Notorious Read online

  My first instinct is to say, I won’t be here tomorrow. But who am I kidding? Where else am I going to be? And anyway, ZeeBee is already gone, scrunched through the bushes, her unappreciated dog at her heels.

  2

  Zarabeth

  Nobody appreciates a good lighthouse anymore.

  The one on Centrelight is 160 years old. That dates back to the days when boats really needed a lighthouse to keep from crashing into rocks and things because they didn’t have running lights of their own. It’s a national treasure—two national treasures really, since it’s built right on the border that cuts through the island. The problem is it needs six million dollars’ worth of repairs. And for that much money, Canada wants it to be an American national treasure, and the Americans want to give it to us. Meanwhile, somebody has to run it, so the two countries switch days. The U.S. takes Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Canada gets Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. (We alternate Sundays.)

  Luckily, nobody has to sit up there like in the old days. The system is automated now, so all it needs is someone to be on call in case of breakdown. The Americans outsource the job to the company that maintains the computer system. But Canada makes the border service run it, which means my dad has to take his turn like the other officers. We get a phone call when the light burns out at four o’clock in the morning. That’s actually happened more than once. It’s hard to get back to sleep after a lighthouse call.

  It’s too bad that the future of an amazing old lighthouse is in jeopardy just because of money. But that’s the way of the world, I guess. It costs a lot to run a whole country, and neither one wants to spend a fortune on a little island in the middle of nowhere. That goes double for Canada, because, even though we have half the land of Centrelight, there are only twelve hundred of us Canadians living here, compared with over five thousand Americans. Don’t I know that! When I get on the ferry to go to school on the mainland, there are only ten other kids with me—four high schoolers and six little kids. Not a single one is even close to my age. I used to at least have my brother, Wayne, to talk to, but he’s away at university now in Toronto.

  Standing on the dock, waiting for the boat, you can see the top of Centrelight Middle School—actually, Centerlight Middle School, that’s how the Americans spell it. Four hundred kids go there. Although the Americans have more than 80 percent of the people, they have more like 99 percent of the kids. Centrelight is a great place for the Michigan families because you can have island living, but thanks to the bridge, you can be on the mainland and heading for Detroit or some other city in just a few minutes.

  It kind of stinks because it’s hard to make friends with kids you don’t go to school with. And the kids I do go to school with live on the mainland, which might as well be on the moon. I used to have Barney, and that was more than enough. Just wheedling him out of trouble was a full-time job. But in the end, I blew it, didn’t I?

  I push the thought out of my mind. It makes me too sad.

  Barney Two isn’t much of a replacement. He wouldn’t get into trouble if you put ten thousand volts through him. No personality at all.

  That’s why I was lucky to find Keenan. He’s a captive audience since he’s stuck in that lawn chair all day while his lungs get better. Perfect timing too, because during summer, nobody cares who goes to what school. But there’s a nice balance to our friendship. I give him pointers on Centrelight life, and he looks out for me by not coughing in my direction and giving me tuberculosis.

  The third day I go over there, I bring along a few welcome gifts:

  A postcard of our historic lighthouse. It’s a great picture, taken a long time ago, before the pieces started falling off. Also, the Canadian flag is flying, which only happens half the time.

  A tourist map of the island, showing the Canada-U.S. border, which looks like a piece of modern art the way it squiggles around.

  A Centrelight History souvenir keychain, with a double-headed portrait: Al Capone on one side and Eliot Ness on the other.

  One order of poutine, the most Canadian food ever.

  He looks at the takeout container like it’s filled with live scorpions.

  “It’s French fries with gravy and cheese curds,” I supply. “If you’re going to live in Canada, you might as well get used to it.”

  “I don’t live in Canada,” he reminds me.

  “Around here, if you worry too much about the border, you’ll go crazy. Pass gas anywhere in Centrelight, they smell it in two different countries.” I indicate the poutine. “Try it. Trust me, it’s a lot less gross than it looks.”

  “Your little friend thinks so too.” Keenan nods in the direction of Barney Two, who peers longingly up at the container, panting quietly.

