Don't You Trust Me? (3 page)

“But—”

“But nothing. It'll work. We're the same height. We're both blondes. You've got a scarf around your neck that I'll wear on my head. I'm going to come running out of here at the last minute, wave to your father, and disappear into the security zone. Got it?”

“Oh, but . . . but what about when you get there, when you get to Albany? My aunt and uncle will be waiting for me.”

“When's the last time you saw them?”

She wrinkled up her face, thinking. “Um . . . I think when I was about seven? Yeah. We went to stay with them for a week one summer. It's kind of outside of a small city—not like Los Angeles.”

“Perfect. You've changed since you were seven.”

She looked at me critically. “Your eyes are a deeper blue than mine,” she said.

“Contact lenses,” I said.

“You weigh maybe fifteen pounds less than I do. I'm curvier.”

“So I've been on a diet.” Actually, it was more like twenty-five pounds.

“My mom might have sent photographs—”

“Look, none of this is a problem. I'll disappear as soon as I get there. They'll never see me and I won't see them. Go on, get in there and start handing over your clothes. When I'm not waiting for them at the airport, and they do start looking for you, they'll see by the passenger list that you traveled on that flight but slipped away before they spotted you. So they'll be looking from there, not LA, see?”

“Yeah,” she said slowly. “I guess so.”

In the end we got adjoining toilet stalls, so it was easy to hand blouses and jeans under the partition wall. Eventually we emerged and looked at each other. We laughed.

“Not
too
bad,” I said.

“I guess,” she said. “We
are
a lot alike.”

“It'll work from a distance, anyway,” I said. “I just can't let your father see me up close, that's all.”

She opened her mouth to wail about something or other, but the announcer came on, talking about her
flight. She gasped. “Go! They're calling my plane!”

“Oh, for crying out loud,” I said. “This is the first time they've announced it. We're waiting until the last minute, remember?”

“Oh yeah. Okay.”

“I need your ticket. Oh, and some identification.”

Janelle fished the ticket out of her purse. This she handed over without hesitation but was less happy about the ID.

“My learner's permit!” she mourned. “I waited so long to get it!”

“You'll have to assume a new identity anyway,” I pointed out. “You couldn't have used it.”

“Yeah, well. I guess.”

“What do you call your father? Dad? Daddy? Popsie?”

“Dad, of course. Are you going now?”

“In ten minutes.”

“Ten minutes! You'll miss it!”

“No I won't. I run fast.” I sat down and pulled out a magazine from my carry-on luggage. As I leafed through it, Janelle fidgeted. I could tell she was mentally pushing me out the bathroom door, whispering
Go! Go!
in her head.

A woman came in and laid a squalling baby on the changing table. She cooed at the kid in an unsuccessful attempt to make it stop shrieking while she wiped its dirty butt. I turned a menacing stare onto the infant, and
it hushed abruptly. You'd think the woman would have been grateful, but she got huffy, bundled the kid back up, and left, shooting resentful looks in my direction.

Janelle kept checking her watch and sighing.

At last I got up and said, “Well, it's been nice knowing you. Better hang on for another half hour in here. For all you know, your dad might wait to see the plane actually leave.” Not that I particularly cared about Janelle and Ashton's future, but I didn't want Janelle's family calling ahead to have me detained as I walked off the plane. I was hoping we could pull this off so I'd have some breathing room for a few days until I decided what to do next.

I held the ticket and learner's permit in one hand and my carry-on in the other—I realized that I was going to lose my big suitcase, checked in for Phoenix—and shot out of the ladies' room, plowing into a bevy of flight attendants.

“Gangway! Coming through,” I yelled. I scanned the area for Janelle's father. Yep, there he was, looking anxiously at his watch and peering nervously in through the door of the other ladies' room. I bellowed “Dad! I've got to run,” waved frantically—taking care to keep my threshing hand in front of my face—and bolted past him, pounding through the rope line in front of security. I thrust my ticket and ID at the agent, gasping, “I'm gonna miss it! Please hurry!”

