Trouble Makes a Comeback

by Stephanie Tromly

  From somebody else, I maybe would’ve thought that kind of honest assessment of the seriously unfair college admissions system was interesting, but coming from Bill . . . I was just annoyed.

  “Can I help you find something?” I said.

  “Actually, I came to talk about Digby,” she said. She handed me a cup of coffee that she’d bought for me. “I wanted to ask if you’d be cool with it if he and I went to a movie. Sometime.”

  “Why are you even asking me?” I said. “It’s weird.”

  “I know, you and Austin Shaeffer are, like, four months strong now. Mazel tov, by the way. That looks rock solid. But you and Digby last semester . . . and now he’s living with you—”

  “He’s not ‘living with me,’” I said. “He’s staying at my house. Huge difference.”

  “But still.”

  “Still what?” I was determined not to cooperate.

  “Okay . . . let’s do this.” Bill took a big breath. “Zoe, sorry I stole Digby’s number from your phone, and sorry you felt used, but honestly, I really did have a great time hanging out with you. You were my friend.” She stuck out her hand for me to shake. “I still want to be friends now if you’ll let me.”

  I didn’t possess enough spite to leave her hanging. I shook her hand. The girl knew how to put on a scene.

  “I’ve been wanting to talk to you for months. This was just the first non-psycho way I’ve found to do it,” she said.

  “Wow. All this to go on a date with Digby.” And then it clicked into place. “You two already have plans, don’t you?”

  Bill laughed and shrugged.

  “Then what are we talking about right now, exactly?” I said.

  “Busted. I’m being sneaky to apologize for having been sneaky,” she said. “But that was the absolute last sneaky thing.”

  “I’m sure,” I said.

  “Come on, Zoe, let’s at least try,” she said. “Since if everything goes well, I might be around a lot more.”

  “I don’t respond well to threats, Bill.”

  “Ha-ha. Does the fact that you just cracked a joke mean you sorta forgive me?” she said. “Friends?”

  Her visit started to make even more sense. She’d lost Darla, her usual social sidekick, to the drama department and the crew of theater kids Darla now ran around with. Bill was making nice because she was lonely and needed new friends.

  I couldn’t listen to her grovel anymore so I said, “Fine. Enjoy your movie.”

  • • •

  I finished the last logic question in my book near the end of my shift and realized my other test prep book was in my locker at school. On the one hand, I’d probably have only an extra two hours of studying that night. On the other hand, there was no telling if they’d be the two hours I needed to be ready for the real thing on Saturday. I cursed a blue streak.

  “Whoa. Does somebody need a hug?” Fisher said.

  “Sorry, Fisher,” I said.

  “No problem. I’m not that old. I remember when,” he said. “The whole boy meets girl thing is heavy.”

  “Huh? Oh, no . . . I finished my practice tests ahead of schedule and I’m trying to decide if I should sneak into school to get my book so I can study tonight,” I said. “The SATs are this Saturday.”

  “That’s a weird problem.” Fisher sighed. “Maybe I am that old. I don’t understand all this hurry-up-and-get-there ambition your generation has. Where are you all going?”

  “Well, for now, my locker in school, it looks like,” I said.

  “Come on . . . you’re seventeen. When is the happy?”

  “After Saturday,” I said. “Then I can stop studying on the clock . . . Sorry, Fisher. I feel like I took advantage of you today.”

  “No way. You saved me yesterday. Anyway, the store’s been so packed lately, we haven’t had time to talk in a while.” Fisher hovered, emanating a shifty vibe. “That was Digby, huh?”

  “Umhm . . .” I said. “Go ahead. I know you’ve been waiting all this time to ask me, so go ahead. Nose away.”

  “No, no . . .” Fisher demurred but, ultimately, he couldn’t resist. “He’s taller than I thought he’d be,” Fisher said. “Is he back in town for good?”

  “Nothing that guy ever does is for good,” I said.

  Fisher laughed. “But seriously. He’s staying?”

