Sammy Keyes and the Dead Giveaway (28 page)

Summer's supposed to be a time of freedom. Freedom from school, from homework, from junior high head games … freedom to hang out with your friends without adults constantly hovering around, telling you what to do.

But it seemed like school had barely let out when all my friends suddenly flew the coop. Marissa's family went to Las Vegas.
Again
. Holly took off on some road trip in a motor home, and Dot went to Holland to visit her grandparents.
Holland
.

Me, I was left trapped in this freak-fest of a town, in an old-folks' apartment where I live with my grandmother, next door to a whale of a woman who has supersonic hearing and the charming habit of falling off her toilet.

I was desperate to get away.

The trouble is, when you're desperate, you do dumb things.

When you're desperate, you might as well face it— you're doomed.

If Marissa
or
Holly
or
Dot had been around, I wouldn't have been thinking about Casey Acosta at all. But since they weren't around, and since Casey
does
qualify as a friend (even though he's my archenemy Heather's brother) okay, I admit it—he had crossed my mind.

More than once.

Partly that was because I'd seen him at the mall a couple of times during the first few days of summer break. Marissa was with me the first time, and she practically choked my arm off with her grip when she spotted him coming out of Sports Central. “Sammy, look! It's
Casey
.”

I wanted to say, So? but it just didn't come out.

Then
he
spotted
us
, and the three of us wound up cruising through the mall, laughing the whole afternoon away.

It was fun.

Like being with friends should be.

The
second
time I was by myself. I'd escaped the Senior Highrise, cruised the whole town on my skateboard looking for something,
anything
to do, and finally I'd wound up at the mall.

Did I go to the arcade?

No.

Did I go to the music store?

No.

To any of the clothing stores?

No.

Like a moronic moth to the flame, I fluttered over to the only place I'd ever bumped into Casey at the mall— Sports Central.

Now, I've got every right to go into a sporting goods store. I
like
sports. But I didn't go inside. I stood
outside
, pretending to window-shop, with my heart racing and my hands sweating, a shouting match going on inside my head.

“What are you
doing
?”

“I don't know!”

“Why don't you just go inside!”

“Because I don't need anything!”

“So what! Just go inside!”

“Why?”

“Because standing out here is the lamest thing you've ever done in your whole entire life!”

It was, too. I felt like one of those dingbat girls who walks back and forth past some guy's house, hoping he'll notice her. How stupid did I want to be? And what were the chances of Casey being here again? Why didn't I just call him up if I wanted to hang out with him?

So there I was, in the middle of a total mental spaz-out, when all of a sudden someone sneaks up behind me and pokes me in the ribs.

Before I can even think about what I'm doing, my elbow jabs back, punching deep into someone's stomach,
and then
wham
, my fist flies up and back, smacking them in the face. And when I spin around, who do I see doubled up on the floor with blood coming out of his nose?

Nope, not Casey.

It's his goofball friend, Billy Pratt.

Casey
is
there, though. And even though his eyes are popped wide open, his words are really calm. “Dude, I told you not to startle her.”

I drop to my knees and say to Billy, “Oh, man! I'm so sorry!”

He chokes out, “I'm good,” but he's still totally winded, and blood's getting everywhere.

So I run to the pretzel stand, snag a bunch of napkins, and run back. “Here. Put some pressure on your nose. It'll stop the bleeding.” Then I add, “I'm
really
sorry! It was … you know … a reflex.”

He pinches the napkin against his nose and sits up, moaning, “No problem.” He gives me a goofy grin. “I've had a stomach massage and a realignment….” He shoves a corner of the napkin up his nose, and with the rest of the napkin dangling, he staggers to his feet and says, “I am totally ready to rock.”

The thing about Billy Pratt is, you can't
not
laugh when you're with him. He is always,
always
“on,” even when he's just been smacked to the floor by a girl. So being around him made the spastic thoughts I'd been having magically disappear. I followed him and Casey into the sporting goods store, where Casey picked out camping supplies while Billy harassed a clerk, acting like he was some hoity-toity British polo player instead of a kid with a
bloody napkin dangling from his nose. “I say there, chap! These shorts say ‘one hundred percent cotton,’ but I must have combed
Egyptian
cotton or I break out in rashes. Absolutely wretched rashes! You wouldn't want to see, not at all! So I must know. I absolutely
must
know … are these combed Egyptian cotton?”

