Masked (2 page)

You don't mistake a voice like that— kind of husky, low for a girl, but not old-lady low. Smoky low. Sexy low. There are a lot of guys at school who are crazy about that voice.

Rosie's voice. Rosie Mirelli.

She's in my history class.

The old man called her, and she called him Dad. What do you know? The princess is no princess after all, not if her dad owns this place.

Part of me thinks she'll never recognize me. She never looks at me at school. She treats me like a ghost, like someone who inhabits a whole different world from hers. A world of shadows and darkness, not a Rosie world filled with bright colors.

Then again, she's just the kind of girl who, if she were to see me trespassing in her world, would say, “What do you think you're doing here?” Not that that would be a big deal ordinarily. I bet I'm not the first kid from school to come in here. It would mean nothing—except for one thing. Except for Leon.

Leon lives next door to me. His mom and my mom talk all the time. Mostly they talk about their kids, about Leon and his brothers, about me and my sister. And because of all that talk, Leon knows about my job. I'm a mystery shopper. That's someone who is hired to go into a store or a restaurant like an ordinary customer but who checks on the service and whatever else he's hired to check on. All kinds of people are mystery shoppers—old people, young people, kids like me. Ordinary people. People you'd never suspect. My uncle got me the job. He knows a guy who runs a mystery-shopper business. But that's not why I'm in the store today. Today my mission is different.

I'm here because I was hired by a friend of my uncle's who's a real-estate developer. A Donald Trump wannabe. He has quietly bought up a lot of property in the area, and to complete his deal, he needs to buy this store. But the owner—Rosie's dad—won't sell. So my uncle's friend hired me to take a look at Mr. Mirelli's finances. That way, he says, he can come up with the right price and maybe the right pressure to motivate him to sell. I don't understand the whole thing. All I know is that I'm being well paid—if I succeed.

Leon asked me about my job one time. And he teases me about it at school sometimes, calling me Mystery Man. He's said it a couple of times when he was with Rosie. And I bet he explained to Rosie what he meant. So I bet she'll say something to her dad if I suddenly appear through a door that leads to a bathroom that her father doesn't usually let customers use. And then he'll know there's some other reason for me to be there, because mystery shoppers are hired by companies that want to check on their employees. Rosie's father doesn't have any employees. He'll know he didn't hire me. He might figure out what I was doing back here, and then what?

I hang back and wait.

“Where did you put the order book when you finished with it?” Mr. Mirelli says.

There's a moment of silence and then a slapping sound, like a teacher makes when he slaps an exercise book down onto your desk.

“Did you even look?” Rosie says, using that same snotty tone on her dad that she uses on people she thinks are beneath her at school, acting all the time like her dad owns a Walmart instead of a crummy little convenience store, like she's some kind of big deal.

Her dad doesn't yell back at her though. All he says is, “What about the beans? That guy who always comes in for beans couldn't find the kind he likes and neither could I.”

“I rearranged that aisle, Daddy. Remember?” She says it like she's talking to a four-year-old.

“Well, go and grab me a couple of cans, will you? I told him if he came back, I'd have some waiting for him. Then you can take your shower.”

Silence. I figure she must be doing what her dad told her. In another minute she'll be gone, and I can get on with my assignment. I'll be in the clear.

I hear footsteps coming toward me. It's probably Rosie, going to get the beans her dad asked for.

The footsteps stop right outside the door to the basement. I hold my breath, while at the same time telling myself I'm acting stupid. There's nothing back here but a cramped little office and a flight of stairs. She has no reason to come back here.

The doorknob turns.

I look for a place to hide and consider diving down the stairs.

The door swings open.

I gasp.

“There you are,” Mr. Mirelli says, scowling at me. I begin to wonder whether he's capable of any other expression. “I thought maybe you'd fallen in.”

I force myself to laugh at his feeble joke. Then I think, maybe he doesn't mean it as a joke. Maybe he suspects something. He peers around me, scanning the bare little office like he's checking to make sure everything is still there. I try to stay calm. I try not to look guilty. I tell myself there's no way he could ever know what I did in here and no way he'll ever find out. I also wonder if what I did is a crime.

“Well, come on,” he says gruffly.

I step out and look around for Rosie. I don't see her anywhere. She must have gone upstairs already to have her shower.

“I've got your stuff up front,” Mr. Mirelli says. “Assuming you still want it.”

“Yeah, I still want it.”

A bell jangles. It's the bell above the store's front door. The old man and I both turn. When I see what's coming through that door, I want to bolt back into the little office, slam the door, lock it and hide out in the basement. It's possible Mr. Mirelli feels the same way, but he doesn't move. Neither of us do.

Chapter Four
The Masked Man

I swear I can see myself, as if I'm watching me on tv or in a movie. I've seen scenes like it a million times in a million cop shows. A guy is about to walk into a store. But first he pulls a mask down over his face, and in that split second, as the mask or the balaclava or whatever comes down to cover him, you see that he's sweating. You see his hands are shaking too. You think maybe he's a junkie, maybe that's where the shakes come from. For sure you know he's desperate. Why else would he be about to stick up a convenience store? I mean, how much could there be in the cash drawer, especially when so many people use debit cards? So, yeah, he must be desperate.

And nervous, just like I am when I pull the balaclava down over my head.

Nervous? Make that scared to death, because once you enter a store with the intent to commit a robbery, you're on the wrong side of the law. And once you're on the wrong side, anything can happen. For example, the guy behind the cash register could have a gun and he could reach for it, even if you tell him
you
have a gun, even if you wave your gun in his face. Some store owners are like that. They're cowboys. They don't like to be pushed around. Or maybe they've been robbed before— maybe they've been robbed one time too often—and now here you are, and the man behind the cash means to make you pay for all those other robberies. So maybe he shoots. Or maybe he tries to shoot, but you shoot first. In your mind, it's self-defense. In the law's mind, it's assault while committing a robbery. If the guy dies, it's murder. Either way, if they catch you, you're in bigger trouble than you bargained for.

