Cadel flushed. He was suddenly, overwhelmingly angry—so angry that he couldn't even speak. Ayesha must have seen the tears of rage that sprang to his eyes, because she seemed to relent, a little.
"I'm sorry," she said, "but I had to be honest. It's best to be honest. You've got a lot going for you, Cadel, if you'd just realize that you're not as wonderful as you think you are."
And she walked away. For once in his life, Cadel couldn't cope. He actually skipped half a day of school. Though it was only recess, he went straight home and lay down, his mind turning and churning. He told the housekeeper (he no longer had a nanny) that he was suffering from a stomach bug.
This was also his excuse the following day, when he presented his homeroom teacher with a note from Mrs. Piggott.
By that time he had formulated a satisfying revenge. The whole of twelfth grade would suffer—he promised himself that—but it would take a lot of hard work. Hard work and a cool head. He would have to calm down. He would have to control the terrible feelings of hurt and fury that kept bubbling up and clouding his vision. Only by focusing would he show all those junk kids exactly what they were worth.
During the remainder of the year, while his classmates grew pasty and tired from studying and revising, Cadel concentrated his energies on just two things: Partner Post, and the frayed emotions of his twelfth-grade enemies. He started to compile a database. In it, he organized every little fact that he knew about his classmates: their timetables, their past romances, their weak points, their ambitions. He noted the growing tensions in the air around him, as graduation slowly approached. Acne flared. Religious conversions became more frequent. A lot of couples split, made up, and split again.
Cadel was pleased to see the stress levels rising and did all he could to encourage the process. He started rumors. He blocked corridors, to direct certain people past certain conversations. He worked out who was betraying whom; who was taking drugs to ease jangled nerves; who was becoming overtired; who had just about decided to pack it all in and get a job at a beach resort. For hours every night he would sit and construct a mental image of all the links between the other sixty-three kids in twelfth grade.
He knew that the two weeks between their last day of term and the beginning of the exams would prove to be a challenge, because most of twelfth grade would then be out of his reach. He also knew that the twelfth-grade formal, on the evening of the last school day, would be his final chance to wrap things up. So he bought himself a pair of black trousers, a jacket, and a silk shirt. He paid his fee, which covered dinner and the cost of the venue. He endured the fussing of Mrs. Piggott, who insisted that he take a hired car to the event and who also presented him with a tie and a vest, both of which he took off in the car. Finally, he arrived at the hall where his classmates were celebrating the end of school—only to discover that his name wasn't on the list at the door.
"Well, I don't know," joked Bruno the smart-ass. "You look kinda small for a twelfth-grade person. What did you say your name was?"
"Oh, stop it," laughed his girlfriend—who wasn't Ayesha. "Don't be so mean."
"Yet another screwup," said the vice principal. "Sorry about that, Cadel. Don't worry, you can still go in. I know you've paid your money. Here. Don't forget your stamp."
The stamp was designed to discourage gate-crashers. Cadel held out his hand, received the stamp, and went in. The hall was dark and noisy. Colored lights flashed. There was a live band onstage. Food was laid out on tables near the walls: spring rolls, mini-quiches, marinated chicken wings. There wasn't supposed to be alcohol, but somehow it had been smuggled in.
As the music pounded and the dancers writhed, Cadel drifted from group to group. He sidled into the bathroom and out again. He saw pills, beer cans, and smoking butts being passed surreptitiously around shadowy corners. He even saw money change hands at one point, and he made a mental note of two particular names. Most people seemed to be getting high on something. Arguments broke out. One girl pushed another girl. Rhiannon started kissing Bruno. Caitlin staggered into the bathroom, retching, where she joined a large group of vomiting classmates.
Cadel watched.
For the most part, he was completely ignored. Only on three occasions was he addressed by anyone. The first time was when Sally and her friend, Jessica, stumbled over him. He was sitting on the floor with his back propped against a wall and his knees under his chin. Sally didn't see him there. She tripped on his black suede shoe and would have fallen if Jessica hadn't held her up.
"For Chris'sake!" she barked, peering through the dimness. "What the bloody hell are you doing down there?"
"It's Cadel," said Jessica, swaying slightly.
"
Cadel?
