The Infamous Frankie Lorde 1 Read online

  “What happened is, he got caught,” I said before getting up and walking away.

  Entry Six

  I knew he wanted more. But I wasn’t ready to give up those details just yet.

  First off, I still don’t really know Uncle Scotty well enough to divulge all my secrets to him. Second, he’s a cop. This alone is enough for me not to fully trust him. Third, I’m not a rat. Loyalty is everything in our line of business, and for all intents and purposes, Dad and I are a team. And you don’t give up your partner.

  If Dad wanted Uncle Scotty to know about our business, he’d tell him himself.

  We spent the ride back to Uncle Scotty’s in silence. It wasn’t uncomfortable. Well, at least it wasn’t for me. My mind was spinning too much for me to worry about what Uncle Scotty was thinking.

  How was this living arrangement possibly going to work?

  Dad was the one who’d decided I would go and live with Uncle Scotty, so he had to have thought it would be a good fit. But we’d only spent a lunch together and I was already questioning whether I could trust Uncle Scotty or not. Dad obviously had. Or he had enough to send me to him, so that meant I should, too, right?

  Or was this just another lesson Dad had set up that I was supposed to learn from the hard way, meant to make me a better thief? Kind of like a final exam? If you can live with a cop and still pull things off, then you’re in our special club.

  Not that there is a special club.

  At least I don’t think there is.

  I’d have to ask Dad the next time we talked. And who knew when that would happen, since his phone privileges were constantly changing in his new digs. As it was, I hadn’t talked to him in more than a month, since Dr. Deerchuck had thought it would be better to keep our interactions few and far between until after the trial was over. Both for Dad’s sake and mine. I think she just didn’t want him to interfere with my “progress.”

  I was hoping that Uncle Scotty would be more open to letting me talk to Dad whenever I wanted. Until then, it seemed like I was stuck here, floundering as I figured out my next steps.

  “What the…,” Uncle Scotty muttered as we pulled up to his little blue-and-white two-story house.

  There on the small porch were boxes. Half a dozen of them, big and small, taking up all the space available on the weathered floorboards. A few packages had been stacked on top of a rickety-looking two-seater swing and looked dangerously close to falling over. A large red trunk blocked the entrance to the house.

  Uncle Scotty turned and looked at me dumbfounded.

  I shrugged and held back a smirk.

  “I thought you said that’s all you had,” he said, motioning with his head to the single bag next to me on the seat.

  “It was all I had with me,” I said slowly. “At the time.”

  He cocked his head to the side as if he couldn’t believe what I was saying.

  “What’s a little baggage, right?” I asked sweetly.

  Entry Seven

  UNCLE SCOTTY’S HOUSE RULES

  1. NO LYING.

  2. NOTHING ILLEGAL.

  3. DINNER IS MANDATORY.

  4. THERAPY EVERY TUESDAY.

  5. ATTEND SCHOOL.

  Kill me now.

  Entry Eight

  Turns out, Uncle Scotty has his limits, and these are them.

  And he laid them out almost immediately after we’d come home to all my stuff piled up on his doorstep. It was the first time since arriving that I’d seen him even remotely frazzled, and to be honest, I found the whole situation very interesting.

  “Okay,” Uncle Scotty said almost to himself as we sat in his truck. He kept the engine on so the air conditioning could run but put the truck into park and turned to face me. “Okay. Okay. Listen, Frankie, I know your dad was probably pretty relaxed on rules over the years…”

  “He only had one,” I said. “Don’t get caught.”

  Uncle Scotty nodded like a bobblehead as he took this in.

  “…Yeah. Well, I want to respect your father’s wishes, but the bottom line is that we have rules in this house. Rules that will keep you safe and on the right track,” he said, scanning my face for any insight into what I was thinking.

  I kept my expression blank.

  “Okay,” he repeated. “First rule: no lying.”

  “It wasn’t technically a lie—” I began to argue.

  “It wasn’t really the truth, now, was it?” Uncle Scotty clapped back.

  I shut my mouth again. I knew I couldn’t fully defend my actions, so why try?

  “This is really important to me, Frankie. In order for this to work, we need to be able to trust each other,” he said. “And I can’t trust you if you’re lying to me. But I want to trust you. And I want you to trust me. So from here on out, no lies. No withholding any info, even if you think it’s small and doesn’t matter. Even if telling the truth is going to get you into trouble. I can’t keep you safe if I don’t know what’s going on. And I know your father. There’s no way he let you lie to him.”

  “I didn’t need to,” I answered truthfully.

  “And you don’t need to with me, either,” Uncle Scotty said. “But I understand we’ll need to work up to that kind of relationship. In the meantime, let’s both try our hardest to be honest with each other, okay?”

  I sighed. “Okay.”

  “Good,” he said. “Next, I’m not going to ask you to give me the details of what you and your dad did on your travels. Frankly, I think it’s better if I don’t know. But given the charges against him, I’m going to assume not all of it was legal.”

  I wasn’t about to confirm or deny this, so I chose to look out the window instead.

