Sweet 16 to Life (3 page)

I'
ve spent the last couple of days working on my powers of forgetfulness, which is close to impossible since I remember everything. I'm trying to forget about the guy I'm sure attempted to burn down MJ's house, the fact that MJ said
she
actually started the fire, and the reality that Lana is so afraid of my SD that she's willing to change the phone number we've had forever. I'm also trying to accept the fact that Marco Ruiz and I are now
just friends
—the relationship status that isn't. Since he didn't like me playing amateur detective and his parents forbade me to date him after I almost got us killed by my neighbor-turned-gangster, I don't have much choice because I'm not willing to change me just to win him. Compromise I could do, but he wants me to be someone else altogether. It doesn't help that he recently hooked up with his ex-girlfriend, Angelique. And I mean
recently
, like the corpse of our relationship wasn't even cold yet.

At the end of the school day, I'm standing at my locker looking for my French book when I hear a male voice behind me call my name. It doesn't sound like Marco's voice; it's slightly deeper but still familiar, so I flash through several scenarios in the three seconds it takes me to turn around:

Since all the scenarios involve it being Marco standing behind me, I'm way disappointed to find it's Reginald Dacey and not Marco at all, but I try hard not to show it.

“Reginald, you're finally back at Langdon. I thought you were supposed to come back a few weeks ago.”

“I hope that means you've been looking for me,” he says, and I notice that while he isn't Marco cute, he's kinda cute, and a lotta presumptuous.

“No, I just remember you telling me that at my friend Bethanie's going-away party.”

“Well, that was the plan until I met with Headmistress Smythe. She won't transfer my fall semester credits from my current school, so I'll have to start in January and still do my full senior year at Langdon.”

“Which means you'll graduate a semester late. That's a bummer.”

“It isn't so bad—I can run track here this spring, which will open up my scholarship chances. Besides,” he says, lowering his voice just barely, “I get an extra semester to hang out with Chanti Evans. I'm just here today to talk to my advisor, but I lucked out running into you.”

This is the point where I usually get totally awkward with boys—when I finally figure out they're flirting with me and that I'm expected to flirt back—or at least say something clever. But it never seems to work out like that, especially when the boy has eyes like Reginald's, a mix of brown and amber and apparently possessing mind control powers because I can't stop looking into them.

“I'm thinking maybe it wasn't so much luck,” I say.

“Then what was it?”

“The teachers' offices aren't in this building. You were at Langdon for three years before Headmistress Smythe expelled you, so you can't be lost.”

“You think I planned to run into you?”

“I'm just saying . . .” Wait, is this
me
throwing around the witty banter with a boy? A senior boy, no less. I'm not sure where it's coming from, but I keep on throwing it before the spell wears off. “. . . it does seem a little coincidental.”

Reginald smiles. Yes, definitely cute. “I remember our conversation from that party, too. You promised to look out for me when I got back to Langdon.”

“I do remember that, but you aren't back yet. Besides, isn't it enough that I'm the reason you're back? If I hadn't proven to Smythe it wasn't you who defaced Langdon property and that she'd expelled the wrong person, we wouldn't even be having this conversation.”

I'm so good at this, it's beginning to feel like I've landed in a romantic comedy, with all my lines memorized and rehearsed. I was never this smooth with Marco.

“Good point,” he says. “I guess I owe you.”

“I guess you do.”

“My mom told me you usually take the bus home—and where your locker is—so I thought maybe I could give you a ride since she gave me the car today.”

“No fair using your mother to do reconnaissance on me,” I say, pretending I'm miffed, but really I love his mom. Now that Bethanie's gone, Mildred Dacey—head custodian and my Langdon informant—is pretty much the only real friend I have here besides Marco. And since we broke up, we don't really hang out all that much except to work on our French semester project. When Madame Renault paired me up with Marco at the beginning of the semester, I wanted to hug her. Now it makes things more than a little awkward. My friend situation at Langdon is actually kind of sad. Good thing Reginald is coming back soon.

“Yeah, I know a little something about you, girl detective. I thought you'd be impressed with my recon work.”

“Maybe I am—” I say, so into playing Coy Girl that I don't even notice Marco coming toward us until he's already there, walking smack into the middle of our witty repartee and completely breaking the spell, making me forget the witty thing I was about to say next.

“Hey, Chanti,” Marco says, giving Reginald a hard look and then totally dismissing him by turning his back to him. “You were going to let me copy your French notes from last Thursday, since I missed that class. And I thought we were going to work on our project this week.”

