Page 34

Chapter 34

Grace

“We’ll talk to them tonight?” I asked again, the four of us trekking up the azalea trail. Our shouting had earned us a few dirty looks back at the wedding. “Right?”

“Right,” James answered. “For the tenth time, we will talk to them tonight.”

I swatted his arm. “I haven’t asked ten times!”

Then James reached up and pinched his nose. Is something still bothering him? I wondered, recognizing his nervous tic. Was he bummed he’d missed all of today’s adventures? Or was he worried about the consequences for leaving school early? Was he worried about—

Uh-oh, I thought, feeling a sudden chill in the air. He saw her, too.

Principal Unger. He was thinking about Principal Unger. He had to be, right? She was the one flaw in his plan to find us, a loose end.

“James, did you run into anyone we know in Rittenhouse Square?” I asked.

“I might’ve seen a witch on her broom…,” he answered slowly.

Isa squeezed his hand. “Did she see you?”

My brother shook his head. “I don’t think so, but I guess I’ll find out for sure during our morning meeting on Monday.”

I grimaced. “James, I’m only going to tell you this once,” I said, “but I really admire you. I dread my student council meetings with her. She makes me feel so small, and that sugary-sweet air of hers…” I shivered dramatically. “I don’t know how you sit down in her office every morning without walking out totally defeated.”

“Because she doesn’t defeat me,” he replied, then paused. “And I appreciate your admiration. If you want some pointers, I’m only two doors up the hall.”

“Well, we also saw her at the festival,” Isa said as James winked. “Multiple times.”

“But her best appearance was her last appearance,” Ev added.

“Did you happen to notice that Victorian doll booth?” I asked James.

He nodded. “The spooky porcelain ones with curly hair and sad eyes?”

“It’s Principal Unger’s!” Isa’s excitement level was off the charts. “Unger restores the creepy dolls! While we raced for our Uber, Grace saw her pitching one to a customer.”

“Mmm,” James murmured. “So that was her private and personal business….” I watched his shoulders visibly relax. “She sucks the souls out of her students to bring her dolls to life.” He laughed. “I wonder how many people know about this niche side gig.” He put a hand to his chest. “From the bottom of my heart, thank you for telling me.”

“Are you going to blackmail her?” I asked.

“Blackmail is a strong word,” he replied. “If necessary, I will embarrass. ”

My brother had parked the Subaru in one of the park’s multiple lots, so we didn’t need to order an Uber. Unfortunately, it was time to reunite with Isa’s Tesla and drive home. James unlocked our car and then jokingly dangled the keys in front of me. “Haha, how thoughtful,” I said, pushing them away. “It’s okay. You can drive.”

He fake-widened his eyes. “What? Really? Are you sure?”

I sighed. “Just stick to the speed limit.”

“Gracie, I always stick to the speed limit.”

His grin told a different story.

We piled into the Subaru and were off after I set Waze to Old City. “Isa almost got us kicked out of Independence Hall,” I said as my brother drove. “She couldn’t stop laughing about when you hopped that fence in fifth grade to go sit in George Washington’s chair….”

James flipped his blinker. “Oh, yeah. The famous ‘sun chair.’?” He shook his head. “I think I had, what? Like five seconds before some guards grabbed me?”

“You still almost broke it,” Isa said.

“Izzy, it’s not my fault that chair has very brittle bones.”

“It’s over two centuries old, J.”

“Well, the maintenance crew clearly needs to step up their game.”

The four of us laughed, then started reminiscing about that long-ago Mr.Adler–chaperoned field trip. James daring a random kid to lick the Liberty Bell’s glass casing, Isa correcting our tour guide in the Betsy Ross House, me buying out the National Constitution Center’s gift shop, and Ev embracing eighteenth-century cuisine at City Tavern. I’d personally thought the food was gross, but he’d been all about it, even taking home leftovers.

It was only when we turned onto Chestnut Street that our conversation stopped. “You have reached your destination,” Waze announced, and as if the app had the ability to comprehend sarcasm, James said, “Have we now?”

Because while there were several tourist groups here and there, barely any cars lined the street. James parked in one of the empty spots and threw on the hazard lights so Isa, Ev, and I could spill out and search for the sleek red Tesla. “This doesn’t make any sense,” I said after consulting my meterUP app. “We had twenty-five minutes left on the clock. Why would we get towed?”

