Twenty-Nine

That left Toni.

Toni was ready for her, bracing herself and planting her feet like a defensive lineman for the 49ers. Nat came at her like a two-hundred-pound running back. She charged Toni full-out, having speed if not weight behind her. Toni went down like a sack of Russet potatoes. Nat jumped over her and disappeared around the side of the house.

Emme and I got to them seconds later. I instinctively went to Sienna while Emme did the same with Toni. I rolled Sienna over so she was staring up at the sky. “My face okay?” she asked.

I checked. “Beautiful as ever.”

“Good. Now go get her.”

“My pleasure.”

I jumped up, rushing past Emme and Toni as determined as ever. By the time I got to the driveway, I was out of breath and Nat was in the driver’s seat of the Mercedes. Tired as heck, I was happy for the opportunity to ease up. Nat didn’t have a key. We were going to be okay.

Then she turned the sucker on.

She must’ve taken the keys when she’d pretended to go to the bathroom. Great. I sped back up, getting to the front of the car just as she put the thing in reverse.

Slamming my fist on the hood, I considered jumping on it. I flashed to a vision of me holding on for dear life as Nat sped down the hill. Then I remembered this was real life. I didn’t have a stunt double, but I did still have my sanity. No hood jumping was in my immediate future. I rushed to the passenger-side door with every intention of yanking it open and jumping in. Just as I touched the door handle, it locked.

Nat smiled at me as I glanced up. We both stayed like that for a bit, staring at each other. Then she hit the gas and backed out the driveway, staring me dead in the eye the entire time. She barely made it to the street before she threw it into first gear and took off.

I gave chase, running down the middle of the road. I made a vow right then and there to spend less time with Ben & Jerry and more time with Jenny Craig. I watched as Nat got about thirty feet. Then the car stalled.

As I ran toward her, I could hear the gears grinding away as she tried to get the car moving again.

She’d said she couldn’t drive stick. Good to see she wasn’t lying about one thing.

I tried the driver-side door handle. It was still locked. “Open the door before I kick the glass in!” I yelled. I’d seen Todd Arrington do it once in a movie.

“Please do,” Nat yelled back. “The only thing you’d break is a heel.”

That made me even more pissed. I was tempted to go ahead and try it, hoping that maybe my anger would lead to the same super strength mothers got when they lifted whole cars off their injured children. I raised my foot up, poised to kick, and that’s when I heard the beep.

Emme ran up from behind me, the spare set of keys in her hand. She practically knocked me out the way as she yanked open the door and grabbed Nat, who’d chosen not to wear her seat belt. Big mistake. “Don’t you ever touch my sister again!” Emme yelled as she punched Nat square in her nose.

Dazed, Nat crumpled to the ground. Emme pounced on her, cocking her arm back, ready to once again make hand-to-face contact. She went for it, but Nat jerked to the right and Emme’s hand glanced off her ear. Nat kicked, catching Emme right in the boob, propelling her backward.

Nat used the opportunity to scramble up and advance toward Emme. She got about two feet away when I saw the blur. Toni jumped on Nat’s back and put her in a headlock. “Don’t touch her!”

Emme got up quickly and served Nat with a backhand that would have made both pimps and tennis pros everywhere stand up and applaud. She was on her fourth go-round when Sienna appeared next to me. “What the … ”

It was not every day you witnessed two rail-thin blonde carbon copies jump someone and do such an amazing job of it. Emme had told me once that she and Toni used to beat up their classmates in elementary school. I’d thought she was joking.

In the intervening twenty years, neither Abrams had lost a step. I’m sure Nat would have given them her lunch money if she wasn’t losing oxygen by the second. Just when it was really about to get good, Aubrey appeared. “That is enough.”

The sound of his voice made them both stop. He picked Emme up, carrying her over to us and depositing her in a heap by our feet. Toni just got a very stern look and an order: “Off.”

She dropped off Nat’s back and walked over to check on her sister. “Okay?” she asked.

Emme nodded. “You?”

Toni took a seat next to her, the two of them using their clothes to dab at wounds while glaring at Nat as if they were three-hundred-pound former bodyguards instead of former child stars. I walked over to Aubrey, who had handcuffed Nat to the steering wheel. She sat in the driver’s seat huffing and puffing like she might blow the house down.

“Ms. Peters, anything you want to say before we call the police?” Aubrey asked.

She just looked at him and said nothing, which was fine by me. I wasn’t up for much of a discussion anyway. “Anyone have a phone?”
I asked.

Everyone shook his or her head. The only one of us who’d thought to bring her purse was Nat. I grabbed it. She glared at me while I rummaged through her bag and found her iPhone.

