Aces Up Read online

  “Okay.” He shrugs. Annoying.

  “Well,” I say. “Bye.” I step all the way into the hallway then.

  “Bye, Shannon,” he calls as the door shuts behind me. But something about the way he says it implies that he thinks I’m going to be back.

  The whole drive home, my head is spinning. This is definitely the craziest thing that has ever happened to me. Should I be scared? Flattered? Should I call the police? I mean, being accosted in an elevator? You totally hear about those kinds of things on Real Stories of the Highway Patrol. Well, maybe not that show exactly, because obviously the highway patrol wouldn’t be patrolling the casino. They patrol highways. But some show like that. (Real Stories from Casino Security?)

  Anyway, what would I tell them? The police, I mean. That a guy left a creepy note in my locker, kidnapped me, and then let me go without hurting me? I’d have to give them a statement for sure, and since I’m a minor, they’d definitely have to get my parents involved. Everyone would find out I’m underage, and it would be a whole big mess. Still, though. If it’s a choice between getting caught at the casino and getting killed, I’m all about getting caught.

  I’m so preoccupied that at first I don’t notice that the kitchen light in my house is on, shining through the blue and yellow plaid curtains. Uh-oh. Who would be in the kitchen this late? My mom’s been working at Starbucks to make extra money, and she has to be there every morning by four, so she’s usually in bed by ten at the latest.

  My dad is trying to keep his “internal clock on a good schedule” by getting to sleep early and getting up early to job hunt, and my sister, Robyn, never hangs in the kitchen, preferring to stay in her room, IM’ing or talking on the phone with her boyfriend, Leonardo. Crap, crap, crap. They’re probably all awake, having some big family meeting about me and my lies.

  I rack my brain for a good excuse about how or why I was at the casino tonight. Picking up a friend? Doing undercover research for a class assignment? Yes! Doing undercover research! For a paper for my human behavior class. Studying the behavior. Of humans. At the casino.

  I speed up, anxious to get the whole scene over with. But as I get closer, I realize there’s a car with flashing lights in our driveway. Ohmigod! The police are here! The casino has probably called the police on me, and now I’m going to be arrested! But when I pull into the driveway, I see that it’s not a police car at all, but a tow truck, its orange lights flipping all around and bouncing off the blackness of the driveway. I park my car next to it and cut the engine.

  “What’s going on?” I demand, stepping out of the car. A guy wearing blue overalls with the name Butch stitched onto the pocket is loading my dad’s BMW coupe onto the back of the truck. Then I notice my sister, Robyn, standing on the front porch. Her long hair is in her face, and she’s hugging her arms to her body. Her eyes are puffy, and her cheeks are flushed, like maybe she’s been crying.

  And then I get it. Robyn took my dad’s car out (probably without his permission, for some kind of party, which she’s been known to do—hello, who wouldn’t want to take a BMW to a party?), and now she’s crashed it and she’s in total trouble.

  “Are you okay?” I ask Robyn, abandoning Butch and rushing over to my sister. “Did you get hurt?” I scan her for bumps and bruises and scratches. But her face is clear and flawless, as always. I breathe a sigh of relief. Now that I know she’s okay, I start to think that this whole car-crashing thing might not be so bad. I mean, my parents are definitely not going to care that I’m home a little later than anticipated if Robyn crashed the car. That’s way more scandalous.

  “Hurt?” Robyn asks. “Why would I get hurt?” She’s wearing one of my dad’s old Harvard sweatshirts, and the big maroon arms flop around her slender body.

  “Because you crashed the car,” I say. I look at her face to assess if we need to do any sisterly ESP. Usually we’re pretty good at figuring things out without even speaking, like the time Robyn missed the SATs because she slept through them and I completely covered for her without even knowing the story.

  “I didn’t crash the car,” she says.

  “What’s the story?” I ask, leaning into her. Better get it straight now, before I go inside, so that my parents can’t bombard me with any surprise questions.

  “The story?” she repeats.

  “Yeah, the story, what are you telling them about how it happened?”

