Under Cover (13 page)

I hoped he wouldn’t notice, but how could he
not? He brought it up close to his face and asked, “You any
relation?”

I gave him my innocent look. More than
innocent, I looked as stupid as I could. “Relation of what?”

“Just asking.” He waved me on in.

I took a step and turned back. “Can you tell
me where the library is?”

“Down those stairs, first door on your
right.”

His station, along with the front door, was
on a landing with stairs going both up and down. I prayed he would
keep his mouth shut and not talk about me, especially give my name.
I would have to get a phony driver’s license. There must be some
way to do that.

The librarian took a minute from stamping
things to show me where the yearbooks were. She said I could look
at them but not remove any from the premises. She actually said
premises.

I figured Liam must be a senior. He had to be
older than I was. The others were probably also seniors, or near
it, so I tried those first.

And there was John Kinsser. He had a mop of
dark hair and was looking off to one side, kind of smiling.
Nice-looking in a pleasant sort of way. I thought of all the things
Liam said about him: making a pest of himself, always goofing
around, too thick-skinned to understand that he didn’t belong. Too
bad he wanted to. Somebody should have warned him. The caption
under his picture called him Johnny the Joker. He belonged to the
Photography Club and the Men’s Cooking Club. My heart squeezed and
I paged on.

I found Liam Penny next. He wasn’t smiling,
but looked calmer than I’d seen him. If Johnny wouldn’t be
graduating with that class, I wondered if Liam would, shut up at
home with an ankle monitor. One life destroyed, another in
shambles. It made me more determined than ever to make shambles out
of Austen.

A couple of pages later, I found him

Hard, dark eyes were the first thing I
noticed. They looked slightly downward, not at the camera. His
hair, too, was dark, and on the longish side. He wore a white
shirt, open at the neck, and no tie. The other males wore ties. All
about him I sensed an air of dissatisfaction. It wasn’t apparent,
but I felt it, I don’t know how. After all I’d been thinking about
him, it was odd to see him actually there. Those eyes. The rest of
his face wasn’t bad, but not good, either. It was thin and bony,
making his features stand out. A sharp chin and high-bridged nose.
Not too much of anything, but it was a face you’d know if you saw
it.

“Psychopath,” I whispered. You can’t tell a
psychopath by looking at him. It’s what they do that sets them
apart. I memorized that face as best I could.

The librarian stopped by to ask if I’d found
what I was looking for.

“Sort of.” I didn’t want to say too much.
“The thing is, I don’t remember all their names, but I’m pretty
sure I’d know them if I saw them.”

“Good luck.” She went back to her desk.

My head split from trying to remember. I went
through all the seniors, but nothing else clicked. Maybe the other
two weren’t seniors. The lower grades didn’t have individual
pictures, only each class together and all their names in the
captions.

I tried the juniors. There were three classes
of them and a lot of extracurricular activities. I skimmed through
the captions.

And stopped.

A row of them sat on a bench with the end guy
holding a soccer ball. I had heard those names only once, but it
was enough. Especially as they sat together and their names were
next to each other. Sam McCallum and Fred Gravitz.

Liam had called him Freddie and he looked
like a Freddie, small and dark, sort of elfin, with a sassy face. I
thought he must be a fun person. What was he doing with a
psychopath like Austen? How could he be mixed up in a murder?

Sam McCallum was bigger, with a squarish face
and lighter hair. He looked as if he’d have blond eyebrows and
probably freckles. Did either of them seem like the sort of person
who would hang out with a person like me? That was the only way I
could get anywhere.

Maybe Grandma was right and I should let Dad
handle it. Dad and the police. But the police had already pinned it
on Liam with no other suspects because Liam wouldn’t talk.

I felt another wave of fear. How could I
manage it all by myself? I had come this far and I didn’t see any
future for it.

Curses on Maddie’s project. She should be
doing this. She had a lot more nerve than I did. She went up
against the headmaster of her former school for not understanding
about Ben’s Asperger’s. A headmaster was Authority. I could never
have done what she did. Maddie had self-confidence. Why couldn’t I
have some?

