by Brad Meltzer
“He never found out, did he?” she asks, suddenly hesitant. “About the Lorax, I mean?”
She’s trying not to push, but excitement’s getting the best of her. At first, I assumed it was all an act. Now I’m not so sure. I narrow my eyes, studying even closer. The frayed stitching on her suit . . . the worn creases in her white shirt . . . She’s definitely not from money, and the way she’s fidgeting and trying to hide a loose button, it’s still an issue for her. It’s hard enough to fit in when you’re seventeen; it’s even worse when everyone around you is at least a decade or two older. Still, her mocha brown eyes have a real age to them. I’m guessing early independence from the lack of cash—either that or she’s getting the Oscar for best actress. Only way to find out which is to get her talking. “Who told you about the Lorax?” I ask.
She shyly turns away at the question. “You can’t tell him I told you, okay? Please promise . . .” She’s truly embarrassed.
“You have my word,” I add, pretending to play along.
“It was LaRue . . . from the bathroom.”
“The shoeshine guy?”
“You promised you wouldn’t say anything. It’s just . . . we saw him in the elevator . . . He was laughing, and Nikki and I asked what’s so funny and he said it, but no one’s supposed to know. He swore us to secrecy . . .” The words tumble from her mouth like she’s confessing a junior high school crush. There’s a hint of panic behind each syllable, though. She takes trust seriously.
“You’re not mad, are you?” she asks.
“Why would I be mad?” I reply, hoping to keep her talking.
“No . . . no reason . . .” She cuts herself off, and her wide-eyed smile returns. “But can I just say . . . putting that Lorax on him . . . that’s easily, without exaggeration, the greatest prank of all time! And Enemark’s the perfect Member to do it to—not just for the prank part, but just the principle of it,” she adds, her voice picking up steam. She’s all gush and idealism. There’s no slowing her down. “My granddad . . . he was one of the last Pullman Porters, and he used to tell us if we didn’t pick the right fights—”
“Do you have any idea how much trouble you’re in?” I blurt.
She finally hits the brakes. “Wha?”
I forgot what it was like to be seventeen. Zero to sixty, and sixty to zero, all in one breath.
“You know what I’m talking about,” I say.
Her mouth gapes open. “Wait,” she stutters as she starts fingering the ID around her neck. “Is this about the Senate pens Chloe stole? I told her not to touch ’em, but she kept saying if they were in the cup—”
“Lose anything lately?” I ask, pulling her blue nametag from my pocket and holding it out between us.
She’s definitely surprised. “How’d you get that?”
“How’d you lose it?”
“I have . . . I have no idea . . . it disappeared last week—they just ordered me a new one.” Whether she’s lying or serious, she’s not stupid. If she’s really in trouble, she wants to know how much. “Why? Where’d you find it?”
I bluff hard. “Toolie Williams gave it to me,” I say, referring to the young black kid who drove his car into Matthew.
“Who?”
I have to clench my jaw to keep myself calm. I reach once more into my pocket and pull out a folded-up picture of Toolie from this morning’s Metro section. He’s got big ears and a surprisingly kind grin. I almost tear the picture in half as I struggle to unfold it.
“Ever seen him before?” I ask, handing her the photo.
She shakes her head. “I don’t think so . . .”
“You sure about that? He’s not a boyfriend? Or some kid you know from—”
“Why? Who is he?”
There’re forty-three muscular movements that the human face is capable of making. I have friends, Senators, and Congressmen lie directly to me every day. Pull the bottom lip in, raise the upper eyelids, lower the chin. By now, I know all the tricks. But for the life of me, as I stare up at this tall black girl with the tight-cropped Afro, I can’t find a single muscle twitch that shows me anything but seventeen-year-old innocence.
“Wait a minute,” she interrupts, now laughing. “Is this another prank? Did Nikki put you up to this?” She flips her blue nametag over as if she’s searching for the Lorax. “What’d you do, rig it with ink so it’ll spray all over the next Senator I talk to?”
