“WHAT THE HELL, CECILIA?”
I launched myself inside the Taylors’ house, nearly taking Duncan down in the process. The six or seven paparazzi that had followed me over stayed rooted on the other side of the white picket fence. Rumor had gotten around that the woman who lived here was a badass lawyer. They knew better than to trespass on her private property.
“Sorry if I scared you.” I’d knocked kinda frantically. “They won’t stop taking pictures.”
I peeked around one of the eyelet curtains and saw the crowd freeze, readying their next move.
“It’s all right,” Duncan said. He was wearing a T-shirt and cotton shorts, dressed for a day of lazing around the house, it seemed. “Are you okay? I can’t believe you got arrested. I swear, no more mobile parties at your place.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “That’s not why I’m here. I just . . .” I glanced around him into the darkened kitchen and cocked an ear toward the ceiling. “Is anyone else here?”
“Nope. Dad and Fiona are at the diner, and Mom’s down at the county courthouse.” He narrowed his eyes at me with interest. “What’s up?”
I took him by the wrist and led him over to the living room, where I basically shoved him down onto the couch before perching on the coffee table across from him.
“I need your help with something, but you have to swear on your life that you’ll never tell anyone what I am about to tell you.”
Duncan’s entire face lit up. “Intrigued,” he said, leaning forward.
“First, do you have any paint?” I asked.
“Paint.”
“Yeah, like spray . . . paint?” I assumed that was what one would need to paint over a brick wall, but how the hell would I know?
“Maybe out in the shed,” Duncan told me, speaking slowly—cautiously. “Why? Are you planning some kind of political protest?” He gasped and covered his mouth with one hand, pointing at me with the other. “Are you gonna spray paint moustaches on your mom’s campaign posters?”
“It pains me that this is what people think about me now,” I said. Then I stood up. “Show me.”
Duncan led me through his house and out the back door to a pretty blue shed in the far corner of his family’s yard. The door creaked as it opened, and inside, along the right wall, were dozens of cans of paint. A few tarps were balled up in the corner, and three different sizes of ladders hung on the back wall.
“Wow. You have everything I need.”
“Britta got to you, didn’t she?”
I turned to him, shocked. “What do you mean?”
“You can drop the act. I know all about Britta and the wall.”
“You do?” I couldn’t help feeling disappointed that I hadn’t gotten to tell him. “How?”
“Because I’m her backup.” Duncan grinned. “I’m the one who paints the wall when she’s out of town.”
I stepped back, clunking my head against a bucket hanging on a hook behind me. Apparently during those two normal weeks of my otherwise abnormal life, I’d been completely oblivious to the world.
* * *
The wig on my head itched like a nightmare and sweat poured down the back of my neck. It was pitch dark on Peach Street now that Duncan had doused the lights—one of Britta’s secret methods for nondetection—and I cursed as I tripped over a curb, dropping several cans of paint with a never-ending clang.
“Shhhhh!” Duncan admonished, and turned on his headlamp.
“Like I didn’t already know that was loud,” I whisper-hissed back. “Why do we have to be quiet, anyway? Everyone in this town turns a blind eye to this street at night, right? If they want the messages to keep appearing, they have to avoid it.”
“Yes, but there’s still the tourists. And your best friends, the paparazzi.”
“Don’t remind me,” I said, scratching the back of my neck under the synthetic blond hair—the wig from an old Halloween costume of his mom’s. As disguises went, it was pretty shoddy, so we’d snuck out the back gate of his house after midnight and taken only back roads to get here. So far, so good. We hadn’t seen a photog or a news van yet. But we had to get this done as quickly as possible.
“Find the black paint,” Duncan said.
“How am I supposed to do that? I can’t see anything!”
Suddenly a bright light flicked on and I blinked at Duncan. He’d strapped the headlamp to his forehead.
“It’s this one,” he whispered, and tossed me the can, which I fumbled thanks to my cast, before finally grabbing it. “Man, your reflexes suck.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Shake it up and test it on the bottom of the wall to make sure it works.”
The aerosol can clicked loudly as I shook it, then sprayed a small dot near the sidewalk.
“Well. That’s a very specific smell.”
Duncan smirked and handed me a white painter’s mask. “Welcome to the world of the street artist, my friend.”
We strapped matching masks over our noses and mouths and he found, and tested, another can of black paint. “We have to cover up the old saying before we paint the new one,” he said. “I’ll go up the ladder. You and your cast stay on the ground.”
