“Why would someone do that?” Parker asked.
We all got out of the car. “I don’t know.”
Avery hiked up his shorts so they hung just below the waist of his boxers. “What’s the theory this time, Claire? Drug cartel? Aliens?” He threw his skateboard to the ground and rolled away.
“We’ll keep an eye out, Kiki,” Nicholas said. He walked ahead of us and was immediately surrounded by a group of giggly girls.
Parker nodded. “I’ll do the same.”
“Me too.” Fed stared at his older brother with a wistful expression, then snapped out of it. “See you in Bio.” He ran inside.
I hated the days when my schedule started with Bio because it required me to think too much in the morning, so I took my time getting to my locker, where I grabbed my lab book and safety goggles. I couldn’t help worrying about what the guy in the black SUV was up to, and if it truly had a connection to us. I had gotten the license number, so I had a place to start. I just didn’t know where to go from there. A few minutes later I was headed to the lab at the end of the hall with a mission in mind. Fed was the perfect guy to help me figure this out.
The smell of formaldehyde overwhelmed me when I walked through the door of the biology lab. The room was decorated with animal skeletons and skulls hanging on the walls; the counter on the far wall had a row of jars with eyeballs, brains, and other animal organs.
Fed was already there. Chase stopped me as soon as I stepped inside. “It’s about time you got here,” he said. “The kid’s been waiting for his babysitter.”
I glared at him. “Fed may only be a sophomore, but he’s way smarter than you’ll ever be.” Even though Fed was a year younger, we had similar schedules because he was a lot smarter than most kids his age. “In fact he’s so smart that I’ve never had to punch him for saying something stupid.”
“Temper, temper,” Chase muttered.
I wasn’t positive he was the one who had accused me of cheating, but even if he hadn’t, it wouldn’t make me like him any better. I pushed past him and continued on to meet Fed at our usual table. He was seated on a barstool, and his long legs were swinging back and forth. His shirt bore an infinity symbol with the caption, My brain has no limit.
I slammed my books on the table. Fed jumped like a feather swept up by a gust of wind and almost knocked over the test tubes in front of him.
“Hey, Nerdus Maximus,” I said, diving right in, “you know all that computer information in your head? And how it’s like, just a waste of space right now? Well, I need your help—”
He rolled his eyes. “So, is this like the time we thought your dad was royalty, but he had to keep it secret ’cause he had run away from home to avoid an arranged marriage?”
I dropped into the stool next to him. “Okay, so we were wrong about that. But I was in the third grade.”
He laughed and rocked back on his stool. “Hey, no need to explain anything. I mean, how often do we even see your dad? Add a few ogres and katanas, and I’m pretty sure I would’ve come up with the idea myself.”
Before I turned on the gas, I made sure the hose to the Bunsen burner was attached securely. “Well, he does travel a lot, so it made sense. And how was I supposed to know what his company does? I mean, the obvious conclusion was that he was secretly visiting a brother or sister who had been banned from seeing him.” The smell of natural gas floated in the air, and I lit the burner.
“Obviously.” He filled the test tubes with hydrogen peroxide, then looked up at me. “Goggles.”
I pulled my lab notes from my backpack and put on my safety glasses.
Mrs. Kenton stood at the front of the lab in a plaid flannel shirt and tan corduroy pants, her lab coat almost as long as she was. “We’re doing the same thing as last time, people,” she said. “Make sure you mark this as trial number two in your notes.” She went to her desk and sat at her computer.
“So are you going to help me or what?” I asked. Fed was the only one who never thought my ideas were crazy. And if anything, he found ways to take the madness even further.
“Depends,” he said. His safety glasses started to slip, so he adjusted them, tightening the sides until they about popped off his pale skin. “We’re supposed to be testing different plant and animal tissues to see if they contain the enzyme catalase, not plotting a harebrained scheme.” He handed me a test tube.
