Free Sammy Keyes and the Art of Deception by Wendelin Van Draanen

to think he was truly remorseful, he calls here and informs me that he's managed to get you an interview at two o'clock tomorrow with the queen herself.”
    “Who?”
    “Diane Reijden!”
    “He … he did?”
    “He says you need it for some art paper.” Her eyes come zooming in on me. “Is that true?”
    “Well, yeah …”
    “But does it have to be an interview with a famous artist? No teacher could possibly assign that, right?”
    “She's not famous, is she?”
    “According to Hudson she is! Or will be, soon enough.” “Well, whatever. It just has to be an artist. Miss Kuzkowski didn't say what, you know,
caliber.
”
    She throws her head back. “Ha! Just as I suspected.”
    “But Grams, interviewing a good artist is way better than interviewing a rotten one. I actually tried that at the Renaissance Faire today and got a whole lot of nowhere. Hudson's just doing me a favor.”
    Her nostrils flare and she says, “You, child, don't understand men.” She crosses her arms again and mutters, “He almost had me convinced that he was impressed with her art, not her, and then he goes and stirs the stew with a rat tail!”
    “A rat tail? Grams, that's gross!”
    “Don't you see? He contacted her
after
he sweet-talked me, and then had the nerve to send me flowers.” She kind of burrows into herself, scrunching into a little ball of arms and shoulders. “My original impression of Hudson Graham was right—the man's an insufferable flirt.”
    I sat beside her for a few minutes, just thinking. And finally I said real quiet-like, “Are you upset because you like Hudson more than you want to admit? Or is it because Diane Reijden's a … you know … younger woman?”
    Grams looks at me for a minute. Then she takes off her glasses, holds them up to the light, and huffs and buffs them until I swear she's going to polish right through the lenses. Finally she pops them back on her nose and says, “Are you implying I might be sensitive about this because …”
    Her voice just trails off, so I look her square in the eye and nod. “Because of Gramps.” She looks down, so I touch her arm and say, “Grams, I know about the Biker Babe.”
    Her mouth scrunches up, down, then all around. Then she straightens her skirt and says, “This has nothing to do with that.”
    “But Grams—”
    “Your grandfather was going through a midlife crisis. It's very typical for a man that age to … to … to develop a wandering eye. But Hudson Graham is well beyond midlife! Besides, Diane Reijden is not really a ‘younger woman.' She's fifty if she's a day!”
    “But still, you're sixty—”
    “Don't remind me! It's not something I want to hear right now, okay?” And with that she got up and said, “You can fix your own supper, can't you? I need to go lie down,” and shut herself in her room.
    So after sitting by myself for a few minutes, I got up and yeah, I fixed myself supper—about ten bowls of cereal with buckets of sugar and milk.
    But the more I shoveled, the more I couldn't stop thinking about Grams and the story I'd overheard about my grandfather leaving her for a bimbo at the HarleyDavidson shop. All Mom or Grams had ever actually
told
me was that he'd died in a motorcycle accident shortly before I was born, but after I caught whiff of the Biker Babe—or the “Harley Hussy,” as Grams once called her—well, things like why Grams didn't have any pictures of my grandfather around and why she never really had much to
say
about him started making sense.
    So I sat there, stuffing myself full of oats and corn and other nutritious grains, thinking. And when I was finally full, I cleaned everything up and headed for the couch. And even though I did read a little and watch some TV with my cat Dorito, after a while I just shut out the light.
    And as I lay there on the couch, wrapped in my afghan and the sweet smell of fresh cut flowers, I couldn't help wondering. About my grandfather. About my father. About my mother and my