Dirty Little Secret (9 page)

I ran my middle fingers under both eyes at once, assuredly emphasizing my beaten-up look, which is what I got for wearing heavy eye makeup in the first place. It didn’t matter what Sam thought of me anyway. I deserved what I got. All I wanted now was to release him with as little further mortification on both our parts as possible. I mumbled, “I told you, my granddad won’t let me go tonight. It’s not even that. It’s just been a long . . .” Week. Month. Year. “. . .  day.”

Sam looked over his shoulder, as if he could see down the stairs and around the walls to my granddad. Then he walked into the room and slid his guitar case onto my bed.

He’d changed again from his T-shirt into a different color of the same plaid shirt he’d worn as Johnny Cash’s son, tight across his chest, with the sleeves rolled up past his elbows like a 1940s farmhand. He’d traded his Chucks for a pair of cowboy boots that looked like they’d seen a few seasons herding cattle. I was pretty sure they hadn’t, though. Sam didn’t strike me as the cattle-herding type. Sam herded people.

He walked back around the bed and stood right in front of me, gazing way down at me, his boots toe to toe with my sneakers. “You can’t wear that,” he said. “You’re cute, but I need you to pull out some stops for me.” He held his hand down to help me up.

The ceiling light behind his head made the edges of his hair seem to glow. I blinked up at him as I put my hand in his. When he pulled me to my feet, I realized how sore my butt had gotten from sitting on the bare floor for an hour.

“What are you doing here?” I whispered. “I can’t go.”

“This isn’t about the gig,” he whispered back. “This is about a date. I told your granddad I met you today and found out you were living with him, so I happened by, wondering if you wanted to go see a band with me tonight.” He reached over to the bed again, opened his case, and looped his guitar around his neck. He placed my fiddle case in the empty space and buckled the guitar case shut. “I said it was a band I know really well.” He beamed at me, pleased with his half-truth.

“And he said yes?” I asked incredulously. It seemed impossible that after I’d agonized for an hour over my death sentence, Sam had fixed everything with a simple lie.

“All he told me was to bring you back in one piece,” Sam said, “which sounded to me like he’s letting you go. He likes me.”

“Really?” I squeaked. I wanted to go—more than anything. But maybe Sam was making this up. He was lying to me about my granddad giving me permission, and he was planning to sneak me out of the house somehow. My granddad wouldn’t believe me when I tried to explain later. He would tell my parents, and there went Vandy. There went the hope I’d been clinging to for the past year that I would find myself again when I got out from under this family.

But Sam sounded absolutely sincere as he said, “I’ve been coming here since I was little, you know.”

“Oh,” I said, remembering that Sam had guessed who my granddad was as soon as I mentioned my fake last name. “So as long as I’m with you, I can do what I want? That’s some power you have over people.”

“Isn’t it? I’ve fooled them all! They have no idea their trust is way misplaced.” He winked at me.

“Wow! You are one talented guy.”

“I don’t know. What does it say about me that girls’ grandfathers reverse their punishment when I step in the room? That’s kind of disturbing.”

“He must think you won’t lay a hand on me.”

Sam’s eyes brightened. With a small smile playing across his mouth, he said quietly, “We’ll see.” He nodded toward my closet. “I’ll go back downstairs while you change. Do you have any other charges you want me to get you out of while I’m down there? Parking tickets? Bank robberies?”

I looked down at my T-shirt. “What do you want me to wear?”

“I believe in you. Just give it another try. The band is counting
on you. And don’t forget to bring the guitar case down casually, like, ‘Hey, Sam, you totally left your guitar case upstairs! It’s totally empty and not suspicious at all!’ ” He backed out of the room, then paused. “By the way, your granddad told me you were upset with him and you hadn’t eaten your dinner. You need to eat. I’ll be working you hard tonight.” He flinched as he heard his own words. “That didn’t come out quite right.” He pulled the door shut.

I stood there stunned for a moment, not believing what had happened. In the past year I’d gotten used to bad shit happening out of the blue. This was good—the best—and I wasn’t convinced it was real until I heard Sam’s footsteps headed down the creaky wooden staircase.

