Authors: Holly Black
“What did you do?” I ask.
“Oh, hi, Cassel.” A faint blush has started at the tips of her ears. She holds out a piece of paper. It’s a printout of an e-mail. I take it from her but don’t really look.
Daneca clears her throat and points to Greg’s prone body, widening her eyes to emphasize that she wants me to do something.
“Is he dead?” I ask. Someone’s got to.
“I roofied him,” Lila says matter-of-factly. The late afternoon light has turned her blond hair to gold. She’s wearing a crisp white shirt and tiny blue stones in her ears that match one of her eyes. She looks like the last girl in the world who would drug a boy in the middle of the day. Like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, the old folks in Carney would say.
“Look what I found on his computer,” Lila says.
I finally look at the page in my hand. It’s from Greg and is addressed to a bunch of e-mail addresses I don’t know. The text informs parents that “Wallingford supports a club encouraging criminal activities” and that “worker kids are allowed to openly brag about their illegal exploits.” I look at the e-mail addresses again. I guess they’re the addresses of our parents. There are photos attached, and although Lila has printed out only the first page, the two there make it pretty obvious that he attached stills of everyone at the HEX meeting. “Wow,” I say, and pass the paper to Daneca.
I don’t mention that to get that off his computer before he tried to drown it in his dorm sink, she must have been working him. I don’t mention that Greg’s passed out now, asleep, vulnerable to any invasion of his dreams.
“I’m going to kill him,” Daneca says. She looks angrier than I have ever seen her.
Lila takes a deep breath, then lets it out slowly. “This is all my fault.”
“What do you mean?”
She shakes her head, avoiding my gaze. “It’s not important. What matters is that I’m going to make it right. We’re going to get him back. For Ramirez and the video. For that e-mail. I have a plan.”
“Which is . . .?” I ask.
Lila hops off the desk.
“Greg Harmsford is about to join HEX,” she says. “He’s going to attend his first meeting today. Right now, hopefully. Before he wakes up.” Her eyes are brimming with manic glee, and I realize how much I’ve missed her like this, ferocious. Missed the fearless girl who used to beat me at races and order me around.
I laugh. “You are evil,” I tell Lila.
“Flatterer,” she says, but she seems pleased.
“I don’t know if I can get anyone to come out for a meeting,” Daneca says. She walks to the door and checks the hallway, then looks back at us. “Do you think people would believe it? Could we pull it off?”
Lila reaches into her bag and pulls out a tiny silver camera. “Well, we’ll have pictures. Besides, stuff like this is in the news all the time. Government officials who are all anti-worker turn out to be workers themselves. It’s totally believable. The fact that he got the footage the first time will make him seem guiltier.”
I grin. “I guess we better make some calls if we want to convene an entire HEX meeting.”
It takes Daneca a lot of begging to get even a small group together. No one wants to be associated with HEX right now. They’ve all got stories about being hassled. Some even have stories about classmates’ parents trying to hire them to do shady things. They’re freaked, and I don’t blame them.
Daneca gives each one the same song and dance about how important it is that we stick together. Lila gets on the line and swears up and down that it’ll be funny. I try to prop up Greg Harmsford.
Posing an unconscious body isn’t easy. Greg’s not comatose, just sleeping. He still moves when I put him in an uncomfortable position, still makes a face and pushes away my hands when I try to make him sit up. I search around in the desk until I find some tape and pencils. I use those to build a kind of splint on the back of Greg’s head. From the front he might look like he’s slouching, but at least he’ll seem awake since his head will be upright. He makes a protesting sound as I attach the tape, but after a minute, he seems to get used to it.
“Nice work,” Lila says absently. She’s busy writing “HEX MEETING” in chalk on the board.
“How long will he be like that?” Daneca asks, poking Greg’s shoulder. He twitches a little, almost shifting enough to ruin the effect of my pose, but not quite. Daneca smothers a shriek with both her hands.
“I’m not really sure, but when he wakes up, he’ll probably be sick. Side effect.” Lila says distractedly. “Cassel, can you put Greg’s arm up on the chair or something? I don’t think he looks very natural.”
“We should get Sam,” I say with a sigh. “Special effects are his area of expertise. I have no idea what I’m doing.”
“No,” says Daneca, taking my phone out of my hand and setting it down on a desk. “We’re not calling him.”
