Sammy Keyes and the Dead Giveaway (4 page)

It was weird being off campus during school. I felt like I was ditching, even though I was really trying to get
in
to school.

The first chance I got, I pulled over and started writing the note.

Then I forged my mother's signature.

Well, I forged the signature my grams uses when
she
forges my mother's signature. Goes with the territory when you live illegally with your grandmother because your mom's in Hollywood trying to make it as a movie star.

Anyway, my version of my grandmother's forgery was awful. It looked like a little kid trying to forge their forged parent's signature.

So I practiced the signature a bunch of times, then started over on a new piece of paper. But I got nervous when it came time to sign my mother's name, and once again it was awful.

So
this
time I tried the signature
first
, and when I finally had one that looked pretty pro, I wrote the note above it.

I checked it over. Good enough. Then I packed everything up, rode back to school, and tried not to shake as I handed the note to Mrs. Tweeter, the office lady.

She read it and smiled, saying, “Well, you certainly look wide awake now.”

Was I ever. But I just nodded and asked, “Are we still in first period?”

She checked the clock. “Yes, dear.”

So off to class I went, my heart fluttering with excitement.

I'd done it!

It was over!

No one would ever know.

But later when Marissa saw me, she said, “Sammy! Where have you been?” and since there were other people around, I said, “Uh …I overslept.”

“Well, you'll never guess what happened in homeroom!”

So I had to act like I didn't know a thing while she went on and on about Heather getting in trouble for snatching Mrs. Ambler's bird. “You should have seen Mrs. Ambler go after her! She was like a detective!”

I played dumb. “Mrs. Ambler?” I said with a laugh. “A detective?”

But Marissa was right — that's exactly how she'd seemed. And it made my stomach queasy again. What if somebody
had
seen me leave campus? What if they were discussing it in the office? What if they were checking my signature against the one on file? What if they were calling
Grams—or, they thought, my mother—to verify? Or what if Mrs. Ambler figured it out a different way? She would think I was the most despicable person to ever walk the halls of William Rose Junior High.

And believe me—that's saying something.

So I was in the middle of a total panic attack when Marissa nailed the Vault of Truth closed by saying, “Knowing Heather, she
killed
poor Tango and hid him somewhere so Mrs. Ambler'll never know what happened to him.” She sighed and shook her head, adding, “This is an all-time low, even for her.”

It felt like there was a dark spot on my heart. Like a bruise. And it was getting deeper and wider with every lie I told. Marissa was the one person I might have spilled the truth to, but after what she'd just said, there was no way I could tell her what I'd done.

So I just listened and nodded and acted surprised. And at lunch when Holly asked me, “Are you feeling all right?” I said, “Huh? Oh yeah. Just a little tired, that's all.”

Heather was gossiping like crazy during science, playing the wounded innocent. She was so, so hurt that Mrs. Ambler had accused her. “I can't believe it,” she moaned. “I just can't believe it. I really liked Mrs. Ambler … and I thought she liked me, too …”

Class Personality ballots were passed out the last ten minutes of school. The seventh-grade ones were blue, all right, and Heather's name was still on them. So I voted against her, hoping that the rest of the school was doing the same.

But when Miss Kuzkowski collected them and said,
“Can I have a volunteer to take these to the office? They go in Mrs. Ambler's box,” I knew that Heather was going to win both categories. Wherever she was, she'd find some way to get to the office, then she'd slip her filled-in stolen ballots alongside the legitimate ballots that had been delivered to Mrs. Ambler's box.

Heather Acosta, Friendliest.

Heather Acosta, Most Unique Style.

She was a shoo-in.

When the dismissal bell rang, I just wanted to escape. School, my enemies, my friends …I wanted to get far away from anyone who knew me.

Or, at least, anyone I'd lied to.

So when I saw Marissa and Holly at the bike racks where we always meet, I came up with an excuse.

Scratch that—I came up with another lie.

“I've got to get over to Mrs. Willawago's early today,” I told them.

Marissa frowned. “Why?”

“Uh…I've got to do some yard work for her.”

“
Yard
work?” Marissa asked. “Now you're doing her
yard
work?”

I forced a laugh. “Not exactly. I, um, I just clean up after Captain Patch.”

She blinked at me. “So let me get this straight—you're in a hurry to clean up dog poop? For a lady who's not even
paying
you?”

“Well, I … I've also got a lot of homework.”

Marissa's eyebrows shot up. “You're kidding. Who's giving you homework?”

“Yeah,” Holly said. “I've got
none
.”

God. Was I lame, or what? I could feel the weight of the lies stacking up. And all of a sudden they seemed to be smothering me. “Look,” I snapped, “you guys may not have any homework, but I do.”

And with that I jumped on my skateboard and tore out of there.

Mrs. Willawago may live in the coolest house I've ever seen, but it's flanked by other houses that are pretty dilapidated, and it's on Hopper, the funkiest street in Santa Martina. Hopper's got no sidewalks or curbs or gutters, just a four-foot strip of asphalt that's all worn through, cracked, full of holes, and runs right alongside the railroad tracks.

Now, I don't know what the railroad tracks are actually used for anymore. Lights still flash and bells still clang when the safety arm lowers across certain streets in town, but all that ever seem to go by are locomotives. No boxcars, no cabooses, just one locomotive pulling another locomotive backward. They don't even switch tracks. They just
toot-toot
as they hold up traffic and take turns pulling each other across intersections.

Anyway, if all the roads in that part of town were like Hopper Street, you'd think the area was just poor, or “economically challenged,” as my English teacher, Miss Pilson, likes to say. But since Hopper Ts off McEllen — which is a wide, pristine street that has the great big municipal pool complex, lawn bowling, and the fire station on one side, and the library, the historical society,
and city hall on the other—well, discovering Hopper Street can be a bit of a shock.

