Sammy Keyes and the Kiss Goodbye (7 page)

So by the time Marissa, Holly, and Dot appeared on the scene, there had already been a steady stream of anxious (as well as unauthorized) visitors, and the ICU staff seemed to have lost its will to resist. Not only was it (for once) a slow day in the ICU, but the staff’s preoccupation with an Internet search on Darren Cole resulted in a definite relaxing of the rules, which became evident when (despite Billy’s citing of the two-visitor rule) nobody interfered as Marissa, Holly, and Dot all entered the corridor that led to Room 411.

Not being a rule breaker, Dot was aflutter with nerves as they moved down the corridor, but Marissa managed to steel herself and channel Sammy, saying, “Just act cool.”

Holly, of course, was already familiar with this concept, having regularly broken many rules (not to mention laws) during her young life. So, between the two of them, the three of them made it down to Sammy’s room without incident.

“Look at her,” Marissa whispered when they’d surrounded the bed. “She looks so …”

“Peaceful?” Dot whispered.

Marissa nodded. “Yes.”

“I’ve heard you’re supposed to talk to people who are in comas,” Holly whispered from the foot of the bed.

Dot nodded. “And stimulate them.”

“Stimulate them?” Marissa asked.

“Like touch them?”

Dot (being a gentle soul) reached out and stroked
Sammy’s leg through the bedding. But Holly (whose soul harbored painful splinters and cracks) did not have deep reserves of patience and went straight for the toes.

“What are you
doing
?” Marissa whispered, because Holly had dug beneath the covers and was wiggling and tickling and pinching.

“Wiggling and tickling and pinching,” Holly replied.

Unfortunately, the only one this activity seemed to stimulate was Marissa. “Stop it!” she cried. “How would
you
like someone wiggling and tickling and pinching
you
when you couldn’t do anything about it?”

“Maybe I’d wake up and slap ’em!” Holly snapped.

But she did stop.

And then she burst into tears.

“Oh, Holly,” Dot said, scooping an arm around her. Then she looked at Marissa and mouthed, “We’ll meet you outside,” and eased Holly out of the room.

Which left Marissa alone with her best friend.

“Sammy,” Marissa said, pulling up a chair beside the bed after she’d stared at her friend awhile. “You need to wake up, okay? You need to wake up and take your finals and finish junior high and start high school and live your life!” She frowned, then added, “Okay, so the thought of finals would make
me
want to stay asleep, too, but you know what I’m saying!” And then, feeling like the words were coming out all wrong, Marissa started babbling. “Look, you have to wake up. Everything is finally going great for you! You’ve got an awesome boyfriend, you’ve got an awesome
dad
, you’re out of the Highrise, and Heather’s not lurking around trying to sabotage you anymore!” She
frowned again. “That doesn’t mean I
like
her or
trust
her, but at least things are better than they were before.…”

Feeling off track again, Marissa shook her head and said, “Never mind about Heather. Worry about
me
, would you? I don’t know what I’d do without you!” She went quiet for a minute, then sighed and said, “Remember last year when I got caught at the top of that stupid chain-link fence behind the Heavenly Hotel? I was stuck and petrified, and you came up and unhooked my pants and helped me down. My
life
has been like that. I wind up somewhere, stuck and scared, and you always seem to know how to help me down. Like with Danny? I was
so
stuck and helpless and stupid, but you helped me get over him.”

And although Sammy would almost certainly have loved the comparison between Marissa’s relationship with Danny Urbanski and being stuck on the detached and decrepit chain-link fence behind the seedy Heavenly Hotel, she gave no indication of this.

She just lay there, silent.

And as Sammy lay there, silent, Marissa thought. And remembered. And then she began to fill that silence. “Actually, the fence was nothing compared to going into the Bush House.… Do you remember that? And finding Chauncy LeBard all tied up with a monster mask on? Was that scary, or what?” She thought some more. “And that time in Sisquane? When we went looking for a missing
pig
and wound up battling it out with a drug dealer?” She shook her head. “I thought for sure we were going to die! But at least
he
was the one trapped in the cellar that time, which was way better than the time
we
were trapped
in a basement by that gang guy! Remember that? With all those creepy black widow spiders?!” She shivered. “I
knew
we were gonna die that time. I still have nightmares about being trapped down there.”

