And Then I Found Out the Truth (7 page)

Then, suddenly, the noise stopped, and a single voice took over. It was my mother, and she was telling me to keep my eye on the ball.

This was a strange thing for her to say since she’s not exactly the athletic type — the only sneakers she owns are white leather Tretorns she has polished at the shoe place whenever they get scuffed. She does like hiking, but that’s more about communing with nature than exercise. Ash was my athletic parent, though he was never big on sports metaphors, either, maybe because he grew up in India, where they mostly play cricket, and maybe because he always preferred extreme sports like ice sailing and parkour to baseball or football or anything like that.

But it was still pretty obvious what T.K. meant. It was embarrassing, too, because in her no-nonsense way she was asking me to confront an ugly truth.

And the ugly truth was that I’d completely lost track of what I was supposed to be doing. It wasn’t just that I didn’t have my eye on the ball — I wasn’t even on the field or at the stadium, or whatever the right sporty metaphor might be.

Because instead of focusing on the evildoers, I’d been obsessing over a guy, like one of those awful girls Charley had warned me about, and reacting to others rather than making the plot unfold myself. And while it probably wasn’t realistic to expect I’d give up on obsessing over Quinn anytime soon, I couldn’t deny my priorities had gotten totally messed up.

After all, it had been nearly forty-eight hours since Charley, Rafe, and I had discussed the next phase of the investigation. I’d promised myself then I’d take action, even if Charley told me to sit tight and eat spaetzle.

But in the time that had elapsed I’d accomplished exactly nothing. If anything, I’d accomplished less than nothing, since I’d lost two days’ worth of potential progress. I’d been too wrapped up in myself to pay attention to what was really important.

So, while Mr. Dudley lectured on, I resolved that now I would plunge into the investigation with laserlike focus. And I also realized who could point me in exactly the right direction — I’d reach out to her as soon as I possibly could.

Though given who it was, I shouldn’t have been surprised when she reached out to me first.

Nine

I tried to lose Gwyneth after class, but it was like I’d accidentally adopted a stray puppy that didn’t have any endearing puppy qualities.

Under normal circumstances I would’ve felt sorry for her — she wasn’t used to being on her own. But today I needed to put Charley in an accommodating frame of mind, and that was much less likely to happen with Gwyneth around.

So when class was over, I gave Gwyneth my sunniest smile, hoping so much positive feeling would send her fleeing. And to make it clear I thought we were parting, I said, “Well, I’m off. See you tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” she said, like she understood.

Except then she followed me out of the auditorium and down the corridor. She even waited while I made an unnecessary stop at my locker in an attempt to shake her.

By the time we reached the steps out front, I’d resigned myself to her presence. In fact, I was thinking I might be able to use it to my advantage, because there was someone I wanted to see, and I couldn’t let Charley know. But if I got rid of Charley by telling her I’d be hanging out with Gwyneth, she’d only worry about me losing my mind and not that I might be up to anything she’d prefer me not to be up to.

Anyhow, I was so busy planning what I’d say to Charley that it took me a moment to notice she wasn’t there. She’d sent a text instead.

sorry sorry sorry — still hunting Dieter

don’t take subway alone — not safe

ask Q 2 take u or put u in cab?

$ in drawer/menus on counter/90210 next 2 TV

sorry again

I returned my phone to my bag, marveling at how conveniently everything had worked out. Of course, I’d still have to get rid of Gwyneth before heading to the Lower East Side.

But when I looked up, I saw I wouldn’t even need to make the trip: Carolina Cardenas was waving from the sidewalk.

“Why do you have the surprise? You are wanting to see me,
sí
?” said Carolina. Psychics tend to be a few steps ahead of other people, and sometimes Carolina forgot others lacked her special gifts. “Your auntie, she is not coming, so I will be your
músculo
today.”

“What’s a
músculo
?” I asked.

“Muscle,” said Gwyneth, who I guessed took Spanish. For reasons I won’t go into except to say they weren’t mine, I’d always taken Latin, and that didn’t help with Carolina. She was newly transplanted to New York from Ecuador, and her English could be spotty.

