The Tell-Tale Con (10 page)

I considered the words.  “So what do we do now?” 

“I don't know.  I guess that we try…”  He stopped.  “Hey.” 

I realized, after a moment of confusion, that he wasn't talking to me.  A notion which was further reinforced by the fact he covered the mouthpiece or moved it enough away from him that his words were garbled nonsense on my end.  Finally he said, “I'm going to have to talk to you later, Talia.  Thanks for the ride tomorrow.” 

He sounded utterly disgusted, and I figured whatever was going on over there, I was lucky that he'd muted the phone. 

After he hung up, I tossed the phone on the bed and pulled on a jacket.  I had no choice but to go grocery shopping.  Otherwise no one would be eating tonight.  I slid on my shoes, bounded down the steps and out into the cold and momentarily considered ignoring the fact we needed groceries and seeing if my mother would eventually get desperate and shop.  But since I liked eating better than I liked being passive aggressive, I trudged three blocks to the nearest store, that wasn't Wong Jr.'s, since he was closed on Mondays, freezing my bruised butt off the whole freaking way. 

I bought the essentials—ramen, bread, peanut butter and diet soda—before heading back home.  Some drunk guy and his two friends tried to pick me up in front of the sushi bar on the corner, no doubt too inebriated to realize that I was seventeen.  I ignored them.  Two of them turned away from me, but one of them followed me to the street across from Mr. Wong's. 

Sigh
.

I turned and evaluated him, deciding which tactic to use.  Mid to late twenties, he was wearing the same rumpled suit he'd had on all day.  He'd come out of a trendy sushi bar that was uber hot right now and would probably go out of business in three weeks.  He was a professional, with aspirations to grandeur.  He had a girlfriend who starched his clothes for him.  He wouldn't want legal trouble. 

“Are you talking to me?”  I requested sweetly. 

He flashed me a smile that his parents had paid big money for.  “You bet I am.”

“That's awesome.  Most grown up guys are totally afraid to talk to me.”

The smile faltered slightly.  “You're kidding, right?”

“Ha.  I wish.  I'm practically an adult.  I don't know what the problem is.  I mean I'm in high school.  Or I will be…next year.”

He backed away slightly, bumping into a trashcan before righting himself.  “Wow.  You look…much older.” 

“Right?  I get that a lot.”

“Well, okay.  Nice meeting you.”  He turned and ran back to his friends, like I was going to pursue him and cover him with the germs of my thirteen-ness. 

I snorted. 

“Nicely done.  I'm impressed.”

Heart tripping wildly, I jerked around and found Harrison sitting on the stairs that led up to The Library's massive double doors.  He had his leg slightly propped on a lower step and was holding an iPad, though he was looking at me instead. 

“Jeez, Harrison.  You scared the hell out of me.  Why did I never see you before, and now you're everywhere?”

It was kind of a rude thing to say, but seriously.  Granted he was sitting in front of his own house, so it wasn't like he was following me around or something, but still, it bugged me. 

“Maybe you weren't looking before.”

He was right.  Two weeks ago I would never have remotely noticed my lab partner sitting out on the stairs.  But now he was Harrison. 

“Fair enough.”

“I thought I was going to have to play white knight, but you handled that guy with no problem.  How'd you know he wouldn't be into the idea of dating a middle schooler?”

“I'm good at reading people.  I knew he wouldn't want trouble.  Anyway, if he'd have kept it up, I'd have thought of something else.”

“You're pretty resourceful.”  Harrison didn't look happy about it.  Maybe he was Mr. Wong part two, thinking I wasn't careful enough. 

Or that I should own a laundry.  One or the other. 

“I've been taking care of myself for a long time.”  I didn't want to have this conversation anymore, so I put the focus on him instead.  “Aren't you supposed to be in bed with that leg elevated?”

He shrugged, his demeanor turning sullen.  “I needed to be…outside.” 

If he was anything like me, he'd really been about to say, “Away from my family.”  Going outside in this weather even with a sore leg was sometimes worth it when it came to escaping family. 

“Understood.  Are you in pain?”

