Prank Wars (32 page)

Byron handed Sergeant Brady his phone. “Thanh?” Brady asked after a moment. “Am I talking to Thanh? Oh, good.”

I froze. That meant she was alright. I still couldn’t deny what I had seen. “Where is she?” I asked.

The officer ignored me. “This is Sergeant Brady. We’ve got a concerned neighbor who thinks you might be in trouble. Are you in a place where you can talk? Are you alright?” He waited for a moment. “Your neighbor claims that you were taken by force by a passing vehicle.” I bit my lip. It seemed ridiculous now, especially if she was with a trusted friend, but still Brady drilled her. “You can answer in the affirmative if this is true.” He listened for a moment then turned to me, his expression unreadable “She’s okay,” he told me.

Was she? But someone took her—except she was safe now. But what if she wasn’t? What if the friend we called had taken her? I knew it was ridiculous, but still these nagging doubts rushed through me. My hands curled into fists and I blew into them to keep them warm. “Are you sure?” I argued, but it was more with myself. I wanted to believe that she was okay, but my eyes had seen something else. “What if that isn’t her?” I asked. “That could be any random girl pretending to be her. Get her social security number! See if it matches!”

Tory bobbed her head next to me in agreement; the water flew with her hair.

Sergeant Brady took a steadying breath. I knew I was driving him crazy. “One more time, Thanh, and I apologize for the inconvenience; we’d like to confirm this is you. Give me your full name.”

“Social security number,” I urged.

He shook his head at me, listening to the other line. Apparently she had a pretty long name, longer than any social security number I had ever heard. Still, it wasn’t enough for me. How were we to know that this was her or that she wasn’t being held by force? Maybe I had seen a lot of movies, but I wanted to see her and make sure a gun wasn’t being held to her back. “Where is she?” I asked.

The sergeant was already irritated with me, but still he repeated my question. He passed the message on to me, “She’s at her boyfriend’s house.”

“Oh.” I glanced over at Byron. He didn’t seem crushed. He looked antsy like he might leave us at any second. Maybe a girl was waiting for him at home. It was past curfew, wasn’t it? “Wait,” I grasped at straws. “Thanh can’t be at her boyfriend’s. She’s breaking curfew. Tell her to get back here.” Even Tory looked at me like I had gone insane, but it would be the perfect proof to make sure Thanh was okay.

Sergeant Brady rolled his eyes. It was more expressive than I expected in a guy his age. “Well, you’re late for curfew then, young lady. Come home.” He hung up his phone with a decisive snap. “Happy?” he asked me.

I had to be, but it just didn’t make sense. I thought my eyes had seen something else. Thanh didn’t want to get into that car, but maybe the boyfriend had been joking around with her in the rain or something? Byron wasn’t that boyfriend anymore. My spirits lifted and then I frowned. Why would that make me happy at a time like this? “Is there a way to take her in, so you can talk to her?” I couldn’t believe I was asking it, but I was. Tory backed away and I should’ve taken her lead.

The officers stared at me like I was a raving lunatic. Sergeant Brady forced his voice into dulcet tones: “Other than breaking curfew, we don’t have anything on her, but we could find something on
you
if that’s what you’re looking for.” He glanced around at the remnants of the battle on the grass. Luckily, it was starting to melt away under the rain. “Curfew breaking is the least of our concerns right now.”

“But we don’t have to be
in
our apartments. Just out of the guy’s apartm…” my voice trailed off at their grim faces. Sergeant Brady meant it. He would slap charges on me if I wasn’t careful. No amount of charm could get me out of this one—not that I had any. “Okay, well, are we done here?” I clapped my hands, “or do I have to fill out some paperwork?”

“We’re done…for now.”

I nodded, and quickly made my escape, belatedly noting Tory had already done so. The little deserter. Before I could move past Byron, he squeezed my arm and tugged me next to him. “Hey,” he whispered into my ear, “you did the right thing.”

