“She’s not coming,” Fatima said.
He angled to see the clock over the checkout desk. “It’s only twenty after. Give her time.”
“She’s always the first one here.”
“That just means she’s late.”
“What if she didn’t get anything from her?”
“From who?”
“Katie. The girl she was gonna talk to,” Fatima said. “The one I was supposed to punk.”
“Yeah, what happened with that?”
“Nothing happened.”
“If nothing happened, we wouldn’t have met in Bullies Anonymous.”
Fatima smiled. “Remember Annalise? She was a riot. I wonder what she’s doing now.”
“It was four days ago,” he said. “I’m sure she’s married with a couple of kids.”
“Four days? That’s it? God. Seems like forever.”
“Don’t worry. This time tomorrow it’ll be all over.”
“Our problems or our secrets?”
“We’ll know in a minute,” he said, nodding to Shelly as she cut around a woman trying to back her wheelchair down an aisle.
“Judging by the look on her face, it isn’t going to be good.”
Eric grunted something and dropped his chair forward, propping an elbow up on the table, resting his chin on his fist, trying to look relaxed.
“Sorry I’m late,” Shelly said, pushing the glass door open with her hip. “Missed the bus.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Fatima said. “You okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said, and swung her backpack onto the table, randomly yanking open zippers as she sat.
Eric looked up at her. “Your eyes are all red.”
Fatima kicked his leg under the table. “Want me to get you some water?”
“I said I’m fine. What did you find out from Connor?”
Fatima sighed. “Nothing important. He admitted to bullying a girl at camp, but he wouldn’t say who she was or what he did.”
“And I got less outta Heather,” Eric said. “She says she heard something about some girl getting picked on, but says that’s all she knows.”
“Her name,” Shelly said without looking at them, holding up a screen-capture print of a tagged Facebook photo, “is Morgan Rouleau. And she was an assistant stage manager for How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.”
She looked over at Eric, then at Fatima—both of them eyes wide and mouths open. And five minutes later, when she was done telling them everything Katie had said, they still looked that way.
Eric shook it off first. “You knew this last night and you didn’t think it was important enough to tell us?”
Shelly ignored his tone. “What would you have done if you knew?”
“Maybe I would have been able to fall asleep instead of lying awake all night,” Eric said.
“Not me,” Fatima said. “Knowing would have made it worse.”
“So anyway,” Shelly started, “Morgan Rouleau—”
“Ratted out her friends,” Eric said. “She’s nothing but a snitch.”
“What? She did the right thing,” Fatima said.
“It really wasn’t any of her business,” Shelly said, then shrugged, not sure if she agreed with herself.
“No way,” Fatima said, her hijab flowing as she shook her head. “What they were doing was wrong. Period.”
“Just because Islam says you can’t do something—”
“Islam has nothing to do with this. It has to do with right and wrong.”
“Exactly,” Eric said. “And she was obviously wrong.”
Shelly held up a hand. “It doesn’t matter—”
“Yes it does,” Fatima said. “This girl—what’s her name? Morgan? She was innocent.”
“We all were,” Shelly said, her voice changing. “But nobody stays that way forever.”
It got quiet. Then Eric said, “We’ve got less than nine hours.”
“Eight hours, twenty-four minutes, six seconds,” Fatima said, glancing at her phone.
“We’d have more time,” Eric said, nodding at Shelly. “If someone had shared what she knew—”
Shelly focused on shuffling her papers.
“—and right now all we know is this girl’s name.”
Shelly tapped the printout on the table. “And what she looks like.”
Fatima studied the image. “Paste this under the definition of ‘plain.’”
Eric slid the paper across the table. “What grade’s she in?”
“She’s homeschooled, but from what she says she’s reading, she’d be a freshman.”
“Okay, but that’s still not enough to go on.”
“The Internet is our friend, remember?” Shelly reached into her backpack and pulled out a small assignment notebook. “She lives at 1595 Town Line Road.”
“Town Line? That’s on the other side of the county.”
“A minor detail.”
“Says the girl who takes the bus everywhere.”
“Her mother’s name is Liz, and she works as an office coordinator for DJB Printing. I couldn’t find anything about her father, but there’s a Frank Rouleau who’s about the right age living in Fairport, so maybe that’s him.”
“Or maybe not,” Eric said.
“And check this out,” Shelly said, tapping the page as she spoke. “Today is Morgan’s birthday.”
“Oh my god,” Fatima said, “That explains everything.”
“Not quite,” Shelly said. “But at least it explains why it had to be today.”
“Because every girl wants videos of people getting macaroni and cheese dumped on their heads for her birthday.”
Shelly smiled at that. “The whole thing got started when she wasn’t invited to get high with the others on Connor’s birthday.”
“I don’t think she wanted to get high,” Fatima said.
“Sure,” Eric said, drawing the word out. “It was this Connor kid’s birthday, though. And now it’s her birthday. I guess it makes sense in some stupid, drama-geek, drama-world way.”