His mouth pressed.  I had the distinct impression he was debating whether or not he wanted to lie to me.  I was gratified at his decision.  “Yeah, kind of.  But not enough to keep me in bed.”

“You shouldn't be playing He-Man.”

His brow wrinkled, and I realized, with horror, that he had no clue who He-Man was.  “You don't know who He-Man is?  Fur-covered Speedo?  Really terrible haircut?  His mortal enemy is a skeleton with a whiny voice?”  I sighed.  “Look it up on YouTube.”

The corners of his lips hitched.  “Yeah, it's coming back to me now.”

“I can't believe you don't watch old cartoons, as obsessed as you seem to be with eighties TV and movies.” 

“My dad didn't let me watch cartoons.  I cut my teeth on Stanley Kubrick and William Friedkin.”  He was quiet for a second, then added, “I've seen
Scooby-Doo
.”

I had no clue who William Friedkin was, but I knew that Kubrick was one crazy dude who made some crazy movies.  “That's kind of…intense.”

He shrugged.  “If it wasn't intense it wouldn't be good enough for Dad.  He admires the people who jack with their actors.  The more intense the experience, the better.  He was a huge fan of the directors of
The Blair Witch Project
once he found out that they kept the actors out in the woods for eight days with a couple of cameras and almost no information, gradually taking away their food and torturing them at night so they got less and less sleep.  Dad thought that was amazingly innovative.”

“Wow.”  I had no idea what to say about someone who thought that was a good idea. 

“Yeah, and he makes everyone do the same scene fifty or sixty times until he thinks it's perfect.  There's a reason people in the business call him Take-it-again-Van and Prozac Poe.  When I was a kid one of his actresses couldn't finish the movie because she had to spend six months in a mental institution.  That's how he rolls.”

“Well, that sounds…fun.”  Parents everywhere were screwed up. 

“Yeah.” 

Despite the street noise, the silence hung heavy between us.  I retreated back to politeness.  “Well, anyway, have you taken any of the Percocet the doctor gave you?”

There was another long pause, a hitch of breath, the slight turning of his head away from me.  He was thinking of lying.  But, for whatever reason, he didn't.  “No.”

“Why not?  Seriously.  Go take it and go to bed.” 

“I…lost it.”

“You lost it?  It was, like, three hours ago.  How could you lose it?”

His jaw clamped down, his mouth pulling so tight he looked like Mr. Wong, about to go on a tirade.  “I just lost it.”

“I bet you could call the doctor, and they'd be able to give you some more.”

“No!” 

Okay
.  Maybe he'd “lost” the prescription pain meds the same way a girl with an abusive husband “accidentally” runs into a door.  Harrison didn't want anymore so that the person abusing them wouldn't have access to them anymore.  I was putting my money on Van Poe, but who knew, really.  People from all walks of life ended up addicted to pain killers. 

Sometimes I had to think that my life wasn't so bad after all.  “You should at least take some ibuprofen.” 

“I already did.”

His voice was so quiet I could barely hear him.  He was in pain.  It was none of my business, and even if I was inclined to give sympathy, which I wasn't, I wouldn't have a clue how to go about it.  Not sincerely anyway.  I knew how to fake any emotion, but Harrison was hurting.  He didn't need my fake sympathy. 

“I hope you feel better soon,” I whispered.  I hiked up my bags and headed across the street before either of us could say anything else that would only make it worse.

CHAPTER NINE

 

 

Rules of the scam #41

Give people what they want.  Unless you have to pay for it…

 

At seven in the morning, I trudged across the street to The Library to drive Harrison to school.  I had already decided that I wasn't going to mention our conversation from the night before.  Even if I wanted to, I had no clue what to say.  Sorry your dad is an addict and he stole your pills?  Yeah, probably not. 

Harrison was a lump huddled in the passenger seat of his car, back to wearing his familiar glasses and ugly T-shirts, the sharp looking guy of yesterday gone.  I rapped hard on the driver's side window before sliding in.  He glanced up at me and nodded once.  After I was securely fastened behind the wheel, I started the car and pulled in a deep breath. 