Leaning forward, she takes a cautious look at the nametag. Around her neck, her ID badge begins to twirl. I spot a photo of a black woman Scotch-taped to the back. I’m guessing Mom or an aunt. Someone who keeps her strong—or at least is trying to.
I once again study Viv. No makeup . . . no trendy jewelry . . . no fancy haircut—none of the totems of popularity. Even those slumped shoulders . . . There’s a girl like her in every school—the outsider looking in. In five years, she’ll kick off her shell, and her classmates will wonder why they never noticed her. Right now, she sits in the back of the class, watching in silence. Just like Matthew. Just like me. I shake my head to myself. No way this girl’s a killer.
“Listen, Viv . . .”
“The only thing I don’t understand is who this Toolie guy is,” she says, still giggling. “Or did Nikki put you up to that, too?”
“Don’t worry about Toolie. He just . . . he’s just someone who knew a friend of mine.”
Now she’s confused. “So what’s it have to do with my nametag?”
“Actually, I’m trying to figure that out myself.”
“Well, what’s the name of your friend?”
I decide to give it one last shot. “Matthew Mercer.”
“Matthew Mercer? Matthew Mercer,” she says again. “How do I know that name?”
“You don’t; you just—”
“Waitaminute,” she interrupts. “Isn’t that the guy who got hit by the car?”
I reach out and snatch the newspaper photo from her hands.
Now she’s the one studying me. “Is he the one who had my nametag?”
I don’t answer.
“Why would he . . . ?” She stops herself, noticing my stare. “If it makes you feel better, I don’t know how he got it. I mean, I understand you’re upset about your friend’s accident . . .”
I look up as she says the word accident. She locks right on me. Her mouth hangs open, revealing her age—but her eyes show something different. She’s got depth in her gaze.
“What?” she asks.
I turn away, pretending to follow an imaginary sound.
“It was an accident, wasn’t it?”
“Okay, everybody calm down,” I say, forcing a laugh. “Listen, you should really get going, Viv. That’s your name, right? Viv? Viv, I’m Harris.” I extend a soft handshake and put my other hand on her shoulder. That one I got from the Senator. People don’t talk when they’re being touched. She doesn’t budge. But she still stares at me with those mocha eyes.
“Was it an accident or not?” she asks.
“Of course it was an accident. I’m sure it was an accident. Positive. I just . . . when Matthew was hit by the car, your nametag happened to be in one of the Dumpsters near the scene. That’s it. No big deal—nothing to panic about. I just figured if you saw anything . . . I promised his family I’d ask around. Now we at least know it was just something in the nearby trash.”
It’s a pretty good speech and would work on ninety-nine percent of the populace. The problem is, I still can’t tell if this girl is in the top one percent. Eventually, though, I get lucky. She nods, looking relieved. “So you’re okay? You got everything you need?”
In the ten minutes since I’ve met her, it’s the hardest question she’s asked. When I woke up this morning, I thought Viv would have all the answers. Instead, I’m back to another blank slate—and right now, the only way to fill the chalkboard is to figure out who else is playing the game. Matthew’s got files in his office . . . I’ve got notes in my desk . . . time to dig through the rest of the mess.
The thing is, Janos isn’t stupid. The moment I try to step back into my life, he’ll stab his little shock box straight into my chest. I already tried calling in friends . . . Only a fool would risk that again. I glance around the tiny room, but there’s no way to avoid it—I don’t have a chance. Not unless I figure out how to make myself invisible . . . or get some help in that department.
“Thanks again for finding the nametag,” Viv interrupts. “Let me know if I can ever return the favor.”
I jerk my head toward her and replay the words in my head.
It’s not the safest bet I’ve ever made, but right now, with my life on the line, I don’t think I’ve got much of a choice. “Listen, Viv, I hate to be a pain, but . . . were you really serious about that favor?”
“S-Sure . . . but does it have to do with Matthew, because . . .”
“No, no—not at all,” I insist. “It’s just a quick errand—for an upcoming hearing we’re working on. You’ll be in and out in two minutes. Sound okay?”
