My Unfair Godmother (10 page)

“You go to school here?” I asked.

“I’m a senior.”

A senior—like me. I didn’t have any classes with him, but we were bound to know some of the same people. Rock Canyon High wasn’t that big. “So it wasn’t even your job to wring a confession from me on Friday night; you did that for fun?” He gave me an exasperated look. “When you wouldn’t tell the police your name, my dad called me to ID you. I know everybody at school.”

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“You don’t know me.” I hadn’t seen him before. I would have remembered him. Guys that good-looking stick in your mind. “How did you know who I was?”

“Nick and I are friends. He’s pointed you out.” I should have put my backpack away. I needed to get ready for first period, but I didn’t move. “You’re Nick’s friend and you tricked me? Do you have any idea how traumatic that whole stint at the police station was?”

Hudson rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I could tell how traumatized you were by the way you used the two-way mirror to do your hair.” I blushed. He’d seen me do that. Stupid two-way mirrors. “I meant making me betray my boyfriend.”

“Oh, your boyfriend.” Hudson’s gaze went to my locker. It had dents where Bo had hit it. “I hope the school doesn’t make you pay for that.”

I let out a sigh and finished my locker combination. With my luck not only would I have to pay for it, but the door would be stuck shut and I would be late for first period.

Hudson leaned against the locker next to mine. “Speaking of boyfriends, how come you won’t tell the police anything about that Robin guy who held up Walgreens?”

My locker didn’t stick, just creaked in protest as I opened it. “He’s not my boyfriend, and thanks for telling the police I was there when it happened. You can imagine how happy my parents were when a squad car came to my house. I’m now officially grounded until I graduate.” Hudson was unperturbed. “If I hadn’t told them, they would have still seen you on the surveillance tape …” I drew in a sharp breath. I hadn’t thought about the surveillance cameras. Not only would that footage be studied by the police, it might 90/356

be played on the news. Then the world would see me kissing Robin Hood in the middle of an armed robbery.

“… and your voice is on the 911 recording.”

“The 911 recording?” I repeated.

“I called the police. Those calls are always recorded.” Even better. They had soundtrack of the whole thing too. I leaned my head against my locker. Did surveillance tapes ever end up on YouTube?

“You obviously knew those guys. Who are they? Friends from New York out here to visit you in the hick town?” I ignored him, pulled my books out of my backpack, and put them on my locker shelf.

“Why the swords?” he asked. “What are they trying to prove?” I hung my backpack on its hook, then took my history book from the shelf. I went to shut my locker door, but Hudson put his hand on it to force me to look at him. “If you cared about those guys, you would help us stop them before a few get shot. That’s how a lot of armed robberies end up: with the bad guys leaking blood onto the pavement.”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you what I knew.” I pulled my locker door away from him and shut it. “And I was trying to reason with them, trying to get them to stop robbing places. But I can’t do that anymore, thanks to you. My father is keeping me under lock and key from now on.”

Hudson ignored my complaints. “What wouldn’t I believe?”

“I just need a little time to take care of them,” I said. Surely, Chrissy would check in on me today. I still had two wishes left. She had to come back sometime to grant them. “Could you talk to your father and make sure the police don’t shoot anybody before I can get rid of them?”

“What wouldn’t I believe?” Hudson asked again.

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I hesitated, then told him. “It’s Robin Hood and the Merry Men.”

“Robin Hood?” Hudson ran a hand across my locker door, tapping it in annoyance. “Sure he is. But what did I expect from you? You girls all think the guy is dreamy.”

“I wouldn’t exactly describe him as dreamy.” I tucked my book under my arm. “Buff, yes. Handsome, I suppose. Daring …” I thought of the way he’d kissed me. It made me smile. “Okay, he’s dreamy.” Hudson shook his head in disbelief. “Your taste in men is pathetic.”

Only if you believed what the pathetic-o-meter said.

Without saying good-bye, Hudson turned and went down the hallway, weaving between the rest of the students with a purposeful stride. I watched him go and my spirits sank. They shouldn’t have. I shouldn’t have cared what he thought—he was the guy who tricked me at the police station.

