My Own Worst Frenemy (12 page)

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Authors: Kimberly Reid

BOOK: My Own Worst Frenemy
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“I probably don't want to know how you were able to get a look at that, right?”
“Right.”
No doubt I'm the only kid at Langdon whose mother would beam with pride over the fact I may have done a little B and E for the sake of solving a case. I lay out the facts as I know them. We don't need to write them down because we're both looking at the same list in our heads. We're quiet for a minute while Lana processes what I've told her.
“I agree, it isn't a boy, for all the reasons you said. Given the way the study rooms are set up, someone would notice a student going in and out of another student's study room, certainly the study-hall teacher would. It has to be someone who could go into a study room while the student is out and be above suspicion.”
“So that leaves the study-hall teacher?”
“Or some other staff, like facilities people.”
Oh no, I couldn't imagine Mildred doing that. But she isn't the only facilities person at Langdon. There are lots of them because the campus is so big.
“Not just facilities staff,” Lana continued, as if reading my mind. “Was someone in there changing out lightbulbs on the days the thefts occurred? Could they have had contractors in to paint or fix a stuck window, anything like that?”
“I'm not sure. But it has to be someone who is in the school every day because the thefts haven't been clustered in sequential days, they've been spread out since our first day at the school. They wouldn't allow the facilities people to disrupt class time. I can't rule out friends of the victims, who no one would suspect if they went into a friend's study room. So that leaves staff or students who have access to study hall during that time.”
“You said the bracelet was stolen from the PE locker room, so you can't limit your search to just the study halls.”
“Yeah, but I think that theft might be unrelated,” I say, still believing Annette was behind that. Now that I think of it, I should find out if she has study hall this semester. Maybe mall shoplifting has lost its thrill.
“What's going on in that school? I sent you there to stay out of trouble. . . .”
“See what I'm saying? Okay, if I ignore the bracelet for a minute and just focus on study hall, I can narrow it down to a couple hundred people, including the alleged victims. They could be trying to set someone up, or one of them could be a thief. Two hundred suspects—not very narrow.”
“Well, let's look at it again. Use the advantage of being new to this world and examine the anomalies. What jumps out at you about the girls who had their property stolen?”
“They're all rich, but that doesn't set them apart at Langdon. Everybody is rich.”
“Instead of looking at wealth as a common denominator, look at it as the backdrop for the anomaly.”
“So someone who isn't rich? But you always tell me shoplifters are usually females who don't need the loot, they just want the thrill.”
“That's true of shoplifters. But I think we're dealing with something different at Langdon. I don't think this is a thrill seeker, or they wouldn't limit their hunting grounds to the study-hall rooms. They'd branch out, get bolder. As an outsider, tell me what you think about the items stolen.”
“Well, first off, I can't believe kids are walking around with five hundred dollar BlackBerrys and messenger bags. Even if we could afford it, there's no way you'd let me spend that kind of money on a phone. Sometimes I want to introduce those Langdon kids to the real world, like closeout sales and after-school jobs and praying all winter that the furnace won't die. They don't know how good they got it.”
By the time I was done, my observations had turned into a rant. Lana looks at me like I've just cracked the case.
“Find someone as angry as you are about some people having too much and others not having enough, and you'll have narrowed that list considerably.”
Maybe Lana's right, but I don't know anyone remotely as angry as I am about overindulged Langdonites. Well, except for one really ticked-off bio teacher. I'm about to go back to my room and make some notes when Lana stops me.
“Chanti, on second thought, I want to look into this. If she's really suggesting you're a thief, that's a serious accusation.”
“But if you go down there and talk to her, won't that blow your cover? She thinks you're what—a drug dealer? Or a pro?”
“I never told you what she thinks I am.”
“Whatever it is, she must not be too worried about you exposing her if she's willing to pick on me like this.”
“I'm not going to tell you, Chanti, so give it up. But you do raise a good point about blowing my cover, since she thinks I'm doing time right now. Maybe she thinks I can't expose her from a prison cell.”
“Prison?”
“It was part of my story to get you into Langdon. You know, ‘I want to save my child from a similar fate, let her into that school,' blah blah.”
This is why I'm such a good liar when I need to be. It's inherited.
“And you asked her to let me into the school in exchange for . . . ?”
“My silence about that which shall not be named. She probably figures she held up her end by letting you into the school and now that I've been locked up in a land far, far away, she can renege. Who will people believe, anyway? The principal or the con? By the way, she thinks you live with a foster family.”
“Oh my God, Mom. Did you have to make the fake me into such a mess?”
Between Smythe's accusations and having two ex-cons mad at me, the real me has enough problems. Lana ignores my anguish.
“I'll just have to send someone from the office to have a chat with her, let her know she has no case against you.”
“Unless one of your cop friends has a student at Langdon who knows I've been accused, that won't make any sense, some detective just showing up out of the blue when Smythe herself hasn't involved the cops yet.”
“You don't know all my cop friends.”
“I know if you have one with kids at Langdon, he's probably got Internal Affairs all over him 'cause a cop's salary could never swing the tuition.”
