Ghostboy Chameleon & the Duke of Graffiti Read online

  Ghostboy, Chameleon & the Duke of Graffiti

  Olivia Wildenstein

  Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Epilogue

  Stay in Touch

  Acknowledgments

  Other Books By This Author

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  In retrospect, spray-painting an enormous white penis on Principal Matthews’s Volvo woodie was not the idea of the century.

  “What’s gotten into you, Duke?” my mother yelled the second she burst into the principal’s office.

  I cringed. She hadn’t taken the time to change out of her tennis clothes.

  “I’m so angry! Your father’s coming home early tonight to have a word with you.”

  Crap. My father never came home early.

  My mother dropped into the free chair facing Principal Matthews’s desk. There were so many coats of polish on it that I could see his clenched jaw without having to look up.

  “Mr. Matthews, we’ll take care of the damages. I’ll have my husband’s driver pick up your car this afternoon. If you could just give me the keys.”

  “That’s kind of you, Mrs. Meyer,” he said, “but I need to get home.”

  “I arranged for a rental. It’ll be in the parking lot this afternoon.”

  His jaw loosened a little. That was a good sign. Right?

  “You’ve thought of everything,” he mused.

  His eyes fixed me; they were very light, nearly see-through. I’d never looked at him that close, not even when he’d found me with the canister of white paint still poised in midair. I’d noticed his skin tone changing from pale to red though.

  “Is there any way we could keep this off Duke’s record?” Mom asked.

  I suspected my principal wouldn’t agree to it; the man was a stickler about rules and good behavior. He probably filed his taxes ahead of time.

  “It would go against our institution’s policy to falsify records. However…”

  My mother leaned forward so abruptly I thought she might fall off her chair.

  “If Duke puts in one hour of community service after school for a month, I’m willing to write that it was a misconstrued art project. Does that sound fair, Duke?”

  I gaped at him. A month!

  “Duke?” he repeated.

  “He’ll be free after school every day for however many hours you need him,” Mom said.

  I bit down on my lip. Great. There goes my social life. “But I have basketball practice on Tuesdays and Thurs—”

  “You won’t be playing for a while,” Mom snapped.

  “But the championship’s mid-May.”

  “You should’ve thought about that sooner. And you can forget about playing on the weekends too,” she added. “Actions have consequences. You’re also grounded for the next four weeks at home.”

  I gasped but didn’t argue for fear of her extending my sentence to my seventeenth birthday, or my eighteenth. “What sort of community service am I going to be doing?” I muttered.

  “You’ll be helping Mr. Darcy.”

  “Help him do what?” I snorted. “Clean the school?”

  When he said, “Yes,” Mom sat up much straighter.

  A Meyer janitor—I doubted there’d ever been one in our family. I nearly smirked at the thought. Nearly, because the reality was that my buddies were going to have a field day with my new line of work. Plus spending time with the janitor wouldn’t earn me popularity points at Francis Academy. Not that I had to earn any. My two best friends and I ran the sophomores. Okay, maybe we didn’t run them, but we were the guys every girl wanted to date and every guy wanted to hang out with.

  My mother squirmed in her seat. “Is there any other job you could offer Duke? Perhaps some accounting or—”

  “No.”

  Her green eyes and newly Botoxed lips rounded into large Os. I could see the wheels spinning full speed in her head. What would she tell her friends? What would she tell my grandma? Actually, Grandma Preiss would probably get a kick out of my predicament. I rolled up the sleeves of my white shirt. Even with the fan blasting the office, it was hot, which was unusual for the month of March in Connecticut.

  “You can start this afternoon.” Mr. Matthews stood up, adjourning our meeting. “Mr. Darcy will be waiting for you in the teachers’ lounge.”

  While my mother shook hands and pocketed the car keys, I headed for the door and drew it open. She flew past me, blond ponytail swishing furiously all the way down the stairs. I walked her out to the parking lot where her dark green Maserati was parked across two spaces.

  “I’m sorry,” I told her, as she flung her door wide.

  “I should hope so. What got into you?” she exclaimed.

  “It was just a stupid dare,” I said.

  “Who dared you?”

  Since I couldn’t tell her who’d dared me—because I’d taken an oath of secrecy—I said, “It doesn’t matter.”

  She folded her arms. “It matters to me. Was it Owen? If it was, I’m going to have a word with his mother.”

  “It wasn’t Owen,” I said.

  “Then who?”

  “Let it go.”

