Coach Marlin has already started over toward other runners. He’s shouting their times off his stopwatch. He’s either forgotten about me or is trying to forget.
Agent Jones lowers his glasses. “Heard your mother was skipping out on some hotel bills in Princeton.”
“You should probably just ask her about that,” I say. “I’m sure it’s a big misunderstanding.”
“I don’t think you really want us asking her about it, do you?” Agent Hunt asks.
“That’s true, I don’t, but I can’t control what you decide to do. I’m just an underage minor and you’re big strong federal agents.” I start walking away.
Agent Hunt grabs my arm. “Stop messing around. Come with us. Right now, Cassel. You don’t want us making things hard on you.”
I look over at my team, jogging toward the locker room, Coach Marlin in the lead. Some of them are jogging backward to see what’s going to happen to me.
“The only way I am getting in a car with you is if you handcuff me,” I say with resolve. There are some things a boy like me can’t live down, and being too friendly with the law is definitely one of them. No one wants to make an illicit bet with someone unless they’re sure that someone is actually a criminal.
They take the bait. I am pretty sure Agent Hunt has been wanting to do this since the moment we met. He catches my wrist, pulls it behind me and smacks a cuff down onto it. Then he grabs for my other wrist. I only struggle a little, but apparently it’s enough to annoy him, since when he gets the other cuff on me, he gives me a little shove. I wind up on my stomach in the dirt.
I turn my head toward the locker room and see a couple of guys and the coach still watching the show. Enough people to pass on the rumor.
Agent Jones pulls me back to my feet. Not too gently either.
I don’t say anything as they march me to the car and shove me into the back.
“Now,” Agent Jones says from the front seat, “what do you have for us?” He doesn’t start the car but I hear the locks of all four doors engage.
“Nothing,” I say.
“We heard Zacharov came to the memorial service,” says Agent Hunt. “And he brought his daughter with him. A girl that no one has seen in public in a long time. Now she’s back. Here at Wallingford, even.”
“So what?” I say.
“We hear that you and her were pretty close. If that’s even his daughter.”
“What do you want?” I ask, giving an experimental tug on the cuffs. They’re double-lock and plenty tight. “You want me to tell you whether that’s really Lila Zacharov? It is. I used to play marbles with her down in Carney. She’s got nothing to do with this.”
“So what’s she been doing all this time? If you know her so well, how about you tell me that.”
“I don’t know,” I lie. I have no idea where this line of questioning is going, but I don’t like it.
“You could have a life outside of all this,” Agent Jones says. “You could be on the right side of the law. You don’t have to protect these people, Cassel.”
I am these people, I think, but his words make me fantasize for a moment about what it would be like to be a good guy, with a badge and a stainless reputation.
“We talked to your brother,” Agent Hunt says. “He was very cooperative.”
“Barron?” I say, and burst out laughing. I let myself flop down onto the leather seat with relief. “My brother is a compulsive liar. I’m sure he was cooperative. There is nothing he likes better than an audience.”
Agent Jones looks embarrassed. Agent Hunt just seems pissed. “Your brother said that we might start looking at Lila Zacharov. And he said that you’d protect her.”
“Did he?” I say, but I’m in control of this conversation now, and they both know it. “I looked over those files you gave me. Are you saying that Lila is a death worker who started killing people at the age of fourteen? Because that’s how old she was when Basso disappeared. And not only that, but she would have to have hidden the death rot really well. Really well, because I can tell you that I’ve see her with not even a stitch of—”
“We’re not saying anything.” Agent Jones puts his hand down hard on the seat, interrupting my little speech. “We’re coming to you for information. And if you don’t give us something, then we’re going to have to listen to other sources. Maybe even sources you don’t consider to be as reliable. You understand me?”
“Yeah,” I say.
“So what are you going to have next time we come to talk?” Agent Jones asks in a kind voice. He takes out a business card, reaches back, and tosses it into my lap.
I take a deep breath, let it out. “Information.”
“Good,” says Agent Hunt.
They exchange a look I can’t interpret, and Agent Hunt gets out of the car. He opens my door. “Turn around so I can take those off.”
I do. A twist, two clicks, and I’m rubbing my wrists, free.
“In case you get some idea that we can’t pick you up whenever we want,” Hunt says. “You’re a worker. You know what that means?”
I shake my head. Finding the business card Jones tossed at me, I shove it into my pocket. Jones watches me from where he’s standing.
Hunt grins. “It means you’ve already done something illegal. All workers have. Otherwise, how would you know what you are?”
I get out of the car and look him in the face. Then I spit on the hot black asphalt of the parking lot.
He starts toward me, but Agent Jones clears his throat, and Hunt stops.
“We’ll be seeing you around,” Agent Jones says, and they both get back into the car.
I walk back to Wallingford, hating both of them so much that I’m jittery with rage. The thing I hate most is that they’re right about me.
I am called into Headmistress Northcutt’s office almost immediately. She opens the door and waves me inside.
“Welcome, Mr. Sharpe. Please have a seat.”
I sit in the green leather chair opposite her wide expanse of a desk. Several tidy folders are corralled in a wooden box on one side, and a well-used planner sits beside a golden pen in a stand. Everything is organized, elegant.Except for the cheap glass bowl of mints. I take one and unwrap it slowly.
“I understand you had some visitors today?” Northcutt asks. Her eyebrows lift, like having any visitors at all is suspect.
“Yeah,” I say.
She sighs deeply at my forcing her to ask the question directly. “Would you like to explain what two federal agents wanted with you this time?”
I lean back in the chair. “They offered to make me a narc, but I said that the workload here at Wallingford was too intensive for me to take on an after-school job.”
