The Infamous Frankie Lorde 1, page 18
Taking a deep breath, I grabbed hold of the door handle and pulled it open.
“And where are you coming from?” a deep voice asked as soon as I’d taken a step out into the hallway.
My head jerked to the left as my gaze fell on another security guard. This one was different from the one I’d sent away earlier, but like the other, he was leaning up against the wall, his massive arms folded in front of him.
And he was not happy to see me.
Swallowing hard, I pulled the door to Miles’s office closed behind me and looked in the opposite direction for some way of escaping. I knew I wouldn’t be able to outrun the guard. Not in the dress and heels I was wearing. And not weighted down with as much cash as I currently had on me.
I’d have to come up with something else.
So, thinking quickly, I turned to the guard and placed my hands on my hips defiantly.
“Where is your boss?” I hissed. “Miles told me to join him here for a private…meeting. And well, as you can see, he never showed up! I have never been so insulted in my life.”
I let my voice grow into a growl as I walked toward the man, wagging my finger at him like he was the one I was angry at. His eyes widened as I stepped closer to him, and he dropped his arms to his side like he wasn’t sure how to handle the situation.
So I pushed even further, walking right up to him and poking him in the chest.
“You tell that jerk Miles that nobody keeps Lola Lafonta waiting,” I said threateningly. Then I spun around on my heel and began to strut off toward the rest of the party before throwing behind me, “Nobody!”
I added this last bit just as I was disappearing around the corner, and then I booked it toward the exit, hoping the security guy wasn’t following me.
Just as I reached the front door, I heard someone call out, “Wait!”
I almost froze where I stood, sure the security guard was after me, but when I turned my head, I saw Ollie just a few steps behind me. He already looked out of breath but motioned for me to keep going anyway.
Once we were outside, we began the long walk down the driveway to where we’d eventually call a cab and finally make our escape.
We’d barely gone a few feet before Ollie turned to me with a smile and said, “I just want to know one thing.”
“Don’t worry, I got it,” I said, patting the tail of my dress. “I got it all.”
Ollie smiled but shook his head. “That’s great, but it’s not what I was going to ask.”
I glanced at him, confused. “Then what?”
After a pause, he finally said, “What’s escargot?”
I immediately began to laugh, which made him frown.
“Hey, it was fried and it looked like calamari, so I took a bite,” he explained as we walked. “And it wasn’t so bad. So I had some more. But then I remembered all that other weird food and got worried….”
I laughed again, this time even louder.
“What? What did I eat, Frankie?” he pleaded, looking like he was going to be sick. “Just tell me.”
I put my arm around my friend as we walked through the darkness together.
“I think it’s better that you don’t know,” I said finally, then clapped him on his back before running off ahead of him, laughing, into the night.
Entry Thirty-Seven
“So there was nothing in Miles’s treasure room that you could steal?” Ollie asked, sounding slightly disappointed.
“I wouldn’t exactly call one-point-six million dollars nothing, Ollie,” I said quietly as we walked down the loud hallway to the lunchroom.
We hadn’t had much time to go over the ultimate outcome of the heist at Miles’s. Not between trying to escape the estate without being caught, and then being stuck with a cabbie who refused to turn on the radio, forcing us to drive the whole way home in silence. And then it had been the weekend, which meant family time with Uncle Scotty and a whole lot of phone calls to put a few things into motion on my end.
At least Ollie knew the operation had gone well. But once again we had to catch up on the details at school.
Not exactly ideal, but I was starting to get used to sneaking around with Ollie and having our top secret conversations out in public. It was almost like a challenge. How far could we push those boundaries without anyone else being the wiser?
“Point taken, Richie Rich,” Ollie said. “So what are you doing with the money?”
“You mean our money?” I asked, raising my eyebrow. “You were there too. That means you get a cut.”
“Nah, I didn’t do this for the Benjamins,” Ollie said, shaking his head. “I did it the same reason you did it. The guy’s a scumbag and I wanted to help. Besides, who needs—how much would my cut have been?”
“About eight hundred thousand,” I answered.
Ollie just about choked on the gum he was chewing as I said this, but then coughed a few times before regaining his breath.
“Right,” he said again. “Who needs that kind of money anyway? Not me.”
He said it like it pained him just a little, but I could tell deep down that he didn’t care about the cash.
“I was hoping you’d say that,” I said, giving him a shy smile. “Because I’ve already spent a lot of it.”
Ollie’s head shot over as he looked at me.
“Are you serious?” he asked. “It’s been two days! How did you burn through that much so quickly?”
“I’m about to show you,” I said, and I steered him over to the lunch table where Ryan and the rest of his friends were sitting.
“Hey, guys!” Ollie said as he shot a questioning glance my way before sitting down. I followed suit and then opened up a bag of Red Vines before offering some to the table. “What’s going on?”
“Ollie, man, you won’t believe what happened!” Ryan said almost immediately. He’d been talking animatedly to the other kids at the table when we’d walked up and still seemed ready to burst with excitement. “They’re fixing everything. And I mean Every. Little. Thing.”
