Be Strong & Curvaceous Read online

  911 OPERATOR: Can you hold the line a moment, ma’am?

  ARAGON: Sure. But I’m down to two bars, so I can’t hold for long.

  911 OPERATOR: Stand by, please.

  U/M: SFPD Communications, Sergeant Lombard.

  911 OPERATOR: SFPD, this is 9-1-1. Do you have an incident at 1721 Bautista Court? An explosion connected with a suspected kidnapping?

  LOMBARD: Affirmative. FBI, ambulance, and fire also at the scene. Not to mention some guy from the British Embassy. It’s ugly. Possible multiple fatalities.

  911 OPERATOR: Please relay a message to the first responders. Lady Lindsay MacPhail is safe. Repeat, she is safe and in the company of unknown persons, apparently on her way back to school.

  LOMBARD: Unknown persons?

  911 OPERATOR: Students, from the sound of it.

  LOMBARD: Confirmed. Will advise.

  911 OPERATOR: Ms. Aragon?

  ARAGON: I’m here.

  911 OPERATOR: Your message has been relayed.

  ARAGON: Oh, thank you. Thanks a lot.

  911 OPERATOR: Do you need assistance? Can I do anything else for you?

  ARAGON: [Pause.] You could try explaining this to my headmistress.

  END 23:28:19 2009-MAY-02

  Chapter 20

  IN OUR ABSENCE, Spencer Academy had been evacuated.

  Not that this was as complicated as it could have been, since it was Saturday night. The day students were at home, tucked in their beds (okay, so that’s a little optimistic), and the usual crowd of boarding students had taken off to go surfing at Santa Cruz or rock-climbing at Yosemite for the weekend.

  The rest of the student body, which numbered nearly two hundred, had been sent downtown in limos to rough it at the Four Seasons. All, that is, except Shani, Lissa, Gillian, Mac, Brett, and me, who had been loaded into three police cruisers and taken to Brett’s parents’ place, presumably for safekeeping.

  This must be the apocalypse.

  That’s the only explanation I had for a night that, aside from the kidnapping and explosions, had included The Kiss, three rides in the Camaro, and a sleep under the same roof as Brett. Frankly, if the world was really coming to an end, I was good with it. It just wasn’t gonna get any better than this.

  Brett’s parents waited for us at the door of their three-story renovated Edwardian with its bazillion-dollar view of San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge, lit up even at this time of night. The cop who seemed to be in charge flashed his ID and made sure we were safely inside before he spoke.

  “Sergeant Mason. We’ll need to interview the kids in the morning, Mrs. Loyola. We’ll be back around ten. Is that all right?”

  She took one look at our wan but totally wired expressions and said, “Better make it noon. I’ll make pancakes and frittata for everyone, including you and your officers, Sergeant.”

  “That’s very kind of you, ma’am, but it isn’t necessary.”

  “I’m feeding everyone anyway, so you’re most welcome. We’ll see you tomorrow.”

  She shepherded us inside and gave us very momlike hugs as she divided us up into the various bedrooms on the top two floors. There were a lot of them. There were also silk draperies imported from Italy, terra-cotta pots filled with orchids and trailing vines, cool tiles underfoot, and—ohmigosh, was that a real Monet hanging there in the drawing room?

  Suffering from a combination of sensory overload and adrenaline high, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to sleep. The room Brett’s mother showed me into was somewhere on the second floor, but I couldn’t see anything through its windows. Maybe it faced into the hillside. Fine with me. I’d had enough of feeling exposed to last me the rest of my life.

  I got into my tank and pajama bottoms, which I’d stuffed into a tote during the ten minutes they’d given us to get up to our dorm rooms and pack an overnight bag. I was just climbing into bed when there was a tap at the door.

  “You’re not seriously going to bed,” Shani whispered when I opened it. “Come on. You and Mac gotta give us the scoop.”

  I followed her down the corridor and up a flight of stairs to a big bedroom with two double beds in it, done up in a pretty English chintz. Draped all over the beds were my friends—minus Brett, of course. I wondered which room was his—and if I’d see him in the morning.

