Coin Heist (20 page)

WHERE R U? WE'RE OUT.

I waited about thirty seconds, but there was no reply.

“Look, we gotta go,” Benny said.

He was right. I just hoped Rankin knew what he was doing.

We pulled away, headed down Market Street. When we hit a light, I snuck a look behind me at the amp cases, holding the thousands of coins we'd just counterfeited. And all I could think was:
Holy crap
.

By the time we parked under the Franklin Institute, the music was peeling out from the main hall. Jason and Dakota had made it all right.

“We can't go in there like this,” I said, looking down at our clothing. “If we're going to use this as an alibi or whatever.”

Benny seemed annoyed—he was probably more comfortable in the coveralls—but he agreed with me. And if I did it, he had to too. We were partners now. We took our bags up the elevator into the lobby.

Lo and behold, there was Mr. Rankin, stationed by the elevator door, looking like he was waiting for us.

“You made it,” I said.

“And you're damn lucky I did.” He looked pissed. I couldn't really blame him.

“What'd you do?” I asked.

“I talked my way out of it. I played dumb. I don't know if he bought it, but he let me leave.”

“S'up, Mr. Rankin?” Jason Sidleman said as he passed by in his tux.

Rankin waved a hand that was blackened from coins and machinery.

I pointed to it. “Um?”

“Mother of . . .” He pulled out a pocket square and rubbed furiously to get rid of the evidence. He sighed angrily. “Go change, you two, and I'll deal with you later.”

Twenty-Eight

DAKOTA

I sang like
nobody's business. Junibel was out there. Dylan, too. I could feel their eyes on me. Everyone's eyes were on me. Oh god. Was my hair okay? I felt like I had mascara running down my face.

I hadn't had a chance to really look in the mirror since we'd jumped out of the limo and dashed back into the Franklin Institute atrium. (And let me tell you, running up those stairs in my Charlotte Olympia heels was no joke.)

Benny and Alice and Mr. Rankin must have gotten out of the Mint okay, because they were there. Alice and Benny were at the edge of the room, looking like they were going to bolt at any moment. I tried to catch Benny's eye, but he wasn't acknowledging me.

I felt terrible, letting them clean up after us. Benny hated me as it was. I deserved his hatred, all of it. I was a jerk. I'd kissed him, then I'd been an idiot at that party, and then he'd done the dirty work for us . . .

No no no. I couldn't think about all that. I was up here, and we were expected to perform. I wasn't going to crack under the pressure, even though I really, really just wanted to go hide in the bathroom.

Just sing, damn it.

I clutched the microphone and sang. I sang my heart out. The funny part was that when I should have felt the most nervous, I was suddenly calm as anything. Like all the fear and stress of the day had floated away. Like the music was just a valve that released it all. Better than Dr. Pollard's Valium breaths any day.

Twenty-Nine

JASON

In the music
I could get lost. When we were up there in front of everyone, I forgot all about everything, all about the stress of that day. It was effortless: I just focused on one chord and then the next. All the rest dropped away.

I couldn't believe it. The set was magic. Somehow, with hardly any practice, we were all in sync. Max kept a steady rhythm behind us, never losing tempo. And Dakota—it was seriously freaking me out how great she sounded. Made me wonder why all along we hadn't thought to get a girl onboard. Her voice was strong and clear but still velvety soft.

She turned to me and smiled. We had this. When it counted, we'd made it work.

Staring out over the audience, I actually could see how good we were—it was written all over them, the way the other kids were moving and smiling. They were dancing, for god's sake. To us. It was like everything I'd ever done had led up to this very moment, and I never wanted it to end. I was riding a total high, and I'd had no weed to speak of in ages. So I had to chalk it up to the band and our ass-kicking awesomeness.

I wasn't just Mr. Hodges' screwup son after all.

And then, as I scanned the audience, I did a double-take. Could that be? Was I hallucinating? Alice was there, in the doorway, only twenty feet away. And she was wearing a
dress
.

Thirty

BENNY

I was at
the prom. How wack was that?

But Rankin had his eye on us. What else could I do but heap up a plate of food from the buffet, then sit down and eat and watch the band? No matter what, I would never dance, not in front of this crowd.

Dakota was singing. I'd seen her onstage, at assemblies and stuff, but it was like she was a whole different person up there now. She was holding on to the microphone and singing into it like it was a person she was talking to, her head arched back, her hair catching the light like gold. She just looked . . . so . . . free.