“Wait. They’re fixing what exactly?” Ollie asked, confused.
I just sat there chewing on my licorice, my face a complete blank.
“Everything,” Ryan said, shaking his head like he couldn’t believe it. “At our apartment. These worker guys showed up this weekend—like, all over the whole South-side complex—and they just started fixing everything. No more rats, no more holes in the walls, no more crappy places to live.”
“You don’t say?” Ollie said, sneaking a glance over at me. I refused to look at him.
“And that’s not all. There’s all this new stuff, too. Like fridges, and stoves and heaters and washers,” Ryan said, ticking the stuff off on his fingers. “Dude, we don’t have to go to the laundromat anymore to do our laundry, because it’s right there, in the complex!”
“That’s awesome, man!” Ollie said, grinning as he stole a Red Vine from me and took a big bite.
“My dad says Miles must’ve finally come to his senses and decided to fix it all,” Ryan said, thinking long and hard about this. “But I think it was something else. Someone else maybe?”
This time I could feel Ryan’s eyes pan over to me. I managed to keep my face neutral, but I didn’t look him in the eye. He might’ve been onto me.
“Why do you think someone else was involved?” Ollie asked, not as good as I was at keeping a straight face. I kicked him under the table and willed him to be cool. “I mean, it sounds like what you said. That Miles guy just stopped being a punk.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Ryan said, not sounding convinced. “But there’s something else.”
At this, Ryan leaned toward the two of us like he didn’t want the others to hear what he was about to say.
“Someone left us…money,” he whispered. “And a lot of it. Enough for us to pay our rent this month and next. My dad talked to the neighbors and the same thing happened to them. I wasn’t supposed to know about it, but I overheard my parents talking, and they think it’s, like, hush money or something.”
“Hush money for what?” Ollie asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe because the place was such a dump,” Ryan said with a shrug. Then he turned to me. “Didn’t you say that lady Mrs. Martinez just took Miles to court? Maybe this is all because of her.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know,” I said. “She actually lost the case.”
“Oh,” Ryan said, sounding surprised.
“Does it matter where it’s all coming from, though?” Ollie asked him finally. “Like, isn’t it just cool that it’s happening?”
“Sure. Of course,” Ryan said, his eyes growing big. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. I think I’m just wondering…like, who to thank?”
Without looking at him directly, I said slowly, “Maybe there’s nobody to thank. Maybe it’s just the universe’s way of working things out. Karma and all that.”
Ryan thought about this as he took a bite of his sandwich.
“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe.”
After a few seconds of silence, I placed my hands on the table and stood up.
“We should go get food before the jocks take all the good stuff,” I said to Ollie.
“Right,” Ollie said, his head snapping over to me at the mention of food. “I’ve been craving a few taco boats myself. See you, man.”
“See you,” Ryan said, still looking at me curiously.
“So that’s where the money went?” Ollie asked once we were far enough away from Ryan’s table.
I just nodded. “It was the right thing to do,” I said. “I’m also setting up anonymous college funds in the names of all the kids who’ve lived there while Miles has been on his reign of terror.”
Ollie let out a low whistle. “But how long can you really keep that up, Frankie?” he asked. “The money we got sounds like a lot, but it’s not gonna last much longer.”
“You’re right,” I said as we walked to the lunch counter and joined the back of the line. “It won’t.”
“Well then, is that it, then?” Ollie asked. He didn’t sound accusatory. I knew Ollie thought that what we’d done so far was enough. It was more like, he knew me. And he knew I’d never leave it at just that.
“Nope,” I said. And then I paused for dramatic effect. “You know, I did leave Miles’s with something other than the money. A few other things, actually.”
Ollie turned to me in surprise.
“I thought that was all you got,” he said.
“I said I didn’t take anything of his from the treasure room except for the money,” I corrected him. “I didn’t say the money was all I got.”
“You sneaky little minx,” Ollie said. “So what did you get? Please tell me it was one of his cars.”
I gave him a look and rolled my eyes. “When would I have gotten one of his cars?” I asked. “We took a cab home, you goof.”
“Oh, right,” he said. “Well then, what?”
“This,” I said, and pulled out my cell phone. Going into my videos, I found the one of Miles admitting he’d messed with Mrs. Martinez’s case and handed it over for Ollie to watch. “I have a feeling this video will thoroughly ruin Christian Miles’s reputation when people see it. And they will see it. Probably later this afternoon, I’d guess. The video file was sent to New York’s three biggest newspapers this morning by ‘an anonymous source.’ Oh, and if that doesn’t totally screw up his life, I also sent the video of all the illegal paintings and sculptures he’s got hiding in his secret room to Uncle Scotty’s work.”
“You’re devious!” Ollie said, though the grin on his face told me he thought it was amazing.