Hudson was right, really. My taste in men was pathetic.

As I made my way to class, I thought of Hudson’s phrase.
You
girls all think the guy is dreamy
. What did he mean by that? I wondered about it until I sat down in first period and three girls descended on my desk like birds landing for bread crumbs.

A wide-eyed blonde pulled up the chair next to me. “Is it true you were with Jessica Wilson and Hudson Gardner at the Walgreens when it was robbed?”

I nodded. Jessica must have been the teenage girl who was with us.

The second girl sat on the corner of my desk. “Did the robber really say the only thing he wanted to steal from you was a kiss, and then”—she waved her fingers dramatically—“and then he kissed you?” I nodded again.

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This made the girls squeal. “I Googled his composite sketch,” the third said. “He’s a total babe.”

“Were you afraid?” the first asked.

“Do you think he’ll try to see you again?” the second put in.

“Is Bo upset about it?”

That question I could answer. “Bo and I broke up Friday night.” Now all three girls oohed like they had learned a great secret.

“Good timing,” the first one said.

The second girl put her elbow on my desk and rested her chin in her hand. She smiled wistfully. “You must attract the dangerous type.”

“I’m going to hang out in convenience stores until I run into him.” The third let out a sigh.

The other girls trilled in agreement, then speculated where the bandits might strike next.

My mind drifted back to Hudson. I couldn’t help being curious about him, and this was as good a time as any to get information about him. I kept my voice casual. “Hudson was really cool under pressure.

Is he always like that?”

The third girl grunted. “No, he’s just too sullen to get worked up about death.”

Sullen? That description didn’t fit. The second girl leaned toward me. “Don’t mind Sarah; she had a thing for Hudson once.”

“Every girl in school has had a thing for Hudson at
least
once,” the third girl—Sarah—said defensively. “But then his mom died a year ago and he went all antisocial.”

“He’s not antisocial,” the first girl said. “He just took it hard. Can you blame him?”

I felt a pang of sympathy for him and wished I hadn’t asked. It seemed wrong to hear these girls talk so lightly about his pain.

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“We all wanted to help him,” Sarah went on, “but he cut everybody out of his life.” She twisted her pencil through the ends of her hair. “He used to start for the football team, and he didn’t even go out for it this year. He didn’t run for student body either, and he was class president freshman and sophomore years. He would have been a sure thing, but it’s like he doesn’t care about the people at school anymore.” The girls didn’t say more because the bell rang and the teacher told them to go to their desks. But I kept thinking about what they said, and I saw Hudson in a new light.

All during the rest of school, girls came up and asked me about the medieval bandits. Everyone wanted to know the details of the robbery. It was strange to have this surge of popularity.

Before long, Bo heard about the kiss. He texted me his opinion about it, but I didn’t care. At least he knew I wasn’t at home pining for him on Saturday night.

• • •

Before long, I heard voices in the kitchen—Nick’s and someone else’s. I wandered out of my room to get something to eat and to see who was over.

Hudson sat at the table with Nick, their math books spread out in front of them. The sight made me do a double take. Hudson looked so out of place there—Mr. Model Material next to the clutter, dirty dishes, and ordinariness of our kitchen. I stared in surprise and sputtered,

“What are you doing here?”

He smiled lazily. “Nice to see you too, Tansy.” 94/356

It wasn’t an unjustified question. Granted, Hudson had told me he was friends with Nick, and suddenly I realized which of Nick’s friends had access to a police scanner, but they weren’t hang-out-at-each-other’s-house friends. Nick’s real friends belonged to the computer club. He wasn’t on knuckle-bumping terms with the football players.

“We’re doing homework,” Nick said.

I walked to the fridge, took out an apple, and let my gaze return to Hudson. I knew things about him now—that his mother had died a year ago, that his grief had changed him. But here in my kitchen, I couldn’t see anything about him that was vulnerable. He seemed more than confident—at least confident in my guilt. I raised an eyebrow at him. “You came here to spy on me.”

Hudson wrote an equation on his paper. “If you’re not hiding anything, you have nothing to worry about. I mean, it’s not like that band of thugs has ever, say, shown up in your bedroom.” I sent Nick an evil glare.

