Читать книгу Tagged - Mara Purnhagen - Страница 7

I WORKED INSIDE A PURPLE triangle. It was probably the only building in the entire state of South Carolina that was shaped like a slice of pie and painted the color of a grape popsicle. It was a little coffee drive-through place called Something’s Brewing. I loved it because the hours were good, the coffee was great and, best of all, there were no crowds. Something’s Brewing was designed to fit two employees, a wall of coffee machines, a tiny storeroom and an even tinier bathroom in the back. Cars pulled up, people placed their orders, we handed them coffee in insulated paper cups, and they drove away, happy and fully caffeinated. Best job ever. Plus, I got free coffee, which I always seemed to need right after school.

Some days I worked with Bonnie, my boss. She was a grandmother who was supposed to retire years earlier, but opened Something’s Brewing instead. “I just couldn’t stay retired, you know? It got boring,” she said to me once as she knitted a green sweater. I loved Bonnie. She was really easy to work with and was always in a good mood.

Most days, though, I worked with Eli James, another junior from my school and one of Trent Adams’s very best friends. Trent usually gave Eli a ride, which I was hoping would be the case that day so I could find out what was going on. Lan was counting on me. She loved knowing things other people did not, and this was the biggest scandal our school had seen since Trent filled the teachers’ lounge with Styrofoam peanuts the year before.

When I arrived at Something’s Brewing, Bonnie was there, wiping down the counter. “Hello, dear,” she said. “What can I make you?”

She didn’t really need to ask. Bonnie always made me a caramel latte. She put in just the right amount of caramel—they were perfect.

“The usual,” I said, and Bonnie began to steam milk. “I thought Eli was working today.”

“He is. Just running a little late, I guess.”

That was interesting. Eli was never late. What if they had suspended Trent and Eli couldn’t get a ride? I wanted to call Lan immediately, but a car pulled up and I had to take the order. While I was doing that, another car pulled alongside the building. I heard a door shut, and the next moment Eli walked through the back, running a hand through his chestnut-colored hair and apologizing to Bonnie for being late.

“Not a problem, dear.” Bonnie treated us more like her grandchildren than her employees. She even knitted scarves for Eli and me—her “two favorite workers”—and gave them to us as Christmas gifts. She once spent a month trying to teach me how to knit, but I didn’t have the patience for it. I managed to make half a scarf, although it looked more like a very fluffy dishrag. I was disappointed, but Bonnie said that not everyone had a knack for knitting.

“It’s not your talent, dear,” she’d said. “But don’t worry, you’re good at so many things.”

I wanted to ask her to name some of those things I was supposedly so good at because, honestly, I didn’t know. I had tried to knit because I thought it could be a retro kind of hobby, something I could be really creative with. I envisioned myself making funky sweaters and bright hats for Lan, who always made me pieces of jewelry for Christmas. The most imaginative thing I’d made for her was a CD of our favorite songs.

I placed lids on three double espressos and handed them to my customer while Bonnie gave Eli the inventory list. “I need you to check this,” she said. “Especially the small cups. I don’t think they sent us enough this time.”

Bonnie gathered up her purse and coat, told us to have a great day and left. As soon as I saw her car pull away, I turned to Eli.

“So?”

He gave me an innocent, surprised look. “What?”

“You know exactly what,” I said. “What’s going on?”

He plopped down in one of the two little chairs Bonnie had set up for us. “I need a strong drink, Katie.”

Eli knew I hated being called Katie. People always assumed that my name was short for Katherine, but it wasn’t. My parents had named me Kate. Just Kate, pure and simple. They said they didn’t want anything fancy or something that could be turned into a nickname, which was fine by me. Still, sometimes I wished I had a more sophisticated name, like Isabelle or Olivia.

I glared at Eli. “If I make you a drink, will you tell me everything you know?”

“Depends on how good the drink is.”

I turned to the coffee machine. I always made Eli a special drink, something not on the menu. It was a latte, but extra strong. I added shots of chocolate and caramel, and just a hint of praline. Eli said it tasted like a candy bar. He called it a “Katie Bar” for a while until I threatened to stop making them. No one calls me Katie, I don’t care how cute they are.

I made his drink and handed it to him.

“I hope you didn’t skimp on the chocolate,” he said.

“Would you like to drink it or wear it?” I asked him sweetly. He smiled and took a sip.

“Perfect,” he announced. “So, what was it you wanted to know?”

I sat down across from him, which was kind of hard to do. Eli was tall and lanky, and his knees bumped into my legs. “I want to know everything,” I said. “What happened to Trent? Where is he? Why were you late to work?”

Eli smiled and took an extra-slow sip. He was torturing me and enjoying every second of it.

