Sammy Keyes and the Art of Deception (28 page)

He sat bolt upright. “What's that?”

“Oh, didn't I tell you? Lance Reijden gave her a ride home. Sort of rescued her from her dress shoes.”

“She's not … she's not
interested
in that hooligan, is she?”

I shrugged. “She has a thing about Harleys.”

“Your grandmother does?”

I grinned at him, then stood up and grabbed my stuff. “There's a lot about my grandmother you don't know. Shoot, there's a lot about her
I
don't know.” I hopped down his steps and said, “But I tell you what—I'm looking forward to finding out more.”

On the way home I decided to stop by the mall. I knew that Marissa was probably long gone from playing at the arcade, but I wanted to check in anyway.

And lo and behold, there she was, annihilating electro–bad guys. And, it turns out, one cool and suave eighth grader.

She spots me watching and says, “Sammy!” then
actually gives up the round to talk to me. “They said you went home sick—what's going on?”

Danny was sort of hovering, so I shrugged and said, “I don't want to interrupt….”

“That's okay! Tell me what happened.”

“It's kind of a long story.”

She looks at Danny, then back at me. “Well, in a nutshell—what's going on?”

“In a nutshell? Well, in a nutshell, I'm fine, but I kinda need your advice.”

“About?”

“Clothes.”

“Clothes?”

“Yeah. I, um … I want to do a little shopping.”

“You?”
She laughs, “I'm there!” She turns to Danny and says, “Sorry, but I've got to go.”

“You want to play tomorrow?” Danny asks her.

“That'd be fun,” she says, then gives me a private grin and calls over her shoulder, “Maybe I'll see you here.”

We left the arcade and, believe me, my eyes were pretty buggy. “Wow,” I whispered. “Was that
you
in there?”

“He may be cute,” she says with a grin, “but no way is he my best friend.”

It took us almost two hours to find what I was looking for. They had to be just right. Not too trendy, not too frumpy, not too expensive. And because I didn't actually have any money on me, I put what we found on a twenty-four-hour hold and then went home.

When I snuck through the apartment door, I discovered
that Grams had company. Not the Harley dude—that would have been very weird, let me tell you. No, for the first time ever, Hudson Graham was in our living room.

He was sitting in a chair across from the couch, and he was looking very awkward. There were some drooping wildflowers wrapped in wet paper towels and aluminum foil lying on the coffee table, and Grams was reclining on the couch with her foot propped up.

“Well, hi,” I whispered as I put down my board and stripped out of my backpack. They just sort of sat there, mum, so I took the flowers, put them in a vase, and placed them on an end table so they wouldn't be dwarfed by the big bouquet Hudson had sent before. Then I whispered, “Should I go to your room, Grams?”

She shook her head and said, “No, Samantha, of course not. Hudson and I have had a very nice conversation—”

He nodded. “Revolving around what a fool I've been.”

“Ah,” I said, sitting down. “So is the air clear, or are we still filtering?”

Hudson sighed and stood up, saying, “I think it's as clear as it can get.”

“For now, anyway,” Grams said. “I appreciate the apology, the flowers, and the concern. But as you can see, I'm going to be just fine.”

I walked him to the door, and right before I opened it, I did something I'd never done before—I gave Hudson a hug. An enormous hug. And I whispered, “Everything'll be fine, Hudson.”

He nodded, then did something
he'd
never done before—he kissed me on the forehead and whispered,
“Thank you, sweetheart. Come by and see me sometime soon.”

“Of course!” I said, then let him out the door.

When I went back into the living room, I sighed and said, “So. How do you feel?”

Grams sat up and said, “Good. No, great. Better than I have in decades.”

“Tackling bad guys can do that for you.”

“That must be it,” she said. “It also gives you a big appetite—I'm famished!”

“I'll make dinner. What do you feel like having?”

She thought a minute, then gave me a mischievous grin. “I believe the events of today deserve something, uh,
god-
like.”

I laughed, “Mac 'n' salsa, coming up!” and headed for the kitchen thinking it was true—there's nobody on this planet like my grams.

After dinner, I got busy on my homework. Most of it was easy, but the whole time I was doing it, I was sort of dreading the one assignment that I knew would be hard—my art report.

And really, I didn't know where to start. I mean, I had all the beautiful interview answers, but I'd interviewed a fake! Not that Miss Kuzkowski would know about that.

Yet.

No, chances were good she wouldn't hear about anything that had happened until
after
she'd graded the reports. Besides, who said I knew she was a fake before I wrote it?

I
could
get away with it.

