The Reckless Club Read online

  The little woman shudders. “Wouldn’t you rather find Agnes?”

  Lilith tilts her chin toward the woman. “You don’t like TBN?”

  “Who now?” the woman murmurs, her eyes narrowing as she, too, watches the nurse.

  “Never mind,” Lilith says as Wes gestures across the cafeteria. Who knew what signal he was trying to make—his mouth flailing, his fingertips going from his eyes to hers and then to TBN. Lilith allows herself a moment to feel the pain of knowing Wes will never star next to her onstage despite the adorableness of his dimple and his flawless complexion. She presses a hand to her heart and shakes her head.

  “Oh, would you look at that cool drink of water?” the older woman says. Lilith swivels her head. The woman is transformed, somehow, her eyes wide and blinking rapidly. A wide smile spreads across her face as she gazes at Wes. The woman pats her cheeks. “Travis is here. Today’s the day. I just know it. He’s going to ask me to prom. I just know it!”

  “What? You mean Wes?”

  He must’ve heard his name because Wes grins in their direction. And then, weirdly, he winks at the old woman.

  “That’s my Travis. Lord above, he’s looking my way!” The woman giggles behind her hand like a girl. “How do I look?” she asks Lilith, smoothing her hair with her hands.

  “Um, great.” The woman is beautiful, Lilith admits. Her dark skin isn’t really wrinkled, just a little creased by the eyes and around her mouth. Her eyes are bright, somehow, as if she were a teenager just a smidgen older than Lilith.

  “I’m going in,” the woman says, and pushes up from her seat.

  “Going in?” Lilith echoes.

  “To get me a prom date,” the woman replies.

  “Wait!” Lilith says. She still had to get over to TBN, talk about her bracelet, and leave it somewhere obvious for TBN to steal. Then Wes and Ally had to trail TBN to her hiding place while Rex and Jason made sure Mr. Hardy and Mrs. Mitchell were distracted. After that, Lilith would retrieve all of the missing jewelry and be universally admired for her hard work in single-handedly leading the effort to solve the mystery.

  But if Wes is off playing along with this old lady’s prom dreams, how could he help them nab TBN? Lilith sighs again as Wes turns on his heel and heads toward the door in the opposite direction of TBN, trailing a tall old man with white hair passing by the open doors instead of focusing on his one job. The little woman in the purple pantsuit is just behind him.

  The show must go on. If Ranveer Singh could fall from a platform, land on his face, get a few stitches, and jump right back to dancing without delaying the Gunday production, Lilith Bhat could bring down this nurse with or without Wes.

  She takes a deep breath and plucks a pea from the old woman’s abandoned tray. Squinting toward Ally—who finally has stopped her fake cackle to stare at the purple pantsuit lady pushing another woman using a walker out of her way—Lilith takes aim. Plunk! The pea hits Ally in the forehead.

  Ally rubs at the spot and looks around. Lilith pelts her with another pea. Finally, Ally sees Lilith, who throws up her hands in a come on, already! sort of way and then beckons her to follow as she turns toward TBN.

  11:00 a.m.

  JASON “The Nobody”

  “I get it, I get it,” Rex says. “TBN is here. Stop trying to laugh. Please.”

  But before he can rearrange his face into something normal, Mrs. Mitchell rushes into the room, hastily cramming her hair up into a net. “Oh, dear, you have the messatophia, don’t you? Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” She grabs Jason around the shoulders. “We’ll get you to the nurse, darling! Don’t you worry!”

  “I think he’s fine,” Rex tries to sputter, but before she can finish, Jason starts croaking again. “Picasso, you okay?”

  Mrs. Mitchell slips her arm under Jason’s and half leads, half pulls him out of the food service area and toward the exit.

  “Picasso!” Rex calls again. Jason, still croaking, looks back over Mrs. Mitchell’s shoulder and pops a thumbs-up in Rex’s direction. Rex smirks and picks up the spatula. “Got this covered,” she calls to Mrs. Mitchell. “I think he’s going to need some water or something.”

  But Mrs. Mitchell is barely listening, leading Jason out into the hall. “I can’t believe Frank wouldn’t tell me all of y’alls issues and troubles. There you are, choking like a cat on a hairball, right over the residents’ lunch!”