  “I dunno. I asked him the same thing,” I said.

  “What did he say?” Fisher said.

  “I never got a straight answer,” I said. “Huh. You’re very interested in Digby.”

  “Oh, you know. I’m just looking out for my number one employee. You seem distracted since he got back,” Fisher said. “What’s going on there?” He wiggled his eyebrows.

  “Nothing is what’s going on there,” I said. “In fact, his future girlfriend was just in here warning me that they’re going to date.”

  “Warning you?” Fisher said. “Total power move. She obviously thinks you’re a threat.”

  “Well, whatever,” I said. “She’s weird. He’s weird. I say good luck to them both. They can have each other.” I accidentally slammed my book bag when I put it on the table.

  “Oh, yeah. Nothing going on there at all,” Fisher said.

  “Don’t you start being weird,” I said.

  • • •

  I tried the school’s front door first, but it was locked. It was raining pretty hard, so I went to the cafeteria’s loading dock gate and used the tin can shim (which Digby gave me last year as a memento) to open the padlock on the chain around the door’s handles. I was dismayed by how thrilled I felt when the shackle clicked free.

  Walking through the cafeteria’s kitchen, I remembered I’d missed lunch. I grabbed a bag of hot dog buns that was sitting out. The empty chairs, the stale garbage and B.O. miasma, the lone electric fan spinning on low—it was all very Left Behind. I walked down the dark halls toward my locker, a little freaked by the apocalyptic ambiance, when I felt the presence of someone close by. I turned to find some dude looming right over me. I swung my bag of hot dog buns at him. He dropped an armload of stuff when his hands went up to defend his face. Then, before he could recover, I punched him hard in the gut and screamed.

  “What do you want?” I said.

  To which the dude on the ground said, “For you to stop hitting me, first of all.”

  Of course it was Digby. I’d completely forgotten he said he’d be here with Felix, working on that other angle to the Sally case in the computer lab.

  “I see you still have that punch of yours, Princeton.”

  “The hell were you doing sneaking up on me?” I said.

  He took a bun out of the bag. “I wasn’t sneaking up on you.”

  “Then why are you in your socks?” I picked up his shoe from among the things he dropped when I’d hit him and handed it to him. I walked over and opened my locker.

  “How’d you get in?” he asked.

  “Used the shim you gave me on the padlock in the back,” I said.

  “Oooh . . .” he said. “Sexy.”

  I took my SAT book out of my locker.

  “Aaand the thrill is gone,” Digby said. “Are you seriously doing this?” He pulled my flash cards from my locker and grimaced.

  “Doing what? Taking care of my future?” I said.

  “Listen to you. ‘Taking care of my future.’ Why so serious?” Digby said.

  “You mean the test my entire high school career’s been counting down to?” I said.

  “It’s all a big corporate scam, you know,” Digby said.

  “And by ‘all,’ you mean life,” I said. “So you’re not taking it this Saturday?”

  “Yeah, sure I am,” he said.

  I picked up the bag of buns and hit him again.

  “Ow, what?” he said.

 
“It’s a little hypocritical to make fun of the test when you’re taking it too,” I said.

  “I’m not making fun of the test, I’m making fun of you for taking it so seriously.” He pulled another bun out of the bag in my hand and stuffed the entire thing in his mouth.

  “Gross. And as always: Thank you for the excellent pep talk,” I said.

  “Felix and I are working on something at the computer lab. You want to watch?” he said.

  “Tempting, but I need to get some studying done tonight,” I said.

  “All work and no play . . . you know what they say,” he said.

  “Speaking of play . . . one of your new playmates came by the bookstore for a chat with me today,” I said. “Bill asked me for permission to go to the movies with you.”

  Something went down the wrong pipe and Digby coughed a few times before he said, “She told me she would. I thought I’d talked her out of it.”

  “Well, you didn’t,” I said. “Are you—” I caught myself before I started begging for deets.

  “Sorry, what?” he said.

  “Nothing,” I said. Now we were both awkward.

