Sammy Keyes and the Search for Snake Eyes (18 page)

“Officer Borsch, why are we here?”

He sits down across from me and produces two cans of green spray paint from beneath the table. He clanks them down right in front of me. “This is the thanks I get for teaching you how to read walls?” He shakes his head. “I was trying to educate you, not turn you into taggers!”

“But … we didn't tag any walls!” I tell him.

“Look, there's no sense playing dumb. We have eyewitnesses. You signed your
names
.”

“We signed our
names
?”

Mr. Caan clears his throat and says, “Samantha, I warned you not to retaliate. And even though I understand it's a temptation and you feel a strong sense of school spirit, that was not the way to show it.”

I threw my hands up in the air and said, “I can't believe this! Whatever ‘that’ is, I didn't do it. And neither did Marissa!”

“Is that so?” Officer Borsch says. “Well, there's graffiti all over Paul Bruster Junior High, and these were in the garbage can waiting for pickup in front of sixty-three seventy-five East Jasmine.” He looks from Marissa to me and back again. “That
is
where you live, isn't it?”

I was in a pickle. An enormous pickle. See, a long time ago I told Officer Borsch that I lived with Marissa. That I'm her foster sister or something like that. And he's seemed suspicious but he's never really pressed it. Vice Principal
Caan
, though, thinks I live with my mother. Where, I'm not sure, but with my mother. Grams' phone
number is in my school file as my
mother's
number, and so far, that little lie has held up pretty well.

But now both lies were in the same room. And I could tell that any minute Mr. Caan was going to say, Wait a minute—you're saying Samantha lives with
Marissa
? Or worse, Officer Borsch would say, Uh-huh, I knew it. You're really living with your grandmother, aren't you?

I was stuck in a squeeze play, and I didn't see any way of sliding to either base without being tagged out.

Then Marissa sits straight up and says, “You went digging through our
trash
?”

“That's right,” Officer Borsch tells her. “Hoping the trash collector would haul away the evidence this morning, huh?”

“No!” she says.

“And Samantha, you're carrying around some pretty strong evidence against you right there,” he says, looking straight at my hand. “And there,” he adds, pointing under the table at my shoe.

Mr. Caan nods. “I noticed that.”

“But —” I jump up. “Heather did this to me yesterday when we were painting posters for the tournament. She did it to me on purpose!”

Mr. Caan shakes his head and says, “Don't. Samantha, just don't.”

“Don't what? Tell the truth? Ask Marissa!”

He looks at me like I've got fog for brains.

“Okay, well, Dot saw the whole thing! Ask her.”

Officer Borsch tisks and produces a notebook, saying, “We've got neighbors who describe ‘two young teens,
female, both wearing green ball caps. One in white high-tops, jeans, and a navy blue sweatshirt. One in a number-nine green-and-gold jersey.’ ” He looks at Marissa. “I understand you're quite a pitcher. And that your number's nine.”

Marissa gulps and nods, then whispers, “But it wasn't me … !” and I add, “Officer Borsch, we didn't do it!”

Mr. Caan shakes his head and says, “Look, I made a deal with the principal at Paul Bruster. We—meaning
you
—will paint over the graffiti. In return, they'll send a crew over to clean up their graffiti and fix our lawn. If you want to escalate this into parent conferences and citations and possible criminal proceedings, just keep this up and that's exactly what will happen.”

It wasn't the criminal proceedings that was striking terror in my heart. It was the parent conference. Officer Borsch looks at me and adds, “Can your parents verify your whereabouts yesterday evening?”

“What
time
? 'Cause I was at Manny's Muffler up on North Broadway yesterday trying to get some information about Pepe's mom and —”

“You
what
?” Officer Borsch snaps, and let me tell you, he's turning red in a hurry. “I told you to stay out of it! And this is
not
helping your cause. Now, is there someone—some responsible
adult
—who can corroborate your professed innocence?”

“What time?” I ask him again, but suddenly my throat feels like it's tied in a knot.