I sprang into action, running for the tiny closet with a tinier space cleared out for my dress bags, which I’d lifted whole from my closet at home, lacking the energy last weekend to pick and choose what to bring. Sam had said he wanted me to look older. Facial hair wasn’t an option, but I could definitely dress like a college student. I ripped through one of the bags for the dress I had in mind, black sprigged with red rosebuds. I’d worn it at a festival and Julie had worn a matching one. At the time they’d looked countrified. Now, though, the dress could pass for sexy vintage, especially since I’d gained another half a bra cup size.

I pulled the dress on over my lacy black bra. As I’d thought, I had actual cleavage, not imitation cleavage that Ms. Lottie constructed out of tissues stuffed into my Dolly costume. My bra straps showed underneath the thin straps of the dress. Back when Julie and I had worn the dresses as costumes, she hadn’t needed a bra at all, and my mom had bought me a strapless bra. She never would have let me out of the house with my bra straps showing like this—but she wasn’t around.

I stepped into the red cowgirl boots I’d worn with the outfit back then. They still fit. I slipped on dangling red earrings and bracelets faceted enough to sparkle in the dim bar, but lightweight enough that they wouldn’t clank up and down my arms when I played fiddle. Then I went to peer at myself in the bathroom mirror. My mascara hadn’t smeared as badly as I’d thought, and I cheered up even more now that I knew Sam hadn’t seen me looking like a heroin addict. I cleaned my eyes up a bit, adding glittery highlights underneath my brows, and applied another coat of blood-red lipstick. I removed my contacts and slipped on red horn-rimmed glasses I’d chosen on a whim at my last eye exam a couple of years ago. My mom had said they made me look like a granny. Power surged through me as I put on this accessory my mother specifically and vocally disapproved of. So there.

Looking at my reflection, I decided that if my mom wouldn’t let me go out with my cleavage and bra straps showing, my granddad, though unlikely to say something to me directly, would mention it to my mom the next time he talked to her. I pulled a black shrug out of the closet and buttoned it over the neckline of the dress. I’d worn it on some cooler nights at festivals up north. Now it would get me out of the house.

Then I disentangled Sam’s handkerchief from the pocket of my discarded jeans and secreted it in the pocket of my dress.

As I clomped downstairs, lugging Sam’s not-quite-empty guitar case in my best imitation of nonchalance, gradually I relaxed, and finally I just walked on through the living room and dumped the case by the door. My granddad wasn’t listening for me. He was doubled over at the kitchen counter, holding his sides.

I was alarmed at first that he was having a heart attack, but he was just laughing, harder than I’d ever seen him laugh, at something Sam had said. He’d lost my grandmom’s apron at some point. Sam chuckled, leaning against the kitchen counter, spinning his fork on
a plate to snag the last bite of spaghetti and sautéed zucchini. He glanced up at me, reached behind him, and handed me a full plate, as though he’d cooked it himself. He probably
had
scooped the food out. He seemed to have taken over my granddad’s house.

He placed his own empty plate in the sink as he said, “But baggage claim found it eventually. Want to see? It’s held up great.” He grabbed his guitar from the kitchen table. As he turned around, he caught my eye, twirled his first finger, and glanced pointedly at my plate, telling me to hurry.

He extended the guitar toward my granddad, who ran his thumb across the “Wright” inlaid on the head. “This is the most delicate part,” my granddad said. “If it held up here, it held up every where.” He nodded toward me. “Bailey did the shading on that inlay, you know.”

Sam gaped in astonishment.

My mouth was full, so I just shook my head and gave my granddad a perplexed look. I’d seen him burn wood inlays to make them look three-dimensional. I hadn’t burned them myself. The most complicated piece of equipment I’d handled at his shop in the last week was a wring mop.

“It was a selling point,” my granddad scolded me, “and you were supposed to go with me on this.” He grinned at Sam. “I guess not everybody can be a salesman like you and me.” He put the guitar strap around his own neck, then plucked the strings, ran his hand along the bottom curve of the body, and launched a fast series of chords. He wasn’t thinking, just testing, more by the feel of the guitar under his hands than the sound of it, from what I could tell. Over the music he asked Sam, “Are you playing anywhere these days?”

“I’m playing with my dad at the mall,” Sam said, “which is of course where I met your beautiful granddaughter today.”

