What's Your Status? (23 page)

“A conversation,” Lisa said, sounding distinctly teary, “that you should have had with me first. Not with Madison.” Lisa and Dave stared at each other for a moment; then Lisa sat down on the bench next to Schuyler, leaving Dave staring at the carpet, his hands in his pockets. It occurred to me that one of
the problems with having a fight in a very long hallway was that nobody could storm out in an efficient manner.

“So,” Dave said after an excruciating pause. “What are you two doing here, again?”

“Well,” Schuyler said, glancing at me. “Um…”

“We had to drop off the crown,” I said quickly. Until we knew what we were going to do about the fact that we’d just replaced a priceless school artifact with a child’s toy featuring Hello Kitty, it probably wasn’t a good idea to be telling lots of people.

“Oh?” Lisa said, a slightly hard tone to her voice. “I’m surprised you were able to part with it.”

I frowned at her. “What are you talking about?”

“The pictures of you wearing the crown,” she said in an extra-patient manner that told me she was still mad at me. “Ginger posted them on her Q-pic.”

“What?” I asked, stunned. Lisa shrugged and handed me her phone. I brought up Status Q, and there they were, posted last night—pictures of me smiling at the camera, unmistakably wearing the Hayes crown. “Oh, no,” I murmured. As I stared down at Lisa’s phone, my own rang, and I answered it without checking the caller. “Hello?”

“Madison!”
Kittson yelled through the phone at me. I held it away from my ear. “Where are you? We have a prom meeting right now.”

“Oh,” I said. I had totally forgotten about it. “Whoops.”

“Yes,” she said. “And I don’t know what’s happening
with the crown, and Dr. Trent is asking me. It’s at the hotel, right?”

“Yes,” I lied. “I just dropped the box off.” That part, at least, was true.

“Well, good,” Kittson said, sounding hugely relieved. “Because I’ve been getting these weird messages from Isabel Ryan.”

“What kind of messages from Isabel Ryan?” I asked, repeating her name for the benefit of Schuyler, who immediately looked terrified.

“Just stuff about how I’m going to freak out when I see their crowning, and how their crown is just going to blow my mind. Stuff like that. Who knows where they picked one up….”

Our lacrosse field, actually.
“Right,” I said hollowly. “Who knows.”

“So everything’s okay on your end?” she asked.

“As well as can be expected,” I said evasively. “Just make sure Tanner got those lists of songs I e-mailed to him, and I think we’re fine.”

“Don’t forget, we need to stuff the gift bags!” Kittson said. “I hope you’re not going to bail on
that,
too.”

“I won’t,” I said. “Sorry for missing the meeting.”

“Don’t let it happen again,” she said before hanging up. Goodbyes weren’t really Kittson’s strong suit.

“Sorry,” I said to everyone—who had been clearly listening to the entire conversation—as I put my phone away.

“Why were you lying to Kittson?” Lisa asked, staring at me, her head tilted to one side.

“What?” I asked, shocked. More and more these days, I was beginning to doubt my acting ability. Maybe the reviewer had been onto something after all.

“To Kittson,” Lisa said. “About the crown. I know you, Madison….”

“So! Um,” Schuyler interrupted loudly. “What are you two doing here? And all?”

“Oh,” Dave said, looking a little thrown by the turns this conversation had taken. “I had to do some stuff for work. Putnam Pizza is catering the Hartfield prom and a bat mitzvah here this weekend, and I had to drop some stuff off.”

I stared at Dave and thought about what Kittson had just said. I still had Lisa’s phone in my hand, and I scrolled absently through our mutual friends on Status Q, thinking. Between Ginger and Turtell and Kittson…and Sarah…and Lisa and Dave…“Wait a second,” I murmured. The plots of all the James Bond novels I’d had to read recently were suddenly bouncing around in my head. A plan, a very vague one, was beginning to take shape. “Dave, are you working on Saturday?”

“No,” he said, looking taken aback. “Big Tony keeps asking me to, but it’s prom night.”

“But if you wanted to, you could?” I asked.

“I guess…” Dave said, looking flummoxed. “But it’s
prom night.
”

“Right,” I said, standing up. The idea was slowly coming together, but I needed to talk it out first with the one person who actually knew what was going on. “Well, Schuyler and I have to get going now.”

