Just Fooling Around Read online

  Well, that wasn’t true. She was still a kid to them, and always would be. But they trusted her intellect. They trusted what she knew about numbers and reason.

  But they didn’t trust her about the curse, even though she knew she was right. She had to be right, because if a curse could exist in a world organized by numbers and reason, then that meant that there was no order or reason. And where did that leave her? Where did that leave every other scientist and mathematician, for that matter?

  She tried to explain all of that to her siblings, to absolutely no avail. They saw only what they wanted, and because of that, they fell victim, blaming every bad thing that happened to them on April first on some mythical curse thrust upon the family in days gone by.

  Honestly.

  A lanky guy in desperate need of deodorant flopped into the seat beside her, then grinned, his teeth a bilious yellow. She forced herself not to crinkle her nose, then focused hard on her phone. It still showed two bars of signal, and she pressed Send before she could talk herself out of it. Less than a minute later, the phone started to ring. She waited, and the signal bars faded. Voice mail had picked up.

  She told herself it wasn’t that she didn’t want to talk to her brother—it was just that she didn’t want to talk to him about the Franklin Curse. Or, at least, she didn’t want to talk to him about it without the fortification of bagels and coffee.

  For that matter, maybe she should rethink the whole bagel thing. If she went by his apartment, would he let her out again?

  The truth was, she’d come into New York City today in one more attempt to prove her point: that April Fools’ Day was perfectly safe. And so she had to see him. Because otherwise, why come, other than to see her best friend and go shopping and then to a show? But those were all the incidental perks. The real point of being here today was to walk through the city, physically proving her ultimate theorem that there was no curse.

  She’d already proved that to herself, though.

  Which meant she had to call Cam. He had to stand witness to her lack of bad fortune.

  Now that she was here, though, she had to admit that maybe this hadn’t been the best plan. After all, Cam truly believed, and he truly loved her. Which meant he’d go to any lengths to see her safe.

  She had a sudden vision of the inside of a broom closet, and frowned. Surely, he wouldn’t really…

  In the past, she wouldn’t have worried. It was just Cam back then. But now he had Jenna, and as much as Darcy loved her new sister-in-law, she also knew that Jenna was now a believer, and would undoubtedly assist Cam in locking Darcy in a padded room until after midnight. Just to keep her safe.

  “You’re not careful enough,” Cam had told her only two weeks ago. Darcy had snorted loudly. He was one to talk, Mr. I-Think-I’ll-Build-a-Rocket-to-Mars-and-Defy-Fate.

  But she had to admit that he’d always believed in the curse—he’d just always faced it down.

  Not Darcy. She knew bullshit when she saw it. If there was really some horrible curse affecting all four of the Franklin kids, then shouldn’t one of her elder siblings be dead by now? A morbid thought, maybe, but true. A theorem required proof, not coincidences masquerading as proof.

  No, the only reason her siblings were constantly getting April Fool injuries lay with the name of the day: they were fools. Fools who believed they’d have bad luck, and so, poof, they did.

  The clackety-clack of the train took on a slower rhythm, and she rose, realizing as she did that her purse felt significantly lighter. She glanced at it, then realized there was no it to see. All she had was a strap, now hanging loosely over her shoulder, the ends neatly sliced, as if by a razor. The purse itself was gone, and so was the stinky guy with yellow teeth.

  A small niggle of something familiar started to whisper in the back of her head. A voice that once again sounded like her.

  A voice that was saying, “I told you so.”

  Well, hell.

  THE RINGING PHONE TAUNTED Evan from across the room. Usually, he left it by his bedside, and he could easily roll over and answer it. Last night—at the tail end of his fit of productivity—he’d left the thing sitting on his desk, which happened to be located exactly eleven feet from his bed. He knew, because he’d meticulously measured the seven hundred and fifteen square-foot condo six years ago before he’d decided to open a vein and bleed money into the Manhattan real-estate market.