Trouble is, I didn't want to. Actually, I kind of wanted to talk to Miss Kuzkowski about things. Not about Diane so much as about art. I wanted to confess that I
didn't
think joy was a psycho pink eye. Wanted to tell her that I
did
think Tess was wearing no clothes. I even wanted to tell her that Merriam-Webster—which has answers to
every
thing—was clueless about art. I mean, ol' Merriam thinks art is “skill acquired by experience, study, or observation,” “a branch of learning,” or “the conscious use of skill and creative imagination in the production of aesthetic objects.”

Please. That's like saying a human being is bones, blood, and muscle.

No, to me art had become much more than an object or a definition. It had become a search. A way to teach me more about myself.

And just thinking about art that way made me realize that I also wanted to thank Miss Kuzkowski. I mean, if she hadn't given us the wacky assignment in the first place, I probably would still think of art as being just, you know,
decoration.

So I decided, okay—I would at least
try
to explain what I was thinking. First I wrote up my interview with Diane, then I tacked on a note for Miss Kuzkowski that said I needed to talk to her in person about something. And
then
I took out a fresh piece of paper and started writing down all my thoughts about art.

Now, maybe Miss Kuzkowski will understand what I'm
trying to say, and maybe she won't. What I can almost guarantee, though, is that she won't agree.

After all, I'm a seventh grader. And her mentor, Tess? Well, she's got a Ph.D.

You just gotta hope that someday she'll also get some clothes.

At school the next day, things were normal—quiet, calm, almost peaceful.

Which is to say, they were completely abnormal.

At least it wasn't weird running in to Casey—we just said hey to each other and kinda grinned. And I didn't even
see
Heather, so I think she was out on another one of her R&R days. They can mean big trouble for me, but you know what? I'm not worrying about it.

And it wasn't until lunch that it hit me that it wasn't just the kids at school that were mellow, it was the whole place. The teachers, the campus, the
trash
… I mean, wrappers and papers weren't whipping around campus like they had been all week. They were just lying on the ground, still.

And then I noticed that the trees weren't bending over sideways and the dirt from the fields wasn't tornadoing around. For the first time in weeks, there was absolutely no wind.

It was like the Big Bad Wolf had packed up his big bad lungs and gone home.

After school, Marissa and I rode to the mall together, but instead of hanging out to watch her play video games, I went around and picked up my twenty-four-hour holds
and cruised home. And when I snuck through the apartment door and whispered, “Hi, Grams!” she looked up from her book and said, “You've been shopping?”

“Uh-huh. For you.”

“For … what on earth?”

I made her sit next to me on the couch, the bags right beside me. “Don't say no right away, okay?”

She just looked at me, worried.

“Here,” I said, handing over the first bag.

She opened it like it had a cobra inside. “
Blue
jeans?”

“That's right. And they go with …” I put the box from the second bag in her lap.

She opened it and blinked at me. “
High
-tops?”

“Very cool high-tops.”

“Samantha, they're
red.
”

“Exactly. And I've decided, they're
you.
”

“They're me.”

“Yes, Grams, they're you. Just look at them, will you?”

She held one out like it was a piece of overripe snapper. Then she switched to the jeans and sort of turned them around, back to front, front to back. And I could tell she didn't quite know how to break it to me that she was
not
going to be wearing the jeans
or
the shoes, so I said, “Look, if you're going to go around tackling bad guys, you need better equipment.”

“But—”

“Just give them a chance, would you? You'll look great, I promise.”

She inspected the tags. “How'd you know what size to buy?”

I laughed. “Like I haven't spent any time stuck in your closet?”

She laughed, too. Then she shook her head and hobbled to her room, muttering, “High-tops. Jeans and high-tops.”

Underneath it, though, she was smiling.

So I slouched back on the couch and smiled, too. She was going to look great in blue jeans and high-tops. She'd look cute.

Young.

And if I've learned anything about my grams in the past few days, it's that it probably won't be long before she'll be
needing
those high-tops.

And when she does, believe me, I'm going to tag along.

PROLOGUE   

There are things in life you can predict, and then there's my mother. And I swear it's on account of her that things happened the way they did. She just has that kind of cosmic power.

Grams says it's silly to blame her, but I know in her heart my grams has suspicions, too.

Strong suspicions.

I mean, the minute my mother hit town, one thing after another went wrong. I tell you, that woman's the Diva of Disasters.

And then all her little disasters sort of added up to a
big
disaster, which made me go and do something I
swore
I wouldn't do anymore.

Snoop around the seedy side of town.