Crescendo
Marcie cupped a hand on her hip and looked ready to slam the door.
“Okay, calm down, we’ll pay,” said Vee, reaching into her back pocket. She stuffed a wad of cash into the bowl, but it was dark and I couldn’t tell how much. “You owe me big-time,” she told me.
“You’re supposed to let me count the money first,” Marcie said, digging through the bowl, trying to recapture Vee’s donation.
“I just assumed twenty was too high for you to count,” Vee said. “My apologies.”
Marcie’s eyes went slitty again, then she turned on her heel and carted the bowl back into the house.
“How much did you give her?” I asked Vee.
“I didn’t. I tossed in a condom.”
I lifted my eyebrows. “Since when do you carry condoms?”
“I picked one up off the lawn on our way up the walk. Who knows, maybe Marcie’ll use it. Then I’ll have done my part to keep her genetic material out of the gene pool.” Vee and I stepped all the way inside and put our backs to the wall. On a velvet chaise in the sitting room, several couples were tangled together like a pile of paper clips. The center of the room was filled with dancing bodies. Off the sitting room, an arched entryway led to the kitchen, where people were drinking and laughing. Nobody paid Vee or me any attention, and I tried and laughing. Nobody paid Vee or me any attention, and I tried to rally my spirits at the realization that getting inside Marcie’s bedroom unnoticed wasn’t going to be as hard as I’d thought.
Trouble was, I was beginning to think I hadn’t come here tonight to snoop through Marcie’s bedroom and find evidence that she was with Patch. In fact, I was dangerously close to thinking I’d come because I knew Patch would be here. And I wanted to see him.
It looked like I was going to get my chance. Patch appeared in the entrance to Marcie’s kitchen, dressed in a black polo shirt and dark jeans. I wasn’t used to studying him from a distance.
His eyes were the color of night and his hair curling under his ears looked like it was six weeks past needing a cut. He had a body that instantly attracted the opposite sex, but his stance said I’m not open to conversation. His hat was still missing, which meant it was probably in Marcie’s possession. No big deal, I reminded myself. It was no longer my business. Patch could give his ball cap to whoever he wanted. Just because he’d never loaned it to me didn’t hurt my feelings.
Jenn Martin, a girl I’d had math with freshman year, was talking to Patch, but he looked distracted. His eyes circled the sitting room, watchful, as if he wasn’t about to trust a single soul there. His posture was relaxed but attentive, almost like he expected something to happen at any moment.
Before his eyes made it around to me, I shifted my gaze.
Best not to be caught staring with regret and longing.
Anthony Amowitz smiled and waved at me from across the room. I automatically smiled back. We’d had PE together this year, and while I’d hardly said more than ten words to him, it was nice to think somebody was excited to see me and Vee here.
“Why is Anthony Amowitz using his pimp smile on you?” Vee asked.
I rolled my eyes. “You’re only calling him a pimp because he’s here. At Marcie’s.”
“Yeah, so?”
“He’s being nice.” I elbowed her. “Smile back.”
“Being nice? He’s being horny.”
Anthony raised his red plastic cup to me and shouted something, but it was too hard to hear over the music.
“What?” I called back.
“You look great!” A goofy smile was plastered on his face.
“Oh boy,” Vee said. “Not just a pimp, but a smashed pimp.”
“So maybe he’s a little drunk.”
“Drunk and hoping to corner you alone in a bedroom upstairs.” Ugh.
Five minutes later, we were still holding our position just inside the front door. I’d had half a can of beer accidentally sloshed on my shoes, but luckily, there’d been no vomit. I was about to suggest to Vee that we move away from the open door
—the direction everyone seemed to run moments before spilling the contents of their stomach—when Brenna Dubois came up and held a red plastic cup out to me.
“This is for you, compliments of the guy across the room.”
“Told you,” Vee whispered sideways.
I stole a quick glance at Anthony, who winked.
“Uh, thanks, but I’m not interested,” I told Brenna. I wasn’t very experienced when it came to parties, but I knew not to accept drinks of questionable origin. For all I knew, it was tainted with GHB. “Tell Anthony I don’t drink from anything but a sealed can.” Wow. I sounded even dumber than I felt.
“Anthony?” Her face twisted with confusion.
“Yeah, Anthony Pimp-o-witz,” Vee said. “The guy who’s making you play delivery girl.”
“You thought Anthony gave me the cup?” She shook her head. “Try the guy on the other side of the room.” She turned to where Patch had been standing only minutes ago. “Well, he was over there. I guess he left. He was hot and wearing a black shirt, if that helps.”
“Oh boy,” Vee said again, this time under her breath.
“Thanks,” I told Brenna, seeing no choice but to take the cup.
She faded back into the crowd, and I set the cup of what smelled like cherry Coke on the entry table behind me. Was Patch trying to send a message? Reminding me of my flop of a fight at the Devil’s Handbag when Marcie had doused me with cherry Coke?