“You should know I'm not a good driver.”

Harrison looked at me oddly for a second and then laughed.  “I guess I should have asked that before requesting you drive me.”

“I could have mentioned it before.  I've never had a car.  I ride the bus.”

“That's very environmentally conscious.”

“Sure.”  It was also very pocketbook conscious, but I was certain Harrison didn't need a primer in the life of the poor. 

The drive between our houses and Metro High was short, so we were there in three minutes, even with me driving like a granny.  As we pulled into the parking lot Harrison told me, “You know, my dad made a movie here once.  Last year, actually.”

“Really?”  I maneuvered into a spot, barely paying attention to him. 

“Yeah.  He had a real issue with that shop right there.”  He pointed across the parking lot to a mechanic's shop on the other side of the chain link parking lot fence, not far from where we'd been nearly mowed down.  That got my attention because I remembered this was Harrison I was talking to, and not someone who told pointless stories. 

“What kind of issue?” 

“Someone from the shop was filming the set.  Was Dad ever pissed.  He sued the guy so he'd have to surrender his footage.  His son goes here to Metro, you know.  Hector Aguilar.  You know him?” 

“Not well.”  Honestly, for all I knew he could have the locker next to mine. 

“He's the president of the AV club.  Wants to be a cinematographer some day.  His father, over the fence there, almost won the right to keep his footage because he was able to prove that Hector is always filming this parking lot.  Twenty-four seven.”

I went around the car and opened the door so that he could maneuver out his massive crutches and awkward air cast. 

“So there's record of the car that hit us.”

He nodded, pulling himself up on the crutches.  “Very probably.”

We crossed the parking lot and headed for the door to the school.  Metro High was an enormous, three-story stone and gray brick building, constructed back when people cared how buildings looked.  A plaque near the door told anyone who cared to look that the building was a historic landmark, built in 1931.  We struggled up the massive stairs to the wooden double doors that had clearly been intended for giants.  People hurried past us as though we were an inconvenience, instead of an injured guy and the person trying to help him. 

“So if you ask him, will he let you look at the footage?”  We navigated the crowds as we made our way through the labyrinth of halls where the lockers were kept.  The thing about Metro was, it wasn't only a giant building, it had a giant population of students.  Numbering in the thousands.  My school in Los Angeles had been smaller, and that was saying something. 

“Maybe.”  Harrison handed me his crutches as he leaned against the wall of lockers and spun his lock.  “If he didn't hate anyone with the last name Poe.”

“Wow, that must make Ms. Wilson's class hard.” 

To my surprise, he laughed.  Most people didn't acknowledge my obscure and stupid jokes, let alone laugh at them.  Ms. Wilson was an English teacher with an obsessive love for the works of Edgar Allan Poe.

“He might be willing to make a deal with me.  But I have no clue what he'd want.” 

I slammed his door while he was pulling up his backpack and spun the lock.  “Well, only one way to find out.”

 

Hector Aguilar looked exactly like the president of the AV club would look in a bad movie.  Plaid pants, glasses with thick lenses and thin frames, too big for his slim, sallow face which was surrounded by a shaggy mane of curls.  He took me in with naked appraisal, the way polite people don't look at each other, sizing up who I was and what I could do for him.  It was like having a conversation with my parents. 

“I've seen you in the hallway.  With Yvonne Maldonado.” 

Had he?  I didn't have any idea who Yvonne Maldonado was.  Like not a guess.  I just shrugged. 

Hector turned back to Harrison.  “Hey, Poe.  I heard you got yourself hit by a car yesterday.” 

He said it like Harrison had been hanging out on the corner waiting for a car to drive by that he could jump in front of.  Unperturbed, Harrison shrugged.  “Something like that.”

“Let's cut to the chase, Poe.  What do you want?  Because you wouldn't have sought me out if you didn't need me.  Oh, wait.  I think I figured it out.  You want to see the part on my tape, at thirty nine minutes and twenty seven seconds, where a red Honda Civic pulled directly past my camera and headed your way without ever stopping?”