Don't You Trust Me? (15 page)

When we got there, Emma waited in the car, as we both assumed I would be inside for less than a minute. I would have been too, except that the phone rang while I was passing through the hall on the way out, paperwork in hand.

Since I still had no cell phone, people had to reach me by using the house phone. It might, therefore, have been somebody calling about the event, with a message I needed to hear. I groaned but veered into Uncle Karl's study to pick up the handset.

“Styles residence,” I said, seating myself behind Uncle Karl's desk. My eye roved over the papers laid out on the surface. Generally he was tidy, so his early start this morning must have distracted him from doing his filing. A letter from his lawyer, one from his accountant, and a few bills. Interesting. I had never thought of looking through his desk before, but a little exploration might pay off sometime in the near future.

A faraway voice floated up from the earpiece of the receiver.

“Hello? Hello, is that Brooke? This is Janelle. Your cousin from Los Angeles.”

A small eternity seemed to pass. My brain finally kicked into gear. Janelle. From Los Angeles.

“Where are you?” I said at last.

“It's—oh, I'm at this little lake in the San Jacinto Mountains a few hours away from LA. Brooke, I am so, so sorry that I skipped out on coming to live with you guys. It's been awful. If I'd known what he was like—”

“Uh-huh,” I said, rolling my eyes. Yeah, trust good old what's-his-name to screw up.

“You must have thought it was pretty weird when that other girl showed up instead of me.”

“What other girl? There was no other girl,” I said firmly. I wanted the girl she'd met at the airport kept entirely out of this conversation. “You simply weren't there when we went to get you. We were scared to death. What are you talking about?”

“Oh, right. So . . . okay, never mind her, then. But, see, I'm in awful trouble, Brooke. I haven't got any money and my boyfriend has, like,
deserted
me here all by myself without a car or anything. He left here headed for Las Vegas. I don't know what to do. I never should have ditched you like I did. I wish I was in Albany now instead of here. I never want to see Ashton again for the rest of my life.” At this point she hiccupped and broke down into noisy tears.

Great. Every time I talked to this girl, she was sobbing.

Finally the storm subsided and I heard some broken murmurings, from which I picked out a few words.

“They must
hate
me!
Why
won't they answer me?”

“Who must hate you?” I inquired, not bothering to disguise my voice. She had convinced herself that I was Brooke, and seeing that the two girls hadn't spoken in years, how was she to know? She wasn't likely to remember the sound of
my
voice from that brief interlude in LAX.

“My
parents
!” Her voice became a little more controlled. “I keep calling and calling them, but they never pick up the phone and they never call me back! And there's no electricity here because Ashton's horrible uncle turned it off, and I can't charge my phone—it's this cheapo prepaid thing, anyway. And besides, there's no reception, so I have to walk three miles into this tiny little village to use a public phone. Can you believe it? They have a
pay
phone in the convenience store. It took, like, a
million
quarters to call New York. And Ashton is just
gone
, and he's not answering my phone calls. And I think I might be pregnant! And I
don't know what to do-hoo-hoo
!”

Lots of wailing on the other end of the phone.

While she howled, I thought fast. I had to decide. Should I hang up, go upstairs and pack, and then spin some sort of a tale so that Emma would drive me to the airport? I would take with me the files I had had the foresight to swipe. Once in a new location I could fake up some identification that made me look eighteen. Or, of course, I could go back to my parents and resume my position in their house.

No.

Not a chance. I had come too far, learned too much, gained too much power and influence here, to go back again. I
liked
it here. I
liked
my riding lessons. I
liked
eating Mrs. Barnes's cooking. I
liked
living in luxury.
I wanted the big event that
I
had envisioned and was bringing to reality today to be a huge success. I wanted to be hailed as the heroine of Lebanon Hill High, admired by one and all (except Helena). Okay, I probably wasn't going to be able to stay much longer—not unless I could somehow vaporize Janelle long-distance through the telephone—but I wanted a week or two more, at least.

“It's a good thing I'm the one who answered the phone, Janelle,” I said in a low, confidential voice. “Yes, I'm afraid your parents are really mad at you. And so are mine. Pretty much everybody is. I overheard my parents talking about it. ‘She's made her bed. Now let her lie in it.' That's what your mother said. Everybody assumed you took a bus or hitchhiked back to California to meet up with Ashton somewhere. Your mom was so pissed off that you'd scared us all like that—she said she didn't ever want to see you again. She thought you probably
would
get pregnant, and she said she'd be ashamed to be the grandmother of a baby born to a sixteen-year-old girl. I'm sorry to tell you this, but you have to understand the situation.”

The scream of fury coming through the phone nearly cracked my eardrum.

“My mother
is such a bitch
!”

Actually, I had to agree. As brief as my exposure to her mother had been, I'd come to the identical conclusion.

“But look, are you sure you're pregnant?” I asked.

“Well . . . maybe not. We did use a, you know, a condom most of the time. I'm not due for my period for a while yet—I'm just scared I might be. Because then what? And they don't have any pregnancy test kits at the convenience store. I looked. It's super-rural around here, and I don't have a car.”