"
"Hello, Cadel."
"What the bloody hell are you doing down there?" Sally repeated. She sounded furious. "Get up! You're in the way!"
"Ah, don't be mean," Jessica protested.
"He's a bloody idiot."
"He's only a little kid."
"Are you
hiding?
" Sally demanded, and Jessica giggled.
"He's hiding from
you,
" she said, then whispered something in Sally's ear. They both laughed and careened off into the throbbing crowd.
Cadel closed his eyes briefly. He was getting a headache. But when he opened them again, he caught a glimpse of Heather Parsons, who was almost certainly drunk, being hustled through a fire exit by someone who looked very much like Damian di Matteo. This sparked his interest. He rose, and pushed his way through knots of heaving bodies until he reached the fire exit. Then he shoved it open.
On the other side of the door lay a covered parking lot, poorly lit. Despite the lack of illumination, however, Cadel could make out two moving shapes. One was helping the other into a dark-colored van, which had white graffiti glowing on its flanks.
"Cadel?" said a voice.
Cadel whirled around. Behind him stood Mrs. Brezeck. She was quite small, even in high heels, and her eyes were almost level with his. Her glossy dark hair was pulled back in a bun, and the mole on her cheek cast a tiny shadow with every flash of the red strobe light behind her.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"Not much," Cadel replied. "Just seeing where this goes."
"Well, you're not allowed outside once you're in. Weren't you told that?"
"No."
"Well, you're not. So come back, please."
Cadel obeyed without argument. As he retraced his steps, Mrs. Brezeck pulled the door shut behind him, firmly. Then, raising her voice against the blaring music, she said, "Having fun, are you?"
"Pardon?"
"I said,
are you having fun?
"
Cadel looked at her in surprise. "Sure," he rejoined.
"In your own particular way, I suppose."
Something about her voice made every nerve in Cadel's body leap to attention. He blinked, and held her gaze.
Masked by the dimness, her face told him nothing.
"In my own particular way," he echoed, slowly. "Yeah. I guess."
She nodded. "Well—I'd wish you luck in the exams, if there was any chance that you'd need it," she said, and abruptly walked away. Cadel was disconcerted. He wriggled back to his patch of floor, only to discover that it was occupied. Seth was lying there, looking vacant.
Cadel stepped over him.
About an hour later, Cadel was sitting on a chair beside one of the food tables, which was covered in crumbs, smears, and shattered remnants. In his hand he held a glass of lemonade and half a curry puff. His feet were planted firmly on the floor; it had been a long time since he had sat with dangling feet.
The crowd in front of him was thinning. A lot of people had left the dance floor, too drunk or sick or tired to stay upright. Through a moving screen of silhouettes he saw Ayesha's. She was draped all over Bruno.
The two of them approached the table beside him unsteadily, as if in search of something to eat. Ayesha was wearing a silk flower in her hair. Bruno's shirt was unbuttoned. They both looked disheveled.
"No more prawns," Ayesha groaned, scanning the finger-food wreckage. Then she caught sight of Cadel.
They gazed at each other for a moment, while Cadel slowly chewed his curry puff. His own shirt was still neatly buttoned. He wasn't even sweaty.
At last he swallowed, then said, "That guy beside you came with another girl, you know."
"Piss off," Ayesha replied, before dragging Bruno away.
Cadel didn't care, though. Because by then he had already begun talking to Kay-Lee McDougall.
Kay-Lee McDougall was a Partner Post client. She had filled in the assessment form, paid the joining fee, and sent Cadel a passport photograph. The photograph showed an ordinary-looking woman with long blond hair, finely plucked eyebrows, and a slightly squashed nose. Kay-Lee was twenty-five. She worked as a nurse in a hospital called Weatherwood House, in Sydney's western suburbs.
Studying the photograph, Cadel was surprised. Although Kay-Lee's face was pleasant enough, it didn't strike him as particularly unusual. Yet according to her assessment form, she was very intelligent indeed. Cadel and Thaddeus had included a set of questions designed to give a rough measurement of someone's IQ_, and Kay-Lee's was exceptionally high. What's more, she gave her interests as number theory, cryptosystems, and detective novels.
