Pretty Wanted (20 page)

No time to dignify this question. We ducked out through the west side exit, skittering across the street. The headlights of passing cars swept by us as we ran by block after block of parking garages, convenience stores, high-rises, pizza joints.

“Where are we going?” I asked Tre as I tried to keep up with his naturally longer stride.

“As far away from here as possible,” he snapped.

We were sucking air, dodging parking meters, and charging forward, the rhythm of our feet on the ground the only sound in our ears. Yesterday’s blisters rang out painfully with my every step. Running again. How many times would we run away? When could we stop running?

A few days ago this city had seemed so foreign. Now we passed by a familiar park, post office, and a sprawling churchlike building with a red roof. There was the library again. St. Louis was no longer anonymous, and neither were we. I didn’t want to think it, but maybe that was a sign.

Tre stopped in front of Union Station. We followed him through an arched doorway, across an indoor plaza, and into an enormous hall. I looked up at the elaborately painted ceiling, covered with gold vines, then down at the clusters of art deco streetlights lining the center of the old waiting area.

“What are we doing in here?” Aidan asked.

“Getting you jokers off the street,” Tre said.

From his body language and the hissing of his voice, I could tell he was furious. This was bad, I knew it was without him saying anything. We were really dead now. If they’d only had glimpses before, the cops and the whole world now knew exactly where we were. And it was only a matter of time until Tre let us have it.

I counted silently:
Three . . . two . . . one . . .

“I can’t believe you two,” Tre said as we followed him down a staircase to the lower level. Suddenly, we were in a mall, with the usual array of stores and fast-food restaurants. “I really can’t believe it. The JumboTron? How stupid can you be?”

“It wasn’t our fault,” I said, scrambling to explain. “The Ram—”

He pointed a long finger at me. “I could have been on there. You could’ve gotten me a ticket straight back to boot camp.”

“But you weren’t. And we had no choice,” I tried again. We were all in danger, weren’t we? “We didn’t mean to—”

He was undeterred, talked right over me. “After everything I’ve done for you both. I just saved your asses from that dude. I came all the way out here, risked everything to give you an assist. And this is how you repay me, ditching me at the hotel to do God-knows-what stupid stuff, and then getting caught on TV?”

“If I remember correctly, you came here to save Willa. It had nothing to do with me,” Aidan said. “So maybe leave me out of this.”

“That’s right,” Tre said, his eyes venomous. “You’re beyond my help. And this thing is your fault, like everything else.”

I looked from one to the other, not knowing who to side with. I was too risky for Tre, and maybe not risky enough for Aidan. Either way, I was caught between them.

“How can you say that?” Aidan asked. “We were there and you weren’t.”

“Because I know you, Murphy. You’re careless. You enjoy getting yourself into bad situations. Because little rich boys like you never have to pay the price, do you?”

“You don’t know anything about that.” Aidan was getting ruffled now, I could see. His lips were pinched together and he shifted his weight from side to side.

I couldn’t be sure, but I sensed that Tre was referring to what went down at Valley Prep.

“That woman was crazy,” I jumped in, trying to defend Aidan. “She was out to get him.”

“Oh, come on,” Tre said. “You don’t think he led her on, just a little bit? Mr. Playah over here? Everyone at school knows the guy thinks with his gonads.”

I looked at Aidan. Now he was angry. Could this possibly be true? “Shut up, Tre,” he mumbled.

“You didn’t, did you?” I asked.

Aidan wasn’t looking at me at all. He was picking at his cuticles, looking nervous.

I felt heat rise on my cheeks. He could at least answer the question, couldn’t he? I’d been trying to give him the benefit of the doubt all this time.

Even if he was flirting with her to begin with, it wouldn’t justify her actions, her attempt to blackmail him. She was still in the wrong.

But what if Tre was right? It would be one more thing Aidan conveniently left out of the story. One more reason to give me pause about whatever it was that he and I were doing together.

“It’s not true, right?” I tried again. All he had to do was say no. I was more than willing to believe him. I looked at Aidan, tried to home in on what he was thinking. When we’d first left Paradise Valley, the three of us were on the same page: With Tre’s help, Aidan and I were supposed to go find my missing mom. Of course everything had twisted and turned since then. Now, I no longer knew where I stood or who I could believe in.

