by Holly Black
I nod. I survive at the edge of friends circles.
“And I followed him around like a puppy dog. Every time he talked to me, I felt like my heart was in my throat. I wrote a haiku about him.”
I look over at her, eyebrows raised. “Seriously? A haiku?”
“Oh, yeah—want to hear it? ‘Golden blond hair and eyes like blue laser beams. Why won’t you notice me?’”
I laugh, snorting. She laughs too.
“I can’t believe you remember that,” I say.
“Well, I remember it because he read it. The teacher hung up all of our haikus without telling us she was going to, and a girl in class told him about mine. It was horrible. Humiliating. All his friends would tease me about it and he would just look at me with this smug smirk. Ugh.”
“He sounds like a jerk.”
“He was a jerk,” Daneca says. “But I still liked him. I think in some weird way I liked him more.”
“So, did you work him?”
“No,” Daneca said. “I worked me. To stop feeling the way I did. To feel nothing.”
I didn’t expect that. “You’re a good person,” I say, humbled. “I give you a hard time about it, but I really do admire you. You care so much about doing the right thing.”
She shakes her head as I pull into a coffee shop. “It was weird. Every time I looked at him afterward, I had that tip-of-the-tongue feeling, like I couldn’t quite remember a word I ought to have known. It felt wrong, Cassel.”
We get out of the car. “I’m not saying that working yourself is a great idea . . .”
The coffee place has tin ceilings and a counter full of fresh-baked cookies. Its tables are filled with students and the self-employed, tapping away on laptops and clutching cups with a reverence that suggests they just crawled out of bed.
Daneca orders a mate chai latte, and I get a regular cup of coffee. Her drink comes out a vivid grass green.
I make a face. We head to the only free table, one next to the door and the racks of newspapers. As I sit down, one of the headlines catches my eye.
“Don’t look like that,” Daneca says. “It’s good. Want a sip?”
I shake my head. There is a photograph of a man I know beside the words “Bronx Hitman Jumps Bail.” The type under the picture says “Death worker Emil Lombardo, also known as the Hunter, missing after being indicted for double homicide.” They didn’t even bother to lie to me about his name.
“Do you have a quarter?” I ask, fishing around in my pockets.
Daneca reaches into her messenger bag and feels around until she finds one. She slaps it down on the table. “You know what the weirdest thing about me working myself over that boy was?”
I find fifty cents and feed our combined change into the machine. “No, what?”
I lift out the paper. The double homicide was of a thirty-four-year-old woman and her mother. Two witnesses to another crime—something about the Zacharovs and real estate. There are smaller pictures of the dead women beneath the fold. They both look like nice people.
Nice people. Good people. Like Daneca.
“The weirdest thing,” Daneca says, “is that after I stopped liking him, he asked me out. When I turned him down, he was really hurt. He didn’t know what he’d done wrong.”
I touch my gloved finger to the murdered women’s faces, letting the leather smear the ink. Last night I helped their killer get away. “That is weird,” I say hollowly.
When we get back to school, it’s just in time for my computer class. I walk in as the bell stops ringing.
“Mr. Sharpe,” says Ms. Takano without looking up. “They’re looking for you in the office.” She hands me her official hall pass, a large plastic dinosaur.
I take my time walking across the green. I think about my new car, gleaming in the sun. I think of the sophomore-year production of Macbeth, and Amanda Kerwick as Lady Macbeth, holding up her bare hands, looking for blood.
But there is no mere spot on me. As her husband says, “I am in blood/Stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more,/Returning were as tedious as go o’er.”
I shake my head. I’m just looking for excuses to keep the car.
When I walk into the office, Ms. Logan frowns. “I didn’t think you’d be back so soon. Cassel—you know you’re supposed to sign out when you leave campus.”
“I know,” I say contritely. I’m hoping that Northcutt gives me only a single demerit for cutting class. Not a week ago I was bragging to Lila about my strategies to get off campus without trouble. Then I drove off without implementing a single one.