“Fed, I’m serious. I need your help.” I wasn’t really begging, but it was pathetically close. “Let’s face it. You’re totally a super genius when it comes to computers. I mean, you’re the only person I know who, if you wanted, could list ‘evil super villain’ as a possible career choice. Without a doubt it would be my top choice if I had your brains, and I guess your goal of becoming an aeronautical engineer is also admirable, but—”
“Claire. Stop.” He raised his thin almost-invisible eyebrows. “Who said ‘evil super villain’ was crossed off the top of my list? Just tell me what you want.”
“I have the license plate of that SUV, and I want to figure out who it is.” I bent my head forward. “It’s a Nevada plate, so I think we’d have to get into the DMV’s system there.”
Fed’s brown eyes widened and his eyebrows went from raised to furrowed. “You mean like hack in?”
“Um, yeah. That.” With steady hands, I dropped tissue samples into the tubes and boiled them over the Bunsen burner.
“No way,” he said. “Have you heard nothing I’ve said? I told you to leave this thing alone. In Son of Tokugawa—”
“I was listening.”
Fed sat straight. “Do you know what would happen to us if we got caught?”
I bent over and recorded some data in my notebook. “But we’re at a school with hundreds of students. No one will be able to trace it back to you.”
Fed sucked in his hollow, freckled cheeks and blew out a slow breath of air. “It’s not gonna work.”
He blubbered about firewalls, security, which all sounded like blah, blah, blah to me because my head was too clouded to think straight. I remained still.
We worked in silence on the lab project for several minutes, talking only about the numbers we needed to record and what we’d need to report. When it came time to clean up, though, Fed said, “Claire, I don’t think this car is anything, ’cause that would be crazy. And we’ve had crazy ideas before, but super exciting stuff doesn’t happen to people like us. But if something ever did, you know all of us would do anything to help you, right?”
He managed to force a smile out of me. “Thanks,” I said.
“How are you doing?” he asked. “Like, really.”
I shrugged. “I still need to talk to my parents. I think I have a better shot of getting information from my dad, but I’ve been trying to figure out what I’m going to say. Is there a good way to accuse someone of lying to you your whole life?”
He balled up a paper towel and threw it in the garbage can like a basketball. “You’re always quick on your feet. I’m sure you’ll think of something.”
“I’d trade you for Avery any day.”
“And I’d trade you for Nicholas.” He laughed, and then he stopped and his face shifted into a thoughtful expression. “I have an idea, if it will make you feel better.”
He reached into his backpack and pulled out a small white disk the size of a quarter. “This is a GPS tracking device. If this car keeps following us around, we can find a way to stick it on the car. It’s magnetic, so it should be easy as long as no one sees us do it. We can keep track of it with an app on our phones, and if we watch where it’s parked at night, maybe we can get an address and figure out who it is. The app has historical data and everything, so once it’s there, we can look at any timeframe we want.”
“That’s brilliant. But . . . why do you have a GPS tracking device?”
“I know it’s brilliant. And Mom’s paranoid,” he said. We gathered our test tubes and took them to the sink.
“Can’t she keep track of you with the GPS on your phon
e?”
“Yeah, but she got this before I had a phone, and now she wants me to carry both even though it’s technically for a girl. They call it GPS jewelry, and you can wear it as a pendant. She never checks it though, so we should be fine.” He used the long wire brush to clean out the tube, then handed it to me to rinse. “There’s a possibility this could backfire, though, ’cause it works the reverse way too. So if I lost my phone but had the disc, I could press the button on it and it would set off an alarm on my phone until I found the phone. Which means if the owner of the SUV found the disc, he could find you.”
“When you say alarm, what kind of alarm are we talking about?” I ran the tubes under the water.
“The app lets you choose between options of a message that flashes as a banner across your phone’s display screen, an actual alarm that sounds like the kind you hear when a spaceship is about to self-destruct, or both. Mom chose both. But don’t worry. You have to push it pretty hard before it does anything, so accidentally setting it off shouldn’t happen.”
“Got it,” I said. I set the tubes on the drying rack. “Is your mom going to be mad that I have it?”
