Don't You Trust Me? (2 page)

Nah, I'm just teasing you. None of us would want to be out in the open like that, or to associate with others like ourselves. What did that old comedian say? “I refuse to join any club that'd have me as a member.” Well, I mean,
duh
! You can't trust any of us as far as you can throw us. What kind of a club would that be?

But the point is, people like me are out there, if you know where to look. In fact, some of them are glaringly obvious. Boys, mostly, getting in major trouble with the law because they don't
think
. The girls are harder to spot; all that testosterone makes the boys act out in crazy ways, while the girls can learn to fly under the radar better.

I don't have much to do with them. Like I said, there's no percentage in getting friendly with other people like me—there's nothing to gain. We take; we don't give. Twenty years from now I'll be rich and respected. Who needs friends like that when you're in the A-list crowd?

Still, if that vision for me is going to come true, I have to be more careful, and stop doing idiotic things like stealing that cell phone just because it was sitting there unguarded.

And do you know what my parents did, after all my efforts to spare them grief ? They decided to
send me away to boarding school
. They said it was because my mother was sick, which maybe she was. She'd been acting
weird lately. To tell the truth, I think she's smarter than my dad. The way she looks at me sometimes . . . I know I make her nervous.

I wouldn't mind so much, only I looked at the brochure for the school, and buried under a lot of verbiage about “a challenging academic and athletic environment” was something about how it's appropriate for “troubled teens.” I am
not
a troubled teen. I am entirely untroubled. I get good grades; I even have a few “friends.”

How was I supposed to prepare for entrance into an elite college from a reform school? No way was I going to have that on my record.

But my parents were implacable. At least, my dad was. My mom just cried all the time. Anytime I tried to talk to her, she burst into tears and rushed to her room. I tried playing the guilt card. I accused them of not loving me, of thinking I'm not good enough to live up to their expectations. Dad wouldn't budge. Mom cried.

One night my father came into my room and packed a suitcase for me.

“We're headed for the airport by seven a.m., so you'd better set your alarm. A representative of the New Beginnings School will be waiting for you at the Phoenix airport. I'm sorry, Morgan, but my decision on this is final.”

“What did I do?”

“Nothing,” he said, avoiding my eyes. “Nothing at all.
But your mother needs a rest. And so do I. It is for your own good. Be ready to go by seven.”

Oh well. This place was kind of played out for me, anyway. Maybe it was time for me to head out, try for a fresh start.

MY FATHER DIDN'T STAY TO
see me off at the airport. He lectured me all the way there on how I was to behave myself at school, and then dropped me in front of the terminal. He hauled my suitcase out of the trunk, gave me a hasty peck on the cheek, and jumped back into the car, hitting the button that made the locks
thunk
down. He realized what he had done—locked me out in case I tried to stage a last-minute return—and raised guilty eyes to meet mine in the rearview mirror. As he drove away, he hunched over the wheel and put his foot to the accelerator like all the hounds of Hades were in pursuit.

Really, I had to laugh.

Anyway, I didn't go through security right away
because it was hours before my flight. Once you're through the TSA screening, they coop you up in the gate area and won't let you out. It makes me crazy being fenced in and told I can't go where I want. So there I was, kicking back in the lounge, bored and ticked off and looking around for some kind of diversion. The place was packed, with groups of people camped out on the floor. The only seat I could find was next to a wet mess of a girl who was about my own age.

Sob, sob, sob. I mean, I'm a blonde too, and when you're a blonde with that thin, pale skin that goes all red and patchy under stress, you ought to know better than to cry in public. Or at all. Her whole face was swollen: eyes, nose, mouth, everything was bloated up like an overstuffed sausage. She was honking into a series of tissues that got wetter and snottier by the second. After a while the racket began to wear on me.

“What's the matter?” I asked, more to shut up the noise than because I cared. Her neighbors on the other side were studiously ignoring Weeping Wanda, so I was obviously the only one who was going to tackle the situation.

“Th-they're s-sending me a-a-
way
!” she hiccupped. “They don't want me to see him again, but I will, I swear I will!”

“
Who
is sending you away?” I asked patiently. “Who is
him
?”

The blonde paused in her lamentations long enough to stare at me like
I
was the crazy one.

“My
parents
, of course. They're sending me away to stay with my cousin so I can't see my
boyfriend
anymore. They
hate
him.”

This struck a chord. “Yeah, my parents are sending me away too,” I offered. “Not to relatives, but boarding school. Only it's because they don't like
me
, not because they don't like my boyfriend.”

She lowered the soggy mass of tissues from her eyes. “Don't be silly,” she said. “Your parents like you. They
have
to like you. You're their
child
. They're probably sending you away because they think it's for your own good. That's what mine keep telling me, anyway. Like they know what's good for me! If I don't get to see Ashton again I will die, and then how will they feel?” She returned to her tissues.

“Oh sure, that's what my parents say too,” I agreed, “but the truth is, they're happier when I'm not around, and they're willing to pay for the privilege.”

“That's
terrible
,” she said, momentarily distracted from her own woes. Then she shook her head. “No, I'm sure you must be wrong. It's, like, a rule. Parents always love their children, even if they don't understand them. Which mine sure don't.”

I shrugged, unwilling to argue the point. However, having spared a millisecond of her attention for my
affairs, she had returned to her own. She pointed at a man who was walking away from us.
“There,”
she said in an accusing undertone. “That's my father. I'm waiting for him to hit the men's room before I go through the security line. He's hoping that before I leave I'll say that I forgive him and that I'm okay with being
kidnapped
to New York. But I'm not. I hate him.”

I nodded, unmoved by her predicament.