But Ms. Logan just shoves the sign-in folder at me. “Put the time you left here,” she says, brushing her gloved finger over the line. “And when you came back, here.”
I write them down faithfully.
“Good,” she says. “The lawyer said you were a bit dazed when he called to remind you about the meeting. Northcutt wants you to know that you don’t have to go back to class if you’re not ready.”
“I’m okay,” I say slowly. Something’s going on. I better figure out what before I screw it up.
“We just want you to know that we’re very sorry for your loss, Cassel. And I hope everything went as well as it could today.”
“Thank you,” I say, trying to look somber.
I head for the door, thinking over what just happened. One of Zacharov’s people must have called and pretended to be the family lawyer—maybe it was even the fellow driving the tow truck—to give me not only the car, but time to tool around in it. Being courted by a mobster sure is sweet. Hard for the offers of the federal agents to compare.
I am crossing back toward my computer class when I see Daneca come out of the office.
“Hey,” I say. “I didn’t see you in there.”
“I was in Northcutt’s office,” she says dejectedly. Then she kicks a clod of dirt off the quad. “I can’t believe I let you talk me into that.”
Looks like Daneca just got her first demerit for cutting class.
“Sorry,” I say.
She makes a face like she knows I’m not that sorry. “So, what’s Lila up to?”
“Lila?” I am feeling very stupid lately.
“You know, your girlfriend? Blonde? Cursed to love you? Ringing any bells yet?” Daneca holds out her phone to show me a text from Lila: Come to Spanish classroom. Third floor. Urgent.
“No idea,” I say, looking at the words. I pull out my phone, but there are no messages.
Daneca laughs. Her voice is teasing. “So, wait, you don’t know who Lila is?”
I realize my mistake and laugh. But it makes me think. The Lila I remember was fourteen. She hadn’t spent three years as an animal in a cage and hadn’t been forced to feel anything, and even then she was a mystery to me. I wonder if I have any idea who Lila is after all.
We find Lila sitting on one of the desks in the empty classroom, swinging her legs, when we walk in. Propped in another is Greg Harmsford. He’s wearing sunglasses, but his head is tilted all the way back and it’s clear he’s unconscious. At least I hope he’s unconscious. In front of him are two cans of Coke, both open.
“What did you do?” I ask.
“Oh, hi, Cassel.” A faint blush has started at the tips of her ears. She holds out a piece of paper. It’s a printout of an e-mail. I take it from her but don’t really look.
Daneca clears her throat and points to Greg’s prone body, widening her eyes to emphasize that she wants me to do something.
“Is he dead?” I ask. Someone’s got to.
“I roofied him,” Lila says matter-of-factly. The late afternoon light has turned her blond hair to gold. She’s wearing a crisp white shirt and tiny blue stones in her ears that match one of her eyes. She looks like the last girl in the world who would drug a boy in the middle of the day. Like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, the old folks in Carney would say.
“Look what I found on his computer,” Lila says.
I finally look at the page in my
hand. It’s from Greg and is addressed to a bunch of e-mail addresses I don’t know. The text informs parents that “Wallingford supports a club encouraging criminal activities” and that “worker kids are allowed to openly brag about their illegal exploits.” I look at the e-mail addresses again. I guess they’re the addresses of our parents. There are photos attached, and although Lila has printed out only the first page, the two there make it pretty obvious that he attached stills of everyone at the HEX meeting. “Wow,” I say, and pass the paper to Daneca.
I don’t mention that to get that off his computer before he tried to drown it in his dorm sink, she must have been working him. I don’t mention that Greg’s passed out now, asleep, vulnerable to any invasion of his dreams.
“I’m going to kill him,” Daneca says. She looks angrier than I have ever seen her.
Lila takes a deep breath, then lets it out slowly. “This is all my fault.”
“What do you mean?”
She shakes her head, avoiding my gaze. “It’s not important. What matters is that I’m going to make it right. We’re going to get him back. For Ramirez and the video. For that e-mail. I have a plan.”