Without a word, Viv scans the room around us, from the multiple keyboards to the stack of discarded office chairs. It’s the one flaw in my story. If everything were truly kosher, why’re we talking in a storage room?
“Harris, I don’t know . . .”
“It’s just a pickup—no one’ll even know you’re there. All you have to do is grab one file and—”
“We’re not supposed to do pickups unless they come through the cloakroom . . .”
“Please, Viv—it’s just one file.”
“I’m sorry about your friend.”
“I told you, it has nothing to do with Matthew.”
She looks down, noticing the stitching in the knee of my suit. I had a local dry cleaner sew up the hole from yesterday’s leap off the building. But the scar’s still there. Her hand goes back to fidgeting with her ID. “I’m sorry,” she says, her voice breaking slightly. “I can’t.”
Knowing better than to beg, I wave it off and force a smile. “No, I understand. No big deal.”
When I was seventeen years old, the moment a thought came into my head, it came out of my mouth. To Viv’s credit, she stays perfectly silent. She opens the door, her body still halfway in the room. “Listen, I should . . .”
“You should go,” I agree.
“But if you—”
“Viv, don’t sweat it. I’ll just call the cloakroom—it’ll be done in no time.”
She nods, staring right through me. “I really am sorry about your friend.”
I nod a thank-you.
“So I guess I’ll see you around the Capitol?” she asks.
I force another smile. “Absolutely,” I say. “And if you ever need anything, just call my office.”
She likes that one. “And don’t forget,” she adds, lowering her voice in her best impression of me, “the best thing you can do in life is make the right enemies . . .”
“No doubt about that,” I call out as the door closes. She’s gone, and my voice tumbles to a whisper. “No doubt about it.”
18
HEADING UP THE fourth-floor hallway as the door slammed behind her, Viv told herself not to look back. However her nametag had gotten there, all she needed was to see the desperate look on Harris’s face to know where this was headed. When she first saw him speak to the pages, he’d glided through the room so smoothly, she was tempted to look at his feet to see if they touched the ground. Even today, she still wasn’t sure of the answer. And it wasn’t just because of his charm. At her church in Michigan, she’d seen plenty of charm. But Harris had something more.
Of the four speakers who welcomed the pages during orientation, two gave warnings, one gave advice . . . and Harris . . . Harris gave them a challenge. Not just as pages, but as people. As he’d said, it was the first rule of politics: Don’t count even the smallest person out. When the words left his lips, the entire room sat up straight. Yet today, what she just saw in that room—today, the man who had the balls to give that speech—that man was long gone. Today, Harris was shaken . . . on edge . . . Without a doubt, his confidence was broken. Whatever had hit him, it’d clearly cracked him in the sternum.
Picking up her pace, Viv rushed toward the elevator. It didn’t take a lifetime in politics to see the hurricane coming, and right now, the last thing she needed was to step inside the whirlwind. Not your problem, she told herself. Just keep going. But as she pressed the call button for the elevator, she couldn’t help it. With a sharp pivot, she took a fast glance at Harris’s door. Still shut. No surprise. From the ashen look on his face, he wouldn’t be coming out for a bit.
A hushed rumble broke the silence, and the door to the elevator slid open, revealing the elevator operator—a dark-skinned black woman with cobwebs of gray hair at her temples. From her wooden stool in the elevator, she looked up at Viv and lifted an eyebrow at her height.
“Momma fed you the good stuff, huh?” the operator asked.
“Yeah . . . I guess . . .”
Without another word, the operator raised her newspaper in front of her face. Viv was used to it by now. From high school to here, it was never easy fitting in.
“Home base?” the operator asked from behind the paper.
“Sure,” Viv answered with a shrug.
The operator turned away from her paper, studying Viv’s reaction. “Crappy day, huh?”
“More like a weird one.”
“Look at the good side: Today we got taco salad bar at lunch,” the operator said, turning back to her paper as the elevator lurched downward.
Viv nodded a thank-you, but it went unnoticed.