I didn't want to think of us kissing in her back yard. I didn't want to watch her. And I certainly didn't want her to watch me watching her, knowing I was thinking of kissing her. But I couldn't look away, either.

Thirty-One

ALICE

Benny and I
had both been dragging our feet, completely disturbed by the turn of events that brought us to this moment. Rankin had basically had to drag us into the rotunda, a hand on each of our shoulders. Inside the big open room, there were special spotlights casting a cool blue glow on the columns. A giant marble statue of Ben Franklin sat on one end, a ghostly presence hovering over the tables, which were already full of people sitting on silver chairs. The décor was simple, but it amplified the history and the beautiful details of the architecture. Blue and white and green balloons floated in clusters in the airy coffered dome, weightless and elegant, with scarves twisted into feathery shapes all around the room.

Everyone's parents had taken them here when they were little, to walk through the giant heart, see an IMAX movie or visit the planetarium. My personal favorite had always been the electricity exhibit, where you could move around on the floor and create a staticky charge on a Tesla coil on the ceiling. But for all that, I'd never realized how beautiful this building was, or how lucky we were to have our prom at a place like this. Make that how lucky
they
were. Nobody had invited me.

“Lookin' good, Harry Potter,” Benny said as we stood and watched the band.

“Shut up,” I said, but I wasn't really mad. “You clean up pretty nicely yourself.”

“Eh, I do all right. But seriously, you can really wear a dress.”

“Thanks.” It was different now that we'd gone through the whole Mint thing. “And thanks for what you did—in there,” I said.

“No sweat.” He didn't seem to want to say much more about it, so I let it drop and tried to get myself into prom mode. That was a joke. Just being here and gawking from the sidelines was proving everything everyone thought about people like me and Benny. It didn't matter that Benny in a suit made most of the other guys here look like mere boys. It didn't matter that I had a dress on, no thinking cap anywhere to be found.

Social math: Within set theory there's something called the “axiom of determinacy,” which means that in a certain kind of game where numbers are involved, one player will always have the winning strategy, but it can only be that one player, and it's determined from the beginning. I mean, someone has to win and someone has to lose, right?

Well, that was me at HF. The loser.

But I didn't really want to win the game at HF. I didn't even like the rules. Why was I supposed to try and be like Dakota or something? I just wanted to be myself, and I wanted that to be cool. A unit set, which contains exactly one element: me.

The band started a new song. Out of instinct, I turned to face the stage, which was to the left of good old Ben Franklin. Jason was up there standing just behind Dakota, playing “Wonderwall.” They looked good up there. They'd make a cute couple if she'd ever dump Dylan.

Then something funny happened: Jason leaned in to the microphone to back up her vocals with a
wowowo
, and then he winked.

At me.

For one singular and great moment, it didn't matter that I didn't have a date. It didn't matter that Rankin was going to get us expelled. It didn't matter that he thought I was the female Harry Potter.
Jason freaking Hodges winked at me.

But did he actually? I'd been wrong before, hadn't I? Thinking there was more to it when there wasn't, that Jason was deeper than he acted? Getting carried away with my fantasies?

I turned to look behind me quickly, and lo and behold, there was Chloe Benezet, wearing a sequined feathery thing that looked like an ostrich, grinding on her dance partner.

I mean, to “Wonderwall”? Seriously?

The good moment was gone, quickly as it came, escaped like one of the balloons up there in the dome, never to come back—not until it was completely deflated, anyway.

I sucked in a breath
.
It was almost a relief, actually, to prove myself right after all. Jason would never be more than a burnout, and I'd never be more to him than a brainiac, a hired hand for his plans. The sooner I got that through my thick skull, the better.

Thirty-Two

JASON

It was all
over. Prom was coming to a close. The lights were coming on. I put my guitar in its case and stepped off the stage.

Chaddie was practically jumping up and down as he followed me. “That was awesome, man,” he said, with a positive attitude for the first time ever. “We rocked. Are you gonna come with us to the after-party?”

“I'll meet you there,” I said. First I had something I had to do.

Alice wasn't where I saw her last, when she and Benny and Rankin first came in. I circled around, looking.

“Great show, Hodges,” Dylan Sanders said, blocking my path, his thick neck poking out of his bowtied collar. “My girl can sing, huh?”

“Yeah, she can,” I said. “Have you seen Alice Drake anywhere?”

