Little Miss Red (19 page)

“Sophie?” I heard a voice say as I debated between a Jack-like pleather jacket to go with my new boots (I had barely taken them off since Jack got them for me, even though they made my shins sweat) and a Michael-approved red and white polka-dotted sundress.

I looked up to see Juliet DeStefano, holding the very same black tank top I had been pondering just five minutes before. “Juliet! What are you doing in Florida?!” I said. Omigod, I couldn’t believe I was talking to Juliet DeStefano. Was she on the run again? Was she even going by the name Juliet anymore, or had she changed it?

“Visiting my grandmother,” she replied.

Juliet DeStefano had a
grandmother
? Who lived in
Florida
?

“I’m visiting
my
grandmother too!” I cried. Now that my life was on the dramatic side, we had a lot more in common than I thought. “So what have you been doing?” Maybe her grandmother was really young, and they got all dressed up and went and sat in hotel bars and tried to bilk lonely men out of millions of dollars like the women in this movie I had once seen on Lifetime.

“Oh, we’re having a great time. Last night she taught me how to knit, and the day before that we played bingo at the community room in her condo complex.”

I searched her face to see if she was being sarcastic, but she just smiled like an actress in a feminine hygiene product commercial. “Oh. Wow. That sounds…fun,” I said. Most of the guys in the Boca Raton area were retired, but I would’ve thought the ones our age would be falling at her feet and fighting to take her out to chain restaurants every night. “But I bet when you’re not knitting, you’re probably hanging out at the pools, where all the boys visiting their grandmothers are fighting over who can put sunblock on your back.” What was I talking about? Juliet DeStefano didn’t use sunblock—she probably used baby oil.

“No, I don’t go in the sun,” she replied. “I burn super easily.”

“Oh,” I said, disappointed. But now that I looked at her a little more closely, I saw that she was a little on the pasty side. Not only that, but her long brown hair looked to be on the thin side. “But you probably take cool day trips to, like, the alligator races and stuff like that, huh?”

She shook her head. “No. We went to the movies the other night, though. The one based on the latest Nicholas Sparks book. And then we went to Olive Garden afterward. That was fun.”

“I
love
Nicholas Sparks!” I gasped. “He’s my second favorite author.” I was dying to see that movie. I looked at my watch. “Speaking of food, I have to go meet my grandmother in the food court now.”

She looked at hers. I would’ve thought it was encrusted
with diamonds, but it was just a plain old run-of-the-mill Seiko. “I have to meet mine there too.”

When we got to the food court, we discovered that the two women knew each other from the mah-jongg circuit. I don’t know what I expected, but I couldn’t get over how
grandmotherly
Juliet’s grandmother looked, with her lavender sweatshirt that said
MY GRANDCHILDREN WENT TO SAN DIEGO AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY SWEATSHIRT
and her pink velour jogging pants. Not only that, but the way she looked at Juliet was so
sweet
. Exactly how you’d think a grandmother would look.

“We’ll let you girls eat while we browse in Chico’s,” Grandma Roz said.

“Okay,” I said. While they were gone, I could pick Juliet’s brain a little. Maybe my life was more dramatic than hers at the moment, but if anyone could give me advice about what to do about guys, it was Juliet.

After we settled ourselves at a table with our Mexican food, Juliet took out a prescription pill bottle and twisted the top off. Oh my god, she was taking pills right in the middle of the mall. I choked back my gasp.

Was Juliet a drug addict? Was it to kill the pain of having to live a life of lies and go on the run? Devon had been addicted to pills for a while, but thankfully went to rehab, in
Addled by Addiction
, the one where she fell madly in love with a fellow rehabber who had been a big rock star in the eighties. Wait—maybe Juliet was manic depressive
like Devon’s sister, Cassandra, and it was for that, so she wouldn’t stay up for three days in a row and then start taking off her clothes in the middle of Sunset Boulevard because she was so overtired that she thought a rain puddle was a swimming pool. That’s what happened in
Insane with Instability
.

I wasn’t sure if I should ask what they were, but since I was now living my life on the edge, I steeled my courage. “What is that?” I asked, pointing at the bottle.

