My Own Worst Frenemy (16 page)

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Authors: Kimberly Reid

BOOK: My Own Worst Frenemy
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Chapter 22
O
n Monday, everything at school is different. I've only been at Langdon a couple of weeks and never really got in the groove of it; still, nothing feels the same today. People are staring at me in the halls like they did when I first arrived. But they'd gotten used to the new scholarship girl pretty quickly, so the stares I'm getting today are different. I hope I can find Marco before first bell so I can ask him if he's getting the same treatment, and if he knows why. Maybe they've found something new to hate on the scholarship kids about.
Smythe is standing at the door of the main office and when she sees me heading for my locker, motions for me to come over.
Now what?
“Chantal, I want you to know that I still have my eye on you until we resolve the issue of the Langdon thefts.”
“But I caught the thief. She admitted her guilt and you fired her last Friday, right?”
“Thank you for alerting us to Ms. Reeves's actions. She gave us quite a lengthy confession, even confessing to taking things that hadn't been reported missing. She did not, however, mention a Montblanc pen or a tennis bracelet.”
Pregnant pause, for effect.
“I asked her about these items and she knew nothing.”
“And you believed her?”
“Why would she lie about those items and be so contrite about everything else?”
“Maybe because the value of the bracelet would be a class-one felony charge instead of a misdemeanor. More jail time.”
“It's certainly to your advantage that you know the justice system so well. You're going to need it,” she says, all cryptic, before walking into the office.
Bethanie is coming down the hall toward me, and the minute I see her face, I know the school isn't hating on all the scholarship kids—it's only about me. Lissa and Justin must have spread the story about me going to jail. I'm about to ask her what's going on when she just passes right by as though she didn't see me. Okay, we had a little falling-out at the party, but now I know we have more in common than I thought, even more than the secrets we share. We come from the same place. She really is a scholarship girl, even if she's working hard not to be one. So I follow her.
“Bethanie, what's going on? Did Lissa tell everyone about me going to jail?”
She looks at me as though she's Supergirl and I'm Kryptonite, and considers whether to even talk to me. “You mean the first time or the next time?”
“Next time?”
“Whatever you did over summer break is old news. What the hell were you thinking, Chanti?”
“About what? Speak English, would you?”
Bethanie takes my arm and pulls me into an empty classroom.
“They're saying you did it, Chanti, and you know, you used to be my girl and I trust you to keep my secret about the lottery money and I want to not believe them, but it looks bad.”
“
What
looks bad?” I'm on the verge of a major freak-out now, and still don't know what for.
“The burglary at Annette's house Friday night.”
“Somebody broke into Annette's house?”
“She's saying the somebody was you.”
“What the hell? Y'all were there. Did you see me break into Annette's house and steal something? I mean, this doesn't even make sense.”
“We weren't there the whole night, and neither were you.”
“Right. I was home in bed, no thanks to you.”
“Yeah, but what did you do before you got home? It happened while we were out getting food. You should've just gotten in the car with us, and then this wouldn't have happened.”
“I didn't do it, Bethanie.”
“Whether you did or didn't, if you'd been with us, no one could accuse you of it. Look, I have to go. I'm sorry to leave you hanging, but I'm not trying to get kicked out of Langdon.” She looks around the hall nervously, as though she's afraid to be seen with me.
“Wait, at least tell me what happened. When you got back to Annette's house, what did you find? Any signs of a break-in?”
“Sorry, Chanti. I'm out of it.”
First bell rings and I'm left wondering what just happened.
 
I tried to find Marco before I ditched school, just to explain to him what little I know, which is that I had nothing to do with a burglary, and give him the real story behind my brief incarceration. But I couldn't find him before the second bell, and I couldn't stand being there with all the staring, all the accusations flying across classrooms and hallways. I just have to hope that Marco knows enough about me to know I couldn't be any part of this. There are only two people in the world I can trust to help me, and one of them won't talk to me. So I call the one who will always help no matter what kind of trouble I get myself into. And I need some help, because I've got a feeling it's all about to go down.
This is where my embellishing skills prove useful.
“Lana, I'm sick. You have to come get me,” I say when she answers her phone.
