“Chill out, Sharpe,” Rahul says, but I struggle against his hold. All I want to do is kick Greg again. Someone I can’t see grabs my wrist and twists it behind me.
Audrey’s gone.
Greg stands up, wiping his mouth. “I saw your mother’s trial in the paper, Sharpe. I know you’re just like her.”
“If I was, I would make you beg to blow me,” I sneer.
“Get him outside,” someone says, and Rahul steers me toward the door. The swimmers look up when we march through. Several people sitting on chaises rise, like they’re hoping for a fight.
I try to pull my way out of the guys’ grip, and when they let me go, I don’t expect it. I drop onto the grass.
“What got into you?” Rahul says. He’s breathing hard.
I look up at the stars. “Sorry,” I say.
The other person holding me turned out to be Kevin Ford. He’s short but built. A wrestler. He’s watching me like he hopes I try something.
“Be chill,” Rahul says. “This isn’t like you, man.”
“I guess I forgot myself,” I say. I forgot that I didn’t belong, that I would never belong. That I had charmed my way into being their bookie but that I was never their friend. I forgot the delicate foundation my excuse for a social life was built on.
Kevin and Rahul walk back to the house. Kevin says something, too low for me to hear, and Rahul snickers.
I look up at the stars again. No one ever taught me the constellations, so to me they are all just bright dots. Chaos. No pattern at all. When I was a kid, I made up a constellation, but I couldn’t find it a second time.
Someone shuffles through the grass to loom over me, blotting out the chaotic stars. For a moment I think it might be Audrey. It’s Sam. “There you are,” he says.
I get up slowly as Sam turns, stumbles, and pukes in the hydrangea bush near the kitchen window. Some girls on lounge chairs start to laugh.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Sam says when he’s done, “but I think you better drive me home.”
* * *
I get him coffee at a drive-through fast-food place and mix in a lot of sugar. I figure it will help him sober up, but he vomits most of it onto the asphalt of the parking lot. He washes his mouth out with the rest.
I turn on the radio and we sit there listening to it as his stomach gurgles. Another song about being worked by love. Like it’s romantic to be brainwashed.
“I used to pretend I was a worker when I was a kid,” he says.
“Everyone does,” I tell him.
“Even you?”
“Especially me.” I offer him the other cup of coffee. It’s mine and I’ve left it black, but there might be more packets of sugar somewhere. He shakes his head.
“How does anyone find out they’re a worker? When did you know you weren’t?”
“I’m sure it was the same with you. Our parents told us not to mess around with working. My mom went so far as to tell us that kids who did work before they were grown-up could die from the blowback.”
“That’s not true?”
I shrug. “Only way it kills you outright is if you’re a very unlucky-with-blowback death worker, and even then it doesn’t matter how old you are. But my brothers knew when they were pretty young. Barron won stuff by other people losing, you know? And Philip was always doing too well in a fight.” I remember Mom getting called into the junior high when Philip had broken the legs of three guys much bigger than he was. The blowback made him sick for a month, but no one ever messed with him again. I don’t know how she managed it, but no one reported him to the law, either. I try to think of an example with Barron in it, but nothing comes to mind. “Once you find out you’re a worker, you learn secret stuff from other workers. I can’t tell you that part because I don’t know it.”
“Are you supposed to tell me
any
of that?”
“Nope,” I say, turning on the car. “But you’re so drunk that I’m pretty sure you won’t remember anyway.”
Somewhere between apologizing to Mrs. Yu for bringing
Sam home so late, dumping him onto his bed, and backing out of the driveway of his huge brick colonial, I realize something.
If Lila is a cat, then there’s a transformation worker here in the United States. I knew that before, but I hadn’t really thought about what it meant. The government would fall all over itself to hire him. The crime families would be desperate to recruit her. That’s what they’re conspiring about. If Philip knows who that person is, the memory work makes sense.
They’ve got a real transformation worker.
That’s something worth making me forget.
CHAPTER TEN
SAM AND DANECA MEET me outside the coffeehouse. They’re sitting on the hood of his 1978 vintage Cadillac Superior side-loading hearse in the parking lot, and Sam looks awful, taking tons of tiny sips from his cup like he’s got the shakes. The car is perfectly polished; its waxed metallic black paint is marred only by the sticker reading
POWERED BY 100% VEGETABLE OIL
pasted just above the chrome bumper. Sam’s wearing a suit jacket over a white shirt with a tie, but the jacket is too short in the arms, as if maybe it’s been in the back of his closet for a long time.
