an invitation to something called Claire’s Christmas Extravaganza.
“Surprise!” she said when I called her back.
“What is this?” I asked.
“Remember when I told you my parents were leaving for Virgin Gorda right after we opened presents on Christmas morning?”
“Yeah.”
“I’d planned on spending the week between Christmas and New Year’s working on my essay, but now that it’s practically finished I decided to throw a party in your honor. I invited all my old friends, and they can’t wait to meet you.”
“Sounds great, but I’d still like to read your essay.”
“Don’t worry. You can read it when you get here.”
My e-mail pinged, and a message from the Wheaton Financial Aid Office appeared in my in-box. I clicked on the link, and a very real possibility of expulsion appeared on the screen:
Dear Cameron,
It has come to our attention that you failed to disclose a significant amount of income on your financial aid form this year. If there’s a reasonable explanation for this oversight, please contact our office immediately. Otherwise, we will be forced to rescind your scholarship for the remainder of the academic year.
Yours truly,
Dean Bell
Director of Financial Aid
I stared at the computer and began to shake. Accepted or not, my admittance to Princeton was contingent on completing my last semester at Wheaton. A reasonable explanation for this oversight? Of course there was. Uncle Wonderful knew a guy, who knew a guy, who hacked into Wheaton’s computers and did something to my account. And now that I thought about it, he had probably done the same thing to my phone. I stared out the library window and wondered why, out of all the families in the world, I had been born into mine. Was I simply unlucky, or was there something more nefarious at work? Maybe the father I never knew stole a valuable trinket from the gods, and I was doomed to suffer for the rest of my days. It was as good an explanation as any.
Claire asked me a question, and I snapped back to reality.
“What was that?” I replied.
“I said, ‘Do you want me to send you the train schedule to Saratoga?’”
“Uh, sure. That would be great.”
“Are you all right?” she asked. “Your voice just got all funny.”
What I should have said was “Funny? Funny how?” but I was so freaked out by my financial aid fiasco that I accidentally told the truth.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “This thing with my mother has me totally freaked out.”
“Your mother?” Claire said after a pause. “I thought your mother was dead.”
Busted.
I shifted into Weasel Mode and tried to figure out my next move. I hated lying to Claire, and if there was ever a time to tell her the truth about my family this was it. Then I thought about my mother, and Uncle Wonderful, and the hundreds of people I’d robbed, and knew I couldn’t tell her. It didn’t matter how much she cared about me, Claire was an honest and upright person and would have dumped me before I had even finished my story.
So, I lied. I lied hoping I would never have to lie to her again.
“My mother is dead,” I said. “Today is the anniversary of her death.”
“Oh, Cam, I’m so sorry. You never talk about her.”
“I know,” I replied truthfully. “It’s just too hard.”
We finished our conversation, and as I walked out of the library I remembered something Grandpa Patsy told me the day he gave me my good name.
“Remember, Skipper,” he said, pulling my passport and birth certificate out of his storage locker, “your good name is the most valuable gift I can ever give you so take very good care of it.”
His words still echoed in my ears, and I looked up at the sky and said, “I tried, Grandpa Patsy. I really did.”
Then I got in my car and went to kill Uncle Wonderful.
10
TEN MINUTES LATER I PULLED UP TO UNCLE WONDERFUL’S HOUSE ready to pound his nose through the back of his head. After all he’d done for me, it was the least I could do. I barreled up the front walk with my fists squeezed tight and was about to kick down the door when it flew open and Uncle Wonderful appeared holding a gun.
“Hello, Skipper.”
“Hi, Uncle Wonderful. Could you do me a favor and put that gun away so I can beat you to death without getting shot?”
“Beat me to death and you won’t be going back to that fancy school of yours.”
“I’m already not going back to that fancy school of