Jex Malone (15 page)

At 3
A.M.
with my eyes still wide open, I toss and turn in the dark under my Strawberry Shortcake comforter, which isn't very comforting.

And I worry, which is something I'm getting better at by the day.

“It's hard to pin down. Little things. A small glance. An attitude. The unsaid things.”

—Eve Whitfield,
Ironside

The girls wait until they see my dad race out of the driveway before they make a beeline to my house. This routine is actually becoming a habit—but today, morning can't come soon enough.

Not even knocking, Deva whips open the front door and yells, “Hey, Jersey Girl. Get out the Oreos and Evian. We're here with the notebook!”

I pop out of the kitchen, my frizzy red hair in a ponytail on the top of my head. I'm wearing my best girl-detective uniform, which is a white tank top and comfortable grunge green cotton shorts from the five-dollar bin.

“What took you so long? My father left a full five seconds ago,” I huff at Nat and Cissy, who are already in their designated seats at the kitchen table breaking into a fresh box of strawberry Pop-Tarts. The way the Pop-Tarts are going in this house, Dad must think I'm a real pig.

Deva plops down next to me. Before we can even start, I tell her I have some big news courtesy of the grand drama that was dinner out with Daddy.

“Katt Kaetan is a very big deal in this town,” Deva informs me in an authoritative tone, adjusting her black formfitting, shorty-short skirt.

“She's been voted three times the most influential woman in broadcasting in the Las Vegas media market and once was considered a frontrunner for the legal correspondent's role on
The
Today Show
until supposedly she didn't test well with a national audience focus group after that unfortunate episode where she got one woman to confess on the air to her husband's murder,” Deva continues. “Except she didn't do it. The woman. She was innocent.”

“She just wanted Katt to stop asking questions,” she sniffs, adding, “Their loss.”

“How do you guys know so much about her?” I ask.
I mean, what kind of sixteen-year-olds sit around watching the news?

“Are you kidding?” Deva practically snorts. “Stylistically speaking, she's my local-news idol. Who was she wearing? Dolce? Chanel? Oh, I bet Fendi. If I were Katt, I would only dress in Fendi, which totally says: ‘Don't mess with me and stay out of my wide shot.'”

I shake my head in disbelief and look at Nat, who could not be more bored at this moment in time. I shoot her a pleading glance and she senses a pause in the conversation and perks up.

“Okay, okay, enough about Katt Kaetan. She's inconsequential to the investigation anyway,” Nat pipes up, working to get us back on the right track.

“We know she didn't kill Patty, and you two seem to have forgotten we've got this notebook that no one else has seen. There could be all kinds of clues in there, so we need to keep ourselves focused,” Nat says.

Deva nods and then Nat pulls the Mead notebook out from her black leather tote bag.

“Let's begin this Drew-Ids meeting immediately. We'll take turns reading from Patty's notebook. Jex, you can start. Read it like you mean it,” Nat says.

“Here we go,” I say with a tiny tremble in my voice. “Let's meet Patty.”

“First, let's say a prayer,” Cissy says, and for some reason all of us join hands without anyone saying another snarky word.

“Dear God, please help us understand Patty and figure out what happened to her. She could have been our friend.

“If we were born under a dark cloud a long time ago. Amen,” says Cissy.

Three more
Amens
fill the room.

Dear Diary:

Actually, I guess I should say, “Dear Journal.” My friend Lillian gave you to me for my birthday today. Lillian says all great artists keep journals, so if I'm going to be a great artist, I have to write in you every day. I am so, so, so happy to finally be sixteen; I thought it would never come. Dad says he's going to take me next week to get my license. Lillian also gave me a new set of colored pencils for a birthday present, but made me promise I wouldn't use them to draw any more rainbows and unicorns. I guess I am getting too old for that baby stuff!!!

