Tempestuous Read online

  “Well….” I said with a protracted pause. “You really think you’d be up to it?”

  “Oh, I am! I am, I am!”

  “Well then!” I clapped my hands together in delight, yanking Caleb’s right hand along in the process. I could sense him trying to ignore me. “Who says we have to wait for them to pay us another visit? Come with me.” I jerked my handcuffed arm and sent Caleb practically toppling off the counter he was sitting on. “Let’s check out the mall directory to strategize and make sure this is going to work.”

  “Whoa—hold up now, hot dog girl,” Caleb said. (I didn’t.) “What are you up to? We’re a ‘we’ now—not a ‘you.’ You can’t just treat me like I’m the back end of a horse costume on Halloween. I get a vote here.”

  “This isn’t a democracy!” I shouted back at him, yanking at his wrist as he stumbled to keep up. “You told me to leave you out of it, and I’m leaving you out of it. So just shut up, and keep up.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Make Yourself Ready … For the Mischance of the Hour

  Like a pair of witless zombies, Caleb and I lurched down the mall corridor until we finally synchronized our pace. Ariel flitted and skipped alongside us, über-eager to defend my honor. Part of me wondered how much of her enthusiasm was really just about getting the opportunity to be a belated participant in the high school sphere she had idealized from afar. My own petty, cliquish drama seemed a fascinating novelty to her, as impassioned and eyebrow-raising as a soap opera, minus the bad acting. I could see how an outsider might deem it all a welcome distraction from some of the more existential ponderings of adolescence: Doozies such as figuring out what you were supposed to do with your life, or weighing the likelihood that anything learned in trigonometry class would actually prove useful someday. The typical teen could be driven slowly insane by his or her own insipid inner monologues. Is it any wonder that we so readily devoured the sensational play-by-play and lurid gossip of the relationships that formed and/or splintered around us? Celebrity tabloid headlines seemed tame by comparison.

  “Ow!” A painful pull on my arm yanked me back to the present.

  “Oh, what? Did I breathe wrong again? Look, we’re never going to be friends; that’s a given,” Caleb said, “but if we’re going to be shackled together for the foreseeable future, we might as well try to get along, at least until I can find something to bust open these cuffs.”

  “Caleb’s right,” said Ariel. “You two really need to kiss and make up already.”

  “Never,” I said, practically sputtering.

  “It was just an expression, Miranda. Jeez,” said my coworker.

  “I’m pretty sure Tim Burton couldn’t even think up this guy.” I glared at the offending creature, who scowled before answering in turn.

  “Some of the other kids may think you walk on water, her included.” He pointed his thumb in the direction of Ariel, my arm flapping helplessly along for the ride. “But I see right through you. You’re just a private school princess with an inflated ego. You can rule as demiurge over your little island of misfit toys, but you won’t stand a chance in the real world.”

  “Socially inept and bitter,” I said. “A winning combination you have there.”

  Looking over at Ariel, I saw that the expression on her face resembled that of a child told on Christmas morning that Santa hadn’t made it this year because he and Mrs. Claus were embroiled in a messy divorce. No matter what I thought about Caleb (or what he thought about me), it wasn’t worth raining on Ariel’s parade. If the little sylph wanted to have some fun at the expense of my mortal enemies, I wasn’t about to stand in her way. And if it proved cathartic for me in the process, well, what was the harm in that?

  “Alrighty then,” I said, turning to Caleb and holding out my free hand. “For the purposes of this evening’s entertainment, I’ll promise to be civil, if you will.”

  “Agreed,” he said, sounding almost human, for once. “Besides, I’m a huge Tim Burton fan. I took that as a compliment.” Of course he did.

  “Great!” Ariel said, instantly cheerful once again. “Let the games begin!”

  Just then Troy and Derek rounded the corner at full speed, nearly running into us, their arms loaded down with supplies.

  “Hey, what’s the big hurry?” Caleb wondered as they skidded to a halt.

  “It’s a full-on militia,” Derek said, panting. “The Eastern Prep kids have dug in and set up a perimeter with BB guns.”

  “Can they do that?” said Ariel.

  “Looks like they’re doing whatever they want,” answered Caleb, as Troy and Derek took their leave.

