CHAPTER 2
CLEAN SLATE
When I open my eyes, the first thing I see are sunny yellow walls—at least that’s the way they looked to me as a kid. Now they make me feel like I’m trapped inside a stick of butter.
Reality hits me, like it has every morning for the last seven days.
I’m living with Dad.
And this butter stick is my bedroom.
I’ve spent the night here plenty of times, but this is different. I won’t be standing by the window on Sunday afternoon waiting for Mom to pick me up. I’m staying here until at least the end of the school year.
For now, this is home.
I dig through a dresser drawer, searching for an outfit the old Frankie would hate. Frayed white button-down or black tee? Tough call, but I go with the button-down. The loose threads would drive the old Frankie crazy. I pull on a pair of skinny jeans, and my elbow whacks against the dresser.
This room is the size of my walk-in closet at Mom’s house, and it’s decorated like it belongs to a ten-year-old: a dresser and matching nightstand covered with hand-painted flowers and green vines, a twin bed with ruffled sheets—and let’s not forget the yellow walls.
Unfortunately, I have bigger things to worry about today.
In the hall, Cujo, Dad’s huge gray-black-and-white Akita, sits next to my door.
“Hey, buddy.” I scratch the dog’s big, square head, and he follows me. The apartment has a simple and borderline-claustrophobic layout—two bedrooms and bathrooms at one end of a narrow hallway lined with mismatched frames, and a living room–dining room combo and a galley kitchen at the other end.
In the kitchen, Dad surveys rows of cereal boxes in the pantry. There are at least a dozen different kinds.
“You’re not making me a real breakfast?” I ask sarcastically, walking past him on my way to the fridge.
Dad swears under his breath. “Sorry. I’m not used to—”
“It was a joke.” I scan the shelves stocked with Dad’s staples: Diet Pepsi (Coke isn’t sweet enough), whole milk (for his cereal), white bread and American cheese slices (in case he gets sick of cereal and switches to grilled cheese), and a gallon of 2 percent milk (store brand).
“I bought extra Diet Pepsi and the milk you like,” he offers.
“I drink Diet Coke.” And I stopped drinking 2 percent milk when I was ten, a fact I don’t bother mentioning anymore.
My father memorizes dozens of car makes, models, and license plates so he can bust car thieves and the chop shops that sell stolen parts, but he can’t remember what kind of milk I drink? Skim. I should make him a list of my food preferences and stop torturing us both.
“I’ve got cereal.” He shakes a box of Froot Loops.
“No, thanks.” I close the refrigerator empty-handed.
Cujo’s ears perk up and he bounds for the front door.
“Did you hear something, partner?” Dad asks.
The dog barks, and a split second later, the doorbell rings.
“It’s probably Lex.” I give Cujo a quick scratch behind the ears and start unlocking the deadbolt.
“Frankie!” Dad shouts as if I’m a child about to run out into traffic.
I turn around, searching for a sign of danger. Nothing looks out of place. “What’s wrong?”
Dad points at the front door with a fierce look in his eyes. “Never open a door without checking to see who is on the other side.”
It’s official. My father has crossed over from paranoid to crazy. “That’s the reason you yelled at me like I was about to set off a bomb?”
“Depending on who is on the other side, you could’ve been.”
I gesture at Cujo sitting next to me calmly, with his head cocked to the side. “Cujo isn’t growling. He always growls if there’s a stranger at the door.” A retired K-9 handler trained Cujo as a protection dog. He’s the definition of an intruder’s worst nightmare.
“You can’t let anything lull you into a false sense of security. Letting your guard down one time is all it takes.”
Does he think he’s telling me something I don’t know? I stifle a bitter laugh.
“This isn’t funny, Frankie.”
No, it’s painful and pathetic, and I live with it every day.
Parents are supposed to understand their kids, or at least make an effort. Mine are clueless.
The doorbell rings again.
Crap. Lex is still standing in the hallway.
I make a dramatic show of peering through the eyehole and turn to Dad. “Happy?”
“These are critical life skills. As in, one day they might save your life,” he says as I open the door.
Lex stands on the other side, smoothing a section of her choppy hair between her fingers. It’s dyed a lighter shade than her usual honey blond, except for an inch of brown roots where her natural color is growing in. The inch is deliberate, like the smudged charcoal eye liner that looks slept in and makes her blue eyes pop against her coppery-brown skin.
Her eyes remind me of Noah’s.
Thinking about him feels like standing in the ocean with my back to the waves. I never know when it’s coming or how hard it will hit me.
“I was starting to wonder if you left without me.” Lex breezes past me. “Ready for your first day in the public school system, or, as my mom calls it, ‘the place where every child is left behind’?”
We haven’t seen each other since the beginning of the summer, but Lex makes it feel like it’s only been days. I spent the last three months trying to leave the old Frankie behind, avoiding Lex and Abel, my closest friends, in the process.
“How’s it going, Lex?” Dad asks.
“Pretty good.” She yawns. “Please tell me you have coffee, Frankie. The line at Starbucks was insane.”
“There’s a pot in the kitchen,” Dad offers.
“Thanks, Mr. Devereux.” If she keeps acting this cheerful, Dad will think she’s high. We’ve known each other forever, but when Lex developed a gross crush on my dad in seventh grade, it almost resulted in best friend excommunication.
“Don’t thank him yet,” I whisper. “His signature blend is burnt Maxwell House.”
“I’d rather go without food for a week than caffeine for a day.” Lex pours herself a cup of liquid coffee grounds.
Dad fishes a Velcro wallet out of his back pocket and lays two twenties on the table next to me. “Swing by the store after school and pick up some Diet Coke and anything else you want.”
