Coin Heist (3 page)

Dakota sighed. “Fine. Keep playing dumb. You can flake on class, but you'd better not do this on prom night. We're counting on you, and you'd better play covers.”

“Yeah,” Junibel said. “You need to learn ‘Don't Stop Believing' and ‘Apache'.”

Whatever. Mixed Metaphors would never play anything that involved a g-synth. We were strictly dance pop, inspired by '90s Manchester bands. Dakota knew that. In our brief relationship, I'd introduced her to all of my favorite bands, like the Stone Roses. And I think she actually got into my music, too, though these days she probably listened to whatever everyone else listened to.

Dakota walked away and so did her clone, and all there was left was the scent of their flowery perfumes hanging in the air. That and Alice Drake, standing where Dakota had been, shaking her beanie-covered head.

“Wow,” Alice said with a smirk. “That's some help we can all do without.”

She was nice enough, but I didn't want anyone pitying me, especially not a girl who wore a beanie over a bowl cut. What was she going to do, beat them up? Alice was pretty much the last person who could improve this situation.

“It's nothing,” I said, repeating the mantra of the day. “It's cool.”

She shrugged and grabbed some paper. At least she knew when to give up.

I was almost safely back to my seat, paper in hand, when I ran into the folded arms of Arno Shepherd, a smirk slashed across his scrawny face. “How does your dad like jail?”

“My dad's actually in Aspen,” I said very slowly and loudly, aware that everyone was listening. “Skiing. The conditions are great right now.” They all knew I was joking, but what was I supposed to say? I didn't want to have to make excuses for the guy, because the truth was that I couldn't. I had no goddamn idea why he'd done what he'd done.

The bell rang and I stepped out into the quad. The school day was over. I could finally walk home and lock myself in my room with my guitar. No one would bug me there. Not my dad, who was obviously in a jail cell. Not my mom, who would be on the phone for a zillion hours.

My feet crunched over the frozen grass. As I got closer to the sculpture, I heard a splat. And then another. I turned to see Dylan Sanders and Gus Flaherty pegging eggs at the hulking iron monster.

“Your dad's a thief,” Dylan said. “Can we return this thing and get our parents' money back?”

All the feelings I'd been bottling up boiled over into rage. Burning, bubbling rage. Screw this kid with his sweater vest and his three-generation Haverford Friends family. He didn't know what the hell he was talking about. He and Dakota were perfect for each other. My fists balled up so tight, I felt blood swelling in my fingers. I imagined slamming Dylan against the fence so hard that the chain-link would brand his back.

But wait. I couldn't let them get under my skin. I had to let this roll off me. It wasn't really Dylan Sanders I was angry with. Or Dakota, either. It wasn't their fault my life had been ruined. And if it had been up to me, I'd get rid of the sculpture, too.

So I shrugged. “Can I have one of those?”

He handed me an egg. It was cold in my hand, solid. I fired away and it exploded, leaving trails of gloppy goo on the $500,000 piece of crap that was my dad's crowning achievement. And for the first time all day, I actually felt better.

Three

DAKOTA

You know what
was the saddest? The moment when it became clear that the student government was a sham. I'd been brought up to think I could do anything, fix anything, but here was a problem that affected the whole student body, and we were powerless to fix it. I was beginning to wonder if I should throw in the gavel. Except our president Simone Gyo was already clutching it tight, banging it against the assembly lectern.

“Could everyone please settle down, please?” Simone waved her arms like a demented bird.

As vice president, I stood to her left and tried to look official. Even though Simone was a senior and I was a junior, and typically juniors never got picked for student council, we'd managed to convince the students of Haverford Friends that we were a worthy team during the fall election. We'd run a good campaign. A great campaign, really. We promised to get more funding for the coffee bar so they could upgrade to a real cappuccino machine, to extend the school gym hours, and to widen the dress code policy to include sleeveless shirts again, which wasn't going to be easy with hardnosed Hodges. The free iPhone covers my dad ordered didn't hurt, either. They were black with silver printing:
gyo gives / cunningham cares
.

I cared. I cared way too much, probably.

Which was why the fact that I was standing in front of the entire school at our weekly Tuesday morning assembly, about to drop a bomb that would ruin all of their lives, was extra painful. With Mr. Hodges out, the assistant headmaster Ms. Coyle had called Simone and me into her office that morning to tell us she had to slash the student budget for extra-curriculars.

“We simply don't have the resources,” she said. “We'll leave the prom in place, of course, though you'll probably have to change the location. And the newspaper and yearbook will stay. Other than that, you'll need to tell the students to hold off. On pretty much everything.”

We broke the news to our council members via text just minutes before the meeting was supposed to begin. There wasn't time for debate or anything else. The show had to go on.

Turns out, as much as Simone loved the power of the gavel, she was a complete mess when it came to doing anything trickier than scheduling a car wash. She'd broken down in tears just before we stepped on stage and begged me to speak at the assembly in her place. I thought, well, this is my duty—this is what a vice president does, fill in for the president in a crisis situation. Now was my chance to step up, to save the day, to at least try to make things better for all of us.