  She grabs me by the shoulders. “Shannon. I. Did. Not. Crash. The. Car.”

  “Then who did?” Is it possible my dad crashed it? That seems totally unlikely, since my dad is seriously the slowest driver ever. One time it took us an hour to get to my grandma’s house twenty minutes away. My dad’s not even that old, but for some reason, he loves to go ten miles under the speed limit.

  “No one,” she says. “The car’s fine.”

  “Then why is it getting loaded onto a truck in the middle of the night?” I turn around and watch as Butch slowly attaches the wheels of the car to the truck. I peer closely at it and realize that it looks fine. Not a scratch or a ding on it. Hmmm. Butch really doesn’t look all that friendly. He has a very cranky expression on his face, and I almost expect him to have a hook where his hand should be.

  “They’re taking it,” Robyn says. I give her a blank look. She sighs. “They’re repossessing it.”

  “Repossessing it!” I say, a little louder than I intended. Butch glances up for a second, glares at me, and then goes back to loading up the car. Wow. A lot of menacing things are happening tonight. I lower my voice. “What do you mean repossessing it?”

  “They’re taking it,” she says again. She slides a hair tie off her wrist, then gathers her dark hair into a ponytail.

  “But where?” I ask. “And why?”

  “Away from here,” she says. “And because, you know, Mom and Dad couldn’t pay for it anymore.”

  “Away from here,” I repeat, imagining my dad’s nice new car being shipped off to some … I dunno, car lot somewhere, with a bunch of other cars that people couldn’t pay for. A lump rises in my throat, and I swallow it. Obviously I knew my parents weren’t doing that well, since my dad lost his job. But I had no idea that people were about to start taking things from them. That’s horrible.

  “Why are they doing it at eleven o’clock at night?” I ask.

  “That’s when they do it,” Robyn says. “I just happened to be coming home in my own car and ran into him.”

  “Where were you?” I ask.

  “At Leonardo’s,” she says. “We were fighting again. About the pants.”

  “Sorry,” I say, reaching out and squeezing her hand.

  Robyn and her boyfriend have this ongoing feud about leather pants. About a month ago, Robyn and Leonardo were watching a music video on MTV (in our family room, I might add, while I was trying to use the only computer that’s available to me in the house to write an English essay) in which some girl was wearing these super-tight leather pants. Leonardo declared that the pants were “bangin’ hot.”

  The next day, my sister borrowed a similar pair from her friend Stacy to wear to this party they were going to. Unfortunately, although he was a big fan of them on the girl in the video, Leonardo seemed to think Robyn’s pants were “skanky.” Robyn then decided that Leonardo wanted to keep her covered up like some sort of Middle Eastern woman, and told him they were in America and she could wear whatever she wanted, and no, she was not going to put on jeans and a sweater. Now whenever they get in a fight, the pants come up. Which doesn’t make much sense, but whatever.

  “How was your first night at work?” Robyn asks. I can tell she wants to change the subject.

  “Um, it was fine,” I say. “Kind of stressful, you know?” Understatement.

  “What,” she says, her eyes widening, “are you wearing?”

  Oh. Whoops. I’m still wearing my cocktail waitress uniform. After I found that note in my locker, I was in such a rush to get upstairs that I didn’t take the time to change. I didn’t
think it would matter, since I wasn’t expecting anyone to be up when I got home. Obviously I wasn’t counting on a car-repossession situation throwing the house into a state of activity.

  “Oh, um,” I say. “This is my work uniform.” I give her a grin, like “Isn’t it so cute?” Robyn’s eyes widen as she takes in the plunging neckline, the built-in push-up bra, and the tight waist. Good thing I left the heels at work.

  “They make you wear that at a diner?” she asks. “That seems a little … racy, doesn’t it?” Robyn and my parents think I’m working at the Rusty Nail, a twenty-four-hour diner that’s about half an hour away.

  “Not really,” I say. “It’s, uh, you know, in Stamford.” I roll my eyes, like we can’t possibly understand the ways of the big-city folk in Stamford, but my sister looks skeptical, and my stomach ties itself into a guilt-filled knot. Which is a horrible, horrible feeling. I have never kept anything from my sister before. Ever.

