Rachel waited. I didn’t know what for. Then she said, “You don’t know my number.”
“Oh. Right.”
“You’re probably going to need it,” she said. “I mean, it’s going to be hard to call me without the phone number.”
I nodded sagely. “You make a good point,” I said.
She laughed. “Give me your phone.”
I did as she asked, handing over my cell phone. She started typing. “Here’s my number.”
“Thank you.”
“Talk to you later.” She handed me back the phone and started to leave.
“Bye.”
Five minutes later, I was at the lunch table with Ema. Ema studied my face and said, “What’s with the stupid grin?”
“What stupid grin?”
She frowned. “I called Agent. He can meet us after school.”
“Good.” Then I said, “You’re not even fifteen yet, are you?”
“So?”
“So how did you get tattoos? I thought you had to be eighteen.”
“You can be younger if you get your parents’ permission.”
“So that’s what you did?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Ema said with a little edge in her voice. “How are you going to drive us there without a license?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said, mimicking her tone.
Ema took a bite of her submarine sandwich. She finished chewing and tried to sound nonchalant. “How was your trip to Los Angeles?”
“Fine. But after you left the other day, I saw our friend from Bat Lady’s house.”
I told her about it. Ema was so good at zeroing in on me when I spoke, making it easier to talk, making the rest of the world sort of fade away. She didn’t just show you that she cared-you felt it.
When I finished, Ema said, “We have to go back to Bat Lady’s house.”
“I don’t know.”
“And they told you not to tell anyone, right?”
“Right.”
“Yet you told me.”
“Yeah, I guess I did. But wait, they said don’t tell anyone about us. You already knew about them.”
She smiled. “I like the way you find loopholes.”
Spoon came over and slammed his tray down next to us. “Every day in the United States, two hundred new jail cells are constructed. I don’t want one of them to have my name on it.”
“I told you,” I said. “We won’t go to the cops.”
He sat down and started eating. Two minutes later, I heard Spoon mutter, “Oh. My. God.” His eyes widened as if he were witnessing the dead being brought to life. I spun toward where he was gazing and saw Rachel Caldwell heading toward us. She was carrying a plate of cookies.
“Hi, guys,” Rachel said with a smile that didn’t just dazzle. It picked you up and shook you hard and then just dropped you back in your seat.
Ema frowned and crossed her arms. Spoon said, “Will you marry me?”
Rachel laughed. “You’re so adorable.”
A swoon. A Spoon swoon, if you will.
“I don’t want to bother you guys,” Rachel said, “but we were just having a cheerleader bake sale. Lame, right?”
“Very,” Ema said, arms still crossed. I shot her a look.
“Anyway, my cookies are pretty awful, so no one bought them, so I figured before I threw them out…”
“Thank you,” I said.
She quickly put them down on the table and shyly walked away.
“The future ex-Mrs. Spoon,” Spoon said. Then, thinking about it, “Or would she be Fork? I must work on that.”
“You do that,” I said. I picked up a chocolate chip cookie and took a bite. “Not bad,” I said.
Ema rolled her eyes into the back of her head. “Of course you like her cookies. They could be made from baby powder and wood shavings and you’d still like them.”
“No, seriously, try one.”
“Pass,” Ema said.
“You know,” I said, chewing the rather dry cookie and wondering what to wash it down with, “disliking someone-anyone, really-based on his or her looks is shallow.”
Ema rolled her eyes even farther back in her head. “Yeah,” she said, “I feel so bad about that. Rachel must be crushed.”
“I think she’s nice,” Spoon said.
“I’m shocked,” Ema said. Then looking back at me, “Do you know she used to date your buddy Troy?”
I made a face. “Eew.” Then: “Used to, right?”
More eye rolling. “Talk about shallow. The hot cheerleader going for the basketball captain? Only one thing you can conclude from that.”
“She’s right,” Spoon said, looking at me solemnly. He put his hand on my shoulder. “You got to figure a way to become basketball captain.”
chapter 12
AFTER SCHOOL, Spoon, Ema, and I walked to Myron’s house. I grabbed the car keys from the kitchen, and we got into the Ford Taurus. I flashed back to my father teaching me how to drive. We were in an old stick shift in South Africa. I kept flooding the engine and Dad kept laughing. “Ease up on the clutch,” he told me, but I had no idea what that meant. I had just turned fourteen. When we traveled in certain remote parts of the world, we would use other names and identifications. The one in my pocket right now was Robert Johnson. It was best, Dad had said, to use fairly common names when going with a fake ID, something people wouldn’t really remember or, if they checked, they’d be overwhelmed with information. Robert Johnson was twenty-one years old, a solid six years older than me. I didn’t look twenty-one but when you’re my height, you can often pass.
The IDs were also impeccable. I don’t know how. I asked my father why we needed them, but he was always a little vague about it. “The work we do,” Dad said. “We make enemies.”
“Aren’t we helping people?” I asked.
“We are.”
“So how do you make enemies?”
“If you rescue someone, you’re often rescuing them
“Yes.”
“And those that are doing evil,” Dad continued, “aren’t afraid to hurt anyone who interferes with their plans.”
Ironic, I guess. He was a humanitarian, my father. He survived going against the wishes of despots and dictators in some of the most dangerous and war-torn jungles in the world. He finally settled back in the relative safety of the United States and dies in a car crash driving me to a basketball game.
It was hard not to be angry.
I thought again about Bat Lady telling me my dad might still be alive. Maybe that was what this was all about- finding Ashley, the bald guy in the dark car, Bat Lady herself. Maybe I was doing all this because of the one chance, the one in a zillion, that she meant it. That it was true.