Schuyler looked at me for a moment, confused, then jumped to her feet. “Right,” she said, a little too loudly. “That’s what we’re doing now.”

“Madison,” Lisa said, frowning, “we’re not done here.”

“I know!” I said as I started heading down the hallway, Schuyler trotting behind me. “In fact, you guys, don’t make any plans for tonight, okay? I might need you.”

“Mon Dieu!”
I heard Lisa grumble.

“What are we doing?” Schuyler whispered to me.

“We’re getting coffee,” I said as we headed for the exit. “And then we’re making a plan.”

CHAPTER 14

Song: A Simple Plan/Pedro the Lion

Quote: “What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.”

—Richard Bach

“Okay,” I said, looking across the Stubbs table at Schuyler, who nodded encouragingly. She’d gotten us drinks while I’d scribbled down my initial thoughts on a Stubbs napkin.

THINK BOND!

“I think,” I said, studying the napkin doubtfully. “I think that maybe I have a plan.”

“Oh, good!” Schuyler said, looking relieved. I was about to tell her that there was a distinct possibility that we wouldn’t be able to pull it off, and that we couldn’t be too relieved just yet, when the ShyPhone rang. Schuyler pulled it out and stared at it for a long moment.

“You just slide the arrow over to answer it,” I murmured after a minute of listening to the ringtone of “Lover Boy.” And much as I loved that song, the other Stubbs patrons didn’t really seem to share my opinion, as they were now glaring in our general direction. “There are little instructions right there on the screen….”

“No, I got that,” Schuyler said, still staring at the phone as Mika kept on singing. She looked up at me, stricken. “It’s Connor.”

“Oh,” I said. Schuyler made no move to answer her phone, but instead just kept staring at it as it vibrated in her hand. “And you…don’t want to talk to him?” She just looked back down at the phone, which was now silent. “Shy?” I asked.

She shook her head. “He’s going to know something is wrong,” she said. “As soon as I talk to him, he’s going to know.”

“You can tell him what’s going on,” I said. “I just didn’t want to tell Lisa and Dave yet, until we figure out the plan.” I looked down at my scrawl. “Such as it is.”

Schuyler shook her head. “I can’t tell him what I did back in Choate,” she said sadly. “Are you kidding, Mad? You know how he is. He once
volunteered
to go to detention because he was ten minutes late to class. It’s one of
the things I like best about him—he has such a strong sense of right and wrong….”

I nodded, as though I agreed. But actually, what Schuyler found appealing, I found pretty annoying. It was Connor’s elevated sense of right and wrong that had put me through two recounts before he’d conceded that I had, in fact, beat him for class secretary. Twice. But it was also this conviction that had led to us getting a confession out of Dell. I had to admit that Connor’s rigidity had been helpful with that.

“But I know that we would be over if he found out about any of this. He wouldn’t be able to get past it. What I did at Choate, then giving away the crown, lying to Dr. Trent, misrepresenting items to hotel personnel…”

“Seriously?” I asked.

She nodded. “I know him. If he found out about this stuff, he’d never look at me the same way again. So I can’t talk to him until I can find a way not to sound different so that he won’t be able to tell that something is wrong.”

“But, Shy,” I said, thinking of a conversation we’d had in this very coffee shop only a few days before, “didn’t you say that you guys tell each other everything? And that relationships are about communication?”

“I did say that,” Schuyler said, a little sadly. “But that was then.” She looked across the table at me and took a breath. “But anyway…the plan.”

“Well,” I said, looking down at the napkin again. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I think ‘plan’ might actually be too strong a word. Maybe we should just call it the
idea
for the moment.”

“Great!” Schuyler said, leaning forward to peer at the napkin. “Is this it?” She looked up at me and frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“I know,” I said. “Me neither, really. But I think that there might be a way to fix the crown situation.”

“Really?” Schuyler asked, looking doubtful. “Because I don’t think Isabel is going to give it back to us.”

“I don’t think she is, either,” I said. “But when I talked to Kittson, she said that Isabel had been bragging about Hartfield High’s new crown. I think she’s planning on using the Hayes crown to crown their prom queen.”

“And we’re going to have to crown our queen with Hello Kitty,” Schuyler said, turning pale. “OMG, this is bad.”