  The phone rang again. Eleven feet, zero inches. Not an overwhelming distance, but one that would require him to get out of bed.He really didn’t want to get out of bed.

  Another ring.

  Shit.

  With a groan, he rolled to face the offending instrument, wishing Ma Bell—or whoever was in charge these days—came with valet service. A Jeeves to walk the phone to him on a silver platter and announce that Mr. So-and-So was calling. Or, better, to tell him that a telemarketer was on the line, and that Evan shouldn’t trouble himself and to please, sir, go back to sleep.

  Riiiiinnnnng.

  He closed his eyes and waited while the closest thing he had to his fantasy Jeeves picked up the line. “Hi, you’ve reached Evan Olsen with Midtown Magazine. I’m unavailable right now, but please leave a message and I’ll call you back as soon as I can.”

  “Yo, Evan. You there? It’s Cam. Pick up. I’ve got a crisis.”

  His buddy’s voice filled the room, and Evan crossed those eleven feet without even thinking about it. “Hey. I’m here. Shit, it’s April first. You battered and broken?”

  Cam cleared his throat, and Evan knew that his friend had in fact suffered his annual injury. That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing—it was those injuries that had brought Cam and Jenna together—but Evan couldn’t help but shake his head. The Franklin Family Curse. Evan was a believer, and he wasn’t even a member of the family, just a longtime friend.

  No, it was more than that. He was a friend, yes, but he was also wrapped up in the curse. Cam had joked that Evan got the yin while the Franklins got the yang, but Evan knew better. He’d gotten the short end of the stick, too. He just couldn’t tell anyone.

  What had happened was that he’d stood up for Cam one April first against the wrath of Cam’s mother, and somehow Evan had walked away a hero, with all the perks that came with it—those particular perks for a fifteen-year-old being much attention from girls. Good on the surface, maybe, but not underneath.

  Before that, he’d been just another guy. Noticed, because he played football and was Cam Franklin’s friend, but nothing special. After, though, he was The Man.

  He’d be lying if he didn’t admit he’d enjoyed the role, but after a while, he wanted to simply be himself. But the mythology was there, and there’d been nowhere to hide.

  That’s what happens when you play hero in a small town. When you follow your best friend to the river during a storm on April Fools’ day.

  When your cursed best friend decides to swim the width of the river, despite everyone in town knowing how dangerous that river was when the water rose.

  And when you haul him back to shore, and then lie to his mother and say that Cam wasn’t trying to defy the curse by swimming across the damn river. That he’d fallen off the bridge—the curse, sure, but not him defying it—and you’d jumped in to rescue him.

  Selfless, they’d all said.

  Heroic, they’d all cheered.

  But he knew the truth. He should never have let Cam try to swim across in the first place. Should never have let his best friend put himself in the position of needing to be rescued.

  Evan hadn’t been a hero, he’d been a damned accomplice. But he couldn’t tell anyone that without getting Cam in hip-deep trouble with his parents.

  So he’d taken his licks, and let the town fete him. And what should have been a great thing ended up being a miserable burden.

  In fact, that’s part of the reason why he’d become a reporter. Not simply to look at the surface of things, but to dig until he could see how different it really was down b
elow. Because who better than him to know that there was always another story going on beneath the surface?

  He pulled himself out of his reverie and concentrated on his friend. “So what did you do?” he asked. “SCUBA dive without a regulator? Sky dive without a parachute?”

  “I’m reformed, haven’t you heard? All I did was trip over the damn cat. Twisted my ankle and threw my back out just after midnight. I’ve been on the couch all night.”

  “You need me to come over?”

  “Yeah,” Cam said. “But not for me. For Darcy.”

  Evan’s knees suddenly weren’t quite strong enough to support him, and he sank down on the edge of the bed, the phone still clutched to his ear. “Darcy? She’s okay, right?”