  But there are multiple reasons I can’t tell her about working at the Collosio:

  a) I really don’t want to put Robyn in the position of having to keep something from my parents. Covering for someone for one night while they’re out at a party is one thing, but deceit that could last for months, about something that is totally illegal? So not cool.

  b) Robyn was supposed to go to UConn before my dad lost his job, but now she’s spending her first semester of school at the community college. It wouldn’t be very nice if I told her I was trying to make money for Wellesley when she’s not able to be at the school she wants.

  c) I feel slightly guilty about keeping the money I’m making to use for school. Especially now that things are getting taken from us! I mean, shouldn’t I be helping my family? I’m hoping that by the time school rolls around, my parents will be back on track. Still. Suddenly, it seems totally selfish.

  “It really doesn’t seem like they should expect you to wear something like that,” Robyn says, still focused on my uniform. “Is your boss a guy?”

  “Um, no,” I say. I reach into my bag, take out the sweater I was wearing earlier, and pull it on over my uniform. Now it just looks like I’m wearing a sweater with a black skirt. “It’s a girl, she just—” I try to think up a reason any female in her right mind would make someone wear something like this. “She used to work in the circus, and so she’s super into costumes.”

  “She used to work where?” Robyn asks, frowning.

  The front door to the house opens, and my dad sticks his head out, saving me from any more questions. I say a silent prayer of thanks that I pulled my sweater on before my parents noticed my outfit.

  “Girls,” he says, “do you want to come in so we can talk about this?”

  We trudge into the kitchen. My mom’s at the table, a cup of tea in front of her. I sit down in the chair next to her, and Robyn hoists herself onto the counter.

  “Now,” my dad says. “I don’t want anyone to worry. The BMW was a car we didn’t need, and the fact that it’s gone isn’t going to affect our family in the slightest.” Um, even I know this isn’t exactly true. I mean, yeah, I guess no one really needs a BMW, but it was my dad’s car. How is he going to get around? As if he’s reading my mind, my dad says, “I can drive your mother to work in the mornings, and then pick her up in the afternoons. That way, I’ll be able to use the car during the day for any interviews, appointments, et cetera, I might have.”

  Robyn and I glance at each other, and I can tell we’re thinking the same thing. But it’s Robyn who has the courage to say it out loud.

  “Are we …” Robyn fiddles with one of her rings and averts her eyes. “What about the house?”

  “We are not,” my mom says firmly, “losing our house.”

  My dad nods. But honestly, who knows whether they’re telling us the truth? If we were losing the house, there’s no way they’d tell us. I mean, up until a few minutes ago, if you’d told me I’d come home to find some guy named Butch loading our car onto his truck, I would have thought you were nuts.

  “Girls,” my dad says. “Really, I don’t want you to worry.”

  My parents spend the next ten minutes trying to reassure us that everything is fine, and that we really shouldn’t be worried, and that my dad has a great lead on a job from his friend Hank Blumenthal over at Farber Bank, and that every family has tough times, and blah blah blah. They’re just getting to the part about how proud they are of us for cutting back on things without complaining when Robyn’s cell phone starts ringing.

  “It’s Leonardo,” she says after checking the screen. “I’m, uh, going to take it. But don’t worry, Dad, honestly, because I’m not worried.” She gives him and my mom each a kiss on the cheek and then heads upstairs to her room. She’s not fooling me. She’s totally worried. Which is why she took the phone call. If she wasn’t worried, she would have stayed here to talk about it.

  “So,” my mom says brightly. “Now that we’re all awake, how about I make some more tea and we can talk about your first night at work?”

  “Um, well,” I say. “There’s not that much to tell.” This may be the biggest lie I’ve told so far. Maybe even ever in my life. I try to think of something I can extract from the night that would be parent appropriate. “I mean, it was interesting.” Totally not a lie. “I spilled a drink on a man.” Also not a lie.

