I looked at the file folder in my hand. This girl was 18 years old, and being charged with assault. There was a note that mentioned something about a cake. Why do I end up with the crazy ones? Threaten someone with a spork and end up with assault charges? Don't worry, we'll assign your case to Stephanie Plum. Bounty hunter extraordinaire. Excellent at blowing up cars, fighting with macho Italian men, and turning her own life into a soap opera.
Ugh. Ok, so maybe the problem was me. But hey, It's not like I attended Ranger's school of badass macho shit. I'd just stick with the skips that they gave me and live off peanut butter and olive sandwiches.
I drove across town to the 'Burg to pick the girl up. The address listed turned out to be a beautiful little home with (naturally) sparkling windows and a front garden full of lush, blooming flowers. I rang the doorbell, half expecting some hormone crazed teen to come leaping out at me, brandishing a spork.
Imagine my surprise when the door was opened by a tall, sturdy looking girl wearing a knee length lilac halter dress and a yellow apron. It was the kind of ensemble that my mother dreamed of me wearing. This girl was headed for a white picket fence adulthood, I was sure. "Can I help you?" she inquired with a smile.
"Um, yeah. Are you Abby Foster?" She nodded. "I'm Stephanie Plum, Bond Enforcement Agent. I need to take you in to reschedule your court date." Abby looked pale and then let out a stream of curses that would make a sailor proud.
"This is not what I needed today." She muttered. Then, she looked into my eyes. It was a little bit uncomfortable, mainly because I was used to my skips leading me on a merry chase through the garbage, not staring at me quietly in their doorway. Suddenly, Abby smiled and blinked, breaking the eye contact. "Pineapple upside down cake." She stated calmly, like it made sense in the conversation we were having.
I must have looked confused, because she giggled and continued. "It's your favorite"
To say I was shocked would be an understatement. Was this girl on something? Some magical dessert discerning drug? "Yeah. AND?" Ok, that was a teensy bit more aggressive than I had planned. Probably not a good idea to taunt a teenaged girl wanted for assault.
Abby seemed to take my attitude in stride. "I'll make you a pineapple upside down cake if you wait to take me in until it's done baking. I already have stuff in the oven, and it will be a while before I can leave anyway. Unless, of course, you want to be responsible for my house burning down?" I mentally cracked my knuckles. That last sentence was a definite allusion to my history of exploding things. But, she did offer me cake, and cake has a tendency to cloud my better judgment. I found myself agreeing and being ushered into the house.
As I stepped inside, I was assaulted by the smell of chocolate and baking bread. If Ranger was here professing his undying love to me, then I'd be in heaven. As it was, this was pretty close. My eyes must have glazed over because
Abby smirked and asked, "Smell something you like?"
Smart ass. But then the smirk turned into a smile, and she explained. "It's the infamous 'idiot' cake that you're smelling right now. No one can resist the temptation" the last bit was said in a strange accent, and I couldn't help but laugh.
"So this cake of yours, why the infamy?" I wondered.
She smiled, and for the first time I noticed the manic glint in her eye. Combine that with the name of the cake she was baking, I could only assume that she had boy troubles.
"The cake has been known to soothe many a heartache, and baking is my way of dealing with stress." She led me into the kitchen and I was astonished by the sheer number of baked goods. Cupcakes, muffins, cakes, loaves of bread. My heart flipped over. "You see anything you like, grab a bag and take it with you. I don't need all of this."
"So, baking as stress release eh? What on earth has got you this nuts?" Ok, wow Steph, super smooth, you don't sound nosy at all. Abby's nostrils flared briefly and I remembered that she had been charged with assault. Maybe following her into the house hadn't been a good plan.
"Well, what else but the idiot I went and fell for?"
"Ah" something I had learned in this business, make sympathetic noises and people will pour their hearts out.
"Have a seat." Abby gestured to a chair over by the counter. "One of the rules of idiot cake is that while it's baking you have to talk about the reason you're making it." She grabbed a bowl and wandered around the kitchen snagging ingredients out of jars and off shelves. "We can take turns."
"Hey, I don't have ma-" the look she gave me stopped me cold. It said 'even you aren't good enough at denial for that one to work.' I sighed. Why hadn't I been that good at her age? I grabbed a couple of cookies and a cupcake to munch on while she talked.
"So, it all started when I moved here at the beginning of sophomore year"
I almost choked on the cookie that I was eating. The burg had done this much to the girl in only two years?
"I didn't have any friends here, and the girl who was supposed to be helping me around grabbed a map from the office, highlighted my classrooms, and left me at the door of the first one."
I grabbed another cookie. Damn but those were addictively delicious.
"By lunch, I wanted to die, and, walking into the cafeteria I realized that I had no one to sit with. There was this brooding hottie sitting all alone at a table, so I figured, what the hell. At least I'd have some eye candy to make lunch more enjoyable. Anyway - Oh, you have to try one of those. I'm still working on the recipe"
She handed me what appeared to be a lemon bar. Like everything else I had been stuffing my face with, it was delicious.