  He clears his throat, about to tell Mrs. Mitchell that he’s better (now that he’s out of the cafeteria and in position to trail TBN, should Lilith manage to lay the bait as planned), but then Wes rushes by, knocking into Mrs. Mitchell and continuing on down the hall.

  “Where are you going, young man?” Mrs. Mitchell twists after Wes, yanking Jason with her. Wes is trailing Hubert. And Hubert is at the end of the hall now, embracing a much younger woman. Hubert’s taller than the woman and whispering something in her ear. The woman reaches up and pats his cheek. Whoa.

  Jason clears his throat. “I’m feeling much better now.”

  “The nurse should check you out,” says Mrs. Mitchell, but just then they are knocked again, this time by a petite woman in a purple pantsuit.

  “Travis! Oh, Travis!” the woman calls.

  Mrs. Mitchell drops her grip on Jason. “What in the world is going on?” she stammers, then calls out to the woman: “Judith, what are you up to?” She throws up her arms. “Whole place is going wild! Go get yourself some water or something,” she says to Jason, and trudges after the purple pantsuit woman. “Judith! Judith!”

  “I can’t slow down!” the woman calls. “Travis is getting away!”

  “Judith, you get back here right now!” Mrs. Mitchell yells.

  Judith turns, sticks her tongue out at Mrs. Mitchell, and shouts, “You’re not gonna keep me from going to my prom, Mama! I’m going shopping! Get me a dress!” She scuttles into the open elevator and disappears behind the doors.

  Mrs. Mitchell pulls a walkie-talkie from its clip at her waistline. “I’m going to need staff members at the elevator doors on each floor. Judith thinks she’s going to prom again.” She sighs, and when she turns back toward Jason her face is splotchy. “I told them she needed to be in the dementia ward. We have to move patients when they start to lose their faculties or we end up with visiting middle school delinquents getting hit on by the elderly. But nooo! Nurses want to keep their patients, have them stay put in their care. Give ’em time. Time for what? Prom?”

  Jason mumbles, “We’re not delinquents.”

  “And speaking of delinquents, where is my brother?” Mrs. Mitchell throws her arms up again, forcing them down with a slapping sound on her thighs. “Typical,” she says to no one in particular as she marches after Judith. “Everyone leaving me to clean up their messes!”

  As Mrs. Mitchell stomps toward the elevator, Jason’s eyes the cafeteria—where Lilith, Ally, and Rex are waiting for him to do his part—and then Wes, who has disappeared around the corner. Jason throws up his arms like Mrs. Mitchell, then darts down the hall after Wes.

  11:04 a.m.

  WES “The Flirt”

  What is it that his mom always says? Oh, yeah: Don’t insert yourself into conversations where you aren’t invited.

  She had picked up that line from the therapist she had seen during the divorce. Or the “uncoupling,” as she phrased it after a month or so of therapy. But his mom and dad weren’t “uncoupled.” No one with kids is ever “uncoupled,” not to the kids anyway. Each parent always will be one half of a complete set. And the kid is the sticky thing that keeps them together.

  Yet, don’t insert yourself is what goes through his mind as he trots down the hall after Hubert and the pretty, much younger woman he’s got his arm wrapped around. Wes’s nostrils flare as he follows the old man who had so clearly been lying to him an hour earlier and who had seemed so in love with Grace just that morning. Am I really seeing this?

  Hubert and the woman pause in front of the main doors. Again, Hubert kisses the woman on
the cheek. She wraps her arms around him.

  Wes stops, his feet suddenly dragging as if going through mud. Don’t insert yourself. But in the space of a breath—just the time it took for the younger woman to tuck her forehead against Hubert’s neck for a moment—Wes remembers back months and years and maybe even a decade, to all the times he had been the one in the middle—the one who suddenly needed a drink of water in the middle of the night because he knew his footsteps down the stairs in the dark would be the only way they’d stop fighting; the one who brought home trophies and certificates and anything that would lead to celebrating over a pizza, together as a family; the one who could charm his mom into smiling and his dad into dropping the grudge. Don’t insert yourself. Sometimes you didn’t have a choice. You’re in the middle.

  And maybe this is different—maybe whatever Hubert is doing, whatever he’s done to Grace—should mean nothing to Wes. But he also didn’t choose Hubert to be his senior today. Yet he is. And whether either of them wants it, Wes is inserted right smack in the middle once again.

