The Classy Crooks Club (27 page)

I swallow my pride and dial.

But Maddie's phone just rings and rings and rings. I call her five times before I realize she must've put it on silent before she went to sleep. Every time her voice mail message starts playing and I hear her happy, giggly voice telling me to leave a message, it feels like I've been kicked in the stomach. What if I've lost her for good and
Go call your new BFF Brianna if you want someone to listen to you
is the last thing she ever says to me?

Wait a minute.
Brianna
.

The invitation is still there in my pocket, folded into a tight square and embossed with her address and phone number. She can actually get in touch with my grandmother, who's probably sitting right outside her house in her big black van.

I pick up the phone again and dial. If this doesn't work, I honestly don't know what I'm going to do. I guess I'll have to hide behind this convenience store counter all night and try to get the clerk to help me in the morning. Five hours seems like a ridiculously long time to wait.

The phone rings six times and goes to voice mail. I'm sure Brianna's sleeping too, but I slam down the phone, pick it up, and dial again. On my fourth call Brianna finally answers. “
What
?” she snaps, croaky and hoarse and super annoyed.

I don't think I've ever been so happy to hear someone's voice. “Brianna!” I shout. “It's AJ.” When she doesn't say anything, I say, “AJ Johansen?”

“Yeah, I know who you are. What do you want? What
time
is it?”

“Listen, I know it's late, but I need you to do me a really, really big favor. I'm in trouble, and I really need to talk to my grandmother, and I need you to get her for me.”

“Wait, what? Why are you calling
me
? Don't you
live
with your grandmother?”

“Yeah, but I'm not with her right now. She's actually . . . um . . . this is going to sound strange, but I think she might be sitting in your driveway in a van, a big black one. Do you think you could keep me on the line and take your phone out to her?”

Brianna's silent for a minute, and I picture her struggling to wake up. “Is this some kind of joke?” she finally says.

“
No
,” I say, and my voice comes out desperate and pleading. “Come on, please? This is really,
really
important.”

“Why would your grandmother be in my driveway?”

“It doesn't matter,” I say. “Brianna, I'm hiding in a gas station from someone who tried to kidnap me, and I need help. I need to talk to my grandmother. Can you please get her?
Please?
”

“Someone
kidnapped
you?” I hear the rustle of blankets.

“Yes! Can you help me?”

“I should probably get my dad,” she says. “I'm not going out there alone in the middle of the night. Hang on a second, okay?”

“That's fine,” I say. My grandmother will have trouble explaining why she's on the Westlakes' property at one in the morning, but that's not my problem. I told her not to go.

I hear Brianna's voice say, “Dad? Dad?” but then all I hear is a lot of mumbling—she must have her hand over the microphone. After a couple of horrible, tense minutes, she finally comes back and says, “Are you still there?”

“Yeah.”

“My dad and I are going outside, okay?” She sounds scared, but against all odds, she's actually taking me seriously and doing her best to help. I never thought Brianna had it in her.

“Thank you so much,” I say.

There are more muffled sounds, and then Brianna says, “I see the van. Oh, they see us, too—wait, they're backing up. I think they're leaving. AJ,
what
is even happening right now?”

“
Run!
” I shout. “Please, catch her. Just you, not your dad. Hold up the phone and yell that I'm on the other end and that I need help!”

She does, and I hear the sound of screeching tires and my grandmother's incredulous voice. “
Annemarie's
on the phone? Where is she? Why did she call
you
?”

“She says—”

“Give me that.” I hear a small scuffle, and then my grandmother's on the line. “Annemarie, where are you? What have you done to Betty? I warned you that you were
not
to interfere with—”

“Grandma Jo,” I say, cutting her off, “I really, really need your help.”

She must hear how serious my voice is, because she stops yelling. “Tell me what happened,” she says.

I spill out the whole story, and she listens without interrupting. When I'm finished, she says, “Oh heavens, not
again
. I knew we shouldn't have let Betty have so much contact with you. That woman has no self-control.” I hear an exasperated sigh. “Where are you now, Annemarie?”

“I don't know,” I say. “A Citgo station on the highway, but I was unconscious while Betty was driving, and nothing looks familiar.”

“You've disabled Betty?”

“I took her keys and smashed her glasses, but I'm not sure how long that's going to stop her. She might have extra glasses, and she probably knows how to hot-wire a car, right?”

“No matter,” Grandma Jo says. “Our headsets have GPS; we can track her.”

“She threw her headset out the window before she drugged me,” I tell her.

“Of course she did.” Grandma Jo sighs. “Look around behind the counter,  Annemarie. Do you see anything with an address on it? An inspection certificate or something?”

I don't know what an inspection certificate looks like, but there are a few shelves behind the counter, so I start digging through them. There's a stained University of Illinois hoodie, a single Converse sneaker, a couple pencils with teeth marks in them, a baseball cap, a half-melted chocolate bar covered in lint . . . and a pile of junk mail.

“I found something!” I shout, and I read off the address to her. I've never even heard of the town I'm apparently in, and I hope it's not too far away.

“Cookie, map this on your phone,” Grandma Jo says.

“Roger that.” About thirty seconds pass, and then I hear Cookie say, “Got it. She's right here, see?”

“Good, that's not so far,” says Grandma Jo's voice. “We're coming for you,  Annemarie.”

My knees go weak with relief, and I sink onto the filthy gas station floor. “Thank you, Grandma Jo. Thank you so much.”

“Let's go, Cookie!”

“Roger!”

“Hang on, that's my phone, you can't—” comes Brianna's voice.