Now, looking at the crowd of students, I wished like anything I hadn't agreed to do Simone's dirty work. They looked so unsuspecting, sipping from their reusable water bottles and coffee cups. HF kids were nothing if not an enviro-friendly bunch. How would they react when I told them that plans for the green roof were being scrapped? It was a disaster.

I cleared my throat. Usually I rehearsed my speeches in the mirror, but of course there hadn't been time for that. Campaigns and promises and winning votes were one thing. This—this was something else.

Smile
, I told myself.
Smile and maybe they won't realize how bad it is. You're Dakota Cunningham, and they think you have it all under control.

“So. We have a bit of bad news. We're going to have to suspend some student activities, due to compromised funding.” Here I turned to my printed list. “That includes the following: Aikido, Asian Students in America, Beatles Appreciation, Birding, Black Student Alliance, Bollywood Club, Chess, Chinese, Community Service, Creative Writing, Ethics, Film Views, Good Greens, Inkwell, Math Team, Mock Trial, Quaker Ambassadors, Queer Straight Alliance, Robotics, Spanish Language Immersion, Stock Market Watchers, Young Democrats, and Young Republicans. Oh, and SCUBA.”

Silence. I glanced at Simone, who seemed to be inching farther and farther away from the lectern.

And all I could do was keep smiling. A big, painful, recently-whitened smile.

At least, until the silence broke.

“Are you kidding me?” Darius Fitzsimmons, president of both the Queer Straight Alliance and the Young Republicans was on his feet. “They can't do this! We have our big demonstration project coming up!”

I didn't know which of his clubs he was referring to, or which project, but it didn't matter.

“You'll just have to hold off for now,” I said, repeating Ms. Coyle's line.

That led to a room-wide eruption of blurted questions. Everyone wanted to know what was going to happen to
their
club or group. Our school was known for its extra-curriculars, that was a selling point, and it was something that kept us all engaged in HF life and primed for college. I loved HF. It was old and beautiful, and being here made me feel part of something bigger, a long tradition of students who went on to do great things. I loved it, and I couldn't believe this was happening.

“Are we still taking our class trip to Colonial Williamsburg?” Rav Patel wanted to know.

“No,” I replied. “The trip is off.”

“What about Diversity Fest?” asked Sienna Grimes, co-chair of the Black Student Alliance. “We ordered all our t-shirts. We can't cancel it. Not if you guys still get to do your wonton thing.” Here she pointed at Simone.

“The ‘wonton thing' is called the Chinese Culinary Celebration,” Simone explained from behind my shoulder, her voice timid. “And that's canceled, too.”

“All events are going to be canceled, except for prom,
The Oracle
, and yearbook,” I confirmed.

This affected me, too, I wanted to tell them. I was an editor of
The Inkwell
, the school literary journal; a founding member of the Spanish Language Immersion club; a co-chair of Film Views. I would have had a starring role in
Titanic
, too, if my parents had let me audition.

“They're not going to let us work in the soup kitchen anymore? What are we supposed to tell the people at St. Alban's Shelter?” Daphne Gibbons, a student council wannabe, cried out. ‘Sorry, we can't afford your lunch anymore?' ‘You have to starve?'

“This is outrageous!” someone yelled.

“Insane!” someone else said.

From then on, individual words got lost in the buzz of chatter. Simone tapped the gavel, trying to maintain order. All the individual faces turned into slashes of angry, bitter confusion. They were mad at me.
Me,
when none of this was my fault. I mean, believe me, if I could have done something, I would have.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I'm sorry.”

Only then did I remember what my dad, David Cunningham of Cunningham, Schwartz, and Kieffer, always liked to say: “Never apologize, and never explain.” Maybe it was good advice for a corporate lawyer, but it hardly came in handy when you were facing down a room of pissed-off overachievers. HF students loved their activities. Activities were good for transcripts, and transcripts were good for college acceptance, and none of us needed to be reminded that the whole point of going to a school like HF and having your parents shell out $45,000 a year was so you could get into a good college and have a good life. I mean, I'd never even wanted to be on the student council. It was my parents who said I should run, that it would help get me into Harvard,
their
Harvard. Never mind that only one person of each class at HF got into Harvard every year, and that brainiac Alice Drake was a total shoo-in.

Everyone thought I had it all together. If only they knew how much work it took to pull off this DAKOTA CUNNINGHAM sham. Every afternoon spent at school on some extracurricular, hours of late-night cramming, Saturdays with SAT tutors. But that wasn't enough—there were the free periods spent studying
Teen Vogue
and
Allure
to stay ahead of all the trends, morning jogs followed by 200 crunches, a ten-part skin and hair care regime, literally. I was naturally pretty, sure, but it took
work
to get to the next level. Lunchtime was devoted to normalness: sitting with my parent-approved boyfriend, gossiping with my parent-approved popular friends, and trying to shut off my constantly churning brain. No wonder I'd spent a good part of last summer in a fancy version of a nuthouse—my parents covered it up, of course, by telling everyone, including my boyfriend, that I was at a pre-college Japanese immersion program. Anything to keep up the illusion of my perfection.