  Starting to doubt true love, Ding?

  Wes walks toward the couple just as they pull apart from their embrace. “When are you going to tell Grace?” the woman asks. “She has a right to know.”

  “Yeah, Hubert,” Wes finds himself saying. “When are you going to tell Grace?”

  Both of them turn toward Wes, Hubert’s face a brilliant red, the woman’s pretty face puckering. Slowly, they step apart.

  “Who’s this?” the woman asks.

  Wes glares at her but doesn’t answer.

  Hubert clears his throat. “Wes, this has nothing to do with you. This is a family matter.”

  A mean chuckle escapes Wes’s mouth. “Seems like it has an awful lot to do with Grace, though, doesn’t it?”

  “He’s right,” the woman says quietly, looking at her feet.

  Wes groans as the woman kisses Hubert on the cheek again. “Really?” He shakes his head, but the woman keeps her eyes on Hubert.

  “You have to tell her. And soon.”

  Hubert rakes his hand over his face. “Why are you both so intent on me breaking her heart?”

  Wes crosses his arms. “As if you haven’t already. She just doesn’t know it yet.” He swallows hard, but the painful lump in his throat doesn’t shift. For a moment, he is flooded with too many memories of two different women crying. First, his mom, who hadn’t cried when she found out Dad had moved in with someone else; she cried when she found out Wes had known about it and hadn’t told her. Second, a different woman but one whose cries wouldn’t stop echoing alongside his mom’s. Wes squishes shut his eyes to push away the memory of the last day of school, the one that had led to spending the day at Northbrook Retirement Village.

  “You just need to own up to it, man,” Wes chokes out to Hubert. “You just need to tell her and let her get on with her life.”

  And for some reason, for some stupid reason that doesn’t make any sense to him, Wes begins to shake. Then suddenly Wes realizes Jason has crept up behind him. Maybe crept isn’t the right word. Maybe Jason just walked in that quiet way of his while Wes was too busy shaking, and maybe even almost crying, to notice. But there he is, his head hanging low with his hair across his face, his hands shoved into his pockets. Jason’s just standing there. Just being there. And for some reason, that makes Wes stop shaking.

  Hubert’s big shoulders rise and fall with a shudder. The other woman reaches out to Wes, as if to pat his shoulder, but he steps away from her, making Jason side step, too. The woman’s arm falls to her side.

  “Take the boy’s advice. Tell her.” The woman pushes her purse strap back up from where it had slid down her shoulder. “I’ll call you tonight.” She turns away, but glances back over her shoulder. “I love you, Dad.”

  “Dad?” Wes echoes. “Wait. What?”

  And now that both Hubert and the woman share the same puckered-up confused face, Wes can see it—the family resemblance. And suddenly the embrace that triggered all of this melts into just a hug. And the kisses were just pecks on the cheek. And the secret is something else entirely.

  Hubert’s mouth pops open as he stares at Wes. The woman sucks in her breath. And then both erupt, laughter shooting out and over them in the same way, as if laughter is genetic. Between gasps, Hubert chokes out, “Wes, I’d like you to meet my daughter, Jenna.”

  Jenna, still quaking, holds out her hand. Numbly, Wes shakes it. “I needed that laugh, thank you, Wes.” She then waves to her dad and strides out the door.

  “What do you need to tell Grace, then?” Wes asks.

  Hubert’s face clouds immediately. “It’s a family matter.” Shoulders slumping, he turns back down the hall.

  “Oh, man. I’m sorry, Wes,” Jason whispers.

  “Sorry about what?”

  But Jason simply watches Hubert walk away.

  “What?” Wes asks again.

  Jason pulls his hand through his hair before meeting Wes’s eyes.

  How did this kid figure out what was going on when I’m still clueless? Wes thinks. But before he can ask Jason, a nurse cuts between them, holding a walkie-talkie to her ear. Her voice is low as she says, “We have a patient who needs transfer up to hospice.”

  And that’s when it hits Wes. Northbrook, despite all of its relationships and its cafeteria and its principal-like Mrs. Mitchell, isn’t a school. It isn’t a place where the residents just hang out. It’s a place for people to go when they can’t live by themselves. It’s a place for people to go to finish their lives. It is a place for people who are dying—even people who just got married.

  “Sorry, man,” Jason says again.

