Free Sammy Keyes and the Hotel Thief by Wendelin Van Draanen Page B

full of teddy bears, and her very own bathroom. Marissa’s bathroom is always a mess. The sink has toothpaste in it, the floor’s covered with dirty clothes, and there’s not a glass figurine in sight. It’s the best room in the house.
    The minute we close the door, Marissa flops down on the bed, hugs a pillow, and sighs. I flop down on the other bed and say, “What’s the matter?”
    All of a sudden Marissa’s crying. “Why can’t we go with them? We never get to go anywhere together! It’s not like they’re actually going to relax up at the lake—they’ve got two phone lines and a computer up there! And it’s not like I’d be in the way or anything.”
    So I say, “Maybe they—” but before I can get it out, Marissa lets out this scream. I jump up. “What? What?”
    She points to the ceiling, all bug-eyed, and whispers, “What is that?”
    I look at the ceiling and what do I see? Nothing. “What’s what?”
    She points again. “That!”
    I stand on her bed and take a close look at where she’s pointing, and sure enough, there it is: the teeny-tiniest spider on earth. I look at Marissa and laugh. “How did you even
see
it?”
    Well, she’s not laughing. Not one bit. “Is it a spider?” All of a sudden it drops and she screams and holds her face just like in an old black-and-white movie.
    I reach up and slap the spider between my hands and when I open them up, there’s barely even a smudge on my palm.
    I go rinse my hands off while Marissa tries to recover from the heart attack she gave herself. When I get back she says, “They are so creepy!”
    â€œIt was microscopic!”
    She shivers. “Little spiders grow into big spiders.” She plops back down on the bed and sighs, and a second later she’s forgotten all about the spider. “All I really want is for them to be home once in a while. I’m so tired of frozen dinners and Pop-Tarts. They always tell me I’ve got to be home for dinner, and then they don’t show up until eight o’clock or something. I can’t believe how lucky you are.”
    I shake a finger in my ear like I need my hearing checked. I mean, here she is in her very own bedroom with her very own bathroom on one of her two beds in a gigantic house she shares with both parents, calling
me
lucky. Marissa’s never had to worry about which way to sneak into the house or how to pay for some little thing she decides she wants at the mall. Never.
    So I say, “Lucky? Me?”
    â€œYeah, you. Your grandmother’s
always
home. Any time you want to see her, there she is, waiting for you. If I want to get ahold of my mother, I have to go through about twenty ‘Please hold’s before I can talk to her, and then she’s usually in the middle of some deal and winds up telling me she’ll see me when she gets home. Thanks a lot, Mom.”
    â€œBut Marissa, you do get to see them every day. And they’re really nice to you—they give you anything you want!”
    Marissa makes a face. “Yeah. ‘Here’s some money, kid, now leave me alone’—I just hate it!”
    â€œThe money?”
    â€œYes, the money! The stupid money.” She looks straight at me. “You’re the only friend I’ve got. The only one. You’re the only one who’s never asked me for money. You won’t even take it when I try to give it to you!” She whacks a pillow with both hands. “Every time I think someone’s being nice to me ’cause they like
me,
what do they do? They ask to borrow money. It’s always the money.”
    Well, I think about this a minute. I mean, even though Marissa has everything in the whole wide world, I’ve never actually wanted to
be
her.
    We were quiet for a long time, just lying there on our beds. And I’m in the middle of wishing I could be at the