Betting Blind (Betting Blind #1) Read online

  PRAISE FOR TORN:

  * “[A] spectacularly realistic portrait of a teen torn between her former friends and the new girl in school …” —School Library Journal, starred review, audio edition

  “Strong voice and complex characters …” —Booklist

  “The author’s thoughtful and nonjudgmental approach creates an engaging, authentic portrayal of female friendship.” —The Horn Book Guide

  “In her debut, Guerra demonstrates insight into the temptations and troubles of late adolescence, all rendered with nicely flowing prose and dialogue. She grounds her story in reality, and her characters come across as interesting, believable individuals, with Stella especially sympathetic and Ruby a standout original… . A strong new voice.” —Kirkus Reviews

  PRAISE FOR BILLY THE KID IS NOT CRAZY:

  “Most readers, children and adults, will cheer for Billy instead of his folks the whole way through, even as he’s acting up… . It’s really hard not to like Billy.” —Kirkus Reviews

  ALSO BY STEPHANIE GUERRA:

  The Betting Blind Series:

  Book One: Betting Blind (2014)

  Book Two: Out of Aces (2015)

  Torn

  Billy the Kid Is Not Crazy

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2014 Stephanie Guerra

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Skyscape, New York

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Skyscape are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781477847855

  ISBN-10: 1477847855

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014935190

  For my husband, Eric

  Many thanks to the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture for its generous support.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER ONE

  The first thing I did every morning was listen for Phil. He only came about once a week and never on the weekends. If he was there, I’d try to mess up his day a little before I left for school.

  I sat up and kicked off my blanket. No voices … no laughter … but in the background, I could hear the soft thump of drums. Bad sign.

  I rolled out of bed, brushed my teeth, and chugged the last inch of a day-old Red Bull. Then I pulled on jeans and a hoodie and headed downstairs. A pair of men’s Italian brown leather shoes was sitting on the landing. I stepped on one, tried to scuff it.

  “An absolute debacle, a political train wreck,” Phil was saying over some cheesy jazz. The air smelled like breakfast. I turned into the living room.

  “Hi, Gabe,” Mom said. She and Phil were kicking it on the couch, Phil with a big plate of eggs on his belly and his arm slung around Mom’s shoulder. Mom was in little pink pajamas that nobody over twenty should be rocking. She’d always been more of a hippie, but Phil had changed that—now she had the makeup, the nails, the dyed hair.

  Phil was dressed for work. His shirt was unbuttoned at the top, and his nasty ape-chest was showing. Dude was nothing but a big roll of bills stuffed in a suit. He didn’t even take off his wedding ring when he came to my place.

  His face stretched in a fake smile. “Well, it’s the young Brando.” He adjusted his corporate toolbox glasses. “Good morning, Gabriel.”

  I didn’t answer, just sat in the recliner across from them and kicked up my feet.

  Mom gave me a look—Please get out of here now—but I pretended not to see.

  “Well, it’s what? Week two? How do you like your new school?” asked Phil.

  “It’s okay.”

  “Making any friends?”

  “Not really. They’re a bunch of future bankers who’ll cheat on their wives in about twenty years.” I stared at him. “What business trip are you on this time?”

  Phil flushed, and Mom seriously turned maroon. “Gabriel! Into your room, now!”

  “But I have school,” I said. We both knew I didn’t have to leave for another forty minutes.

  “Go!” Mom said in a choked voice.

  I got up, taking my time, grabbed a banana out of the fruit bowl in the kitchen, and went upstairs. I had a feeling Phil wouldn’t stay much longer. I was right: a couple minutes later, the door slammed. I lay on my bed and ate the banana, wondering what it would take to make him leave forever.

  Mom came up to my room. Her eyes were red, which made me feel like crap, because I didn’t want to make her cry—just poke at him a little. She sat on the end of my bed. “Why can’t you be decent to him?”

  I sighed. “Because he’s a jerk who’s never going to leave his wife.”

  Mom glared at me and took a shaky breath, but she didn’t answer. She knew I was right; she just didn’t want to admit it, especially now that she had us trapped. We were doing okay before, living in White Center: she had a job at a café, and yeah, we lived in a crappy apartment, but so did everybody else. Now Phil was giving us free rent and he owned us.

  I looked at Mom in those pink pajamas and said, “You could probably get your old job back. Or you could work for Frank at the insurance company.” I tried to keep my voice calm. Mom had a hard time not getting emotional.

  She shook her head and sure enough, tears started leaking out of her eyes. “You know I can’t sit behind a desk all day! Why can’t you just be happy? You can put Claremont High on your college applications! That’s why we moved here!”

  “No, you moved here for Phil.”

  “I moved here for your school! If you’d just try—”

  I cut her off. “Don’t go there.” She was about to give me a speech I’d heard a million times, not that it ever did any good.