“But he’s—,” I start.
“No,” she says.
Lila looks at us in confusion.
“They’re having a fight,” I explain.
“Oh,” she says, then tilts her head and squints at Greg. “There’s something still off. Maybe if we had some junk food? We’ve always got stuff at real meetings. Daneca, can you go to the vending machine before people start showing up? Cassel, maybe you can look and see if there are empty chip bags in the trash? They’d just be props. I could run to the store—”
“I’ll go if Cassel promises not to call Sam,” Daneca says.
I groan. “I’ll pinky swear if you want.”
Daneca gives me a dark look and heads into the hallway. Instead of following, I turn toward Lila, who’s rifling through her bag.
“Why do you think this is your fault?” I ask.
Her gaze darts from me to Greg. “There’s not a lot of time. We should . . .”
I wait, but she doesn’t say anything else. Her cheeks pink and she turns her gaze to the floor.
“Whatever happened,” I say, “you can tell me.”
“It’s nothing you don’t already know. I was jealous and stupid. After I saw you and Audrey together, I went and talked to Greg. Flirted with him, I guess. I knew he had a girlfriend and it was a mean, bad thing to do, but I didn’t think things would get—I didn’t think it would be as bad as it was. Then he asked about you, wanted to know if we were together. I told him ‘sorta.’”
“Sorta,” I echo.
She rubs her hand over her eyes. “Everything was so complicated between us. I didn’t know what to say. Once he heard that we were—whatever—he started really hitting on me. And I just wanted to feel something—something other than the way I felt.”
“I’m not—,” I start to say. I’m not worth that. I reach out and tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear.
She shakes her head, almost angrily. “The next day, I can tell he was bragging about me. One of his friends even asks me about it. So I go over to Greg and think of the worst possible thing I can say. I tell him that if he doesn’t shut up about me, I will swear up and down that he’s awful in bed. That he’s hung like a worm.”
I give a snort of incredulous laughter.
She’s still not looking at me, though. And her cheeks are, if anything, redder. “He’s all, ‘You know you liked it.’ And I say—”
She stops. I can hear people in the hallway. In a few moments, they’ll be inside.
“What?” I ask.
“You have to understand,” she says, quickly. “He got really mad. Really, really mad. And I think that’s why he went after HEX.”
“Lila, what did you say?”
She closes her eyes tightly. Her voice is almost a whisper. “I said I was thinking about you the whole time.”
I’m glad her eyes are closed. I’m glad she can’t see my face.
People start filing in. Nadja, Rachel, and Chad are the first to arrive and Lila, still blushing, doesn’t waste any time directing them. Soon, everyone is arranging chairs.
I fake my way through seeming calm and collected. Daneca comes in a few moments later with snacks.
It’s not your fault, I want to tell Lila. But I don’t say that. I don’t say anything.
We take picture after picture with the backdrop of the blackboard and the scrawled “HEX MEETING” on it. Ones with someone standing in the center of a circle of chairs, talking earnestly. Ones with everyone laughing and a girl on Greg’s lap. Halfway through our photo shoot, he wakes up enough to pull the pencils off the back of his neck and push up his sunglasses. He looks at all of us in confusion, but not with any real alarm.
“What’s going on?” Greg slurs.
I want to snap his neck. I want to make him sorry he was ever born.
“Smile,” says Daneca. He gives a lopsided grin. A girl throws her arm over his shoulder.
Lila keeps clicking away.
Eventually Greg goes back to sleep, head cradled in his arms on a desk. Lila, Daneca, and I go to the corner store and use the booth there to print out all the photos from the SIM card.
They look great. So good that it would be a crime not to share them with everyone at Wallingford.
Most people never report being conned, for three reasons. The first reason is that con artists don’t usually leave a lot of evidence. If you don’t really know who did this to you, there’s no point in reporting them. The second reason is that usually you, the mark, agreed to do something shady. If you report the con artist, you have to report yourself along with him. But the third reason is the simplest and most compelling. Shame. You’re the dummy who got conned.
No one wants to look stupid. No one wants to be thought of as gullible. So they hide how dumb and gullible they were. Con artists barely have to cover up at all, with marks so eager to cover up for them.