“Five-fifteen.”

I just blinked. At five-fifteen I was somewhere north of Main, ditching gangsters.

He snorts at me. “What about you?” he growls at Marissa.

An eight on the Richter scale would've had me on steadier ground. I held my breath and braced myself for the worst. But then Marissa did something only a true friend would do. She looked down and shook her head.

There was a moment of complete silence, and then Mr. Caan said, “Well, then. Let's go.”

“Go?” I asked.

Officer Borsch hiked up his gun belt. “Over to Paul Bruster.”

“Now?”

Mr. Caan headed out of the room. “I'll inform your parents—I'm sure they won't object, considering the alternative.” He hesitated in the doorway. “Now go clean up your mess.”

So off we shuffled behind Officer Borsch, whispering frantically to each other on our way to the squad car.

“How did those spray cans get in my trash?”

“Can you spell
framed
?”

“Yeah,” she grumbled. “H-e-a-t-h-e-r.”

“But Marissa, why didn't you stand up for yourself?” She eyed me. “You know why.”

“I'm sorry. I'm really, really sorry,” I said, and at that moment I felt like the world's biggest jinx.

But then she mumbled, “Plus, my parents
can't
verify my whereabouts.”

This was no big surprise because Marissa's parents are always at work, even when they're at home, it seems. But Mrs. McKenze had hired a nanny to watch after Marissa's little brother, who likes to sneak out of the house and buy up the candy store. Which meant that if Marissa's parents weren't around, well, Simone had to be. So I asked, “What about Simone?”

“She can't, either.” She looked away. “Actually, I'm grounded.”

“You're
what
?” I asked, because Marissa McKenze has never been grounded in her entire life.

“Grounded,” she grumbles. Then she whips around and says, “I got in a big fight with Mikey, all right? He stole the toilet paper out of my bathroom
again
, if you can believe that. I was totally stuck in there with nothing to use and … and I just got mad.”

“So…?”

“So I left.”

“To get toilet paper?”

“No, I snagged that from my parents' bathroom.”

“So…?”

She blurted, “So I went to the mall and played video games.”

I eyed her but didn't say a word. And she knew what I was thinking—too tired to walk home with me, but plenty energetic enough to ride clear back to the mall? But I bit back what I wanted to say and shrugged. “So? They always let you go to the mall.”

“Except I wasn't home when they got home, and I
hadn't told Simone where I was going. So there,” she says. “I'm grounded.”

“For how long?”

“I have no idea. They were so mad at me and brought up about Hollywood again.”

I cringed, remembering the little unauthorized trip we'd taken to Hollywood. It had been my idea. All my idea. And I'd been in the McKenze doghouse ever since. “I'm sorry!”

“I know. I just hope they don't believe Mr. Caan.”

As we slid into the backseat of the patrol car, she held my arm and whispered, “I'm sorry I bailed on you yesterday, Sammy,” and I could tell she meant it.

What neither of us knew was that by the end of school, we'd both be a whole lot sorrier.

Officer Borsch didn't say a word to us on our way over to Paul Bruster Junior High. And yeah, I felt pretty miserable. Here I'd finally gotten him to trust me, but the reality was he
couldn't
trust me. Not because I wasn't trustworthy. No, he couldn't trust me because I couldn't risk trusting
him
.

It was, I was starting to see, a two-way street.

Now, six months ago I wouldn't have cared that Officer Borsch didn't believe me. Six months ago it didn't matter, because I
hated
the guy.

But I don't hate him anymore. I don't exactly
like
him, but I understand him better than I used to.

I know him better.

Which is the whole problem. It's hard to keep up a lie with someone you talk to a lot. Especially a cop. But he
is
a cop, and that's exactly why I can't tell him the truth about living with Grams.

So, sitting in the back of the squad car, I decided—I had to back away from Officer Borsch. Knowing him had gotten too complicated.

Too dangerous.