“It’s Prevacid,” she replied, as she popped one in her mouth and washed it down with some Diet Coke. “It’s for my ulcer,” she explained. “I have to take it before I eat. Especially when I have spicy food.”

Oh. “I thought only old people got ulcers,” I said.

She shook her head. “My shrink says that lots of people who suffer from anxiety get it.”

Was I the only one in our class who didn’t go to a shrink?

“Hey, I heard you were going to Mexico with Jordan,” she said as she crunched on a tortilla chip. It’s funny, I had never noticed how crooked her teeth were.

“I was, but then it got cancelled, and I had to bring these candelabras to my grandmother that I thought were family heirlooms but that turned out to be from a French guy she had a fling with.”

“Wow…that sounds
exciting
,” she said, impressed. I had impressed Juliet DeStefano! I was carrying on a
conversation with her! It was almost like she was…normal. Who would have figured?

Hmm. Had her forehead always been broken out like that? Now that Juliet had suddenly become a normal human being, I felt so much closer to her. Which is why I broke down and told her everything. Well, that and the fact that drama wasn’t very fun if you didn’t get to share it with anyone.

“And my boyfriend, Michael, was going to come and visit his grandmother too, but then he couldn’t because he got the chicken pox.” I reached for a chip. “And then soon after he pushed the pause button on our relationship, I met Jack on the plane,” I said, shoving more chips in my mouth. Just
thinking
about everything I had been through over the last week zapped my energy and made me hungry. “And then Michael decided to go from pause to stop,” I said, my mouth full. “Which wasn’t so bad, because then I could kiss Jack and not feel guilty.”

“Omigod,” she gasped. “Your life is like a novel or something!”

I told her about Jack buying me the motorcycle boots as a token of his love (she thought they were really cool) and the e-mail from Michael professing his love—even about Jean-Pierre. After I was done, I realized Juliet was right—my life
was
like a book. And now, instead of being something you’d find in the middle-grade section, it was something you’d find in adult fiction.

“So what do you think I should do about Michael and Jack?” I said, trying to catch my breath. “I mean, with all the boyfriends you’ve had, I’m sure you’ve been fought over tons of times.”

“What boyfriends?” she asked, taking a bite of her taco.

I took a sip of my soda. “Well…all the ones…you’ve had…” Now that I thought about it, I didn’t know for sure that she had a bunch, but she had to have had a few. She was Juliet DeStefano!

“I’ve only had one,” she replied. “Doug Barrington. My freshman year in Atlanta. For three weeks.”

“Okay, but what about the guys you’ve, you know—”

“Supposedly hooked up with?” she said bitterly. “Like the guys on the football team?”

“Well, uh…yeah,” I replied. “And, you know, the ones on the soccer team.”

She rolled her eyes. “Now they’re saying it’s the soccer team too? Great.”

“Wait—so you’re not—”

“The Castle Heights junior-class slut?” she asked.

I gave a shrod, which is a half-shrug/half-nod. Obviously, I wouldn’t have used that
S
-word, but well,
yeah.

“No. I’m not.”

In light of everything else I had discovered about her in the last half hour, I guess that shouldn’t have surprised me.
But still, even with the grandmother, the ulcer, and everything, it was still hard to think of her as just normal.

“Maybe because once I went out for pizza with Bobby Newman, and afterward he tried to maul me until I told him that I had a black belt in Ashtanga and would snap his neck in two if he didn’t stop.”

“Isn’t Ashtanga a form of yoga?” I asked.

“Yeah. But he’s so stupid, he didn’t know that,” she replied. “And when he found out he was pretty pissed.”

I laughed. Who knew Juliet liked to knit
and
was funny?

“Or maybe it’s because I have big boobs?” she went on.

I glanced at her tank top. They
were
pretty big.

“I know it makes me sound lame, but I’ve never done anything more than kissed a guy,” she confessed as she daintily dabbed at the corners of her mouth. “So as much as I’d like to help you, I have no idea what you should do.” She sighed. “You’re so lucky, Sophie—I wish
my
life were that exciting. Before the French club calendar, my life was as boring as it gets.” She sighed again. “I know I got voted in for every month as a joke, but at least now I have
something
to look forward to.”

I knew just what she meant. That’s exactly what I used to say whenever I heard Lulu had a new book coming out!