  “She was in bed,” Shani reported, making herself comfortable in the matching easy chair and tucking her feet up under her. “With all of us up here dying to know what happened.”

  “All right, spill,” Gillian told me, lounging on the other bed next to Lissa. I sat at the bottom of Mac’s, where she was leaning on pillows piled against the wrought-iron headboard, the covers pulled right up to her chin. “Start from the moment Lissa and I left to go get Security.”

  Thinking back past The Kiss and the explosion—what had happened to that old guy in the robe?—seemed like going back into ancient history. Like I’d passed some kind of major milestone and now there was Before and After.

  I looked at Mac. “Sure you don’t want to do this? You’re the one it actually happened to.”

  “You do the first bit,” she said. “And Shani can tell us how she got Ms. Curzon back here. Maybe by then I’ll have my head round it all.”

  So. Before.

  “Well, once you guys left, Mac felt it was too risky to not go meet David. We had no idea whether he’d really stand by what he said and blow something up if she didn’t show. And of course I wouldn’t let her go by herself, so she took a cab to town and I, well, I missed the bus.”

  Moments too late, I realized I should have glossed over this part. But then, everyone knew how we’d gotten back to school. There was no keeping Brett out of the story.

  “Did you?” Mac said. “Then how did—”

  “Brett saw me and gave me a ride.”

  “Aha,” Lissa said with satisfaction. “Now it all makes sense.”

  “I’d like to know how we got from giving Carly a ride to all of us being invited to stay at his house like the best buds we are,” Shani added. Sarcastic much? “Seems to me there’s something really interesting missing out of the middle.” Eyebrows raised in two delicately plucked arches, she gave me an expectant look.

  “That has nothing to do with what happened to Mac,” I said, and they started to laugh. But since I was trying to keep a straight face, too, it was the good kind of laughter. The kind that feels best when you share it.

  “So we got down to the Cow Hollow Café and Brett dropped me off at Piccadilly Photo.”

  “Where?” Lissa said. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  I realized that, except for Mac, none of them knew. Wow. Only a day or two ago, keeping my secret had meant everything. Now it was just another footnote in the story. “That’s where I work. I told Brett I needed to pick up my check, which was a total lie, and once he left, I asked my boss for help.”

  “Where you work,” Shani repeated.

  “You work?” Gillian echoed. “As in, you have a job?”

  “Where do you think she got those photographs?” Mac asked them. “Off the Net?”

  “Something like that,” Gillian said. “And here, all this time, we thought you were having a secret, torrid affair with someone. It never crossed our minds you had a job.”

  “Sad but true. So what happened was—”

  “I think she might be now,” Shani inserted slyly. “Having a torrid affair, I mean.”

  “What happened was, I developed the pictures myself.” She was implying a question I totally didn’t know the answer to. “That’s what triggered this whole thing. I saw the bombs and stuff, and even though I thought I was wrong or overreacting or crazy, I made an extra set of photos. So when Mac showed me the JPEG attached to the e-mail David sent, I realized her stalker and the guy with the bombs were one and the same person.” They glanced at each other, and I took the opportunity to move on. “So, anyway, Mac called my cell secretly when David showed up, so Philip and I could listen in on what th
ey were saying. The problem is, my stupid cell lost the signal, so when they left I had no idea where they went.”

  “Back to his house,” Mac said. “Thanks a lot—I thought you were following me the whole time. I’m glad I didn’t know you weren’t. I’d have been even more terrified.”

  “We did, eventually,” Gillian said. “Carly had the brilliant idea for me to check the phone number on the envelope on four-one-one-dot-com.”

  “Except it was registered to some guy name Clyde. We were kind of running blind there. It could have been a frat house or a fake,” I said.

  Mac shook her head. “David didn’t have a phone. That poor old fossil downstairs took his messages for him.”

  “Criminals can be so dumb.” Lissa shook her head. “Who takes pictures of bombs, anyway? And then takes them to a photo shop to be developed? Hasn’t he heard of digital cameras?”

  “And then wouldn’t you put a fake number on your film envelope, anyway?” Gillian wanted to know.

  “I’m glad he didn’t,” Mac pointed out dryly.