Dad and Mom got me the Britney Spears CD, even though I am a little too old for that kind of music now (don't you think?) and little Cooper scribbled on a birthday card like he was signing it—it was so cute. I think I might return the Britney CD for Destiny's Child, but I don't want to hurt their feelings. I'm pretty sure Mom had to ask someone at the record store which one to buy to begin with. My boyfriend (and I love the B-word), Billy, told me he's got a big surprise for me tonight when he gets off work. I think he's going to take me to see this new movie called “Harry Potter,'' although I've already seen it three times.

So, if I have to write in you every day, I guess we should get to know each other. Everyone calls me Patty, but I don't think that sounds very sophisticated, so you can call me Patricia. I'm in 11th grade and my favorite classes are art and English.

My boyfriend's name is Billy and he's seventeen and plays football. I have two best friends, Lillian and Melissa, and I guess Chloe, my cat, is my best friend, too. There's really nothing super special about my life. I'm just kind of ordinary, but I kind of hope that changes one of these days.

I kind of hate school. There are so many stuck-up people there, and they always want to tell you what's wrong with you. Who cares if I don't have perfect clothes and a perfect body like Britney S.? Melissa wants us to try out for cheerleading this year, but I don't think that's such a good idea. She says it will bring Billy and me closer together since he's on the football team and he's around those hottie-hot cheerleaders all the time. Better safe than sorry. Don't want some rah-rah queen to shake her groove thing and steal him away.

Seriously, I don't want to be a cheerleader. It's not even in my DNA.

I don't think I could be that stupidly happy all the time. I swear those girls are so fake. But the uniforms are cute, so I don't know. And Melissa's probably not wrong—it's not like Billy hasn't noticed the cheerleaders or they haven't tried to flirt with him. For starters, we're not exactly the kind of couple you'd expect to be together.

If he hadn't been flunking English and purposely sat next to me so he could read off my papers, we probably never would have gotten together. The truth is he's a lot smarter than he gives himself credit for, and he says he wants to play professional football and become a multimillionaire if he can get a college scholarship. I like everything about him—his hair, his smile, and even the way he chews his food. I never in a million years would have thought he liked me, and someday, he's going to wake up and realize he could have any girl in the school he wants. And that probably wouldn't be me. I guess I'm lucky he's not too smart sometimes.

Melissa and I have been best friends as long as I can remember. She does even worse in school than Billy does. She hates homework and never does it. She wants to move to New York and become an MTV host.

I take a deep breath after reading the entry. Everyone else is really quiet and looking guilty—we're reading Patty's private journal and I'm sure none of us would want some stranger doing that even if they were trying to find the person responsible for our disappearance. I wonder if my dad feels awkward when he goes through people's personal stuff.

“I feel like I am invading her privacy,” Cissy announces to my surprise.

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” I say, quickly seconding her.

It doesn't matter. We have to keep reading.

Dear Diary:

Another boring day at school and I don't even know why I bother to go there anymore. I cannot wait until the day I graduate. If it didn't mean my life would be more messed up than it already is, I'd drop out tomorrow. Can't do that—won't do that. I know if I'm going to make anything of myself, I have to finish high school. But why do they have to make the days so long and boring?

So where was it that we last left off? Oh yeah, it was my birthday and Billy was planning something—he wouldn't tell me what for the longest time. I kept hinting and hinting, but he didn't say anything and I thought that he was doing a really good job playing like he'd forgotten. Only the thing is, I think he actually did forget, because we ended up not doing anything that could be called a huge surprise. He gave me some perfume and a bunch of scrunchies in different colors that I think I saw at the drugstore. I guess it's the thought that counts, right? Just not sure he put very much thought into it.

He did take me to the Steak and Ale for dinner—so that was super nice, and then since we didn't want to see anything playing at the movies, he just came back to my house and watched Titanic. Oh my God, it is soooo good. I can't even describe how great it is. I think I would have totally been okay being on a sinking ship if I could have been there with Leonardo DiCaprio. Kind of weird when your boyfriend is sitting right next to you and all you want to do is just watch Leo be Leo—but that totally made up for the scrunchies as presents. I can't even count how many times I've watched that movie and wished my heart would go on and on with someone very cute on a ship that didn't sink, so we could live and be in love.