“Excuse me?” I didn’t think it was possible for her eyebrows to rise even higher on her forehead, but they do. It isn’t a nice thing I’m doing—selling a story that’s less ridiculous than my presentation of it. Worst thing she can do is give me a couple of detentions or a demerit for my smart mouth, though.
“A narc,” I say excessively politely. “An informant who reports on observed narcotic violations. But don’t worry, there is no way I would ever agree to rat out my fellow students. Even if they made the poor decision to use drugs, which I am sure no one here ever would.”
She leans forward and picks up her golden pen, points it at me. “Do you seriously expect me to believe that, Mr. Sharpe?”
I widen my eyes. “Well, I guess there are some people here who do look like they’re stoned all the time, I’ll give you that. But I always figured they were just—”
“Mr. Sharpe!” She looks like she’s ready to actually stab me with the pen. “It is my understanding that the agents handcuffed you. Would you like to change your story?”
I think of sitting in this same office last year, begging to be allowed to stay. Maybe I’m still angry about that.
“No, ma’am. They just wanted to give me a little demonstration of how safe I would be working with them, although I can see how someone observing it might have come to a different conclusion. You can call the agents yourself,” I say, reaching into my pocket. I pull out the card Agent Jones gave me and set it down on Northcutt’s desk.
“I will do that,” she says. “You may go. For now.”
The agents will back me up. They have to. They’re not done with me yet. And Agent Hunt doesn’t really want to explain why he was slamming around a seventeen-year-old with no criminal record. So I get the satisfaction of their having to agree to a silly story. And I get Northcutt’s annoyance at having to accept a story she’s pretty sure isn’t true.
Everyone wants to get out of a situation with dignity.
The HEX meeting has already started by the time I get there. The desks in Ms. Ramirez’s music room have been rearranged into an impromptu circle, and I see Lila and Daneca are sitting together. I pull up a seat next to Lila.
She smiles and reaches over to squeeze my hand. I wonder if this is her first meeting. I haven’t attended enough to know.
On the blackboard, there’s the address for the worker rights protest Sam promised we’d attend way back when school started. Turns out it’s tomorrow. I guess that’s what they were talking about before I got here. Rules are written below the protest information: stick together, no talking to strangers, stay in the park.
“I’m sure that many of you didn’t see yesterday’s speech, since it ran during study hall,” Ramirez says. “I thought we could watch it together and discuss.”
“I really hate Governor Patton,” says one of the sophomore girls. “Do we have to see his face spewing more crap?”
“Like it or not,” says Ms. Ramirez, “this is what America sees. And this is what New Jersey will be thinking about in November when we vote on proposition two. This or a speech very like it.”
“He’s ahead in the polls,” Daneca says, biting the end of one of her braids. “People actually approve of his performance.”
The sophomore gives Daneca a horrible look, like Daneca was suggesting people should approve of Patton.
“It’s a stunt,” says one of the boys. “He just acts like he cares about this because it’s a popular issue. Back in 2001 he voted with worker rights. He goes where his bread is buttered.”
They talk some back and forth, but I lose the thread of it. I’m just happy to be here, not getting yelled at or handcuffed. Lila’s watching the discussion, gaze flashing to each of the speaker’s faces, but her hand rests in mine and she seems more relaxed than I’ve seen her in a long time.
Everything seems possible.
If I just think hard enough, plan carefully enough, maybe I can solve my problems—even the ones I was considering unsolvable. First off, I need to actually figure out who killed Philip. Once I know that, I can engineer the steps to get the Feds off my back. Then maybe I can figure out what to do about Lila.
Ms. Ramirez pushes a television in front of a chair on one side of the circle. “Enough! Let’s leave some discussing until after watching, okay?”
She presses a button, and the screen flickers to life. She points the controller at it, and Governor Patton’s pasty face fills the screen. He’s at a lectern, with a blue stage curtain hanging behind him. The few white hairs he still has are slicked back, and he looks through the screen like he wants to eat us all up.
The camera pulls back so that we can see the press pit in front of him. Lots of people in suits raising their hands like it’s high school all over again, just waiting for the teacher to call on them. And at one side there’s an aide standing on the narrow steps to the stage, like he’s guarding them. Beside the aide is a woman in a severe black dress, her hair pulled into a chignon. There is something about her that makes me look again.
“You’re hurting my hand,” Lila whispers.
I let go of her, ashamed. My glove was pulled tight over my knuckles, like I was trying to make a fist.
“What?” she asks me.
“It’s just hard to listen to,” I say, which seems to be true, since I wasn’t actually listening at all.
She nods her head, but there is a pin scratch line between her brows. I wait interminable minutes until I think I can safely turn to her and say, “Be right back.
“Bathroom,” I say to her frown of inquiry.
I head down the hallway the opposite way from the bathroom, lean against the wall, and take out my phone. As it rings, I think over and over about Millionaires at Home or whatever that stupid magazine was.
“Hello, sweetheart,” my mother says. “Let me call you back on a landline.”
I clear my throat. “First, would you explain what you were doing on television?”
She laughs girlishly. “You saw that? How did I look?”
“Like you were wearing a costume,” I say. “What were you doing with Governor Patton? He hates workers, and you’re a worker ex-convict.”
“He’s a nice man once you get to know him,” she says sweetly. “And he doesn’t hate workers. He wants mandatory testing to save worker lives. Didn’t you listen to the speech? Besides, I’m not an ex-convict. My case was overturned on appeal. That’s different.”
At that moment I hear shouting back where the HEX meeting is being held.
“I got you freaks,” someone yells.
“I’ll call you back,” I say, folding the phone closed against my chest as I head back down the hall. Greg is watching as Jeremy holds a video camera in front of the doorway, swinging it back and forth, like he’s trying to get everyone. Jeremy’s laughing so hard that I wonder if he’s holding it steady enough for it to record anything but streaks of color.