  Mom stopped for a second. It was our dirty little secret that neither of us could deal with school. She’d dropped out her junior year, but she wanted so badly for things to be different for me. “I am going there. Maybe—”

  “It doesn’t matter where I go to school. It’s not going to change anything!”

  Mom wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Well, I don’t agree with you. And you need to stop treating Phil this way. He owns this house.”

  My stomach twisted. I looked around my room: four white walls, a particleboard desk, and a bed. I hadn’t even put up posters—that was how much I hated living on Phil’s turf.

  “Can you at least try to be nicer to him?”

  “No.”

  “Please, Gabe. Where’s the gentleman I raised?”

  This was such a crazy question, I didn’t even know how to answer. Mom was fuzzy-brained about a lot of things, including this whole idea of a gentleman. How could she talk about gentlemen when she was hooked up with a guy like Phil? And what was a gentleman
, anyway? The only part of it I understood was that I was supposed to pay on dates and open doors for women (except the ones who didn’t like it).

  “Okay,” I said to make her stop crying. Then, because I couldn’t stand being home one second longer, I got up, bolted downstairs, and left for school. Even though it meant getting there early.

  Claremont High was a training camp for rich people. It was a shock the first time I saw it. The floors were always clean, and there were twisted metal statues in the stairwells and big windows showing buzz-cut grass outside. The ceilings went up forever with cool beams and pipes at the top. Every classroom was tricked out with ceiling speakers, Smart Boards, and MacBooks—but most kids brought their own laptops or pads.

  Now, two weeks in, it was starting to feel normal. I got to school early and sat in the quad, watching people drift in. A lot of the kids were what you’d expect from Microsoft Land, pulses ticking like bombs under their Abercrombie, all I’m gonna beat you to Stanford and Silicon Valley and Googleplex! But there were plenty of others, too, a bigger range than I’d expected.

  When the bell finally rang, I headed to first-period science with Mr. Newport. He was a big guy with messy, curly hair. His pants were always droopy, his tie always loose, and his shirts looked like he’d ironed creases in them. I liked him for that.

  As soon as the flood of people stopped, Newport held up a hand. “Don’t put down your backpacks. We have to turn right around. The Microsoft Orchestra back-to-school concert is today.”

  Microsoft Orchestra?

  I ended up in line next to Kyle Butler and Forrest Lexington, who ruled the school, along with their boy, Matt Chen. Kyle was a typical high school king. Dude had that surfer blond hair that girls love and a confident vibe like he knew how to have a good time; plus, he drove a Jag and dated Erin Fulman, the hottest girl in school. I think he was a rower. Forrest was harder to peg, but he was wicked smart and could talk circles around the teachers. I kind of liked him, for no good reason.

  We headed downstairs to the auditorium and sat in the stadium seating, big fat plushed-out chairs like at the Cineplex. Kyle and Forrest broke out their phones and started texting. On my other side was an Asian guy plugged into a Kindle.

  I wondered what my boys back at Jefferson were doing. Probably lighting blunts in the bathroom or texting through Hazlegrove’s class. Maybe still at home sleeping. I wanted to make some guy friends at Claremont, but that takes time. Meanwhile, some girls—Jamie Elliott and her crew—were taking care of me, which was cool. Nothing like being adopted by a bunch of hotties.

  “Oh damn, here it comes,” Kyle said to Forrest. “Wait for it.”

  I glanced over, and they were both staring at the stage curtain, which was starting to open.

  “She grew up, Daddy,” breathed Forrest. “She ain’t a little girl no more.”

  I looked at the musicians, dressed in black pants and white shirts, most of them about a hundred years old—and I saw who Forrest and Kyle were checking out.

  There was a girl in front with a violin. She looked foreign, like Swedish or something. Her hair was blond, and she had slanted dark eyes and lips I could have sucked on for days. She was holding her violin under her chin, and she must have felt us staring, because she looked into the fourth row, right at us—and smiled.

  “See that?” Kyle whispered. “She wants me!”

  Forrest saw me looking and grinned. “That’s Irina Petrova, dude,” he told me. “It’s okay. Go ahead and stare. We all do.”

  Kyle looked over, registering me for the first time.

  “She’s hot,” I said. “How old is she?”

  “Our age,” said Kyle. “She used to go to school with us, but she’s a music genius or something. Her parents pulled her out to homeschool.”

  “That was a sad day,” said Forrest.

  “Yeah, but it’s not like she talked to anybody. She’s …” Kyle made a stuck-up face.

  “I’m going to get her number.” Why did I do that?

  Kyle said to Forrest, “Oh no, he didn’t really just say that.”

  Forrest was nodding. “Yeah, he did. What’s your name, dude?”

  “Gabe.” Well, I’d have to do it now.

  “Good luck with that, Gabe,” said Forrest.