At this point Marissa realized that if Sammy
could
hear her, she might well be giving
her
nightmares. So she steered away from memories of deadly gang leaders and drove the conversation toward a brighter destination:

Hollywood.

“What about that time we snuck away to visit your mother? Remember how we threw that mattress out of the window so we could jump on it to escape that crazy mummy lady? And how that guy Max …”

But suddenly Marissa realized that she was heading off a cliff with that misadventure, too—that their unauthorized trip to Hollywood had also involved a very creepy ending.

So Marissa swerved in another direction.

“How about that time we went ice blocking after the Farewell Dance and Billy had those chicken bones and was acting like a pirate going ‘Aaargh,’ and then—” She came to a screeching halt. “Shoot! That one turned out all scary and gruesome, too!” She stared at her friend and shook her head. “It was even worse than finding those two skulls in the graveyard on Halloween.” She shivered again. “And that turned out to be organized crime! Organized crime, Sammy! How do we get ourselves into these things?”

And then, as she took a deep breath to calm herself, a voice behind her said, “We need to make a list.”

Marissa spun around.

Heather Acosta was standing right there.

“How long have you been spying on us?” Marissa demanded.

“I wasn’t
spying
,” Heather said. “I was actually just trying to be considerate.”

“You want to be considerate? Leave!”

“Look, I know you hate me,” Heather said, moving forward. “But you need to get over it.”

“
You
get over it!” Marissa snapped, and immediately wished she hadn’t because not only did it sound childish, it didn’t make any sense.

Still. It
felt
right because Heather was so … Heather.

And her being there was so … 
wrong
.

But Heather wasn’t leaving. She was now standing on the opposite side of Sammy’s bed, and had (to Marissa’s horror) reached over the safety rail to hold Sammy’s hand. “All that stuff you were talking about?” Heather said as she looked at Sammy. “We need to make a list.”

Marissa was fixated on the hands. “A list of
what
?”

Heather turned to face her. “A list of people Sammy busted.”

Marissa was dying to tell her it was a stupid idea. It was Heather’s idea, after all, so it was, by definition, either stupid or evil.

Probably both.

Plus another knee-jerk retort was dying to shoot out of her mouth: Well, you’d take up the first ten slots, wouldn’t you?!

But the words didn’t come out because Marissa immediately knew that Heather’s idea
wasn’t
stupid.

It was a great idea.

One the police should have already thought of.

But before she could figure out how to agree with Heather without actually
agreeing
with Heather, Heather gasped.

“What?” Marissa asked, because the redhead’s eyes were stretched wide.

“She … she …” Heather blinked across the bed at Marissa. “I think she just squeezed my hand!”

Marissa pounced forward to grab Sammy’s other hand. “Sammy! Can you hear me?” She waited, and when there was no response, she shook her friend’s shoulder. “Sammy!”

But again there was no response.

No squeeze.

Not even a twitch.

And after a few more attempts at getting a response—any kind of response—all that remained were dashed hopes and the awful suspicion that, once again, Heather was lying.

After the nursing staff had concluded that there was no evidence (other than Heather’s word) that Sammy had actually moved, the teens gathered in the ICU waiting room, where Heather switched gears, announcing, “I’m going to go talk to the police about making a list.”

Well, Marissa was not about to let Heather do that without her, so she immediately said, “I’m going, too.”

“Are we tracking down the Borschman?” Casey asked.

Marissa nodded. “There are a lot of people Sammy helped put in jail. Maybe one of them did this to her.”

Billy jumped up. “I’m in!”

“Us, too!” Holly and Dot said, and suddenly they were off, whooshing out of the waiting room and along the hallways in a gust of purpose, arriving at the steel elevator door just as it was whooshing open.

And this little dust devil of teenagers would have whooshed right into the elevator and down to the lobby, but they found themselves temporarily blocked by two people (and a large camera) intent on whooshing
out
of the elevator.