“Um, we never confirmed a date, right? Or did we?” I ask, my normal unsmooth self suddenly making a comeback. Without even trying, this boy can get me all kinds of flustered.

“She'll have to get that to you tomorrow, man,” Reginald says, stepping around Marco to stand beside me. “We were just leaving, right, Chanti?”

“We were? Oh, that's right, Reginald is giving me a ride home.”

Marco looks crushed. Maybe
crushed
is too strong a word. But he does look disappointed, just like I must have looked to Reginald a few minutes ago when I discovered he was behind me, not Marco. Does it make me a bad person to admit I'm doing a little happy dance inside?

“The French exam is tomorrow and I was hoping to study the notes tonight,” Marco says, more to Reginald than to me.

“I guess I'll call you tonight, Marco. We can divvy up the work over the phone.”

“And the notes? We've got an exam tomorrow.”

“I'll scan them to you,” I say—just before I bang my locker door shut, tell Reginald I'm ready to go, and leave Marco standing there. I'm hoping he's still in front of my locker watching us, noticing how I walk closer to Reginald than necessary, but I stay cool and don't look back. Not until we're at the school entrance anyway, and then I just have to turn around. Yes! Marco's been there the whole time—watching me walk away with another boy.

 

Seeing Marco apparently removed the Coy Girl spell permanently. Once Reginald and I were in his car, I couldn't think of a single cute thing to say. It wasn't the usual where I just get tongue-tied around boys unless I'm interrogating them. It was seeing Marco and remembering how much I want him—and all the reasons why I'm a little afraid to have him. Like how my friend Tasha found out he was a player when he was at his old school, which is the reason his thing with Angelique has always been on-again, off-again. It's hard to imagine about a guy as sweet as Marco, but Tasha isn't the only person I've heard it from. So how does a girl keep score with a player when she's clueless about the rules of the game? It's hopeless. And yet . . .

You know how when you were a kid and you thought you'd explode from the anticipation of waiting for Christmas morning, or a trip to the water park on the hottest day of July, or a summer vacation to Disney World? Imagine anticipating all those things at once. That's how Marco makes me feel every time I see him. When you feel like that about a guy, you might let him beat you at chess even if you're the better player or give up sleuthing for him just because he asks. Maybe you'd be like Lana and give up something more so that nine months later, you're having a kid at sixteen but then you never hear from the boy again. Well, not until sixteen years later, in Lana's case.

Nope, I promised myself I won't be that girl. I have plans that don't involve diapers and daycare. And I won't be the off-again part of his Angelique romance. Besides, unless he stops thinking of my sleuthing as The Big Bad Thing, it doesn't matter anyway. It was fun showing Marco that someone else is interested in me even if he isn't, and it was safe playing that game with Reginald because he doesn't make me feel like I'm on anticipation overdose. Still, on the ride to Denver Heights all I could think about was how I'll never have Marco. So when Reginald asked if I wanted to get something to eat, I directed him to TasteeTreets in a tone so dry he'd have gotten more play if he'd let the woman who voices the GPS directions tell him how to get there.

When he opens the door for me at TasteeTreets, I'm trying to figure out how to get back the flirting mojo I had earlier when I see a guy in a jacket sitting with his back to the door. Not just any jacket, but a hoodie with a scroll design and some letters written in an Old English font. He's wearing his hood up so I can make it out, even though the booth is hiding all but the very top of the design. I turn around to leave, running into Reginald's very muscular chest and I also notice that he smells really good. So I hate what I'm about to do but I have to.

“Look, Reginald, this was a bad idea,” I say, heading out the second set of doors and into the cold November air.

“I thought you picked this place because you love their shakes, but we can go someplace else, no worries.”

“No, it's not the place. It's just . . . you know the guy who wanted my French notes?” I say, deciding the truth, or mostly the truth, was as good an excuse as any to get rid of Reginald fast.

“Yeah.”

“We recently broke up and I guess I'm not quite over him.”

“I thought there was something going on between you two back there. Guess that explains why you were so quiet on the ride over,” he says, and I'm surprised he seems disappointed. I know I helped him get back into Langdon, but is he really interested in more?

“I thought I was okay with the breakup, but then seeing him and everything . . .”

“You sure you can't stay? It's just a couple of chocolate shakes between new friends.”

“I know, but it feels weird to me. I'm sorry. It's just that I'm really mixed up right now.”