“But did we get towed?” Ev asked. “There’s no ticket on the meter.”

A lump rose in my throat. “Could it have been…”

My heart hammered. I couldn’t finish the question, now looking at Isa. While Ev and I were still pointlessly circling the area, she was petrified. Absolutely petrified, with a perfectly straightened spine, arms dangling lifelessly at her side, and a frozen face.

I, however, was not. “Oh my god, Isa!” I exclaimed. “I’m so sorry. You were right, and I was wrong—we shouldn’t have left the car here. I promised nothing would happen to it. Not a scratch, not a bruise, not a dent, nothing.”

“No, Grace,” Isa said softly, finding her voice. “Listen, it’s okay….”

I shook my head, eyes pooling. Someone had stolen the Tesla. Someone had stolen Mr. and Mrs.Cruz’s car, and it was all thanks to me. I’d persuaded Isa into taking it for an extended spin. “Isa, it’s my fault,” I croaked. “I’ll take the blame. We’ll go to your house and wait for your parents to come home, and when they get there, I’ll tell them I did it.” I swallowed hard. “They might not like me anymore, but—”

Isa moved forward and wrapped me in a hug. “That’s not true,” she said. “We’ll get in big trouble for today, but they’ll still like you. They’ll still love you.”

Tears spilled down my face as I squeezed her tight. I didn’t want to do this, but I would for her.

James slow-clapped when we separated. He was sitting on the Subaru’s hood, like he didn’t give two craps about the situation. Why are you dating him, again? I wanted to ask Isa, but then James slid off the hood and spoke. “That was beautiful,” he said. “Your love for each other is truly touching.” One side of his mouth curled up. “Are we ready to go get the carnow?”

Ev raised an intrigued eyebrow. “You know where the car is?” he asked as I grabbed Isa’s arm with a flare of hope in my heart.

In response, James pointed to a streetlamp. A banner hung from it, advertising the Run for Independence! I squinted to see that it was a 10K…which just so happened to be taking place early tomorrow morning. I sighed. None of us needed a map to know that Chestnut Street would be on the route.

The Tesla had indeed been towed, but not because we’d overstayed our welcome. It had been towed because Philly was clearing the streets in preparation for the race. I looked up ahead to see a crew setting up bright orange traffic cones.

“But how?” I turned back to James. “No notice was left behind. How do you know where they’ve taken the car?”

My brother shrugged. “Intuition.”

If you asked me to take a guess, I would’ve said the police had the Tesla and its fellow cars towed to an empty lot only a few blocks away. A walkable distance, close enough to where we’d originally parked. Somewhere we could actually find it without needing a forwarding address.

Not quite.

“You’re joking,” I said twenty minutes later, when James swung the Subaru into a packed parking lot. We were back in South Philly, directly under I-95. “This can’t be the place.”

My brother turned off the car. “Well, I hate to break it to you,” he said, “but it is. This is the Island of Mis-parked Cars. Ryan, Caleb, and I had to come here once after a concert to find Ryan’s truck.” He popped open his door. “Trust me, this is definitely the place.”

You could hear the cars, trucks, and motorcycles whip by on the highway. Isa squeaked when something with at least eighteen wheels thundered above us.

“I think we should split up,” James said after we determined there was no one manning the pickup booth. He scanned the rows and rows of cars. The Tesla was somewhere in the weeds. It had to be. “We’ll cover more ground that way?”

“Yeah, good idea,” Ev agreed. He too was scanning the sea for our ship. “It’ll save time.”

“Especially since we have to find -find the car,” Isa said. “I was so nervous this morning that I accidentally grabbed the spare key fob with the defective alarm button.” She clicked it to demonstrate. No siren sounded. “And since it’s only the spare, my parents haven’t gotten around to contacting the dealership yet….” She trailed off to look at something on her phone. Her eyebrows knitted together. Was she concerned about the time?

I clapped my hands together optimistically. If I told myself that I could find the car and still be back in bed by six, tucked under my covers when my parents got home, then I could!

We have two hours, I thought. We can make this work.