Or maybe the guy behind the cash register has an alarm system and he trips it, and the cops show up. Maybe one of the cops is a rookie. Maybe he's overeager. Maybe this is the chance he's been waiting for all his life. He's been waiting to take out a bad guy. Maybe he's so excited that he forgets he's supposed to issue a warning. Maybe he just decides to pull the trigger and make his dream come true.

All those thoughts jangle in my head as I open the door and cross from the street into the store. I even think to myself in that split second, It's not worth it. I should forget the whole thing and go home. The risk is too big.

But it's already too late.

I read somewhere that the army figured out back in World War II that soldiers who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder aren't cowards. They used to think they were. They used to put guns in soldiers' hands and tell them to kill,
kill,
kill
, and then think there was something wrong with them if they fell apart after they'd obeyed the order. They used to think that real soldiers did what they were told, so if you told them to kill the enemy, they did it, and that was that. It was all okay.

But it wasn't all okay. Guys fell apart. They got screwed up. Until some genius figured out that most regular people get messed up when they kill other people. They get even more messed up when they spend months and years killing people. Apparently getting messed up after killing people is normal. Getting used to killing people—
that's
screwed up.

So then the army changed the way it trained soldiers. They stopped talking about killing people. Instead, they talked about
securing targets
, like securing didn't mean killing, even though it really did, and targets didn't mean people, even though it really did. In other words, they made it impersonal.

And you know what?

They found that soldiers were a whole lot better at killing when they were ordered to secure a target instead of being told to kill people, even if those people were the enemy.

I know. You're wondering: What do soldiers have to do with a masked man?

Well, you can learn lessons from all kinds of places, even from the army. A person who is, say, scared to death about something he's doing can decide to keep it impersonal. It's a mind game, like how they tell people who are afraid of public speaking to imagine that the whole audience is sitting out there in their underwear. How can you be afraid of a whole bunch of people in their underwear, right? You could be creeped out. But intimidated? No way.

A guy—like, for instance, me—who is going into a new situation can learn from that too. For example, I can walk into that store and tell myself that the owner is just a useless old man. He's powerless too, because, well, who has the gun? I can think of the store as my target. I can think of my mission as securing the target. I can even pretend it's a game: I'm a character in a game. I have an objective. The clock is running, and I am going to
win
.

So there I am in the store. The mask is down over my face, and my hand is coming out of my coat pocket, wrapped around a gun. The store owner, partway back along one wall, is staring at me, his mouth hanging open like he's trying to figure out if this is a joke or if it's for real. But there's someone else with the owner. A guy. Is he a customer? Maybe not. No, definitely not. And, at the far side of the store, just for a second, the top of her head visible before she drops down behind an aisle of shelves, there's a girl. She's probably hoping I haven't seen her. Then, like a flash from the sky aimed right at the center of my forehead, comes a blinding thought: What if she has a cell phone? What if she's dialing 9-1-1?

I start to think that maybe what I'm doing isn't such a great idea. I'm thinking it's getting too complicated. There are so many things I haven't considered, so many things that don't feature in my plan.

But I've already crossed the line. I'm in the store with a gun.

I tell myself that my plan is a good one. I tell myself I'm not going to back down now.

“This is a stickup,” I say.

Chapter Five
Rosie

Not only are the beans exactly where I said they were, but they haven't hidden themselves in a cloak of invisibility since I put them there. They're right out in the open. You can't miss them. That tells me that my dad didn't even bother to look for them. No surprise there. It's always, “Rosie, where's the soup? Rosie, where's that new shipment of disposable razors? Rosie, what did you do with the marshmallows?” A walk down this aisle or that one would answer those questions and a million other ones besides. But no, why take so much as a single step when you can just yell for Rosie? It's one more reason I'm glad Corey came back and is waiting for me upstairs.

I stand up, holding the beans, my mouth open and ready to yell at my dad while I wave the cans at him. I see my dad with a boy I recognize from school, a dork named Daniel. Where did he come from? I see that my dad is staring at something. I turn my head.

There's a masked man in the store, and it isn't Halloween.

I duck down again—fast.

I hear someone say, “This is a stickup.” It's the guy in the mask. He has a weird voice, like it's not his normal voice. He says, “Is there anyone else in the store?”

That tells me that the masked man hasn't seen me.

“No,” my dad says without even a second's hesitation.

The masked man doesn't know I'm there—for all the good it does. My cell phone is upstairs. There's a phone in the store, but it's behind the counter. I'd have to get past the masked man to reach it—or to get to the door to the upstairs apartment or the one to the street. I'm stuck in the canned food aisle. There's nothing I can do. Unless…

I'm still clutching a can of beans in each hand. The cans have the heft of rocks. What if I sneak up behind the masked man? What if I smash one of those cans onto the back of his head? Maybe it wouldn't knock him out, but it would distract him for long enough that my dad could do something.

“I already told you,” my dad says. “There's no one else in the store.” There's a panicky edge to his voice.

I wish I could take another look at what's happening. But what if I get caught? No, I have to stay hidden. That's the best thing to do. Let the masked man take whatever he wants. Then he'll go away. No one will get hurt. My dad will call the police—and that will be good. While he's busy with them, I can make my getaway. I start very slowly to crawl down the aisle toward the back of the store. There are cases of pop stacked there. I can hide behind them until it's all over.

I'm barely breathing.

I maneuver around the spot where the floor squeaks. I've asked my dad a million times to fix it, but he always says no. He says he likes to know when there's someone in the aisle farthest from the cash. He says that squeak lets customers know that he knows they're there.