I leave the crumpled bills on the table. “I won’t have time. Community service starts at three thirty, right after classes let out.” Thanks to King Richard, I already have a probation officer and a community service assignment. He called in a favor at the district attorney’s office, and my case was bumped to the top of the pile. “Lex is dropping me off at the rec center and picking me up when I’m done.”
I told Dad all this last night.
“You don’t mind?” he asks Lex. “You’re already driving Frankie to school in the mornings. I would take her myself—”
“But you can’t blow your cover. I totally get it.” She takes a sip of her coffee and cringes, but Dad doesn’t notice.
“You can’t slip and make a comment like that at school.” Dad gives us his serious cop look. “You both understand that, right?”
I ignore the question.
“Absolutely,” Lex says. “I mean … I absolutely won’t say anything.”
“Good.” Dad nods and looks over at me. “I would never send you to Monroe if I thought it would be an issue. The high school and the rec center are in the Third District—the nicer part of the Downs. It’s nothing like the war zone where I work in the First District.”
It’s weird to hear him describe any part of the Downs as nice. I guess it seems that way if you compare the run-down projects, abandoned buildings, and streets lined with liquor stores in Dad’s district with the neighborhoods near Monroe.
“People in one-D think I’m a car thief. If anyone finds out I’m a cop, I’ll have to walk away from my open cases and transfer to a district outside the Downs.”
Most people hear the word undercover and automatically think of DEA agents in movies—the ones who have to disappear without telling anyone where they’re going and move into crappy apartments so they can infiltrate the mob or the Hells Angels. But that’s not the way it works for regular undercover cops like Dad.
Obviously, he doesn’t wear a T-shirt that says I’M A COP. But he also doesn’t have to lie to the whole world about his job—just people who hang out in, or near, his district.
“Frankie? You understand, too, right?” He sounds irritated. That’s what I get for ignoring his question the first time.
“I’ve never told anyone about your job except Lex, Abel, and Noah. Why would I start now? Maybe you should lecture Mom. She still bitches about it to all her friends.”
Dad sighs. “I’m not trying to give you a hard time. I’m just reminding you to be careful what you say.”
“Consider me reminded.” I glare at him, and Dad turns to Lex.
“Your parents don’t mind you driving Frankie to the rec center?”
“They’re fine with it.” They probably have no idea. Lex’s parents are never around unless they need her to pose for press photos.
“Does your father still have family in the Downs?” Dad asks.
“Nope. The Senator moved everyone out as soon as he could afford it.” Lex refuses to call her father Dad. Instead, she calls him the Senator because she says he cares more about being the first Puerto Rican–American senator in the United States than about being a father.
“I don’t blame him,” Dad says in his cop tone. “There’s a lot of crime. It’s a tough place for honest people to live. Make sure to keep the car doors locked while you’re driving.”
“We know, Dad.”
He continues issuing instructions. “Remember to leave your purse in the car when you get to the rec center. Just take your phone and some money. And I got you something.” Dad opens the hall closet and fishes around in the pocket of his jacket. He returns with something pink in his hand. A flashlight? And two pieces of orange plastic?
Dad hands me the pink thing.
I take a closer look at the canister. “Pink pepper spray?”
“I think it’s cute,” Lex says.
“Then you can have it.”
“It’s pepper gel,” Dad explains. “The spray can blow back at you, but this stuff shoots wherever you aim the nozzle. And the gel really sticks.”
“I’m not carrying that around.” I try to hand the canister back to him, but he won’t take it. “What if I set it off accidentally? I’m sure there’s a rule against bringing tear-inducing toxins to school.”
“It has a safety, so it won’t go off unless you want it to. Keep it in your bag.” Dad points at the small black shoulder bag that already feels like the wrong choice.
I shove the pepper gel inside. Otherwise, he’ll never leave me alone.
“And you both need one of these.” Dad offers us each an orange piece of plastic.
Lex grabs one.
“It’s a rape whistle,” Dad says proudly.
I saw that coming.
She scrunches up her nose. “Umm … thanks.”
I take mine and toss it in my army-green backpack.
He scratches his head as if he’s forgetting something. “Wait inside the building until Lex gets there to pick you up.”
And I won’t take any candy from strangers.
“I’ll be on time, even if I have to speed,” Lex teases.
Dad misses the joke. “Do you have a clean driving record?”
“Except for a few parking tickets, but everyone has some of those, right?” She flashes him the perfect smile that you only end up with after four years of braces.
“I don’t.” Dad walks over to the sliding glass door that leads to the balcony, and he looks down at the parking lot. “Is your Fiat a stick shift?”
“Automatic,” Lex says. “Frankie is the only person I know who can drive a stick.”
Because my dad suffers from undercover-cop paranoia and he forced me to learn in case of emergency.
“One day you might need to drive a vehicle that isn’t an automatic,” he says.
I know exactly where this conversation is going. “Enough, Dad.”
“What if you’re alone and some lunatic grabs you off the street, and he drives a stick shift?” Dad asks, like it’s a perfectly normal question. “If there’s an opportunity to get away, you won’t be able to take advantage of it.”
Lex stares at my father, dumbfounded. She has heard me recount enough of these stories to know he’s serious. Usually, he saves these questions for me.
“You should learn,” Dad says. “If Frankie’s license wasn’t suspended, she could teach you.”
My shoulders tense. I’m not letting him play his passive-aggressive games with me. “Is there something you want to say, Dad?”
“Just stating a fact.” He stands his ground.
“Why? So I won’t forget how badly I messed up my life?”
Dad sighs. “I’m trying to help you, Frankie.” He isn’t apologizing or admitting he’s wrong.
“I don’t want your help.” I push Lex toward the apartment door. Before I follow her out, I turn back to look him in the eye. “I’m sorry you lost your perfect daughter. But I’m the one you’re stuck with now.”