“I made a lot of mistakes. I see that now,” she says, pulling a gun from underneath the covers and leveling it at me. “You understand I can’t afford to make any more.”
“Oh, absolutely,” I say. “So you sure don’t want to kill the guy who just framed someone for his own brother’s murder.”
The gun wavers in her hand.
“You didn’t,” she says. “Why would you?”
“I tried to protect Philip when he was alive.” I’m sincere, although I’m sure she’s used to sincere liars. “I don’t think he believed that, but I did. Now that he’s dead, I’m trying to protect you.”
“So you’re really not going to tell anyone,” she says.
I stand, and the gun comes up.
“I’ll take it to my grave,” I say, and grin. She’s not smiling.
Then I turn and walk out of the hotel room.
For a moment I think I hear a click, and my muscles stiffen, anticipating the bullet. Then the moment’s past and I keep moving—out of the room, down the stairs, and into my car. There’s this old Greek myth about this guy named Orpheus. He goes down to Hades to get his wife back, but he loses her again because on the way out of hell, he looks behind him to see if she’s really there.
That’s how I feel. Like if I look back, the spell will be broken. I’ll be dead.
It’s only when I pull out of the parking lot that I can breathe again.
I don’t want to go back to Wallingford. I just can’t face it. Instead I drive down to Carney and bang on Grandad’s door. It’s well past the middle of the night, but eventually he answers, wrapped in a bathrobe.
“Cassel?” he says. “Did something happen?”
I shake my head.
He waves to me with his good hand. “Well, get in here. You’re letting in all the cold air, standing in the doorway.”
I walk into his dining room. There’s some mail on the table, along with a bunch of wilted flowers from the funeral. It seems like it happened so long ago, but really it’s just been a few weeks since Philip died.
On the sideboard are a bunch of photos, most of them of the three of us kids when we were little, doing a lot of running through sprinklers and posing awkwardly, our arms around one another, on lawns. There are other photos too, older ones of Grandad with Mom in her wedding dress, Grandma, and one of Grandad and Zacharov at what looks like Lila’s parents’ wedding. The expensive-looking wedding band on Zacharov’s finger is pretty distinctive.
“I’m going to put on the kettle,” he says.
“That’s okay,” I say. “I’m not thirsty.”
“Did I ask you?” Grandad looks at me sternly. “You take a cup, you drink it, and then I’ll make up a bed for you in the spare room. Don’t you have school tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” I say, chastened.
“I’ll call them in the morning. Tell them you’re going to be a little late.”
“I’ve been late a lot,” I say. “Missed a lot of classes. I think I’m failing physics.”
“Death messes you up. Even a fancy school like yours knows that.” He goes into the kitchen.
I sit down at the table in the dark. Now that I’m here, I feel a calm settle over me that I can’t explain. I just want to be here, sitting at this table, forever. I don’t want to move.
Eventually there is a metallic whistle from the kitchen. Grandad comes back, setting down two mugs. He flicks a switch on the wall, and the electric lights of the chandelier glow so brightly that I shade my eyes.
The tea is black and sweet, and I’m surprised that I’ve finished half of it in a single gulp.
“You want to tell me what’s going on?” he asks finally. “Why you’re here in the middle of the night?”
“Not really,” I say as forthrightly as I can manage. I don’t want to lose this. I wonder if he’d even let me into his house if he knew I was working for the government, no less that I blackmailed my brother into joining me. I’m not even sure they allow federal agents into the worker town of Carney.
He takes a slug from his cup and then winces, like maybe his doesn’t have tea in it. “Are you in some kind of trouble?”
“I don’t think so,” I say. “Not anymore.”
“I see.” He stands and shuffles over to put his ruined hand on my shoulder. “Come on, kid. I think it’s time for you to get to bed.”
“Thanks,” I say, getting up.
We go into the back room, the same room where I slept when I spent the summers in Carney. Grandad brings in some blankets and a pair of pajamas for me to sleep in. I think they might be an old pair of Barron’s.
“Whatever’s eating you,” he says, “it’s never worse in the morning.”
I sit down on the corner of the mattress and smile wearily. “G’night, Grandad.”
He pauses in the doorway. “You know Elsie Cooper’s oldest son? Born crazy. He can’t help it. No one knows how come he turned out like that—he just did.”
“Yeah,” I say vaguely. I remember people in Carney talking about how he never left the house, but I can’t recall much else. I look over at the folded pajamas. My limbs feel so heavy that even thinking about putting them on is an effort. I have no idea where Grandad’s story is supposed to be going.
“You were always good, Cassel,” he says as he closes the door. “No idea how you turned out that way—you just did. Like the crazy Cooper kid. You can’t help it.”
“I’m not good,” I say. “I play everybody. Everybody. All the time.”
He snorts. “Goodness don’t come for free.”
I’m too tired to argue. He switches off the light, and I’m asleep before I even crawl underneath the covers.
Grandad calls school to tell them I won’t be there for classes today, and I basically just sit around his house all morning. We watch Band of the Banned reruns and he makes some kind of turmeric beef stew in the Crock-Pot. It comes out pretty good.
He lets me stretch out on the couch with an afghan, like I’m sick. We even eat in front of the television.
When it’s time to go, he packs up some of the stew into a clean Cool Whip container and hands it to me along with a bottle of orange soda. “You better go study that physics,” he says.
“Yeah,” I say.
He pauses when he sees the shiny new Benz. We look at each other silently over the hood for a moment, but all he says is, “Tell that mother of yours to give me a call.”
“I will, Grandad. Thanks for letting me spend the night.”
His brows furrow. “You better not say anything stupid like that to me again.”
“All right.” I grin, holding up my hands in a gesture of surrender. Then I get into the car.
