Free A Hole in Juan by Gillian Roberts Page B

and Mackenzie carried plates to the sink. I heard a soft plop and looked up to see Macavity resettled atop the TV, hoping, perhaps, that the end-of-dinner sounds meant someone would turn the tube on and once again provide him with his heating pad.
    Nobody was looking his way except me. I noticed that this time his tail was curled around himself and not dangling over the blank screen.
    GILLIAN ROBERTS
    64
    Pip’s observation returned to me. The cat dangled his tail when he wanted to simply because he could. A test and chemicals and pipettes and a roll book could be missing to present the same message: I can do this if I want to.
    Maybe it was all about demonstrating power.
    Pip turned from the sink. “I’ve got the best idea,” he said, his eyebrows raised. That plus his hair, spiked unnaturally, made him look as if he’d been electrocuted.
    We waited.
    “Let me work undercover at your school, and I’ll find out who’s doing what. They won’t suspect me. I’m a kid like them.”
    We looked at him in silence. Aside from the legal ramifications, I envisioned Pip wiggling into school, thinking he’d be un-noticed. The skinny country boy from Iowa who, despite trying overly hard to look citified, all but still had hayseeds in his hair spikes. “Interesting idea,” I finally said. “But I thought you said you hated school.”
    “Not if I was working it.”
    “Wouldn’t you have to do schoolwork? Don’t you think people would get suspicious of a newbie slinking around the halls, peeping and listening?”
    “I wouldn’t do that! I’d be cool—inconspicuous.”
    “You’re a junior—or would be, if you’d stayed in school,”
    Mackenzie said softly. “We’re talkin’ seniors. You’d be in a different class, a whole year behind. You know how it is, don’t you?
    They’d barely speak to you.”
    He looked stricken.
    Good. Let him realize he was too young and unequipped to be loose in the world or to qualify for any of his fantasized professions. Let him mull the ramifications of deciding to go out on his own at age sixteen. Meanwhile, I changed the topic. “You know that party on Friday? I asked about it today.” I suddenly remembered the confusion my question produced in Nita and Allie, and Reyes’s overheard comment that “some people aren’t 65
    A HOLE IN JUAN
    welcome.” They couldn’t mean Pip. “If you want to spy then, pick up on whatever you can, that’d be fine.”
    His brow furrowed, trying to decide whether this would be a worthy or humiliating opportunity.
    “Your uncle and I might be there,” I added.
    His frown deepened. “Do I need a costume?”
    “It’s optional.”
    “We’re going disguised as chaperones,” Mackenzie said.
    “Amanda’s wearing a drab suit with a long drab skirt—brown, I think it has to be—and funny shoes and her hair pulled back in a knot, and I—”
    “A suit. Kind of Clark Kent, right?” Pip said. “No offense—
    I think your idea . . . it isn’t good. You’ll both just look . . . well, as if you aren’t in costume, you’re just—”
    “Stupid chaperones,” Mackenzie said. “Out-of-it old people.
    Yes, that is the point.”
    The phone rang. I was already standing, so I answered it.
    Silence.
    “Hello?” I said again. “Hello?”
    A throat clearing.
    “I’m hanging up,” I said.
    “Miss . . . Pepper? I . . .” The voice, thin and squeaky, grew ever more attenuated until I couldn’t tell whether he—she?—was still trying to speak or not.
    “Are you there? I can’t hear you. What is it? Who is it?”
    “I . . . Please, I’m sorry, I . . .” And in the background, somebody shouting something like “Do it!” and then another voice, lower, more adult, but unintelligible.
    And then click and silence.
    “Who was that?” Mackenzie asked.
    “I have no idea. We should have gotten caller ID. No, that’s wrong—it was a student. Somebody who would call me Miss Pepper. And who was upset—and apologetic. Sorry about something.