Shelly scribbled a line, then flipped the page to a bulleted list. “I haven’t got everything worked out yet, but basically here’s what we’ve gotta do. First we go to her house—”
“That’s, like, thirty miles from here,” Eric said.
“Good thing you have a car. Once there, we get her to invite us in—”
“No way,” Fatima said, laughing as she said it. “I’m not going into that psycho’s house. She could kill us or something.”
“She’s not going to hurt us,” Shelly said.
“You don’t know that for sure. Maybe she planned it this way all along. Right now she could be oiling up her chainsaw, just waiting for the bell to ring.”
Eric raised his hand. “Question, Sherlock. She knows who we are and probably knows what we look like, right?”
“Yeah. So?”
“So we show up at her door, why would she let us in?”
“I’m working on that,” Shelly said, writing another note, this one spilling over to the next page.
“It’s all farmland out there,” Eric said, remembering his ride in Garrett’s car and his two-mile run. “What are we supposed to say, we were just in the neighborhood?”
“I said I was working on it. Geez.”
“I don’t see why we have to go in at all,” Fatima said.
“Because that’s where she has the evidence against us. And if we’re going to get it back, we have to get inside.”
“Oh, I get it,” Eric said. “We’re driving way out to Hicksville to force our way into the house of a girl we don’t know—”
“We’re not forcing our—”
“—and then stealing a few things. But it’s not really stealing since it’s our stuff to begin with.”
“You make it sound so—”
“Criminal? I wonder why.”
Fatima sighed. “I’m gonna be in so much trouble. Even if she doesn’t chainsaw me.”
Shelly started to say something, then folded her hands and set them on the table in front of her, closing her eyes and breathing slowly like Father Caudillo had taught her.
“Besides,” Eric continued, “the thing she has on me? The picture? It’s digital. It’s on her computer.”
“Me too,” Fatima said. “She’s got my books, but she scanned some of it. That’s what she’s gonna send out.”
“No problem,” he said. “When we’re done stealing things, we can just smash her computer. I’m sure the police will understand.”
They both looked at Shelly, who waited until it was quiet before opening her eyes. “Are you finished?”
“You don’t think that’s enough?”
“He’s got a point,” Fatima said.
Shelly nodded. “Everything he said is true. All we have is her name and her address. Assuming we can get out there—and assuming we can find the place—she’s probably not going to let us in her house. And if she does, we’re probably not going to be able to find your book or get at the computer files. And at nine o’clock, she’s probably going to do exactly what she said she’s going to do all along—send out emails to everybody we know, telling them the one thing we want to keep secret. And realistically? There’s nothing we can do to stop her.”
The silence lasted a full minute, then Fatima leaned in. “But?”
“But,” Shelly said, “we’re gonna try anyway.”
Eric grunted a laugh. “We don’t have a choice.”
Shelly turned to a blank page and licked the tip of her pencil. “Okay, so you’ll be driving, right?”
“I have a restricted license. I can’t drive after dark.”
Shelly looked at him. “So, you’re driving, right?”
“Right.”
Fatima scootched her chair closer. “How we getting in the house?”
Shelly smiled. “You ever read The Odyssey?”
“I saw the movie.”
“Well, that’s how we’re getting in.”
“What about my books?”
“I’m more worried about the computer,” Eric said.
“Easy for you to say. They’re not your books.”
“If we can get to the computer, maybe we can delete the files. But don’t expect me to do it,” Shelly said. “I’m no computer expert.”
Eric leaned back in his chair. “I know a guy,” he said.
“And that means . . . what?”
“It means I know a guy who knows computers, that’s all.”
“So do I,” Fatima said. “My cousin. But I’m not telling him anything.”
“This guy,” Eric said. “His name’s Ian. He goes to my school. Kind of a loner. And a real freak. He’s into all that computer stuff. I could tell him what we need—without giving him any details. He could tell us how to do it.”
“Why would he help us?”
“Money.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged and thought about what he was supposed to have paid for the video work. “A couple hundred bucks, maybe more. You guys will have to chip in too.”
Shelly nodded. “All right. Find out if this is something he can do and what it’ll cost—”
“Wait a second,” Fatima said. “What are you gonna ask him to do?”
Eric shrugged. “Wipe out her computer. Crash it. Something like that.”
“No way,” Fatima said, shaking her head. “We just want our stuff erased, that’s all. Trust me, we don’t want to piss off a computer geek.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Eric said. “How’s Ian supposed to know what he’s looking for? He’s gotta take it all down.”
“If this guy’s as good as you say he is, he can target specific files. I know that much.”
“Why bother? If he wipes it all out, we’ll be sure he gets our stuff.”
“No, Fatima’s right,” Shelly said. “If we erase our stuff, that’s one thing. She’ll know it’s over and she’ll know not to mess with us anymore. But if we go after her stuff, that’s like we’re out for revenge or something.”