“You were fine this morning. What happened between then and now?”
It's times like this when I wish I had one of those mothers who hears the words
I'm sick
and just drops everything to come get their kid—no interrogations, no need to make up a lie.
“I guess I must have picked up something. This girl in PE just came back to school after having mono. Maybe I . . .”
“Mono?” she says, sounding worried. “Seems like the school should have told the parents there was a student there with mono.”
Caller, you're a winner.
But just in case she hasn't fully bought it, I add some insurance.
“I'm at the coffeehouse near my bus stop. While I was walking to the stop, I had to puke in someone's yard, so I was afraid to get on the bus and get sick on whoever sits next to me.”
“All right, give me twenty minutes.”
It's hard to fool a detective, and I only manage to half the time, but that still says something about my special talent for storytelling. But I have to tell Lana the rest of this story in person and away from Langdon Prep because she will absolutely lose it when she hears I'm about to become a B and E suspect.
As soon as I get in the car, Lana slaps her hand against my forehead.
“You don't have a fever. It must not be the flu. Does it feel like a cold?”
“Yeah, I think it's a cold.” I have to keep the lie going until we get home because we're only a mile from campus and if I tell her everyone at Langdon is fingering me for the burglary, she'll go right back up there and turn Langdon inside out. That's the last thing I need right now. But by the time we reach home, she's onto me.
“So what's really going on, Chanti? I was in the middle of a stakeout.”
“Soon you might be trying to solve a case a little closer to home,” I say, trying to make light of it, but Lana's not smiling.
“Please tell me you haven't gotten yourself into some new mess. That's why I sent you to that school, to keep you out of trouble. But you always seem to find it.”
“Trouble finds
me
.”
“Tell me what's going on.”
I relay what little I know, which is my impending arrest for a crime I didn't commit, since I don't have any details of Friday night past the point of seeing Bethanie's taillights fade in the distance. Lana listens intently, but doesn't look nearly as distressed as I'd expected.
“So you think you're going to jail because a girl's house you'd been to earlier that night was later burglarized, and because of the way kids were looking at you in the hall.”
“Exactly.”
“Chanti, there's nothing in that story that points to you. If the girls didn't lock the house before they left—like one girl I know who got our TV and stereo stolen last year—anyone could have gone in there.”
“That's true.”
“Or it could have been some other girl at the party, for that matter. Even that girl you went to the party with.”
“Bethanie? No way. She's my friend.”
“You claim she tricked you into going to a party she knew you'd never want to attend. Doesn't sound like much of a friend to me.”
I can't see any way Bethanie could be involved in this. She rescued me after I wrecked that birdfeeder and tried to cover for me by giving Smythe that pen she bought. I've only known her a short time and she did ditch me so no one would think she was involved with the burglary, but I know she wouldn't set me up like this. Then I remember what she said in hall this morning: “You
used
to be my girl. . . .” Not to mention I really have no idea who Bethanie is after she revealed her Dirty South persona.
“But how?” I ask, a little more open to the idea that I truly may have been betrayed.
“Unless they pulled in there with a moving van and took everything, an inside job would be easy. If there were only a couple of small things missing, it could be anyone who was there that night. What was taken? Were there signs of forced entry?”
“I never found out all that. I just got out of there. Those kids were persecuting me with their eyes.”
“Oh, the drama,” Lana says, sounding tired. “You're not going to jail, but you
are
going back to school. And I need to get back to my stakeout.”
Suddenly I feel the need to defend myself, even with Lana, because when she lays it all out like she has, there really is no case against me. Well, at least not based solely on the alleged burglary at Annette's house.
“Something's going on, Mom, and I know when you break it down the way you just did it doesn't sound like it. But there's other stuff happening.”
“What other stuff? That business with the thefts around school? The teacher did it, right?”
“That's another thing,” I say, remembering Smythe's warning. Ms. Reeves confessed to the thefts, but not all of them.
“They can't tie those thefts to you,” she said, sounding like a cop when I wish she'd sound more like a mother.
“Yeah, but I just have this feeling.”
