Brownie Points (22 page)

I panicked. “What’s going on?!”

“Probably a fire. Could be a shooter, who knows?” she drifted off as if into a wet dream.

I ran to the car and got in, slamming my skirt in the door as I closed it. Amy reached for the passenger door and started rattling it, trying to get in. I rolled down the window. “I’m going alone, Amy.”

“What are you talking about?!” Amy barked, her eyes wide with panic. “You’ve got plenty of room!”

As I rolled out of the driveway, Amy ran alongside the open passenger window and kept talking. “Come on, I’ll be the last one there if you don’t drive!”

“I’m sorry, Amy,” I said. “I have some trust issues with you.”

“Trust issues?!” she barked. “Aw come on! Why, ’cause of this?” Amy gestured at her Girl Scout uniform.

As I reached the street, it became clear to Amy that I was not backing down, so she jumped on my windshield, looking like a suction-pawed Garfield. I screamed from the shock. “Amy! I can’t see the road!” I said slowing even more. “This is extremely dangerous!!!”

Thud!

Then she was gone from my sight. But what was that noise on my roof? It couldn’t be …

“I’m sorry it has to be this way, Mrs. Taylor,” Amy shouted, her head hanging upside down at my window. “I am very determined to speak with you!”
Gee, y’think?
Every time I looked back at the road, Amy kept banging her forehead against the glass to get my attention. Finally, I rolled down the window so she wouldn’t damage her brain any more than it already was.

“Amy, I am going to stop this car, and I want you to get off my roof,” I said, calmly. Still, I was anxious about what was going on at the school that required six fire engines.

“Can I get in the car?” she barked.

“No,” I replied.

Without missing a beat, Amy continued, “What was your reaction when Logan first told you he wanted to be a Girl Scout?”

™˜

When Amy and I arrived at the school, there were fire engines and police squad cars parked in the lot with their lights still spiraling. Officers communicated with each other by crackling walkie-talkie. A few parents were scattered outside the gate, clasping hands in anticipation. The intensity level was high until I saw Jason, who looked relatively calm.

“Hey, baby, what are you doing here?” he asked.

“What’s going on in there, Captain Taylor?!” Amy asked, holding a microphone up to his face. He knit his brows, trying to recall where he’d seen this woman before. “Is it a shooter?” She sounded famished.

Before he could answer, Jim McDoyle rushed over to Jason and said, “We got him.”

“Who’d you get?” Amy begged. “Who did you get, officer? Is it a shooter?”
Shit, did
Dateline
give cash bonuses for live coverage of school shootings?

Jim looked baffled by the blood-thirsty Girl Scout. I explained to both Jim and Jason that Amy was a reporter covering Logan’s story. “Ohhh,” Jim said. “Well, Amy, we did apprehend a suspect who planted a bomb in the boys’ bathroom.”

I gasped with horror. Was anyone hurt? Where were Maya and Logan?!

“Was anyone hurt?” Amy asked Jim, her eyes swirling with anticipation.

“Nah, everyone’s okay,” Jim replied. “You see that guy over there in the red sweater? That’s our press guy for the department, so he can answer any questions you’ve got.” Amy bolted. “You’re welcome, Amy.”

“I didn’t know anything about a bomb,” Jason said to us.

“There’s no bomb,” Jim said. “And that’s not our PR guy.”

“Who is it then?” I asked.

“Dave Anderson from Chop Stix,” Jim said. “He’s got a kid in seventh grade here. Word has it he’s ready to snap today.”

™˜

After a half-hour of waiting around with other nervous parents in the parking lot, we got the story.

“Everyone’s fine, baby,” Jason said upon his return to me. “Some clown pulled the alarm. It wasn’t a kid either. Some jackass from the
Today Show
wanted to clear out the school so he could get an interview with Logan.”

Amy was back in our midst. “A lot of these shows are ruthless about getting interviews,” Amy began. “If we could sit down for a few minutes, I’m sure we could —”

“We’re not sitting down anywhere,” Jason said, more sternly than I’d ever heard him. “You people have done enough damage here for one day. I suggest you leave of your own accord before my buddy Jim finds you a room at the Iron Bar Motel.”

Indignant, Amy replied, “Impersonating a Girl Scout is not a crime, Mr. Taylor.”

“You jumped on the hood of my moving car this morning!” Jason barked.

I smiled, feeling a bit sorry for this woman who made her living jumping on cars and racing toward schools hoping for bloodshed.

“Mrs. Taylor, please.”

“Please what? I’m not letting you near my family.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

The following morning, our newspaper was delivered by a reporter, who we can only hope bribed our regular paper boy.

Just before dinnertime, Logan opened the front door to find a pizza delivery guy spouting questions about the lawsuit. Jason lumbered toward them, took the pizza and slammed the door.

When the “Avon Lady” showed up at ten that night wearing a baseball cap with the CBS logo on it, Jason stormed down to the security booth to chew out the guards.