  “Let it go? Someone made my son do something stupid, and you want me to let it go? I will absolutely not let it go! Give me a name.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I think your friend is as responsible and should suffer the same consequences. I won’t have my son be the only one picking up trash!”

  “Whoa…Mom, relax. It’ll be fine.”

  “Don’t tell me to relax! I’m furious! So furious!”

  I placed both my palms on her shoulders. “On the upside, it’ll make a good essay topic for my college applications,” I said, mainly to calm her down. I wasn’t delusional. The next month would suck.

  Mom sniffled.

  “Don’t cry.”

  A few tears plopped out, so I hugged her.

  “I promise it won’t happen again.”

  And it wouldn’t, because I would never get a second chance to join the Alphas.

&nbs
p; Chapter Two

  On my way to the teachers’ lounge at the end of the day, I began planning how to redeem myself to shorten my punishment. In my daze, I walked right past the rec room and had to double back.

  The door was open. Instead of knocking, I cleared my throat. “Reporting for duty, Mr. Darcy.”

  As he made his way toward me, he tightened his brown ponytail. He resembled a hippy past his prime, which had earned him the nickname of Shagdar, a mixture of Shaggy and Darcy. Owen had come up with it last year. Not only had it spread, but it had also stuck.

  “Nearly on time,” he said.

  I was one minute late.

  “So what’s the plan for today?”

  “The plan for today, Mr. Meyer,” Shagdar said, “is to scour the school grounds. The quad’s filthy. Wrappers and soda cans everywhere.”

  I rubbed the back of my neck.

  “I hope you don’t find that beneath you.” He cocked a bushy eyebrow. “The garbage pick and trash bags are in the closet next to the girls’ bathroom. Ground floor.”

  I nodded and turned to go.

  “You might want to change into something more comfortable,” he called after me. “Wouldn’t want to get grass stains on your uniform now.”

  “Can I wear my sports clothes?”

  He nodded. “Hurry up. You’re wasting time.”

  My plan all along. As I pushed through the doors of the locker room, I ran into Owen and Gabe, who were changing for basketball.

  “Are you hiding from Shagdar?” Gabe asked, tying his sneaker laces.

  I made a face. “You heard?”

  “Yup. You’re his bitch for the month,” Owen said, guffawing.

  I glared at my friend, and then past him, into his gym locker. His bag seemed to have exploded inside. That was Owen—messiest guy alive. I’d never seen the color of the carpet in his room—in spite of the squadron of housekeepers his parents employed—and I had spent many afternoons holed up in there, playing Lands of the Fae.

  “I’m not hiding. I’m changing,” I said, unbuttoning my shirt with the academy’s eagle crest.

  Gabe smiled, displaying what looked like an abnormal amount of pearly whites. “Did Shagdar lend you a pair of blue overalls?”

  “Shut up,” I said.

  Owen grinned. He reminded me of the largemouth bass we caught last summer off the dock of his ridiculous mansion on Long Island Sound. “I still can’t believe you got busted.”

  “Why?” I grumbled. “You two idiots were staring at Liane’s rack instead of watching my back.”

  “She has a seriously nice rack,” he said, running his freckled fingers through his orangey-blond hair. He was of Irish descent and had his ancestral countrymen’s paleness, which contrasted sharply with Gabe’s black skin.

  “That’s so not the point,” I said as I rolled my pants off.

  “So what’s Mr. Darcy having you do?” Gabe asked, rising from the bench and stretching his legs.

  “I have to clean the quad.”

  “Ouch.”

  The sound of the coach’s whistle reverberated through the locker room.

  “Gotta go,” Owen said. “Have fun.”

  “Yeah right,” I grunted.

  As he slipped past me, he dropped his voice and whispered, “They’re giving you a second chance.”

  “What?” I squeaked. I cleared my throat. “Why?”

  Owen opened his mouth, shut it, and then opened it again, “Because you didn’t talk.” I had a feeling that wasn’t the reason, but hey, I had a second chance. I didn’t care how I’d gotten it.

  Relief spread through me like dye in water, but it was instantly replaced by panic. What if I got caught next time as well? I would be expelled and my parents would cart me off to an all-boys’ boarding school. My life would be over.

  “Don’t break a nail out there,” Gabe said, winking as he left.

  I really wanted to become a part of the Alphas, Francis Academy’s exclusive, century-old club, which usually only recruited juniors and seniors. This year, they’d wanted Gabe because his father was running for governor of Connecticut; and they’d wanted Owen because his parents owned the largest, most expensive property in Greenwich, and because his older brother was already a member. They hadn’t especially wanted me, but my friends had tapped me, and the Alphas had given me a chance. I’d blown it by getting caught. Stealth was the Alphas’ motto.