  “Anyway, I’d invite you and Austin to double . . . but you probably have study plans.”

  “Wait. So when Bill said ‘sometime,’ she meant tonight?” Even when she was telling the truth, Bill couldn’t help being a liar. All that fake permission-asking and sneaking around like I was some disapproving mom was annoying. “Okay. Have fun.” I turned and walked away, not stopping when he called out.

  “Don’t wait up,” he said. “I’ll let myself in with the keys Mike gave me.”

  TEN

  I got about three hallways away before I allowed myself to beat the living crap out of the bag of hot dog buns by smacking them against the wall until they were basically just a bag of crumbs. I felt incredibly relaxed afterward.

  A voice behind me said, “Um . . . Zoe? Everything okay?”

  “Henry. What’s up?”

  “What’d he do?” Henry said. “Only Digby can piss someone off this bad.”

  “It’s okay . . .” I said. “Why are you here?”

  “First string’s getting their VO2s measured,” Henry said.

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  “They’re making sure we’re fit to play,” he said.

  “Man, this school’s like Hotel California. Check out anytime you like, but you can never leave,” I said. “Felix and Digby are in the computer lab right now.”

  “Digby’s here? I need to see him, actually,” Henry said.

  “He’s—” Just when I pointed behind me, a figure scuttled across and disappeared around a corner.

  “What was that?” Henry said.

  “That looked like Felix,” I said.

  By the time we got to the hallway Felix had turned onto, he’d disappeared around another corner.

  I called out, “Felix.”

  Henry grabbed my arm and said, “Careful. Coach will bust you if he catches you trespassing.”

  “You know, when people say this school runs on football, they don’t mean that football literally runs the school,” I said.

  “Don’t get mad at me. I just don’t want you to get busted,” he said. “The entire coaching staff’s here today.”

  We set off again. We got close to Felix and I said, “Pssst . . . hey,” but that just quickened his pace. “Why’s he running away from us?”

  Henry and I accelerated into a jog and followed Felix up some stairs. My bag was heavy with books and my laptop, and when I got to the third-floor landing, I was panting and Felix was gone. Henry and I were about to split and go room to room when I heard a faint wheeze coming from a locker. That’s right. Felix had stuffed himself into a locker. Henry and I banged on the door.

  I’d laughed when I read once that a giant anteater could kill a hunter. Now, though, in the long instant between Felix bursting out of the locker screeching and tackling Henry so they both fell backward, the moral of the anteater tragedy crystallized. Doesn’t matter how small or cute they are: Frighten something enough and it’ll mess you up.

  “Felix,” I said. “It’s us.”

  “Zoe?” Felix said.

  “Yes, nutbag,” I said. “Who’d you think it was?”

  From down the hall, we heard, “You kids there.” It was Coach Fogle, all thunder thighs and arm hair. “Petropoulos. What the H-E-double hockey sticks is happening here?” Fogle walked toward us, assessed the situation, and drew the most natural conclusion. “Son, you know this team—heck, all that is good and great about football in America—is under attack and here you are stuffing a nerd in a locker in plain sight like you’re fourteen years old without a care in the world.” He got in Henry’s face and lowered his voice. “Are you ready to be a YouTube star? Because all these AV pinheads live for is whining about their problems on the computer.”

  Below Coach Fogle’s eye-line, Henry’s hand made a slicing motion, which I took to mean Felix and I should split. Henry said, “But Coach—”

  “I don’t want to hear it. You need to keep your nose clean. It ain’t like you’re some running back. I got me a dozen of those. You’re my QB, son.” Coach grabbed Henry by the arm and when Henry winced, he said, “Is it your UCL again? Better ice that elbow and have one of the trainers give you a treatment—ask Chris.”

  With his back to us, Coach Fogle didn’t see Felix and me sneak away down the hall. We were around the corner by the time Coach Fogle said, “Now say your sorries and come down for your VO2 assessment.”

  When we were farther away, I said, “Felix, why were you running from us?”

  “I thought you were someone else,” Felix said.