Wait—had Juliet DeStefano just said she wished she had
my
life?

I reached down and pinched my thigh. “Ow,” I said aloud. I guess she had. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure,” she replied.

“Is your name really Juliet?”

She gave me a weird look. “Yeah. Why?”

I shrugged. “Never mind.” So much for thinking I had other people all figured out.

After lunch, Juliet and I went back to Always 16, where I helped her pick out some outfits for the calendar. Now that we had kind of become friends, I wasn’t bitter anymore about the calendar situation. (Although I had to admit that with a few of the things she chose, when she said, “Does this make my butt look big?” and I said no, it was a
teeny
bit of a lie.) As we said good-bye (she and her grandmother were heading off to Color Me Mine to paint some pottery) we exchanged e-mails and numbers so we could hang out when we got back to L.A.

“The boys still must be out,” Grandma Roz said when we got back to the Garden of Eden and saw that Art’s Cadillac wasn’t in its parking spot with the orange cones he used to make sure no one got within six feet of it.

But when we got inside the condo, Jack was there, in the living room, surrounded by files that said things like “stock statements” and “bond statements” and a big envelope that said TeePeeMatic, the company that made my great-grandfather a millionaire. I saw broken glass on the
floor, and a shattered window behind him. Jack turned when he heard us come in, and looked really freaked out.

“Oy gevalt!”
Grandma Roz bellowed, dropping her bags. “What’s going on here?!”

I dropped mine too, and my hand immediately clutched at my heart. “Yeah! What’s going on here?” Obviously, spending time with Grandma Roz had rubbed off on me.

“I don’t know,” Jack cried. “Right after you left, Mervyn, the motorcycle guy, texted me to say I could come pick up the bike, so instead of going to the track with Art, I took the bus to the trailer park where he lives. But the bike was
not
as advertised on eBay and was completely covered with rust—you can bet I’m contacting customer service about that seller—and when I got back, I found the window broken and all this stuff on the floor!”

“Oy, my heart. This just might be the one that puts me six feet under,” Grandma Roz moaned as she waddled over to the fake Picasso painting on the wall and took it down.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Checking the safe,” she replied, matter-of-factly.

There was a safe?! First the candelabras, and now this. What other secrets was I going to find out about my grandmother—that she had had a baby before my dad and gave it up for adoption?

When she twirled the lock and the door popped open, Jack whistled. “Man, check out all those jewelry boxes.”

I turned to him, the hair on the back of my neck standing
up. He couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with the break-in…right?

She counted the boxes. “Oy, thank God they’re all here.” She opened a blue velvet one. “Ah, the diamond and sapphire earrings that Juan Carlo gave me—I don’t know what I’d do if I lost those.”

“Who’s Juan Carlo?” I asked.

She looked up. “He was a…friend,” she replied. “You don’t know him. It was before Art came into the picture.”

Another guy? How many boyfriends did she have? I peered over her shoulder into the safe. I could see that in addition to the jewelry boxes, there were two silver menorahs. “Did you get the menorahs from ‘friends’ as well?” I asked suspiciously. This woman wasn’t my grandmother—she was a stranger.

She shrugged. “What can I tell you? I’m quite the catch at the Garden of Eden.” She walked over to the phone. “I’m going to call the police and file a report.”

I started walking through the condo to check if any other windows were broken. I couldn’t believe how calm Grandma was—I was feeling shaky, but she was calm as could be. In between rooms, I’d peer into the living room to see what Jack was doing, but by this time he was settled on the couch watching
Wheel of Fortune
. “Everything else looks okay,” I called out.

“The important thing is that you’re okay, Jack,” Grandma Roz called out from the kitchen. “You must be
hungry after all that drama, so right after I make this call, I’m going to go make you a bagel.”

“Yeah, a little something would be nice,” I heard him call out.

When I walked back into the living room, the TV was still on, but he wasn’t on the couch anymore. Instead he was standing in front of the safe, which was still open.

“What are you doing?” I demanded.

He jumped and whipped around. “Man, Red, you scared me.”

Did he look
guilty
, or was he just
startled
? Something wasn’t adding up. Jack still hadn’t paid me back for anything so far, but that didn’t mean he was a criminal, did it?