Carolina flexed her biceps, which, like the rest of her, were tiny. “Power yoga.”

“Impressive,” said Gwyneth. Then she turned to me. “Why do you need muscle?”

Just about everyone at school, including Gwyneth, thought the Range Rover incident had been random rather than part of a broader web of events. And Charley and I had also carefully kept Patience uninformed — she was convinced T.K. was dead and I was in denial, and she was still making noises about my being in need of psychiatric help — so I wasn’t about to tell Gwyneth why I wasn’t supposed to be going anywhere alone. “It’s hard to explain,” I said, which was true.

“Okay,” said Gwyneth. And she wandered away.

Carolina yawned. “The cousin, I am looking in her head, and it makes me sleepy.”

“I think it makes her sleepy, too,” I said.

“You and I, we have no time for sleep,” she said, motioning for me to follow her. “We have much to do.”

Rafe on bodyguard duty was one thing — he did claim he knew karate, though I had a feeling he might be exaggerating about the black belt — but Carolina’s psychic powers would be her only weapon if things turned violent. She was even shorter than I was, and while she liked to compensate by wearing five-inch heels, they just made her look like a little girl playing dress-up. Her brown hair hung in loose waves down to her waist, and she seemed to do most of her shopping (except for the shoes, obviously) in the children’s department at Target. “Where are we going?” I asked.

“To your auntie’s house,” she said, teetering along in pink stilettos. “She will not be home until late, and her
televisión
is superior to my
televisión.
There is a program you must see.”

“Which program?”

“Bewitched,”
she said. “Do you know it? Little Tabitha, she is my favorite.”

I’d been expecting
Oprah
or maybe a
telenovela,
not that those would have made immediate sense, either. But back when everyone thought T.K. was dead, Carolina had known she was alive, and while she hadn’t been able to pinpoint T.K.'s location on a map, her description exactly matched the part of Chile where she’d turned up. So now I’d do anything Carolina wanted, even if it meant watching a TV show that practically predated TV. “I’ve seen it a couple of times, I think.”

“It is on all day.
Cómo se dice,
a marathon. And this morning, I see the advertisement, and you go pop in my head, and also the Sagittarius. I do not know why this is, but it is possible I will know better if we are viewing together.”

A couple of weeks earlier, Carolina had called to warn me about a Sagittarius. Not that she could identify which specific Sagittarius posed the threat, but she was convinced one was out there and filled with evil intent.

We still hadn’t gotten to the bottom of this, though when I’d told Natalie, who had issues with psychics, she’d helpfully pointed out that she herself was a Sagittarius, as were one-twelfth of the other seven billion people on the planet. She also suggested that if I wanted to narrow things down I should be on the lookout for fire-breathing, topaz-wearing archery enthusiasts, since those were all Sagittarius traits.

That Natalie wasn’t a big believer in Carolina’s gifts was a given — her entire worldview was predicated on empirical data and the scientific method. The strange part was that Charley wasn’t a believer, either.

Actually, that wasn’t strictly true. As a general rule, Charley was probably more open-minded than the average incredibly open-minded person. The problem was that I’d done some things that were sort of dangerous based on information from Carolina, and because Carolina had told me not to tell Charley, saying it would only prolong the time before I saw T.K. again, I hadn’t.

Of course, when Charley found out, she’d gone ballistic. Her current feelings about Dieter paled in comparison to how she’d reacted when she learned Carolina had warned me about life-threatening dangers on the one hand and cautioned me not to mention them to Charley on the other. So Carolina wasn’t Charley’s favorite person these days, which was why I’d thought it best to see her on my own.

The after-work rush hour hadn’t started yet, and the train downtown was much less crowded than the uptown one had been that morning. We found seats between a family of chattering French tourists and a guy singing along to the Black Eyed Peas on his iPod. It wasn’t the most peaceful setting, but we didn’t have to worry about any of them eavesdropping.

