The Cinderella Society (23 page)

Chapter 15

AFTER A LONG NIGHT
spent beating myself up for admitting I was the Dateless Wonder to the first guy to take an interest in me since Dan had shown up in our old backyard for a game of Frisbee, I was pretty much the walking wounded by the time Mom and I waddled into the yuppie-mom heaven known as Babies “R” Us. Things had been going so great until I’d spilled about my lack of dating savvy. Why couldn’t I be smooth with guys? Just one time?

To top it off, now I was stuck in my personal version of Hades. The land of babies and pregnant women with impossible-to-predict mood swings. Yes, I’d been the one to suggest the outing as a bribe for not making it home for dinner in the early days of my
CMM
work. But now … now I could see the error of my ways. I’d thought it would just appease her. Instead, she saw it as me taking an active interest in preparing for the babies.

The fatal flaw in my plan had been revealed.

First, we hit the ever-important rocking chairs. Two full rows of them lined up like an assembly line for moms-to-be, putting mine over the edge. A woman who was once
famous for her brilliant snap decisions was reduced to an indecisive mess.

“I like the blue and the beige,” she said, running her hand over the twill cushions. “But should we get two of the same or one of each?”

This is my penance
. “Whatever you want,” I said, forcing a smile. I propped my feet up on a footrest and discovered it moved just like the glider. Cool, not that I’d point it out to Mom.

She walked halfway down the aisle in the other direction. “I like the natural wood finish, but I don’t know if it’s too light. They don’t make a rocking chair that coordinates with the other furniture I chose, so I’m not sure if I should coordinate or go with something that’s different.”

“They’re babies, Mom. Do you really think they’ll care?”

“Of course they won’t. But other people will see it when they come to see the babies.”

“Like who?”

As soon as it was out there, I regretted it. Nan had been trying to convince Mom to move back to Mt. Sterling for years, but Mom’s high-school days were something she’d rather forget. Her friends had been kids like her, the ones totally rebelling against their hippie parents. Just like Mom, they scattered to the winds after graduation. Unlike Mom, they hadn’t returned twenty years later to raise a family in their hometown when—surprise, surprise!—they ended up pregnant with twins at age thirty-nine.

Talk about a major life shake-up. Mom and Nan might not always get along, but when you’re closing in on forty with two babies on the way, I guess you need all the help you can get.

So here we were, in the house Mom grew up in so Nan could downsize into something that required less upkeep. And here Mom was … pregnant, not working, and trying to put down roots for the first time in her adult life. She’d been trying so hard to make the house feel like home (a real and true
home
, which was a novelty for us, with our transient ways) that she hadn’t gotten out to meet people. I could count on one hand the number of visitors other than Nan that we’d had since we’d moved here.

“I mean, how many people are going to go into the nursery?” I said, trying to cover. “Don’t you usually bring the babies down to show people?”

“Not if they’re sleeping.”

“If they’re sleeping, the lights will be low. Who’s going to notice if the rocking chairs coordinate?”

Logic was still the best way to get Mom back on track when hormones got in her way. She thought that over. “So you think one of each in the darker wood?”

“Sounds groovy.” Mostly, it sounded like a decision that put us one step closer to getting out of there.

We wandered over to the changing tables. She’d already chosen one, so that saved us time. But now she was considering the options for covering the changing pad. Knit fabric or terry cloth? Or maybe a cute yellow gingham? One gingham and one stripe?

All for something the babies would end up rubbing their bare butts all over.

I was counting the minutes until I could get back to the Club and figure out how in the heck to defeat Lexy and the Wickeds while saving Heather. But yeah, let’s debate the pros and cons of poly-cotton knit over cotton terry.

Mom seemed to sense my waning enthusiasm and shifted
her attention to me. She brushed my hair out of my eyes. “I like how you’ve been keeping your hair down,” she said. “These lights really pick up the highlights in it. Where did you say you got it done?”

At a place you can’t get into without a gold coin you definitely don’t have
.