But anyway,
I
wasn't shocked because I'd been visiting Mrs. Willawago every day for three weeks. What I
was
, was out of breath. I'd ridden my skateboard really hard the whole way from school, and actually, being out of breath felt good. Like I'd cleansed my lungs of lies-and-deceit pollution.

Now, since you can't exactly ride a skateboard on what's left of Hopper Street, I popped up my board and headed down the road on foot, passing by the abandoned Santa Martina Railroad Office, where
Mr.
Willawago used to report to work.

“It was the cutest office you ever saw,” Mrs. Willawago told me. “Oh, there were desks and the like, as any old office has, but the boys built a miniature railroad that went around the walls, complete with trestles they'd fashioned above the doors. If someone came into the building,
chuga-chuga-chuga-whoo-whoo
, it would trigger the train. Praise the Lord, what a sight! It would take a trip clear round, then come to a rest until the next person went through the door.

“They had the place decorated with pictures of the men working the line, crossbucks and a gantry, a semaphore, steel gangs and spikers … all manner of railroading paraphernalia. Frank adored the place, which is how we got our start collecting and decorating in here. It was a real ferrophiliac's delight.”

Now, I didn't know what half the things she'd mentioned were, but ferrophiliac? I couldn't let that one slide. So I asked, “Uh …ferro-
what
?”

She laughed. “Ferrophiliac. Someone who loves railroads.”

Before Mrs. Willawago told me about the railroad office, I thought it was just another old building ready for the dozer. There's chain-link clear around it, and all the windows and doors are boarded up. And slashed all over the plywood and the building's brick are layers and layers of graffiti. It was hard to imagine it ever being anything cute or, you know,
vibrant.

But now that I knew its history, it made me kind of sad every time I walked by. It felt like the tomb of the railroad guys. A place where they'd spent their lives. A place that was now just fading memories.

Anyway, I walked by the railroad office, then the weedy vacant lot next door, past two houses with more car parts out front than a wrecking yard, past another weedy lot, and then the Stones' house.

The only reason I knew their name was because they lived next door to Mrs. Willawago, and she had joked that they were just a “Stone's throw away.” Their house was definitely weathered, but at least their front yard wasn't a car-parts graveyard. It didn't have flowers and a white picket fence or anything, but it did have the finest lawn I'd ever seen. Not fine as in great—fine as in fine hair. The blades were thin and delicate and cropped really close to the earth. Actually, the first time I saw the lawn, I thought it was fake, but even in Santa Martina most people don't mow fake grass, and that's exactly what Mr. Stone was doing as I walked by.

He was pushing a little antique lawn mower. You know, no seat, no motor… just a handle and a wide spiral blade.
And he was wearing the same thing he always seemed to wear—blue coveralls, work boots, cop-style glasses that turn dark in the sun, and one of those ball caps with the built-in safari cloths in back.

I waved because it seemed pretty stupid not to, seeing how I was walking right by, but I might as well not have because he pretended not to see me.

No big surprise. Mr. Stone's a bit of an odd duck, if you ask me. His weight's all in the middle, plus he's got an overgrown brown-and-gray moustache that curves around his mouth. So between that and the shades and the hat, he looks like a dressed-up walrus.

He's also not very friendly, but Mrs. Willawago says he's actually nicer than he used to be. Apparently he injured his back at work, but she says she thinks he's been humbled by other medical problems—like skin cancer.

Whatever. Humbled or not, he's still not very friendly.

Anyway, it was trash day, so I moved Mrs. Willawago's empty bin into her garage, then picked up her mail and opened her front door. She likes me to just call hello and come in because it saves her from having to hobble over to answer the door. But this time I kind of choked on my hello because she was standing right there, flushed and flustered, clenching some papers in her hand. And she was breathing funny. Sort of shallow and
panty
.

If she had been alone, I would have worried that she was having a heart attack. But there was another woman standing right beside her. A very
patriotic
-looking woman, which somehow made her seem, I don't know,
safe.
The lady was wearing a royal blue skirt, a white
blouse, and a red blazer that had a blue-and-white scarf peeking out of the little scarf pocket. Even her
feet
looked patriotic in blue-and-white pumps with little red buckles across the tops.

Something about this woman seemed familiar. Not like I'd met her before, but like I'd
seen
her before … maybe on TV? But before I could figure it out, Mrs. Willawago grabs me by the arm and says, “Oh, Sammy, come in!” like she's never been so relieved to see anyone in her whole entire life.

“Are you all right?” I ask, looking from her to the patriotic lady, trying to imagine what this woman could have done to Mrs. Willawago. I mean, she was probably about as old as Mrs. Willawago and way too beauty-parlored to look threatening. Her hair was all pouffy and dyed, her nails were a perfect candy-apple red, and her face was covered in pressed powder. But where Mrs. Willawago was casual and friendly, this patriotic lady had definite airs. Like a politician who pretended to be one of “the people” but really thought “the people” were a breed beneath them.

“I'll be all right,” Mrs. Willawago was saying, but her voice was definitely shaking, “as soon as this woman gets out of my house.”

“This woman?” Blue Butt says, her penciled-on eyebrows arching high. “Annie, honestly, I'm here as a friend to warn you, is all. It's going to happen whether you want it to or not.” She laughs softly, but it's a slick laugh. A practiced laugh. Then she tags on, “You know what they say—you can't fight city hall.”

And that's when it hits me—this woman
is
a politician.

Someone Mrs. Willawago hasn't seen in years.

Someone she would live happily ever after without ever seeing again.

Someone who, it turns out, had just delivered some very bad news.