Okay, so I know I'm not just supposed to write about my day in here. I'm supposed to write down my innermost thoughts and dreams. Lillian says if I put them down on paper, they are more likely to happen—I kind of believe her, too. She said it makes them permanent and when you have a permanent goal, you can really apply yourself. That sounds like pretty good advice, so here goes:

I want to be an artist. I don't even have to be a famous one. I just want to make enough money to pay for a little house somewhere that would be super cute and small and I could live there with my perfect husband and our perfect kids. I just want to paint all day and think about painting more at night. I can't really tell you why it makes me happy, it just does. Maybe I want to travel—it sounds like it would be fun. I don't know, I've never really gone anywhere.

Secondly, I want to have a really great husband. Maybe that's Billy, and maybe that's not. I hope it is Billy someday, but there's a lot about him I want to change first. He's not the most sensitive guy in the world, and he says stuff that can hurt your feelings. Or at least my feelings. It's really not his fault—his mom isn't very nice. I guess she never bothered to teach him good manners. Oh, and his dad hasn't been anywhere to be found in a really, really long time.

I know one thing for sure—if I ever get married, I will never fight with my husband. I hate fighting. I hate yelling. I hate screaming. I hate people who call other people names. Almost everyone I know has parents who yell and scream at each other all the time. Why would you spend your life with someone you disliked so much? That's a situation that hits a little close to home—if you know what I mean. I'm just glad that Cooper is too little to realize what's going on here in this house. Maybe by the time he's older, everyone will have learned to get along a little better.

I promise someday if I have kids and a husband, I will never yell at them or ignore them either. I'll teach them how to draw and our house will be so cool because I would just leave the walls blank and let the kids fill them up with drawings, and then we'd paint over them and start all over again. I think that's how people should live—surrounded by beautiful things they've created.

What else do I want? A driver's license and a car would be a good start. I might get a license, but don't think a car is going to happen anytime soon. Too much money and we can barely afford the repairs on the old Trans Am we have now. I want Billy to have his best season ever next fall so he can get a football scholarship—even though if he does, I'm going to have to do his college homework for him, too. I think we better go to the same school then, otherwise that's not going to work very well. At least, we have another year of high school to figure it all out.

“You know, she sounds like a really nice girl,” Cissy says as I take a break from reading to catch my breath. “She sounds like someone we could have been friends with, don't you think?”

Nat doesn't answer because she's in some kind of a trance. I haven't known her very long, but I can tell now that she's absorbing details of what's in the diary and filing them away in her brain for future reference. She nods in agreement, though.

Nat motions for me to start reading. I take a drink of sparkling water that Deva just poured for us in my dad's best football-team glassware and start reading again.

Dear Diary:

Well, I guess I wasn't very good about actually writing here all the time. School and life is so boring and I don't want to sit here like a fool and write down what I had for lunch. (A cheeseburger from the school cafeteria, if you must know, and it was awful.)

So it's been a few weeks since my birthday and I still don't have my license. Dad pretty much broke his promise to take me. He was his usual aces at stalling me—first it was he had to work too much, then he said he couldn't afford insurance on the car if I was driving it. Then he got mad about something Billy said and told me I couldn't get my license if I kept dating Billy.

That's where it all sort of stands right now. As long as Billy is around, there will be no license for me. Dad gets mad pretty often, and when he gets mad it's really, really bad. I know the neighbors hear him yelling. It would be hard not to perk up to that roar. Lillian says she can hear him across the street, and always knows when he's coming home after having too much to drink by the way he slams the brakes on the car right before he hits the house and then how hard the door slams when he comes in. One time, he slammed the door so hard two pictures frames fell right off the wall and glass fell down like tiny glittering raindrops. I had to clean the mess up before Cooper got his hands on the broken glass and cut his little fingers. Mom was yelling at him so loud for slamming the door hard, she didn't even notice. When they get mad at each other, they get really mad. I don't know what makes them so angry, other than I know it's hard trying to earn enough money to support me and Cooper.