Emancipated (12 page)

“You in trouble?” Lucy asked. “They gonna break your ribs or something?”

“No.” Paolo seemed to choose his words carefully. “Dude said I could owe him a favor.”

“That's cool of him.”

“Yeah.” Paolo was still looking at Lucy. Maya had the distinct impression that he wanted to be alone with her. She began to make her way to the stairs. Paolo followed after a few seconds, then disappeared into his own room.

Inside the triple room, John-Michael had just finished bagging the garbage. He was sweeping now with a dustpan and brush.

Maya crossed the room and opened her laptop.

“You mind if I take a quick break before I start again? Lucy and I pretty much finished the kitchen.”

“No
problemo
.”

Maya added, “All the treats you baked got eaten, by the way.”

John-Michael seemed pretty happy with that news. He started humming quietly to himself as he swept.

Maya gave him one final glance before she opened a second window on her desktop. It was a document named “school schedule.” But the contents had little to do with school. She began to type:

Paolo lost a tennis match to some guy he met on the beach. At least, I'm pretty sure he was playing tennis because he was wearing shorts and carrying a racket, plus, he was all sweaty and it wasn't all that hot outside. He said there was money involved. He seems pretty cut up about it. He told Lucy and me that the guy—whoever it was—isn't going to make him pay the money he owed. But now Paolo owes the guy a favor. He seems more freaked out than he's letting on. Maybe he didn't tell us everything that happened.

Lucy spent most of the party in her room with her friends from the beach. I already wrote most of their names in an earlier report so you can look them up, but from memory it was Darla, Mikey, and Luisito. There were a few randoms, too, friends of friends, but I didn't talk to them or get their names. They fired up a bong pretty early on and basically got wasted. At around midnight Luisito and Lucy came down into the kitchen to get the cupcakes John-Michael baked. They seemed pretty annoyed when I told them they'd been eaten already.

Maya's phone buzzed. Reading the text, she sniffed in irritation.

WHERE IS TODAY'S REPORT? YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO SEND IT BY 10 A.M.!

Stabbing at the buttons Maya typed back: Even weekends? So not fair! I can basically never sleep in.

DEAL WITH IT, BABY.

“Something wrong?”

Maya closed her laptop. She plastered a sweet smile onto her lips. “No, thanks, John-Michael. Just realizing that I have a lot of homework, more than I remembered.”

“We'll be done cleaning soon.”

She nodded. “I'm going to help Grace.”

Candace and Lucy's bedroom, however, already looked fairly clean when she walked through the door. Grace was sitting on Lucy's bed, a photograph in her hand. When Maya walked in, Grace put the photo down in a hurry, embarrassed to be caught.

“Hey. Uh . . .” Grace stammered. “Someone pulled out a box of photos from under Lucy's bed.”

Maya folded her arms, unsure of how to begin. “Grace . . . maybe you shouldn't, you know, be looking at Lucy's stuff?”

“Oh, I know, I wasn't trying to, I just found photos scattered all over the room so I was gathering them up. I found the box, too.”

Maya moved closer. “I don't think I have a single photo. Who keeps actual, you know, snapshots?”

“They're pretty old. Lucy's a kid in most of them.” Gently, Grace placed the photos inside a fabric-covered box and closed the lid.

Maya noticed that she didn't offer her any chance to look at them. She remembered how she'd caught Grace staring at the video of Lucy singing that Green Day song.

“Grace . . . is there something going on between you and Lucy? Do you have some sort of issue with her?”

For a moment it seemed like Grace was going to hotly deny anything. But when she looked into Maya's eyes, she began to shake her head. “I guess I should tell you that there isn't.”

“But . . . there
is
?”

Grace's eyes filmed over without warning. “Maya,” she murmured. “Why's he so crazy about her?”

“What? Who's crazy? About Lucy?”

A tear spilled over and Grace tried to smile. “Paolo about Lucy. She's not interested. But he doesn't care.”