I took another look at Austen Storm, then the
two juniors, and left the yearbook out because the librarian told
me to. Both the wall clock and my watch said it was almost
three.

I reached the front entrance and went down
about six steps, just as a bell rang and kids began to trickle out.
I was glad the security guard had gone. The trickle became a
flood.

This was stupid. I was looking for three
faces out of more than a thousand. What if I missed them? That was
more than likely, and it would mean coming all the way back to try
again. If I cut too many afternoons, my school would send a note
home and Grandma would ask what I was doing. She would want to come
with me and that would ruin everything. Who hangs around school
with their grandmother?

What if Liam saw me here? He had that ankle
monitor. Maybe he couldn’t get to school.

His senior year.

Hey, people,
he didn’t do it.
Let him
graduate.

I was so busy fuming, it took me a moment to
register the shout I heard in back of me. Somebody calling. “Hey!
Dude!”

That voice. I didn’t know whose it was, but I
remembered it. “
Hey, dude! Got any beer?
”

Chapter
Thirteen

He looked like his picture in the yearbook.
It was the same dark, bright eyes. The impish mouth and ready
smile. I couldn’t tell, of course, from one black and white photo,
how ready his smile really was, but he had a general, overall
twinkle.

I stared at him. Deliberately. He looked at
me, then away, then quickly back again.

I asked, “Do I know you from somewhere?”

“Me?” He doubted it.

“I’m sure I’ve seen you before.”

“Yeah, maybe,” he said. “I go to school here.
What’s your name?”

“Uh—Peggy Mellin.” It was Mom’s maiden
name.

He grinned. “Like a watermelon?”

I spelled it for him. He shook his head.
“Don’t know you.”

“I was so sure,” I said. “What’s your
name?”

“Fred Gravitz.”

I pretended to think it over. “Fred Gravitz.
The name’s not familiar, but the face is.”

“Yeah? Do you go here? I never saw you
before.”

“That’s because I don’t. Go to school here,
but I will. My folks are moving to Hudson Hills as soon as they
find a house.”

He studied me from head to toe. “Where
from?”

“Southbridge. We’re renting a house and it
got sold. But not to us.”

“How come?”

“The other people offered more money. Anyway,
my mom says the schools here are better.”

Actually, Mom never said that, but it sounded
good.

He moved me out of the way as more kids
poured down the steps.

“What year are you?” he asked.

“Junior, going on senior. What about you?” I
took a tip from Grandma and fluttered my eyelashes. It made me feel
like an idiot.

“The same.” He cocked his head and gave me a
fraction of a smile. If I read him correctly, he was starting to
get interested.

I took a big leap—for me—and said, “Sometime,
if you have a minute, could you show me around? It’s all new and
it’s so big and confusing.”

He shoved his hands into his pockets and
rocked back and forth. “I could do that.”

Someone whistled. It was loud, the kind where
you put your fingers in your mouth. Fred looked around, then rested
a hand on my elbow. “I’ll be back. Don’t go away.”

He went to join two others. I recognized them
both from the yearbook—blond, heavy-faced Sam McCallum and, yes,
Austen Storm. Where Sam was solid and stolid, Austen looked
restless and dissatisfied. Unlike his yearbook picture, he wore a
pair of dark-rimmed glasses.

The three of them went into a huddle. I tried
to keep my profile low, especially when I saw someone walking
toward me. A man with no neck and a blue uniform.

Was he really coming for me? Was I busted
already? And right in front of the goons. I turned away, trying to
look inconspicuous. Tried to blend in with a group of chattering
girls.

They gave me funny looks and moved back as if
I had leprosy. I muttered, “Excuse me,” while doing my best to
blend in.

The guard went on past, aiming at someone who
wasn’t me. I could breathe again, but it left me jittery. I felt
awkward barging in on the girls.

Fred must have thought I was leaving. He
hurried back to me.

“Who was that?” I asked before he could say
anything. “I mean, he whistles and you go running.”

“Yeah.” Fred chuckled. “That’s, like, how we
communicate.”

“Oh. I thought he must be some kind of
boss.”