He frowned. “Who?”

“The girl who stole your rat?” He knew damn well who she was. “Never mind,” I said and moved on.

It occurred to me that just a few months ago, I probably would have said the same thing. I'd never looked for Alice in my life. She'd just been there, hanging around, like ozone. It was only in the past few weeks that I'd started to really notice things about her, like how long her eyelashes were underneath her glasses, how she had a little dimple on her left cheek, how her laugh snuck up on her sometimes and made her eyes tear up. And tonight, from the stage, it had all become clear.

Nothing was what I'd planned, exactly. The whole Mint thing was just a cover-up job. I'd had big hopes of saving the school, of actually helping the people who worked there, but now we were only saving ourselves. Still. I was tired of not trying, not caring, not being honest.

I went out into the lobby, which was cold and empty and silent in contrast to Franklin Hall. No sign of her there, either. Just a security guard, who I nodded to. I guess after tonight, I felt like I understood these guys a little better.

I stepped outside through the heavy bronze doors, onto the front steps of the museum, which were like a waterfall spilling to the sidewalk below. That's where I found her, about halfway down, her knees gathered into her chest as she watched the traffic pass by on Twentieth Street.

“Hey,” I said, sitting down next to her on the cool concrete. The warm spring evening air swirled around us like perfume, blossom-sweet. “What are you doing out here?”

She shrugged her little shoulders. “I don't know. Waiting for this thing to be over,” she said.

“It feels nice,” I said. “Fresh air.”

She just nodded with pursed lips.

“So . . .” I said. “What did you think?”

She gave me a strained smile. “It was fine.”

“Just fine?”

“Yeah. It sounded fine.” Her face tightened. “What do you want me to say, Jason? That you're ready for an arena tour? Can you please just find someone else to stroke your ego? I'm not in the mood.”

Wha?
Why was she so snippy all of a sudden? I held up my hands in defense. “Sorry. I'm not fishing for compliments. I just thought—since you were the one who encouraged me—”

She cut right in, waving me off. “Yeah, great. I encouraged you and now you're a superstar, so let's not pretend we're going to be friends in school on Monday, because we won't. We've never been friends. I paved the way and helped you get what you want, and, you know, mission accomplished. Go you. You can officially ditch me now.”

“Is that what you think of me? That I'm some kind of freeloader?” It felt like I'd been sucker-punched. And I realized, all of a sudden, that I really did care what she thought. It mattered to me that she, out of everyone, actually got who I was. Because throughout this ordeal, I'd relied on her. She was right when she said she'd paved the way. She'd done that and more. Because she liked me. I knew then why I was really out here.

“Aren't you?” she asked, and her eyes, behind their glasses, glinted with a direct challenge. It was like looking in some nightmare mirror that only reflected the worst thing you could imagine. The slacker pothead selfish jerk she must have seen. It sucked.

“No. NO!” I shouted. “I'm not. I just wanted to thank you. I'm sorry if it offends you, but the truth is that you're right: Without you, I would have never done this. What we did tonight, or playing the prom. And you know, it doesn't even matter to me what happens next. Everyone always says I give up too easily, but not this time. Don't you see?”

She was still just staring at me, waiting for me to finish, I guess.

“And I'm not going to forget you, if that's what you think. You
get
me, Al.” I was in her face now, leaning in close. “And . . . I—I think I kind of get you, too.” Before I could think twice, I lifted her chin with my finger and went in for a kiss.

She pulled away in surprise. “Don't make fun of me,” she said, her lip trembling.

“I'm not.” To prove it, I leaned in closer and tried again. Her lips felt plush and warm—not what I expected. Then the kiss opened up deeper, and I ran my hand through her hair. She smelled nice, like herself, and not a cloud of super-sweet celebrity perfume like most of the girls I knew. Maybe I never would have thought of doing this, if she hadn't called her crush to my attention. I'd basically been oblivious that whole time. But in my defense, there were a few other things going on.

And now there was just this. I swear—something electric passed between us, and I knew it was more than just an instinct.

“Are you . . . sure?” she asked, looking at me closely.

I closed my eyes to kiss her again, but she pulled away from me.

Damn.
Maybe I'd come on too strong. I looked down, a little embarrassed, but she just jerked her chin at something behind me.

“Rankin,” she said through gritted teeth.

I saw him then, glaring down at us from the top of the steps. “You lovebirds had best get yourselves back up here. I'm not finished with you.”