Lana tries to think of a comeback, but accepts defeat.
“So I'm supposed to just let this woman call my kid a thief?”
“After talking to you, I have some ideas I want to check out. If I don't find the real thief soon, or if she escalates and goes to the police, then you can go after her. But at this point, setting Smythe straight is not worth blowing your cover.”
“How'd you get so smart?”
“Good genes.”
She smiles, but only for a second before she turns into Officer Mom.
“I don't want flattery. I want to know everything you find out. Don't hold out on me, Chanti.”
“Deal,” I say, hoping her mom/cop radar won't pick up on the mental finger-crossing I'm doing as I say it.
Chapter 16
I
was actually looking forward to school when I woke up this morning. Not only do I have a lead on catching the real thief, I also have a lunch date. Some would call it a study session at the library, but I like to think bigger. Langdon's library is nicer than most city branch libraries, with two floors, a ton of books, and a multimedia center. It gets more use than the library at my old school, but Marco and I manage to find a secluded table in the humanities section. We're sitting side by side, so we can collaborate on our skit for French class.
“I want to apologize for last weekend,” he says, and I'm so relieved we're finally going to talk about it.
“I'm sorry if I said something stupid.”
“No, it was all me. I'm just a little sensitive about that subject.”
I hope he tells me why because that would mean he trusts me, but he doesn't say any more about it and opens his French book. But that's okay. He isn't angry with me and we can get back to turning our friendship into something more. The table we picked is the perfect spot for a little extracurricular activity, but unless he makes the first move, I know it'll never happen. I can't think of anything to restart the conversation, so I focus on unwrapping my sandwich, part of the contraband lunch we've sneaked into the library.
“So what do you think we should do?” Marco asks.
I think we should kiss, but that's not what I say. What I say is, “About what?” because I'm an idiot.
“What should our skit be about?”
“I don't know. Maybe this, what we're doing now.
Petit-déjeuner au bibliothèque.
”
“Except that's breakfast. Lunch would be
dejéuner au bibliothèque.
And we're breaking Langdon law by having lunch in here. Maybe we should move lunch to the café for our skit.”
I'm feeling the whole French thing, so I tell him it's a great idea:
“C'est une grandes idée, Marco.”
I hope the way I say his name sounds seductive instead of ridiculous.
“Let's come up with the dialogue, or should we do the setting first?”
“Let's do the setting. But after we eat. I'm starving.”
Oops, yet again I've broken the first rule of dating—don't let on to the guy that you are ever hungry. Oh well. That's a stupid rule, especially when he's already seen me go through a basket of fries like there might be gold hidden at the bottom of it. So I bite into the sandwich and try to think of something else I can do to let him know I'm a delicate flower, because I know my hips and butt will never convince him that all I ever eat are salads.
He opens a bag of chips and I notice that the tan line on his wrist is nearly faded away.
“Any luck on finding the missing bracelet?”
“It doesn't matter anymore. She broke up with me.”
“Over that? No way.” I try to look sympathetic instead of incredibly happy.
“It was more than the bracelet. I saw it coming. She says I'm different now, and Angelique does not like different.”
Angelique
. Sounds like a beautiful girl's name, the kind of girl who could make him forget she ever left him, forget my name, and take him back, all before breakfast. I pretend I didn't hear it.
“What's changed?”
“From the minute I applied for the scholarship to go here, she started in on me. Why do I want to go to some snob school? Did I think our public school wasn't good enough? It's good enough for her. Maybe I thought she wasn't good enough, either. Crazy noise like that, you know?”
“Yeah, I do know. A couple of my friends said the same thing when I told them I wasn't going to North.”
“North? That's my old school. You weren't there last year. There's no way I'd have missed you.”
I'm hoping he means because it would have been love at first sight.
“My old school is the one that closed down and merged into North. My mom saw it as an excuse to get me into Langdon.”
“I'm glad it worked out the way it did. We may not have been friends at North. Angelique could get pretty jealous.”
Hate her
. But I can do that later. Right now I need to move the conversation back to us, not his emotionally unstable ex-girlfriend.
“I still hang out with my old friends, but not as often,” I say. “It hasn't been two weeks at Langdon, but it seems like we're already in different places. We don't have the same things to talk about. . . .”
“It's like they think wanting something better is a bad thing,” Marco says, peeling an orange. Without asking if I want some, which I do, he just hands me half. Is that not the sweetest thing? “And I'm not saying Langdon is better, but it might get me better opportunities—I can't deny that.”
“It's the only reason I'm here.” Well, that, and Lana forced me.
“Friends say I have to keep it real. I'm trying not to hear that. I just want to get into a good college, help my parents out. To me, that's keeping it real.”
“And I can still be an around-the-way girl just because I'm wearing this uniform. I'm still Chanti, just Chanti with more prospects.”
“See, Angelique didn't get that.” Marco turns to me and smiles. “I'm glad you get it.”
Kiss me.
I try to suggest this to him subliminally since this would be the perfect opportunity, but all he does is unwrap his sandwich and tell me how amazing it is that I'm so aware of things. Yeah, but I'm not aware of how to make boys think of me as something more than a friend.
“Well, I'm hoping all this awareness will help me solve the school thefts.”
“Have any ideas yet?”
“No, but I'm working on it.”
 
