but only if you let me invite you to dinner.”

“Why?” I ask. Suddenly I am so so tired.

“Wrong question, Michal. You should always ask ‘Why not?’”

There are always more reasons
not
to do something than to do it. That’s why being a bookie is so easy—it’s easy to watch people place the bets and take the chances while I sit back and wait. I’ve always been okay with that. But now I’m not and I don’t know why.

“A celebration.” He holds out his arm and links mine through it.

“For making it out of the school by climbing through an open boys’ bathroom window the size of a postage stamp, jumping two fences, running across a field through a herd of cattle before I collapsed into a not-quite-frozen patty pile?” I feel happiness bubble up and fill me, then start to laugh. “I stink. I think if anything, we’d better get takeout.”

Josh’s eyes crinkle and fill with tears. I have to lean up against the fence to keep steady. Our world explodes with laughter—belly-aching, can’t-catch-my-breath joy. “I can’t believe we just pulled off an actual heist.” He pulls dried grass from my hair, tucking a loose piece that fell from my ponytail behind my ear. I feel like my scalp is on fire, prickling where he touched me.

“Nothing unlike your past exploits,” I say. “Hard to top those.”

Josh shakes his head. “You know, changing schools so much is like hopping into parallel high school universes—the only distinguishing mark is the school mascot and colors.

“There’s always a Nim. There’s always the in crowd, the band geeks—they can’t help that. I think it has to do with the polyester uniforms—institutionalized nerddom. There’s always the overachieving student council president-slash-debate club captain-slash-basketball point guard-slash-valedictorian-to-be. There’s always a Trinity.”

It’s unsettling to think I’d be the same in every school—the girl who wore jeggings for a year because she felt too bad to tell her grandma she spent thirty bucks on something totally uncool. I think I just wanted to wear something Lillian had bought for me, something she had picked out; she had taken the time to think about me. That doesn’t happen much.

“But,” Josh says, stepping closer to me, “you’re the first.”

“I don’t know what that means,” I say. “The first what?”

“You have purpose. You’re the one,” he says.

And now I feel like I’m going to be a virginal sacrifice, recruited to work in the CIA or . . . I can’t let myself hope for the
or
. That happens in movies. Not to Michal Salome Garcia in Carson City, Nevada. I clear my throat. “Stealing ski trip passes and catering to my peers’ vices aren’t purpose. According to your line of thinking, I should open a brothel.”

Josh laughs. “Nah. You’d never do something so legal.”

His intensity is gone and I feel like I can breathe again. I picture myself dodging between the cows in the pasture and cover my mouth to keep the snorts muffled.

Josh pulls me close to him, wrapping his arm around my shoulders. “We’ve got some ski passes to distribute. At least let me take you to coffee.”

“Deal,” I say.

At Starbucks we debate about what to write on the invitations, then decide simple is best. “But who should the invitations be from?” Josh asks, tapping away on his iPad.

I shrug. “Anonymous?”

Josh shakes his head. “Anonymous is cowardly. We want to stand by our work. Give it a name.”

“Like we really need a name for delinquency,” I say.

“This isn’t delinquency. This is big, like
Dead Poets Society
big. Hey . . .” He pauses. “Dead Poets?”

I sigh. “I think that’s been done. Plus we don’t read poetry.”

“Or hang out in a cave.”

“Or go to an all-boys school.”

“Thank God,” he says, and winks.

“We just steal ski trip tickets.”

“
Just
steal ski trip tickets? Please. We’ve done more than that. We’re exacting social justice for—”

“For kids like me,” I say, swallowing a little of the perma-shame that comes with being considered substandard. PWT.

“And Moch,” he says.

I’m grateful he says that, like he knows what Moch means to me. “To the exiled,” I say.

“Exactly,” Josh says. “To the exiled. Plus tonight we get to play Santa Claus.”

“How are we gonna pass this stuff around and
not
get caught?” I ask. “Hell. We’re gonna get caught.”

“Not if we didn’t in the office when Mrs. Martinez walked in, turned on the lights, and didn’t even look our way. Not us.”

Since when did I become an
us
?

I believe him. Like by being with Josh I’m covered in lucky fairy dust. He splits a chocolate graham cracker in two, handing me the bigger half. “Living in the land of exiles isn’t so bad after all, right?”

“Depends on who you’re talking about. I don’t think Napoleon was too into Elba or the Jews were particularly fond of Babylonia.”

“Nah. But our little Babylonia isn’t so bad.” He raises his eyebrows. “Right?” he says through a mouthful of graham-cracker crumbs.

I nibble on the chocolate cracker. “No. Not too bad.”

“That’s it,” Josh says. “Babylonia.”

“What about it?”

“That’s us,” he says. “Babylonia.”

“Babylonia,” I say. He’s right.

Dear Valued Member of Carson High Student Body,

You are invited to the Pearly Gates Heavenly Ski Trip. Show up to the ski bus tomorrow at seven a.m. sharp, appropriately dressed for the best ski day ever!

Put the ticket in your wallet, pocket . . . wherever.

Trash this letter as soon as you read it.

It will not self-destruct. It will not turn into a toxic poison that melts your skin off. It is a simple piece of paper that is evidence of our wanton disregard for trees (in the name of justice). And an invitation.

Cordially,

Babylonia

We take the file to Kinko’s and print out the invitations. I feel a shudder of excitement. Josh and I Google a list of Carson High students, then pop their names into Spokeo on my iPhone. We map out a reasonable route and pass out the letters and ski passes, making sure we leave one for Seth. He won’t go. But he can write about it. I hope.

Josh pulls up next to my car, still parked outside Starbucks: the least ecologically friendly machine on the planet; an eighties throwback; an embarrassment to American car makers everywhere. But I have grown to love the splotchy maroon Buick beast. She’s trying to hang in there like the rest of us. I just need her to make it to the end of the school year and through the summer so I can do my one and only road trip with her to the Great Basin National Park. My graduation present to myself. My chance to say good-bye to Mom.

“Here we are,” Josh says.

“Yep.” I’m not really sure what the protocol is for saying good night to someone you committed larceny with. I can feel Josh looking at me, and I tuck my hair behind my ears. “Thanks. This was—”

“Magic.” Josh smiles. “See you tomorrow morning, Michal Garcia.”

“Bright and early,” I say, opening my door. The blast of cold air practically takes my breath away. The scent of snow lingers in the air. Clouds shroud the mountaintops.
Nice
. Fresh powder for tomorrow.