“No, it’s good,” I said quickly. “Well, not
good.
But this means that we know where the crown is going to be. Isabel’s not selling it on the black market or anything. And I think…” I rotated the napkin. “I think we might be able to take it back.”

“Steal it?” Schuyler asked, eyes wide.

“Well…” I demurred. This had been a bit of a sticking point for me, too. “She took it from us, right? And it’s
our
property. Even though you gave it to her voluntarily.”

“So sorry about that,” Schuyler murmured. “So, so, so, so, so, so…”

“I know,” I said, cutting her off in the interest of time. “But even though you gave it to her, she coerced you into it. So I think we’re justified in taking it back. We just have to do it before ten thirty on prom night, when they’re going to open the safe.”

“Can we do that?” Schuyler asked, looking at me seriously. “Really?”

“I think so,” I said. “I mean, I hope so. But I think that maybe it’s possible.” I looked at Schuyler across the table, and I felt the first very tiny glimmer of hope that we might be able to get out of this after all.

Schuyler nodded. “Well, I’m in,” she said. “I mean, of course I am. It’s my fault, after all. And I’m so, so, so, so…”

“Shy,” I said, trying to stop her before she got going.

“Right,” Schuyler said, sitting up a little straighter. “What can I do?”

I pushed the list of names across the table at her. “Feel like organizing a get-together tonight?”

Four hours later, I looked around the group that had gathered in Brian McMahon’s living room: Lisa, Dave, Schuyler, Brian, Mark, Sarah, Ginger, and Turtell. Schuyler had sent out the SOS text, and amazingly, everyone had come—though it might have been because they were curious about why they’d been asked. We’d settled on Brian’s house; even though his father wasn’t home, his housekeeper was under strict instructions not to let Brian leave the premises. But he was permitted to have people over if they were there in some academic-related capacity. It was where the Young Investors Club had been meeting ever since the beginning of this grounding—which, coincidentally, was when his father had forced Brian to join the group.

So we were there under the pretense that we were a study group. Though I’d been to Brian’s house a lot, it had always been for a party, and the place looked different when it wasn’t filled with overturned furniture, discarded red plastic cups, and tipsy people stumbling about.

Dave, working overtime at the restaurant, had been allowed to leave only if he was on a delivery. So we’d called in an order that Schuyler had insisted on paying for, and Dave had arrived within the promised thirty minutes with five pies. I had thought it was going to be too much food, but now there was barely any left. It seemed like Turtell had eaten almost an entire pie himself.

It was a bit of a motley crew, I realized as I looked at the group. I was friends with everyone there, but it now struck me that that didn’t necessarily mean that they were all friends with each other. Mark and Sarah, sitting side by side on the couch in the living room, looked particularly out of place, and I realized they’d probably never been to one of Brian’s parties before.

Feeling that I should get things going, I went to stand in front of the TV, where the three couches, forming a horseshoe shape, all faced. “Hi,” I said. “Um, has everyone eaten?” The eight people sitting in front of me nodded, and I cleared my throat. “Good,” I said, wondering how to begin this. “Okay. So.”

“Question for you, Mad,” Turtell said. He picked up the two remaining slices of pepperoni, layered one on top of the other, folded them lengthwise, and took a bite as Sarah stared in amazement. “What are we doing here? I mean, it’s always cool to hang, and thanks for the grub,
but what’s this about? My girlfriend wasn’t too happy about me bailing on her tonight.”

Everyone else turned to me, expectant, except for Sarah, who was still watching Turtell eat with a kind of horrified fascination. “Right,” I said, realizing that I just had to bite the bullet. I looked over at Schuyler, who nodded encouragingly. Schuyler hadn’t eaten anything except her hair, until Lisa had taken over and forcibly pulled it back into a bun. “So here’s the thing,” I said. “We’re kind of in trouble. Schuyler and me. But especially me. I have a plan—well, an idea—for getting out of it, but it’s kind of complicated. I asked you guys here because you all have unique abilities that we’ll need in order to pull this off. But I totally understand if you don’t want to do this. What I’m going to ask you to help with is pretty risky. And I basically have a guarantee from Dr. Trent that there will be severe punishments for everyone if he finds out about this. So I don’t want anyone to feel like they have to do it.” Mark raised his hand. “Um, yes, Mark?” I asked as I saw Brian smile behind his hand.