Vee pushed something into my hand.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“A walkie-talkie. I borrowed them from my brother. I’ll sit on the stairs and keep watch. If anybody comes up, I’ll radio.”
“You want me to snoop in Marcie’s bedroom now?”
“Yeah, about that. I’m sort of having a change of heart.”
“Are you kidding me?” Vee said. “You can’t chicken out now.
Imagine what’s in that diary. This is your one big chance to find out what’s going on with Marcie and Patch. You can’t pass that up.”
“But it’s wrong.”
“It won’t feel wrong if you steal it so fast that the guilt doesn’t have time to soak in.”
I gave her a pointed look.
“Self-talk helps too,” Vee added. “Tell yourself this isn’t wrong enough times, and you’ll start to believe it.”
“I’m not taking the diary. I just want to … look around. And steal Patch’s hat back.”
“I’ll pay you the eZine’s entire annual budget if you deliver the diary to me in the next thirty minutes,” Vee said, beginning to sound desperate.
“That’s why you want the diary? To publish it in the eZine?”
“Think about it. It could make my career.”
“No,” I said firmly. “And what’s more, bad Vee.” She heaved a sigh. “Well, it was worth a try.” I looked at the walkie-talkie in my hand. “Why can’t we just text?”
“Spies don’t text.”
“How do you know?”
“How do you know they do?”
Figuring it wasn’t worth an argument, I tucked the walkie-talkie into the waistband of my jeans. “Are you sure Marcie’s bedroom is on the second floor?”
“One of her ex-boyfriends sits behind me in Spanish. He told me every night at ten sharp Marcie undresses with the lights on.
Sometimes when he and his friends are bored, they drive over to watch the show. He said Marcie never rushes, and by the time she finishes, he has a cramp in his neck from staring up.
He also said there was this one time—”
I clapped my hands over my ears. “Stop!”
“Hey, if my brain has to be poll uted with these kind of details, I figure yours should too. The whole reason I know all this vomit-inducing information is because I was trying to help you.” I flicked my eyes toward the stairs. My stomach seemed to weigh twice as much as it had three minutes ago. I hadn’t done anything, and I was already sick with guilt. When had I become low enough to snoop in Marcie’s bedroom? When had I let Patch twist and tangle me up this way? “I guess I’m going up,” I said unconvincingly. “You’ve got my back?”
“Roger that.”
I climbed the stairs. There was a bathroom with tile floors and crown molding at the top. I moved down the hall to my left, passing what looked to be a guest bedroom, and an exercise room equipped with a treadmil and ell iptical. I backtracked, this time taking the hall to the right. The first door was cracked, and I peeked inside. The room’s color scheme was a frothy pink—pink walls, pink drapes, and a pink duvet with pink throw pillows. The closet had spewed itself onto the bed, floor, and other furniture surfaces. Several photographs, blown to poster size, were tacked to the walls, and all were of Marcie posing size, were tacked to the walls, and all were of Marcie posing seductively in her Razorbills cheerleading uniform. I experienced a mild rush of nausea, then saw Patch’s ball cap on the dresser. Shutting myself in the room, I rolled the Bill of the cap into a narrow cone and crammed it into my back pocket.
Beneath the ball cap, lying on the dresser, was a single car key.
It was a spare, but it had a Jeep tag. Patch had given Marcie a spare to his Jeep.
Swiping the key off the dresser, I shoved it deep into my other back pocket. While I was at it, I figured I might as well look for anything else belonging to him.
I opened and closed a few dresser drawers. I looked under the bed, in the hope chest, and on the top shelf of Marcie’s closet. Finally I slipped my hand between the mattress and box spring. I pulled out the diary. Marcie’s small blue diary, rumored to contain more scandal than a tabloid. Holding it between my hands, I felt the overwhelming temptation to open it. What had she written about Patch? What secret things were hiding in the pages?
My walkie-talkie crackled.
“Oh, crap,” Vee said through it.
I fumbled it out of my waistband and pushed the talk button.
“What’s the matter?”
“Dog. Big dog. It just lumbered into the living room, or whatever you call this humongous open space. It’s staring at me. Like, staring right at me.”
“What kind of dog?”
“I’m not up-to-date on my dog species, but I think it’s a Doberman pinscher. Pointed, snarling face. It resembles Marcie a little too much, if that helps. Uh-oh. Its ears just went up. It’s coming toward me. I think it’s one of those psychic dogs.
It knows I’m not just sitting here minding my own business.”
“Stay calm—”
“Shoo, dog, I said shoo! ”
The unmistakable growl of a big dog came through the walkie-talkie.
“Um, Nora? We have a problem,” Vee said a moment later.
“The dog didn’t leave?”
“Worse. It just bounded upstairs.”
Just then there was a snapping bark at the door. The barking didn’t stop—it grew louder and more snarling.