  Darcy was Cam’s little sister, the youngest of the four Franklin kids. And although Evan had been Cameron Franklin’s best friend throughout high school and college, it had always been Darcy who’d got his pulse rate going. Darcy who had been his fantasy. Darcy, whom he could never approach. Because how could he go after his best friend’s little sister?

  “Right now she’s fine,” Cam was saying. “But the day is young, and it’s not a great day to be a Franklin in New York.”

  “She’s here?” He hadn’t seen her in years. He could still remember the first time he’d met her—he’d been a senior and she’d been by herself, alone at a table in the cafeteria. He’d come in with Cam, the two of them surrounded as usual by laughing friends—cheerleaders and jocks and a few kids from band. Cam had noticed her across the room and called her name. She’d slowly put her finger in the book to mark her page, then looked up, her eyes wide and unblinking and so bright they seemed to cut right through Evan. “Wanna sit with us?” Cam had asked. She’d smiled, then shook her head and returned casually to her book. The shock of the rejection had reverberated through the cafeteria. No one—no one—turned down an offer to dine with Cam and his friends.

  No one except Darcy.

  She’d gained a bit of respect from the rest of the school that day, and also a bit of a reputation as a freak. The fact that she was young for a freshman—having skipped a year of junior high—didn’t help, and for the most part, Darcy Franklin had become a school loner, even with one of the most popular guys in school as a brother.

  Evan, however, had been smitten the first time he’d seen her. He’d never done anything about it, though. He might have had his own entourage of hero-worshipping girls, but the idea of going after Cam’s little sister—and a freshman, no less—was unthinkable. So he’d consoled himself with talking to her after school at Cam’s house, arguing about cool books they’d read, like the works of Stephen Hawkings or Carl Sagan. After he graduated, he’d see her occasionally on the local college campus, taking dual-credit courses. Each time, he’d feel that familiar twist in his gut, but again, he never did anything about it. She was a high-school girl, and he was in college. She was still Cam’s sister. And he was dating an English major he’d met at registration.

  Now, the English major and Evan had gone their separate ways, Darcy was all grown up and the simple sound of her name still made his skin tingle. “She’s in the city?” he asked. The last he’d heard, she was at MIT working toward a Ph.D. in mathematics.

  “On the way to my apartment,” Cam said. “And unless my little sister has changed, there’s no way I’m going to convince her to stay here for the day.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Already he was out of bed. Already, he was imagining a day with Darcy.

  “I need you watch out for her, buddy,” Cam said, voicing the words that Evan so wanted to here. “I need you to take care of her. I know it’s a lot to ask—following my kid sister around—but I’d really appreciate it if—”

  “No worries,” Evan said, his voice in a rush. “I get it. You’re worried about her. She’s alone in the city on April first.”

  “The kid’s brilliant,” Cam said. “But she can be scattered. And tunnel-visioned. And she’s determined to pretend like the curse doesn’t exist.”

  “Don’t worry,” Evan said. “I’ll keep an eye on her.”

  “How?”

  “Huh?”

  “She’ll have both our butts in a sling if she realizes I asked you to keep an eye on her. And it’s not like you’re going to play James Bond in a trenchcoat and tail her from afar. So what’s your excuse going to be? To hang out with her, I mean.”

  “Right,” Evan said, scrambling. “I’ll think of something.” Heck yes, he’d think of something. The idea of spending the day with Darcy beat pretty much anything else he could think of doing that day, and that included winning the lottery.

  “How about an article?” Cam said. “Tell her you’re doing a feature on the family curse.”

  “That’ll go over well,” Evan said. He might believe in the curse—how could he not?—but he knew damn good and well that Darcy was the hold-out in the family. And the truth was that antagonizing her wasn’t what he had in mind. No, his image of the perfect day was something significantly different.

  “She says she doesn’t believe in the curse,” Cam said. “But she can’t deny what happens to us every year.”

  “I’ll tell her I want to write a feature piece from her perspective. Holding the line in a family of believers.”

  “You’re a good man,” Cam said. “There’s no one I trust more to keep an eye on my baby sister.”