Without looking back, the operator added, “Don’t sulk, sweetie—your face’ll stick and all that.”
“I’m not . . . I—” Viv cut herself off. If she’d learned anything in the past few weeks, it was the benefit of staying quiet. It was the one thing her family always tried to teach—from her dad’s work in the military to her mom’s job in the dental practice, she knew the value of keeping her mouth shut and ears open. Indeed, it was one of the reasons Viv got the job in the first place. A year ago, as her mom was hunched over the dental chair, a patient in a pinstriped suit was having his wisdom teeth taken out ASAP. If she hadn’t been listening to the mumbled small talk, she’d never have heard that the patient was Senator Kalo from Michigan—one of the oldest proponents of the page program. Four impacted teeth later, the Senator walked out with Viv’s name in his suit pocket. That was all it took to change her life: one kind favor from a stranger.
Leaning against the back railing of the elevator, Viv read the newspaper over the elevator operator’s shoulder. Another Supreme Court Justice was stepping down. The President’s daughter was once again in trouble. But none of it seemed important. On the floor, the rest of the newspaper was tucked below the wooden stool. The Metro section was on top. Viv’s eyes went right to the headline: Hit-and-Run Driver’s Identity Released. Below the headline was the photo Harris just showed her. The young black man with the soft smile. Toolie Williams. Viv couldn’t take her eyes off him. For some reason, her nametag was found near a dead man. Even the very best reason couldn’t be good.
“Can I borrow this a sec?” she asked as she bent down and grabbed the paper from under the stool. Her eyes narrowed as she pulled it close. The photo blurred into a forest of gray dots. With a blink, it snapped back—and Toolie Williams was once again staring straight at her. Her thoughts rolled back to the Senator. That was all it took to change her life. One kind favor from a stranger.
“Here you go,” the elevator operator announced as the elevator bucked to a halt and the door creaked open. “Second floor . . .”
From the moment Viv lowered her head to duck past the Senator from Illinois and his leering glare, she could hear her mother’s insistent scolding in the back of her brain. Stand up for yourself. Always stand up for yourself. That was part of the reason Momma had wanted her to come to Capitol Hill. But right now, as Viv looked down at the grainy photo in the newspaper, s
he realized Mom only had part of the picture. It’s not just about standing up for yourself—it’s also about standing up for those who need it.
“This your stop or not?” the operator asked.
“Actually, I forgot something upstairs,” Viv replied.
“You’re the boss lady. Fourth floor it is—up, up, and away . . .”
Squeezing outside the elevator the moment the door opened, Viv rushed up the hallway, hoping she wasn’t too late. Her oversized suit jacket fanned out behind her as she ran. If she missed him now . . . No. She didn’t want to think it. Stay positive. Stay positive.
“Sorry . . . coming through . . .” she called out, cutting between two male staffers, each carrying a redwell accordion file.
“Slow down,” the taller of them warned.
Typical, Viv thought. Everyone likes to boss around the pages. Instinctively she slowed her pace to a calm walk—but within two steps, she looked back at the two men. They were just staffers. Sure, she was a page, but . . . they were just staffers. Picking up speed, she started to run. It felt even better than she thought.
At the end of the hall, she stopped short, made sure the hallway was empty, and knocked on the door.
“It’s me!” she called out.
No answer.
“Harris, it’s Viv. You in there?”
Again, no reply. She tried the doorknob. It didn’t budge. Locked.
“Harris, it’s an emergency . . . !”
There was a click. The doorknob turned, and the heavy door flew open. Harris stuck his head out, cautiously checking the hallway.
“You okay?” he finally asked.
Wiping her palm against her pant leg, Viv reasked herself the question. If she wanted to walk away, this was her chance. She could feel her ID dangling from her neck. She never reached for it. Not once. Instead, she stared Harris straight in the eye.
“I . . . uh . . . I just . . . you still need help with that pickup?”
Harris tried to hide his grin, but even he wasn’t good enough to pull it off. “It’s not gonna be as easy as you think. Are you sure you can—?”