I called the tip line. Not surprisingly, the Voice didn’t answer: it was late. As much as I’d wanted to gloat in her face, I happily settled for imagining her listening to my message. “This is 1018 calling about the Haley Joseph case. We just caught Nat Peters getting rid of evidence at Toni Abrams’ house. We have strong reason to believe she’s responsible for the murders of Haley Joseph and Victory Malone—”

I was interrupted by Nat’s very sudden, very loud screaming. “What are you talking about? I didn’t kill anyone, you idiot!”

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, okay, I’ll take your word for it.”

I sounded cocky. It helped she was handcuffed to a steering wheel and I had the twin terrors standing guard a few feet away.

“You’re a bigger idiot than I thought,” Nat said.

“And you’re going to jail. So who’s really the idiot?” I was about to say more, then I realized I was still on the phone. “Anyway, let me know about the reward.”

Then I hung up and called 911.

The next day, we were the talk of the town—at least Toni was. Everyone and their mama reported how she’d single-handedly taken down one-half of the Rack Pack while walking in on her mid-robbery. Accurate? Not at all.

But Emme, Toni, Sienna, and I didn’t discuss the discrepancy. In fact, we didn’t discuss the previous night at all. Maybe because it was too fresh or maybe just because we were too drunk. We’d started drinking the moment the police carted Nat away and we hadn’t stopped. I’d never been stone-cold drunk at nine in the morning before. It felt better than being hung over. Much, much better.

Toni’s trip home had been a spur-of-the-moment attempt to cure a bout of homesickness. She had to fly back to Antarctica that afternoon, so we all squeezed into the car the studio sent to take her to the private jet the studio had paid for and drank the champagne the studio had left for her. We dropped her off and had the car take us to the condo—where we camped out and, you guessed it, drank.

Emme stood before us with two bottles. “White or red?”

“Red, dahling,” Sienna said, grabbing the bottle. “The wine must match the outfit.”

She giggled and started pouring, managing to get half of it on the floor. She looked down at the spill. “Oopsies,” she said. “At least if we run out, we can just lick it up later.”

“You are so drunk.” I tended to state the obvious when I’d had too much to drink myself.

“I’ll drink to that,” she said.

We clinked glasses. I tried to look into Emme’s eyes but she avoided me. “Emme!” I yelled. “Eye contact.”

“She wants you to have seven years bad sex!” Sienna said.

“I know!” I said. “Though I’d settle for any sex at this point, even if it was bad.”

“I’ll drink to that!” Sienna said and we clinked glasses once again. “Why don’t you want to be in my reality show?”

Talk about an abrupt subject change. “Why didn’t you ask me?” I asked.

“Because I knew you didn’t want to.” She changed her voice so it sounded like mine. “You’re retired.”

“Of course I wanted to.” My intent was to make her feel better, but as I said it, I realized it was the truth. “You didn’t want me. You wanted Fab.” I said his name like it was some disease.

“I wanted you. I just knew Fab would say yes.”

“Oh.” That made me feel better. “I’ll drink to that!”

As had become custom, Sienna and I clinked, made eye contact, and sipped.

Emme finished her drink and spoke up. “It’s settled. You’re on the show.”

“I have an audition tomorrow,” Sienna said.

“Ugh,” I said. “Saturday auditions are the worst. It’s always some bootleg production or last-minute casting.”

“I know!” Sienna said. Clink. Stare. Sip. “At least the casting director said we could film it for my sizzle reel. You can come and give me advice. Amazing, wonderful advice.”

“I’d love to!” We tapped glasses with each word, then each took a long sip.

I had reward money coming to help my parents, a reality show to be a sidekick on, and a full glass of wine. I was happy. Very, very happy. The moment needed to be captured for the ages. “Let’s take a selfie!”

I grabbed my tablet. The three of us sat on the couch and crowded into the frame. There was barely enough room for us and our wine glasses, but we made it work. “To solving Haley’s murder,” I said.

“To finishing my sizzle reel,” Sienna chimed in.

“To not leaving my house anytime soon,” Emme said.

We clinked glasses once again and said “Cheese.” The resulting photo was about as good as one would expect from someone holding a ten-inch tablet arm’s length from her face in one hand while cradling a wine glass in the other. But at the moment, it was perfect.

I immediately uploaded it to Instagram and decided to also upload it to Twitter. But I got a bit sidetracked when I loaded the app. The first thing I saw was a tweet from Anani Miss: It ain’t the first time I’ve revealed a Blind, but it’s the first time with visuals. Meet Mr. Bullet Train & his lady love.

She had oh-so-thoughtfully included a link. Mr. Bullet Train? Why did that sound familiar? A thought started in the back of the brain. It took a moment to swim through the alcohol, but it finally made it to the front. Mr. Bullet Train was Omari!! Butterflies descended on my stomach faster than Sienna at a sample sale going for the last pair of size seven Louboutins.