I rolled my eyes, which he didn’t see. He was schmoozing with my granddad, not talking to me.

“Other than that,” Sam said, “no way. I’m going to college on a music scholarship, but my dad says I have to switch my major to business and get a good job before it’s too late. My dad says a band would be a terrible distraction.”

My granddad grimaced. “I think your dad’s probably right about that.” He pulled the strap off over his head and handed the guitar back to Sam.

“Oh, yes sir,” Sam said with a straight face. “My dad has me totally convinced.”

With Sam giving me the hairy eyeball, I ate in record time, then grabbed his guitar case and escaped out the door while he carried his guitar separately. No, this did not look weird at all. I held my breath as I descended the ancient cement stairs down the hill that passed for a front yard, waiting for my granddad to call me back. He didn’t. We placed the guitar case behind the seat of Sam’s truck, on top of his electric guitar case, with his actual acoustic guitar on top of that. My granddad just grinned to us and waved from the front porch.

Sam kept his cool a lot better than I did, but he didn’t waste any time starting the truck and speeding up the shadowy street. At the stop sign, I looked in the rearview mirror and noticed he did, too. My granddad wasn’t running up the dark sidewalk after us.

I fished in my purse for my dark red lipstick and reapplied it in precise strokes. Then I unbuttoned my shrug, shimmied out of it, and dropped it out of sight behind the seat.

Sam had started to press the gas and drive on through the intersection. When he saw me move, he stopped again, looked me up and down, and smiled. “Now, see? You acted like you were so clueless
about what you should wear, and you had me worried, when all along you knew
exactly
what I was talking about.”

“Oh, this passes muster?” I asked archly. With lipstick on, my lips felt stiffer, like somebody else’s lips. I liked that.

“You know it passes muster.” Sam’s voice had been honey sweet since I’d met him, but this time I heard a darker tone as he met my gaze.

My pulse quickened. Maybe his claim to my granddad that he was taking me on a date was more than just a ploy to get me to the gig. Maybe it was wishful thinking, on Sam’s part as well as mine.

He winked at me, then reached behind the seat and produced a cowboy hat, which he settled on his head.

Now I didn’t know what to think. Did the wink mean he’d been kidding when he implied I looked hot? We’d just met—if you didn’t count that one festival years ago when I was completely smitten with him—and I had no idea how to read him. I’d grown so used to Toby and the other people I’d hung out with senior year, whose cardinal rule was to suppress enthusiasm. I didn’t know what to do with this excitable guy with a lust for life and music, who might or might not have had a lust for me.

“What’s wrong?” He glanced over at me as he drove. In the shadows between streetlights, I couldn’t see his face clearly, only his dark hair mashed beneath his hat and curling around his ears.

“I just . . . I don’t know.” Finally I exclaimed, “I can’t believe you flat-out lied to my granddad.”

“Your granddad is wrong,” Sam said simply. We’d turned onto a wider boulevard through town. He slowed to let a car flashing its blinker slide into the lane ahead of him. After a few seconds of thought, the guilt I’d been feeling seemed to register with him, too, because he went on the attack. “You mean to tell me that you’re eighteen years old, you just graduated from high school, and you
never in your life lied to your grandparents or your parents about where you were going or what you were doing when you got there? A lot of girls
are
squeaky-clean like that, more power to them, but you don’t look like one of them.”

I gaped at him. “What is
that
supposed to—”

“And don’t even start with that,” he insisted. “You look the way you do on purpose. You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

I blushed—not the reaction I would have had if I’d ever been able to achieve the screw-you attitude I’d
wanted
to achieve. On a sigh I admitted, “I did have some pretty wild nights in high school. I just never lied about them.” In fact, now that I thought about it, I’d felt morally superior because I might have been, at various times, a drunk, a pothead, and a bit of a slut (according to girls) or a tease (according to boys, describing the same series of events), but never a liar.

Until now. Sam didn’t even know my real name, and though I hadn’t lied yet about how famous my sister was about to become, I knew I would do it if he asked me a direct enough question. That made my stomach twist. I’d done a lot of bad things, but somehow I retained one fingerhold on this crazy code of honor. I was about to lose even that.

Sam repeated what he’d learned about me that afternoon: “You learned to play fiddle on the bluegrass festival circuit with your sister.”