If anyone ever found out, I'd be so dead. I might as well jump out of the HF belfry.

And now they were all looking at me like I was to blame for this crisis.

Too bad
Titanic
was canceled. It would've been an appropriate production for a school going bust.

“Sorry?” Sienna stood up and yelled. “You're
sorry
? This whole place is sorry!”

I wanted to run. I wanted to hide. I wanted to puke. God, if only I could escape into the bathroom right now.

But I couldn't. All I could do was look out at the sea of kids, feel their disappointment, and curse that stupid moron Mr. Hodges for screwing us all over. Because what he did? It was costing us
everything.

I felt faint.
Get it together, Cunningham.
They're watching you.

I tried one of Dr. Pollard's Valium breaths. In for three, pause for one, out for six, pause for one. Ever since my stay at the Eastlake Center, I'd found myself using his technique for relaxation more and more.

Another smile. “We're going to try our best to work this out and get our funding restored. In the meantime, does anyone have any more questions?”

The bell rang.

Thank god. Before I could take any more comments or questions, the assembly was finally over. I exited the stage through the back, walking out toward the dressing room. No one would be in there now.

I wouldn't throw up, I decided. I would show some restraint. I could just do a few more breaths, gather my thoughts together. A few moments alone was all I needed to regain my composure.

Except Jason Hodges happened to be standing in my way. Typical. His whole shaggy, unkempt, too-cool-to-care thing was really getting old. Hadn't anyone told him that he needed to use a comb once in a while if he didn't want birds to start camping out on his head?

“What are you doing back here?” I asked coldly. What kind of person would just joke around like nothing had happened? If that were my dad, I'd be hiding in my bedroom with my Frette sheets pulled over my head, possibly lining up plastic surgery appointments so I could live in disguise the rest of my life.

“I needed a music stand for my band practice,” he said, eyeing me up. “Or are you going to cancel that, too?”

His tone was teasing, but still. How dare he put this on me? I was annoyed at him from the other day in Design, when he'd blown me and Junibel off when we were only trying to help. Like his “cool” music taste made him better than us. “Ask your dad,” I snapped. “He's the reason for all of this.”

That did it. The clueless smile slipped away, and I felt a little bad for hurting his feelings.

That is, until he snapped right back. “Sucks about all your clubs. There go your college applications, huh? Now all those admissions people will think you're just mediocre like the rest of us.”

He
was insulting
me
? The slacker who'd used his dad's job as an excuse to do nothing but mess around all these years? The guy who'd taken class clown–dom to a new level? Well, now his dad was out, and he couldn't get away with being a clown anymore. Nobody had to kiss his ass, because he was just a regular student like the rest of us. No, he didn't deserve my sympathy.

“The sad thing is, you have no idea what it's like to work hard or participate in anything. You've never even joined a club.”

“Well, seeing as how everything has been axed, it's a good thing, right?”

“Your dad basically ruined our school, Jason. Do you even care about that?”

“This isn't a council speech here, Cunningham, so you don't have to speak on behalf of the student body. He didn't ‘ruin the school', okay? It was a misunderstanding.” His voice sounded confident, but I could see that he didn't believe what he was saying. And was I imagining it, or was he the tiniest bit shaken up?

“So the police
misunderstood
when they found pages of evidence showing how he cooked the books?” This part I'd heard from my dad, who knew someone familiar with the case. He said he would never represent Hodges, because what the police had was so damning that criminal charges were definitely going to be brought. The jury would see the paper trail, and there would be no way he'd get off. My dad said Hodges would probably serve time. Hard time.

“I don't know what they found. It was a mistake. Whatever.”

“And he's still in Aspen, right?”

Now he was really flustered. “I don't have to explain anything to anyone.” When I didn't respond, he added, “And even if I did, you'd never understand, because you've never made a mistake before, have you, Cunningham?”

I'd made plenty of mistakes. Who hadn't? Obviously, he thought I was some goody-goody priss. Well, this wasn't about me. If we were a community, like HF was supposed to be—I mean, that was our motto, wasn't it,
discamus ut serviamus
, ‘We learn so that we might serve'—then we should all be working together to make things better.

Something else bothered me: the fact that Jason actually bought into DAKOTA CUNNINGHAM, just like everyone else. He of all people should know better—he should know that there was more to me, because he knew me way back when, before my life became all caps, when I was still allowed to be in school plays and do things just for fun, when I still had control over who I was or who I thought I'd be. I wasn't perfect. I was human just like he was. Well, it was one more reason that Jason Hodges deserved what was coming to him. He didn't just act like an idiot. He
was
an idiot.