  The news that Brian’s posse had taken such ludicrously extreme—and potentially violent—measures to stake their so-called turf furthered my resolve to wreak a little havoc on them. They’d have to arm themselves with something more substantial than a BB gun to keep Miranda Prospero at bay. Their false bravado didn’t scare me. Given what I had up my sleeve, they were the ones who should be nervous, I thought.

  “Listen up,” I said. “It’s payback time.” I gave Caleb and Ariel a cursory outline of my planned course of action, which, if I do say so myself, had the potential for restoring my legendary status.

  “Wow,” said Ariel, when I’d finished my spiel. “You just came up with that?”

  “It’s what I do,” I said with what was probably a poor attempt at modesty. “Any questions?”

  “Yeah, I have one,” Caleb said. “You actually think these lame-brained plans are going to work?”

  “Miranda knows what she’s doing, Caleb. She’s a mastermind. You’ll see.”

  “This isn’t Unicorn Fantasy, Ariel,” he said.

  “It’s not like we have anything else to do,” I said.

  He sighed. “You do have a point there. Fine, I’ll go along with this, but only out of curiosity. And, well….” He glanced at our wrists, “because I’d have to gnaw my own arm off if I wanted to object.”

  “On the bright side, it couldn’t taste any worse than your options at the food court.” I noted a barely perceptible uptick in the corners of his mouth. Behold! The beast could smile! Speaking of beasts, I turned the corner and headed toward our first stop in this sojourn: the pet store.

  “But I still don’t understand,” Ariel said a few minutes later. “It just seems cruel.”

  “Don’t be such a softie. This is the same girl that started an anonymous group called ‘Chub Club’ and encouraged people to upload photos of any girls in our class who were perceived to be the least bit heavy. And let’s not forget how she treated you a few hours ago at your party.”

  “I didn’t mean cruel to Rachel,” my coworker said. “I’m totally on board with that. I just don’t understand why an itty bitty furball has to be exploited for the purpose.”

  “No animals will be harmed in the making of this poetic justice. It’s PETA-approved, I assure you.”

  Caleb scoffed, but I refrained from putting him in his place since we had just entered the pet shop and had business to attend to. The store mostly dealt in small critters—fish, hamsters, newts, and the like. The place had that slightly off odor, a mixture of aquarium chemicals and gerbil pellets. Past the register, a mynah bird named Myrtle eyed us suspiciously from her spacious cage.

  “Wassup!!!” she trilled. Poor bird. Who taught her to talk like a drunk frat boy?

  “Okay, Ariel,” I said, ignoring Myrtle and walking toward a glass pen near the back of the store. “That white one with the wonky ear is perfect. Can you hold it for me until we’re ready?”

  Ariel’s smile was so exuberant it looked poised to leap off her face.

  “Can I name it?”

  “Good lord.” I knew it would be fruitless to talk her out of it. “Just make it snappy.”

  “No, not Snappy. She doesn’t look like a Snappy. Awwww … hello, my sweet baby girl.” She lifted the bunny tenderly from its pen and kissed it gently on its nose. She pondered its frankly creepy pinkish eyes before tu
rning it upside down to cradle it in her arms like a baby. “Oh! Or should I say ‘baby boy!’ Well, now, you have an important mission, little guy, so you need a distinguished name. Nothing too obvious like Peter or Roger, but nothing too pretentious or hard to pronounce either, because—”

  “Hurry up, Ariel.”

  “A name is important, Miranda! You can’t rush me!”

  “Yes I can. We don’t have all night.”

  “Actually, we sort of do,” Caleb said.

  “Thank you, peanut gallery. Let’s just get a move on it.”

  “Oh gosh,” Ariel said, fretting. “I don’t do my best work under pressure, but let’s see … um, okay, how about Sebastian?”

  “Sebastian? As in Johan?”

  “No, as in The Little Mermaid.” She turned to Caleb. “He was Ariel’s sidekick, this funny little crab with a Jamaican accent. He almost gets boiled alive at one point and—”

  “Super. Great. Fantastic,” I said. “We now baptize thee Sebastian, blah-blah-blah,” I made the sign of the cross over the powder puff in Ariel’s arms. “Okay, the bunny’s in business. Oh my god, this plan is the kind of stuff Stephen King dreams up.”