“Trent is alive and well,” he said finally. “He is at home. I was late because Brady’s new girlfriend is incredibly slow and we couldn’t leave without her.” He wrinkled his nose. “I mean, we could have and maybe we should have because she’s really annoying, if you ask me.”

“I didn’t ask you about Brady’s girlfriend. I asked about Trent. Is he suspended? Did they take him to the police station?”

Eli raised an eyebrow at me. “I thought you would know that.”

“Just because my dad’s the police chief doesn’t mean he tells me everything. In fact, I probably know less than anyone else about what goes on in this town.”

Dad tended to keep things to himself, which I appreciated. Occasionally, he would relate some police-related story at dinner, but only if it was funny—like a naked guy stuck in a tree, which happened a lot more than you would think—or strange—snakes discovered in a car, for example. Everyone seemed to think that I did know things or, worse, that I was potentially a rat. Sometimes kids would stop talking if I was close by. But my dad and I had an understanding that I would go to him if, and only if, someone was in danger of hurting themselves or someone else. Other than that, I was not responsible for the actions of others. Of course, try telling that to the entire school. Any time a party got busted, people looked at me funny the next day, like I was somehow responsible. Lan thought I was imagining things, but I knew I wasn’t. My dad’s job created a negative side effect for me: it made me stand out during those times when I most wanted to fade away.

“I don’t know anything,” I repeated.

Eli pulled his laptop out of his backpack. “I believe you,” he said. “Unfortunately, I don’t know anything, either.” He began typing.

“You must know something,” I protested. “You’re his best friend.”

Eli didn’t answer me. He was staring at his computer screen. “Just checking my e-mail,” he said softly. I could tell he was reading, and once Eli got into his computer, forget it. He completely focused on that and nothing else. “Well, Trent’s not suspended,” he said finally. “Yet.”

A car pulled up to the window and Eli stood up. It was a big order: five drinks, each one different, including a strawberry cheesecake cappuccino, which is a hassle to make. Eli started on a low-fat, almond latte while I handled the cash register. We worked well together. Eli was fast and efficient, and I double-checked everything, made sure the lids were on tight and cleaned up afterward. After our customer left, Eli sat back down at his computer while I rinsed out the steamer cups.

“So he e-mailed you?” I asked.

“Yeah, but it’s brief.” Eli read aloud from the message Trent had sent: “I’ll be back at school tomorrow. They’re checking my alibi. Not to worry, it’s all good. No proof, no crime.” Eli started to say something else, but stopped. I knew he was holding back, but I wasn’t going to push it.

“I wonder what his alibi is.”

Eli yawned. “He was out of town visiting relatives.”

“So you do know more than you’re telling me.”

He smiled and shook his head. “Why does everyone assume it was someone from our school?”

“Who else would do that to the building?” I wiped the counter and made sure we had enough medium-sized cups. I knew we’d be getting an after-work rush in a half hour, and nearly everyone ordered a medium.

I glanced at Eli, who was still typing away at his computer. I wanted to remind him to do the inventory, but I also knew he would get it done and I didn’t want to sound like a nag. If Eli was anything, it was reliable. And adorable, in a way. When we first began working together over the summer, I thought he was potential boyfriend material, but the timing was off. He had just started dating Reva, a junior who came around all the time to gaze at him and glare at me, and I was just breaking up with Kevin Cleaver, a senior I had dated for a total of three months.

Kevin and I had dated casually because we both knew he was leaving for college at the end of the summer. He took me to the prom, where we danced and laughed and ate chicken Marsala. We had fun, and I thought we would keep seeing each other until August, when he left for school.

Then, a month before he was supposed to leave, he announced that he’d been “hooking up” with a college girl he met at a party. It was the first time anyone had broken up with me. Kevin just stood there, his hands shoved into his pockets, and shrugged. “We both knew this wasn’t a long-term thing, right?” he asked, and I nodded and said something like “Yeah, sure, no big deal.” But I was crushed. It actually surprised me that I was so hurt. I mean, I knew it was a temporary thing, but still. I guess it was the fact that I had been so easily replaced. I thought I had mattered to him at least a little, and when I realized I hadn’t, I felt even worse.

“You look tired,” I said to Eli. He had dark circles beneath his eyes and he kept yawning.

“I need to get back on schedule,” he said, not taking his eyes off the computer. “I stayed up too late over break. Ben was in town and he never sleeps.”

Eli’s brother Ben went to college out West somewhere, where he was an undeclared senior. According to Eli, Ben changed his major every semester and would be in school at least another three years.

Eli looked at me. “So, what did you think of it?”

“Think of what?” I was debating whether or not to bring another bottle of almond syrup out of the back room. We were getting low.