  Shani took up the story. “By that time, I’d gotten back with Ms. Curzon, after totally interrupting her dinner with the board members and causing a teensy little scene in the restaurant.” She hugged her knees, smug satisfaction written all over her. I’d have bought a ticket to watch that. “It took about six seconds for her to fire her assistant once she got back.”

  “I should hope so,” Mac said. “Idiot.”

  “I’ve never seen Curzon like that,” Lissa said, her eyes going round at the memory. “She was like a human hurricane. She tore into the security guy, ripped a bunch of skin off him, and the whole department all scattered with copies of David’s map to search the grounds. Then she found out you guys were gone.” Lissa shook a hand as if she’d burned it. “Man. She was crazed. Livid. Molten.”

  “At which point the cops arrived to take the brunt of it,” Gillian went on. “And then the FBI got involved because it was a kidnap case, and they called the British Embassy because apparently Mac is a VIP.”

  “Rubbish,” Mac said with a snort, lady that she is.

  “Not according to the feds. Curzon had some kind of security agreement to protect you, except that somehow you gave them the slip.”

  “The rain tunnel,” I said, looking at Shani. “Thanks for that.”

  “Any time,” she said. “Glad to help.”

  “Meantime, after Gillian got me the address, I took a cab over there and Brett found me. Again.”

  “What, have you got a stalker now, too?” Lissa wanted to know. “This is the part where we get the details, girlfriend.”

  “We snuck into the backyard and hid behind some big pots and decided that Brett would make a distraction out front while I climbed up and got Mac out of the room she was in. It was obvious she couldn’t do it on her own.”

  “Tied up hand and foot,” Mac added. “Took a bit of doing, getting out of it.”

  “But how did he tie you up in the first place?” Lissa wanted to know. “Don’t get me wrong, but I can’t imagine you doing anything you didn’t want to.”

  “Thank you.” Mac smiled at Lissa, and for the first time, the light was right and I noticed the bruise darkening the skin at her temple.

  “Oh, Mac, he hit you,” I breathed. “You should have told the EMT guy.”

  She shook her head. “I’ve had enough fussing, thank you. Anyway, that part came later, when David finally got that I didn’t want to be his sister, didn’t want a lovely family reunion at Strathcairn, didn’t want to see him ever again in my life. In fact, I think I told him I’d prefer it if he were dead.” She frowned. “Possibly not the smartest thing to say, because really, the poor boy was pathetic. Anyway, at that point he swung at me and I didn’t get out of the way fast enough.”

  Lissa covered her mouth in horror and I reached over to give Mac’s foot a supportive squeeze through the covers. To my surprise, she didn’t jerk it away. Instead, she smiled at me. It had to be a record for her—three smiles in a row. Real ones.

  “While he taped my hands together, he oh-so-kindly told me about the bomb he’d made that was just for the two of us,” she went on. “Somehow I think that even if I’d agreed to the slow-motion reunion between father and children in a sunlit meadow, he’d have still done what he did. At that point, that poor dear Clyde man creaked up and told David there was someone at the door and would he help him.” She glanced at me. “As soon as he was out of the room, I heard rocks hitting the window. Carly got me out, we did a Spider-Man impression going down the side of the veranda, and next thing I knew, I was being tossed headfirst into Brett Loyola’s incredibly noisy car.” She laughed. “And the funny thing was, the whole night was so surreal that his turning up seemed quite normal.”

  “I still want to get to the interesting part between him showing up and him inviting us all to refugee at his house,” Shani put in. “Carly, you’re leaving something out.”

  Hot blood crept into my cheeks. “I am not. That’s exactly what happened.”

  “Come on, Carly,” Gillian said. “True confessions.”

  “Leave her alone, you lot.” Mac took in the color of my face. “A woman’s entitled to her secrets.”

  “Not this woman. Not the kind of secrets she’s been keeping from us all term,” Shani retorted. “A job, for heaven’s sake. Showing up in the middle of the night with one of the most popular guys in school. Next you’ll be telling us you landed a guest spot on VH1.”

  “No, but I might get a summer job with Tori Wu.”

