Coin Heist (4 page)

“Say what you want, but what he did affects all of us.” I sniffed. “It was selfish, and it was wrong.”

“I get it, okay? Message received, loud and clear.” Jason shouted, kicking the music stand so it fell down in a noisy clatter. “Do you think I'm enjoying any of this?”

Then he stalked down the hallway and left me in the quiet that I'd hoped for.

Had eternally chill Jason Hodges really just cracked, right in front of me?

My hands were shaking. There was no way I could get through this day now, not without a little relief.

Damn him.

I turned on my heel and headed for the dressing room to do what I had to do.

Jason Hodges was wrong. I was a walking mistake. I just hid it better than anyone else.

Four

BENNY

The glowing numbers
on my phone stared at me, all ugly-like. Twenty minutes until American History started, and I had to call my grandmom and move my car out of the senior parking lot. I'd been running behind this morning—lots of traffic on 76 headed out of the city—and it was the only spot I could find. But I'd learned the hard way that you got a “ticket” for taking one of the precious senior spaces. This school was too much. No way was I gonna let some security guy tow my Mustang. My Mustang was my one true love.

All the kids in the Upper School were squeezing through a tiny little door out of assembly. If I went that way, I'd be late for class. I couldn't afford to have any teachers giving me detentions. I was one of exactly six kids “of color”—we were all lumped together—at this place. I couldn't afford anything bad on my record. It had to be perfect if I was going to get into college.

I backed up, remembering there was another exit down by the front row of seats that led out to the Arts Center classrooms and the Drama Studio. That was the way to go if I wanted to get out quick.

Nobody noticed me as I wove back through the rows of seats. That pretty much summed up my life at Haverford Friends: nobody ever noticed me. Even on the football team, where I was the best wide receiver they'd probably ever have, the guys mostly grunted at me. They were clueless.

To be fair, they did invite me to their keggers once in a while. Well, really only once, but I couldn't go. They were always being held in some park where all the prep school kids got together, but it was an hour from my house. Not to mention my grandmom would go bananas if I was arrested for underage drinking or got a DUI. Maybe if I did stuff like that, I wouldn't be so invisible. Then again, I could be just as invisible at a party, a red Solo cup floating around.

The first kegger was in September, after we won our first game in, like, one trillion years, and I guess I blew my chance because no one had really asked me to anything since. No biggie. Not like I had anything in common with these rich dudes with their overpriced cars and blonde girlfriends and dads with pink pants. My car was a 1993 model someone had abandoned at my uncle's garage, where I worked nights and weekends. It took me awhile to get it back into order, but I'd tricked it out myself, slowly adding new parts whenever I could afford them. I always gave my grandparents most of my paycheck when I got it, so there usually wasn't much left for me. My uncle and my buddy, ‘LT,' had helped me with the labor—lots of Sunday afternoons working on that thing. It was nothing like the Range Rovers or Beemers people drove to HF, but none of those kids had any idea how satisfying it was to mend a brake line, replace an oxygen sensor, or fix a Pitman arm.

As for my dad, he was back in the Dominican Republic. I hadn't seen him since I was four. We talked on the phone, but he wasn't coming back to the States any time soon—wasn't allowed to. And the only girlfriend I had was in my head: Jennifer Lawrence. My buddies at my uncle's garage made fun of me that I picked the
Hunger Games
chica over the bikini calendar girls that hung on the walls at the garage, but I didn't care. She was hot. If I ever got to meet her, it'd all be over. She'd forget all about those Hollywood dudes.

The Arts Center was quiet like a funeral. I'd never really hung out here much except for Design class. That was another crazy thing. Design class. Who needs a design class? I'd taken it 'cause my advisor said it was the way to go, since I wasn't into photography or video. The metalworking class I wanted to take (easy A for me for sure, and those kids got to help build a sculpture in the quad) was all filled up. Mr. Rankin was always trying to get us to think about stuff like the little heads on quarters. That dude was all right, but as far as I was concerned, coins were just money.

And money was what I needed to help my grandparents out. They'd done so much for me already. They were the ones who found out I could get a football scholarship to Haverford Friends—that was after my boy Diego got arrested for boosting cars. They said I had to think of myself and my
opportunities.

