I just kept quiet in the backseat while Heather tapped the screen of her mother’s phone and gave her mom directions. “No, stay on Tropicana! We have to get on Fifteen North.”
Not having a cell phone at all, I was having a really hard time not looking over the headrest at what she was doing with hers. And the truth is, I was jealous.
Really jealous.
And it didn’t take long for me being jealous over a cell phone to turn into reinforced anger at my mother. Pete was right—her life compared to mine was just wrong.
“Get back, loser. I don’t like you breathing down my neck.”
I guess at that moment I was mad enough at my mother that it didn’t register that I’d just been called a loser or, really, who I was sitting behind. Because out of my mouth comes a pathetic little “Sorry.”
“Heather!” Candi snaps. “The names are unnecessary.”
Heather snorts. “You’re right. I was stating the obvious.”
“Heather!”
For some reason this seems to put Heather in a righteously bad mood. She snarls and snaps directions at her mother, and when we get back off the freeway and Candi misses a turn, Heather cries, “That was Clark! Right there!” Then she grumbles, “Great. Now we have to go clear around the block.” And that’s when what’s really bothering her comes out. “I don’t know why we had to take her with us. Why is she even here? We know what to do. We don’t need her!”
Candi downshifts and roars through a yellow light. “Strength in numbers.”
“What?”
“Heather, you throwing another one of your tantrums is not going to convince your father of anything. Both of you being here might.”
“Tantrums? I can’t believe you just said that!” Heather shrieks. “And in front of her.”
“She’s not the one giving me a headache right now,” Candi mutters as she guns it down the street.
“What?”
Now, normally I would have been hanging on every word of this spat, but right then I notice CLARK COUNTY DETENTION CENTER on the huge gray building that we’ve been circling, and out of my little window I see Marissa and her mom and dad getting into their rental car.
At first I can’t believe it’s them, and then I feel like I’m watching them in slo-mo, even though we’re zooming by. Marissa’s dad looks awful. His clothes are a mess, and he seems pretty green around the gills. Like any minute he’s going to bend over and barf. And while Mrs. McKenze’s acting really uptight—a no-nonsense get-in-the-car-I-want-out-of-here kind of uptight—Marissa seems dazed, very pale and sort of stunned.
I want to call out to her. I want to bail out for her. But I’m a prisoner in the back of this blazing bullet and before you know it we’re half a block past them and Candi’s crying, “There it is!” and cutting across traffic and into a big, open, mostly empty parking lot.
So wait, I say to myself, the Marriage Bureau and the jail are on the same block? And at that moment I make a weird connection in my head.
A connection between Marissa and me and Heather.
And I guess it kind of knocks me upside the head, because out of my mouth pops, “Man, parents can really mess you up.”
“Shut up!” Heather practically spits, twisting around to face me. “Stay out of it!”
“Heather, what is wrong with you?” Candi says as she nose-dives to a halt in the wide open. “She was agreeing with you!”
“I don’t need her agreeing with me! And we shouldn’t even be talking about him in front of her! I hate her, you get that? And you hate her, too, remember?”
So I guess they’d been talking about Warren, but right then all I could think about was Marissa maybe spotting us. Like she didn’t have enough on her plate already? I sure didn’t want her worrying about me being so desperate that I’d teamed up with Candi and Heather!
I mean, talk about hell freezing over.
And since I didn’t know which direction the McKenzes would be driving or how long it would take them to leave the area, I kind of dragged and fumbled and, you know, delayed getting out of the backseat.
“Just leave it,” Heather says as I’m pretending my skateboard’s stuck, and when I pull it out anyway, she mutters, “You are such a dork.”
“Look,” I tell her. “You want to get rid of me as soon as possible after we find them, right?”
“You got that right!”
“So see? I’m just being optimistic.”
“Girls, come on!” Candi says, clicking along in her high heels.
“Stop calling us girls!” Heather snaps.
Candi tosses a look over her shoulder. “You’d rather I called you boys?”
I laugh out loud because coming from Candi it seemed really funny. And for the first time ever Candi grins at me.
Heather catches up to her mother and cries, “That was not funny! None of this is funny!”
I felt like I’d moved from being a prisoner to being someone tossed in the middle of a battleground. Why couldn’t we just get the job done and be done? Why all this sniping and tension and fighting?
With Heather there were always battles, but after all this time I still had no idea what had actually started our war. Heather had just hated me from day one.
Something about my shoes.
And for the past year and a half we’d moved from battle to battle to battle, but … why?