  An eye, Evan thought. He’d keep an eye on her, all right. On those flashing green eyes and that mass of wild, untamable curls.

  He imagined brushing her hair out of her eyes and stroking her cheek, taking her hand and walking through the park. Sharing a kiss on the top of the Empire State Building.

  And, yeah, he imagined a hell of a lot more than that, too.

  Cam sighed. “It’s just that she can be so damn naive, you know? I don’t want her to get hurt.”

  “Right,” Evan said, reining in all of his fantasies, because he could have none of them. This was Darcy he was thinking about. Cam’s little sister, who’d never once shown the slightest hint of interest in him. “I’ll keep her safe.”

  Safe, he thought. And at arm’s length.

  2

  “YOUR PURSE WAS STOLEN,” Cam said. He spoke the words as if they constituted mathematical proof, and punctuated them with a scowl, the effect of which was only slightly lessened by the flower-print blanket Jenna had tucked around his shoulders, his body and his elevated foot.

  “So? Lots of people get robbed in New York without being cursed. All it means is that I was an idiot for not holding the thing closer. And,” she added with a wry grin, “it means I need to borrow some cash.”“And if I say no?” Cam asked, as if that was his trump card.

  She rolled her eyes. “I only need to borrow a few bucks. As soon as the bank opens, I can get more.” She reached into the back pocket of her jeans and pulled out her driver’s license. “I always keep it in my pocket when I’m in the city. I figure that’s just smart.”

  “You’re being irresponsible,” Cam said, apparently unimpressed by her foresight. “Stay here, nice and tight and snug. Tomorrow you can window shop or do whatever you planned on doing.”

  “Tomorrow, I’m going back home. And I don’t want to stay in today. I have theater tickets for tonight, and I’m going. They’re for Dance in the Winter, and it’s sold out for the next two years. It’s the hottest thing on Broadway right now, and I’m not missing it. Just because you’re laid up on the couch doesn’t mean I have to be an invalid, too.”

  “It’s hours until your show,” Jenna said, coming back into the room with a yellow tray topped with three mugs of coffee. “And Cam and I hardly ever see you.”

  “Jenna’s right,” Cam said, taking one of the mugs, then wincing when hot coffee sloshed over the sides onto his hand. Darcy eyed the tray and decided to wait. “Hang out here and keep us company,” Cam added.

  “Keep you company?” she repeated. “Cameron Franklin? Mr. Action? Laid up in bed with a sprained
ankle, and you want me to just hang out here for the day? Excuse me for being blunt, but that’s really not my idea of a good time.”

  “I sprained it this morning, Darcy. Right after midnight.” He ran his fingers through his thick hair, making it stand up in tufts and giving him the look of a man who knew he was fighting a losing battle, but was determined to go on fighting. “You know what day this is. Why the hell did you have to come in to New York today, anyway?”

  “Because tonight’s the play,” she said simply. And that was true, since she’d specifically told her friend Bella to buy tickets for the April 1 show. “And because I was able to take the whole day for shopping. It’s not like my schedule gives me that many free days. MIT’s not exactly a party school, you know.”

  Also true, but what she didn’t point out was that as a Ph.D. candidate, she had significantly more flexibility than she’d had during the earlier years of her education. Her free time was still sadly lacking, but at least she could move the blocks of time around, like tiles on a sliding-number puzzle, until she managed to create a gap large enough to allow for a trip into the city.

  But was it really her brother’s business if she got a certain sense of satisfaction from coming to New York City on this day?

  Cam used to dive out of planes on April Fools’ Day—his boldness a way of thumbing his nose at the curse. Darcy did the same. Only she wasn’t daring the curse—there was no curse, after all. Instead, she was proving a point to her siblings who continued to believe in such nonsense.

  “Dammit, Darcy,” Cam said, not needing to say any more. She understood his frustration. She even sympathized with it. However silly it might be, Cam was a believer, and her big brother’s concern was genuine.