Free Son of the Mob by Gordon Korman

pretty sure a lot of vending-machine business goes on. “What’s the problem? Why aren’t you in school?”
    I laugh. “You’re Tommy’s baby-sitter, not mine.”
    He turns pale. “Not so loud! People got big ears. If that gets back to your brother, there’s going to be pain to go around.” He pulls up a bar stool. “Why are you ditching class?”
    I say stuff to Ray that I wouldn’t even tell my own mother. “Head lice. It’s a twenty-four-hour pass. Listen, Ray, I need a big favor. Can you get me a cell phone that’s untraceable to me?”
    â€œUntraceable?” He’s instantly alert. “If you’re dealing drugs—”
    â€œYou know me better than that,” I retort. “There’s this girl, Ray—at least I think there is. I want to be able to talk to her without the FBI listening in.”
    Notice how I don’t bore him with the details of who she is, and more important, who her father is. That’s on a need-to-know basis, and nobody needs to know. I wish I didn’t.
    Ray nods understandingly. “I can probably come up with something.”
    â€œToday?”
    â€œRelax, Romeo.” He grins. “I just want to make sure you know what you’re getting into. This is a cloned phone. It’s illegal, right?”
    â€œI’ll pay for it,” I insist. “I just don’t want it to be bugged. If I went to the store and set up a real account, the FBI would be listening in by the end of the week.”
    Ray laughs. “You can’t pay for it, dummy. What, you’re going to send AT&T thirty bucks a month anonymously for a phone they don’t even know exists?”
    Good point. But I’m not really sweating the small stuff. Kendra has assumed a place in my brain where logic has no sway. “I still need it,” I insist.
    â€œIt’s yours,” he assures me. “So long as you know what you’re doing. You’re the one who’s always moaning and groaning about staying out of your father’s business. This is part of it. This girl must really be something special.”
    I shrug helplessly. “I don’t know. I’ve got nothing to compare it to. Maybe it’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.”
    â€œDoes she know who you are?”
    I shudder. “God, no!”
    He reaches out and ruffles my deloused hair. “You’ve got the right to be seventeen. Listen, your mind must be working a mile a minute right now. Just try to relax and enjoy it. It’s never going to be this new again.”
    Ray’s the best. He promises to drop by with the phone tonight.
    As I leave the Silver Slipper, it occurs to me that seventeen years living under Anthony Luca’s roof couldn’t make a criminal out of me. That took half an hour in Kendra Bightly’s basement.
    On the way home, I swing by the grocery store and buy thirty dollars’ worth of canned goods and cereals, which I take over to the food bank at St. Bartholomew. Call it a donation of my monthly cell phone fee from the Good Samaritans at AT&T.

 
    CHAPTER EIGHT
    K ENDRA AND I continue to see each other—if see is the right word. I take her to dark movie theaters; we spend our afternoons in the gloom of her basement, and evenings crammed into my parked Mazda. If Jimmy Rat thinks the trunk is too small, he should try to maneuver in the backseat.
    We see each other in daylight too, but that’s mostly at school, with Alex hanging around. Which is becoming a bit of a problem because he really, truly hates her.
    It’s nothing against Kendra. He would hate anyone in her position right now. I’m coming to see that all that blather about living his love life through me is exactly that, blather. He’s just plain jealous, and I’d tell him so if it wasn’t for the fact that I genuinely feel bad for the guy. He’s languishing on the bench of that