Pretty Sly (10 page)

So the guy did see Aidan after all. They knew who he was.

Oh no oh no oh no oh no.

The reporter again. “Local police confirmed that Murphy’s parents filed a missing-persons report today. Murphy has been on probation for an unrelated crime and was recently expelled from the Valley Preparatory School. Authorities have reason to believe he’s on the run with the stolen car.”

I didn’t need to hear any more. I ran back to the couch
and shoved Aidan awake.

“Aidan, get up,” I said through my teeth. “Get up right now.”

He rolled over and draped an elbow over his eyes. “What? What time is it?”

“They know it’s you,” I said. “I just saw it on the news. That guy you saw . . . he went to the police.”

Aidan sat up immediately. “Oh crap. This is not good. Really not good.”

“I know,” I said, alarm rising through my voice in faltering waves. “What should we do?”

“We can’t stay here. That woman at the desk saw both of us. And who knows who else.”

“The valet driver. I just talked to him. But he saw my mom. She was here.”

“We’ll have to come back,” he said, standing and whispering fiercely. He took hold of my arm. “We’ll have to figure it out. Let’s
go
.”

“Now? But what if she shows up?” We were so close. How could we leave?

“C’mon, Willa,” he hissed.

I reluctantly followed him out through the lobby, looking back over my shoulder for any sign of my mom. But there was no one coming or going. The woman at the front desk didn’t even look up.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

EIGHT

“WE’RE SO DEAD,”
Aidan said, covering his face with his hands.

We were back in the Volvo, still parked behind the Hadley, hardly daring to look at each other. The road trip, maybe just a garden-variety bad idea to begin with, was quickly becoming a full-on, shaky-handheld-camera horror-movie nightmare.

“I can’t believe you did this to me,” I said. “You put the whole plan in jeopardy.”

“Me?
I
did this to
you
?” His eyes widened and his voice flared to an incredulous pitch.

“Yeah, you. Screwing up with the car. Getting spotted. Now they know. They know we’re gone. And they’re after us.”

My point was that we were supposed to be finding my mom and rescuing her and now we
were devoting precious time and energy to saving ourselves. Now we were on the run like criminals. Which maybe we were, but the running wasn’t part of the plan.

“It takes two to tango,” he said.

“Actually, it only takes one person to botch a car theft.”

He blew out a slow sigh and I watched it bloom on the windshield. “(A) This is my first time. There’s a learning curve with this sort of thing.”

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, well, that’s not what you were saying back in Phoenix. You were all, ‘How hard can it be?’”

“I’m not finished.” He held up a hand as if to hold back my torrent of anger and fear, and maybe his own. “(B) They only know about me, so you’re still in the clear. And (C), I was only trying to help you out. So theoretically I could be just as mad at you right now, for putting me in this situation to begin with, but I’m not.”

Was he even serious? After he and Tre conspired to make him my designated driver? Like they gave me any choice?

“For the record, I didn’t ask you to come with me. I could’ve just taken the bus.”

“And you would’ve been on the express route back to juvie. Look, Willa, we can blame each other all we want. It doesn’t matter now. What’s happened has happened. We need to move on. Preferably by getting as far away from the Hadley as possible.”

I stared out at the velvety nighttime California sky,
the wrinkled folds of mountains in the distance, and the ocean, to our left. Hostage to the beauty, I felt time slipping away. The car was beginning to close in around us like a prison. In my grand scheme we were supposed to be on the road back home, my mom in tow. Now everything was up in the air again.

Even so, I felt bad. I didn’t want to be fighting Aidan or blaming him. “Look, I’m sorry if I snapped at you. This whole thing is making me jumpy. But we still have a mission.”

“I’m not giving up on that. We just need to think.” He rubbed at his temples, staring ahead.

It was twelve forty-five
A.M
. I was overwhelmed with fatigue suddenly, realizing that I hadn’t slept since the night at Tre’s, which was now almost thirty hours ago. Aidan had at least gotten his nap in the lobby.

“I can’t think,” I said. “I’m exhausted.”