Maya could scarcely believe what was coming out of Grace's mouth. “You think . . . you think he should . . . look at someone else?”

Grace wiped a tear away with the back of her wrist. “God. I'm such an idiot. What's wrong with me?”

“You . . . you're telling me you like Paolo?” Maya didn't bother to hide her astonishment. “Whoa, Grace. You are one dark horse.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 28

“Finally, you pick up your phone!”

“It's been crazy, Ariana. We had a party. There's a lot to clean up.” Ariana could hear a guitar softly strumming in the background.

“I hear you,” Ariana said. “That's why I had to get a place of my own. Too much temptation around my cousin and those college types.”

“So it's working out for you? You're staying clean?”

“Eighteen months now.” Ariana gave a short laugh. “Got my life down to Zen simplicity. Wish I'd lived like this when I was a kid. I'd be at Harvard by now.”

“Well, things were pretty simple when I was a kid,” Charlie said. “Mom and Dad. The TV show. A driver, a chaperone, the work. And I wound up with exactly the same problem as you.”

“It wasn't a very normal life for a nine-year-old child.”

“It felt normal to me. Remember, I was seeing the other kids in the show go through the same thing.”

“But then everything changed?” Ariana probed.

“Yeah. When Tyson Drew drowned in that swimming pool.”

“That's when you and your folks moved away, right? I thought you said you didn't tell them?”

“I didn't. The TV show wrote me out, remember? They didn't like the kind of coverage the Tyson Drew murder was getting. Just me being there was enough to throw off the vibe.”

“And your folks were happy to move?”

The girl let out a sardonic laugh. “Are you kidding me? They were ecstatic. Not everyone likes LA. New city, new jobs for them. No more TV show for me. Their lives got a whole lot easier.”

“How about you?” Ariana asked. “Were you sad to lose your job?”

“You'd think. And yet, by the time it happened, I was relieved.”

“Relieved? I thought you loved being on TV.”

“I loved acting. But then, my whole life became about pretending. I told the first cop that I hadn't seen anything. And after that . . .”

Ariana concentrated. Time to prod the kid again, see how much she might be hiding—even from her. After all they'd been through together in the meetings, Ariana wanted to believe that this girl trusted her. She was counting on that trust. “You had to stick to the story.”

“Right.”

“Were you scared? Afraid that the cops would call you a liar, say you were making things up?”

The guitar strumming stopped. The girl paused, thinking. “I was sleepy and I wasn't sure if I was awake. Because I was so convinced that I'd remembered things differently.”

“That'll do it.”

“Yeah. But now, after all these years, the image that dominates from that night is that hand on the back of his head. The person in the shadows holding him under. White knees. And fingernail polish.”

“Fingernail polish?”

“Yes. It's a detail that's only really made sense lately. Someone in a dress or a skirt. And painted fingernails. A real pretty shade, I remember that. Like, flames and peaches.”

Ariana laughed nervously. “You remember the color?”

She heard her friend pausing. “I guess.”

“Wait up, wait up,” Ariana said. “Are you telling me you're really sure now? Because you've talked about this a few times. And you never really believed it happened the way you say. You told me it was a dream.”

“But I'm not sure now. I think maybe a
woman
killed Tyson Drew.”

Ariana waited for several long seconds for the voice on the other end to start talking again. This was very dangerous territory. From the halting tone of her friend's voice, Ariana guessed that they'd both understood this. But only Ariana could possibly understand just how much the threat had suddenly increased.

“Ariana, if a woman killed Tyson Drew, then that guy they put in jail for the murder, the one they're going to execute . . . he's innocent.”

Ariana began cautiously. “Lucy,” she said emphatically, using her friend's name, not a term of endearment but to stress how important this was. “Lucy, seriously, think hard about this. I mean it. Just think about what you're saying.”