She took one quick look at the photo, one quick, irritated look at me, and then processed the ticket.

“Better not cut it so close next time, young lady,” she called after me as I raced toward the scanner machines. The flight attendant looked pretty annoyed as I flung myself in through the door to the airplane, but she helped me to my seat and stowed my carry-on for me.

Almost immediately after I sat down the door shut and the engines started humming. The plane slowly eased out of its position against the gate and began to taxi toward the runway.

And off I went.

“ARE YOU JANELLE? WELL, YOU
must be. You look exactly like your picture. And of course I'm your cousin Brooke. It's been so long since we've seen each other; I bet I look totally different from what you remember, right?”

“Sure,” I said. She was another blue-eyed blonde like me and Janelle, on the plump side. And as dim as her cousin, if she thought I looked
exactly
like a picture of Janelle. No aunt or uncle in sight, so I guess she got sent alone to pick me up at the airport.

Why was I even talking to her, you ask? Yeah, I know I said I'd disappear once I got to Albany, but I changed my mind. So sue me.

“Sorry I'm late,” she prattled on, “but the traffic was awful. Don't
we need to go to the baggage claim to get your luggage?” she asked, tagging along like a little duckling as I rode down the escalator. I shook my head and held up my carry-on bag. “You mean that little thing is all you've got? Well, I'm glad you're not one of those girls who needs to travel with a whole shopping mall full of clothing changes and makeup. Still, I don't think I could move across the country for a whole two years with only one little carry-on. If you want, we can go shopping before school starts. I already got my fall wardrobe, but if you need to get some things, I'll be happy to do it over again with you.”

I opened my mouth to respond but was forestalled.

“I'm crazy about airports, aren't you?” my newfound cousin asked, gazing around, wide-eyed, as she chattered. “There're always good-looking boys at the airport. And I love watching the people, especially families who've been separated. Military families, you know? The mom or the dad has been overseas in danger—they could have died, or come home missing a leg or something—and the spouse and the kids are so excited and so relieved to see them alive and okay. They're really happy to see each other. It makes you feel better about humanity, I always think. Oh, look at that little girl—how sweet! Isn't she darling?”

I looked where she was pointing, at a particularly foul specimen of beribboned and beruffled toddlerhood,
who seemed to be having a meltdown in the lounge area.

“Mmm,” I said, and followed the Babbling Brooke out into the August heat.

“Right this way. This is the parking garage. Well, of course.” She giggled. “What else would it be? An ugly hotel, I guess. This airport is pretty small, probably, after what you're used to. I always park kind of far back because I'm afraid my car will get scratched. Aggressive drivers tend to park up front, that's what they say.” She sucked in some oxygen to fuel the next gush of words as we approached a little green convertible.

“It's a Miata roadster. My car, I mean. I've wanted one my whole life ever since I saw one as, like, a baby. I saved up my money for years and years, but of course my father paid for most of it. It was used, but it's in perfect condition. I wash and wax it every Saturday. Or Sunday, if it's raining or something on Saturday. There's a car wash just outside our neighborhood so it's easy even in bad weather. But if it's nice out, I like to do it in the driveway. Do you have your driver's license yet? No, you probably don't. You're six months younger than me, and lots of people take a couple of tries to pass.”

I managed to insert four words into the stream of verbiage: “I have my permit.” Of course, I didn't actually have
my
permit, but I had Janelle's, so what's the difference?

“Oh great, but probably you won't be able to drive my car because it's a stick shift. It's not like I wouldn't let you
if you could drive stick shift, but you can't, can you?” Here she actually paused for my response.

“No,” I admitted.

“Oh good. Well, not ‘good,' of course. But I admit I was a little teeny bit worried. Because I love my car so much. I'm sure you understand.”