Daneca looks strange out of uniform. Her jeans are worn along the bottom, above her thin flip-flops, but her white shirt
is perfectly ironed.
“I see your car is out of the shop,” I say to Sam.
He looks confused. “My car’s—”
Daneca talks over him. “I thought I’d come along anyway, since I already said I would.”
I take a deep breath and wipe my damp palms against my pants. I’m too nervous to care that they lied. “I really appreciate you guys giving up your Saturday to help me,” I say, turning over a new leaf of gentlemanly behavior.
“So, what’s the deal with this cat?” Daneca asks.
“It’s a family friend,” I say, hoping they’ll laugh.
Sam looks up from his cup. I can see the shimmer of sweat on his face. He looks massively hungover. “I thought you said the cat was yours.”
“Well, it is. It was. It was mine.” I am confusing myself. I am forgetting the basics of lying. Keep it simple. The truth is complicated, which is why no one ever believes it over a halfway decent lie. “Here’s what I need you to do—I guess you didn’t get my text?”
“Am I not dressed rich enough?” Sam asks, leaning back so that we can appreciate the full glory of his suit. “Don’t be drinking the Haterade.”
“You look crazy,” I say, shaking my head. “Like a crazy valet. Or a waiter.”
He looks over at Daneca, and she bursts out laughing. “Is that why you’re dressed like that?”
Sam flops back on the car. “This is so not good for my ego.”
“Daneca can do it,” I say. “Daneca looks the part.”
“Humiliation on top of humiliation,” Sam groans. “Dan
eca looks rich because she is rich.”
“So are you,” she tells him, which makes him put his sunglasses over his eyes and groan again. Sam’s parents own a string of car dealerships, which makes it ironic that he both drives a hearse and opposes big oil.
“It won’t be hard,” I tell her, trying to push out of my head all the times I blew her off. “You’re going to be a nice well-to-do girl who was supposed to be taking care of her grandmother’s long-haired white cat. Its name is Coconut, but it has a longer show name that you don’t know. The cat also had a Swarovski crystal collar worth thousands.”
Sam sits up. “Your cat is a Persian? I love their little pushed-in faces. They always look so angry.”
“No,” I say as calmly as I can, even though I want to knock Sam in the head. “Not my cat. Her cat. Just let me finish.”
“But she doesn’t have a cat.” He holds up his hands at my look. “Fine.”
“First you go in looking for Coconut, but then you ask if they have
any
fluffy white cats. You’re desperate. Your grandmother is going to be home on Monday and she’s going to kill you. You’ll pay the person behind the desk five hundred bucks for any all-white fluffy cat—no questions asked.” They’re staring at me strangely. “There aren’t any monitors on the desk, I checked.”
“So then they give me the cat and I give them the money?” Daneca asks.
I shake my head. “No. They don’t have a fluffy white cat. Our cat is a shorthair.”
“Dude, I think your plan has a flaw,” Sam says slowly.
“Trust me,” I tell them, and smile my biggest, charmingest smile.
Daneca goes over to the Rumelt Animal Shelter and comes back, looking a little shaken.
“How did it go?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” she says, and for a moment I’m furious that I couldn’t have played her part too. I am furious that her parents haven’t taught her how to lie and cheat properly, so that now I am betrayed by her inexperience.
“Was there a woman there?” I ask, biting the inside of my mouth.
“No, it was a skinny guy. In his twenties, I’d guess.”
“What did he say when you talked about the money? Or the collar?”
“Nothing,” she said. “He didn’t have any fluffy white cats. I don’t know if I did it right. I was just so freaked out.”
“It’s okay.” I take her hand. “Freaked out is good. You just lost Granny’s Coconut. Anyone would be freaked out. Just tell me you gave him your number.”
“That was the only time he seemed interested in what I was saying.” She laughs. “Now what?”
I shrug my shoulders. “Now we wait. Next part can’t happen for an hour—at least.” I look over at Daneca, and she gives me the same look she gave me when I refused to sign up for any of her causes. The look that said I’d betrayed who she thought I should be. But she doesn’t take her gloved hand out of mine.