And Aidan, meanwhile, wasn’t denying anything. He just heaved his shoulders. “This is all old news. It happened a while ago.”

Was that a tacit admission? “It was only a few months ago,” I said. “Not that old.”

He turned to me. “I’m with you now. So what does it matter?”

“It matters,” I said. “Because I’ve been trusting you. And I need to know if you’re the kind of person who takes responsibility for their actions. Or if, like Tre said, you stumble into these situations, worm your way out, and blame someone else.”

Something broke inside him then. He no longer seemed like he cared what I thought. “You know what? Screw you both. I don’t need this crap,” he said, his face scrunched up in disgust. “It’s like I’m on trial or something. I shouldn’t have to explain myself to my friends.”

“Answer the question,” I said quietly, staring him in the eye. “Can you at least do that?” How could he be so cavalier right now? Didn’t he understand that our whole relationship, whatever it was, was riding on this?

His mouth went bitter and mean. “Why? Tre will answer it for me, obviously. I’m sure between the two of you, you can figure this out. I’m gone.”

He charged out through the center aisle of the mall, knocking into a little kiosk with sunglasses, shaking its flimsy structure so that mirrored pairs of them went flying, rattling across the tiled floor. Aidan’s lone frame stalking away was reflected in every one.

“Hey, wait a minute,” the salesman said, but Aidan didn’t turn back or even flinch.

We watched as he passed under the ramp of the escalator and then disappeared through a set of double doors. We watched as he became smaller and unreachable, narrowing to a dot in the distance.

“Wow,” I said out loud. How could Aidan walk away, just like that? Then I remembered how dismissive he’d been about his parents. A few slipups and he was done. This was Aidan. This was who he really was, temper and all. I wasn’t sure I could be with someone who gave up on the people he loved so easily.

But I also felt the panic I’d felt when I’d lost him back in Tahoe, when he’d stormed off a bus and I was convinced I’d never see him again.

“He’ll be back,” Tre said after a while. “He’s probably blowing off steam.”

I nodded, hoping like anything that Tre was right.

Not knowing what to do with ourselves, Tre and I walked around the mall. Never in my life had a shopping trip been less fun. There wasn’t much in the way of fashion—the Glitterati wouldn’t be caught dead here, I thought—but there was a Foot Locker, and some cute gift-type stores, and a lot of sports memorabilia that we had no use for. By now, we’d already put on our Rams gear, just as a safety measure, and I’d taken off the ridiculously impractical dress. Our matching outfits were ridiculous in their own way.

Tre led us toward a bagel place. “I don’t know about you, but fights make me hungry.”

I nodded my assent. Food was a good thing. A distraction. He bought us sandwiches and sodas and we sat down at a little table to eat them.

“I’m sorry I yelled at him,” Tre said.

“Are you sorry to me or to him?”

He thought this over, chewing. “More to you right now. I still think he’s been acting stupid.”

I didn’t know what to say about that. I was afraid of Aidan’s carelessness myself, worried about what he could be doing at this very moment. I was mad about the Sheila thing, too, and I was afraid that if I opened my mouth about that a whole torrent of feelings would come out.

“So how long have you two known each other, anyway?” I asked. I’d always wondered—it seemed like when I came to VP, they were already pals, but Tre started there the same time I did.

“We met over the summer. I moved in at my dad’s, and he started taking me to the golf club. He plays with Murphy’s dad all the time. I have no clue how to play, so one day Murph and I hung out by the pool and started talking. I guess you could say he was my first friend in town. I think my pops was hoping the whole golf thing would rub off on me, that Murphy would be some kind of good influence, but Murphy hated that place. All he wanted to talk about were ways we could mess with them. You know, pranks and stuff.”

“I think he mostly just hates his dad,” I said, tearing off a piece of my bagel.

“I can see that. The guy’s your typical CEO cornball. He puts a lot of pressure on him. Wants him to be the next one in line for the dynasty, or whatever.”

“I haven’t met him,” I said. “But that sounds about right.”

He dug his straw into his waxed cup. “That’s the way rich people are, man. They like to control their kids. But it never works out.”

“What about you? Your parents, I mean?”

