Authors: Holly Black
“No,” I rasp. Guilt is closing up my throat. “Don’t. You shouldn’t have to apologize. Not to me.”
“At first I thought I could just ignore it, and now—well—it’s like ignoring made the wound go septic. And then I said that if I came here and at least could see you, it would help. But it didn’t. Everything that I think will help just makes it worse.
“So I want to ask you to do something,” she says, looking at the floor, at a collection of textbooks that I’m pretty sure she’s not actually seeing. “And I understand it’s not fair, but it won’t cost you much, and it would mean everything to me. I want you to be my boyfriend.”
I start to say something, but she talks over me, already sure I’m going to say no.
“You don’t have to really like me. And it will just be for a little while.” She’s looking up at me now, her eyes hard. “You can pretend. I know you’re a good liar.”
I don’t even know how to protest. I’m scrambling. “You said that everything you think will help actually makes it worse. What if this makes it worse?”
“I don’t know,” she says, so low I can barely hear it.
It’s not real or right or fair, but I no longer have any idea what is. “Okay,” I say. “Okay. We can date. But we can’t—I mean, that’s all that can happen. I can’t live with you sitting on the floor of a shower in six months, regretting being with me.”
I am rewarded with her coming into my arms, her clothes damp and cold, her skin feverishly hot. I can see the relief in the sag of her shoulders, and when I put my arm around her, she leans against my chest, tucking her head under my chin.
“Hopefully . . . ,” she says, a hitch in her voice like a swallowed sob. “Hopefully by then I won’t be thinking about you at all.”
She smiles up at me, and I am, for a long moment, unable to speak.
Boyfriends, even fake boyfriends, sit with their girlfriends at dinner. So I’m not surprised when Lila sets her tray down next to mine and touches me briefly on the shoulder. Daneca, however, bristles with curiosity. It’s clearly costing her something not to speak.
When the first person walks over and tosses an envelope into my bag, Lila smiles into her paper napkin.
“You’re a bookie? I thought you were the good brother,” she says.
“I’m good at what I do,” I say. “Virtue is its own revenge.”
“Its own reward,” says Daneca, rolling her eyes. “Virtue is its own reward.”
I grin. “That’s not the version I’ve heard.”
Sam plunks down his tray and grabs for the apple about to roll off it. “You know how Mr. Knight is getting a little bit on the senile side? Like walking past the classroom and having to double back, or putting on his sweater over a winter coat?”
I nod, although I haven’t had Mr. Knight for anything. I’ve just seen him in the halls. He looks like a typical ancient English professor—tweedy, with leather elbow pads and white nose hair.
“Well, today he came into class, and not only had he forgotten to zip up after a trip to the bathroom, he forgot to tuck his junk back in.”
“No way,” I say.
Lila starts to laugh.
“That’s the thing, right? It should be funny,” Sam says. “It’s funny now. But right then it was so awful that all we could do was sit there in shock. I was so embarrassed for him! And he just lectured the class on Hamlet like nothing was happening. I mean, he’s quoting Shakespeare while we’re all just trying not to look down.”
“Didn’t anyone say anything?” Daneca asks. “All those jokers?”
“Finally,” says Sam, “Kim Hwangbo raises her hand.”
I shake my head. Kim is quiet, nice, and will probably go to a better college than anyone else at Wallingford.
Even Daneca is laughing now. “What did she say?”
“‘Mr. Knight, your pants are unzipped!’” says Sam. He laughs. “So Mr. Knight looks down, barely has a reaction, says ‘Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,’ tucks himself in, and zips up. The end!”
“Are you going to tell anyone?” Daneca asks.
Sam shakes his head as he opens his milk. “No, and don’t you, either. Mr. Knight is harmless—it’s not like he did it on purpose—and he’d get in a lot of trouble if Northcutt found out. Or parents.”
“They’re going to find out,” I say. I wonder how long it will take before bets start flooding in about him getting fired. “No one can hide anything for long around here.”
Daneca frowns in my direction. “Oh, I don’t know about that.”
“What do you mean?” Lila asks, not entirely friendly.
Daneca ignores her question. “We’re going to the movies this weekend,” she says instead. “Do you guys want to come? We could double-date.”
A flush creeps up Sam’s neck.
Lila turns to me uncertainly. I smile.
“Sure,” she says. “If you want to, Cassel?”
“What’s the movie?” I ask. With Daneca, we could wind up going to some kind of documentary on the evils of baby seal clubbing.
“We’re going to see The Giant Spider Invasion,” Sam says. “They’re playing it at the Friday Rewind. It’s a classic Bill Rebane film—the special effects crew created the giant spider by covering a Volkswagen Beetle in fake fur and using the taillights as its red glowing eyes.”
“What’s better than that?” I ask.
No one can think of a thing.
That night I dream I’m in a room of corpses, all of them wearing dresses and lipstick, sitting stiffly on couches. It takes me a moment to realize they’re all my ex-girlfriends, their dead eyes glittering, their mouths barely moving as they whisper a list of my flaws. He kisses like a fish, says my kindergarten girlfriend, Michiko Ishii. We’d meet behind a fat oak tree on the playground, until we got caught by another girl who ratted us out. Her corpse is that of a very little girl; glassy eyes make her look like a doll.
He flirted with my friend, says the girl who ratted us out, Sofia Spiegel, who was technically also my girlfriend at the time.
He’s a liar, says a girl from Atlantic City. The one in the silver dress.
Such a liar, says my eighth-grade girlfriend. I didn’t tell her that I was going to Wallingford until after I left. I don’t blame her for still being mad.
After the party he pretended not to know me, says Emily Rogers, who, to be fair, pretended just as hard that I didn’t exist after we’d spent the night rolling around on a pile of coats at Harvey Silverman’s freshman-year house party.
He borrowed my car and totaled it, says Stephanie Douglas, a worker girl I met in Carney over the summer after I was sure I’d killed Lila. She was two years older than me and could knot the stem of a cherry with her tongue.
He never really loved me, says Audrey. He doesn’t even know what love is.
I wake up while it’s still dark outside. Rather than go back to sleep, I start on some homework. I’m tired of the dead ganging up on me. There’s got to be a problem somewhere that wants solving.
CHAPTER EIGHT
WALLINGFORD PREP-aratory prides itself on getting its young men and women ready not just for college but for their place in society. To that end, students not only have to attend all their classes—they also have to participate in two enriching after-school activities. This year mine are track in the fall and debate club in the spring. I like the feeling of running, the rush of adrenaline and the pounding of my feet on the pavement. I like that it’s just me deciding how far to push myself.
I also like thinking up ways to trick people into agreeing with me, but debate club doesn’t start for many months.
I’m just finishing my last lap when I see two dark-suited men talking to Coach Marlin. He waves me over.
Agent Jones and Agent Hunt are wearing mirrored sunglasses along with their dark suits and darker gloves, even though the weather is still unseasonably warm. I’m not sure they could be more unsubtle if they tried.
“Hello, Officers,” I say with a fake grin.
“Haven’t heard from you in a while,” Agent Jones says. “We got concerned.”
“Well, I had this funeral to go to, and then I had all this extra grieving to do. Really filled up my social calendar.” Although I think I’m managing to smirk like an innocent man, knowing that I’m the murderer they’re looking for really adds an uncomfortable layer of terror to the whole interaction. “There’s been loads going on since last Wednesday.”
“Why don’t you take a ride with us?” says Agent Hunt. “You can tell us all about it.”
“I don’t think so,” I say. “I’ve got to take a shower and get changed. Like I said, really busy. But thanks for stopping by.”
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.