I didn't want to leave my boys in North Philly, but even I had to admit that I didn't have much of a future if I stayed at Thomas Janson High. The kids there carried guns, and we didn't even get books unless the teachers paid for them. The budget for Philly schools like Janson was getting cut every year, and every year they took something else away. There were no nurses, no gym class, no milk. At Haverford Friends I had a computer, a college counselor, crazy shit like philosophy classes, squash courts, and couscous for lunch. I mean, HF students actually got on vans to give out soup to guys that lived in my neighborhood. I was lucky to be here, I guess, but if anyone ever thought I'd get used to a place like this, they were crazy. I just had to survive it.

And I almost didn't. Just as I passed, the door to the dressing room opened, clocking me in the face.

“Oh. Sorry.” I covered my forehead and nose where the wood made contact, and I could feel it getting red. Don't know why
I
apologized.

Maybe because it was Dakota Cunningham behind the door. Yeah, I knew her name. All the girls at HF looked alike to me, but Dakota had a little Jennifer Lawrence in her—at least in the eyes and butt. Sometimes in Design class I would squint and pretend. She had it going on and she knew it. Everyone did. I'd heard some guys on the team talking about her. She had a boyfriend, Dylan Sanders, who she'd been with since freshman year, and they still hadn't had sex, according to Dylan.
The hottest prude in school
, one dude on my team said.
Maybe's she just not feeling it
, I wanted to say, but didn't.
Maybe whale-belt-wearing golf club dudes ain't her thing
.

“That's okay,” she said quickly. She reached up and pulled on her hair, twisting it to the side. I'd seen her do that a lot in class. Then she wiped around her mouth.

I noticed her face looked kinda flushed and she seemed a little embarrassed or something. Or maybe it was me that was embarrassed.

“That was a good assembly,” I said. Even though it hadn't been. All the kids were going bananas because they were getting their activities cut. Welcome to my world. No money, no fun.

“Um, thanks?” Then she gave me the side-eye, all suspicious. “Are you being sarcastic?”

“No, no,” I stuttered. Had I pissed her off? “I just meant, you handled it well.”

She paused, looking me up and down like I was making fun of her.

“I really didn't. But I didn't have a choice. Those people? They have no idea what it's like, to be up there, trying to put a happy face on terrible news, trying to make everyone feel better about everything when really there's no way—oh, never mind. I could go on forever.”

Clearly. She was babbling. But she seemed upset, and I was tired of feeling invisible. If she wanted to talk, I was happy to listen. “So you think it'll stay this way?”

“I really don't know,” she said. “I mean, I'm not the one to ask.”

“It's bad, huh?”

“Yeah.” She sighed and then looked at me as if seeing it was me, Benny, for the first time. Then she whipped her bag over her shoulder. “I better get back to class.”

“Okay,” I said, feeling like an idiot. She'd looked right at me—that was more than she'd ever done—but I guess she didn't like what she was seeing 'cause she was rushing off.
Good job, Yizar
.

As she was walking away, it hit me—why she was acting so freaky. She'd just thrown up. My cousin Luisa had done the same thing when I'd caught her puking once. The nervous eyes, flicking side to side, not meeting mine. Wiping her mouth. Keeping her distance. Pretending like everything was normal. People say poor kids don't get anorexia, but that's not true. They also say rich kids don't act ghetto, and I'd seen plenty of kids at HF walking around with their pants low, throwing gang signs in the halls, using the n-word like it was going out of style.

I stood there for a moment, watching Dakota walk away. She was hot and all, but the girl clearly had some issues. If she was just gonna ignore me like everyone else, then I wouldn't waste my time talking to her again.

Then I remembered: time. I was going to be late to History.

Shit.

Five

ALICE

“So what were
you saying the other day, about the Mint?” Jason asked. He was sitting next to me in Design class, for the first time ever.

I frowned. “The Mint?”

“About the security. The network?”

Of course. The day when he'd talked to me. It was about hacking. “Just that for a place so important, they're practically inviting a zero-day.”

“A what?”

“An attack that takes advantage of vulnerabilities or weak spots,” I explained. My stomach was doing weird things that felt like hunger, despite the fact that I'd just eaten a corn muffin during morning break. He was
right there
—inches away—my body knew it even if my brain wasn't admitting it.

Come on, Alice. Get a grip.

“Huh.”