I whispered to Casey, “Do they even grow cotton in Egypt?”

“You got me,” Casey whispered back. “Probably just Billy being Billy.”

He'd turned and looked me in the eyes when he'd said that, only he didn't look away when he was done talking. He just kept right on looking me in the eyes.

Which of course made my heart skip around funny while glands everywhere burst forth with sweat. “Uh … so you're … uh … going camping, huh?” I said, showing off my brilliant intuitive talents.

He laughed, “Yup,” and went back to picking out freeze-dried food. “Backpacking, remember?”

He had mentioned it at the end of the school year. Like twenty times.

“You've really never been?” he asked.

I shook my head.

He shrugged. “My dad and I got into it a few years ago. It's like camping, only cooler.”

I hesitated, then said, “I've never been camping, either.”

He stopped flipping through foil packages. “
You?
Never been camping?”

I shook my head again.

He stared.

I shrugged.

He went back to his freeze-dried selections. “Sorry. You just seem like …” His voice trailed off, and then he chuckled and said, “Now,
Marissa.
That I would believe. But you? You'd love camping.”

“I don't know.” I picked out a foil pouch of vegetable lasagna. It weighed hardly anything. “You actually eat this stuff?”

“That right there's pretty vile. But some of these are almost good.” He grinned. “And after about day four, even the vile ones start tasting all right.”

“You going with your dad?”

“Nah. He was planning to come, but then he got some big audition in L.A.” He hitched a thumb in Billy's direction. “So now it's just me and Mr. Entertainment.”

“You and
Billy
? And you expect to survive?”

He laughed out loud. “Yeah, my dad wasn't too hot on the idea, either. But I know what I'm doing, and he trusts me. And Billy's a good camper, believe it or not.” He hesitated, then eyed me and said, “I don't suppose your mom would let you come along?”

It was my turn to laugh out loud. “I don't suppose … !”

And see? That's the stupid thing about trying to be friends with the opposite sex. How can you be friends when you can't
do
anything together? Even going to the movies becomes a big deal. Voices drop. Eyes bug. Gossip flies. “She went to the movies with him?
Alone?
” All that gasping and gossiping over what? A movie? Sharing some popcorn? Sitting next to each other and laughing? Maybe accidentally touching elbows?

Hmm.

Anyway
, it made me mad that I couldn't go camping. Not because I wanted to go and couldn't, but because I couldn't go even if I wanted to. I was a girl and he was a boy and the idea of going camping together was just insane. No, it'd have to be just him and Napkin Nose in the woods eating from shriveled foil pouches, warding off bears with nothing but sticks and their wits.

Okay, so it was probably a good thing that I couldn't go, but still, it didn't stop me from being royally ticked off about it.

So a couple of days later I went
back
to the mall because I was bored to death, and I went
back
to Sports Central. It was on beyond insane, because yes, I was hoping to run into Casey again, and no, I had no idea when he was actually leaving on his backpacking trip or how long he'd be gone.

Little details I'd neglected to gather.

I can be so bright.

Anyway, this time I didn't stare at the lime green biker shorts display and have an argument with myself. This time I just moseyed inside. And who did I find over in the camping department holding on to an empty shopping basket?

Not Casey.

It was a girl from school named Cassie Kuo. Or Cricket, as she likes to be called.

And maybe she wasn't Casey, but at least she was someone I knew.

Sort of.

I mean, I'd had her in homeroom all year, and she had been my Secret Santa at Christmastime. She'd made me a little macaroni angel to hang on my tree, so I probably
should
have known her better than I did, but she's quiet and shy and I never saw her at the lunch tables or after school; she didn't hang out around town or at the ballpark….

Not that this was anything I'd ever given any thought to, but now all of a sudden there she was, sifting through the same foil pouches that Casey had gone through, and it hit me that it was truly weird to see her anywhere outside of homeroom, especially here.

“Cricket?” I asked, because I still couldn't quite believe it was her.

She jumped a little, then her head snapped to face me. “Sammy?” she gasped, like I was a long-lost friend. “It's so great to see you! What are you doing here?”

I shrugged. “Trying to get over perpetual boredom.”

