Call the Shots (Swim the Fly #3)(86)

“No,” I say. “They’re not. I don’t know what she’s talking about. I’ve never seen those people in my life.”

“You lying sack of crap!” Evelyn pounces on me like a possessed puma, knocking me to the ground. She tries — but thankfully fails — to rip the mask from my face. So she goes to town on the mask itself, hitting and scratching it while cursing at me, all of the crazy bursting out of her like a volcano. “You toasted to trust, you jerk! How could you toast to that when it wasn’t true? I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!”

The police officers try to pull her off of me, but Evelyn is raging.

“Holy Jesus, she’s strong,” one of the cops says.

She is screaming and crying and flipping out. The monkey mask absorbs most of the blows, though my eyes are sprayed with the occasional fleck of flying spittle. I turn my head to try to catch my breath.

“I can’t believe I stole that equipment for you. For you! So that you would love me. You used me like a piece of meat. All this time. Lying and sneaking around. How dare you? How dare you?”

She takes another swipe at my face, just as I turn toward her, and her fist connects with my nose. Hard. The police officers finally manage to pull her off of me. But it’s too late for my nose.

Matt and Coop are at my side in an instant, hoisting me to my feet and asking if I’m okay.

“Fine, fine,” I say, grabbing my nose, the pain shooting through my head. I think it might be broken.

And maybe I deserve at least that. Because as nutty as Evelyn is, she isn’t completely off base. I was sneaking around and lying. And I was using her. It just . . . seemed like I didn’t really have a choice. But of course I did. I just didn’t want to do what was hard. What was right.

I shake my head, feeling like a royal tool for letting things get this far out of control.

And then Officer Jay stands and looks around. “Hey,” he calls out, “I thought there were three monkeys. Where the hell did the other one go?”





I FLIP OVER ON MY BED, lying on my left shoulder, turned away from Cathy’s side of the room, where her snoring has kicked into high gear. I’ve tried everything to block out the sound: balled-up tissue, earplugs, my iPod earbuds. But nothing can match Cathy’s vicious log sawing.

I pull the pillow up over my head, but I can still hear her rasping and wheezing.

In. Zzzzzzzzzz! Out. Zaaaaaaaah! In. Zzzzzzzzzz! And out. Zaaaaaaaah!

Ugh. It’s no use. I let the pillow flop back onto the bed. It’s too claustrophobic to sleep like that anyway. What I can’t understand is how Cathy isn’t waking herself up. I mean, if I shouted as loud as she’s snoring, she’d be awake in a second.

I close my eyes. Try to imagine her breathing as the loud hum of a boat engine. Which might actually lull me into a slumber . . . if the stupid engine didn’t backfire every five seconds.

BRRRRRUCKUCKUCK!

I roll onto my back and stare up at the ceiling. Four weeks I’ve been grounded. Twenty-eight days to think about my actions at the country club. Six hundred and seventy-two interminable hours with no computer, no television, no video games, and no guests.

One solid month of sleepless nights to curse my miserable life and anguish over the fact that there is absolutely no way we’ll be able to finish the movie in time now.

No way I’ll ever escape this room.

Or this torture.

Zzzzzzzzzz! Zaaaaaaaah! Zzzzzzzzzz! Zaaaaaaaah!

Ultimately, Rico decided not to press charges. And he convinced the country club to do the same. He said he hadn’t had that much fun for a long time. That it made his sixtieth birthday “a celebration that people won’t soon forget.” And that his guests thoroughly deserved to have the crap scared out of them.

Of course, it would have been nice to have found this out before my parents came down to the station and begged the police for leniency. Saying how I was under enormous stress after having just come out of the closet.

Zzzzzzzzzz! Zaaaaaaaah! Zzzzzzzzzz! Zaaaaaaaah!

I swear I’m going to go insane if I can’t get some sleep soon. Yesterday I spent half an hour looking all over the house for my coat when I was wearing the stupid thing the whole time. The day before that, I got into the shower wearing my pajamas.

Speaking of insane, since Evelyn confessed to stealing the camera equipment, we were off the hook on that one. She tried to convince the cops that this was a one-time offense, that she’d only taken the electronics because she was trying to help out the love of her life. And that she fully intended to return everything when the movie was done shooting. She even tried pinning that on me, saying I coerced her into jacking the equipment by telling her I’d break up with her if she didn’t. She put on a pretty good act, I have to say, and I could see some of the cops softening toward her. But that all changed when her mom showed up at the precinct with two duffel bags full of stolen merchandise she’d found in her daughter’s closet — clothing, jewelry, perfume. None of it remotely related to our movie.

No one’s seen her since her meltdown. There was talk that she was put on probation. And that she has to go to a special school now with therapists who deal with things like kleptomania. But nobody knows for sure.

If it is true, that’d make two Moss kids on probation. Although it seems like Nick has broken his by disappearing — along with our humanzee suit. Coop says he’s probably using it to his advantage. Going undercover at the zoo. Or hiding out in some South American rain forest. I’ve heard all sorts of rumors about why he was in trouble to begin with — from illegal surveillance to assault to DUI — but whatever the reason, he’s not likely to be coming back anytime soon. Which works out just fine for me.