“What’s up?” Sienna asked. She looked alarmed.

Suddenly remembering Sienna and Emme were in the room, I attempted a smile. “Nothing. Anani’s got pictures of Omari and his new girlfriend.”

Emme and Sienna exchanged a look and a fleeting moment of sobriety. “You okay?” Emme asked.

“Of course.” That was my story and I was sticking to it.

I clicked the link and waited. Why did I feel like I was about to look at photos of my boyfriend cheating on me? But Omari wasn’t my boyfriend. He’d made it clear he had no feelings for me. He was allowed to date whomever he wanted. I was not allowed to be upset about it.

An error message came up on screen. I wasn’t the only person interested in seeing who Omari was dating. “It’s not gonna be him,” Sienna said, though I noticed she was looking at the tablet as anxiously as I was.

I shrugged, hit the reload button, and got the same error. “Like I said, I don’t really care.”

I immediately tapped reload again. “Honestly, I just want to see who tied him down. That’s it.”

Another error message. I hit it again. “His love life is none of my concern.”

And again. “We’re barely talking.”

And again. Still an error. “I mean, I want him happy, but with who isn’t my concern.”

I was about to hit it with my finger another time when Sienna placed her hand over mine. “We get it. You don’t care.”

“If you cared any less, my tablet would be broken,” Emme said.

I rolled my eyes, but I was much gentler when I tapped the reload button the next time. The page finally began to load.

We all leaned in. The page loaded slow as molasses, doing that annoying thing where it loaded from the top, revealing more and more like a rolled-up poster. The first thing we saw was sky. Not very helpful. A few seconds later, we saw the top of a familiar brown head. I’d been right. Mr. Bullet Train was indeed Omari. I threw Sienna a look. “Oopsies,” she said.

We got another spurt, Omari’s face and the beginning of his love. Just from the scrap of head, she was a blonde and much shorter than him. “She’s hideous,” Sienna said, her voice so automatic she might as well have been a robot.

“Her hair color is horrid,” Emme said, just as automatically.

Another few centimeters loaded and there she was.

Emme.

She was Omari’s girlfriend? That didn’t make sense at all. Sienna and I whipped around to look at her. She was as shocked as we were. No one spoke until the photo finished loading. Sienna finally turned to Emme. “You really might want to think about getting your hair dyed, though.”

“STFU,” Emme said.

“Don’t get mad,” Sienna said. “You said it. Not me.”

Her buzz back in full effect, Sienna giggled while I was just confused. “Where was this taken?” I asked.

“Toni’s house,” Emme said. “Probably by that idiot guard.”

I looked closer. It was outside Toni’s house. The guard had been there the first time we went and had mistaken Emme for Toni. He must’ve sold the story to Anani—omitting that I’d also been in the car—and then jumped at the chance to take some pics of Omari and Emme together while they were outside investigating how Nat and Haley had broken into Toni’s place.

I started laughing like someone had just said the funniest thing in the world. Omari wasn’t dating Emme. “He’s single,” I said. “Omari’s single. And I care. I really care.”

Emme and Sienna both rolled their eyes. “Duh,” Emme said.

Sienna chimed in. “No question about that. The only question is why you’re telling us and not telling him.”

The girl had a point. I knew I should tell him. I’d been feeling that way for years. He had the right to know. I looked around for my phone, then realized it was in the bloset. I jumped up and the Earth shook.

Was this the Big One? My mother had been right. California was about to fall into the Pacific Ocean. Then I realized I was the only one moving. I took another step and the ground shook again. No way I going anywhere.

I still needed to tell him. I sat and thought about it. Brilliance soon followed. If I couldn’t call him, I could tweet him. It made sense. The world had a right to know. I went back to my Twitter app and @ed him. My mind went blank. “What should I say?”

Emme and Sienna wasted no time offering suggestions. “Ask him if he wants to shoot your club up.”

“Take a lap in your pool.”

“Smash your box.”

“Hit your lotto.”

“Tell him the amusement park is open for business.”

“You’re offering free admission.”

“But he has to be this big to ride.”

I won’t mention how far apart Sienna’s hands were. Amusing? Yes. Helpful? No. “No, seriously.”

But they just kept on with the metaphors. Realizing I was on my own, I thought about what I really wanted to say to him. How could I express ten years of feelings in 140 characters or less? How could I tell him that I wanted to be with him? That I’d been in love with him since that first rehearsal of Guys and Dolls?

I thought long and hard, then ultimately decided to keep it simple. I typed the message out.

I miss your hand.

I hit send, then replaced the tablet with my drink.