Chapter 8
Despite announcing himself as law enforcement, the man standing on our stoop is dressed in overalls and has a beard covering half his face.
Unless it’s agricultural law he’s involved in, I’m unlikely to believe him.
I find myself leaning for protection into Gavin, who, at the moment, is the lesser of two evils.
“Sorry to trouble you today. I’m Officer Hartford. Are you the proprietor of the house?” he asks.
Proprietor? I swallow a laugh. I hardly want to be a tenant. “Are you kidding? I’d rather die than call this my house.” Then I add a second later, “No offense.”
He angles his face at me. “So you don’t live here?”
“What she means is, we’re living here. Temporarily,” Gavin clarifies.
“So you do live here?” Officer Hartford scratches the back of his head.
Has he not been listening to anything we’ve said? “We. Are. Staying. Here. Only. For. A. Short. Time. Not”—I shake my head for added emphasis—“forever.” I speak loudly and slowly in case he has trouble with comprehension.
Gavin jabs me.
“What the hell, Gavin? You don’t have to break a rib.”
“What’re you doing?” Gavin hisses at me.
“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m talking louder in case he doesn’t understand what we’re saying.”
Gavin blinks at me, open-mouthed. I’ve never wanted to gouge an eye out as much as I do now. And I’ve had to fight a dude trying to cut me in line for the bathroom at Coachella.
“Right,” Gavin drawls out. “And talking louder is going to get him to understand your words better.”
I know he’s trying to make a point with that all-knowing, holier-than-thou tone in his voice. So I ignore him. And apparently so does the man—I mean, police officer?
“Ma’am, I’m just trying to find the source of some suspicious activity going on at this location.”
If I weren’t so worried by the suspicious part of the sentence, I’d be more troubled by the ma’am part. (Excuse me, but I could pass for a mature twenty-year-old—twenty-one, tops!)
“Officer, I think you’re mistaken,” Gavin says, putting on his nice-guy act. “We’ve been doing nothing untoward.”
I snort. Untoward? It’s like he’s swallowed a Jane Austen novel.
Gavin shoots me a side-eye that could cut glass.
“I was talking to my girlfriend about our apartment. She wanted to know what to do with our bills since I had them linked to my account. But because those don’t work anymore, I had to—”
“Oh my God, Gavin. No one wants to hear about your boring-ass domesticated lifestyle, okay? Like, we get it. You’re in a committed relationship.
Literally no one cares.” I internally sweat.
Is Gavin that clueless? Was he really going to divulge why our accounts are under criminal investigation to a law enforcement officer (though the verdict on his official title is still TBD)?
“Jesus, Elena! Are you trying to help or not?”
Believe it or not, I was trying to help. But I can’t seem to ESP my thoughts to my brother, someone I’m supposed to share DNA with. Honestly, the more time we spend together, the more I’m convinced we don’t share anything, not even a single thought.
“Officer”—I put my sugary sweet voice on—“I was listening to music with my AirPods on. I have no idea what he was doing.”
“You said you were wearing AirPods?” The officer’s brow quirks.
I nod, though I’m less confident now that it feels like I’m being interrogated.
“I think I’ve found the issue here.” Officer Hartford flips a page on his clipboard and starts scribbling something down.
“I think there must be a misunderstanding. I was wearing AirPods. I know this is a Quiet Zone or something, so there isn’t a way I caused any noise disturbance.”
“That’s just it, though. This here is a National Radio Quiet Zone, which means we have to monitor the radio frequency waves being emitted so they don’t interfere with the radio telescope.
But considering this is your first offense, I’ll only issue you a warning.
” He asks us for our names, which we reluctantly give him.
Then he rips off a piece of paper and hands it to us.
“Just make sure to turn off your Bluetooth option on your devices and put them on airplane mode. It’ll save me another trip here.”
“You betcha.” Gavin actually salutes the guy, like some character from an old-timey black-and-white movie.
It’s a good thing Officer Hartford didn’t seem to recognize us. I let my hair air dry, and the frizz is starting to take hold. I’m sure the tabloids would have had a field day if they knew what we’ve been reduced to.
“That was close,” I say, patting down my unusually coarse hair.
Still holding the warning in the air, Gavin remains frozen.
He doesn’t even blink. I’m about to wave a hand between his face and the paper when I hear noises outside the door again.
The sputtering of an old vehicle grows louder before shutting off completely, followed by the unmistakable thumps of footsteps up the front porch. I freeze.