I hadn’t seen Carolina in a while, so I started by updating her on everything that had happened since we last spoke. This ended up being a complete waste of time since she was, after all, psychic and already knew just about everything I told her. But she did agree that whoever was organizing things within EAROFO was the same person as her Sagittarius. “This group that is greedy for oil, they are very bad people, and the Sagittarius is the most bad. We need to find the Sagittarius.”

Then I asked what she thought about Thad as a suspect. But the main thing I learned from this was the Spanish word for weasel, and apparently it had different connotations than the English version.

“La comadreja?
“ she asked, puzzled. “Why do you call him this? This is a good animal. It kills the
ratones.
Are the
ratones
pleasing to you? No, with this Thad, I see only the math. He is like the calculator with the business of your mama, no? Plus and minus this, multiply and divide that.”

“Are you saying he’s not involved with what’s happening in Antarctica?”

“I tell you what I see. And this Thad, I see something not right with him, but he is not part of the big group.”

I was reluctant to bring up our other suspect — I was nervous about what Carolina might tell me — but I knew I had to. “Could Hunter Riley be the Sagittarius?”

“Como?”

“Hunter Riley. Quinn’s father.”

“Oh — the Romeo,
sí
? Why are you asking about his papa?”

I told her about how Hunter talked to Trip Young a lot on the phone, and how he’d been making enormous bets on the price of oil going way down, and his trip to Argentina. I also told her about one of the many unwelcome realizations I’d had recently, which was that an archer was a type of hunter.

Carolina shook her head. “No, this Hunter, he is not the Sagittarius. I am certain of it.” She thought a little more. “I believe he is a Libra. Yes, he is certainly a Libra. And I do not see a Libra in the group with the Sagittarius.”

I felt a flicker of relief. It wasn’t like Carolina had absolved Hunter completely, but at least she didn’t seem to think he was in cahoots with the others. Though now I was going to have to figure out if his being a Libra was significant in any way — I could only guess what Natalie would say about that. And none of this put my other concerns about Quinn to rest.

“But why are you not asking what you really want to be asking?” said Carolina, interrupting my thoughts.

“I was,” I said.

“No, you are asking about
la comadreja
and the Libra, when you want to ask about the Quinn. But you think you should not ask because you should be playing the sport. Why do you think this? You do not like the sport.”

So now I had to explain about keeping my eye on the ball, though it translated better than the weasel thing.

“That is very sensible,” said Carolina. “Your mama, she is smart to tell you this. But you still worry about the Quinn?”

“It’s sort of complicated. First I thought maybe he was beginning to lose interest in me, and then I found out he might be in trouble, and if he is, then I don’t know if I should still like him, because if he’s in trouble the way I think he’s in trouble, then it means he’s not the person I thought he was, which is also a problem, but I can’t just stop liking him, can I?”

Carolina made an impatient noise. “In Ecuador, you would not bother about these things. You would be tired from the banana plantation. It is very hard work, you know, picking the bananas. Only in rich countries do the girls have the time to bother about what the
novio
does or does not do.”

It was like she’d been talking to Charley. “But —”

She made the impatient noise again. “It is as you say. You should be with the ball. Quinn, he is confused. But he is not confused for the reasons you think.”

“What’s he confused about, then?”

“I do not know. He will be like the diamond soon, from the pressure, but it is not to do with you.”

That wasn’t reassuring. “But —”

“Do not bother yourself,” she said with an air of finality. “That is all I know about this.” Then it was like she really had been talking to Charley, because she used food to change the subject. “Now, what snacks does your auntie have in her house? I like snacks with the
televisión.”

But when we emerged from the subway I checked my phone, and there was still no text back from Quinn.

Ten

We stopped at a deli to pick up snacks — strawberry Yoo-hoo and salt-and-vinegar potato chips for Carolina and chocolate chocolate chip Häagen-Dazs for me — and then headed for the loft. But as we rounded the corner at Hudson Street, we came face-to-face with one of the few problems I’d actually managed to forget about, at least temporarily.