  I back him off with my sneaker. “Forget it, buster.” I can’t help thinking of Original Barney, who would have skipped the begging part and wolfed down the food, the container, and probably most of my arm below the elbow. This purebred impostor is an insult to the proud Barney name.

  Keenan examines the fries. “How come there are fingerprints in the gravy?”

  “I love poutine,” I tell him. “Hey, I’m not the one with the tuberculosis,” I add when he scowls at me. “Once you take a bite, the whole batch is contaminated.”

  “Maybe not,” he argues in his own defense. “My doctor says I’m probably not contagious anymore.”

  “So let’s blow this popsicle stand!” I exclaim. “I can’t wait to show you around the island.”

  “Not yet,” he puts in quickly. “I’m getting better, but I still have to take it easy.”

  Bummer. As much as I like Keenan, being stuck in this one little backyard is getting on my nerves. Barney and I had that in common. We didn’t appreciate being fenced in. Wimpy Barney Two couldn’t care less.

  Keenan reaches under the lawn chair and pulls out a tennis ball. He holds it under Barney Two’s wet nose for a few seconds and then launches it across the yard.

  Barney Two doesn’t move a muscle.

  “C’mon, boy—fetch!” Keenan encourages.

  “He might actually be too stupid to understand,” I offer.

  “And Barney One had a PhD in fetching, I suppose,” Keenan says sarcastically.

  “Barney wouldn’t have chased it either,” I admit. “He had better things to do with his time.”

  Keenan seems annoyed. “Barney Two is not stupid. In fact, he’s the opposite. He isn’t fetching because he’s waiting for permission.”

  I’m amazed. “What does he expect—an engraved invitation?”

  “I mean permission from you.”

  “Why should he care what I say?” Keenan might have a point, though. Barney Two is looking up at me as if awaiting some kind of signal. “Fine,” I tell the dog. “You can go.”

  Barney Two takes off across the lawn like he’s been shot from a cannon. His gait is so fast and so light that his paws barely disturb the individual blades of grass. I can’t help but compare it to any one of Barney’s many rampages.

  On the fly, he scoops up the ball, turns on a dime, and races back to hold it out to me.

  “What am I supposed to do with it?” I ask him.

  Keenan reaches over to take back the ball, but Barney Two bites down on it with his teeth. Pretty soon there’s a mini tug-of-war going on, with Keenan pulling and twisting, and the dog clamped on alligator-style. The craziest part is that Keenan is smiling and laughing like he’s never had so much fun. Honestly, it’s the happiest I’ve ever seen him. (Ever meaning the past three days.)

  “Okay, enough. Stop,” I say.

  Barney Two drops the tennis ball like a hot potato.

  “I brought something else,” I tell Keenan. “You can’t keep this because it’s probably worth a lot of money.” I reach into my pocket and take out an ancient bullet shell casing, the brass tarnished. “We found this on our property when we dug the hole for Barney’s grave. It’s probably from Tommy-Gun Ferguson—maybe even from the famous gun that gave him his name
.”

  “Or some random guy shooting at tin cans,” he comments.

  I shake my head vigorously. “This is Centrelight. You find a bullet here, and it was either shot by a gangster, at a gangster, or through a gangster.”

  He laughs. “Prohibition was like ninety years ago.”

  I step closer (I hope he really isn’t contagious anymore) and drop my voice. “Listen, just because the rumrunners are gone doesn’t mean there are no more gangsters on Centrelight. The laws may be different, but we’re still right on the border, and that’s a valuable location for illegal activities.”

  “What illegal activities?” he asks, licking the gravy off a French fry. “Smuggling poutine? Maybe it just oozes across the line.”

  “Things happen here,” I confide in a hushed tone. “People meet and have secret conversations in the middle of the night. Strangers suddenly appear and then you never see them again. Car alarms go off for no reason. There are footprints that can’t be explained and voices that are almost, but not quite, heard. Someone’s watching our house, Keenan. I don’t make mistakes about things like that. My father is a law enforcement professional, so I’ve got it in my DNA.”