“Thanks.”
We got down to work. Between the mask and the wig I was sweating pretty profusely, and breathing wasn’t exactly easy. In fifteen minutes that felt more like an hour, we managed to paint over Britta’s old message. Duncan jumped to the ground next to me from the second rung of the ladder, and placed his can on the ground.
“Okay, Lia Washington, what’s this wall gonna say?”
I took a breath. “It’s going to say, ‘You can’t be brave if it doesn’t scare you.’ ”
Duncan took a couple of steps back and looked up at the still-glistening paint.
“I like it.”
I grinned. “So let’s do this. What’s the plan? What’s the procedure?”
Duncan grabbed two cans of white paint. “The most important thing is to get the message on the wall. As long as the words are up, if you get caught, the job is done. Only get fancy if you have more time.”
I nodded. “Got it.” I hadn’t felt this excited—this exhilarated—in days. Maybe since my foot hit the gas on that car I’d stolen back in Florida. Was it possible I was an outlaw at heart? Or maybe it was just that I’d been so good for so long that stepping any teeny toe out of line felt like an accomplishment.
Actually, it felt kind of awesome.
“I suggest you start at the top,” Duncan said, lifting his chin.
“Me?” I said dubiously.
He stood up. “This is your deal. I’ll shine the light up at you from down here.”
“What happened to, ‘You and your cast stay on the ground’?”
“Hey, this is your deal. I can’t do everything.” Duncan gave me a shrug. “If you fall, I’ll catch you. Promise.”
I snorted, rolled my eyes, and took the paint can. It was slow going, climbing the wooden ladder with one hand in a sling and the other holding the paint can, my face covered by a paper mask, and by the time I got to the top, I was dripping with sweat.
“Screw this,” I said, and knocked the wig—and the baseball cap that had been holding it on—off my head with my cast. The night air rushing over my scalp felt like heaven.
“Um, Lia? I think you owe my mom a new Marilyn Monroe costume,” Duncan called up to me.
I looked down and saw that the wig had caught some of the black paint on the way down.
“Oh God! Sorry!”
Duncan chuckled. “It’s okay. She—”
He stopped abruptly and glanced over his shoulder. My heart stopped. “What?”
Silence. He held up a finger and I held my breath. Finally he relaxed. “It was nothing. But let’s get this show on the road.”
My hand was shaking as I started to paint, but somehow I managed to eke out the Y and O in “You.” Then I had to climb down so Duncan could move the ladder, then climb back up to finish the word. When I leaned back to check my work, I saw that the U was a lot bigger than the O and the Y was crooked.
“It looks like crap,” I grumbled.
“It’s fine,” Duncan replied. “The lettering takes some practice, but no one expects it to be perfect.”
I took a deep breath and shook off my type A side, which was screaming at me to go back and fix it. I wondered if that was really me, or if I’d gotten that perfectionist thing from my mom. I wondered if I’d ever know.
I climbed back up to paint the words “can’t be brave,” which seemed to take three hours. My arm hurt from holding it in the same position, and the nozzle of the can had permanently embedded itself in my fingertip. By the time I finished up the E at the end, I felt as if I’d run a marathon.
“I’ll do the rest,’ ” Duncan offered, taking pity on me as I climbed back down the ladder.
“Bless you,” I replied.
I was just handing him the paint can when the first camera flashed.
“Oh crap,” Duncan said.
“It’s her! It’s Cecilia Montgomery!”
There was no telling how many there were, but they rushed at us from the direction of Main Street, sounding like a herd of buffalo. I dropped the paint can and Duncan grabbed my hand and ran, the light from his headlamp bouncing in front of us, disorienting me to the point of nausea. We ducked around a corner and Duncan turned off the light, pulling me into a tiny garden outside a little brick home and shoving me to the ground. The mulch was fresh.
Duncan and I held on to each other, panting for breath as quietly as possible, as the stampede went by. Two photogs stopped not inches from the bushes we hid under, one of them wheezing.
“Where the hell did they go?” someone asked.
“I don’t know.” The wheezer paused to wheeze some more. “But did you get the shot?”
“I did. I so did,” the first voice answered.
There was a click and some laughter, and then the two of them walked back toward town. I looked at Duncan.
“That can’t be good,” he said.
I groaned and hid my face behind my hands.