“Let go, you ungrateful child. Can't you see I need it more than you do?”

“
What
is going on here?” shouts a man's voice. “Are you trying to steal my daughter's phone? And why are you even—”

“
Drive
, Cookie!”

There's a loud screeching sound, an enormous crash, and the sound of several people screaming. “What's going on?” I yell.

“Who
are
you?” shouts Brianna's dad. “What are you doing on my property? I'm calling the police!”

“I thought the car was in reverse,” comes Cookie's mournful voice. “I'm still not used to this dang van. Now it won't even—”

“Give me my phone!” screeches Brianna.

“Annemarie, we've hit a little snag over here,” Grandma Jo's voice says, totally calmly. “We've also hit the Westlakes' garage. I'll tell the police to track down Betty and pick you up. Stay hidden and don't go anywhere.”

“Okay,” I say. I pull my knees up to my chest, suddenly aware that I'm shivering, even in the warm night air.

“And Annemarie?”

“Yeah?”

“I'm sorry about what happened tonight. You've been very brave. I respect a girl who puts her skills to use and does what needs to be done without making a fuss.”

Before I can respond, Grandma Jo hangs up.

•  •  •

I spend the next half hour huddled behind the counter, jumping at every sound. On an endless loop inside my head, I picture Betty throwing a brick through the glass door and barging into my safe little hiding space with her toothless mouth and uneven walker, ready to whisk me away to a place where nobody will ever find me. For every endless, uneventful minute that ticks by, I grow more nervous, more sure nobody's actually coming to help me after all. Maybe Brianna's dad had my grandmother and her friends arrested before they could notify the police. I wonder if I should call 911 myself and try to explain the situation after all.

I'm about to grab the Cheetos-dusted receiver when I hear a car door slam outside, followed by the sound of quick footsteps approaching the convenience store. My heart starts banging so hard I'm pretty sure people can hear it five miles away, but then a male voice calls, “Miss AJ? Are you in there?”

It doesn't seem possible that
Stanley
is here right now—maybe I'm so stressed out that I'm hallucinating. But when I peek over the counter, there he is on the other side of the glass door. “It's just me,” he says. “Can you let me in?”

I run to the door and undo the dead bolt, and then he's inside, wrapping his arms around me in an enormous bear hug. He's wearing a worn green T-shirt, and the fabric feels soft against my cheek. Since that time Stanley hugged me at the soccer field, I've imagined him doing it again a zillion times. But in my made-up scenarios, it was never in an empty convenience store in the middle of the night, and I was never crying, something I suddenly seem to be doing.

“I came as soon as your grandmother called,” he says. “Are you okay?”

“I think so,” I say.

Stanley lets go of me and looks me up and down. “AJ, you're bleeding.”

It's only then that I even remember my scraped leg. The bleeding has mostly stopped, but there are thin streams of dried blood snaking all the way down my shin, like the veins of a leaf. “It's fine,” I say. “It doesn't even hurt. Can we go home?”

“We have to wait here for the police, kiddo,” Stanley says. “They're on their way here, and they're on Betty's tail.”

“How did you get here so fast? Where's Grandma Jo?”

“She and her friends are at the police station. Something to do with trespassing and destroying someone's garage? I don't really know. My parents' house is ten minutes from here, so your grandma asked me to come help out. She thought you might want to see a friendly face.”

I nod hard. “I did. I'm really glad you're here.”

“I should call the cops and tell them I'm with you. One second, okay?”

I nod, and Stanley makes the call. When he's finished, I ask, “Did they find her?”

“Not yet,” he says. “But your grandmother said you took her keys and her glasses, so she probably hasn't gotten very far. That was really quick thinking.” He wraps an arm around my shoulders and gives me a little squeeze, and something like happiness blooms in my chest.

“Thanks,” I say.

“Do you want to tell me what happened?”

I'm sure I'm going to have to tell the police everything, and the thought of repeating the whole story an extra time feels exhausting, so I shake my head. “Not really, if that's okay.”

“No problem. Hey, I know what we can do instead.”

Those drugs Betty gave me must've done something seriously weird to my brain, because for a split second, I think Stanley's going to dip me back and kiss me like in one of Amy's sappy movies. But instead he says, “Go sit back down behind the counter, okay? You're probably safest where nobody can see you. I'll be there in a second. I promise I'm not leaving the store.”

I nod and huddle down in my spot by the Cheetos phone. When Stanley joins me a minute later, he's holding a pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream from the convenience store freezer and two plastic spoons. He reaches for his wallet and counts four dollars onto the counter next to the cash register, and I want to hug him for being so careful not to steal.

“Your favorite, right?” he asks as he settles back down beside me.

I nod. “Thank you,” I say, and I don't just mean for the ice cream.

“Of course,” he says, and I feel like he gets it.

We sit there behind the counter in silence, our arms pressed together from shoulder to elbow, and spoon ice cream into our mouths. Even before the police arrive and shatter the quiet with their sirens, I start to feel safe again.

T
he rest of the evening is a blur. A police car and an ambulance arrive at the gas station, and even though I say I'm not hurt, a couple of paramedics rush me to the hospital anyway. Stanley sits in the back of the ambulance with me and holds my hand, and it's so distracting that I barely remember anything else about the ride. In the emergency room, the doctors bandage my knee, examine me from head to toe, and do a blood test to try to figure out what Betty used to knock me out. When they find out my parents are in South America and my grandmother has been arrested, they ask if there's someone else who can come get me, and I tell them to call Maddie's parents. I can't wait to see Maddie's face when she finds out what happened to me tonight.