We ordered our food and waited as the people working behind the counter got our meals together. I was starved by all this do-gooder stuff and didn’t even wait to sit down before starting to pop fries into my mouth.
“You’re still gonna run out of money soon, though, Frankie,” Ollie said as we walked back to the lunch tables. “You know that, right? I mean, I love what you were trying to do and you’ve probably already changed these people’s lives more than you know. But the money isn’t going to last much longer.”
“I still haven’t told you the last thing we snagged from Miles,” I said, chewing on a French fry mysteriously.
“I’m listening,” Ollie said.
“You know how the plan was supposed to be to switch Miles’s phone back at the end of the night? Take the duplicate with us?” I said slowly. “Well…I didn’t.”
“You kept it?” Ollie asked, his voice getting all high and squeaky.
“I did,” I said, nodding.
“I thought you hated that thing,” he said, clearly remembering how I’d wanted to smash the picture of Miles into a million little pieces the night of the gala.
“I did,” I said. “Until I Googled it while I was in the treasure room and found out that it’s worth sixteen million dollars.”
Ollie started to choke and I had to smack him on the back to make sure he was okay.
“Sixteen million dollars for that thing?” he asked incredulously.
“It was covered in gold and diamonds. Hundreds of them,” I explained. “Rare, too. And completely untraceable. Which means…”
“Which means you can sell off all the parts,” Ollie deduced, shaking his head.
“I’ve got a guy,” I said, winking at him. “So what do you think? Does that cover all the people in Ryan’s apartment complex or what?”
“I would say so,” Ollie said with a laugh.
I pointed to a table that was free over in the corner and Ollie and I made our way toward it. Ollie was in the lead, winding through the throngs of other students eating their lunches, and I was trailing behind, still thinking about everything we’d accomplished in the span of a few weeks.
And I was so distracted that I almost didn’t see it coming.
Ollie had just passed by a table full of girls, and as soon as his back was to them, one of them stood up and began to follow him, her tray held high—and full.
It dawned on me almost immediately what was about to happen and something inside me snapped. Without thinking about the consequences, I sprinted forward, and just as the tray began to tip down toward Ollie’s head, I flipped it in the opposite direction.
Right on top of the girl’s head.
Ketchup, milk shake, leftover fries, and various other remnants of the girl’s lunch cascaded down the front of her, leaving her a gooey mess.
And that’s when she began to scream.
It was louder than I thought possible, and it immediately made everyone in the cafeteria turn and look at her.
I was still standing there, just inches away from the girl, when she slowly turned around to look at me, a murderous look in her eyes.
“Annabelle,” I said, only slightly surprised when I realized who it was. Though I really shouldn’t have been. Nobody else would’ve been so evil that she would’ve purposely tried to tray someone like Ollie.
“You little freak!” she screamed at me. “What’s your problem?”
Everyone in the room heard this, too, of course. Because the whole place had gone silent as soon as they’d seen what was happening.
And there wasn’t a single person who wasn’t currently staring at the two of us. I looked just past Annabelle’s shoulder and saw that Ollie had turned and was staring at us, too. I couldn’t quite place the look on his face, but it was obvious he knew what had happened. Or what Annabelle had tried to make happen.
But all anyone else in the school knew was that Annabelle was covered in, well, lunch. And it appeared like I was the one who’d done it to her.
Needless to say, it was way more attention than I’d ever wanted to have on me and I froze as I thought quickly through my options.
I could apologize profusely and rush to get napkins to help Annabelle clean up. I would still be able to keep my cover if everyone thought it had just been a mistake and I was really that clumsy.
I could run away and hope people would be so focused on helping Annabelle that they’d forget all about me.
I looked over at Ollie again and watched as he put down his tray and began to walk back toward us. At first I wanted to ask him what he was doing, but then it clicked. He was coming back because he had my back.
He wasn’t going to make me deal with this on my own, because he was my friend.
My best friend.
And in that instant, I knew I was going to go with option three.
I could stop thinking only of myself for a minute and stand up to the bullies who were trying to make my friend’s life miserable.
So that’s what I did.
“What’s my problem, Annabelle? That would be you,” I said clearly.
Because it was still so silent around us, the words came out much more loudly than I’d intended. Still, I didn’t quiet my voice. I needed it to come out strong. I needed her to hear me and know I wasn’t kidding. I needed Ollie to understand that our friendship wasn’t one-sided. That I would always stand up for him. After all, I’d just helped a bunch of strangers when they’d needed someone. It was time for me to help my best friend, too.
“I know that other people around here have let you pull this kind of crap on them, but I’m telling you now, it’s going to stop,” I said, taking a step closer so she was forced to look me straight in the eye. “I don’t care if you hate me. I don’t care if you say things about me behind my back. But you do not get to mess with my friends. Because if you do…well, I think you know what will happen. Understand?”
Annabelle just stared at me, her mouth hanging open like a fish out of water. I waited for her to say something back to me, but the nasty retort didn’t come. Instead, someone in the room started to clap.