I knew it wasn’t her fault she wasn’t a Cindy. But it didn’t make it okay. Innocent questions and no way to answer them without lying were turning me into a very stressed girl. I needed to figure out which Cindys didn’t have Cindy moms and see what they told their parents. Gaby’s mom wasn’t a Cindy—her sister wasn’t, either—so I’d start with her. I hated lying to Mom, but I felt stuck in the middle between family and Sisterhood.

“It’s this place where Sarah Jane goes. Do you have everything you need here?” I rolled the shopping cart out into the main aisle as a hint. “I think the lights are giving me a headache.”

She put her hand on my forehead. “Do you think you’re coming down with something? Maybe you shouldn’t go in to work today.”

“It’s just a headache. Fluorescent lights do that to me sometimes.”

Mom went back to the rocking chairs and pulled tags for the ones she wanted. I used the lights as an excuse to wait outside in the sunshine. My head did hurt, but the lights weren’t to blame.

I found a wooden bench in a courtyard and planted myself there to wait. They’d probably installed it for all the soon-to-be-dads who had to escape their pregnant, hormonally insane wives while they discussed the merits of the Diaper Monster versus the Diaper Annihilator.

Ten long minutes later, the stock guy was helping us load up the minivan with this week’s haul. I’d survived, and I even managed to finagle a lunch out of it at my favorite chain restaurant across the parking lot.

We walked over, much slower than normal because of Mom’s sore back, and out of the corner of my eye, I caught movement behind the bushes. I circled around to Mom’s other side and saw Leah Michaels crouched down behind the row of hedges lining the restaurant sidewalk. She was staring at Corrine Duncan, one of the nicest Reggies I knew, as Corrine got into the car of someone who was definitely not her boyfriend.

I told Mom I’d just seen a friend and would meet her inside the restaurant. She nodded, still muttering to herself about swollen ankles and being on her feet all day. I waited until she rounded the front of the building before slipping around the other side.

I watched Corrine’s date open her car door and help her into his Camaro. He went around to his side, and as they drove away, I saw Corrine lean her head on his shoulder. Just as Leah held her phone out and snapped a picture.

With the car safely out of sight, Leah got up from hiding and dialed a number. She paced along the sidewalk in the rear of the restaurant as she talked quietly on her cell. She made a couple of nervous gestures with her hands, then settled a bit as she listened to whoever was on the other end. Visibly relieved, she said a few more words and disconnected.

The wheels in my head turned as she got into her car and drove away. Corrine was nice, but she wasn’t a power player that I knew of. And Leah definitely wasn’t a Wicked. She was more of a loner like Heather.

If the Wickeds were using Reggies to get dirt on other
Reggies, they could expand their reach exponentially. No wonder they’d been able to take their game to the next level so quickly.

Double the Wickeds plus an entire network of spies at their disposal? It might just be a hunch, but my hunch was telling me things were about to get ugly in a hurry.

*   *   *

“Can you mind the counter while I take these boxes to the back?”

“No problem, Nan.” I slid the duster into the basket under the cash register and plopped down on the stool as the bell above the door jingled.

An older guy came in, holding a small black notebook in his hand. “Is Rosemary around?”

“She’s in the stockroom. Do you need me to—?”

“In here, Stan.” Nan stuck her arm out the door and waved him back, her thin metal bracelets jangling.

With Nan in the back and no sign of Heather, my mind wandered to its usual place.
Welcome to the land of Ryan
. I knew I shouldn’t get my hopes up, but I wanted Ryan to be at the banner party. It would be the first time we’d be together with our friends since we’d started dating. And I could say that now. I was dating Ryan Steele. In fact, I could say it over and over and never get bored.

I was dating Ryan Steele.

I was dating
Ryan Steele
.

As much as it gave me a case of the golden giddies just thinking about that fact, I wasn’t sure if it qualified me as his girlfriend. We hadn’t talked exclusivity or anything. But our late-night chat left me feeling like he wasn’t interested in dating anyone else, so that had to be a good sign.

My butterflies gave a cheer.

“I haven’t heard anything,” Nan said as she and Stan came out of the stockroom a few minutes later, “but I’d rather you leave that business to the police and write something positive for a change.”

“Reporting the news is my job, Rosemary. Not all news is rosy.” Stan rolled his eyes at me as if to say,
Women
. Like I wasn’t one of them.