  “Oh, honey.” My mom sets two teacups down, one in front of me, one in front of my dad. I pick out a decaffeinated bag from the bowl in the middle of the table. My nerves are way too shot for caffeine. “That’s okay, it was only your first night. You know that when I was a waitress, I—” She stops talking then, a confused look passing across her face, and for a second I panic, thinking maybe she somehow knows my secret.

  But then I hear it. Screaming coming from Robyn’s room at the top of the stairs.

  “Well, if you weren’t such a jerk!” Robyn’s shrieking. Her voice sounds like one of those people in bad karaoke YouTube videos that get passed around the Internet. A silence comes over the kitchen as my parents try to hear what Robyn and Leonardo are fighting about.

  “We really shouldn’t be listening to this,” I say. “It’s spying.” Suddenly, I’m starving, and I get up and head to the cupboard to grab a snack. This has been a completely crazy night, and I deserve some junk food. Not to mention I didn’t even have any dinner.

  “No, that is true!” Robyn’s voice comes shooting down the stairs. “Because you said that those pants were skanky!”

  My dad’s eyebrows shoot up, and his green eyes glint with excitement. I sigh. My dad is so obviously hoping that Robyn and Leonardo are going to break up. He’s like one of those sports fans who paint their faces the team colors and write “GO PANTHERS” on their chests, even though the other team is favored by a bazillion points.

  Although I can’t really blame him for not liking Leonardo. I mean, he’s not a likeable character. He eats with his mouth open, and he walks into our house without even ringing the doorbell and then goes, “Hello? Helllloooooo?” like he’s been out there knocking for hours. One time he walked in while I was lying on the couch in just a T-shirt and a pair of underwear. (No one else was home.) I’m not sure what was more embarrassing: being caught with no pants on, or the fact that he didn’t even try to sneak a peek.

  “They’re not going to break up, Dad,” I say, shoving a handful of chips into my mouth.

  “Honey, why don’t you have some of that baked ziti in the fridge?” my mom asks. “You should eat something more than just chips.” My mom gets confused by the idea of snacking. She doesn’t understand why people would opt for a snack instead of a good meal. She’s probably right about chips not being the best late-night dinner, though. I did split a seam at work tonight. “Did you eat at the Rusty Nail?” she asks.

  “Noooo,” I say truthfully. Suddenly, my throat feels tight, and I put the chip I’m holding back into the bag.

  “How about a grilled cheese?” my mom presses. “Wouldn’t you like one of those?”
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br />   “I’m fine, Mom,” I tell her. Well, I was. Until some crazy guy accosted me and my dad’s car got taken away, all in one night.

  “Why are you so sure they won’t break up?” my dad asks me, his bushy eyebrows knitting together in confusion. “They’re fighting about the pants again.”

  My poor dad doesn’t get that relationships (especially teen relationships) don’t follow logic. He’s definitely more of a numbers/hard data kind of guy, which is why it’s so sad that he lost his job, since it was perfect for him. He would get so happy taking the train every morning into New York, where he’d spend his days working as an investment banker, playing with numbers and stocks and whatever else investment bankers do.

  Until his whole company went under, and my dad lost his job and most of our savings, which were tied up in company stock. The weird thing is, even though we’re essentially broke, my dad still does have some stocks, and the value of our house is still so high (even though it’s nowhere near what we paid for it) that I’m not going to be able to get as much financial aid as I need for school. Which is another reason I can’t tell my parents I’m working at the Collosio. My dad would feel super-bad if he knew my debauchery was partly because he can’t find a job.

  “Yeah,” I say to him now, trying to be gentle. “And they’ve been talking about the pants for what, weeks now?”

  “Yes, but maybe she’ll get fed up with it, like it’s the last time,” my dad says hopefully.

  “Maybe,” I say, even though I don’t believe it. But I have to be nice to him, because my dad’s had a hard night, and anything I can do to give him hope is important.

  The sound of something heavy hitting the floor comes from Robyn’s room. My dad looks toward the ceiling, his face turning even more hopeful as it becomes apparent that Robyn is either stomping around or throwing things.