I turn away from the elevator door and duck while people squoosh in tighter. Marissa stoops, too, and we look at each other all bug-eyed as we hear, “Excuse me … excuse me … oh, thank you … I’m sorry … we’re getting off at four … can you …? Thank you.”
Then the door closes.
I don’t dare look as the elevator goes up, but I’m pretty sure I know who the other half of “we” is. Then the elevator stops, and I hear her voice go, “This is it, Mom,” and I know I’m right.
“What are they doing here?” Marissa mouths.
I’m just working out that the reservation for Acosta must not be for Warren and my mom, but for Warren’s ex and the last person on earth I want to deal with—Heather.
But them being in Las Vegas actually does make sense. “Probably the same thing I am,” I whisper to Marissa.
Marissa shakes her head. “Wow. Your mother has no idea what she’s in for.”
The doors are open, and since Heather and Candi are already off the elevator and there’s no time to think, I grab Marissa and announce, “Excuse us, we have to get off here, too,” and push forward.
“No!” Marissa whispers, yanking back.
I drag her along. “Yes!”
The fourth floor looks just like the fourteenth, with a short elevator hallway that leads to an open area with a bunch of long corridors branching off it like the spokes of a wheel. Heather and her mother are already out of sight, so I hurry toward the open area and catch a glimpse of a big red suitcase disappearing down a corridor to our right. “There they go!”
But Marissa stays put by the elevators.
“Come on!” I whisper, waving her along.
She finally takes a few steps forward. “Why? I don’t want to talk to them! And I promised Mom we’d be right back! What are you going to do if my mother gets mad and kicks you out?”
I move forward so I can peek down the corridor. “I just want to see where they’re staying, okay? Nothing else.”
She finally gives in and we watch as Heather and her mother stop at a door about a third of the way down the corridor and slide their card in about six different ways before unlocking it and going inside.
Since the doors down the corridor all look the same, it would be easy to lose track of which room they went into, but there’s a tray with dishes outside the room right across the hall from them. So I’ve got my mark, and the second Heather and Candi’s door closes, I jet down, read the room number, and jet back. “Four fifty-six,” I pant when I join up with Marissa.
“So now what?”
“Now we get back to your mom!”
Once we’re on the fourteenth floor and don’t have to worry about people in the elevator hearing, Marissa says, “So if they’re here and your mom’s not, how are you ever going to find her?”
I don’t have an answer, so I just march along saying a whole lot of nothing.
“Well, do you think Heather knows where they’re staying? They wouldn’t have come clear out here if they didn’t know more than we do, right?”
We’re practically running down the hallway to make up for my little detour, and it’s hard to run and think and be in shock. “I don’t know! But she’s sure not going to tell me!”
“So true.” Then when we get to the door, she whispers, “So do you want to look up wedding chapels and start calling around?”
“Now?”
“I think a lot of them are open all night.”
So the minute Mrs. McKenze’s disappeared back inside her room with the aspirin and a sandwich, we dive into our food as we dig through the room’s phone book. And almost right away we discover that there are about a hundred wedding chapels in Las Vegas.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” I say through a mouthful. “It’ll take us all night to call these!”
“And what if they didn’t make an appointment? Some people just show up, wait in line, and get married.”
I shake my head. “I’m never going to find her.”
“You’re just now getting that?” Then she rubs it in by pointing to an ad that reads, Love in the Fast Lane—Drive-Thru Weddings. “I doubt people get appointments for that.” She points to another ad, for the Love Me Tender Wedding Chapel that has a picture of a white gazebo with Elvis playing an acoustic guitar. “Can you see your mom getting married by Elvis?”
“No! I can’t see my mom doing any of this stuff! I can’t even believe she’d get married here! It’s so tacky!”
Marissa takes a huge bite of her sandwich but still manages to say, “She’s never had a wedding, right? So maybe because you and your grandmother are against her marrying Casey’s dad, this is the closest she can get to a dream wedding.”
“Getting married in Las Vegas is not even close to a dream wedding!”
Marissa shrugs. “Maybe getting married here has just been stigmatized.”
“Stigmatized? Stigmatized?”
“Sure. Here, look at this,” she says, pointing to another ad. “This one offers limousine transportation, a fresh floral bouquet, professional photographs.… And the wedding parties I’ve seen at the chapel downstairs are always decked out.” She shrugs. “They look classy.”
“Classy,” I say, staring at her like she’s lost her very last marble.
She gets up and goes to the sink for a glass of water. “I’m just saying, if there are a hundred chapels, not all of them are going to be tacky!”
“Well, great,” I say, getting up for a glass of my own. “If there are a hundred potentially untacky chapels, how will I ever find the one she’s going to? And since my mom’s not staying at this hotel after all, how will I ever find her?”
“That’s what I’ve been saying this whole time!”
“I didn’t know there were a hundred chapels! That changes everything!”
For a while we both focus on eating instead of talking. And then Marissa tosses her sandwich wrapper in the trash and says, “Maybe you should call and ask your grandmother?”
“No! And she wouldn’t tell me anyway. She’s weird about my mother.” I toss my wrapper, too. “I think she’s afraid of her.”
“She’s … but why? Your mother may be full of herself, but she’s not someone I’d be afraid of.”
I think about this a minute and then kind of shake my head. “It’s more like she’s afraid of her reaction to things. Maybe when you don’t have much family, you’re afraid to lose what you do have?”
We sit around some more, and finally Marissa grabs the phone book and says, “Well, let’s start at the top and work our way down.”
“You’re serious?”
“You got a better idea?”
Just then Mrs. McKenze comes out of the bedroom and says, “The CCDC is open until midnight.”
Marissa looks up. “The CCDC?”