Later in the day, I'm sitting in study hall and instead of doing homework, I'm watching Ms. Reeves. The study rooms are set up in a squared-off U-shape, the open end of the U being the front of the room where Ms. Reeves sits. I made sure I got to class early enough to get a study room, otherwise I'd have to share one of the tables inside the U and I don't want any distractions. In fact, I got here so early—after pretending I was sick at the end of my last class—that I was able to watch the study hall class before mine empty the room. I didn't see Annette, so I guess I can eliminate her as a suspect for the study-hall thefts.
I don't know how I'll get a chance to watch the other study-hall teacher, but I don't think I need to. I'm pretty sure Ms. Reeves is the one. The other teacher, Ms. Hemphill, fits the Langdon scene perfectly—she's got that whole
I'm a person of culture
thing going that all these teachers try to pull off, like they're better than teachers at other schools just because they teach at Langdon. You get the feeling she can afford to be a teacher because she came from money. That's the only explanation for her car, a Mercedes so new the temporary tag in the back window still has a month before it expires. Even at Langdon with its trust-fund teachers, that big shiny car stands out in the parking lot. She's not a woman struggling to understand how these kids have the money they do.
Ms. Reeves, enviro-psycho, is the total opposite. She's already decorated the study hall with posters of decimated rain forests and endangered seal pups. A jar sits on her desk with a sign next to it that reads:
THE CHANGE LEFTOVER FROM YOUR SUPER VALUE COMBO COULD FEED A THIRD WORLD VILLAGE FOR A WEEK
. It's always empty. She drives a tiny hybrid that looks more like a Matchbox car than something made for grown people. It also looks brand new, so I figure Ms. Reeves is another trust-fund teacher, just one with a guilt complex.
Wait a minute. Her car. The tiny hybrid with a tiny trunk. I grab a dollar from my wallet, go up to her desk, and drop it into the jar.
“May I have a hall pass?”
“Thank you for your donation,” she says sweetly, handing me the pass.
I head outside toward the teachers' parking lot, looking for a brand-new orange Honda, the little car I saw speeding away while I waited for Lana on the first day of school. I find it at the end of the lot, sporting a license plate that reads 431ZTF2. So that was Ms. Reeves at the mall. And I'd bet my Langdon meal plan ticket that she
really
was running because she stole something. I don't have a motive yet, but I think I might have my suspect.
 
Back in study hall, I grab my books and move to one of the shared tables inside the U so I can have a better view of the study rooms. I'm hoping the boy I sit next to doesn't think I moved because I'm weird or I like him or anything. But he just looks up at me for a second, then goes right back to texting, holding his cell under the table so Ms. Reeves can't see it.
I watch Ms. Reeves like I'm Lana on a stakeout. She has her back turned to the room while she hangs a poster of endangered snow owls on the wall behind her desk. If the perp was a student, this would be the perfect time for the thief to make her move, but no one even shifts in their chairs. I see Angela from world history pretending to study while she reads the manga mag placed strategically inside her textbook; a few students trying to get next period's homework done since they didn't do it last night; one with her study door closed and talking on her phone, violating school policy; a boy named Brad I recognize from English playing a game on his PlayStation Portable; another asleep with his head on the desk.
Brad puts the game into his backpack, leaves the backpack in the room, and goes up to Ms. Reeves's desk. She hands him a hall pass, and the minute he's out of the room, she picks up the cardboard box she keeps beside her desk and heads toward the study rooms. It's one of those boxes with lids that printer paper comes in. She has cut a slot in the top of the box lid and marked on it in big letters
SINCE YOU DIDN'T SAVE A TREE
,
AT LEAST RECYCLE ONE
. Ms. Reeves walks slowly, deliberately, as if she's trying not to look deliberate. She stops in Angela's room and asks her something. Then the girl hands her a few sheets of paper that Ms. Reeves slips into the slot on the box lid and continues her pass of the study rooms.
Now she smiles at a student as she walks by his room, but he doesn't smile back because he's the one asleep and drooling onto one of his textbooks. She keeps smiling, and even nods her head at the boy who doesn't know she's there. What study-hall teacher would let a kid get away with sleeping? I think that's their favorite thing to catch us doing. Teachers live to scare kids out of a good midday nap in study hall. But Ms. Reeves just keeps smiling and moves along, stopping in front of the room where PSP-playing Brad was.
She moves into the room and a few seconds later, exits and heads back to her desk. I notice that she never gets to the bottom of the U, never finishes her search for a tree that might be recycled. Now she carries the box differently, like it's a little heavier even though she only put a few sheets of paper in it. The clincher is when she puts the box under her desk in the space where her legs should go, where no environmentally conscious student could reach it to recycle a tree.
The second that box goes under Miss Reeves's desk, I ask for another hall pass. Since I add another dollar to the jar, she doesn't question the second request. I go straight to the headmistress's office.

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