“More of it is than you print. Look at the boy Jessica is dating.”

“Nan!”
Please don’t print that I’m Ryan’s girlfriend!

Nan gave me a startled look. “It’s a prime example of what I’m talking about. Jessica’s date last night saved a little boy from being run over in the street. But did that make the front page?”

“At the amusement park?” He shrugged. “We ran that one, but the rescuer wasn’t identified. You know him?”

“Ryan Steele,” Nan said. “His mother, Elizabeth, was killed at the corner of Green and Main a few years back.”

“Sure. I know the Steeles. Ryan’s the quarterback over at the high school.” Stan turned to me, suddenly interested. “You’re his girlfriend?”

“We’re just friends,” I clarified, nailing Nan with a glare. “But Nan’s right about last night. It was at the Fun Zone.”

I relayed the story as I remembered it. It still stung that I hadn’t been able to get Ryan to feel good about what he’d done. Shouldn’t he trust my opinion more? If enough other people supported him, maybe he’d finally accept that it was okay to be a hero. The world needed more guys like Ryan Steele.

“Sounds like a good kid,” Stan said, his pen scribbling on the pad. “Anything else I should know?”

I scrunched up my nose at him, even though I knew it was
rude (and not very flattering). “Isn’t that enough?”

He looked at Nan and laughed. “Like grandmother, like granddaughter.” He flapped his pad at us. “Thanks for the tip, ladies. You let me know if you hear anything about the shoplifting ring.”

Nan patted my shoulder as he left. “Some people need to be trained to see the good that’s around them. You remember that, Jessica. All it takes is a little redirecting of their energy and”—she snapped her fingers—”magic.”

I thought of Ryan.
Magic
.

*   *   *

With Nan back out on the floor, I excused myself to finish dusting and take out the trash. I’d just tied the bag and dragged it to the back door along with the broken-down boxes for recycling when I heard a scuffle outside.

I looked through the peephole Nan had installed for safety and saw Lexy, Tina, and Morgan. I so did not want to deal with them today. I looked to the side to see what they were focused on—

Oh, no
.

I reached for the handle to put a stop to it once and for all.

“What do you mean you won’t tell us?” Lexy barked at Heather. “Who put
you
in charge?”

Heather was standing up to Lexy?
You go, girl!

I plastered my ear against the door, not wanting to save a girl who was ready to save herself. I could hear Heather sobbing. “He’ll hate me.”

“You should’ve thought about that before you went slumming with a freakin’
janitor
, Clark Bar.”

I gave Lexy the evil eye through the peephole, my hand on the doorknob in case Heather needed me.

Heather straightened as the tears continued to fall. “I won’t let you do this anymore. What you saw was a private thing between two people. A
private
thing,” Heather argued, and I pumped my fist in the air at her nerve. “It was an innocent kiss and a mistake. You have no right to use it as blackmail!”

“Is that right?” Lexy smirked. She reached into her shocking pink bag. “Doesn’t look so innocent to me.”

Heather took the large envelope Lexy shoved in her face and pulled out some sheets of paper. Heather’s face crumpled, and her body followed, sliding down the side of the steel dumpster until she was sobbing and hugging her knees to her chest.

“You didn’t think he actually liked you, did you?” Tina jeered. “He only liked the hundred bucks.” Morgan laughed along with her.

Lexy plucked the papers from Heather’s hand and slid them back into her bag. “Do we have a deal?”

Heather rocked back and forth. She nodded in response and wiped her nose on her sleeve.

“That’s what I thought. Keep your cell on.”

I waited until Lexy, Tina, and Morgan had disappeared before yanking open the door and dragging Heather inside. Makeup ran down her face, and she was crying so hard I was afraid she’d start dry-heaving. I pulled her straight into the tiny break room, giving Nan a quick
I’ll explain later
look. I closed the door behind us, pulled out a chair for Heather, and set a box of tissues on the table. I grabbed a chair for myself and hunkered down to wait.

If you think there’s a limit to the amount of liquid a human tear duct can produce, let me clear that up for you. Heather cried so long and so hard, going through eleven tissues
(not that I was counting), that she could have filled a two-liter bottle.