  He frowns. “Then shouldn’t you be telling him, and not me?”

  “He’s not a cop; he’s a border officer,” I explain. “He works on the river. You can’t enforce the border on the island. It’s just not possible. His only responsibility on Centrelight is lighthouse duty.”

  “Yeah, but if somebody’s watching your house . . .”

  I feel my cheeks flame. “My father doesn’t believe me about that. He says I’m being too dramatic.”

  I can tell by the look on Keenan’s face that he agrees with Dad. It kind of annoys me. How long has he been here? Five minutes? I’m the one who knows everything there is to know about Centrelight.

  “Eat your poutine,” I tell him. “It’s no good when it’s cold.”

  3

  Keenan

  The call comes in at the worst possible moment.

  It’s almost lunchtime Wednesday, and I’ve been playing Igloo Tycoon all morning. I’m only three blocks away from completing the Alaskan Edifice, which would be a personal best for me. But my phone is down to 4 percent, so if I take the call and the battery dies on me, I’ll lose all my progress.

  It’s an easy decision—until Dad’s work number appears across the frozen tundra. With a sigh, I hit Accept.

  “Hey, kid. How’s it going?” he greets me. “Just got the test results from Dr. Sobel. Good news—you’re golden. You’ve still got to take your meds, but you’ve got the green light to leave the house.”

  “Really?” I’m psyched. “How long before I can go back to Shanghai?”

  “Not so fast,” he cautions. “You’re not getting rid of your old man so easily.”

  “That’s not what I meant, Dad,” I say, instantly contrite.

  “It’s still going to take a while for your immune system to rebuild itself. The last thing you need is sixteen hours on a plane, breathing people’s recycled germs.” He adds, “We talked about this, remember?”

  “I remember.” The one topic that never came up in that conversation was the time frame. I get that I’m stuck here, but till when? It’s starting to sink in that I never asked because I didn’t want to hear the answer.

  “It’s just that I really don’t know anybody on Centerlight.” Not technically true. I know ZeeBee. I’ll bet there’s nobody quite like her, even in Shanghai, with its twenty-four million residents.

  “All that’s going to change now that you can get out,” Dad reasons. “You’ll meet people—especially when school starts in a couple of weeks.”

  “Right.” I guess I sound pretty dejected. I was hoping to get back to Mom and Klaus and my friends pretty soon after my clean bill of health. Now Dad’s implying that not only am I here until school starts, but that I’ll be staying awhile. Bummer. When you’re on the international school circuit, your classmates are from all over the world—kids of ambassadors and princes, professors and tycoons. You live in exciting cities, where you hear more different languages before lunch than you’ll hear in a century in Centerlight. Face it, a remote little island is just plain dull, no matter who shot who during Prohibition ninety years ago.

  “You’ll want to get your strength back by the time school rolls around,” Dad goes on. “So I signed you up for some training sessions at Island Fitness. It’s on the American side, next door to Taco Bell. Ask for Bryce. On the phone, he sounded like a really good guy. He works out a lot of kids. He’s a Chicago boy, just like your old man. Same neighborhood too—west side. Of course, he’s a little younger than me.”

  “Of course,” I echo cautiously.

  He sweetens the pot. “And guess what—Bryce used to be an amateur MMA fighter. How cool is that? You’re still into jujitsu, right?”

  “Tae kwon do,” I correct him. “I picked it up when we lived in Korea, but I’ve studied it other places too.”

  “See? You two have something in common already,” Dad concludes. “You’ve got a two-fifteen appointment. Enjoy.” A command, not a suggestion.

  So help me, it actually does sound pretty good. To go somewhere—anywhere—that isn’t either the house or the yard. I’ll go for a training session. I’ll go for being-hit-on-the-head lessons if it’ll pull me off the lawn chair and set me on the road to getting my life back.