  Gillian shrieked and Lissa clapped her hands and pandemonium broke out just long enough for me to hope that they’d all forgotten Shani’s question.

  But no.

  “Congratulations, Carly,” Shani said. “But I notice you cleverly did not tell us what we want to know.”

  I gave up. They’d nag until dawn unless I told. “While we were coming up with the plan in the backyard, Brett kissed me. Is that what you want to know? Are you happy now?”

  “Kissed you?” Shani leaned forward. “A real kiss? Or an ohmigosh-we’re-going-to-die-good-bye kiss on the cheek?”

  “A real kiss. Full frontal. On the lips.”

  More pandemonium. I swear, at this rate Mrs. Loyola would be calling the cops and begging them to take us down to the station.

  “So are you guys, like, official?” Lissa wanted to know. “A couple?”

  “How could they not be, after this?” Mac asked. “Facing danger, rescuing the damsel, the whole lot. It’s destiny.”

  “It is not, you guys,” I mumbled. “It was the heat of the moment. He was just being gallant.”

  Now Shani snorted through her nose. Such elegance my friends have. “Gallant is holding open the gym door so it doesn’t smack you in the face. Cruising up just in time so you don’t have to rescue your friend from the insane psycho by yourself is lo-o-o-ve.”

  “He really followed you over there?” Gillian wanted to know.

  I nodded. “He saw me in the cab, right after Ms. Curzon ordered me back to the school. He thought it was weird or that I was in trouble or something. I don’t care. I’m just glad.”

  “I think there was more to it than that,” Gillian said thoughtfully.

  “Don’t say the L word,” I begged her. “That’s not true, and besides, it’s embarrassing.”

  “It was the L word.” Gillian smiled at me. “L for ‘Lord.’ ”

  Lissa nodded slowly. “She’s right. Don’t you see? God was in on it from the beginning.”

  “Oh, come on.” Mac’s voice would have been rough with scorn if she hadn’t been so tired and riding the same adrenaline crash I was. “That’s a bit presumptuous, don’t you think?”

  “No.” Gillian looked over at me. “God is all wrapped up in the smallest details of our lives. You prayed for help, didn’t you.” It was a statement, not a question.

  I nodded. “Like crazy. I prayed for protection for Mac and courage for myself. Repeatedly.�
�

  “And I’d say those were both answered, wouldn’t you?” Gillian’s face had relaxed into happiness and a kind of awe.

  “I don’t buy it,” Mac said flatly. “You lot are reading too much into it.”

  “You know that’s not true, Mac.” The more I thought about it, the more amazing the whole night became. “I mean, I’m not exactly the Spider-Man type, am I? No hero. Just a Latina scholarship kid with a part-time job to finance some fabric for a dress. And there I was, shimmying up that veranda to get you out of that house as if I did spy operations for a living.”

  “Wait. Whoa.” Gillian held up a hand. “That’s why you have a job? You’re here on a scholarship?”

  I nodded. The last of my secrets, thrown out there in the open for my friends to see. It just seemed right to tell them everything, to get it all out, so I could leave Before behind and move on to After. “My father can’t afford the tuition to Spencer. I got a full ride. And no one could pay for the fabric for the dress I want to make for Design Your Dreams, so I decided I would. People can laugh if they want.” I shrugged. “I’m kinda beyond that now.”

  “Why the secret, though?” Gillian wanted to know. “I’m on a scholarship myself.”

  “Yeah, but yours isn’t to fill the minority quota. And you can afford to buy whatever you want,” I pointed out.

  “Nobody’s laughing,” Lissa said. “Why should they?”

  “Vanessa would. And I thought Brett would. So that’s why I kept it quiet all this time. Because I wanted them to see me as equal to them. Not—not as a fruit picker’s grandkid.”

  “I don’t think you have to worry about Brett,” Shani said, eyebrows waggling. “That boy don’t care whose grandkid you are.”

  “And besides, it totally fits,” Lissa said. “If you hadn’t gotten that job, you wouldn’t have developed the pictures. And we probably wouldn’t have known a thing until Mac disappeared and the school went up in smoke. So, see? That scholarship isn’t anything to be ashamed of. It was all part of a bigger picture.”