“I'd give anything,
anything
, if only I could get away and go live with Ashton,” she said, her voice wailing monotonously up and down like a bagpipes player practicing scales. “He doesn't know I'm leaving, and they took my
phone
away from me so I can't talk to him. They wouldn't even
let me say good-bye to him
.”

“So, why don't you leave?” I asked. “When you get to your cousin's, you could call him, couldn't you? Then you could take a bus back, or he could come get you.”

“No!”
She was getting petulant
.
“Because if I ran away, they'd know it. My aunt and uncle would call my parents, and they'd start searching for me. I'm only sixteen. We wouldn't be allowed to get married or anything. My dad is standing over me like a creepy old vulture, ready to watch me walk onto that plane. And then my aunt is waiting like another vulture at the other end to grab me the second I walk off the plane.
There is no escape.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. This female was beginning to bore
me. My eyes strayed across the crowded room, looking for another empty seat. There wasn't one.

So, suck it up, Blondie,
I thought. A hot, damp hand closed on my wrist.

“It's
HIM
!”

“Him who?”

“
Him
! Ashton! Oh, isn't he the most beautiful guy you've ever seen?”

I looked where she was looking, my eyes narrowing. Leather jacket, curly hair, short, muscular body. Definitely several years older than his girlfriend—in his twenties, I'd say. I could see why Mom and Dad wanted to ship Blondie out of state. The guy was definitely hot. Truth was, she didn't deserve him.

“Not bad,” I conceded. “You're a little young for him, aren't you? I'm surprised your parents don't just sic the cops on him.”

“They're
threatening
to! That's the only reason I agreed to go away. But now he's found out I'm leaving, and he's come for me! I'll never get away with my dad here. You have to help me! You have to!” She was still hanging on to my wrist, half looking imploringly at me, half looking at Ashton.

I was looking at her hand on my wrist, about to pry her fingers off one by one, but all the same, my mind had begun to churn. Was there something in this for me? “What do you want me to do?”

“I don't know!
You seem really smart. I know you can help me. Oh, Ashton! He doesn't see me!”

“Stop waving at him,” I snapped, irritated. “Don't try to attract his attention or call him over here, you dope, or your father will come out of the men's room and see him. I'll go talk to him and get him to lay low. Don't let anybody else sit in my seat, including your father. Now
get your hands off me
.”

Reluctantly she let go. I rose and went to talk to Ashton, who was scanning the crowded room, looking in exactly the wrong direction. He was cute, all right, but possibly not very smart.

“Hey,” I said when I got close. “Don't look now, but your girlfriend is behind you, about a hundred feet— Hey! I said,
don't look
! Her father's here somewhere too.”

“Who're you?” He was chewing gum with his mouth open, looking me over.

“A friend. A friend who's going to fix everything so that you two lovebirds can be together. Only, are you sure you want her? 'Cause she seems like more trouble than she's worth.”

He went on chewing, giving himself a long moment to think this through. “You mean Janelle? Sure I want her. We're in love.”

“Okay, fine, just checking,” I said. Yeah, he was dumb. Too bad. Still, nobody could say I didn't give him a chance to back out. “Here, c'mon over where we can talk
without your future father-in-law seeing us.” I motioned him behind a big cement pillar. “Sit down here. Don't move,” I said, speaking in short, easy-to-understand sentences. “Wait until Janelle comes for you. We're going to convince Janelle's father that she got on the plane. After he leaves, you and Janelle can too.”

He chewed his gum for a while longer. “Okay, I guess. Tell Janelle we can go stay at my uncle's fishing cabin in the mountains. It's on a little lake and it's real pretty this time of year. My uncle doesn't go there after the last week of July.”

“Fine,” I said. “But remember! Sit quietly here until Janelle comes up to you. That's when it'll be safe to show yourself. And it could be a while, so be patient.”

“Uh-huh.” He sat down obediently, and I wound my way back through the crowd to Janelle.

“Oh, did you talk to him? What did he say? Is he upset?”

“Seemed okay to me,” I said. “You and he are going to have a honeymoon at his uncle's fishing cabin if I can manage it.”

“Oh, how romant—”

“Keep your voice down. When does your flight leave?”

The tears welled up again. “In forty minutes! I have to go through security any second. Oh! Here comes my dad!”

“Fine. Excellent.
Go tell your father you're going to the ladies' room and you'll meet him at security when they call the flight.”

“Oh, but . . . shouldn't I be on the way through security now?”

“Not if you want to catch fish with Ashton, you shouldn't. You have to wait until the last minute. Your father wouldn't go looking for you in the ladies' room, would he? Or at least not until he thought you were about to miss the flight?”

She giggled a little. “Not even then,” she said. “My dad is kind of a prude.”

“Okay, then. We're in business. Go tell him. Then get to the restroom over there in the far corner. I'll be inside.”

“But—there's a closer one, nearer to the security checkpoint.”

“Exactly. You are not going to that one, but if you want to suggest to your dad that you
are
, like by pointing in that direction, that'd be fine. He'll be expecting you to be coming from there instead of from way back
there
, see?”

Janelle looked bewildered.

“Just do it. Point at the ladies' room near the checkpoint, and then kind of sidle around back to the other one. I'll be waiting for you there.” I got up and left. Either she'd do it or she wouldn't. I'd wait for ten minutes.

The ladies' room was crowded, but there was a bench near the mirror and I sat down.

Two minutes later she pushed through the door. “Oh, he's so mad! He wanted me to go through security, like, immediately. He said I could use the ladies' room in the gate area or on the plane. I said I had to go really, really—”

“Good. Now get into a stall and take off your clothes down to your underwear.”

“What?”

“We're going to change clothes, dummy. I'll take your place on the plane, and you wait here until the flight has taken off and your father has gone home. Then you go find Ashton, see?”