  Wes shakes his head, and then follows Jason back toward the cafeteria.

  “Psst!” A thin arm and hand shoots out from behind a big fake ornamental tree. A scrap of paper is clutched in the fingers. Without thinking Wes reaches for it. It’s a phone number written in shaky print.

  “Call me about prom, Travis!” Wes squints through the branches and sees a small face. “I have to go. My mom’s after me.”

  Then the woman, still holding the tree as cover, backs down the hall.

  Don’t insert yourself, Wes reminds himself, and catches up to Jason.

  11:13 a.m.

  LILITH “The Drama Queen”

  Ha! Lilith doesn’t bother stifling her laugh when a second pea slams Ally right between the eyes with an overly cooked splat. Sure, Ally might be the pitcher for the softball team but that doesn’t mean Lilith can’t give her a little competition if she desires. Which she doesn’t.

  Ally rubs at the sticky spot and makes her way toward Lilith. Her face, which could be so pretty with a little accentuation of the cheekbones and an artful eyebrow shaping, is screwed up in a why-am-I-doing-this expression. Lilith reads her like she’s a font on a typed page. It’s a gift she has—tapping into what other people are thinking. People have no idea how many expressions float across their face, clear as words in a script. Most people don’t bother reading them, but Lilith can’t stop doing so, even when she doesn’t want to, even when what she reads tugs at something in her chest. And Ally’s face is crystal clear. She’s thinking she doesn’t care—like none of them are her friends.

  But Lilith has seen Ally’s so-called friends. Just like the cast around Lilith’s table shifts with every play or project she leads, Ally’s table changes with sports seasons. Ally probably only sees uniforms, not faces when she thinks of friends. It’s not a smug thought. If anything, it stirs up something else in Lilith’s chest. Something a lot like understanding.

  Ally moves toward Lilith, who nods. Show’s on. Suddenly, Lilith is flitting around the room like a bumblebee—smiling at residents, waving to others (showing off her bracelet, of course)—and heading right toward TBN and Opal.

  “Come on,” Lilith mouths to Ally.

  But Ally is stuck, trying to scoot past two women who are blocking her path to Lilith with their chairs. Just as Ally begins to backtr
ack and move around the table in the opposite direction, one of the ladies calls out, “Oh, miss! Miss! Would you take our trays for us?”

  The other woman nods. The one on the left wears a red hat as big as a sunbonnet and the one on the right is also wearing a red hat, but hers is small and round against her head. The one with the bonnet is the one speaking. She leans forward to get Ally’s attention and now is shifting side to side as she piles the trays with about thirty crumpled napkins in a mountain on top. Meanwhile, the second lady rolls back and forth in her seat to avoid getting swatted by the bonnet.

  Ally nods and picks up the trays while Lilith tries not to groan out loud. In one voice, the ladies say, “Thank you, dear!” and then go back to their whispering and laughing. Ally dumps the food and stacks the trays back near the kitchen.

  Three more times on her way toward Lilith, Ally is flagged down to clear trays. Once Lilith glances her way and mouths hurry up! Ally holds the trays and arches an eyebrow.

  But Ally could totally move faster. Be a bit speedier on clearing the trays. Be her usual pushing-to-the-limits self.

  Lilith is now standing at the table where TBN is helping Opal spread out her napkin over her lap. She’s opening a container of something—pudding, by the look of it—for the old woman.

  Ally scrapes clear the same tray again and again. Every time she seems ready to stack it with the other trays, she glances over at Opal, shudders a little, and gives the tray an extra scrape.

  Whatever. Time to step up the performance, Lilith tells herself. She’s leans her back against the table, talking to residents at the full table in front of her. “Well,” she says in a loud, carrying voice, “would any of you like some help? I’d be glad to do it. I just love helping the elderly!”

  “Who are you calling elderly?” says an old man with a gruff voice.

  Lilith giggles. Only, unlike some people, Lilith’s makes her laugh sound natural. “My grandmother taught me how important it is to help others. Yeah,” she says, twisting the arm with the bracelet so it glimmers in the florescent lights, “Dida’s the one who gave me this gold bracelet. She told me that I should always remember her when I wear it—remember how valuable I am. Just like this bracelet is valuable. Just wear it, she said.” Lilith cradles her braceleted arm against her chest. “Wear it and remember my name.”