Jordan’s still checking out the garage. Eric edges over to the table. Bends down and lifts it, gets it upright just as Jordan comes back out to the yard.
“Anything?” Eric asks him.
Jordan looks around. Looks at the garden furniture. He shakes his head. “Nothing. Let’s go back in the house.”
303.
Eric and Jordan poke around Paige’s house for another hour.
(“Maybe she left, like, an airline receipt or something,” Jordan says.)
They don’t find anything.
(An empty box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and a stack of brochures.)
Paige is gone.
304.
They drive back to Jordan’s house. Jordan pulls into the driveway and stops. Leaves the Tesla running.
“First thing tomorrow,” Jordan says, “I’ll call my lawyer. Let him know our ex-friend Paige Hammond and her partner, Haley Keefer, might be spreading malicious lies about us to the police.” He glances at Eric. “And don’t worry, E. My guy is the best. Even if the cops do come for us, he’ll make sure we get to tell our side of the story.”
Eric doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t know what to say.
(His head is still spinning.)
(What is “our side of the story,” exactly?)
(He might have a concussion—or maybe he’s been overdosing on Jordan the past couple of weeks.)
“Right now, though, we need to cover our asses,” Jordan says. “And that means—”
(He hits the garage door opener on the Tesla’s visor. The garage door rumbles open, revealing Jordan’s garage, empty save for three brand-new pressure cookers and a couple telltale coffee cans in the corner.)
“—we need to move these explosives to a secure location.”
Eric stares in at the garage. “You built more?”
“They’re not finished yet. But yes,” Jordan tells him.
He gives Eric that smile.
“It’s my Fix, remember? And I’m telling you, E, this one is going to change your life. Like, forever.”
305.
I mean . . .
You had to figure there was some kind of big, climactic showdown brewing, right?
That’s always been the direction this was headed.
E isn’t about to hop a Greyhound and bail and leave all the dramatic stuff to the cops.
He isn’t flying away to some desert island with Jordan.
That would be cheap. It wouldn’t jibe with the thematic demands of the genre—or the HERO’S JOURNEY.
E has to learn a lesson.
He has to, like, do something, and it has to symbolize how he has, you know, changed. Grown. Evolved.
Whatever.
(Plus Paige is on the run now, so we kind of have to resolve that.)
My point is, I hope you’re not surprised that Jordan has more bombs. And I hope it doesn’t piss you off if I tell you—
[SPOILER ALERT!]
—those bombs are going to have to explode.
Just not yet.
306.
Jordan picks up the pressure cookers, and carries them back to the Tesla.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Eric asks him. “What are you planning, Jordan?”
Jordan places the pressure cookers in the Tesla’s trunk. Turns around and goes back for the gunpowder. “I can’t tell you the target. It’s a surprise.” He glances back at Eric. “We’re going to be famous, though. I can promise you that. We’ll be household names when we finish this Fix.”
Jordan places the twin cans of gunpowder in the back of the Tesla. “And it won’t even matter about Paige and the police, because we’ll be gone, E. We’ll pull off this Fix and bail out of this shitty town, and we’ll be fucking free for the rest of our lives. And anytime anyone mentions Capilano, anywhere, they’ll say our names with it. That’s how famous we’re going to be.”
Eric’s not exactly wavering, but his mind’s testing out the possibilities. Jordan’s dad has a shitload of money. Therefore, Jordan has money. Jordan could buy them first-class tickets to a non-extradition-treaty country, and they could spend the rest of their lives on the beach, living in the Moment together.
(Just like those three days on the boat, except forever.)
(To the very end.)
“You want to do this,” Jordan says, tearing the cell phones out of their cases. “You know you want it. Your mind just can’t accept it, because you’ve trained it to worry so much. You focus on the worst-case scenarios.”
Eric doesn’t say anything. He is worried. But he’s starting to see Jordan’s point, a little bit, like the first hint of sunrise in the morning.
“Luckily, you’ve got me to show you another way,” Jordan says. “So, your family’s disowned you. Paige ran away. There’s a very good chance you’re already a fugitive.” He looks at Eric with those hypnotic eyes. “What, exactly, is keeping you in Capilano? More to the point, why would you stay in this broken place?”
He holds Eric’s gaze.
He waits for an answer.
Eric shifts his weight and looks around the driveway.
“Shit,” he says.
307.
Eric almost gets in the car with Jordan.
Almost.
He’s thisclose to buying what Jordan is selling.
308.
It all sounds so easy.
(And yet.)
If Eric goes along with this . . .
Maybe he didn’t actually murder the movie star, or Mike McDougall—
(or Haley)
—but he’s not stopping it.
He’s condoning the crimes.
He’s an accessory.
Guilt by association.
(He’s Jordan’s sidekick.)
Eric doesn’t want to be Jordan’s sidekick; he wanted to be Jordan’s boyfriend, but suddenly the idea doesn’t have the same appeal.
He may not want to be president, but he definitely doesn’t want to be a murderer.
So.
Jordan’s halfway in the driver’s seat of the Tesla. He’s watching Eric over the roof. “No time to waste, E. Let’s go.”