"She says she likes guys who are 'a little bit crazy,'" Cadel told Thaddeus. "She says she doesn't care about looks, or age, but that she wants someone intelligent."
"I'm not surprised," said Thaddeus, frowning over Kay-Lee's assessment form. "Number theory? There wouldn't be many idiots interested in that."
"Except the ones still trying to square the circle," Cadel remarked. He was studying Thaddeus's face. "What is it?" he suddenly asked. "What's the matter? Don't you think she's telling the truth?"
Thaddeus didn't reply at once. He flicked through a few more pages, pulled at his nose, removed his glasses, rubbed his eyes.
Then he put his glasses back on.
"Up to a point," he replied at last.
"She's passed all those fail-safes—"
"I know. She has." Thaddeus picked up Kay-Lee's photograph and peered at it closely. "You can't see much from this, can you?" he murmured. "Nothing below the neck."
Cadel waited.
"I'm just getting a sense, here, that there's something about her body image." Thaddeus stabbed at the pages in front of him with a long, bony forefinger. "
Appears ... appearance ... looks ... face ... face up to
... so many loaded words."
Cadel was puzzled. "But she seems pretty stable," he pointed out. "I mean, there isn't a trace of any personality disorders."
"I'm not talking about personality disorders, Cadel. There's just a slight disjunction..." Thaddeus sighed. "I don't know. I suppose it's not unusual, for most women—body image is such an issue."
"Hang-ups, you mean? About the way they look?"
"Precisely."
This time it was Cadel's turn to pick up the photograph. "She looks all right to me."
"That's what I'm saying. She does. And yet I'm getting a whiff here of a really deep disturbance. I mean, consider her answers to questions forty-eight and fifty-four. That's a very strong response." Thaddeus removed the photograph from Cadel's hand and scanned it again. "I'd only be guessing, but I wonder if she's got burns or something? Some kind of deformity?"
Cadel blinked. "You think so?"
"It's possible. You said yourself, a lot of these people would be choosing an online dating service for a reason." At last Thaddeus laid the photograph back on his desk. "Just something to keep in mind, that's all."
Cadel nodded. He already knew that Kay-Lee's perfect match was going to be a lot more interesting than most: a seedy academic, about thirty-three or thirty-four, brilliant but unreliable, with a moderate drinking problem. Someone "a little bit crazy," in other words. Cadel settled on the name Eiran Dempster. He pasted together a blurry snapshot of someone with a scrubby jaw and lots of dark hair, sitting in a restaurant. A Canadian restaurant. Cadel decided to make Eiran a Canadian academic living in Toronto. That way the chances of a face-to-face meeting were very low. Of course, he had to do a bit of research, but he didn't mind that. Research was always interesting.
Eiran had a good position at his university but was busy throwing it away by turning up late for class, objecting to certain students (because they were "slow"), giving punishingly low marks, and drinking too much alcohol at lunchtime. He taught mathematics but hated teaching. Whenever he wasn't drunk, he wanted to spend all his time trying to discover the solution to an age-old mathematical problem: how to factor a number. Obviously, he was interested in number theory and cryptosystems.
Because he was so arrogant, however, he didn't think much of detective stories. He believed that most of them were inferior to what he could have written himself.
That was exactly what Cadel said, in Eiran's first e-mail to Kay-Lee. Kay-Lee agreed that most detective novels
were
clumsy, but not all of them. She asked Eiran if he had ever met Manindra Agrawal, the Indian mathematician who had produced the primality testing solution. (He was one of her heroes.) She challenged Eiran with a message written in a number code, which Cadel solved quite easily. He enjoyed doing it.
What's this,
he wrote,
playtime for preschoolers?
He threw back a message in another, equally famous code, which she deciphered. After drawing on his knowledge of six frequently used number codes, Cadel had to start looking up texts for further inspiration. He had a wonderful time. In the end, he and Kay-Lee devised their own code, using primality testing, the periodic table of the elements, and certain ideas that Cadel had picked up from the International Data Encryption Algorithm.
Why are you a nurse?
he finally asked her, in code.
Why aren't you teaching math?
Like you?
Kay-Lee replied.
I thought you said it was pseudohell at your work, because at least in hell there would be some interesting people. You must be bored out of your brain.