I could just imagine the police beat on this one. Brady and Oliveira returned to their patrol car, their bodies stiff. “Yeah.” I was drenched and cold and bitter. Byron actually felt pretty warm. I shivered and he pulled me closer.

He ran his hands down my wet arms, splashing away some of the rainwater. It warmed me instantly. He cracked a smile. “Just because someone has a love life, there’s no reason for us to get jealous, right?”

I almost laughed at that one. “Yeah. Thanks.”

After a moment, he let me go, taking his warmth with him. He jogged away in the rain, his Nikes sloshing against the wet grass. Byron didn’t have a love life? I gave myself a mental shake. That was a strange thing to get out of this night. I dripped past Thanh’s window. Her curtains were open slightly. The mess in her apartment cast looming shadows across the checkered linoleum inside. A black backpack sat on the kitchen floor. The zipper closed. Thanh had her backpack. I
was
a raving lunatic.

I tugged on my door and let myself in, dripping over the blankets that made up the fort in our living room. Kali and Lizzie looked cozy with their towel covered heads pressed together, their skin bright and rosy from the storm. They stopped talking as soon as I entered. It meant they were talking about me. Most great leaders were betrayed by their most loyal supporters in the end. I should’ve expected it. I hesitated in the entryway. “What?” I asked. They looked blank. “Why don’t you just lecture me and get it over with, Lizzie?”

“Do you want me to?” Lizzie said with the predictable lecture to her voice. “Kali was just talking about…” Kali gave her a warning look to stop her from saying it.

“…a boy,” I finished for Lizzie. And they couldn’t tell me? Was this what my life had come to? Riddled with paranoia? It hurt that I couldn’t be trusted with normal girl talk anymore. Boys weren’t to be trusted. I saw a kidnapping when there was none. Thanh’s messy house was a ransacking. That threatening note on Thanh’s door was a...was a…wait? Was it really meant for us or for Thanh? I wished that I could look at it again, but Byron had stolen it. Why did he do that?

I heard a phone go off in my room. It didn’t sound like my ringtone. Lizzie sighed. “It’s been going off all night.”

I flung open my door and shuffled past my opened physics book on my desk. The ringing wasn’t coming from that mess. I moved to the laundry hamper and followed the sound through my dirty clothes. I scraped my jeans out from the bottom and found a cell phone in the pocket along with some keys. The cell was cute and pink with diamond studs just like I remembered it. Thanh’s. Oh no. No wonder she couldn’t answer her cell.

It stopped ringing as soon as I had it in my hand. Those were the jeans I had been wearing when I tried to return Thanh her backpack on Saturday. The keys didn’t work in her door and I had thrown them in my pocket. Her cell phone followed the keys after I got that threatening call from Byron that day. I winced, knowing I was in for it. My room was a thief’s den. I checked the caller ID and saw the number unblock again. I could just press the call back button like I did last time and fess up to the dirty deed. I pressed it against my wet cheek, took a deep breath, and called the person back.

A guy answered.
“So there you are.”

“Oh, I’m not Thanh.”

“
I know.”

I readjusted the phone against my ear. It was so small that it was threatening to slip away. “Look, are you with her? I need to talk to her?”

“
I want something from you first.”

He wasn’t making any sense, though it was beginning to sound like the same guy I talked to on this phone before. I stared at the number. It was the same one. “Byron?” I accused. What was he doing? The idiot was trying to get Thanh’s phone back for her. He was a man of his word I was coming to find out.

A soft knock sounded at my door and Tory barged into my room with drenched hair. The bells above the door rang merrily. I set them up there to make sure Tory couldn’t sneak in without my knowledge—apparently they worked. “Just a sec,” I told her. I went back to my conversation with Byron. “What do you want?”

“S
omething in that backpack is missing. And I think you know what it is.”

I laughed. “Yeah,
this
cell phone for starters.” He was silent on the other line and I knew an apology was in order. “Look, I’m sorry. I saw you returned Thanh’s backpack to her. I’m glad she got it back.”

“What?”