“Well, you sleep. I’m going to drive a little, and then we’re going to find another place where we can wait and stay the rest of the night. Like a motel or something.”

“Just don’t go too far,” I said, trying to keep my eyes open. It felt wrong to sleep at a moment like this. And yet . . .

The forward movement was seductive and I could not resist the pull.

Just five minutes,
I told myself. I felt my head lolling as Aidan drove, and I was out.

• • •

When I woke up, the car was stopped.

“Hey, sleepyhead,” Aidan said, almost affectionately.

“Hey,” I said, smiling at the sound of his voice, forgetting where I was.

It took me a moment to come back to reality. To remember what was going on. The stolen car, the Hadley, the news report. Then I saw where we were parked, in the lot of the Palms Motel. A neon vacancy sign glared at us, missing a few letters. There were only a handful of other cars around, most of them as beat up as the Volvo.

“You ready? We can check in for the night,” Aidan said. “Then I was thinking we could ditch the car and maybe try to sneak back into the Hadley tomorrow.”

“Okay.” I liked the sound of that plan. We didn’t need the car, anyway. Once we found my mom we could all drive back to Paradise Valley. Then we could explain everything to the police. I might have to go back to juvie but it was worth it.

With a little sleep under my belt I felt ready for the next phase of Operation Rescue My Mom. We got out and walked toward the entrance. Wherever we were, it felt remote and quiet.

“How long did I sleep?”

“About an hour. You looked pretty cute, with your mouth hanging open.”

Oh man. That was mortifying. I was starting to think that there was an appropriate juncture in a relationship
for road trips, and Aidan and I just hadn’t gotten there yet. And now we were about to check into a motel like some creepy old people having an affair. Can you say cringe?

The lobby at the Palms was a one-eighty from the Hadley. There were no floral arrangements, no piped-in music, no freebie snacks. No one wanted to be seen in this place, let alone hang out in the lobby. There was, however, a desk with a woman behind it. She had bleached blond hair, a name tag that said Sherry, and a pink piece of gum that flashed between her teeth.

“We’d like a room, please.”

Her eyes traveled over me. I prayed the woman didn’t think I was a prostitute.

But she didn’t say anything. “That’s sixty-five dollars,” she said.

“Let’s see,” Aidan said, thumbing through his wallet. “I only have forty bucks. Do you take AmEx?”

I yelped and grabbed for his hand, remembering Tre’s warning. “No! We can’t use that!” Seeing the startled look on his face, I took it down a notch. “I mean, we should just pay in cash.”

As much as I wanted to save the money my mom left me, I knew this was what it was for. My survival. Which was now, for better or worse, bound up with Aidan’s.

I put down my hand and felt for my bag at my waist, but I was pawing at air.

My bag. Oh my God.

“Hold on,” I said, and bolted for the door, heading for the now-familiar boxy shape of the Volvo in the lot.

I’d probably just left it in the car, right? I mean, that would have been stupid, given the busted window, but we’d only been inside for five minutes, tops. It wasn’t enough time for anyone but the most talented burglar . . . and no one was even around. . . .

I’d already gone through all the scenarios by the time I got to the car. Once you became a thief, you couldn’t help but think like one.

I threw open the passenger-side door and searched the seat. Nothing. Just my bag with the schoolbooks.

Then I knelt down on the pavement and groped underneath, pushing my hand between the grubby floor mat and the sticky springs. But by the time I was reaching frantically into the crack between the seat bottom and backrest, I knew the bag was gone.

I walked back into the lobby, where Aidan was waiting for me.

“I lost it,” I murmured as I looked at him in horror. “I lost the money.”

“You what?” Aidan glared at me. Then to the floor: “Oh crap.” And then to the lady: “I’m sorry. We’ll have to come back.”

The woman shrugged, as if she’d seen a thousand indecisive teens walk away from her desk before. We meant nothing to her.

But that motel room, it meant everything to me. It
was our shelter. Our means of sleeping, washing, and hiding until we could find my mom. We were rootless, homeless, moneyless. It was all I could do now to keep from falling apart.