Eric thinks about Mike McDougall. About . About freaking Haley.
(He thinks about Paige.)
“I can’t do this with you,” he tells Jordan. “I won’t.”
309.
Jordan doesn’t blink. Jordan isn’t fazed.
“Fine,” he says. “Be a pussy, if you must. I’ll just fix this town by myself.”
(And something triggers in Eric.)
“I can’t let you do this,” he tells Jordan. “This isn’t cool anymore.”
But Jordan just smiles. It isn’t a nice smile. “Oh yeah?” he says. “And, what, Eric, you’re going to stop me?”
310.
What follows is a very short struggle.
(You couldn’t even call it a fight.)
It ends with Eric on the ground in Jordan’s driveway, holding his bloody nose as Jordan drives off in the Tesla.
It ends with the Tesla’s brake lights disappearing around a curve on Marine Drive.
It ends with Eric lying there alone.
311.
Eric pulls himself to his feet and wipes the blood and snot from his face. Stands in the driveway in front of Jordan’s dark, empty mansion, and doesn’t have a clue what to do.
A part of him is wishing he’d climbed in that car with Jordan. A part of him believes Jordan’s the only way out of this mess. Commit to the Suicide Pack. Stick together forever. Follow Jordan to the ends of the earth.
But Eric’s sick of following.
He’s sick of Jordan’s Fixes.
Eric’s starting to feel like Jordan isn’t really in the Pack to fix anything at all. He’s starting to suspect that maybe Jordan just likes to watch the world burn.
And that kind of makes Jordan the biggest hypocrite of them all.
312.
Liam picks up on the third or fourth ring. His words are like
one big, weary sigh. “What do you want, Eric?”
“I need your help,” Eric tells him. “Jordan’s planning something crazy. Something, like, big. And I can’t stop him by myself.”
There’s a long silence. Eric runs through his list of other people he could call. Other people who could possibly help him find Jordan.
(Paige isn’t answering her texts.)
(It’s a short list.)
(It’s pretty well nonexistent.)
Then Liam lets out his breath.
“You’d better have a good story,” he says. “Where are you?”
313.
Liam drives an old Hyundai. The backseat is littered with paperwork. He leans over and pushes open the passenger door. Eric climbs inside. Liam looks at Eric and flinches.
“My god,” he says. “You look like you got attacked.”
Eric pulls down the visor and studies himself in the mirror. His face is scratched from the gravel in Jordan’s driveway. His nose is still bloody. He has a black eye, too, and a welt on his forehead.
“That’s from Jordan,” he tells Liam. “We kind of had a difference of opinion.”
Liam frowns when Eric says Jordan’s name. “You really have to explain what’s going on,” he says. “I hope you didn’t call me all the way out to Capilano because you had a lovers’ quarrel.”
“It’s not a freaking lovers’ quarrel,” Eric says. “I told you, this is big.”
314.
So Eric explains everything.
315.
“So you didn’t kill ,” Liam says when Eric’s done. “It was all Jordan and those girls, right? You weren’t even in the room.”
Eric shakes his head. “I was part of the team. The Pack. I knew what was happening. I helped them get away.”
“But you didn’t kill him. You didn’t kill the special effects guy, either, or your friend on the boat. It was all Jordan. You’re not actually a murderer.”
Eric doesn’t say anything.
(He is a murderer.)
(He’s part of the Suicide Pack.)
“There isn’t anything in the news yet,” Liam says, checking his phone. “Your face isn’t, like, on a Wanted poster or anything. Jordan’s, either. So maybe your friend didn’t go to the cops.”
Eric wonders where Paige is.
(He hopes she’s really far away.)
“You think we should call them?” Liam asks. “The cops? Like, if Jordan’s really running around with a bunch of bombs, shouldn’t we—”
“We can’t,” Eric tells him. “Not yet. If the police know for sure that Jordan killed , they’ll know I’m in the Pack, too. And then my life is over.”
Liam stares at him. “You’re willing to risk lives to protect yourself?”
Eric avoids his eyes. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” he says. “I just need you to help me find Jordan, okay?”
316.
But Liam isn’t much help. “We only dated for a few months. And to be honest, we mostly just fooled around here, or on his dad’s boat.”
(Eric flashes back to those three days on the Sundancer. Pictures Jordan and Liam doing the same thing, having the same conversations, watching the same sunsets. It hurts like a stab wound.)
(He shakes the image from his mind.)
“Think,” he says. “Please. Anywhere you can think of that he might have gone. Anything in Capilano that he actually hates, something he would use as a target.”
“I’m thinking,” Liam says. “I’m just really not sure.”
KIK -- CAPILANO HIGH PRIVATE MESSAGE GROUP – 08/27/16 – 08:46 AM
USERNAME: Anonymous-9
MESSAGE: Good morning, Cap kiddies! I hope you’re excited! You’ve all been waiting SO patiently to know the identities of those destructive fanatics who call themselves the SUICIDE PACK, and I’m happy to tell you TODAY’S THE BIG DAY. That’s right, I know the identities of every member of the PACK (all four of them), AND I WILL REVEAL THAT INFORMATION TONIGHT, IN AMBLESIDE PARK. Come one, come all! Fun for the whole family! Tell a friend!