In the days following O’Mally’s
Hot Under the Collar
, we heard from
60 Minutes, People, Today, Dateline,
and
Good Morning America
, not to mention all of the local TV and radio stations, magazines and newspapers. Barbara Walters herself called to invite Logan to join the ladies on
The View
.

We called Wax hourly, frantic for advice. He remained the calm captain of the ship in the media storm. “Hang in there, this too shall pass.”

Newsweek
called for an interview for their upcoming cover story, “The New Gender Wars.”
Business Week
wasn’t far behind with their piece on the economic effect of O’Mally’s massively successful cookie girl-cott.

The following week, the cookie wall was the most photographed media image since Charlie Sheen went on his rampage. The second most photographed image was Jason shouting at reporters. A picture of Jason yelling into a camera lens appeared on every supermarket tabloid cover with the headline “Scout Dad Loses His Cookies!” Technically, this means he vomited, but we gave up on accuracy the day that
Star
referred to Logan and Maya as “conjoined twins.”

We would have given anything for a real celebrity to have an affair, throw a phone at a photographer or go into anorexia rehab — anything to divert the attention from us. Alas, it was a slow news week, so the media stayed our constant companion.

“Housewives Desperate to Remove Cookie Wall Arrested for Vandalism,” shouted the
San Francisco Examiner.
“Moms Gone Wild,” barked another after Val and her minions attempted to destroy the cookie wall in the middle of the night.

“You didn’t think I was going to leave our wall unprotected,” Kate said as we drove to the police station just before sunrise that morning. “I knew someone would try something like this.” Kate had rigged a motion sensor around the cookie wall to alert the police of any activity. “What kind of fucked-up people deface art?” Kate asked as we drove to the station.

“
Try
to deface art,” I reminded her.

When the police showed up an hour earlier, the coiffed quartet had barely sawed an inch into the wooden buttress that held up our wall. They were carted off to the station and booked like common criminals before we were called in to identify the suspects.

Kate laughed. “The officer told me they wore pink ski caps with Lake Tahoe embroidered on the front. Must have been terrifying for the police.” Looking ahead at the road, Kate concluded, “What a bunch of spoiled princesses. I hope they throw the book at them.”

As we watched the sun begin to peek over the treetops, I hedged. “This will humiliate their kids.”

“Probably something they should have considered before they went in for a life of crime,” she said, unmoved.

I sighed, regretting that I would have to reveal more about Bianca than she would like. “Val’s daughter is a cutter.”

“Oh, crap, Lisa! You ruin all my fun,” she shouted.

“Come on, Kate, have a heart.”

“All right, all right, I won’t press charges this time, but those women can’t expect me to be as forgiving next time. If those bitches come near my property again, they’d better be prepared to step into a bear trap.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“A rusty one!”

Despite our best efforts, Kate and I weren’t able to keep the story out of the press. In public, Bianca simply said, “My mom is such a loser,” but I worried about her internal dialogue on the issue. After all, the girl who secretly dissected her body also wore a t-shirt that read “Serenity.”

™˜

Logan’s hearing in March would merely determine whether the case would be dismissed or allowed to proceed. The judge wouldn’t rule on whether or not Logan could join the local troop, yet Bob O’Mally acted as if the demurrer hearing would decide the fate of the free world.

“Listen up, people!” he shouted through our television screen in his follow-up report.

“Oh my God, how could we not?” Maya asked, as she and Logan linked arms in front of the television.

O’Mally’s eyes bugged out as he leaned forward and raised his voice. “Get in your cars, jump on an airplane, get on your flippin’ bicycles if you have to, but get yourselves to the Los Corderos County Courthouse on March 1. That’s three days from now!”

Jason had turned off the ringer on the phone and all calls were immediately received by an outgoing message informing the media that our family was not granting interviews. Still, this didn’t deter Amy from showing up at the fire station with a trench coat, stilettos and nothing else. She trotted into the kitchen, flashed the guys and promised a hot night to anyone with information about our family. I had never been more proud of the guys when they turned the hose on her. Amy wasn’t alone in her relentless pursuit. The guy from
The Today Show
convinced the front guard that he was a roofer, then tried to get into our house Santa Claus style. It was tempting to leave him stuck in the chimney, but Maya reminded us that “when this dude finally croaks, the body’s gonna start to stink.”

O’Mally bellowed, spitting so hard that he practically created a mist around himself. “Three days until we save our nation from the feminist hypocrisy and liberal political correctness that have decayed the foundation of this great nation!”

“This guy is seriously whacked,” Maya said, seriously thrilled.

O’Mally raised his hands to the heavens like a preacher. “It is not too late, but we have got to rally, people! We have to get to Los Corderos and let this judge know that we mean business. We have to let America know we mean business. If we have to put up with women burrowing their way into every last sacred bastion of manhood in this country, then get ready for a very hostile testosterone takeover of your girly little cookie club!”