  In my blue gym shorts and white tee, I slunk out of the locker room toward the cluttered janitorial closet and rifled through it for my tools. The junior football team was training by the time I emerged on the field, which offered a nice distraction from plucking plastic wrappers and empty soda cans off the bleachers. I didn’t play football because I wanted to avoid concussions and broken noses. Anyway, my height would’ve been wasted on that sport. Basketball was my calling.

  A few of the guys waved to me during their water break and smirked at the sight of my tools. I just shrugged and bore my cross, reminding myself that I had a second chance, and that when I was inducted, no one would snicker. Not even Goth Girl perched on the top bleacher, whose black lips were tilted up in mockery. I held her gaze and waited stubbornly for her to break the connection. Just when I thought she wouldn’t, she scowled and looked away.

  Chapter Three

  Liane, Francis Academy’s head cheerleader, tossed her pink backpack on her desk and walked toward Gabe, Owen, and me. Unless our teachers forced us apart, the three of us were always packed together in the last row of every classroom. We’d sat together since we became friends back in middle school.

  “Hi, boys,” Liane said. Her voice was like a gust of air, weightless, as though she breathed after every word.

  “Whassup?” Owen said. At times, he spoke like one of those dope dealers on Arcadia Street. Considering his family’s wealth stretched back to the founding of Fairfield County, his speech habits were comical.

  “My parents are going away this weekend and I’m throwing a pool party to celebrate. I was hoping you boys could make it,” she said-breathed. I still wasn’t certain how she got that much air between each word.

  “Sweet,” Owen told Liane’s boobs.

  She didn’t seem to mind.

  “We’ll be there,” Gabe said.

  “Six o’clock on Saturday. The dress code is beachwear,” she said and winked.

  “Well, that sounds like fun,” I said, as I fished my notebook and my copy of Othello out of my black messenger bag. “You’ll have to send me some footage.”

  “Aren’t you coming?” Owen asked, reverting back to normal English.

  “Can’t. I’m grounded, remember?” I said. “No basketball, no video games, no parties.”

  Maybe if I told my father why I got into trouble, he would take pity. Then again, rule number two of the Alphas was secrecy. No one outside the brotherhood could know the members’ identities. If I broke rule number two, I wouldn’t get my second chance. I would be out. I didn’t want to be out. Especially not now that my best friends were in.

  “Maybe you could sneak out. I’m sure Grandma P. would cover for you,” Owen said.

  “That’s a thought.” But if my parents found out, they’d check Grandma into a fancy retirement home. I liked having her around. “I’ll see,” I said, although I’d already made up my mind about not involving her.

  Our scatter-brained, thirty-something English teacher, Miss Brown, erupted into the classroom, dropping a few books on her way to her big wooden desk. She heaved her satchel to the floor and returned to the path of mayhem, squatting to round up the toppled books.

  “Everyone, take out a sheet of paper and a pen,” she said, stacking everything haphazardly on her desk.

  I would never admit this to any living being, but her class was my favorite, partly because I loved English and writing, and partly because her assignments were original and fun.

  Turning to the blackboard, she grabbed a piece of white chalk and scraped: “Being a rock star is difficu
lt, especially during an alien invasion…”

  “Now, I want you all to begin with this prompt, but use Shakespeare’s writing style.”

  A collective groan erupted around the classroom. I didn’t groan but I made sure to chew on my lip to mask my eagerness. Miss Brown rubbed her hands together, and a cloud of white dust materialized from her palms. Flecks landed on her black skintight sweater, which gave me an idea for the scene I was about to write.

  Gabe accompanied me that afternoon as I changed into a pair of cargo shorts and a tee. He wasn’t hanging out with me out of the goodness of his heart. He was waiting to see our college counselor. Not that I needed company. I had earphones and my cell was packed with music.

  He sat on the bench next to me, reading out an article about his dad’s campaign. “The journalist calls him ‘the entrepreneur who wants to give back,’” he said. “My dad’s a capitalist, not a fucking communist. God, journalists are shit. Don’t they check their facts?”

  “Generosity, not cupidity, will get your dad elected.”

  “Cupi-what? You and your SAT words.”

  “Shoot me. I like nice words.”

  “What does it even mean?”

  “It means being greedy,” I said.

  Gabe grunted. “Whatever. Anyway, I think people have a right to know what sort of politician they’re voting for. If they elect my father thinking he’s going to give handouts, they’ll be royally pissed.”