Well, it was obvious he was there because he had nowhere else to sit. Within days of the news about his dad, Jason had become
persona non grata
at Haverford Friends. No one wanted to be associated with a crook, or in this case, a crook's son. It was sad, really. He was still making snarky jokes whenever anyone mentioned his dad, but everyone had stopped laughing at them. Social math: In set theory, there's a hierarchy, organized by how deeply the sets are nested into one another. Every day, Jason was slipping down the hierarchy a little more.

So I couldn't get too excited. In fact, there was nothing to do but focus on my Mint project, which was a rendering of a new commemorative coin. My plan was to scan the design I was drawing by hand into the computer once it was approved and turn it into some kind of three-dimensional rendering. Given a choice, I generally preferred to do everything auto-magically, since computers were my language, my art.

I had some questions for Mr. Rankin about my plan, but he'd already retreated into his office. He'd been acting off lately—he never showed us any funny videos or asked us about our weekends anymore. It was like everything that went down with Mr. Hodges had cast this big shadow over the whole school. I mean, I got why people were bummed out about their activities and stuff, but it was all going to blow over, wasn't it? A place like HF, which had been around forever, would have to bounce back. I'd heard they were going to do a search for a new headmaster. By next year, there would be a whole batch of new students, and they'd raise more money and everything would be forgotten. Our evil headmaster would be reduced to a little eraser smudge on the school's history.

Speaking of smudges, I snuck a glance over at Jason's paper. It looked like he was drawing a coin, too.

“What do you have there?”

“I don't know,” he mumbled. “It's just in the early stages.”

“I hope you're not making a commemorative.”

“Why? Do you think I'm stealing your idea? Because I'm not.”

“I didn't say that,” I said quickly. Jeez. I'd never heard him sound so down.

I knew Jason had it worse than anyone, but the rest of us were stressed out, too. I was taking the PSATs again over the weekend, and I had at least twenty hours of homework. I should've been thankful that Math Team was suspended because of budget cuts, but I wasn't. It was my only chance to blow off steam, for me anyway. Greg and I had even tried doing something else, something normal after school—we'd gone to the mall yesterday—but it felt all wrong. We couldn't really relate to each other unless we were role-playing or running equations.

Also adding to the stress was the fact that now I had to spend more time at home, which meant seeing my mom doing things like make my dad's favorite pork chops for dinner even though he was late and obviously with Sheryl the skanky secretary. She still had no idea. How could she be so stupid? Even though she'd invited Greg to stay for dinner, he'd insisted on getting home to study for his Chemistry test, so it was just me and her across from each other at the table, with me trying to avoid her eyes.

Now that Jason had mentioned it, though, I did feel a little suspicious. Maybe he
was
copying my assignment. I couldn't be sure. I mean, people tried to copy my stuff all the time.

Then again, why would anyone try to copy me in art class? Reality check: I was an art idiot.

Jason hovered guardedly over his work, digging his pencil into the page, making hatch marks. He was making them more aggressively now, I noticed. “Yeah. No. Mine is different. I'm doing something historical. And it's a medal.”

“Okay,” I said, my voice coming out weirdly high-pitched.
Forget I mentioned it.
Forget I'm even sitting here.
The more I thought about it, the more annoyed I felt. I mean, I was the only person in school still willing to talk to Jason—against my better judgment. Shouldn't he be grateful?

We were both quiet for a while, letting the sound of our markings take over. Then he spoke again. “Well, so, if someone wanted to hack in, how would they go about it?”

I lazily dragged my pencil around the paper, giving the coin a three-dimensional edge. “Hypothetically, you mean?”

“Hypothetically.” He looked up. The goofy smile was back and his hazel eyes—they actually lit up. Why was he always trying to hide them with that hair?

I couldn't help but feel flattered that he wanted to hear about this stuff. It was my specialty, after all, and I knew I could impress him. “Well, first, you'd use a Fire Pwn unit. Do you know what that is?”

He shook his head, wide-eyed.

“It's a little device you can get that's loaded with wi-fi, Bluetooth, cellular, and ethernet, so basically you can communicate with it from anywhere at any time. The cool thing is that you just plug it into an outlet. It looks like an ordinary power strip, so no one would even notice it.”

“Where do you get it?”

“Online,” I said, like duh.

