The Girl with the Wrong Name by Barnabas Miller

rich yet?”
    “The Long Con ? What is this, House of Games ?”
    I was hoping to make Lou laugh with the reference to one of our favorite David Mamet movies. I could tell from her angry smile that she was reliving the movie in her head: a slightly fat Joe Mantegna spends days conning a slightly mannish Lindsay Crouse into giving him eighty thousand dollars. Lou seemed to get the point: I was absolutely sure I was not Lindsay Crouse to Andy Reese’s Joe Mantegna.
    “Lou, enough .” I grabbed her hands and squeezed. “You don’t have to worry. This guy is totally harmless. Besides, none of this matters anymore because the project is over. The whole story ends tonight. I found her. I found the girl he’s looking for. And once I get them together, he’s not going to need me anymore.” My throat caught. Without a hint of warning, I found myself fighting off another ambush of tears.
    Lou leaned closer. “Sweetie, are you all right?”
    “People really need to stop asking me that.” I took a deep breath. “I am fine. Don’t pay any attention to this.” I pointed to my moist eyes. “This has no actual meaning; it’s just a thing that happens to me now. Just ignore it.”
    “Oh, God, Theo. Are you in love with this guy?”
    “ What? God, no. If I were in love with him, would I be helping him find his girlfriend? Hel- lo ?”
    “I thought we outlawed ‘hel- lo’ last year?”
    I laughed in spite of myself. “Well played. How about this? I’ll come over to your place around nine tonight, and you can help me start logging all the footage.”
    “Okay, fine,” she said, still sounding unsure. “But you promise you’ll come? You can’t bag on me—not now.”
    “I swear,” I said. “All I need to do is shoot the final scene.”

Chapter Nine

    It’s 6:52 p.m. The sun has already sunk below New Jersey, leaving a dark violet sky in its wake. Andy and I are standing in a pocket of shrubs outside Wagner Park, across the street from the Ritz-Carlton Battery Park Hotel. Yes, we are hiding in the bushes.
    I’d realized something crucial in my run-in with Lou. I’d gotten so involved in this search for Sarah that I’d forgotten my real purpose here, and that is to make a fantastic documentary. I’d let my obsessive mind throw me off course. I’d told Lou about the great footage I’d be showing her at nine o’clock, but I hadn’t shot a stitch of video since our creepy visit to Bergen Street. So I stopped home after school, grabbed my jacket with the button cam, and plugged myself back in for the grand finale, the dramatic reunion of Sarah and Andy Reese.
    Maybe it will be beautiful. Maybe it will be a disaster. Either way, it will be high-octane cinema, and that’s the only reason I’m here. Camera-shy Andy doesn’t need to know I’m shooting.
    “I feel sick,” he says now. “I shouldn’t feel sick, right? I should be excited. Or maybe I’m so excited, it’s making me sick? What do you think?”
    It’s too damn dark out. The button cam doesn’t do well in low light. I should have picked a spot under some direct streetlight. I want to peek into my jacket pocket and check the screen, but I can’t risk Andy catching on.
    “Theo,” he says, “throw me a bone here. This isn’t the time to go quiet on me.”
    “Sorry. I feel queasy, too. I think it’s excited-queasy. I mean, I’m sure it’s excited-queasy.”
    “Totally,” Andy says, wiping his clammy palms on his Oxford shirt. He spots two women across the street. They could be twins with their shiny elegant blonde hair and designer coats, shuffling their way into the Ritz-Carlton lobby on their Christian Louboutin stilettos. (Okay, I can’t be sure; I just assume they’re Christian Louboutins.) “You think those two are going to the party?” he asks.
    “I am ninety-nine percent sure. Ninety-nine point nine-nine percent.”
    The lame semi-humor doesn’t go over well. “Oh, man.” He runs his hands through his sweat-slicked hair and