He slaps the hood. “Bye, kid.”
I drive off. I get twenty minutes out of Carney before I drink the orange soda. By the time I arrive at Wallingford, I’ve missed most of the day. I roll into the break period after study hall and before lights-out.
Sam is sitting on the striped couch of the common lounge, next to Jeremy Fletcher-Fiske. A newscaster is on the television, talking about football. Some guys are playing cards on a folding table. Another senior, Jace, is watching a carrot on a plate rotate in the microwave.
“Hey,” I say, waving.
“Dude,” says Sam. “Long time, no see. Where have you been?”
“Just family stuff,” I say, sitting down on the arm of the couch.
Tomorrow I am going to have to get my homework from teachers. I’m going to have to start buckling down if I want to pass everything this semester, but I figure that tonight I might as well just relax.
On the screen another announcer starts in on the local news. He says that on Sunday, Governor Patton held a brunch where his unexpected and controversial announcement had his constituents up in arms.
They show a clip of a big ballroom covered in tables and Patton up on a podium with a blue curtain behind him and my mother standing nearby, along with another guy in a suit. Her hair is pulled back and she’s wearing a yellow dress with short white gloves. She looks like a costumer’s idea of a politician’s wife. I am so busy trying to make out her expression that for a moment I don’t realize what Patton’s saying on the clip.
“—and furthermore, after consideration, I have come to realize that my stance was an unrealistic one. While having access to information regarding who is or is not hyperbathygammic would be convenient for law enforcement, I now see that the price for that convenience is too high. Worker rights groups have made the point that it’s unlikely the information would remain confidential. As governor, I cannot countenance any risk to the privacy of New Jersey citizens, especially when that privacy may protect their lives and livelihoods. Even though I have been in the past a strong supporter of proposition two, I am withdrawing that support as of this moment. I no longer believe that mandatory testing for workers is something this government should tolerate, no less dictate.”
I must be staring at the screen in horror.
“Crazy, right?” asks Jeremy. “Everyone’s saying that the guy got paid off. Or worked.”
Sam flinches. “Oh, come on. Maybe he just grew a conscience.”
That’s the brunch my mother invited me to, the one she said I’d love. Baby, I know what I’m doing.
A shiver runs down my back. The news has moved on to coverage of an earthquake, but I am still stuck with the memory of my mother’s face on that clip. If you didn’t know her, you wouldn’t notice it, but she was fighting back a smile.
She worked him. There is no doubt in my mind.
I want to scream. There’s no way to get her out of this. There’s no way it won’t be discovered.
Sam is speaking, but the buzzing in my head is so loud, it drowns out all other sounds.
I call my mother dozens of times that night, but she never picks up. I fall asleep with the phone still in my hand and wake up when its alarm goes off the next morning. I drag myself through my classes. I’m behind in everything. I stumble through answers, fail a quiz in statistics, and botch a French translation to great hilarity.
When I get up to my room, I find Daneca waiting for me. She’s sitting on Sam’s bed, her clunky brown shoes kicking the bed frame absently. Her eyes are red-rimmed.
“Hey,” I say. “I don’t know where Sam is. I haven’t seen him since I passed him in the hall on the way to Physics.”
She pushes a thick braid off her shoulder and straightens up like she’s steeling herself to do something unpleasant. “He already went to play practice. He’s still acting weird, and I’m not here to see him, anyway. I have to talk to you.”
I nod, although I’m not in the frame of mind to say anything remotely sensible. “Sure. Fine.”
“It’s about Lila.”
She couldn’t go through with it, I realize. “That’s okay,” I say lightly. “Maybe it was a terrible idea anyway.”
“No, Cassel,” Daneca says. “You don’t understand. I really screwed up.”
“What?” My heart is a drum, beating out of time. I toss my backpack onto my bed and sit down beside it. “What do you mean—‘screwed up’?”
Daneca looks relieved that I finally seem to understand her. She scoots forward, leaning in toward me. “Lila caught me. I’m an idiot. It must have been obvious what I was trying.”
I picture Daneca trying to get off her glove without Lila noticing. It didn’t occur to me until now how hard it must have been. Daneca doesn’t know how to brush someone accidentally, the way you need to for a working or to lift a wallet. She’s no expert at sleight of hand.
“So you didn’t—,” I say. “So you didn’t work her?” All I feel is relief so intense that I almost laugh.
I’m glad. Horribly, shockingly glad.
I can learn to live with guilt. I don’t care about being good. I can learn to live with anything if it means being with Lila too.
Daneca shakes her head. “She made me tell her everything. She can be really frightening, you know.”
“Oh,” I say. “Yeah, she can be.”
“She made me promise not to say anything to you,” Daneca says, voice low.
I look out the window. There are so many thoughts running through my head, it’s like I’m not thinking at all. But still I force myself to give her a quick smile. “She didn’t think you would break a promise? We’ve got to do something about that reputation of yours, Goody Two-shoes.”
“I’m sorry,” Daneca says, ignoring my attempt at humor.
“It’s not your fault,” I say. “I shouldn’t have asked you. It wasn’t fair.”
She stands up and starts toward the door.
“See you at dinner,” she says, looking at me with surprising fondness.
As the door closes behind Daneca, I feel a terrible wave of emotion sweep through me, reckless joy and horror so mixed up that I don’t know what to feel first.
I tried to make myself do the right thing. Maybe I didn’t try hard enough. All I know right now is that I love Lila, and for a little while she’ll love me back.
When I find Lila, she’s heading toward the library. The collar of her shirt is open and the white silk scarf around her throat flutters in the wind. She looks like she’s about to go for a drive in a car with the top down.
“Hey,” I say, jogging up alongside her. “Can we talk for a minute?”