“Which is . . .?” I ask.
Lila hops off the desk.
“Greg Harmsford is about to join HEX,” she says. “He’s going to attend his first meeting today. Right now, hopefully. Before he wakes up.” Her eyes are brimming with manic glee, and I realize how much I’ve missed her like this, ferocious. Missed the fearless girl who used to beat me at races and order me around.
I laugh. “You are evil,” I tell Lila.
“Flatterer,” she says, but she seems pleased.
“I don’t know if I can get anyone to come out for a meeting,” Daneca says. She walks to the door and checks the hallway, then looks back at us. “Do you think people would believe it? Could we pull it off?”
Lila reaches into her bag and pulls out a tiny silver camera. “Well, we’ll have pictures. Besides, stuff like this is in the news all the time. Government officials who are all anti-worker turn out to be workers themselves. It’s totally believable. The fact that he got the footage the first time will make him seem guiltier.”
I grin. “I guess we better make some calls if we want to convene an entire HEX meeting.”
It takes Daneca a lot of begging to get even a small group together. No one wants to be associated with HEX right now. They’ve all got stories about being hassled. Some even have stories about classmates’ parents trying to hire them to do shady things. They’re freaked, and I don’t blame them.
Daneca gives each one the same song and dance about how important it is that we stick together. Lila gets on the line and swears up and down that it’ll be funny. I try to prop up Greg Harmsford.
Posing an unconscious body isn’t easy. Greg’s not comatose, just sleeping. He still moves when I put him in an uncomfortable position, still makes a face and pushes away my hands when I try to make him sit up. I search around in the desk until I find some tape and pencils. I use those to build a kind of splint on the back of Greg’s head. From the front he might look like he’s slouching, but at least he’ll seem awake since his head will be upright. He makes a protesting sound as I attach the tape, but after a minute, he seems to get used to it.
“Nice work,” Lila says absently. She’s busy writing “HEX MEETING” in chalk on the board.
“How long will he be like that?” Daneca asks, poking Greg’s shoulder. He twitches a little, almost shifting enough to ruin the effect of my pose, but not quite. Daneca smothers a shriek with both her hands.
“I’m not really sure, but when he wakes up, he’ll probably be sick. Side effect.” Lila says distractedly. “Cassel, can you put Greg’s arm up on the chair or something? I don’t think he looks very natural.”
“We should get Sam,” I say with a sigh. “Special effects are his area of expertise. I have no idea what I’m doing.”
“No,” says Daneca, taking my phone out of my hand and setting it down on a desk. “We’re not calling him.”
“But he’s—,” I start.
“No,” she says.
Lila looks at us in confusion.
“They’re having a fight,” I explain.
“Oh,” she says, then tilts her head and squints at Greg. “There’s something still off. Maybe if we had some junk food? We’ve always got stuff at real meetings. Daneca, can you go to the vending machine before people start showing up? Cassel, maybe you can look and see if there are empty chip bags in the trash? They’d just be props. I could run to the store—”
“I’ll go if Cassel promises not to call Sam,” Daneca says.
I groan. “I’ll pinky swear if you want.”
Daneca gives me a dark look and heads into the hallway. Instead of following, I turn toward Lila, who’s rifling through her bag.
“Why do you think this is your fault?” I ask.
Her gaze darts from me to Greg. “There’s not a lot of time. We should . . .”
I wait, but she doesn’t say anything else. Her cheeks pink and she turns her gaze to the floor.
“Whatever happened,” I say, “you can tell me.”
“It’s nothing you don’t already know. I was jealous and stupid. After I saw you and Audrey together, I went and talked to Greg. Flirted with him, I guess. I knew he had a girlfriend and it was a mean, bad thing to do, but I didn’t think things would get—I didn’t think it would be as bad as it was. Then he asked about you, wanted to know if we were together. I told him ‘sorta.’”
“Sorta,” I echo.