“That’s Zelda Quinn!” Marissa gasped after the KSMY
reporter and her beleaguered cameraman had pushed through them and were hurrying down the corridor toward the ICU.

Holly shook her head. “Oh, this is bad.”

“Very bad,” Dot agreed.

And it certainly had that potential. With a dramatic streak of white hair traversing an otherwise jet-black coif, Zelda Quinn was a very recognizable presence in the community, ferreting out stories or, on slow news days, fanning smoky wisps of gossip into sizzling segments that she passed off as news.

And, having been temporarily forced out of the market by the smooth-talking (and conservatively coiffed) Grayson Mann, only to be reinstated after Mann’s career meltdown and subsequent lockup, Zelda Quinn still harbored feelings of insecurity that (in a classic case of overcompensation) resulted in over-the-top reporting. Zelda Quinn wanted stories with flair! A sense of urgency and drama! And this story certainly had that. Plus the godsend of a celebrity connection!

Ratings would be through the roof!

Los Angeles markets might even see her!

And there was that elusive Emmy she’d always dreamed of accepting.

So Zelda Quinn had big plans to get to the bottom of what she had dubbed (without thought to alternate interpretations) the “Girl Hurled” story, and those plans included getting an interview with (or at least some really fine footage of) that hunka-hunka heartthrob Darren Cole.

Even if that meant camping out at the hospital.

Or breaking a few silly rules.

The public had a right to know!

So. Zelda whooshed down the hallway to pursue an Emmy, while Marissa and the others whooshed down the elevator to pursue Sergeant Borsch.

Which left Sammy in Room 411, all alone.

Down in the cafeteria, Rita was quickly approaching a breaking point. After Darren and Lana had joined her and Hudson, Lana had revved back into diva overdrive, complaining about everything from the coffee to the air-conditioning (which was, admittedly, on the chilly side), to the hospital’s “complete and utter disregard for a parent’s agony.”

“Stop!” Rita finally begged her daughter. “This isn’t helping anything!”

“She’s just worried,” Darren said as he texted a friend of a friend of a neurosurgeon at Stanford.

“And I’m not?” Rita snapped.

“Oh, forgive me for not wanting to chitchat about the weather!” Lana snapped back.

“I barely mentioned it!”

“And I barely mentioned the air-conditioning! Which anyone can tell is set to subzero!”

Rita turned to Hudson and said, “I need some fresh air.”

Lana gave a little snort. “Isn’t that typical?” She turned to Darren. “You wonder how I got so good at running away from my problems?” She pointed to Rita. “There’s your answer!”

“That does it!” Rita said, standing up. “It’s time you stopped blaming
me
for all your problems and took a good hard look in the mirror!”

“Me?” Lana squeaked. “How about
you
? You were
so
strict with me, but you let Samantha run wild!” She leaned in closer to her mother. “Why do you think we’re in this predicament?”

Rita’s jaw dropped.

Her cheeks flushed.

And finally alarms began clanging in both Darren’s and Hudson’s brains.

This was more than another mother-daughter spat.

This was serious!

“Fresh air sounds like a very good idea,” Hudson said, moving his sputtering wife toward the exit.

“Lana’s just exhausted and worried,” Darren called apologetically.

“And I’m not?” Rita spat out. “But you don’t hear me blaming
her
for this.”

“Me?” Lana cried. “Me? How could you possibly blame me?”

And, incredulous right back, Rita took off the kid gloves and let the verbal knuckles fly. “Where have you been for the past
three years
? Seeing that your child was safe and secure and tucked in every night? No! You were too busy pampering your overblown ego!”

“
My what
?!”

Hudson cut in, calling, “We’ll meet you upstairs in a while,” as he swept Rita out the door.

“Can you believe her?” Rita cried when they were
outside. “After everything I’ve done to help her live her dream, this is the way she looks at things?”

“She feels guilty,” Hudson said quietly, keeping his arm around his wife as they walked along.

“No, she doesn’t! She’s pointing the finger at
me
.”

“You’re her scapegoat, sweetheart,” Hudson said. “She knows that she’s done a lot wrong—it’s just too painful to face.”

“So she’d rather point the finger at me?”