Besides, I could tell from the way he was acting that he
wanted nothing more to do with me. He was sick of my snooping, and now he thought I'd defaced public property.

Like the juvenile delinquent he'd always suspected me to be.

When we got to Bruster Junior High, Officer Borsch delivered us to the vice principal—a grouchy-looking woman named Ms. Toalz. She was Bruster's version of Mr. Caan, only instead of thinning blond hair and a scuba watch, she had stiff brown curls and a gulch of a wrinkle between her eyebrows. Even when she thanked Officer Borsch and smiled, that wrinkle didn't ease up.

Officer Borsch wished Ms. Toalz good luck and waddled off without a word to us. And right away I told Ms. Toalz that we weren't the ones who'd sprayed the school—that we'd been framed. And do you know what she said?

She said, “Yeah, you and O.J.”

Can you believe that? Then she starts laying into us about defacing public property and civic responsibility and all of that. And I did try to be respectful and listen, but pretty soon my eyes are wandering up to that wrinkle between
her
eyes and those super-stiff ringlets wound tight to her skull. Then my
mind
starts wandering, too. I'm imagining tiny gnomes living on her head, using her curls for caves. And I can just see them, grabbing hairs from the middle of her forehead, using them as ropes to rappel down the great gorge between her eyes, when all of a sudden she yells, “Wipe that stupid grin off your face!” grabs my elbow, and marches us over to the gym.

The outside wall of Paul Bruster's gymnasium has a nice glass-covered marquee with a great big picture of a rooster painted above it. In the marquee it says BRUSTER'S ROOSTERS HAVE A LOT TO CROW ABOUT! and under that there's a list of upcoming events.

Now, you've got to wonder about how a school picks its mascot. Maybe they decide it should be something strong or heroic or just plain fierce. Or maybe it's their way of saying Whoops, sorry! to an endangered species that lived there before they plowed the land and put up the school. In the case of Bruster, I'm sure a bunch of adults sat around and came up with cute little slogans for the school. Like having a lot to crow about. And I guess being a rooster would be better than being a whippoor-will or a hummingbird or a
chicken
, but what you can do to make fun of a mascot should be a factor, too. I mean, the brains at Bruster definitely would have changed their choice if they'd considered the
field
day the teenage mind can have with roosters.

Still, any kid who attends William Rose Junior High would trade mascots with Paul Bruster in a heartbeat. Our mascot isn't fierce. It's not smart. It's not quick. It's not endangered or even cute. We are—get this—the William Rose Junior High …

Bullfrogs.

Go!
Ribbit-ribbit.
Fight!
Ribbit-ribbit
. Win!

Ribbit-ribbit.

I guess William Rose—the man who gave all the money for the school—had a thing for amphibians. Frogs
in particular. So we're stuck being slimy little wart-inducing, lily-lodging bug snaggers.

Anyway, the Bruster marquee was mounted up high enough not to get tagged with spray paint, but starting about three feet under the marquee, the wall was slashed with green. Just covered in green. BULLFROGS RULE, GREEN POWER, WRJH ROCKS—stuff like that. There were also rooster-related slams written on the wall. The kind of thing you've probably heard a million times but wouldn't actually say yourself unless you didn't care about getting suspended.

So there's all this stupid stuff written all over the place, and there, right under BULLFROGS RULE, are the signatures.

They don't exactly say Sammy Keyes and Marissa McKenze—they're more clever than that. One of them's the letter S with two skeleton keys drawn hanging from the bottom curve, the other is two M's—one stacked on top of the other. But anyone who knew the Bullfrog lineup would know who the symbols stood for.

Grouchy Gulch sets us up with paint and rollers, and snaps, “You're here for as long as it takes. And don't get funny with that paint. It'll cost you.”

I call after her, “We didn't do it!” but she just throws us a scowl and keeps on trucking.

The minute she's gone, Marissa says, “God, I'm so embarrassed. Look at this!”

I nod. “We've got to prove we didn't do this.”

“But how?”