Take It Off by J. Minter Page B

sort of awesome. The thought of Flan gave me a little kick, like a sort of renewed zeal to get the hell out of here. I had to get back and protect her from Rob. I used the dry bar of cheap soap to clean up my face, and a dab of the cheap conditioner to get my hair back into form, took a deep breath, and went back into the monk’s cell.
    Suki was sitting on the windowsill, staring up at the night sky and smoking one of those weird cigarettes. It smelled like a harem in there, and itwas actually a kind of romantic picture.
    â€œI quit this morning,” she said without looking at me, “but this seems like a pretty good reason to start again.”
    â€œHey,” I said, trying to sound conciliatory. Suki didn’t respond, so I went on. “So, in the morning, I’ll call my mom and get her to wire us some money.”
    â€œIn the
morning
? In the morning, it’ll be the middle of the night in New York.”
    â€œUm, no. It’s six hours ahead there, so if we wake up at eight it will be like two there.”
    â€œNo, they’re six hours
behind.
If we wake up at eight—which is doubtful—it will be two in the morning there.”
    â€œOh.” Could that be right? Then Rob
hadn’t
been at Flan’s at two in the morning! This was good, this was very good. I cleared my throat. “Should we try and call now?”
    â€œI don’t think we can get a phone card anywhere at this time of night. And besides, I’m exhausted. Let’s just wake up fresh in the morning, figure out what we need to do, and then try and get some money.”
    This sounded sensible, so I nodded and sat down next to her on the windowsill.
    â€œListen,” Suki said, “I’m really sorry, but my parents are on this retreat in Provo where they take a vow of silence and don’t speak for three weeks. So I don’t think I’m going to be able to get any money from them to get us out of here.” She bit her lip when she said this, which struck me as needlessly coy, especially since I already told her that I’d pay for us to get to Barcelona.
    It reminded me why I so disliked this girl in the first place: She’d been a total tease with my guys. I know this lame, narcissistic type of girl pretty well. New York is full of them, except the better-dressed version. She’d created all this tension between Arno and Mickey, just because she wanted everybody drooling over her all the time.
    All I said was: “That’s cool. My mom’s pretty easy to track down, and it shouldn’t be a problem to wire us plenty of cash.”
    â€œThanks.”
    I nodded to let her know it was no problem, and Suki blew smoke rings out the window. “I think what we do is, tomorrow, we check out of our hotel and find a ferry schedule and see what time the ferries run to Barcelona. When it’s morning in New York, we call and get some money transferred, and then we get on the next ferryoutta here. Ocean Term is going to be doing their survival test all tomorrow, anyway, and hopefully we can sneak back onto the ship without anyone being the wiser. If, that is, they haven’t found us out yet,” she said.
    â€œMy guys will be covering for us.”
    â€œYeah, Greta, too.”
    â€œSounds like a good plan.”
    Suki took several slow drags of her cigarette and I thought about how maybe my assessment of her was too harsh. Which was a charitable thought I had way too soon.
    â€œWell, I’m glad you had a chance to redo your hair,” she said.
    â€œWhat’s wrong with my hair?” I said defensively.
    Suki shrugged.
    â€œ
You’re
the one running around with this Pocahontas look. I mean, you’re really one to talk about colonization when you’re pretending to be an Indian. Oops, sorry,
Native American
.”
    â€œPocahontas?! Just because I’m a woman of color doesn’t make me a ‘Pocahontas’”—she was making