  Stepping out the front door of the house is a weird experience. I’ve been on Centerlight for more than a month, but except for past visits and a few car rides to the doctor, I haven’t really seen much of it. As I walk along St. Clair Avenue toward downtown, I’m amazed at how quickly I’m out of breath. That’s what you get for weeks of lying on your butt. I’m about to take a major L at Island Fitness. I hope this guy Bryce isn’t expecting a sparring partner, because what he’s getting is more like a paperweight.

  Downtown is less than half a mile away, but I’m in no shape to hoof it. I find a bench and sink down on it gratefully. I haven’t been there long when a small jitney bus pulls up to the curb. It’s covered in overlapping American and Canadian flags, with a sign reading: SEE HISTORIC CENTERLIGHT. The driver opens the door and looks at me expectantly.

  “Going downtown?” I ask.

  “Hop on.”

  To my surprise, the jitney is full of tourists—not a crowd, but at least seven or eight. I look at this island as a place you go as a last resort to recover from a serious illness, but there are people who come here on vacation—on purpose.

  I take a seat next to an older lady who is poring over a “gangster map” of the island. I peer over her shoulder at the different destinations—Al Capone’s waterfront home, Bugs Moran’s cottage, Meyer Lansky’s summer rental, and the rooming house where Eliot Ness and his famous Untouchables stayed during trips to Centerlight are marked in boldfaced type. Lesser figures and mob lieutenants appear in smaller print. I blink. Tommy-Gun Ferguson is on there too. I half believed ZeeBee made him up. But there’s his house—a wood-frame Victorian with a cupola and a wraparound balcony. Which means that must be ZeeBee’s house. I pictured it as being kind of far because it’s in another country. But it’s only a few blocks away from Dad’s, even if it’s on the other side of the border. No wonder she and Barney Two show up in our yard every single day. It’s just a short walk from home.

  For me, it’s an eye-opener. ZeeBee seems kind of crazy, but all this gangster stuff turns out to be real—real enough to bring vacationers to Centerlight to tour the island, following maps of gangster homes!

  When we reach Island Fitness, the bus empties out. I’m the only one going to the gym; everybody else wants to see Lucky Luciano’s bocce court, which is in the back of a dark tavern called Volstead’s.

  Bryce Bergstrom, my trainer, turns out to be a twenty-two-year-old tower of muscle with a blond brush cut and tattoos along both arms. Yeah, I’ll say he’s a little younger than Dad. And there are a few other differences—like the fact th
at he’s a tank.

  He looks me up and down. “So you’re the martial artist.”

  “More like I’m the kid who can’t string together three decent breaths,” I confess.

  “I don’t do excuses,” he tells me seriously.

  The gym is about equally split between weights on one side and cardio equipment on the other. Bryce sets me up on a leg press machine, and at first I’m amazed how easy it is to move the stack.

  Bryce counts in a strident voice that reminds me of a marine drill sergeant. “One! . . . Two! . . . Three! . . .”

  But somewhere between four and five, something happens. I feel like my lungs are being squeezed in a giant vise grip, and I’m sucking for air that just won’t come.

  “Sorry,” I pant, rolling out of the seat and collapsing into a squat on the padded floor. “I had tuberculosis. I know, excuses—”

  “Take your time,” he insists, somehow managing to sound impatient about it. Or maybe I’m putting that on myself. Something about this bodybuilder makes me want to impress him.

  Bryce runs me through a routine of free weights, machines, and abdominal exercises, and each time it’s the same. I start out great—strong, even. But a few reps in, I run out of breath. The weights slam down against the stacks and I’m left gasping.

  “Good,” says Bryce.

  “Good?” I wheeze with what little wind I have left. “I can’t do anything. What’s so good about that? I have no strength left!”

  He shakes his head. “You have plenty of strength. What you need is stamina.”

  “Now who’s making excuses?”

  He favors me with a crooked grin. “It doesn’t count when I do it.”

  It’s the first time I see Bryce smile. He’s like a whole different person when it happens. His face becomes softer, less angular.

  “Now we’ve got something to shoot for,” he goes on, escorting me to a treadmill. “Cardio.”