With every step back to the Volvo, I was bracing myself for the onslaught of Aidan’s anger. Not that I needed it right now—I was thoroughly furious with myself, enough for the two of us.

So. Freaking. Stupid. How could I have done it?

“Dude, I can’t believe you,” Aidan said, smiling at me sidelong.

“I messed up, okay?”

“I know,” he said, his smile cracking into a deep chuckle.

He was
laughing
?

“It’s so not funny,” I said. “We have to go back to the Hadley. Like, instantly.”

I pictured where I’d most likely left my overnight bag, on the floor by those couches in the lobby. If we hurried, maybe we could still get it before anybody noticed. Going back there now was risky but it was a lot of money in question, too much money to leave behind. We needed it. Besides, my wallet was in there, too, with my VP school ID. And all my clothes. With every passing second our total screwedness was reaching new heights.

Of course, I still had my Comp notebook and my copy of
Walden
. Because those things were really going to come in handy on the road. Maybe only if we could
cook them or use them for a fire.

“Okay, okay,” he said, trying to contain himself. “Let’s go.”

I stared at him as he calmly drove out of the Palms parking lot, signaled, and turned onto the road. “You’re actually enjoying this, aren’t you?”

He pressed his bottom lip out. “A little. I mean, at least I’m not the only one who makes mistakes.”

“Clearly you’re not,” I said, leaning my head against the broken window. I wanted to yell and smash things. I wanted to cry.

He shook his head, still not even looking mad. “So maybe we’re even?”

“Maybe,” I said. It was no consolation, though. Because our being even did nothing to make our situation any less terrifying. It just meant we’d both been idiots.

“Look, Willa, it’s okay. It was just a few thousand bucks.”

“To you, maybe. To you, that’s chump change, right?”

I thought of Nikki and Kellie. Not having any concept of what a few thousand dollars meant to us in this situation, or in any situation, for that matter, was pure Glitterati-tude. Having grown up without servants, a pool house, or a trust fund, I valued every single in my wallet. Which, of course, might be gone forever.

“I’m just saying, money is money. It’s just a bunch of paper with green ink. It doesn’t
mean
anything.”

“How about our safety and freedom?”

“We’ll get it back,” he said gently. “Probably no one even noticed it.”

And this was worse, this nice-guy stuff—I couldn’t even be mad and take it out on him when he was being all supportive. How irritating was that?

I huffed out my misery, and it was sucked into the air through the busted glass. Freezing now. Couldn’t Mr. Volvo Owner have invested in a little duct tape?

I was still wearing my mom’s windbreaker, and I wrapped it tighter around me and shoved my hands in the pockets. As I did, my fingers brushed against a piece of paper on the right side.

I pulled it out and unfolded it. There was a doodle in the top corner, the kind she made while she talked on the phone. Beneath was a single column of words, written in her sloppy cursive.

                
Needles

                
Posts

                
Crest

                
Azalea

                
Drain

                
3RS

One of her shopping lists. Maybe she had used it on the way to Home Depot when we were settling into the house. I folded it up and put it back into the pocket. It
was probably sentimental of me, but there was no way I was getting rid of anything of hers now. Not until I got to see her again.

“That’s a nice jacket,” Aidan said, probably noticing it for the first time.

“It’s my mom’s,” I replied. Even referring to her in this way made me sad and angry and anxious. I was here to find her and the only thing I’d done so far was successfully steal her clothing. Stealing was the only thing I was good at, apparently.

We drove most of the way back into town in silence. The ocean came in and out of view through my window. Then I remembered that in all the time I’d lived in Arizona, I had been craving an ocean view. I should enjoy it now. I tried to watch the waves and let them wash away all my negative thoughts.

Okay, do-over. What’s done is done.

What was it my mom always said about not letting your worries eat you up inside? Time to start thinking constructively.

“So we’ll get the money,” I said, trying to convince myself and lay out our goals. Saying them aloud would help us make them a reality.

Aidan nodded. “Then we’ll find another motel. And in the morning we’ll try to find your mom.”