“Yeah, but I don’t want her to think . . . you know . . . because we were in the bed . . .”
“We were back to back.” He grinned. “Zoe, I know you’re a good girl, but you know you can’t”—he made a lurid motion with his fist—“when you’re back to back, right? I wonder if that’s why Austin is walking around looking so frustrated.”
I threw my pillow at him. “Get out.”
TWELVE
The next morning, the phone rang with fifteen minutes still left before my alarm was set to go off. I was super-peeved and answered the call with “What.”
A sour voice I didn’t recognize said, “Excuse me?”
“Who is this?” When all I heard was an exasperated sigh and a muttered curse, I checked my phone’s screen and saw my father’s office number. “Oh . . . Barbara. Hi.”
“I found information on the holding company you asked about. I’ll e-mail it,” Barbara said. “I noticed something, though. I decided to call because you’d probably miss it on the page.”
“Thanks, Barbara,” I said.
“One of the company’s directors is Jonathan Garfield Book. Book was a big lawyer here in the city, but he took early retirement ten years ago and became a non-executive chairman of the board of a huge multinational,” Barbara said. “Which is why I thought it was strange he’s on the rolls of your little local company. What does this company do?”
“Um . . . thank you so much for doing this so quickly, Barbara. I didn’t mean for you to work on it so early in the morning,” I said.
“That’s fine. I like to get all the nonsense out of the way first thing,” she said.
And on that delightful note, I got off the phone, forwarded Barbara’s e-mail to Digby, and tried to fall back asleep. I couldn’t, though, and got out of bed.
I found Digby on the landing, spying on Mom and Cooper fighting downstairs.
“Check your e-mail,” I said. “What’s going on here?”
“I think they’re fighting about something she saw on the news,” Digby said. “Are they always like this?”
“I guess maybe recently?” It sounded more like a tiff than a real fight to me, so the distress on Digby’s face seemed outsized. “Couples fight . . . why is this worrying you? Don’t tell me your parents didn’t fight . . . they’re divorced.”
“My parents didn’t fight like this. Theirs was frosty tension and our recycling bin filled up with empty bottles for months and then one day, my father tells me we’re moving and I had two hours to pack,” Digby said.
“Whoa,” I said.
“Although, I should’ve known. He was boxing up his junk for a week before,” he said. “I guess I counted on my mom getting custody.”
“That’s when you moved to Texas?” I said.
“We ended up in Texas, but we stopped all over the place, sometimes for weeks.” He pointed to his coat. “I learned to pack light and eat whenever I got the chance because you never know when you’ll stop next. Now, that’s an education.”
“No. That’s child abuse,” I said. The shouting downstairs got more intense. “We should go break it up.”
They simmered down when Digby and I walked into the kitchen.
“Good morning,” I said.
Mom kissed me and walked out.
“Everything okay, Mike?” I said.
“I’ve always known she has a problem with what I do for a living, but lately, I don’t know . . . it seems like she’s been looking for ways to be annoyed with me,” Cooper said.
“What happened?” Digby said.
“I was telling her about this drug bust I almost made today and I guess she thought I was too excited,” Cooper said. “But shouldn’t I feel good that I was able to keep up in a foot chase with a kid twenty years younger than me? I chased him down near the high school.”
“Drugs?” Digby said. “What kind?”
Cooper shrugged. “He threw out his stuff during the pursuit and I never found the drop bag when I went back over the flight path. I caught him but I had to cut him loose.”
“I heard kids have been buying injectables,” Digby said.
“Steroids, right?” Cooper said. “I heard that too. But, like I said, I didn’t find his stuff. I was just amazed he didn’t lose me. That kid was an ex-athlete . . . played football for the school once upon a time. Rob Silkstrom?”
“Silkstrom? No . . .” Digby had a blank look on his face, which meant he was definitely up to something. “Before my time.”
“Ugh, this macho crap still?” As Mom walked past Digby, she caught a scent of something, and then leaned in close to take a deeper sniff. “You smell like lavender. Zoe’s perfume is lavender . . . ”
I hated to leave Cooper alone, but Digby and I got out of there before Mom could interrogate us on how my perfume got on Digby.
• • •
Digby left and I went back up to study. It was Tuesday. The second Chancellor’s Conference Day. The SATs were Saturday. It was time to get real. I put my head down and powered through the practice exams in my book. Hours later, while I was doing the last test, it clicked in my head that I was actually ready for the real thing.
I put down my pencil when I finished. I felt like my heart was going to blow out of my chest. But the celebrations didn’t last very long because just a few minutes later, I slid right into worrying about the fact that Austin hadn’t called. The last little while had been a mess of failed connections and weirdly awkward conversations, so I didn’t know what was going on.