“So do I, a feeling you hate that school and you're looking for a way to get out of it so you can go to North High with your friends.”
“At Annette's party, this bi-atch named Lissa—”
“Watch the language.”
“I am. That's why I said bi-atch. Anyway, somehow Lissa found out about my little incident over summer break and she told everyone at the party. That ticked me off, so I left.”
“How did she find out? That was all expunged, there's nothing on your record. You
have
no record.”
“Exactly. The only way I figure it is Smythe told her.”
“Who?”
“The headmistress—the one you arrested for something.”
“Don't get sidetracked, Chanti.”
“Well, when she called us into her office to falsely accuse us, she said she knows something about my past, and this morning she says she has her eye on me. And Smythe loves Lissa. I don't put it past her telling Lissa about me.”
“But there's nothing to tell. If they were to do a background check on you, they'd find nothing. You never told your friends at school, did you?”
“I don't have any friends at school.”
Bethanie has made it clear she wants nothing to do with me, and I figure Marco has heard the rumors by now and he'll be the next victim on my friendship list. Maybe hearing I have no friends causes Lana to have some pity for me (though not much) because she lets me stay home.
“I still think you're blowing this out of proportion and it's more about you not wanting to attend that school. You're going back tomorrow,” she says, heading out the door. “Do the laundry since you're home.”
I can't believe Lana thinks I'd go through all of this just to create a reason not to go to Langdon. Okay, maybe my history might lead her to believe that, but couldn't she see everything I'm telling her is on the real this time? So much for thinking my own mother would have my back.
Chapter 23
U
ntil today, I thought only one other person knew about my arrest outside of Lana and the cops. I didn't even tell Tasha. I knew she'd have nothing to offer but “I told you so” because she never liked MJ from the get-go. I'd always trusted her to keep my secrets, but once she started hanging out with Michelle, I didn't know if the best-friend rule about keeping secrets was still in play, though I know differently now. So that leaves MJ, and how could she have told Smythe or Lissa when she doesn't know anything about them? Besides, she's the only person other than Lana who I'd trust with my life because after all, she's already saved me twice.
After Lana forced me back into the holding cell, claiming she had to do it to keep her cover, though I knew it was to teach me a lesson. Then I discovered she had put way too much confidence in the guard's knowledge that I was her kid. Either that or the guard knew and didn't care because when I returned to the cell and saw that MJ was gone and the girl I'd recently called a skank was waiting for me, the guard was not at all interested when I told her about my looming death. She left me there to figure out how to keep myself from getting shanked or skived or whatever they call it when a fellow inmate takes you out with a knife made from a Popsicle stick.
Okay, the skank didn't have a knife, homemade or otherwise, but she did have a serious uppercut, which she landed against my chin the minute the guard was out of sight. I hoped that was all I'd get, but then she sat on my chest—which was easy because her punch had landed me on the floor so quickly I didn't have time to try to defend myself, which in my case meant assuming the fetal position. There were four other girls in the room, and no one seemed to notice I was about to get my butt kicked, except for the one who was standing over me saying, “Hit her again! Hit her again!” Now that girl seemed really interested.
I think the skank was about to oblige her audience when someone else whispered, “Guards.”
“Turn away from the door,” she said as she got off of me. “Don't say a word or you'll get a helluva lot worse when the guard leaves.”
I would have, too, if the guard hadn't come with MJ in tow. You can believe the minute that guard was out of sight, someone got a helluva lot worse, but it wasn't me. MJ just about lost it when she saw my bruised jaw, which had already begun to swell. Lucky for the skank, I pulled MJ off of her before she could do her any serious harm. After that, no one came near MJ or me, and we had one roomy corner of the holding cell to ourselves.
“Maybe we should call the guards about your face. You probably need some ice on that.”
“I hope it looks bad. Maybe now I can teach my mother a lesson.”
“What are you talking about?”
That uppercut must have rattled my brain because I never slip up when it comes to Lana's cover, especially around MJ, who I'd figured would probably not have much interest in me as a friend if she found out that it was my mom who had just interrogated us.
“I mean, you know, when I get out of here, she'll probably be mad about me taking the car without her permission. Seeing my face like this might soften her up.”