“So what? She did it to us,” Eric said.
“Check with this friend of yours,” Shelly said, missing the look he was giving them. “See if he can take out just our files.”
“And leave the rest of the computer alone,” Fatima said.
Eric shook his head. “Whatever.”
Fatima swiped on her phone. “We’ve got eight hours and twelve minutes. We won’t have time to come up with another plan.”
“Exactly,” Shelly said. “And that’s why we have to make sure this one works.”
Twenty-Eight
THE HOUSE WAS EMPTY, AND IT WOULD BE AT LEAST A couple of hours before his mother got home, but Eric moved quickly anyway, taking the stairs two at a time and running down the hall to his parents’ bedroom. His iPhone was on the charging pad on top of the dresser, right where he knew it would be. He swiped it on, went to contacts, and scrolled down until he found the name and hit the call button. The phone rang eight times, and Eric was expecting it to go to voicemail when Ian said, “You owe me fifty bucks.”
“I’ve been suspended. I’m back in school Monday—I can pay you then.”
“Don’t make me look for you,” Ian said, then hung up.
Eric hit the call button again, and when he heard the click he said, “I’ve got another job for you.”
There was a video game playing in the background, and after a burst of machine-gun fire, the sound dropped out. “Another cafeteria video?”
“No, this is different.”
“Good. Because that was lame.”
If it was so lame, Eric was tempted to ask, why did it cost me fifty bucks? Instead he said, “I need some files cleaned out of a computer.”
“Clarify your terms.”
“I need some files erased. Or deleted. Whichever is better.”
“And by ‘better’ you mean . . . ?”
“Gone. Permanent. Forever.”
“Obviously it’s not your computer. You wouldn’t need me to do that.”
“No, it’s somebody else’s.”
“Do you have it now?”
“No.”
“When will you have it?”
“I won’t. It’s at her house.”
“Her house,” Ian said, a hint of twisted humor in his voice. “Interesting. Will you have access to this computer?”
“What kind of access?”
“Close enough to plug in a flash drive?”
“Maybe. But I doubt it.”
“Which is it, Eric?”
He thought before answering. “No.”
“That’s too bad for you,” Ian said. “The flash drive option would have been better. And by ‘better’ I mean cheaper.”
Eric swallowed. “Can you still do it?”
“I can do it. But it’ll take some cooperation on the part of your victim.”
“I can’t guarantee that.”
“Neither can I. But I get paid whether she does or she doesn’t. Now, when do you need it?”
Eric glanced at the clock and worked backwards. Thirty minutes to pick up the others, say an hour to get there, then ten minutes inside. “Four hours?”
“Cha-ching.”
“Is that a yes?”
Ian made a noise that might have been a laugh. “It’s a yes to me adding on a one hundred percent rush fee. That’s what you get for procrastinating.”
“How much we talking?”
“Five,” Ian said. “As in hundred.”
“That’s way too much.”
“It’d cost more, but you get a return-customer discount.”
“I don’t know,” Eric said. “It’s a lot of money.”
“Guess what? I don’t care. You can take it or leave it. But if you want it, I need to know right now. Much to do on my end.”
Eric drummed his fingers on the top of his parents’ dresser, trying one more time to imagine a different option
, a different way to get it done. Nothing.
He did the math.
Twelve bucks in his wallet and some cash in his room, maybe sixty bucks total, and another hundred or so on a debit card he could cash out. He could sell his phone fast enough, but that would raise way too many questions, so that left his Xbox games. He had the standard stuff, and nothing so new that it would be worth anything close to the original price. Even if he sold them all, he’d still be short, but with what Shelly and Fatima would kick in, it’d be enough. It had to be.
“Just so I’m clear,” Eric said, “you’re telling me you can make some sort of, what, virus?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Okay. But whatever it is, it’ll go in and just delete the files I tell you to delete. Right?”
“Right,” Ian said. “All I’ll need are the file names.”
“What if I don’t know the exact names?”
“Do you know when they were saved?”
“Well . . . yeah,” Eric said, then a second later, “but . . .”
“Let me guess. Not the exact dates.”
“No, not exactly.”
“How about the month?”
Eric rubbed the top of his head as he remembered the day he had it all and threw it away. “June.”
“Fine. It’ll delete everything that was saved starting June first, and anything that came after. Anything saved before that will be fine. Simple,” Ian said. “For me anyway.”
“What if it’s a picture?”
“I said everything.”
Hand on the back of his neck, phone to his ear, Eric paced his parents’ bedroom.
It would work.
All their secrets cleaned out.
Erased like the whole thing never happened.
The picture—that picture—deleted, just like he had promised April.
It would work.
But it wouldn’t be fair.
No payback for the shit she put them through, the way she played them, bullied them, yeah, even terrorized them.
No revenge.
No justice.
Just an end.
That’s all Shelly and Fatima wanted, the only thing they needed.
But not him.
Cold Calls Page 15