“Listen to me,” Mrs. McKenze mutters. “I sound like a pro.” She takes a deep breath and says, “The Clark County Detention Center, also known as the jail.”
“Oh.”
“And I won’t be able to visit or even talk to your father”—she looks at her pad of paper—“also known as inmate zero-one-zero-seven-two-nine-zero-one … until we go down to the CCDC in person to register.”
“But when’s he getting out?” Marissa asks.
“I don’t think that’s going to happen tonight.” She checks her notes. “We can post bail until midnight, but I don’t think they’ll just release him. I think there’s a whole procedure they follow.”
“How far away is the jail?”
“Only a few miles.” She looks back at her notes. “On South Casino Center Boulevard.”
Marissa mutters, “How appropriate.”
Mrs. McKenze turns to me. “So I’m sorry, Sammy, but we have to go. You’re welcome to stay here, but honestly, I can’t take on worrying about you. I’ve got too much to deal with as it is.”
“I’ll be fine,” I tell her. “I really appreciate you letting me stay here.”
She grabs her blazer and purse. “Someday I want to hear about your mother, but not now.”
Marissa follows her mom toward the door, but at the last minute she runs back and slips me her room key. “If you want more than that lousy sandwich, there’s a McDonald’s downstairs in the food court. Pizza, too. Just turn right at the fountain, and then stay to the right. You’ll run into it. Everywhere else is super expensive.”
Mrs. McKenze is holding the door, waiting. “Marissa, let’s go!”
“Coming!” Marissa calls over to her mom, then whispers, “Good luck!”
“You too!” I whisper back. “And thank you!” And really, I can’t believe how helpful and nice Marissa’s been. Especially considering her dad’s in jail.
And then they’re gone.
And it’s really quiet.
And for some reason I just sit there, alone in that big hotel room with green glowing lights outside and complete silence inside. And the longer I sit there, the smaller I feel.
The stupider I feel.
What was I thinking?
Then fear starts creeping in. It’s a panicky, spidery feeling that tells me I’m trapped.
Helpless.
And if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s feeling helpless.
So I grab the pen and pad by the phone, put the phone book in my lap, and start trying to track down my mother.
Now, during the first few calls I was nervous and kinda stuttery. For one thing, the fact that they even answered the phone surprised me. I was glad they did, but it was late and the idea that you could get married at this hour still seemed … bizarre.
So was having the phone answered by Elvis. I mean, it’s really hard to get out what you need to ask when the person on the other end is going, “Viva Las Vegas, baby!” and making stupid Elvis jokes like “Will you be hitchin’ up your hound dog t’night?”
But after about the tenth wedding chapel, I got the hang of it and just said the same thing, over and over: “Hi, I’m wondering if this is the chapel where Lana Keyes and Warren Acosta will be getting married—it’s either tomorrow or Sunday. I flew in last minute and forgot my invitation.”
And at every single one I got the same basic answer—sorry, not here.
After almost an hour of this I still had miles of numbers to call. And since it had been a lousy sandwich and I was hungry, and there was no way I was going to get through the whole list of chapels before Marissa’s mom got back anyway, I was just talking myself into going down to the food court when I got an idea.
It was a stupid idea, but at that point any idea seemed better than calling another chapel. So I went with the stupid idea.
I dialed 411 and answered the recorded voice with “Las Vegas … Peter Decker.”
A live person came on and said, “I have two. A ‘Peter L.’ and an ‘Elvis Enterprises.’ ”
My heart started pounding. “The Elvis one.”
“Here it is,” she said, and clicked over to a computerized voice.
I scribbled down the number, then hung up and just sat there holding my breath, wondering if it was crazy to call, especially since it was late and I had no idea what I wanted to ask or how he could help me.
But I felt at a total dead end, and the thought of calling the rest of the chapels seemed worse than making one senseless phone call to Elvis.
So I dialed.
And on the fourth ring I heard, “You’ve reached the King. Leave me your name and number and I’ll get back atcha as soon as I’m havin’ a little less conversation. Or if you want to do the Jailhouse Rock, my cell number is—”
I scribbled down the digits he rattled off and before I could talk myself out of it, I dialed his cell.
After the second ring a husky voice says, “You’ve reached the King.”
I go, “Pete?” but it sort of sticks in my throat, so I try again, louder. “Pete Decker? It’s Sammy.”
I can hear a bunch of noise in the background. Cars. People. Horns. Music.
And then the King says, “From Santa Martina?”
“Yes!” And all of a sudden I’m stupidly happy.
“Hey, little mama!” he says, and he sounds stupidly happy, too. “Are you in Vegas?”
“Yeah.”
He hesitates. “Are you callin’ for tickets? ’Cause I don’t have a show yet—I’m just workin’ the Strip.”
“Actually, no, I’m looking for somebody, and I’m wondering if maybe you have connections to wedding chapels.”
“Wedding chapels?”
“Yeah. The person I’m looking for is getting married this weekend.”
“Hang on,” he says, and then he’s gone for, like, two minutes before he says, “Thank you … thank you very much,” to someone and gets back on the phone. “Sorry,” he says in his regular voice. “Photo op.” Then he goes, “Hang on,” again, and two minutes later he’s finally back, saying, “Look, I’m workin’, and Elvis with a cell phone is just tacky. You think maybe you can come down here?”
“Uh … where are you?”
“Across the street from the Bellagio.”
“What’s the Bellagio?”
“A resort on the Strip. Near Caesars Palace?”
“How far is it from the MGM Grand?”
“It’s not bad. I’m just past Paris Las Vegas.” I hear someone call, “Hey, Elvis!” and then he says, “I gotta go,” and hangs up.
So I scribble a note that says, I’ll be back soon, then I grab my backpack and skateboard and Marissa’s room key and jet out of there.