She rubs her hand over her eyes. “Everything was so complicated between us. I didn’t know what to say. Once he heard that we were—whatever—he started really hitting on me. And I just wanted to feel something—something other than the way I felt.”
“I’m not—,” I start to say. I’m not worth that. I reach out and tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear.
She shakes her head, almost angrily. “The next day, I can tell he was bragging about me. One of his friends even asks me about it. So I go over to Greg and think of the worst possible thing I can say. I tell him that if he doesn’t shut up about me, I will swear up and down that he’s awful in bed. That he’s hung like a worm.”
I give a snort of incredulous laughter.
She’s still not looking at me, though. And her cheeks are, if anything, redder. “He’s all, ‘You know you liked it.’ And I say—”
She stops. I can hear people in the hallway. In a few moments, they’ll be inside.
“What?” I ask.
“You have to understand,” she says, quickly. “He got really mad. Really, really mad. And I think that’s why he went after HEX.”
“Lila, what did you say?”
She closes her eyes tightly. Her voice is almost a whisper. “I said I was thinking about you the whole time.”
I’m glad her eyes are closed. I’m glad she can’t see my face.
People start filing in. Nadja, Rachel, and Chad are the first to arrive and Lila, still blushing, doesn’t waste any time directing them. Soon, everyone is arranging chairs.
I fake my way through seeming calm and collected. Daneca comes in a few moments later with snacks.
It’s not your fault, I want to tell Lila. But I don’t say that. I don’t say anything.
We take picture after picture with the backdrop of the blackboard and the scrawled “HEX MEETING” on it. Ones with someone standing in the center of a circle of chairs, talking earnestly. Ones with everyone laughing and a girl on Greg’s lap. Halfway through our photo shoot, he wakes up enough to pull the pencils off the back of his neck and push up his sunglasses. He looks at all of us in confusion, but not with any real alarm.
“What’s going on?” Greg slurs.
I want to snap his neck. I want to make him sorry he was ever born.
“Smile,” says Daneca. He gives a lopsided grin. A girl throws her arm over his shoulder.
Lila keeps clicking a
way.
Eventually Greg goes back to sleep, head cradled in his arms on a desk. Lila, Daneca, and I go to the corner store and use the booth there to print out all the photos from the SIM card.
They look great. So good that it would be a crime not to share them with everyone at Wallingford.
Most people never report being conned, for three reasons. The first reason is that con artists don’t usually leave a lot of evidence. If you don’t really know who did this to you, there’s no point in reporting them. The second reason is that usually you, the mark, agreed to do something shady. If you report the con artist, you have to report yourself along with him. But the third reason is the simplest and most compelling. Shame. You’re the dummy who got conned.
No one wants to look stupid. No one wants to be thought of as gullible. So they hide how dumb and gullible they were. Con artists barely have to cover up at all, with marks so eager to cover up for them.
Greg Harmsford insists he was Photoshopped into the pictures, loudly and to anyone who will listen. He’s furious when his story gets questioned. Eventually the teasing gets to him and he punches Gavin Perry in the face.
He’s suspended for two days. All that because he doesn’t want to admit that he got had.
I’m sitting in my room for study hall, working on my world ethics homework, when my phone rings. I don’t know the number, but I pick it up.
“We have to meet,” says the voice on the other end. It takes me a moment to realize I’m talking to Barron. His voice sounds colder than usual.
“I’m at school,” I say. I’m not in the mood for more sneaking around. “I can’t get out of here before the weekend.”
“What a coincidence,” Barron says. “I’m at Walling-ford too.”
The fire alarm sounds. Sam jumps up and starts shoving his feet into sneakers.
“Grab the PlayStation,” he says to me.
I shake my head, covering the phone. “It’s a prank. Someone pulled it.” Then I nearly spit into the phone, “You idiot. Even if you wanted me to leave, there’s no way I can now. They will take a head count. They will make absolutely sure we’re all back in our rooms.”
Sam ignores me and starts unhooking his game system.
