Chapter 5
I’ve spent the last couple of days working on my powers of forgetfulness, which is close to impossible since I remember everything. I’m trying to forget about the guy I’m sure attempted to burn down MJ’s house, the fact that MJ said she actually started the fire, and the reality that Lana is so afraid of my SD that she’s willing to change the phone number we’ve had forever. I’m also trying to accept the fact that Marco Ruiz and I are now just friends—the relationship status that isn’t. Since he didn’t like me playing amateur detective and his parents forbade me to date him after I almost got us killed by my neighbor-turned-gangster, I don’t have much choice because I’m not willing to change me just to win him. Compromise I could do, but he wants me to be someone else altogether. It doesn’t help that he recently hooked up with his ex-girlfriend, Angelique. And I mean recently, like the corpse of our relationship wasn’t even cold yet.
At the end of the school day, I’m standing at my locker looking for my French book when I hear a male voice behind me call my name. It doesn’t sound like Marco’s voice; it’s slightly deeper but still familiar, so I flash through several scenarios in the three seconds it takes me to turn around:
1. It’s Marco, but he went hoarse calling plays during the football game on Saturday, which he won, of course. Now I need to put on my best I’m-cool-with-us-just-being-friends face while I explain how I didn’t get a chance to congratulate him afterward because I was too busy counting all the ways I hate Angelique, who I watched cheer him on the whole game (instead of watching him) while I sat in the bleachers behind her and her shiny, bouncy, model-wavy ponytail.
2. It’s Marco, and he must have caught a cold over the weekend and he knows I keep a mini first-aid kit in my locker—always prepared—and he’s wondering if I might have some cough drops in there, and thanks for the drugs but he’d better get home now, no time to chat about how he broke my heart.
3. It’s Marco, and he has a sore throat from fighting with his girlfriend and his parents all weekend and now he wants to tell me how wrong he was to dump me and how desperately he wants me back.
Since all the scenarios involve it being Marco standing behind me, I’m way disappointed to find it’s Reginald Dacey and not Marco at all, but I try hard not to show it.
“Reginald, you’re finally back at Langdon. I thought you were supposed to come back a few weeks ago.”
“I hope that means you’ve been looking for me,” he says, and I notice that while he isn’t Marco cute, he’s kinda cute, and a lotta presumptuous.
“No, I just remember you telling me that at my friend Bethanie’s going-away party.”
“Well, that was the plan until I met with Headmistress Smythe. She won’t transfer my fall semester credits from my current school, so I’ll have to start in January and still do my full senior year at Langdon.”
“Which means you’ll graduate a semester late. That’s a bummer.”
“It isn’t so bad—I can run track here this spring, which will open up my scholarship chances. Besides,” he says, lowering his voice just barely, “I get an extra semester to hang out with Chanti Evans. I’m just here today to talk to my advisor, but I lucked out running into you.”
This is the point where I usually get totally awkward with boys—when I finally figure out they’re flirting with me and that I’m expected to flirt back—or at least say something clever. But it never seems to work out like that, especially when the boy has eyes like Reginald’s, a mix of brown and amber and apparently possessing mind control powers because I can’t stop looking into them.
“I’m thinking maybe it wasn’t so much luck,” I say.
“Then what was it?”
“The teachers’ offices aren’t in this building. You were at Langdon for three years before Headmistress Smythe expelled you, so you can’t be lost.”
“You think I planned to run into you?”
“I’m just saying . . .” Wait, is this me throwing around the witty banter with a boy? A senior boy, no less. I’m not sure where it’s coming from, but I keep on throwing it before the spell wears off. “. . . it does seem a little coincidental.”
Reginald smiles. Yes, definitely cute. “I remember our conversation from that party, too. You promised to look out for me when I got back to Langdon.”
You mean when I was just using you as a flirtation device to make Marco jealous?
“I do remember that, but you aren’t back yet. Besides, isn’t it enough that I’m the reason you’re back? If I hadn’t proven to Smythe it wasn’t you who defaced Langdon property and that she’d expelled the wrong person, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”
I’m so good at this, it’s beginning to feel like I’ve landed in a romantic comedy, with all my lines memorized and rehearsed. I was never this smooth with Marco.
“Good point,” he says. “I guess I owe you.”
“I guess you do.”
“My mom told me you usually take the bus home—and where your locker is—so I thought maybe I could give you a ride since she gave me the car today.”
“No fair using your mother to do reconnaissance on me,” I say, pretending I’m miffed, but really I love his mom. Now that Bethanie’s gone, Mildred Dacey—head custodian and my Langdon informant—is pretty much the only real friend I have here besides Marco. And since we broke up, we don’t really hang out all that much except to work on our French semester project. When Madame Renault paired me up with Marco at the beginning of the semester, I wanted to hug her. Now it makes things more than a little awkward. My friend situation at Langdon is actually kind of sad. Good thing Reginald is coming back soon.
“Yeah, I know a little something about you, girl detective. I thought you’d be impressed with my recon work.”
“Maybe I am—” I say, so into playing Coy Girl that I don’t even notice Marco coming toward us until he’s already there, walking smack into the middle of our witty repartee and completely breaking the spell, making me forget the witty thing I was about to say next.
“Hey, Chanti,” Marco says, giving Reginald a hard look and then totally dismissing him by turning his back to him. “You were going to let me copy your French notes from last Thursday, since I missed that class. And I thought we were going to work on our project this week.”
“Um, we never confirmed a date, right? Or did we?” I ask, my normal unsmooth self suddenly making a comeback. Without even trying, this boy can get me all kinds of flustered.