"We sat without speaking for a while, which gave me a good chance to look him over semi-discreetly. He had black, longish hair, fair skin, and the greenest eyes I had ever seen. Definitely muscely and attractive. I think I might have drooled a little bit. Anywho, I'm really not a fan of awkward silences, so I was like 'Hi, my name's Abby. I just moved here from California. ' He looked at me like I was on something and said "Sean" and then went back to his lunch. So then I was like, 'I'm trying to perfect a cookie recipe. I baked these last night, can you try one and tell me what you think of it?' I figured that everyone liked sweets, but then he was like ' I don't eat sweets' and that was the end of that conversation! Later that day, after school, I was walking by the lockers. I had stayed late to talk to my new teachers, and these 3 guys who were in my math class were all like 'hey Blondie, wanna go for a ride?' and I was like 'NO!' and they sorta did this like" She paused in the middle of stirring batter and made a ring with her hands.
"Like they closed in around you in a circle so you couldn't see all of them at once?" I interrupted. I knew from experience how friggin terrifying that little maneuver was.
"Yeah, so I'm getting ready to make a break for it, and one of them grabbed me from behind. So I started kicking and yelling, and out of nowhere, the guy who I ate lunch with earlier comes to my rescue. He took out one of 'em, but then the other two ganged up on him. I so I had to do something. I had all my new textbooks so I cracked one of them in the head with it and while the other one was distracted by a flailing biology book, Sean took him out. I was really shaken up, and Sean came up to me and asked 'you ok?' and I was like 'yep' but then…" Abby stopped again to shake her head
"The world went a little fuzzy around the edges, and you needed to sit down?" I knew that feeling too. Actually, Abby seemed to have my kind of luck if this story was going where I thought it was.
"Pretty much. I felt really wobbly, so I tried to sit down against the lockers. Sean sat down next to me quietly for a while and just let me breathe. Then he asked me if I needed a ride somewhere. Well, I wanted to say home, but no one would be there and there were no supplies there either. So I asked him if he could drop me at the grocery store instead and then I could take the bus home. That way, I could bake something to thank him. " Abby opened a can of pineapple rings and put them in the bottom of a pan. "So he took me to the grocery store, and then wouldn't let me get on the bus, so he drove me home. Then, when we got to my house and no one was home because they were in Germany."
I had to interrupt Abby then. "So, your parents moved you to a new city and then just left the country?"
"Well, yeah. Technically, the move was my idea, so they figured I could handle myself in a city that I had chosen. I mean, it didn't make sense for them to fly from California to Europe all the time, it meant that they could spend less time with me. So instead, I decided that we should move to the East Coast and picked this lovely suburb of Trenton to call home."
"huh" was my eloquent response. No way in hell would my family have picked up and moved if I suggested it, even if it would have made their lives easier. This girl was obviously capable of managing by herself, so how on earth had she managed an assault charge?
"Right, so, Sean offered to keep me company until my parents got home and then when I laughed, he got all mad. But then I explained that they were in Germany and wouldn't be back for a week. He offered to drive me around for a few days, and 'help me get settled'"
I knew how this story ended, so I decided to make life easier on everyone and tell the ending myself. "So you guys started dating, have been together from then on, and now that high school is ending you're not sure what to do?"
Abby slammed the cake pan, now filled with batter, against the counter. "No! that would be normal. Ugh. Instead, we became best friends. Then one night, he kissed me and it was like, like I never wanted it to end. SO since then we've played this game of cat and mouse. But it's sooo frustrating. His brother is a pretty serious gang-banger, and he's worried that one day some of that shit will follow someone back to him. So he thinks that if we're in a relationship that I could be part of the danger brigade! But, he still shows up at my house for dinner when my parents are out of town, and I deliver baked goods to his mom and some of her friends all the time. And, he keeps kissing me like he has a right to. Not that I object or anything, but it's just so confusing"
I had found myself nodding along to Abby's story. The girl really did have my luck. She finally finds a guy that could make her happy, and he refuses because he wants what's best for her. "Men are such dumbasses. They think that they know what's best for us, so they deny us the only thing that they really want. Then they turn around and take it anyway, even though they told us we can't be together about a bazillion times and that it's never gonna work. And then after they kiss you or you know, whatever, they're all like 'what we give each other has no price' and 'I love you in my own way' what the HELL does 'in my own way even mean damnit!" So, maybe I was just a teensy bit more frustrated than I thought.
Abby shook her head. "Alright, now you have to tell me the whole story." And I did. She didn't know me, or Ranger, and that somehow made it easier to tell her about how we met, the incident with the shower rod, the deal and the morning after. All of it. Halfway through my explanation, the oven timer dinged and Abby pulled out something that smelled heavenly. Seeing my hungry look, she smiled and interrupted my narrative to tell me that it had to cool a while first. Five minutes later, right when I was talking about the night of the deal, she cut slices from the cake. My first bite melted in my mouth and I might have moaned because Abby smiled sardonically and queried, "Is my cake that good or are you thinking about that night?" I flushed red to the roots of my hair and then we both burst out laughing. As soon as I was done with my sob story and had eaten another slice of cake, Abby pulled the pine-apple upside down cake from the oven, turned it out, and wrapped it up for me. Then, she packed ¾ of the baked goods lying on the counter into a basket and we left to get her re-booked.