So, when the bell rang and I found Austin at my doorstep holding flowers, I was so relieved and remorseful that I straight up burst into tears.
“Are you okay? I called you so many times today,” Austin said. “I wanted to talk to you about something—”
“Airplane mode! I’m so sorry, Austin, I forgot I turned it on when I was studying.”
The way my entire being responded to his presence surprised even me. It all became very clear. What was I doing risking everything I had with Austin to play detective with Digby? Austin had every reason to be mad at me. I was a Bad Girlfriend, and yet here he was—with flowers no less.
I launched myself at him. I’d ripped off his jacket before we got the front door shut. By the time we got to the couch, I’d gotten his shirt off. Finally, I thought, this is The Moment. I wasn’t sure how much of the rush I felt on seeing Austin was just the reflected excitement from my successful study session, but I felt ready. Ready to take the SATs and ready to be with Austin . . .
“Wait. You said you wanted to talk to me about something?” I said.
“What?” Austin said. “Oh, that? Nothing.”
He kissed me again. This time, our kisses were slower and less frenzied.
And then there was a loud knock on the front door. Austin and I froze.
“Ignore it,” I said.
“Okay,” Austin said.
But then whoever was trying to get in began pounding on the door. I was about to tell Austin to ignore it again, when the doorbell started to ring over and over.
“I’m going to kill him,” Austin said.
I got off the couch. “It’s not Digby. He has keys.”
I opened the door and found Sloane hopping around, agitated. “Wow,” I said. “Even the way you ring the doorbell is entitled.”
“I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t an emergency.” Sloane stepped past me into the house.
“Please. Do come in,” I said. I heard Austin scramble to get his shirt back on.
“How can I help you, Sloane?” I said.
“You have to come with me,” she said.
“Excuse me? I’m in the middle of a date,” I said.
Sloane vaguely waved toward Austin. “He’ll wait.” She passed me her phone, where, on the screen, a little blue dot was slowly tracking across a map.
; “You—” It occurred to me she probably didn’t want Austin to hear any of this. To her, I said, “Kitchen.” To Austin, I said, “One sec. Girl problems.”
In the kitchen, Sloane said, “You haven’t told Austin about Henry?”
“No.” I said, “And I haven’t told anyone else, if that’s what you’re going to ask next.”
Sloane stared. “Oh.”
I took her phone. “I can only assume this means you’ve lost your whole mind and started stalking Henry?”
“Again he said he was going to work, but look . . . this is downtown,” Sloane said. “Why is he downtown?”
“Well, technically, all you know is that his phone is downtown . . .” I said. She gave me a dirty look. “Fine. What do you want me to do about it?”
“Come with me,” Sloane said.
“Take your driver,” I said.
“I took a cab here,” she said. “I didn’t want to deal with Mom and Elliot.”
“So take a cab downtown,” I said.
“I tried,” Sloane said. “The cabbie refused.”
That’s because according to the blue dot on the screen, Henry had gone into a particularly rough area called the Downtown Core. The businesses that made up the real Downtown Core had migrated a long time ago, and the neighborhood that kept the name was a bombed-out crime-ridden memory.
“Fine. Austin can drive us,” I said.
Sloane grabbed my arm. “No.”
“A second ago, you thought I’d already told him everything, so why do you care if we tell him now?” I said.
“I just . . . couldn’t take it if everyone at school knew,” she said.
Maybe it was the shock of seeing Sloane have a genuine emotion or maybe it was the fact that, even though he’d apologized, Austin had put my previous visit to Sloane’s house in the gossip pipeline, but I said, “Fine. I won’t tell Austin why I’m coming with you. But. When Henry gets mad, you better make sure he’s clear that I told you this was a stupid idea. Got it?”
“Yes.” Sloane composed herself and said, “Thank you for doing this, Zoe.”
“Was that the first time you’ve ever thanked someone?” I said. “You looked like you were coughing up a hairball.”
We walked back into the living room. “Austin . . . I have to go with Sloane real quick—”
“You’re leaving?” Austin said.
“I’ll be back in fifteen minutes,” I said. “Twenty maximum.”
Austin groaned and smacked a sofa cushion.
“Also, can I borrow your mom’s car?” I said.
“I took the bus here,” Austin said.
“Can’t we take one of your cars?” Sloane said to me.
“Mom has it at work,” I said.
“Your family has one car?” Sloane said.
“Well, I guess Cooper’s car is here . . .” I said. “But it’s a police vehicle—”
“He’s here?” Austin said.
“Relax,” I said. “He’s asleep upstairs.”
“Then let’s ask to borrow his car,” Sloane said.