317.
“Eric, wake up.”
Liam shakes Eric out of a restless, fitful sleep. Eric rolls over. Rubs his eyes. Checks his watch.
It’s quarter to ten in the morning.
(Eric never meant to fall asleep, honest. But yesterday was kind of a crazy day, with the whole Jordan-killing-Haley thing and then the Jordan-trying-to-kill-Paige thing and all the times Jordan, like, kicked Eric’s ass . . .
He was kinda exhausted.
So he slept a little.
Sue him.)
Liam’s standing over Eric. He’s holding Eric’s phone. “This thing’s been blowing up for, like, a solid hour,” he says. “I thought maybe it had something to do with what’s happening.”
Eric takes the phone. Kik notifications, and tons of them. He swipes his phone unlocked, opens the app. The Capilano High message board is on fire again. Eric scrolls up.
And up.
And up some more.
He scrolls up a half hour, and then he sees the new message from Anonymous-9.
“Son of a bitch,” Eric says. “I know where Jordan’s planting the bombs.”
318.
So, here’s the thing:
Jordan’s final target—
(and thus the climax of this book)
—has to be something symbolic. It has to be something crazy dangerous. It has to, you know, raise the stakes higher than anything we’ve experienced before.
And what higher stakes than if THE WHOLE TOWN’s at risk?
What better way to rid Capilano of all the hypocrites
than by setting off bombs
at the Capilano
Summer’s End
Ball?
(Kablamo.)
319.
(Rich people stories always end with ridiculous parties.
It’s, like, required.)
320.
A brief digression about this particular ridiculous party party:
Every August, the Capilano elite throw a tremendous party in Ambleside Park, by the beach. It’s called the Capilano Summer’s End Ball, and it’s technically some kind of charity event for, like, Africa or something, but it’s really just an excuse for the whole town to get dressed up like it’s the Oscars and pay a couple thousand dollars a plate to feel like they’re doing good in the world. Everybody who is anybody will be there. And they’ll bring their kids with them.
Eric knows a little bit about the gala, because his mom is on the board of directors. Eric knows, for instance, the gala is tonight. He knows his dad is supposed to give a speech.
And he knows everyone in Capilano will be there.
(Well, naturally.)
321.
In case you missed it, here’s the key to the whole saga:
Jordan is Anonymous-9.
He’s been building buzz for the Pack under a secret identity.
(The oldest trick in the book.)
And Jordan’s BIG REVEAL tonight isn’t just, like, a speech.
The people want the Suicide Pack. They’re going to get the Suicide Pack. They’re going to get more Suicide Pack than they know what to do with.
(And in this instance, Suicide Pack = chaos and burning and a lot of explosions.)
322.
Eric and Liam find a pay phone outside a 7-Eleven, and Eric calls Capilano PD. He tells the desk sergeant that the guy who killed is planning to blow up the Capilano Summer’s End Ball.
He tells the desk sergeant that Jordan Grant is the guy planting the bombs.
“How do you know this?” the desk sergeant asks.
“Never mind how. Just get your officers to Ambleside Park. Do it now.”
Eric hangs up the phone. Walks back to Liam’s Hyundai and gets in the passenger seat. “Okay, drive,” he tells Liam. “The cops are going to come looking. And we don’t want to be around when they get here.”
323.
Eric calls home with his cell ph
one. Gets the machine.
(Damn it. Pick up.)
He calls his dad’s cell phone instead. His dad answers. “Senator Connelly.”
“Dad.” Eric realizes he’s yelling. Tries to keep his voice calm. “Dad, it’s me. Dad, you need to stay home today.”
“Eric? Where are you?”
“It doesn’t matter. I just need you to listen to me. You can’t be at the gala today, okay? You have to get out of there. Mom, too.”
Eric’s dad laughs, scornful. “Your mother is with her sister in San Francisco, Eric. You drove her there, and after all of the planning she put into this event. Though I’m certain San Francisco’s not far enough to escape the shame.”
(Eric checks the time on his Omega. It’s already twelve fifteen. The gala starts at six.)
“Dad, there’s a bomb,” Eric says. “Jordan’s going to blow up the gala. You can’t be there when it happens.”
“Is this some kind of a joke? Are you on drugs?” Eric’s dad’s voice is hard. “You need to come home before you damage your future any—”
“Fuck my future,” Eric says. “Just stay home, okay? Please. Go somewhere and hide out until this is over.”
“I will not stay home,” his dad replies.
(Click.)
324.
“Well?” Liam says.
Eric puts down the phone. “He basically told me to go fuck myself.”
“So what do we do now?”
Eric looks around. Looks at his watch. “I guess we find out if the police believed me.”
325.
Ambleside Park is situated by the water on the west side of town. The symphony does performances there every Sunday in the summer. People get married with a view of the ocean.
(It’s Capilano’s crown jewel, if you believe the brochures.)
Eric and Liam park a couple blocks over from the west end of the park—
The Fixes Page 22