“Can I at least take you home?”

“No, I'll walk. It's just a block from here.”

I don't want the guy in the jacket to leave before I get a chance to bump into him by accident and find out if he's the same boy from the fire.

“So you have to go, Reginald. Like, now.” Rude much?

“All right, if you say so. I guess I'll see you around next semester, then,” Reginald says, looking completely confused. I don't blame him after the way I was flirting with him back at school. But as much as I'd probably enjoy hanging out with him, I need to do some investigating first. So after I wave good-bye to Reginald and watch his car disappear into the Center Street traffic, I go back inside Treets.

Imagine my surprise when I see Hoodie Dude now has a dining companion joining him with a tray of food—MJ Cooper. They haven't spotted me so I turn around and go back outside where I can watch them without being seen. Sure, that can't be the only brown hoodie with white scrollwork in all of metro Denver. It's just a major coincidence that MJ's friend has the same jacket as the guy I think tried to burn down her house. I'm having a hard enough time trying to convince myself of this story, but it doesn't help when the guy stands up to dig into his jeans pocket and I can see the full back of his jacket. The day of the fire when he was halfway down the block, I thought the numbers
04
were written in an Old English font in the middle of all the scrollwork. But now I can read it clearly, and they aren't numbers. They're two letters:
DH
.

And I know what it stands for: the
Down Homes,
MJ's old gang.

I'
m not sure how long I stood outside the restaurant staring at MJ and my suspect having shakes and burgers like it's nothing but a thing to burn down your grandmother's house. It may have been five minutes or five seconds, but I didn't move until some rude—and apparently very hungry—girl told me to stop blocking the door and get the hell out of her way.

I want to storm in there and ask MJ if she's crazy, but that seems pretty obvious, not to mention it would tip her off that I'm on to them. But I need to talk to someone about this before I explode. It can't be Lana. She's still at work and besides, she isn't MJ's biggest fan even though the girl has saved my life a few times now, and I mean literally. She has softened up some, but for Lana, that only means she no longer wants to haul MJ off to jail every time she sees her. My mom comes from the once-a-felon-always-a-felon school of thought when it comes to ex-cons. And even though I've spent the last few months defending MJ, recent developments leave me wondering.

So I go to the only other person I trust with secrets, my best friend Tasha. We've known each other forever, and I could trust her with just about anything, even though she's Aurora Avenue's official gossip. She keeps all my stuff private; the only major secret I've never told her is that Lana's a cop. It's best that as few people as possible know about that. The only reason MJ knows is because she found out by accident.

I walk the block from Treets to my street and get to Tasha's house just in time to catch her locking her front door.

“You're leaving?” I ask the obvious.

“Yeah, I have a shift at the theater tonight.”

“I thought your dad said no working on school nights.”

“Normally I don't, but someone called in sick so my manager asked me to come in.”

“What excuse did you give your father?”

“I didn't need an excuse,” Tasha says in a low voice and motions me to follow her down the porch steps. “The hospital cut my mom's hours twenty percent. We could use the extra money.”

“Oh,” I say, understanding all the secrecy. Her father is about the proudest man I know when it comes to his family and stuff like money. He'd hate it if anyone on the street knew they were having problems. She doesn't even have to ask me to keep it quiet.

“Walk me to the bus?”

I do, but I decide the last thing Tasha needs right now is me going on and on about MJ returning to a life of crime. She doesn't need to hear about other people's problems, especially not MJ's since I neglected our friendship for a while when MJ first moved onto Aurora Ave. Tasha trusts MJ even less than Lana does. So I stay mostly quiet and let her tell me about her new job at the movie theater downtown and her supervisor, whose hotness makes it easier for her to say yes to working on a school night.

“I like him a lot, but I don't think he knows I exist—I mean, in any other way than where I am on the weekly schedule.”

“He
is
your boss. Even if he liked you, he'd get in all kinds of trouble if he told you so.”

“Not from me,” Tasha says. “I'd never tell a soul.”

“Sure you wouldn't, at least not until you caught him with some other chick, then it would hit the fan. I mean, that's probably what he's thinking. He's not trying to get his company sued for sexual harassment.”

“I suppose. That's a better reason for why he ignores me. Thanks.”

“No problem. Any time you need a legal or criminal excuse why a guy isn't interested, I'm here for you.”

“Yeah, you and your cop and lawyer shows. I guess all that TV watching is good for something.”