  “Stephen who?” Ariel looked at me, confused.

  “You really think she reads horror novels?” Caleb chided me. “Don’t worry about it, Ariel. You just stick to the Disney stuff.”

  “Never mind, both of you,” I snapped. “We’ve got to figure out where Rachel is. She could be anywhere in the mall, though it’s a safe bet she’s still attached at the hip to Brian.”

  “You’re one to talk,” Caleb pointed out.

  Ariel wandered off with Sebastian, cooing something about finding him some rabbit treats. I noticed Myrtle bobbing her neck forward and backward and sidestepping along her perch.

  “Wassup! Wassup!” she chirped. Why did that sound so familiar?

  “Oh. My. God.” I instantly realized. “Brian was here.”

  “How do you know?” Caleb wondered.

  “Myrtle. I’ll explain later.” I inched up to the bird cage. Hopefully my powers of persuasion were as effective on birds as they were on humans.

  “Hi, pretty bird!”

  “Wassup! ” Uggh. I’d heard my fill of that phrase over the last two years.

  “Yes, wassup! They were in here tonight, weren’t they, you winged goddess?”

  “Wassup! ”

  “Where did the mean boy and his bitchy girlfriend go? Did they say? Can you tell me where, smart birdy?”

  Caleb tapped me on the shoulder with his free hand. “Um, excuse me? I wanna go on record here as saying this is getting a little worrisome.”

  “Not now,” I hissed. “I’m busy.”

  “As you were, then. Carry on.”

  “Heyyyy Myrtle, Wassup … wassup….” I said, trying to speak her language. “Did they say where they were going next?”

  Like the avian world’s very own Bird Whisperer, I stupidly spent the next several minutes trying to psychically connect with Myrtle, cajoling and pleading with her to enlighten me as to Rachel and Brian’s whereabouts. Just when I was about to acknowledge the inanity of my efforts and concede Caleb’s point, Ariel walked back from the front of the store, stroking Sebastian’s soft ears.

  “Sorry, Miranda. I know you’re busy with Myrtle, so I hate to interrupt, but just thought you’d want to know I spotted Rachel walking into Veronica’s Boudoir just now.”

  Caleb doubled over in laughter, forcing my left shoulder to dip involuntarily.

  “Okay, Ariel, thanks,” I said with a sigh, tempering my frustration at both my cohorts. “Tell Sebastian to get ready. It’s on.”

  • • •

  Veronica’s Boudoir was on the mall’s upper floor within close proximity to where the Eastern Preppies were bivouacked at this end of the building. That meant the payoff could be huge if my plan unfolded without a hitch. As we darted, unseen, from the pet shop toward the lingerie store, I quickly filled Ariel in on Rachel’s history.

  “She’s from Poughkeepsie, not Manhattan like she claims. Her mom married the black sheep brother of the heir to a cough drop fortune when Rachel was in middle school and that’s when they moved here. Her true roots are a bit more, well, rural.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Ariel confused. “How does that help us take her down a notch? And why do we need Sebastian?”

  “Just wait,” I said. “You’ll see.”

  I thought back to the weekend I’d accidentally happened upon Rachel’s inner demon, so to speak. She and the Itneys had conked out in front of the TV watching SNL. I couldn’t sleep, and since I typically read in lieu of counting sheep, I went up to Rachel’s room to grab Jane Eyre from my overnight bag. It wasn’t where I left it, so I checked the closet to see if her housekeeper, Rosie, had hung it up in there. I’d been in her bank-vault-sized walk-in closet plenty of times before when we tried on outfits for double dates or the first day of school. I ventured back to where Rachel kept all her designer purses, stored with the same loving care as the Met’s Egyptian collection. I couldn’t find my bag, but on a shelf in the corner underneath a stack of Vogues I noticed a fabric-covered binder. It was about four inches thick, trimmed in a surfeit of white eyelet and pink ribbon. Curious, I picked it up, expecting to see cute pictures of Rachel as a baby. Turned out it wasn’t a photo album but more of a scrapbook-journal hybrid put together by someone who couldn’t have been much older than twelve or thirteen. Common decency would have dictated that I put the book back where I’d found it, but since most of this “young Rachel’s” inner musings were surprisingly banal (names for her future children, celebrity crushes) I didn’t feel too guilty about reading on. Nevertheless, by the time I’d emerged from Rachel’s bedroom and snuggled back into my sleeping bag in the family room, I felt privy to a dark recess of her mind that I was certain she’d never meant to share with anyone.