“Oh yeah. Big Mama is gonna give me hell, too. When I called to ask her to pick me up, she went from pissed to crying in under sixty. I hate to make my grandmother cry.”
“They'll get over it eventually,” I said, not quite believing it.
“Sorry I got you into all this mess. I really did think my cousin just wanted to see me while he was passing through town.”
“So what did he really want?”
“We can't talk in here. They don't have nothing on us though. Don't worry. That cop was just talking smack.”
“You think so?” I said, pretending I was afraid even though I knew everything was going to be okay, at least for me. I hadn't been in that motel room. Though I knew MJ would never commit a crime intentionally, in our brief friendship I'd learned a couple of things about MJ that could easily land her back in JD—she'd do anything for a friend and she wasn't likely to ever win class valedictorian. A big heart and a not-so-big brain is a dangerous combination.
“Nothing but a thing. That cop though, I didn't like her. The lady cops are always the worst. They have this game, pretending they can relate to you or something just because they're women. She don't know nothing about me.”
“Not all cops are bad.” When I said this, MJ had the same look in her eyes that skank had just before she hit me. Rage. But it only lasted a second, and turned into pity, the way you look at a squirrel trying to cross a busy street. You know the poor dumb animal is doomed.
“Believe this, Chanti, There's is no such thing as a good cop. Not if you're us.”
She waved her hand back and forth when she said this, connecting us. At that moment, I didn't feel like a traitor to Lana at all. I felt like I'd just made a friend for life.
 
They let MJ out first, about ten minutes before me. That was the longest, most terrifying ten minutes of my life. Once she was sure MJ wasn't coming back, that girl with the uppercut tried to make good on her promise, until I screamed for the guard. I was almost as relieved to see the guard as I was to know that MJ didn't hear me scream like a baby. Then I spent another hour in Lana's office while she finished her report without saying a single word to me after she got some ice for my bruised and swollen jaw. I guess she saw it as another lesson. That if I was terrified enough of jail, I would never get myself into enough trouble to land there again. Let me tell you—my mother is hard.
“What if MJ is down there waiting for me?” I asked her as we took the elevator to the first floor of the department. “What about your cover?”
“You think she's such a good friend she'd wait around here for you?”
“I know she is. You're passing judgment without even knowing her.” That last line I actually said to myself. I'm not brave, but I'm also not stupid. I was pretty sure Lana was still looking for someplace to land her shoe.
“She won't be. I had a cruiser take her home. Didn't want to disturb her grandmother. I checked out her whole situation and that girl did some time in JD. Big Mama took on a handful.”
When we stepped off the elevator, there was no MJ. I still expected her to be there even though Lana told me a uniform had taken her home.
“You said yourself we didn't do anything.”
“You didn't do anything that will keep you locked up, but you made a lot of bad decisions tonight. Taking my car when you only have a learner's permit—be happy I didn't have you ticketed. But don't worry, I'll be treating you to
my
version of jail. And you know nothing good happens at those motels over there. Have I taught you nothing? Your average person wouldn't have noticed what was going on at the motel, but you aren't average. You notice everything.”
It was true. But not tonight, and I still hadn't figured out why. Lana had, though.
“That MJ girl is trying to lead you down the wrong path. Not while you're under my roof, Miss Thing.”
I was grateful Lana didn't have any more lecturing for me in the car. It turned out she was only waiting until we got home. She picked up where she'd left off the minute we were out of the car.
“There is no way a child of mine is going to be running the streets with all kinds of delinquents. I better not
ever
catch you with that girl again, you hear me?”
She was still talking as she went up on the porch, even though I had turned back to get my bag out of the car, which I will forever think of as my “personal effects.” Lana was still lecturing when she opened the front door and went inside the house. I could hear her saying “that girl” at the very moment I noticed MJ come from behind a car parked on the other side of the street.
“I was waiting for you, wanted to make sure those cops didn't hold you when you didn't even do anything, but I see I wasted my time.”
“MJ, look, she's vice. I couldn't say anything. She has a cover and I . . .”
“Don't worry, narc. MJ ain't no snitch.”

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