Take it slow and easy.
I refrained
from asking the boss’s name.

The scent of pot drifted past us. Fred
sniffed. “Hey, I know where we can get some good stuff.”

“That? If I go home smelling like that, my
mom will kill me.”

“You ever tried it?”

“Sure, I tried it. It didn’t do a thing for
me, so why bother?”

“Couldn’t have been any good. The stuff I’m
talking about is really good. How many times you tried?”

He walked me slowly to the far end of the
school, the end that faced the river. Away from his goon friends
and everyone else. Down below and a little to the right, I could
barely see River Edge Park. I thought of saying something to get
his reaction, but that wouldn’t be taking it slow and easy.

I answered the question instead. “A few.
Forget it, I’m really not interested.” I tried to say it as Stacie
would, with humor and a bit of flirting. Nothing that could be
taken as prissy or judgmental.

We reached the edge of the school lawn. They
had flattened out a sort of plateau for the school to stand on but
here it began its downward slope toward the river.

Fred asked, “What do you do for kicks?”

“Kicks?” Idly I drew an arc in the grass with
my toe. “I don’t know. Hang out with my friends. Burger King.
Pizza. We have a really neat pizza place in Southbridge.
Perrino’s.”

“Yeah? What’s neat about it? Special
pizza?”

He did have a hang-up. A pot-track mind. I
wondered about the other two. I looked back, but didn’t see them.
The guard, too, had disappeared.

“What happened to your friends?” I asked.

“Huh?”

“The ones who whistled. I don’t know anybody
here.”

“You know me!” He gave me a twinkling
grin.

“What are your friends’ names?”

“I got lots of friends.”

“The two who were back there. Who whistled.”
Was he deliberately evading me?

“Sam,” he said with some reluctance.
“Aus.”

“Oss? What’s that?”

“Austen. Okay?” The reluctance turned to
annoyance.

“Oh. Austen.” What was the annoyance for? Was
he not supposed to be naming names? I had a horrible qualm that
maybe he’d figured out who I was and what I was after. But how
could he?

To distract him, I looked up at the school.
“It sure is big.” Four stories to Southbridge’s three, and a lot
more sprawl.

“Bigger than yours?” he asked.

“Oh, yes. I know every inch of mine, but I’ll
never find my way around here.”

“We’ll help you.”

We? It sounded promising. “That would be
great.” I almost forgot I wasn’t really transferring.

“Where’re you moving to?” he asked.

“You mean here? They’re still looking at
places. It’s a big decision.” I took a peek at my watch.

He noticed. “Somebody picking you up?”

“Not today. I came on the bus. I wanted to
see what the school was like.”

“You came all the way on a bus? Just to look
at the school? You’re really into this, aren’t you?”

He had no idea. “I’m kind of nervous,” I
said. “Starting a new school. And it being so big. I want to get my
bearings first, as much as I can.”

Was I making sense? Or did I come across as
some sort of ditz? It might not matter. Some guys like ditzes.
Usually it’s guys who aren’t too brilliant themselves, I’d
noticed.

I saw the guard again and this time the crowd
was getting too thin to hide in. I turned back to the river and
wished my hair weren’t such a showpiece. Waist-length and mahogany
red.

Fred must have sensed something. “What’s the
matter?”

“I, um—I just wanted to see if there are
boats on the river.”

How lame was that? I had thought this
undercover stuff would be easy. Stupid me. It’s
serious.
What if you get caught? They shoot spies, don’t they? After
torturing them. Or sometimes they hang them. I couldn’t help my
hand going to my neck.

He noticed that, too, and tilted his head.
“Sore throat?”

My mind lingered on coat hangers. I tried to
forget them. “I think it’s an allergy.”

He tilted the other way, still concerned.
“Would pizza help?”

“Pizza? Um—sure. As long as it doesn’t have
funny stuff.”

“What’s your definition of funny?”

“We talked about that. I’m not ready for my
mom to kill me.”

He started back toward the street. “What
about your dad? Do you have one?”

That was getting close. I brushed it off. “I
don’t have to worry about him. He’s in California.”