“My dad’s okay. A little out of touch sometimes. A little obsessed with his work. He doesn’t want me to embarrass him, is all. So I have to toe the line if I want to stay in Paradise Valley. Right now he thinks I’m in Colonial Williamsburg. I told him we weren’t allowed to use our phones, for the full old-timey experience.”

“And he bought it?”

He shrugged. “More like he didn’t bother to
not
buy it. He’s a busy guy. But my mom . . . she’s great. She wanted more for me than she could provide, you know? I mean, I didn’t even know who my dad was until I came to live with him. She wasn’t just going after his money. She wanted to do it on her own.”

I thought of Leslie, and then my real mom, and a lump lodged in my throat, along with a surge of loneliness. They wanted more for me, too. I put down my bagel and tried to regroup.

Tre must have noticed because he looked at me with concern. “Did I say something wrong?”

“No, not at all,” I said. “Remember when you said I wasn’t bulletproof? You were more right than you know.”

“Nobody is. Hey, I cry.” He looked up at me with a funny little smile. “Well, not a lot. Like, once a year.”

“Once, huh?” I teased.

“Look, you don’t have to be bulletproof. You’re plenty tough. It’s gonna be okay, Willa. I promise you it will.”

But I wasn’t sure he or anyone else could make that kind of promise. “I’m sorry for being a bad friend,” I said. “And for ditching you earlier. I guess I kind of took you for granted. I want you to know how much it means to me that you’re here.”

“I’m over that now,” he said sheepishly. “It was stupid.”

“No, I mean it. We need a chance for a do-over. A time when we can just hang out without all this other stuff going on.”

“I’d like that,” he said, dimples emerging.

I crumpled up my napkin and got up to throw out my food, then placed the tray back in its slot on top of the trash can. There were so, so many things I wished I could do over.

We walked a bit more and then, at Tre’s suggestion, got some ice cream. “We deserve it,” Tre said, spooning up butter pecan. “Listen, you don’t have to decide now. But I want you to think about turning yourself in tomorrow.”

“You’ve been saying it ever since you got here,” I reminded him. “I know. You want me to do the right thing, pay my dues.” He thought I should pay for my crimes as he had with his.

“You keep saying that, but it’s not about me. Believe me, I don’t want you to go to juvie. I don’t even like to think about you being away that long, in that place. . . .” He looked away as the words trailed off. “Just, I’ve been mulling it over and it’s gotta be the best option. The safest. Think about it, okay?”

I agreed to at least think about it. “I don’t think I’ve ever had ice cream in winter,” I said, smoothing down the top of my cone, feeling the cold sensation numb my lips.

“Are you kidding? That’s the best time.”

“Speaking of, what time is it?” I asked.

“Eight forty-five,” he said.

An hour had passed and there was no sign of Aidan anywhere. And that’s when I realized that he’d walked off with his bag, with all the FBI files, our changes of clothes and our temporary phone inside it. Great. I’d relied on him to take care of all of our stuff. Well, it served me right for not doing things myself. At least I still had my mom’s date book.

Tre checked his phone. Nothing. We were both getting annoyed. Where the hell was he? This wasn’t the time for dramatics, for storming away in a huff. We had serious problems on our hands that were way bigger than this fight.

“What do you think?”

“I think he’s trying to prove a point,” I said.

The mall would be closing in another hour, so we decided to stay on for the night. That way, when Aidan came back, we’d be right where he left us.

As usual, Tre knew what to do. We hid in the Santa’s workshop display, me crouched in between some elves with hammers and toys, and Tre curled up under a blanket of fake snow. We waited for the guards to do their rounds.

When we heard the footsteps receding, and the overhead lights in the mall dimmed, we freed ourselves and found a couple of benches to settle down on in the shadowy center of the floor, overlooking some topiary arrangements in the shape of candy canes.

This had to be least comfortable of all of the temporary sleeping arrangements we’d come up with and the silence in the mall was stranger, more disturbing than anyplace else we’d squatted at night. In the library and museum, at least, it had seemed peaceful. Here it was just lonely. I tossed and turned on the narrow slats, trying to drift off, but unconsciousness wouldn’t come. All I could think about was what would happen to us tomorrow, when we would reunite with Aidan, and what we—or I—would do next.