Greg Harmsford insists he was Photoshopped into the pictures, loudly and to anyone who will listen. He’s furious when his story gets questioned. Eventually the teasing gets to him and he punches Gavin Perry in the face.
He’s suspended for two days. All that because he doesn’t want to admit that he got had.
I’m sitting in my room for study hall, working on my world ethics homework, when my phone rings. I don’t know the number, but I pick it up.
“We have to meet,” says the voice on the other end. It takes me a moment to realize I’m talking to Barron. His voice sounds colder than usual.
“I’m at school,” I say. I’m not in the mood for more sneaking around. “I can’t get out of here before the weekend.”
“What a coincidence,” Barron says. “I’m at Walling-ford too.”
The fire alarm sounds. Sam jumps up and starts shoving his feet into sneakers.
“Grab the PlayStation,” he says to me.
I shake my head, covering the phone. “It’s a prank. Someone pulled it.” Then I nearly spit into the phone, “You idiot. Even if you wanted me to leave, there’s no way I can now. They will take a head count. They will make absolutely sure we’re all back in our rooms.”
Sam ignores me and starts unhooking his game system.
“I already made your hall master forget you,” Barron says. The words send a chill up my spine.
I file out with Sam and all the other kids to stand on the grass. Everyone’s looking up at the building, waiting for wisps of smoke to unfurl or flames to light the windows. It’s easy to back away until I’m near trees and shadows.
No one’s looking for me. No one but Barron.
His gloved hand comes down on my shoulder heavily. We walk away from the school, along the sidewalk, toward houses bathed in the flickering blue light of televisions. It’s only around nine, but it feels much later.
It feels too late.
“I’ve been thinking about the Zacharovs,” says Barron too casually. “They’re not the only game in town.”
I should never have let my guard down.
“What do you mean?” It’s hard to look at Barron now, but I do. He’s smirking. His black hair and black suit make him into a shadow, as if I conjured some dark mirror of myself.
“I know what you did to me,” he says, and although he’s trying to keep his tone even, I can hear rage bleeding through. “How you took advantage of the holes in my memory. How for all your bellyaching about doing the right thing, you’re no different from me or Philip. I met two nice men from the FBI—Agent Jones and Agent Hunt. They had a lot to tell me about my big brother—and about my little one. Philip told them how you turned me against him. How somehow you’d messed up my head so that I didn’t remember that I’d been in on his plan to make Anton head of the Zacharov family. At first I didn’t believe them, but I went back and looked at my notebooks again.”
Oh, crap.
There are master forgers in the world, folks who know exactly what chemicals ink had in it in the sixteenth century versus the eighteenth. They have sources for paper and canvases that will carbon date correctly; they can create perfect craquelure. They practice the loops and flourishes of another hand until it is more familiar than their own.
It probably goes without saying that I am not a master forger. Most forgeries get by because they are good enough that no one checks them. When I sign my mother’s name to a permission slip, so long as it looks like her handwriting, no one brings in a specialist.
But if Barron compared the notebook I hastily forged to his older ones, the fake would be obvious. We are all specialists in our own handwriting
“If you know what I did to you,” I say, trying not to seem rattled, “then you know what you did to me, too.”
That brings out his lopsided grin. “The difference is that I’m willing to forgive you.”
That’s so unexpected that I have no reply. Barron doesn’t seem to need one. “I want to start over, Cassel,” he says, “and I want to start at the top. I’m going to the Brennan family. And for that I need you. We’ll be an unstoppable team of assassins.”
“No,” I say.
“Ouch.” He doesn’t sound all that put out by my refusal. “Think you’re too good for such a dirty job?”
“Yeah,” I say. “That’s me. Too good.”
I wonder if he really could rationalize what I did to him, really treat betrayal like the slight transgression of a recalcitrant business partner. I wonder if I hurt him.
If he can rationalize what I did to him, it’s easy to imagine how he rationalized what he did to me.
“Do you know why you agreed to change all those people into inanimate objects? Why you agreed to kill them?”
I take a deep breath. It sucks to hear the words out loud. “Of course I don’t. I don’t remember anything. You stole all my memories .” “You would follow Philip and me around like a little puppy,” Barron says. I can hear the violence in his voice. “Begging to do a job with us. Hoping we’d see your black heart and give you a chance.” He pokes me in the chest.