“And how does it help?”

“It's like a stealth operator. It bypasses all the network controls and gets into the system without being detected. So from there all you'd have to do is figure out the weaknesses. Like, the places where someone could get in.” I'd never personally used one myself—I'd just read about them on message boards.

“How does it find them?”

“Sniffing.”

“Sniffing?”

“You know, sorting through the traffic.”

“And then?”

I shrugged. “And then it would probably take a couple weeks but you could crack the password. Once you got on the system, you could see where the administrator computer was. From there it depends on how the internal network works and what you want it to do. But there's a lot less security on an internal network, so once you're on, you could get in there and maybe change things.”

“Like, change the number of coins they're making?”

“Maybe.”

“Huh,” he said. “That's pretty smart.”

“Thanks,” I said, feeling myself blush a bit. I
was
smart. It was just nice to have someone like Jason recognize it.

“Cool stuff. Very cool.” He looked like he was thinking something over.

“Are you planning on hitting up the Mint?” I was joking.

“What?” He looked offended. “I was just curious. I'm not a thief, you know.”

Ohhh.
“I really didn't mean . . . I wasn't . . .”

“I know. But everyone's acting like I personally did something wrong, like I was in on my dad's little secret, when I didn't have any more of a clue than you guys did.”

Gone was the smile, the tilt of his head. My insides rippled. This was a real conversation we were having. Maybe there was more to Jason than I'd thought. Maybe hiding underneath all the shaggy hair and pothead jokes was a smart and interesting person?

“Parents do stuff we can't control,” I said. “My dad—he's done some really dumb things lately. Like very clichéd mid-life crisis things. I want to tell him to stop, but it's not like he'd listen to me anyway. He thinks I'm just a dumb kid. The man thinks I still collect stuffed animals.”

He looked at me with interest. “So what did he do?”

I paused and looked at him. He was staring back at me intently, still with those hazel eyes shining. Why not tell him? It wasn't as bad as what
his
dad had done—or was it?

“He's bonking his assistant. I stumbled on an email.” This was the first time I'd ever said it out loud, and the words sounded just as tacky as the reality. To be perfectly honest, it wasn't exactly “stumbling” so much as “snooping”—I'd reconfigured my dad's spyware so that I could monitor his network activity instead of vice-versa. I mean, he didn't trust me, so why should I trust him? But I was only looking to find out what they knew about my online activities. I was mortified. Disgusted. In all these months, though, I hadn't told anyone. Not even Greg.

“Ouch,” he said. “Really?”

Did Jason pity me? That wasn't the same as being genuinely nice. It occurred to me that he might think I was a complete nerd. Not getting that I was actually
choosing
not to be like Dakota and all the rest of them. Being like them was easy—all you had to do was dye your hair and buy the regulation outfits and basically just follow the crowd. But who was I fooling? My “thinking cap” was a choice, maybe, but my negative bra size was not.

Jason was still looking at me, so I kept talking. “It isn't fair, you know? They're supposed to be the ones figuring stuff out. They're supposed to be the ones who have their shit together.”

“Even when they ruin schools,” he said. “I'm supposed to go on acting like it's normal, even though everyone hates me by association.”

“But Jason, everyone knows you had nothing to do with this thing.”

“Do they?”

“They'll forget about it. Just give them time.” I wanted to cheer him up, even though I wasn't entirely sure that last part was so true.

“I hope so.” His face relaxed into a smile again, and I felt better. “Do you—“

His eyes broke away from mine in mid-sentence, and I turned to see where he was looking. Dakota Cunningham had just walked into the room.

“Do I what?” I asked, trying to snap him out of it. Dakota was now standing in front of the glass display case where Rankin put the “Design of the Week,” one of her slim legs twisted around the other as she peered through it, probably wondering when her design would be there. Because it wasn't enough for her to be on every page of the yearbook, was it? She wanted to be an art superstar, too.

“Never mind,” he said.

Whatever. Jason wasn't deep or interesting. He was just a dude, staring at a typical hot girl. The surface, the goofy stuff, was all there was.

The bell rang, and I gathered up my stuff and headed for the door.
Let him be an outcast
, I thought.
I have better things to do.

“See you,” he called out after me, but I was already walking down the Arts Center hallway, feeling ridiculous, as usual.