  “Who?” I said.

  “The girls on the team. Actually . . . since I have you here . . .” Felix said. “I wanted to tell you I’m sorry.”

  “For what?” I said.

  “For last year . . . when I was so persistent . . . trying to convince you to go on a date with me,” Felix said. “Anyway. I didn’t mean to make you feel chased. Or like a thing . . . like you were a punch line to a joke . . .”

  “Wow. Okay, Felix. I appreciate the apology—apparently, it’s my day to be getting them. I just got one at the mall from Bill.” Felix looked confused, so I said, “Never mind. But that was a lot of pretty specific detail. Is something going on?”

  Felix hemmed and hawed. “It’s my team.”

  “Team?” I said.

  “The Lionesses,” he said. “They’re after me.”

  “For a spot on the team?” I said.

  “At first, yeah. But then one day, I heard the goalkeeper tell the midfielders she wanted to deflower me. And then the rest of them got in on it and you know . . . those girls are so competitive,” Felix said. “Deflower me? That sounds like it’d hurt.”

  “Oh, Felix, I’m sorry,” I said.

  “And those girls are on a hair trigger. The other day, I choked on some water and all of a sudden, they’d pinned me down, and they had my EpiPen out,” he said. “I mean, at first, the attention was awesome, but now . . . I’m afraid.”

  We got to the computer lab and Felix opened the door. “Hey, Digby,” he said.

  Digby was hooking up terminals. “Hey, Felix.” Then he spotted me. “Heeeey, Princeton. Can’t get enough?”

  “You’re so annoying,” I said.

  Felix set up in front of a bank of terminals and retrieved an enormous bunch of flash drives dangling from an oversized key ring.

  “I think we’re finally ready. You want to do it?” Felix plugged in a pair of USB keys and started typing away when Digby nodded that he was. Instantly, engineering plans appeared, twinned on the two monitors Digby and Felix had linked.

  And then Felix abruptly stopped typing and yanked out the USB sticks and froze.

  “Wh
at?” Digby said.

  Felix stayed frozen, hands raised off the keyboard.

  We all watched the screens for a few seconds and when nothing happened, Felix smiled and said, “Okay . . . that was almost really bad. I put in the wrong drives. These ”—Felix held up a pair of flash drives still on the oversized key ring—“have a custom decryption program I wrote for Digby to open his dad’s files.”

  Felix held up the two flash drives he’d inserted and quickly removed and said, “These, though, have copies of a seriously malicious worm that would’ve basically nuked this terminal and eventually every computer networked to it.”

  “What?” I said.

  “We’re okay, though, because if it was going to happen, it would’ve already . . .” Felix said.

  Felix was about to insert the uninfected drives when Digby stopped him and said, “Felix. Maybe I could take it from here.” Digby took the USB drives from him. “You’ve already done so much . . . I don’t want you to get in trouble.”

  Felix took the flash drives back and said, “Forget it, Digby. I want to be here. I owe you. Everything changed once people found out what you did to Dominic for me. You know how many people have forced me to write their homework essays? Zero. How many times my lunch has been stolen? Zero. How many lockers have I been stuffed into by anyone other than myself—”

  “What?” Digby said.

  “Zero,” Felix said. “I want to do this.”

  Felix pulled up the engineering plans again.

  “What’s all that?” I said.

  “What my dad was working on,” Digby said.

  I was quiet while they flipped through screen after screen. After a few minutes, Digby opened a bag of Doritos and ate as he scrolled. “I’m having a hard time believing anyone would kidnap my sister for this.”

  “I was thinking the same thing,” Felix said.

  “Why?” I said.

  Digby tapped his screen. “These. Plans for retrofitting a wine cooler into a private plane.” He clicked through some more. “This. A patch for a sat phone to receive network TV. All these things were kinda cool ten years ago, but even then, nothing near kidnap cool.” Digby pushed back his chair and opened his chocolate milk. “I mean, I’m questioning whether my dad was ever that good an engineer at all.”