He shrugged. “You’re my sister. I worry about you, especially when the guys you hang out with threaten to cut out your tongue with their swords.”

Which meant Hudson had told Nick everything that had happened during the robbery.

“I am not hanging out with them,” I said. “I just …” But I couldn’t explain that I felt responsible for them. That I
was
responsible for them. After all, I had told both Nick and Hudson that it was Robin Hood and the Merry Men and neither believed me. “I’ll let you guys finish your homework.”

I went back to my room, finished my math assignment, and wrote a long text message to my sister. Kendall thought she was doing drama? Ha.

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After an hour and a half, I walked back to the kitchen to throw away my apple core. I hadn’t expected Hudson to still be there, and I especially hadn’t expected to see him sitting alone at the table doing his homework.

“Where’s Nick?” I asked.

“He needed to run to the store to pick out some stuff for his science fair project.”

That was odd. I tilted my head at him. “And he left you here by yourself?”

Hudson sent me a look like I should know better than to ask.

“Your parents want Nick to make sure you don’t go anywhere before they get home from work.” He leaned back casually in his chair. “Although that didn’t work on Saturday night, did it?”

“Unbelievable,” I said. “You’re here babysitting me?”

“Nah.” He flashed a smile. “I’m here spying on you.” I threw my apple core away and opened the fridge for more food. I needed to eat now because when dinnertime came, I was telling my dad I wasn’t hungry and spending the evening in my room. I pulled out last night’s enchiladas and took a plate from the cupboard.

Hudson strolled over and leaned against the counter. “So why were those guys in your bedroom Friday night?” I dished some enchiladas on my plate and didn’t answer.

“You’re the only lead in the case,” he said. “If I tell my dad they were over here, the police will bring you in for questioning. Why don’t you make it easier on everybody and tell me what you know.” I put the enchiladas in the microwave and punched in a minute.

“Is there some reason you feel the need to be supercop and crack this case?”

“You mean besides the fact that I was robbed at sword-point?” 96/356

“You’re not even on the police payroll, and I bet you’re working harder than the rest of them.”

He shook his head. “It’s only a matter of time before one of those thugs kills someone. Trust me—everybody down at the station is working overtime.”

I watched my plate slowly rotating in the microwave. “I’m doing what I can.” I had already called for Chrissy several times today.

“Didn’t you learn anything from dating Bo?” Hudson asked. “He pounded your locker today and he would have pounded you too if I hadn’t showed up. And I don’t care how handsome that Robin guy is.

He hurts people. How can you protect him?” He held up a hand in frustration. “How can you be involved with someone like that?”

“I’m not involved with him.” I meant I wasn’t romantically involved. Which was the truth. One kiss while he was holding me up didn’t make us a couple. But apparently the denial counted as a lie. Before I could say another sentence, I caught sight of tiny lights fountain-ing around my head like a garland of sparklers.

Hudson’s mouth dropped open as he stared at me. “How did you do that?”

I put my hand to my head, then jerked it away with an “Ouch!” The sparklers were not only bright but also hot. This was bad. Nothing was burning my head yet, but that could happen next. Was I supposed to stop, drop, and roll, like I was on fire?

Then again, there is only one thing more freakish than having your head unexpectedly ignite with magic sparklers, and that is dropping to your kitchen floor and trying to roll them off your head. I couldn’t do that in front of Hudson, and besides, smothering the flames probably wouldn’t work to extinguish magic fire.

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But how did I get rid of them? I hurried to the bathroom in a walk that was somewhere between a panicked scurry and a don’t-fan-the-flames glide.

In the mirror, I saw a wreath of fireworks surrounding my head.

Worse yet, a message lit up like wording on a scoreboard:
She’s lying!

The disclaimer tromped brightly across my forehead.
She’s a blasted
liar! She’s lying! She’s lying!

“Well, this is wonderful,” I said.

Hudson came up behind me. I saw him in the mirror’s reflection studying the lights. “Where did that come from?” I tried to bat the thing off and only succeeded in burning my fingers. What had Chrissy said about the lights? Were they permanent? I couldn’t go to school like this.