“Crap,” I said. “Thanks, Rhonda. You couldn’t have showed up at a better time.”
“It’s all right now,” sang Rhonda. “In fact, it’s a gas, gas, gas.”
On the way home, Randy talked about how he would’ve stomped the crap out of Sideburns if he hadn’t pulled that switchblade. I didn’t mention that Sideburns had about a thirteen-inch and hundred-pound advantage. I was more interested in how he knew who I was and where to find me.
“He probably just wants the reward for himself,” Randy guessed.
“But how would he know about me?”
“Hey, it’s not like you aren’t writing about the case in the school paper, you know. Maybe he’s buddies with someone at our high school or something.”
“Yeah, maybe.” I doubted it was that simple, though.
At home, I didn’t have a chance to creep up the stairs to the privacy of my bedroom. My parents were all about wanting to interrogate me over how the first big date went.
“Not good,” I told them, trying to head off any further barrage of questions.
“Aw, what happened?” Mom asked, her voice changing to a syrupy sympathetic tone like I was a five-year-old coming home with a bee sting.
“Nothing,” I said. “I just don’t think we’re compatible.”
“You can’t always tell on a first date,” Dad said. He was going for the buck-up-there-little-fellow strategy he probably used on his grade school students. “Sometimes things can turn out a lot different on a second date.”
“I don’t think so,” I said, heading for the stairs. “There won’t be any more dates like the one I had tonight.”
CHAPTER 28
Here’s the weird thing—with that knife blade shining about an inch from my face, I was scared, sure, but I didn’t really think Sideburns could actually kill me. After all, I can’t count the times the Andromeda Man had knives or guns or even, one time, a medieval sword flashed at him, and he’d always get out of it. I mean, he’s the Andromeda Man. The whole show was named after him. He couldn’t get killed. But later that night it hit me hard—I’m not the Andromeda Man.
It would’ve been pretty easy to give up on Ashton, but curiosity is a weird thing—it’s hard to just turn off, especially feeling the way I did about her. A bunch of ideas whirled in my head, but mainly I kept coming back to the question of why Sideburns wanted me to give up. Maybe Randy was right. Maybe Sideburns was after the reward for himself. A hundred thousand dollars could make a guy itchy with a switchblade all right. But, to me, he seemed more likely to be a thug for hire. But who would hire him? Mr. Browning? Rowan Adams?
Or maybe even Beto Hernandez. That could’ve been why he’d tried to call me. Maybe he was trying to find out when I’d be back in Topper’s parking lot so he could make sure Sideburns would be there waiting.
I couldn’t exactly call Beto back and ask him about it, though. That would be a dead giveaway that I was still digging into the Ashton thing, and I sure didn’t want to give Sideburns an excuse to come back around to make sure I started breathing through a hole in my face.
I still hadn’t figured out what I was going to do, when I got a text message from Audrey. Apparently, her date with Trix was finally over. She said I’d never believe what happened. I texted her back and told her she’d never believe what happened to me more.
We didn’t fill each other in on the details until the next day, when we could get together and talk face to face. We sat on the patio at McDonald’s, where a lot of us from our high school hung out at lunch. I got two Quarter Pounders. I never, ever get a Big Mac. I don’t know what’s in that special sauce, but I suspect it’s mayonnaise-based. Audrey offered to let me tell my story first, but I told her to go ahead. I was pretty sure whatever her story was it couldn’t beat mine.
She’s like, “Okay, so we go to the movie—Georgia’s Roses—which is like this cool indie film about these two women who go into hiding from one of them’s despicable husband.”
“Who drove?”
“She did.”
“That’s interesting.”
“Why is that interesting?”
“I don’t know. I’m just interested in how the lesbian thing works.”
“What? Are you trying to figure out who is supposed to be the girl in the relationship and who is supposed to be the boy?”
“Something like that.”
“That’s just like a guy. You have to think one of us is trying to be like you. But we’re not. There’s no one’s the girl and the other’s the boy. We’re both girls. No boys involved at all. None.”
“Okay, okay—I got it. You don’t have to act like it’s such a stupid question.”
“Anyway,” she says, all exasperated, “the movie is like so good, and we’re sharing popcorn out of the same bucket, and then I put my arm on the armrest, only hers is already there—and neither one of us moves our arms. We’re just sitting there watching this amazing movie with our arms touching the whole time.”
“Congratulations,” I said, though I couldn’t see what the big deal was. Plenty of times I’d shared an armrest with Audrey at the movies over the years.
So then she started going on about how they went for coffee after the movie and talked and talked and were finishing each other’s sentences because they thought so much alike. At this point, I didn’t think it was that big a deal, but I kept listening and nodding because that’s what you have to do when you have a friend who’s a girl.