“Is that when I get to do my part?” Sam asks. I’m sick with nerves. This part is delicate and if it doesn’t work, my only backup plan is recruiting homeless guys to try and adopt the cat.
“I can handle it,” I say.
He gives me a hurt look. “I want to come watch you work your magic.”
I feel bad for dragging him out here on a Saturday for no reason. “Okay,” I say finally. “Just follow my lead.”
We wait an hour and a half, drinking coffee and hot chocolate until my skin feels jumpy. Finally I take a bracelet out of a Claire’s bag, put it in my pocket, and pull out a bunch of flyers from my bag. Daneca’s eating a package of chocolate-covered coffee beans and looking at me strangely. I wonder if I can ever go back to Wallingford or if I’ve already revealed too much of myself.
I wonder if I should tell her that her part’s over and she can go home, but if I was going to tell her that, I should have told her more than an hour ago, so I decide that I better not do it now.
“What are those for?” Sam asks, pointing to the flyers.
“You’ll see,” I say. We cross the highway, which involves running across two lanes of traffic when the light changes, and then walk down a side street until we get to the shelter. There’s a lot of people there on a Saturday, most of them in a cat room where giant carpet-covered trees are perched upon by dozens and dozens of hissing, dozing, and clawing felines. I feel my heart drop when I see
that Lila is not in there. The possibility that she’s been taken home with a family already stutters my heart.
Lila.
I’m not pretending or considering anymore when I think it.
The white cat is Lila.
Sam looks at me like he’s just realized that I have no idea what I’m doing. I clear my throat. The guy at the desk looks up. His face is a mess of pimples.
“Hey, can I hang this here?” I say, and hold up a flyer.
It’s on bright white paper, and there’s a photograph I downloaded off the Internet of the cutest fluffy white Persian cat I could find without a collar. A dead ringer for our description of Coconut. Above it is the word “FOUND” and then a phone number. I put the flyer on the desk in front of the guy.
“Sure,” he says.
He’s a perfect mark. Young enough to want the money and the glory of helping out a pretty girl. I’m suddenly very glad Daneca decided to be part of the plan.
I start tacking another copy to the board, praying that in the chaos the desk guy looks at the flyer I left for him. An older woman starts asking him about a pit bull mix, distracting him. Sam is fidgeting next to me like he has no idea what’s going on. I drop the copy as if it’s an accident and pick it up again.
Finally the woman leaves.
“Thanks for letting me post this,” I say to get the guy’s attention, and he finally looks down at the flyer. I can see the gears move behind his eyes.
“Hey, you found this cat?” he says.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m hoping to keep her.” People love to
help. It makes them feel good. Greed is the icing on the cake. “My little sister is super excited. She’s been wanting a cat for a while.”
Sam gives me a look when I say “super.” He’s probably right; I need to tone it down.
I slip my hand into my pocket and take out the bracelet. It shines in the fluorescent lights. “Look at this gaudy collar.” I laugh. “Who puts a cat in something like this?”
“I think I might know the owner,” the guy says slowly. His eyes sparkle like the stones.
As convincers go, I’ve seen worse.
“Man, my sister’s going to be disappointed.” I take a breath, let it out again. “Well, tell your friend to call me.”
This is the moment of truth, and when I look into the face of the mark at the counter, I can tell that I’ve got him. He’s probably not a bad guy, but that five hundred dollars is quite a lure. Plus the collar.
Plus, he’d have an excuse to call Daneca.
“Wait,” he says. “Maybe you could bring the cat here. I’m sure I know the owner. The cat’s name is Coconut.”
I turn toward the door and then back to him. “I was stupid to tell my sister, but now she’s all excited and—well, I don’t suppose you have a white cat here? All I told her about it was the color.”
He looks eager. “We do. Sure.”
I let out my breath. I’m not faking the relief that I know floods my face. “Oh, great. I’d love to have a white cat to take home to her.”
He grins. Like I said, people love to help, especially when
they can help themselves in doing so.
“Cool,” I say. “Let me fill out the paperwork and we’ll take the cat. Your friend’s fluffy kitty is at this guy’s house, so we’ll go get her and bring her right to you.” I gesture toward Sam.