“Only if she finds out. For right now, if she happens to check it, it shouldn’t matter because we’re pretty much together all the time anyway,” he said. “And I’m not saying you should use it. Remember, this can backfire in a bad way. This is the absolute last resort. But if you know you have an option, your mind can stop spinning.”
We wiped down our table. He gave me the disk and programmed the app in both of our phones before the bell rang.
The disk had a small clip. I attached it to my necklace so it hung next to my bead. “Thanks. I owe you.”
“For the rest of your life.” He slid an overfilled messenger bag onto his bony shoulder. “I’ll need a hot date for the Halloween dance and also every weekend for the next two months. Brunettes are good. And I can’t resist gingers because they complement my hair color.”
I followed Fed into the hall. “You’ll be lucky if I can get a monkey to go out with you,” I said.
Truth is, Fed didn’t quite have Nicholas’s social status, but I didn’t know how any girl wouldn’t fall in love with him. Finding him a date would be easy.
MR. TAMA WAS speaking to Chase outside the door of the history classroom. Tension set in my shoulders. Was Chase trying to get me into more trouble somehow? I edged a little closer to them on my way into the classroom to see if I could overhear anything, but they were only talking about something for debate. Nicholas had mentioned they were preparing for a tournament.
Mr. Tama grabbed my arm as I passed. “Can I speak to you briefly after class?”
Had Chase said something after all? Maybe he hadn’t liked how I’d confronted him about the cheating. I pressed my lips together and reeled back the urge to glare at him. “No problem,” I said to Mr. Tama. The best I could manage was a flight-attendant smile.
Mumps was already seated when I walked into the classroom, so I gave him a half wave as I passed his desk to get to mine. I sat at my usual seat and had just unzipped my backpack when Mumps sat down next to me in Forrest’s seat.
“Hey,” he said.
I stopped what I was doing and looked up. “Hey?”
“I wanted to apologize,” he said. “That was really awkward the other day, and I swear if I had known you and Forrest were together, I wouldn’t have asked you.”
He had gotten a haircut and his dark eyes didn’t look as vacant as I had imagined them to be the other day. “We’re not,” I said. There were enough lies in my life. I didn’t want to spread more. “And I’m the one who should apologize. I know it was rude to say no, but I’m sure you can understand why I don’t really like Nicholas and my brother setting me up on dates.”
The vacant expression returned to his face. Or maybe it was confusion. He shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Forrest walked through the door, and as soon as he saw Mumps in his seat, I could tell he was irritated. The seats around me started to fill with the girls from my team. I tried to act like I was really into my conversation with Mumps so they didn’t ask me any questions about my absence from the field. I felt like I’d let them down, even though I hadn’t cheated.
“Nicholas and Parker didn’t tell you to ask me?”
“No,” he said. “Hey look, Forrest is heading this way, and he probably wants his seat. Are you going to Katie’s party?”
Katie flopped into her seat and pointed a finger at me. “You’d better be there.” She smiled, then turned to Mumps. “I’m Katie. I know we have this class together, but I don’t think we’ve been introduced.”
Katie was the kind of person who knew everyone, so I hadn’t realized they didn’t know each other. But then again, I guess I hadn’t noticed Mumps hanging out with anyone.
Mumps shoved his hands in his front pockets. “I’m Mumps.”
“Cool.” Katie crossed her legs and swiveled to face the front.
Mumps tapped the top of my desk with his hand. “I’ll catch up with you there. And you should consider joining the debate team. I hear they have a really cool guy named Mumps on the team who is a lot of fun to be around.” He winked and went to take his seat at the front of the room.
The wink felt more like an inside joke rather than a flirtatious gesture, but I didn’t know him well enough to tell. Lanie and Kimi waved at me, but thankfully no one said anything about my alleged cheating.
“What did he want?” Forrest took his seat next to me. His voice sounded tense.
“To apologize,” I said.
“He should. Nicholas never said he could—” Forrest opened his notebook and suddenly found something more interesting than our conversation inside.
“Nicholas never said Mumps could what?”