  “But, Frankie, I’m a cop. I can’t have my niece—someone who’s living under my roof—running around and breaking the law,” he said. “I don’t know what circumstances brought your dad to live that kind of life before, but they don’t exist now. I can take care of you. My salary is more than enough to pay the bills and give you a good life. There’s no reason you have to do any of the stuff you did before.”

  I refused to look at him as he finished, because the truth was, there was so much I wanted to say to that but couldn’t.

  “Do you understand what I’m saying, Frankie?” Uncle Scotty asked as I remained silent.

  Finally, without turning around, I nodded.

  “Great,” he said. “The others are all pretty easy. I want us to eat dinner together every night. I know it sounds cheesy, and it’s going to take some scheduling on my part to make sure I can get away from work at a reasonable hour, but I want to make sure we’re connecting. We have more than five years to catch up on, and I think it’ll be nice to eat a meal together.”

  Dad and I have always eaten meals together, too, so this wasn’t too out of left field for me. It did make me wonder whether it was something the two of them had done growing up. I vowed to find this out later.

  “Fine,” I said.

  “And you won’t even have to worry about my cooking,” he answered with a smile. “Because I don’t cook. I sort of live on takeout.”

  “Works for me,” I said, liking the sound of family dinners even better now.

  “Of course, you have to continue with your therapy with Dr. Deerchuck,” he continued. “I won’t get involved in this part of your life, but just know that she will reach out to me if you shirk on your calls.”

  I mumbled some not-so-nice stuff under my breath concerning what I thought about therapy, but I knew I wasn’t getting out of it and eventually agreed I wouldn’t miss the Tuesday phone calls.

  “And last, you have to attend school regularly,” Uncle Scotty finished. “No skipping, no slacking off.”

  “School? Uh-uh, no way,” I said, waving my arms in a crossing motion in front of me. “I’m not going
to school here.”

  “You have to go to school, Frankie,” Uncle Scotty said, sounding tired. “It’s the law.”

  “Screw that law,” I said, feeling a little crazed. “Dad never made me go to school.”

  “You weren’t getting an education?” Uncle Scotty asked, surprised.

  “Oh, I was getting an education,” I said. “Just, Dad was my teacher.”

  “Well, now you have to go to school,” he said forcefully. “With real teachers and other students your age.”

  “But, Uncle Scotty—” I started to whine.

  “You’re not getting out of this one, Frankie,” he warned. “Might as well just accept it.”

  “Arrrgh!” I cried out in frustration as he turned off the truck and stepped out.

  He’d only gone a few steps before adding, “And school starts tomorrow.”

  Entry Nine

  I’d like to make something perfectly clear right now: up until this moment, my knowledge of middle school has been limited to what I’ve seen on TV and in movies. And if that’s what it’s going to be like, I would sooner pull out all my own eyelashes and walk over hot coals than have to experience it firsthand.

  Dramatic, I know. But also true.

  I told Uncle Scotty as much as we moved my boxes into the house and up to the bedroom that had been cleared out for me. I explained that I didn’t understand why I needed to go, when my system with Dad had been working just fine for the past few years. Uncle Scotty’s response was that he wasn’t equipped to teach me math and science and creative writing, blah, blah, blah.

  “That’s funny because Dad was great at it, and he didn’t even go to a fancy school like Purdue,” I baited him, hoping his ego would change his mind.

  It didn’t.

  And that’s why I was up all night stressing about having to experience my first-ever day of public school as a freaking middle schooler.

  And I didn’t even want to care about any of it. If I was going to be forced to go to school, I wanted to just show up and be me. Not care. Because, who cares about making friends and following the sociopathic hierarchy that makes up middle school? I don’t. Who cares about sports and getting good grades and having your intelligence measured by arbitrary things like tests and homework? Not me. So then why had I lain awake all night, staring up at the ceiling of my new room, instead of sleeping soundly?

  The answer was: because the flip side of not caring about any of it was that it could make my life that much harder.

  If I was a hundred percent me at this new school, people would know I was different. And being different meant I’d stand out. And standing out was the opposite of everything I’d ever been taught.

  Thieves blend into their environments. It’s how they get away with things. It’s how they survive.

  In a way, it’s even a sign of just how good you are at what you do. And I’ve been trained to be the best.

  So while I wanted to not care about this whole going to school thing, I also couldn’t not care.

  See the problem?

  That was when I realized I had to start looking at this whole thing as a job and nothing more.

  So at five in the morning, I turned on my laptop and Googled “clothing trends for NYC teens.” I might not have known a lot about my new place of residence yet, but I was well aware that since it catered to the moneyed elite, there had to be a certain sophistication and elegance to people’s personal style. And who’s better at creating personal style than a New Yorker?

  Now, I’ll admit, this was a low point for me, and I just want to say that never in my life have I ever Googled such embarrassing words. I spent a few minutes berating myself for not having spent more time investigating what kids were wearing when Uncle Scotty and I were in town. Was I already going soft? I erased my search history as soon as I’d finished my research just to ensure that the proof of its existence never got out.