“Oh, you can't tell with those home tests until you're two or three months along, anyway,” I said. I had absolutely no idea if this was true or not. “Listen; here is what I think we should do. Can you stay where you are for a few weeks, until you're sure if you're . . . you know, expecting?”

“I haven't got any
money
!”

I sighed. This was going to be painful, but there was no help for it.

“I have some saved up,” I said. “If I sent you, like, a few hundred dollars, could you make that last until you know for sure? Because I think I could talk my parents into paying for you to come out here like you were going to before. See, your parents are seriously ticked off. But
my
parents think that
your
parents are being too harsh. Only, it would really help if I could tell them that you're not pregnant.”

“Oh.” She thought about this for a moment. “That's nice of you. But maybe, if you sent me some money, I could go home. I mean, they couldn't actually kick me out.”

“I wouldn't do that if I were you,” I said. If she went home and found the house empty, she'd probably talk to the neighbors, or get in touch with one of her friends, and there was sure to be
some
way of contacting the Johanssens in Brazil. “See, your parents decided to go away on a little vacation, so they're not there. And before they left,” I added, “they changed the locks on your house, so if you came home, you wouldn't be able to get in.”

“
What?
What century are we living in, the Middle Ages? Lots of girls get pregnant! Okay, I can see they'd be mad, but they
changed the locks
?”

“I'm sorry, Janelle. Yeah, it does seem pretty mean, but that's what they told my mom and dad. Honestly, if you would just stay where you are for a week or two, until we know if there's anything to worry about, I think that would be best. If you aren't pregnant, I
might
even be able to get your parents to take you back,” I added as one last inducement.

“Wow.” She was silent a moment. “I'm not sure I even
want
to go back, if they're going to be that awful. I guess that explains why they never came looking for me. I kind of expected them to eventually figure out about Ashton's uncle's camp when they realized we were both missing. But, like, it's been
months
and they haven't even checked. That is so
cold
! I'm better off without them. Except . . . I'm only sixteen! I don't have a job, I don't have any money—”

“I'll send you some money,” I said hastily. “I'll do it right away and Express Mail it to you. What's your address?”

After a bit more sobbing and wailing, I got an address and we arranged for her to call when she knew what her situation was. We hung up, and for a few seconds I sat there, thinking. It wouldn't buy me a whole lot of time, but at least I could finish up with After the Race Is Run, collect a bunch more money, and exit in a dignified and organized way, instead of fleeing with the police of two states on my trail.

Emma. She was going to be wondering what I was doing in here so long. Oh, well. I'd think of something. I always do.

I groaned aloud as I peeled off fifteen twenty dollar bills (fifteen!) and tucked them into an envelope, but it was a necessary sacrifice. I needed Janelle to stay put and stay quiet for a little while longer while I planned my future. I addressed the envelope, omitting Janelle's name for the moment so Emma wouldn't spot it. Then I went out and hopped into the car.

“I thought you must have slipped through a portal to another dimension or something,” Emma said. “What took you so long?”

When in doubt, tell the truth. Or some of it.

“The phone rang and I answered. It was a relative of ours.” Well, of Brooke's, anyways.
“She's in a jam because she needs her medication. She left it here by mistake, and she really needs it. So we have to make a superfast run to the post office and Express Mail it to her.”

Emma rolled her eyes. “Right now, of all times? I have to say, Morgan, I think it's amazing how you can have this amount of responsibility on your shoulders, but you never seem to break a sweat. I'd probably be cursing her out right this second, but you don't even seem to mind.”

“It'll be okay,” I said. “But don't mention it to anybody, would you? No big deal, but nobody knows she was here at the house but me. She's having problems with her parents, and she wanted to talk. We'll make it back in time—we just have to
move
. C'mon, Emma, I bet this dumpy old station wagon can go a
lot
faster than this.”

“I'm already doing forty! In a thirty-mile-an-hour zone!”

“Oooh! Scary! What a lawbreaker you are!”

“Okay, but if I get stopped,
you
can pay the fine.” Rounding the corner at a death-defying forty-five miles an hour, Emma shrieked. She was a real daredevil, that one.

We had the money Express Mailed off to Janelle in no time, and nobody at Hidden Hollow even noticed how long it had taken us to fetch the papers. They were working steadily, changing soiled tablecloths, emptying
trash bins, moving folding chairs from one place to another as our needs changed, rearranging flowers and plates of cookies, leading horses and ponies around.

It was a beautiful day. For the previous week everybody had studied the weather forecasts like they were the Delphic oracle or something. Not me. I figured it would either be nice or it wouldn't. As Emma had said, I don't break into a sweat over much of anything. In the long-range forecast there had been rain threatened for the day of the benefit, but gradually the storm warnings shifted off. We had clear skies and a big yellow sun. The peak of the autumn leaf season was past, but there was still plenty of color left, and, at least in the sunshine, the air was soft and warm.