  “She’s going to school you,” said Kyle. “But credit for trying. If you even talk to her.” He said it in a friendly way, and I could tell he thought I was all right. I smiled. It was actually the first nonschool conversation I’d had with guys since I started Claremont.

  Principal Morrow tapped the mic. “Seniors, please join me in welcoming the Microsoft Orchestra.” He clapped. After a second, so did everybody else.

  Then the conductor lifted his stick, and the music started. The girl was a witch on her violin: all you could see was this sheet of blond hair and her bow ripping like a knife. After the first few songs, the other people stopped playing, and it was just her and this old man blazing out music. Even I could tell it was good.

  I checked my phone. Twenty minutes left in first period. Screw it. I was going to get her number.

  I got up and told Mr. Newport I had to go to the bathroom. Then I tried the doors in the hall until I found the one that led backstage. I opened it quietly and stuck my head in. Empty. I slid inside.

  Backstage was dark and loud and messy, and it smelled like a basement. The musicians had left their cases and jackets lying everywhere. I couldn’t help noticing that one of the jackets, tossed over a chair, had a big lump in the pocket. This was the kind of crowd that would carry cash and cards, maybe even checks … but I decided to leave it alone. I wasn’t trying to get kicked out for theft.

  I heard the applause, on and on. Finally the curtain opened, and people started coming through. A couple of them gave me weird looks, but mostly they ignored me. Then the girl walked past and crouched by a long black box.

  She was ten times better up close. No detail left out, just damn perfect, even down to some freckles to make her look real. I walked over and said, “You were great.”

  She looked me up and down. “Thanks.” She closed her violin box.

  I was used to getting better reactions from girls, at least a smile. “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Irina.” Then she got up and started walking away. Burn!

  I almost let her go, but I couldn’t face those guys if I didn’t get her number. Time to up my game. I followed her and said, “What was that song where it was just you and that old guy playing?”

  “Mozart’s Symphony number forty in G Minor,” she said, still walking.

  My neck was getting hot, but I made myself act completely calm, like when I’m bluffing through a bad hand in poker. “Do you know who does a good recording of that one?”

  She turned and squinted at me. “Shouldn’t you be in class?”

  “Probably,” I admitted. “Aren’t you going to tell me, though?”

  “My favorite is Karl Böhm and the Berlin Philharmonic.” She gave me a little wave and walked fast down the stairs, kind of an obvious, Don’t follow me.

  But I had to. My manhood was at stake. I could see a straight ask was out of the question; no way would she give up the digits. So I said, “Hey, I know this is kind of weird, but I never heard anybody play the violin like that. Could I come watch the next time you play?”

  She stopped walking and smiled—and I knew I was in. “Are you serious?” she said.

  I nodded. “Yeah, you’re really good.”

  “Well, we’re performing at Seattle Center on Wednesday. But that’s kind of soon.”

  “No, it’s not. Can I text you or friend you or something, so I can get times and stuff?” I was already pulling my phone out of my pocket.

  It took her a second, but she said, “Okay.”

  I handed it to her, and she punched in her digits and gave it back. It was harder than I usually had to work for a number, which made my phone feel like pure gold.

  She walked away, didn’t even say
good-bye. I stood there for a second, grinning. Then I darted back into the auditorium just in time to grab my backpack before our row emptied. As I squeezed past Kyle and Forrest, I held out my phone.

  “No,” said Kyle. “You’re lying.”

  “He’s totally lying,” said Forrest.

  I showed them her number.

  “You put that in yourself.” But Kyle sounded amazed.

  “Think whatever you want,” I said. “It’s the real thing.” As we pushed out of the auditorium and into the hall, Kyle and Forrest kept staring at me.

  “Is that really Irina Petrova’s number?” Forrest demanded. “If you’re screwing with us …”

  “I’m not.”

  Forrest made little bowing motions. “You. Are my hero.”

  Kyle said, “You cracked the Rosetta stone, dude.”

  “I’m seeing her on Wednesday,” I told them.

  “Bastard!” said Kyle.

  Forrest just shook his head. “Gotta hit calculus.”

  “You’ll have to tell us about it. Take pictures,” Kyle called as they went down the hall.

  I couldn’t stop smiling as I headed to the north wing for Algebra II.

  Mr. Chatterjee had the softest, calmest voice, like something you’d listen to on purpose to go to sleep (as if math weren’t enough). I sat in the back and searched Irina Petrova on my phone under the desk. She had about a hundred YouTube links. I clicked one, and at first I thought I’d gotten it wrong. The kid on there was six or seven, playing the violin on a big stage. But she had that same blond hair, and yeah, I decided it could be a younger Irina. I tried another, got the same thing—and then another tagged Child Prodigy Plays Sonata in F Major.

  Irina was seriously a child prodigy? I always thought of them as nerds, not hot blondes. I guess you can outgrow anything. I was definitely going to give her a hard time about it on Wednesday. Girls like it when you tease them about something they’re good at.