“It's not easy to realize that things you've believed in for such a long time could have been twisted into a lie.” Ariana heard Lucy give a heartfelt sigh. “I don't know how much longer I can take it.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

BALCONY, SUNDAY, MARCH 1

Sunday morning, and Maya suggested that they all get up crazy early, rent some boards from the place on the beach, and go surfing. Paolo refused on account of
hello, tennis
, and he couldn't afford to get injured. Lucy refused on account of it was lame, but she'd still watch. Candace and Grace were eager—they'd hardly ever tried surfing. But most of all, they were curious. Maya surfed? Who knew?

In the end, Grace and Candace mostly wound up paddling on their boards and bodysurfing the waves, boogie-board style. Maya caught a couple of waves, which impressed them. But it was obvious that she was out of practice.

Afterward, Maya bought the whole house breakfast burritos and a blueberry cheesecake to celebrate finishing the beta version of her app. It was already being downloaded at a healthy rate. Even though she wasn't making much money from it, which puzzled Paolo, she seemed relieved and happy.

The housemates all sat on the balcony, munching and drinking coffee. It was another day of white clouds and haze but it didn't matter. The beach stretched wide in front of them: the faint roar of the ocean rolling in, the whisper of the palms. All this had grown familiar to them. Paolo felt as though he'd lived here for years.

But unlike the others, he couldn't relax. Paolo's eyes kept combing the sands, the path from the boardwalk and south, down to the tennis courts. He thought back to Darius's words when they'd parted the morning before.
“You shouldn't play for money you don't have.”

Paolo had privately doubted that Darius would have paid him had the outcome been different. What could Paolo have done about it? Nothing.

“Kid, people get their asses handed to them for a lot less,” Darius had said.

“Don't be that way, dude,” Paolo had replied. “You're not the type.”

Darius had shot him a dismissive look, as though he had something far more serious on his mind and Paolo had interrupted his train of thought. “You think so?”

There was barely a hint of aggression; yet for the first time, Paolo had felt a little scared. Darius could be just about anyone. There was no way to know.

The guy had appeared out of nowhere. His body was covered in tattoos. Sure, that alone was no guarantee of toughness, but he'd proven himself the stronger tennis player. That final game, Paolo had felt it. Darius had played a different quality of game to what he'd produced up until that point. Almost as though he'd been faking it before that. Paolo hadn't even suspected—he was so used to winning against non-pros. By the time he and Darius had neared the house, Paolo had realized the truth.

He'd been hustled.

Darius had been serious from the start, looking to make real cash. It gradually dawned on Paolo that there really might be no painless way out of this.

“This is where you live?” Darius had said approvingly. “Nice.”

Paolo had felt faintly sick. Probably not smart to let this guy see where he lived.

“You live here with your family, Paolo?”

He'd managed to limit his response to, “With friends.”

“
Very
nice. I guess you're not short of a dollar or two. That's good. I wouldn't like to think you weren't good for the money.”

Paolo had stopped walking. He'd turned to Darius, forced himself to look the guy in the eye.

“I gotta be straight with you, man. I can't easily get the kind of money we're talking about. And whatever you think about me living here, I'm not rich.”

Darius had stared at Paolo then, a glare as pitiless as a granite wall. A lengthy silence had developed between them, long enough for Paolo's nerve to begin to falter. And then like sunshine after a rainstorm, Darius had broken into a grin. “You're not rich? I hear you. We could all use a little more, know what I'm saying?”

Paolo gave a tentative grin. Darius smiled more easily now, turned back onto the beach path, and put an affectionate hand on Paolo's shoulder.

“Now that I think about it, there's another way to work this out.”

“Really? That would be awesome.”

“A favor you could do for me.”

Paolo hadn't answered right away. What if the guy wanted him to off-load a bunch of drugs or something? The cure might wind up being worse than the disease.

“I got a grudge match coming. A buddy who swears he can beat me in a doubles match. Only, I got no partner right now. But you, you're good enough to give me a shot at winning.”