“She’ll have to get that to you tomorrow, man,” Reginald says, stepping around Marco to stand beside me. “We were just leaving, right, Chanti?”
“We were? Oh, that’s right, Reginald is giving me a ride home.”
Marco looks crushed. Maybe crushed is too strong a word. But he does look disappointed, just like I must have looked to Reginald a few minutes ago when I discovered he was behind me, not Marco. Does it make me a bad person to admit I’m doing a little happy dance inside?
“The French exam is tomorrow and I was hoping to study the notes tonight,” Marco says, more to Reginald than to me.
“I guess I’ll call you tonight, Marco. We can divvy up the work over the phone.”
“And the notes? We’ve got an exam tomorrow.”
“I’ll scan them to you,” I say—just before I bang my locker door shut, tell Reginald I’m ready to go, and leave Marco standing there. I’m hoping he’s still in front of my locker watching us, noticing how I walk closer to Reginald than necessary, but I stay cool and don’t look back. Not until we’re at the school entrance anyway, and then I just have to turn around. Yes! Marco’s been there the whole time—watching me walk away with another boy.
Seeing Marco apparently removed the Coy Girl spell permanently. Once Reginald and I were in his car, I couldn’t think of a single cute thing to say. It wasn’t the usual where I just get tongue-tied around boys unless I’m interrogating them. It was seeing Marco and remembering how much I want him—and all the reasons why I’m a little afraid to have him. Like how my friend Tasha found out he was a player when he was at his old school, which is the reason his thing with Angelique has always been on-again, off-again. It’s hard to imagine about a guy as sweet as Marco, but Tasha isn’t the only person I’ve heard it from. So how does a girl keep score with a player when she’s clueless about the rules of the game? It’s hopeless. And yet . . .
You know how when you were a kid and you thought you’d explode from the anticipation of waiting for Christmas morning, or a trip to the water park on the hottest day of July, or a summer vacation to Disney World? Imagine anticipating all those things at once. That’s how Marco makes me feel every time I see him. When you feel like that about a guy, you might let him beat you at chess even if you’re the better player or give up sleuthing for him just because he asks. Maybe you’d be like Lana and give up something more so that nine months later, you’re having a kid at sixteen but then you never hear from the boy again. Well, not until sixteen years later, in Lana’s case.
Nope, I promised myself I won’t be that girl. I have plans that don’t involve diapers and daycare. And I won’t be the off-again part of his Angelique romance. Besides, unless he stops thinking of my sleuthing as The Big Bad Thing, it doesn’t matter anyway. It was fun showing Marco that someone else is interested in me even if he isn’t, and it was safe playing that game with Reginald because he doesn’t make me feel like I’m on anticipation overdose. Still, on the ride to Denver Heights all I could think about was how I’ll never have Marco. So when Reginald asked if I wanted to get something to eat, I directed him to TasteeTreets in a tone so dry he’d have gotten more play if he’d let the woman who voices the GPS directions tell him how to get there.
When he opens the door for me at TasteeTreets, I’m trying to figure out how to get back the flirting mojo I had earlier when I see a guy in a jacket sitting with his back to the door. Not just any jacket, but a hoodie with a scroll design and some letters written in an Old English font. He’s wearing his hood up so I can make it out, even though the booth is hiding all but the very top of the design. I turn around to leave, running into Reginald’s very muscular chest and I also notice that he smells really good. So I hate what I’m about to do but I have to.
“Look, Reginald, this was a bad idea,” I say, heading out the second set of doors and into the cold November air.
“I thought you picked this place because you love their shakes, but we can go someplace else, no worries.”
“No, it’s not the place. It’s just . . . you know the guy who wanted my French notes?” I say, deciding the truth, or mostly the truth, was as good an excuse as any to get rid of Reginald fast.
“Yeah.”
“We recently broke up and I guess I’m not quite over him.”
“I thought there was something going on between you two back there. Guess that explains why you were so quiet on the ride over,” he says, and I’m surprised he seems disappointed. I know I helped him get back into Langdon, but is he really interested in more?
“I thought I was okay with the breakup, but then seeing him and everything . . .”
“You sure you can’t stay? It’s just a couple of chocolate shakes between new friends.”
“I know, but it feels weird to me. I’m sorry. It’s just that I’m really mixed up right now.”
“Can I at least take you home?”
“No, I’ll walk. It’s just a block from here.”
I don’t want the guy in the jacket to leave before I get a chance to bump into him by accident and find out if he’s the same boy from the fire.
“So you have to go, Reginald. Like, now.” Rude much?
“All right, if you say so. I guess I’ll see you around next semester, then,” Reginald says, looking completely confused. I don’t blame him after the way I was flirting with him back at school. But as much as I’d probably enjoy hanging out with him, I need to do some investigating first. So after I wave good-bye to Reginald and watch his car disappear into the Center Street traffic, I go back inside Treets.
Imagine my surprise when I see Hoodie Dude now has a dining companion joining him with a tray of food—MJ Cooper. They haven’t spotted me so I turn around and go back outside where I can watch them without being seen. Sure, that can’t be the only brown hoodie with white scrollwork in all of metro Denver. It’s just a major coincidence that MJ’s friend has the same jacket as the guy I think tried to burn down her house. I’m having a hard enough time trying to convince myself of this story, but it doesn’t help when the guy stands up to dig into his jeans pocket and I can see the full back of his jacket. The day of the fire when he was halfway down the block, I thought the numbers 04 were written in an Old English font in the middle of all the scrollwork. But now I can read it clearly, and they aren’t numbers. They’re two letters: DH.
And I know what it stands for: the Down Homes, MJ’s old gang.