Is Officer Hartford coming back? Did he just google our names and discover who we are? And now he’s hoping to snap a caught-off-guard photo of us that’ll appear in the tabloids? I can see it now in bold block letters: Caught in the Wild, the Oks Are Not Okay.
The door opens before I have a chance to hide or run a flat iron through my hair.
“Omo.” Mom puts a hand to her chest. “What are you two doing right in front of the door like that? You nearly gave me a heart attack,” Mom says, even though she’s the one who nearly gave us a heart attack.
Dad follows Mom into the house. “I saw a guy leaving in a truck. Did he leave from here?” he asks.
Gavin nods. “He’s from law enforcement. Apparently Elena was using her phone,” he divulges much too eagerly.
I cut Gavin a severe look. That Brutus.
“I wasn’t using my phone,” I clarify. “And honestly it wasn’t a big deal. Only a slight misunderstanding over AirPods.” Nothing remotely close to leading a multinational company into possible financial ruin, I think but don’t say.
“He gave us this.” Gavin’s fingers tremble, holding the ticket up. For all his arrogance, he seems rattled. It surprises me because, one, Officer Hartford wasn’t even the real police. And, two, who cares? We’re not staying here long enough for some stupid ticket to matter.
Dad takes his time reading through the fine print. “It’s just a warning, and there’s no penalty. Nothing to worry about.”
Mom reads over his shoulder. “Still, we shouldn’t be so cavalier about our stay here.
It may be temporary for now, but we don’t want to do anything to jeopardize our appeal.
What if someone finds out about it? The papers have a way of spinning things.
They might make us look like we have a history with the law.
So we must be careful not to break any more of the rules here.
Don’t use your AirPods again. In fact”—she holds out her hands—“I’ll take your phones and wireless devices now. ”
I gasp. “You can’t be serious.”
“I am.” She pushes her hands out farther, as if to say gimme. “You can’t use them here anyway, so they’re as good as useless.”
Gavin parts with his devices much easier than I do. His level of nonchalance is as enviable as it is irritating. I guess not having a life has its perks. All I can do is watch Mom as she stows away our phones into a kitchen drawer.
“So, what else have you been up to?” Dad asks. “Other than getting in trouble the second we leave.”
“I was talking to Sonya. So far Bucky’s BBQ’s stock hasn’t been affected.
I explained to her that it would be better for their family if we distanced ourselves from each other during the appeal, so we decided to take a break from our relationship.
For precautionary measures.” He raises his eyebrows at Dad, waiting for his approval like the trained monkey that he is.
“Good. Smart.” Dad nods definitively with his arms folded across his chest like he’s in some kind of board meeting. It’s so weird when I think about it. How can he say good about anything Gavin just said? And don’t even get me started on the smart comment.
“You didn’t use your phone, did you?” Dad asks.
“No, of course not. I used the landline. I wouldn’t be so careless as to use anything that could potentially interfere with the airwaves.
” Gavin glares at me. As if he wasn’t shitting his pants a second ago when the tech officer was making his inquiry.
“Except there’s something wrong with the phone,” he recalls. “It kept clicking during my call.”
“Clicking? How?” Mom’s interest is suddenly piqued.
Gavin looks up thoughtfully. “Well, at first it made a short beeping sound, then it clicked. It did that a few times, then stopped. Then it would start again a minute later, then stop. You should get someone to look at it.”
Mom slaps a hand on her forehead and sighs. “How can someone so smart be so…not smart?”
As much as I’d like to jump on this bandwagon disproving Dad’s smart comment to Gavin earlier, I don’t know what Mom is referring to. And according to the look on Dad’s face, he doesn’t understand either. So we wait for Mom to explain.
“The clicking sound is a call waiting.” When my dad doesn’t reanimate, Mom leans in, wide-eyed. “Which means another call was trying to get through.”
Comprehension immediately floods Dad’s face. “Mr. Ahn! The appeal!”
“Yes, Dale. The appeal,” Mom says, like duh.
Dad scrambles to look up Mr. Ahn’s number in the notebook he scribbled all the important phone numbers into. Before he finds it, the phone rings. He drops the notebook and lunges for it.
“Hello? Mr. Ahn?” Dad says frantically, followed by a long pause.
“Uh-huh. I see. Yes, of course,” he says, giving us no indication of whether it’s good news or bad.
The rest of the call is a series of yeses and noes while Dad paces the room.
After about a million minutes go by, Dad finally hangs up and immediately rushes over to rummage through his briefcase.
“What did Mr. Ahn say?” Gavin asks, hovering over him.