“I'm an exceptionally good driver,” I said. This was not quite true. My parents flatly refused to let me touch the steering wheel of their little tin-can car until I had a permit (and they kept the keys under close supervision), so I had zero driving experience. But I figured that possession of Janelle's permit entitled me to claim her experience. Why shouldn't she be a good driver? “I could learn to drive stick shift,” I added, regarding the little car with interest. “I'll bet this baby can go really fast.”

“Oh! Well . . . we'll see. Maybe you could try driving the SUV first. Actually, I drive
slower
in the Miata than I do in the SUV. It's so low to the ground, it makes you
feel
like you're going a lot faster.”

“Seems like kind of a waste of a sports car, doesn't it? If it were mine, I'd want to push it to the limit, so I knew how much power it had.”

Brooke fell silent for the first time in our twenty-minute acquaintance, no doubt seeing visions of crushed and mangled roadster before her eyes. I settled into the passenger seat as she lifted my carry-on into the trunk.

She didn't
speak again until we were on the highway, zipping along with the wind in our hair and the sun on our faces. Oh yeah, I could get used to this form of transport. The most notable thing about the scenery whizzing past was that it was green: yellow green, moss green, blue green—more greens than in an L.L.Bean catalog. At home things are brown and olive, mostly. And the air felt different; kind of moist and balmy.

“Um, so, Janelle—”

“Morgan,” I corrected absentmindedly, watching how she moved her feet on the pedals, trying to fathom the mysteries of driving stick.

“What?”

“Oh,” I said, resurfacing. “Um, I mean, I've decided that I hate that name. It's so stupid-sounding.” Which is nothing but the truth.
Janelle?
Give me a break. “I always wanted to be called ‘Morgan,' so I figured this would be the right time to make the change, moving to a new place and all.” My parents did give me one thing I liked: my name.

“Oh wow, really? ‘Morgan'? It almost sounds like a guy's name.”

“Sometimes it is,” I said. “It's unisex.” I like that about it. It sounds strong, a little tough. Like me.

“Well, okay . . . Morgan. Anyway, I hear your mom and dad are trying to break up your romance,” she said. “If you don't
want to talk about it, that's fine, but if you do, I can sympathize. What happened?”

I considered this question for a long moment. If there is one thing I pride myself on, it's making up a good story. Oh, how tempting it was at that moment to open my mouth and see what came out! It would be a sad story, for sure, one that would get Brooke entirely on my side. An exciting story, one that would make those blue eyes bug out with amazement, a tale of thwarted lovers, cruel parents, unjust accusations, and violent deeds. If I could count on not staying long with Brooke's family, it didn't have to be entirely believable either. I sighed regretfully. It would have been great, but . . .

See, I'd had time to think on the plane ride. That's why, even though I
had
said I would disappear as soon as I got to Albany, I'd changed my plans.

I'd been so pleased by my own cleverness in switching places with Janelle that I hadn't thought much about the future. My old weakness, I admit. On a sudden impulse I will launch out over thin ice, improvising brilliantly, skating faster and faster until I've reached the other side of the pond. The problem was that this time the pond was more like an ocean and I could see some pretty big cracks forming under my feet.

I wasn't too worried about my own family figuring out where I was. The people at New Beginnings were bound to notice when I didn't show up, and they'd tell my parents. They'd
check the passenger manifest and see I hadn't gotten on the plane. Knowing I didn't have the money for another plane ticket, everybody would assume I had taken off from the LA airport, hitchhiking or whatever. Nobody would guess in a million years where I was; I was safe from them at the moment.

But if I wasn't going to go to school at New Beginnings, where
was
I going to spend the next two or three years? And how was I going to go about getting into my elite college, with no high school transcript or fixed address to offer? And then there was money. I'm smart, all right, but my grades weren't of that stellar quality that provides a totally free ride at an upper-echelon school. My parents were irritatingly lower-middle-class. They didn't earn anywhere near enough to make paying tuition at a good school easy, but they did earn a bit too much to get me in on a needs-based scholarship. Frankly, they must have been desperate to get rid of me, to have forked over the money for New Beginnings.