“Yeah, I saw it on her kitchen floor tonight.” I laughed in realization. “Unless it was yours? You got yours back, right Byron? Oh, I’ve got your physics book too. Sorry about that.”

“
Don’t make me come for you.”
He was starting to sound testy.

“Or what are you gonna do? Call the police on me? I guess that would work. They already hate me.” I flopped on my bed, enjoying the conversation. If there was one thing I loved, it was teasing Byron.

“
I’ll do worse.”

I laughed again. “Okay, come and get me, tough guy. I’ll be waiting for you. If that’s your backpack at your girlfriend’s apartment, you might want to pick that up too. Seriously man, don’t you ever study?”

He clicked off his phone and I giggled. Tory’s eyes widened and I covered my mouth. Did that sound just come from me? Like I said, I was seriously going crazy.

“Who were you talking to?” she asked suspiciously.

“Byron.”

“How? I thought you stole his phone.”

“For the last time, I did
not
steal his ph—!” My eyes widened and I dropped the pink cell phone to the floor. “Holy cow!” Yes, that was an understatement. Byron had lost his iPhone. Who did I just talk to?

Day 112

2217 hours

“
Who is my enemy? To be honest, I have no idea. They don’t know who I am either, so in a way that gives me the advantage.”

—Madeleine’s War Journal Entry (Monday night, June 4th).

“Something weird is happening.” I tugged some dry clothes onto my wet body, and stuffed my war journal into the back pocket of my red sweats. The rain from outside had turned into a torrent, raging against our little red brick apartment. I picked up Thanh’s cell phone from the floor, staring at it. Whoever had been on the phone was angry.

I turned to Tory. I only had a hunch, a very crazy hunch. I replayed the whole phone conversation through my mind. I had asked to talk to Thanh, but the guy said he wanted something from me first. Did that mean whoever called really had Thanh, assuming he wasn’t her boyfriend? I saw her taken, didn’t I? The police had talked to her on the phone, but there was no way to know it was Thanh. Even if it had been, was she somewhere she could talk openly? She had been taken! I knew it. Before I could get the police to listen to me, I needed cold hard evidence—or at least someone chasing me. I could arrange that.

This guy said he was missing something. He didn’t seem interested in Thanh’s cell phone. I glanced over at the keys I had taken from her backpack. Maybe those? They didn’t open Thanh’s door; they opened something else…obviously; they were keys. My thoughts kept circling to the backpack. Whatever this guy wanted could be resting on Thanh’s messy kitchen floor. I brushed past a wet Tory; her
mean
shirt clung to her, her red hair curling. “Don’t let anyone in. Lock the apartment up and I mean it.”

These were orders that Tory understood. She nodded. “What about Sandra? She isn’t in yet?”

I tilted my head at her. “Of course, she’s the exception. You can let her in.” I thought that was obvious, but maybe to a soldier used to strict orders it wasn’t. “As much as I hate the thought, Byron might have something to do with this.”

“Just as you were beginning to like him,” she said under her breath.

“What?”

She gave me a playful grin. I wrestled with the idea of telling Tory everything, but there was no time. Mystery man was onto me. I might as well have begged him to break back into Thanh’s place to steal her backpack and help himself to whatever else he wanted. The only thing I didn’t spill was her bank account number. If there was something vital in that backpack, we’d have nothing to bargain with to get Thanh back. She’d be lost forever.

I rushed out into the hall, thinking hard. There was no way to get into Thanh’s unless I broke a window. I didn’t know how to use bobby pins or credit cards like Byron did to pick the lock. Our ring of keys to the apartments was missing. It was way too late to call Eric—Mr. Magic fingers himself—no way inside Thanh’s at all…unless?

I looked up and saw our trapdoor to the crawl space. We had a trapdoor, so would Thanh. The crawlspace over the ceiling would take me to her place. I took a steadying breath. This guy was practically a Nazi anyway…if my landlord ever cared to question me. I tugged on the string. The trapdoor ripped away from the Velcro. I felt warm air rush down on me. “Get me a chair,” I ordered Tory.