“The gorillas. What did you think of the gorillas?”

“I think someone wasted an awful lot of time and effort. I mean, they’re just going to be removed.”

“But what did you think about the actual gorillas? Did you like them? Hate them? Anything?”

I considered it. My first thought had been that someone—most likely Trent—was going to be in a lot of trouble. But I also thought that the gorillas had been very well done. Beautiful, almost.

Eli would probably think I was crazy if I called them beautiful, so instead I said, “We debated it in history. You know, whether it was art or just vandalism.”

“And?” Eli seemed pretty intent on the topic.

“And the class was fairly divided.”

“Which side were you on?”

I knew what he wanted me to say. Despite his claims that he didn’t know anything, Eli was almost certainly covering for Trent.

“I haven’t decided,” I said finally.

Eli stood up and stretched. “Well, let me know when you do,” he said. “I’m going to do the inventory. If you get a chance, check out the article on my computer.”

After he went back to the storage room, I sat down and picked up the laptop. The screen showed the front page of a newspaper from Tennessee. Mt. Juliet Encounters Gorilla it read. It was about a town near Nashville where a four-foot high gorilla had been painted onto the wall of an abandoned building. There was a small black-and-white picture of the building. I pulled out my camera and compared the pictures I had taken earlier in the morning to the one in the article. The gorilla was exactly the same as the ones on our school. Exactly. I checked the date of the article.

“Two days ago,” I murmured. Mt. Juliet was at least a four-hour drive from Cleary, maybe more. Was that where Trent’s relatives lived? If so, it was a bad alibi. And why paint the same picture in both towns? The police would be able to connect him to both places and he’d really be in trouble. If Trent’s relatives did live in Mt. Juliet, it wouldn’t make any sense that Eli would want me to read the article. He would be pointing the finger at his best friend. I was confused.

Eli came back from the stockroom just as cars began lining up for the after-work rush. I wasn’t sure what to say to him, but fortunately we were so busy making drinks that neither one of us had time to talk. Finally, just before six, we began to close up for the day.

“So what did you think of the article?” Eli asked.

“Well, it’s obviously the same guy,” I said, handing him my camera. He clicked through the images I’d taken that morning.

“These are good,” he said. He paused at a shot I’d taken of the crowd. “This one’s really good.”

I looked over his shoulder. The picture on the screen showed one of my crowd shots. A group of freshmen boys had just moved in front of me, blocking my view of the wall. One of the boys was holding something in his cupped hands, and the others looked down at what he held, smiling. I didn’t get a look at what was in the boy’s hands, and just after I took the picture, they walked away.

“The gorillas aren’t even in that one,” I pointed out.

“I know, but it’s still a good shot. Very clear. Plus, it’s not staged. There’s something real there.”

“I guess.”

Eli turned off the camera and handed it back to me. “You should take more pictures like that.”

“I think people would notice if I stood around taking pictures of them.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. You could try to, you know, stay out of the way.”

Something I tried to do every day, I thought. But taking pictures of unsuspecting students seemed like an odd thing to do if you weren’t on the yearbook staff.

“Think about it,” Eli said.

“Um, okay.”

I wasn’t sure what else I was supposed to say. Eli and I cleaned up and locked the doors. Brady was waiting for him in the parking lot. He waved at me. “Hey, Kate!”

I could see Reva in the backseat of Brady’s car. She looked at me, scowled and then smiled wide when Eli opened the door. Eli turned to me just before getting in the car. “You okay with a ride?”

“My dad’s coming,” I said.

“We’d better get out of here, then. Brady’s tags are expired.” He smiled so I would know he was joking and got in the backseat next to Reva. I watched them leave, still trying to figure out not only why Eli had shown me the article possibly connecting Trent to two separate acts of vandalism, but why he had seemed so intense about me taking more pictures. Did he think I was actually good at it, or was he just trying to get me off the topic of the gorillas?

Minutes later, Dad pulled his police cruiser into the parking lot and I got into the front seat.

“How was your day?” he asked.

“It was very strange,” I replied.

LAN WAS MORE THAN A LITTLE disappointed that I didn’t have any real news about Trent. “But he’s definitely coming to school tomorrow?” she asked for the tenth time.

“Definitely,” I assured her. I was talking to her on my cell phone while I searched the Internet for “gorilla graffiti,” in the upstairs office. My parents wouldn’t let me have a computer in my room. They said anything I needed to search for could be done in public, which was just their way of saying that they didn’t want me looking at naked people online.

I wanted to read through the Tennessee newspaper article again. I felt like I was missing something. Lan moved off the topic of Trent and on to Mr. Gildea’s class.

“No one else assigned a paper on the first day back,” she complained. “What am I supposed to write?”