“Nothing.” Forrest stuck the front of his T-shirt in his mouth and looked straight ahead at the front of the room.
Nicholas never said he could what? Did Forrest really think I would just drop it?
“Forrest,” I whisper-shouted. “Forrest.” I continued to stare in his direction, but he refused to look my way.
I had a pretty good idea what he was about to say anyway. Nicholas never told Mumps he could ask me to the dance. It made sense considering Mumps’s confusion a minute ago.
Mr. Tama walked in. “Let’s get started.”
Forrest might think he was off the hook, but I would corner him later. Was Nicholas vetting the guys who were allowed to approach me? Was that why I never got asked to dances by anyone remotely interesting?
When I reached into my backpack to get my notebook, I found a small white box on top of it. It was wrapped with a black bow, and my name was written on a white tag in red. When did that get put there? I’d had my bag with me all morning.
I untied the bow and lifted the lid.
When I saw what was inside, I released what sounded more like a yell than a scream. I dropped the box, and it fell into my backpack.
“Is everything all right, Ms. Takata?” Mr. Tama asked.
The last thing I wanted was for Mr. Tama to think I was a troublemaker in addition to being an alleged cheater. “I’m fine. I thought I saw a spider,” I said, even though I’m not afraid of spiders. “Sorry.”
“No need to apologize,” he said.
Chase laughed. When Mr. Tama’s back was turned, Chase faced me and spun his pointer finger around the side of his head, mouthing, “Psycho!”
Why was punching him not a good decision? I waited for my pulse to slow down before I got out my notebook and pen.
Forrest shuddered. “Was it really a spider? Please tell me you killed it.”
“Eyeballs,” I whispered.
He raised his eyebrows.
I tried to copy what Mr. Tama had written on the board, but I couldn’t stop my hands from trembling. “Someone put four eyeballs in a box. In my bag. Real eyeballs.”
Who would have done this? If it was Chase, he was much
sicker than I ever could have imagined. But how would he have gotten the box in my bag?
As much as I wanted to run out of the classroom, I steeled my nerves and stayed seated. If there was any chance Chase had done this, I was not going to let him see me squirm.
I couldn’t concentrate enough to take notes, so I closed my eyes and drowned out everything by air-playing “Reverie” by Robert Schumann, tapping my fingers against my legs. It wasn’t a difficult song, and Mr. Tama wasn’t making anyone answer any questions. I’d played it years ago. I let whatever was built up inside lilt away along the melody in my head.
The bell rang, and I gathered myself together. Rather than put my notebook in my bag, I handed it to Forrest. I held my backpack away from my body so I didn’t have to touch any more of it than I had to. If I didn’t get out of there, I was going to explode. I pushed my way—not gently—through everyone ambling out and sprinted through the door.
“Claire!” Mr. Tama called out. “I still need to speak to you.”
When I glanced back, Mr. Tama had followed me into the hall and started after me. For a brief second I thought about turning around. I’d completely forgotten we were supposed to meet after class, but I couldn’t go back. Behind me, Forrest shouted my name. My feet kept moving, propelling me through the masses.
Forrest caught up with me at the end of the hall. Either Mr. Tama had given up, or the halls had become too crowded for me to see him.
Forrest grabbed my backpack and unzipped it. He peered inside and paled, swaying as if he might throw up. It’s not like I hadn’t warned him what was inside. I was far too angry and confused to get squeamish. And right now, I couldn’t control the adrenaline coursing through me.
“I’m going to make a pit stop at the bathroom,” he said.
I tugged my backpack from him before he jogged down the hall. We still had seven minutes before the next class started. I marched the opposite way to the biology lab.
Mrs. Kenton was at her desk. I grabbed a couple of paper towels from the dispenser on the wall and brought my backpack over to her.
“Mrs. Kenton,” I said, pulling out an eyeball with a paper towel. “Someone put these in my bag as a disgusting joke. I need to know these aren’t human so I can try to get some sleep tonight.”
Ink and Ashes Page 11