We’re at the Marriage Bureau now, and Candi is just reaching for the door when her phone goes off. We stop and look at Heather, who’s still holding it, and Heather gives herself away by glancing at me before she steps aside to answer it. “Hello?”
Candi abandons the door and follows Heather, so I follow, too, and when Heather says, “Yup, it’s me,” I call out, “No, it’s not!”
Heather hunches over like she’s trying to protect the phone from my voice and says, “No … no … yes.” Then she lets out a little curse and hands me the phone.
“Hey, it’s me,” I say into it.
“I’m too tired to play this game, but in case you’re another imposter, here we go again: ‘In the Ghetto.’ ”
“No.”
“ ‘Don’t Cry Daddy.’ ”
“No.”
“ ‘Peace in the Valley.’ ”
“I wish … but no.”
“ ‘Amazing Grace.’ ”
“Definitely not.”
“ ‘Love Me Tender.’ ”
“Bingo.”
He lets out a heavy sigh. “I just got a call. There’s been a sighting.”
“There has?”
“Uh-huh. Inside the Miracle Mile Shops. They’re at Oyster Annie’s having lunch.”
“Oyster Annie’s?” I was picturing a girl in a big rubber hat and boots. It sounded like the last place on earth my mother would go.
“Yeah. Now go catch her, would you? The King needs his beauty rest.”
“Thank you!”
I click off, and once again I’m so excited that I forget who I’m working with. “There’s been a sighting!”
“There has?” Candi asks all bug-eyed, and even Heather perks up.
“Do you know where the Miracle Mile Shops are?”
“Yes!” Candi says. “It’s a giant mall on the Strip.”
“Well, let’s go!” I tell them. “They’re at Oyster Annie’s.”
“Oyster Annie’s?” they say with disgust.
I laugh. “It’s a restaurant.”
Candi squints at me. “Warren doesn’t eat oysters.”
And I’m so excited that we’ve got a real lead that I joke back with “Probably my mother’s bad influence?” which makes Candi roll her eyes, but a little grin does actually break through.
But heading back to the car, I start thinking that I really can’t picture my mom eating oysters. Or going anywhere … oystery. And then I start worrying that maybe it’s a false sighting. Maybe we should stay and stake out the Marriage Bureau. Or maybe we should split up, with one of us waiting here and the others going to the mall.
But … who would go where?
Not an easy thing to figure out when you factor in the possibility of being backstabbed—something Heather’s a master at.
But before I know it, we’re back in the car, and we’re zooming down a street, blasting past giant billboards about bail bonds and half-price lawyers.
“Look at all these stupid wedding chapels,” Heather grumbles after we’ve gone a few blocks. And she’s right—every other building is a wedding chapel. And since I’m kinda leaning forward again so I can see better, it’s easy for her to turn and tell me, “Getting married here is cheap. And tacky.”
“And legally binding,” Candi says, stepping on the gas.
I just sit there for a minute, and finally I say, “What I don’t get—”
“Don’t talk to us, you get that?” Heather snaps, turning all the way around in her seat.
“Fine!” I tell her, sitting back. “I was just feeling sorry for your mom, okay?”
Candi eyes me in the mirror. “Why’s that?”
“ ’Cause you’re obviously still in love with him.”
“You are so out of line,” Heather says. “And stupid!” She looks at her mom. “Can you believe her?” She vultures around at me. “Now stop talking to us!”
“Fine.” Then I mutter, “But your mom’s still in love with your dad.”
“Stop it!”
“Fine.”
But even when I’m quiet, Heather can’t seem to let it go. She stays vultured and finally points at me and says, “Stop it!”
“What? What am I doing?”
“Stop thinking that!”
“What am I thinking?!”
“You know what you’re thinking and so do I, so stop it! You don’t know anything about anything!”
Now, this whole time Candi hasn’t said a word, but she has glanced back at me in the mirror.
Like six times.
Which is a lot, considering how she’s darting through traffic.
But what’s really weird about the whole situation is that what I said seems to be news to Candi, too. Like she really thought she was here to stop her ex from marrying the mother of her daughter’s archenemy for her daughter’s sake.
And then we’re squealing through a parking structure, going up, up, up, until Candi finds a slot she likes and nose-dives into it. “Let’s go, girls,” she says, flying out of the car and over to the elevators.
The Miracle Mile Mall is huge—like an enclosed little city of shops. But Candi’s jaw’s not dropped like mine. She beelines for a directory, and when she finds Oyster Annie’s, she says, “Come on!” And as she hurries ahead, I hear her hiss, “There’s no stopping us now!”