“It sounds fairly easy, Lan. Just do a Web search. You can write three hundred words about art in ten minutes.”

“No, you can write three hundred words in ten minutes. It’ll take me hours.”

Mom called me downstairs for dinner and I told Lan I had to go.

“By the way, did you hear about Tiffany’s party?” she asked before I could hang up.

“She’s always having a party.” Every time her parents took a weekend “holiday,” Tiffany threw some kind of wild celebration for half the school.

“This is different. It’s her birthday party, and apparently she’s going all out. As in, bigger than homecoming and prom put together.”

“Well, I’m sure it will be lovely. Gotta go.”

I had never been invited to one of Tiffany’s parties, and I didn’t think she was going to start putting me on the guest list now. I guessed it would be nice to see what all the fuss was about, but at the same time, I knew I’d feel completely out of place with Tiffany’s crowd.

My parents were already sitting at the dining-room table when I walked in.

“How’s Lan?” Mom asked as she scooped steaming vegetables onto her plate.

I took my seat and dug into a bowl of pasta salad. “Good. She’s freaking out about a history paper we have due tomorrow.”

“A paper on the first day back? Good,” Dad said. He approved of hard work, strict teachers and rigid rules. Dinner, for example, was nonnegotiable in our house. We ate dinner together six days a week, with only Friday as an exception. My parents kept strange hours and dinner was the one time we were all together.

Sometimes Dad was called out in the middle of the night, and Mom worked at Cleary Confections, the local bakery, and usually got up around four in the morning, which I considered inhumane. Mom was in charge of cakes. Birthday, wedding, graduation—she made them all, from plain yellow with chocolate frosting to a six-tiered red velvet monstrosity decorated to look like a volcano. She said baking was her “creative outlet,” and she loved it. She came home smelling like buttercream icing and devising new ways to shape gum paste into flowers.

“I heard you had an exciting morning at school,” Mom commented. I wasn’t sure if she was talking to Dad or to me.

“You mean the graffiti? It wasn’t that big a deal.”

Dad looked at me. “Not a big deal? Do you have any idea how much money it’s going to cost to sandblast that stuff off the wall?” He shook his head. “No one respects public property anymore.”

“It was on the news at lunchtime,” Mom said. “It’s certainly interesting. Not your typical graffiti. It seemed more, I don’t know, professional?” She looked at Dad like he might be able to supply the appropriate word.

“Well, it just might be,” he admitted. He told us that Trent’s alibi was a good one, that he was out of state visiting his grandmother that day. He got home around eleven, a fact established by a gas receipt, and went to bed at midnight, which was confirmed by his parents.

“And we think the vandalism occurred around 1:00 a.m.,” Dad said. “He could’ve left after they thought he went to bed, but his folks let us search his car, and we didn’t find anything. No paint, nothing. So Trent may be innocent.”

Unless his parents were covering for him, I thought. Why would he be visiting his grandmother in another state the night before school began? I didn’t say anything about the article I’d read, but I didn’t have to. Dad had seen it, as well.

“This same thing happened in Tennessee just a few days ago. We think it was some guy traveling through town, looking to stir up a little trouble.”

Mom reached for her glass of wine. “Well, it certainly is strange.”

Dad shrugged. “It’s probably a one-time thing. This guy tagged the town and moved on. Some other town will get those gorillas next.”

“Tagged?” Mom asked.

“It’s what they call it now.”

After dinner I went to my room to work on my history paper. I had looked up some definitions of art and tried to find a clever way to use them. The problem, I discovered, was that no one could come up with one single definition for art. It didn’t have to be beautiful if it was considered “significant.” But who decided what was significant?

I figured I could spend hours on the question and still not come up with an answer, so I decided to use a quote from Hippocrates because I knew Mr. Gildea liked the Greeks. “Vita brevis, ars loriga,” I typed at the top of the page. Then I included the translation: “Life is short, art endures.” I argued that the gorillas on the school wall weren’t really art because, in the end, they would not endure. They would be removed within the month, and if they had truly been art, wouldn’t someone want to keep them around longer? I knew it wasn’t the most solid argument, but I figured the ancient Greek quote would earn me some points and besides, weren’t all teachers supposed to be opposed to defacing school property? Mr. Gildea would like it, I was sure.

I put away my schoolwork and got ready for bed. I couldn’t stop thinking about the wall. I was sure Trent was behind it, but maybe someone was helping him. Maybe Brady and Reva were working with Trent, not just covering for him, but painting, as well. I told myself to stop coming up with conspiracy theories and get some sleep, but I couldn’t seem to turn off my brain. As I was drifting off, another thought occurred to me: what if Eli was helping Trent?