  But I have an excuse for the madness. I swear. And here it is.

  I’m going to let you in on some top secret information here. You should know that this kind of intel is usually completely classified. Only known to people in my line of work. It’s sort of the blueprint for how we do what we do.

  The handbook for thieves, if you will.

  And like a good magician, thieves never reveal their tricks.

  Except I’m going to here. Because nobody’s ever going to read this, except for maybe Dad. And he already knows all my secrets.

  The first step to pulling off a job is looking the part. Most of the time, this means fitting in with your mark—whoever they are. If they’re into sports, you wear a baseball cap and workout clothes. If your target is the son of a diplomat, you stock up on cardigans and pearls.

  Of course, there are the occasional exceptions to this rule. For instance, sometimes your way in with your mark could mean being the opposite of who they are. This works well on the sheltered goody-goodies. Case in point: a good girl always loves a bad boy.

  The idea is to get an in—however you can—with whoever you’re conning.

  And in my case that meant every student at my new school.

  Thus the early-morning Googling session.

  Ordinarily, I would’ve gone straight to my red trunk for my disguise. In fact, it was the first place I went that morning out of habit. But when I opened it up, I was reminded that this was no ordinary job. Which meant it would call for a completely different set of tools. Tools I didn’t have. Tools I’d never used before.

  Closing the trunk and locking it up tight again, I turned to the boxes that held my regular clothes and sighed.

  Usually I had days if not weeks to prepare for a new case. I would even build in time to go shopping for what I needed. But considering my limited time frame, I was going to have to make do with what I already had.

  Which for the purposes of this job meant borrowing a pair of Uncle Scotty’s too-big-for-me pants out of the dryer—luckily he wore them fitted—and cinching them with a belt at the waist. Then I dug around in my boxes until I found a multicolored tank, which I went at with a pair of scissors, cutting away about six inches of material to reveal just the tiniest sliver of skin between my pants and top.

  It was so not my style, but that didn’t matter. Because it was apparently what was “in” with my new crowd at school, and that meant it was what I’d be wearing for the foreseeable future.

  Ugh.

  But what can you do? There are times when being a thief isn’t easy. This was one of those times, I suppose.

  “Hey,” I said when I finally slinked down the stairs and fell into a chair at the kitchen table in the morning. Uncle Scotty was standing at the counter, looking at his phone while drinking something from a mug.

  A half dozen boxes of cereal sat on the table and an empty bowl and a spoon had been set out for me. I grabbed the unopened carton of milk and filled my bowl before I’d even picked out what I was going to add to it.

  “You must really like cereal,” I said, looking at all my choices.

  Uncle Scotty barely looked up from what he was reading. “It’s the breakfast of champions,” he said absently.

  I could tell he never actually ate the cereal himself. None of the boxes had been touched, and a glance over at him showed no empty bowls in his vicinity. It didn’t take a detective to guess he usually ate something at the station or skipped breakfast altogether.

  As I mulled this over, I chose an organic, gluten-free cereal I’d never heard of before and popped a handful of it into my mouth before adding it to my bowl.

  “And here I’ve been missing out on being a champion all these years…,” I said sarcastically, taking a big bite and crunching on it loudly.

  This seemed to catch Uncle Scotty’s attention, and he finally looked up at me. “Sorry?” he said. “Do you not like cereal? Would you rather have bagels or waffles o
r something? If there’s something else you want, just write it down on the notepad on the fridge and I’ll pick it up at the store on my way home.”

  “Cereal’s fine,” I mumbled, and pulled my leg up next to me in my chair.

  Uncle Scotty’s expression turned puzzled, and he squinted as he took a closer look at me.

  “Are those my pants?” he asked.

  “Oh, yeah,” I said, throwing my leg out to the side to show him my impromptu fashion choice. “I didn’t have time to unpack everything last night and all my stuff is still in boxes. I figured you wouldn’t mind, since it would make me late to school if I had to look for something else to wear.”

  Uncle Scotty opened and then closed his mouth like he was going to say something more, but I cut in.

  “I mean, I can go and change, but it would definitely make me late to class. And I don’t want to start things off on the wrong foot with my teachers, so in that case, it would probably just be better if I skipped today and started fresh tomorrow…,” I rambled, figuring that either outcome would be fine with me at this point.

  “No,” Uncle Scotty said with a sigh. “You can wear them. Today. But after this, why don’t you try to stick to your own clothes? We can go shopping this weekend if you need new stuff.”

  “Roger that,” I said, giving him a little salute.

  He gave me a weird look again before turning back to his phone.

  “How did you sleep?” he continued distractedly.

  “Fine,” I said, the word tumbling out before I could stop it. Then I remembered rule number one. Well, if Uncle Scotty wanted the truth, then I’d give him the truth. “Actually, I was kind of up all night stressing about today. So much is changing, and adding school to the mix just threw me off.”

  Uncle Scotty looked at me sympathetically. “Look, I know things are…different here, but I’m just trying to do what I think is right for you,” he said gently. “Trust me, school is the best place for you right now. You’ll see. You’re going to love it.”