  Peering around the entrance to the boutique like a three-headed monster, Caleb, Ariel, and I saw Rachel in back browsing the bras and lace teddies. Having ascertained that our target was still there, we retreated out of her direct line of sight for a quick powwow.

  “Okay, Ariel,” I whispered, grabbing the thankfully placid rabbit from her and securing it in the crook of my free elbow. “We’ll make sure Sebastian’s in the right place at the right time. All you need to do is go in the store and tell Rachel that Brian is freaking out downstairs at Teasers wondering where she is. Escort her to the elevator, and keep her distracted. Press the button for the ground floor, then once the doors start to close, hit the alarm button. You’ve got to jump back out as fast as you can.”

  Having handed Ariel her marching orders, I headed to the nearby glass elevator with Caleb in tow.

  “Sorry, genius, but pressing the alarm button isn’t going to trap her in the elevator,” he said.

  “Duh! What do you take me for, a sociopath? I’m not going to trap her anywhere.”

  “Okay then, would you care to spell it out? Because you lost me.”

  “Don’t I wish. Look, I’ll explain it all later. Let’s just get Little Bunny Foo-Foo in there. They should be heading this way any second.”

  I gently placed Sebastian on the corner of the elevator floor with a pile of Muesli-looking rabbit food to keep him from scampering out. Caleb and I hid out of view as the elevator closed in on him. My heart took five more pounding beats before Ariel and Rachel came walking at a fast shuffle around the corner.

  “But like, what was he saying?” Rachel said. “Did he seem pissed? I mean, I told him where I’d be! And, no offense, but seriously? I don’t need a nonentity like you getting involved.”

  “I just think you’d better go talk to him, ASAP,” said Ariel, ignoring the blatant insult. When the elevator door opened, both girls stepped in, but not a half second later, my diminutive pal flitted back through the closing doors as the elevator’s screeching alarm bell began to sound. Rachel’s bloodcurdling scream soon chimed in. A masterstroke, if I do sa
y so myself.

  I’d discovered the unusual chink in Rachel’s armor about halfway through my perusal of the doily-covered chronicle she’d stashed in her closet. She’d written passionate entries about her involvement with the 4-H club breeding and raising rabbits. (Embarrassing, right? But I digress.) One section of the binder served as a shrine-like documentation of her zealous commitment to her “beauties.” I scanned through pictures of a chubby-cheeked, knobby-kneed Rachel posing proudly in front of her outdoor rabbit hutch, cradling baby rabbits as if she herself had carried them in her womb for nine months. Blue ribbons from county fairs were Scotch-taped alongside crude line graphs of the creatures’ ages and weights written in Crayola markers. I could tell from the photos and her overuse of smiley faces and exclamation points, that her favorite rabbit was a pure white roly-poly guy she called Fritz. Clearly this had been no mere passing fancy but a hardcore obsession for Rachel. All of it was certainly understandable behavior from a prepubescent girl; quite sweet, really. But like Charlotte’s Web minus the feel-good heroics of a literate arachnid, Rachel had to face the morbidly pragmatic reality: Most rabbits bred in captivity are not intended to live happily ever after. I didn’t have to picture Rachel bawling her eyes out saying goodbye to a caged Fritz and friends the day they were sent off to, well, I shudder to think where. Her journal had elaborated on the heartrending scene in great detail.

  And here’s where things got weird. As the journal continued, Rachel began making fairly frequent references to nightmares involving Fritz. In the dreams, he started off looking docile and sweet as she’d known him, but he’d eventually manifest ferocious, razor-sharp teeth and an insatiable bloodlust. She’d wake in a cold sweat, and confided in her diary that she’d felt certain Fritz was haunting her as punishment for sending him to his dismal fate.

  From an appreciable distance, Ariel, Caleb, and I watched Rachel make her screaming descent in the glass elevator. Midway between the upper and lower floors, the transparent box came to a sudden halt. Rachel was hysterically pushing buttons on the elevator panel, banging frantically on the buttons, doors, and glass window panes.