“You're bored? How can you be bored? It's summer!” Then her eyes got really big and she said, “Oh! It's because Heather's in England, isn't it? She's gone and you just don't know what to do with the peace and quiet, is that it? But where are Marissa and Dot and Holly and … all your friends?” She looked around, like, where was I hiding my posse of friends.

I couldn't help laughing, because (a) she was being really hyper and (b) the stuff she'd said about Heather was so …
bizarre. Like I would be bored because the world's most evil, conniving, mentally deranged teenager was half a world away?

I don't think so!

Cricket leaned in and said, “I bet Heather comes back with a phony English accent! I bet she tells everyone that she had breakfast with the queen and a private tour of Buckingham Palace. I bet she starts complaining that there's no high tea offered in the school cafeteria! I bet she starts using words like
brilliant
and
loo
! I bet—”

I busted up so hard that everyone in the store turned to look at me. I mean, Heather's
my
archenemy, not hers, but everything she was saying was so spot-on that it was like
she'd
been the one harassed by Heather all year.

When my laughing wound down, I asked, “What did she do to
you
?”

“What did she do to
me
?” She seemed to take a step back, even though she stayed right where she was. “She tortured
you
.”

“But …”

“She was evil! Awful! How can anyone be so terrible?” She shook her head. “All year I just wanted to smack her.” She grabbed my arm. “But you stood up to her and won! And now her brother likes you and she's insane over
that.
” She rubbed her hands together. “It's all so … satisfying!”

All of a sudden I was not laughing. I was staring at Cricket and feeling very, very weird. She was treating me like the star of some teen-drama reality show that she hadn't missed one episode of. She knew a
lot
about my
life—about my archenemy and her brother and my friends and all the action that had gone down at school— but I knew nothing about her.

She was just Cricket Kuo, Quiet Girl.

Macaroni Angel Girl.

“So what are you buying?” I asked, suddenly wanting to change the subject.

“Backpacking food!” she said, like she'd been saving up all year for this very moment. “We're hiking out to Vista Ridge to see condors!”

“Condors? I thought they were extinct or …”

Her eyes got wide. “They were
almost
extinct, but they're making a comeback! We hike out to a tracking station where we can monitor them.” She tossed a couple of freeze-dried pouches into her basket. “Everyone who's seen a condor soaring over the canyon says it's the most amazing sight, and this time I'm not leaving until I spot one!”

“So how far do you have to hike?”

“Aaaactually …” She pulled a little face. “We drive most of the way. There's a road clear up to the tracking station, but it's steep and full of potholes, and there's a gully you need a four-wheel drive to ford. So we just get as close as we can and hike the rest.” She shrugged. “It's only about five miles.”

“Your whole family's into this?”

She stopped cold, then seemed to thaw from her fingertips, up her arms, to her shoulders. “I'm going with my Scout troop,” she said quietly, then gave me a shy smile. “Remember? I told you about it once?”

I racked my brains, and yeah, I kind of remembered her inviting me to go on an outing with them. It was when she'd given me the macaroni angel. Or thereabouts.

“We don't wear uniforms or anything. We're just a group that likes to camp.” She was looking down, and her voice had dropped to a whisper. “We don't look like the girls you see on cookie boxes.”

I didn't know what to say. She was acting apologetic and so
embarrassed.

“You would like it, Sammy,” she whispered. “You really would.”

I shrugged. “Probably so.”

Mistake! All of sudden her face is twitching and popping and lit up like fireworks, and she says, “Why don't you come! You'd have a blast! Vista Ridge has the most amazing views! You could share my tent! You could share my food!” She turns over a pouch of freeze-dried Santa Fe Chicken with Rice. “See? Serving size: two! I don't mind! I'll buy more!”

“Whoa, Cricket, hang on! I've never been backpacking. I don't know how. I don't have any gear!”

And what does she do with this camp-killing news flash?

She looks at my feet.

“What's your shoe size?”

“A seven …?”

She hops up and down. “You can borrow boots from me! And a pack from my brother! And Robin has extra sleeping bags! You'll love Robin—she's our leader and she's good friends with Coach Rothhammer!”

Now, the fact that her leader was good friends with my softball coach was a plus. I respect Ms. Rothhammer. As Grams says, she's got backbone. But still, it wasn't reason enough to go backpacking.