When we get to the bus stop, Tasha still has a couple of minutes before it's due, so I wait with her. It reminds me of when we were little and hustled riders for money during summer vacation. We'd hang out in the bus shelter waiting for someone to need change for the $1.50 fare. We'd give them seventy-five cents on the dollar, because they'd rather give us a quarter than give the bus driver fifty cents. The bodega across the street would make them buy something and nothing in that place costs less than a quarter. Of course Lana never knew anything about our entrepreneurial spirit, but I always figured it was the same as what she always said about the prices at 7-Eleven—you have to pay for convenience. Besides, nearly everyone on the Ave has a hustle; ten-year-old kids are no exception. Tasha and I made a couple of bucks a day doing that, more than enough to keep us in candy for the week.

“So what's up with the boy you
still
haven't told me much about? Will he be your birthday date?”

“Marco? Good thing I didn't tell you much. That was over before it even started. He's already back with his ex, and I'll be having a dateless birthday.”

“What happened?”

“You know, the usual.”

“Did you borrow that answer from boy-of-the-month Michelle? There is no usual for you. It may not have lasted long, but he was your first boyfriend.”

“Look, there's your bus,” I say relieved I don't have to talk about my very sad—and very brief—romantic history.

After Tasha boards, I realize I'm still stressing about seeing MJ with the possible arsonist, so I consider texting my only other good friend on the Ave to see if she wants to hang out. True, Michelle and I probably wouldn't say more than “hi” to each other if not for Tasha bringing us together, so
good friend
might be a bit strong. But she could be useful in a situation like this since she's been known to run with criminals—namely her ex-boyfriend Donnell. On the other hand, the reason he's her ex is because my detective work landed him in jail, and Michelle is still using that as a reason to barely tolerate me, even if she knows I did the right thing by getting him busted.

I'm still sitting on the bus shelter bench when I notice MJ leaving Treets with Hoodie Dude. They don't linger on the sidewalk for a minute before going their separate ways the way friends do. From what I can tell, they don't even say good-bye. MJ just jaywalks across Center Street headed for home, and Hoodie Dude walks straight toward the bus shelter. I pull out my phone, pretend to make a call, then turn my body away from the direction of his approach, like I'm trying to get as much privacy for my call as anyone could in a bus shelter. I hope he didn't get a good look at me before I realized he was coming my way, and if he did, that he won't recognize me from the day of the fire. My heart is pounding when I feel his weight land on the bench beside me.

But I guess he doesn't recognize me because when I sneak a quick peek, I see he has taken out his own phone and begun texting. I want to get out of there, but I make myself stay. Maybe he'll make a call and I'll hear him say something incriminating. After a couple of minutes, he's still texting and I begin to feel stupid holding my end of an imaginary phone call. I'm about to leave the shelter when I notice an odd smell.

It would probably be hard for anyone who doesn't live near the corner of Aurora Avenue and Center Street to smell anything other than the grease Treets uses to deep-fry fish, dry-cleaning fluid, bus exhaust, and the sesame oil-scented smoke from Seoul BBQ. But this corner is as familiar to me as my own home and I know an out-of-place scent when I smell one, and I didn't detect this one until Hoodie Dude arrived. It's the smell of smoke, but different from the spicy grilled-meat smoke pouring out of stacks on Seoul BBQ's roof. This is the smell of wood smoke, tinged with something else I can't quite make out. Maybe bacon? I guess I'm picking up on a blend of Eau de Hoodie Dude and TasteeTreets value meal #8—the Extreme BLT.

But the smoke smell is unmistakable, and it's also strong. It's been two days since MJ's house almost burned down. I suppose Hoodie Dude could have gone camping and built a fire since then, or maybe he has a fireplace at home. But I suspect a guy who goes around in the same jacket all the time even when it stinks of smoke probably doesn't live in the kind of home that has a washer and dryer, much less a fireplace. And two-day-old smoke doesn't smell this strongly on the clothes of someone who watched a fire from across the street.

“Hey, you got the time?”

His voice startles me, but I know he doesn't really need the time from me because he was just on his phone. Maybe he did see me when he first came out of Treets and recognized me from the day of the fire. But I don't turn around when I answer, “Nope. My battery just died.”

I see the bus approaching from a block away and get up to leave the shelter before Hoodie Dude does so I can pretend to board first. When the bus doors open, I dig around in my bag, mumble something about forgetting my bus pass and walk in the direction the bus came from. That way when he boards—
if
he boards—he won't be able to look back to see my face.