I said, “You don’t bother a sleeping cop on the graveyard shift—”
Sloane walked away to our foyer. By the time I caught up, she’d already dug through the bowl of keys and retrieved Cooper’s.
“Sloane.”
“You said so yourself. Twenty minutes tops.” Sloane walked out the front door.
I wrestled on my boots and grabbed my coat. When I was halfway out, I heard Austin say, “Can’t you just call a cab?”
THIRTEEN
Sloane hit the unlock button on the key fob until Cooper’s car identified itself from its parking spot on the street. She already had the engine running by the time I got into the passenger seat.
“You know this is an unmarked police car you’re stealing, right?” I said.
“Stealing?” Sloane put the car in gear and sped off. “Isn’t this your step’s car?”
“My step? No,” I said. “My mom’s boyfriend.”
“Whatever. He won’t tell on you,” Sloane said. When I pshawed, she said, “Besides, it’s unmarked.”
“To civilians. Other cops will recognize a cop car being driven around by not-cops,” I said.
“Maybe if we drive fast, they won’t see our faces?” Sloane said.
“I’m not sure you understand how this works,” I said.
Sloane handed me her phone. “Where is he now?”
It took me a moment to figure it out. It was the part of Downtown Core that people called The Jungle. Downtown Core was bad enough, but The Jungle was, as its name implied, an altogether different ecosystem. Of course, Digby, Sloane, Felix, Henry, Bill, and I had all been down there before, when we’d skipped out of the winter ball to chase after Marina Miller, the missing girl who turned out to be a runaway. Between Bill being nearly assaulted, Felix getting trapped in a stolen ambulance, and Digby and me getting kidnapped and stuffed in the trunk of a car . . . let’s just say the place brought back memories.
“Why’s he in The Jungle?” I said.
“The Jungle?” Sloane said.
“Yeah, remember last year . . . that one night,” I said.
Sloane looked worried. Clearly, she did remember.
“Maybe you should speed up,” I said.
• • •
After a tense and mostly quiet drive, Sloane and I got to where the blue dot said we needed to be. “Northwest corner of Peco and Gray. That’s here.”
“Do you know how to read that thing?” Sloane said.
I yanked the phone away when she tried to snatch it. “Hey. Manners. I’m reading it right.” I held up the screen for her to see.
We looked around. Two corners had the check cashing/payday loan/liquor store cluster of businesses. One corner was a weedy patch and a falling-down building. On the fourth corner, where Henry’s blue dot was, stood a boarded-up convenience store beside a Laundromat.
“Should we go in?” Sloane said.
“Go in where?” I said. “It’s abandoned—”
Just then, some kids walked out of the store.
“I guess it’s open,” I said. “Let’s go.”
We opened the car doors and were halfway out when I heard a thunk.
“What was that?” I looked at the floor under the dash. That’s when I noticed her shoes. Specifically, how high the heels were. “Sloane, what the hell are those shoes?” In fact, Sloane’s entire outfit was even fancier than usual. “What are you wearing? Are you going to a club later or something?”
Sloane hesitated before saying, “I left home thinking I was going to bitch-slap some guy-stealing slut. Clearly, I’m overdressed for this.”
“Okay . . . many objectionable words and concepts in what you just said, but we’ll deal with that later,” I said. “Just try not to break your ankle.”
“So what just fell?”
I patted around the floor and picked up a long black rectangular tube. It was a gun’s magazine, brimming with bullets. We both gasped and instinctively shut the car doors.
“Put it back,” Sloane said.
“Put it back where? I don’t even know where it fell from.” I tried the glove box, but I didn’t know the code to the combination lock.
“What do we do?” Sloane said.
“I guess I’ll carry it?” I put the magazine in my pocket, opened the car door, and was about to step out. “Wait.” I climbed back in and shut the door.
Sloane got back in too. “What?”
“Probably a bad idea to walk around with a bunch of bullets,” I said. “The trunk?” Sloane’s shrug wasn’t much of an endorsement, but we got out of the car and opened the trunk. As I was stuffing the magazine into a corner of the trunk, though, I spotted some kids watching us from a nearby stoop. I suddenly didn’t feel
putting the bullets in the trunk was a great idea. “Cooper would kill me if these got stolen.” I slammed the trunk shut and we got back in the car again.
We were looking around the interior of the car, stymied, when someone rapping on our window scared us half to death. It was Digby.
“Get out, crazy,” Digby said. “Door open, door close, door open, door close . . . it’s like first-day jitters at clown school.”
I pocketed the magazine of bullets. Sloane and I followed him into the convenience store, which turned out to be cleaner and better lit than you’d think. Henry was there, sitting on a stool at a lunch counter against one wall.
“Sloane? What are you doing here?” Henry said.
“What are you doing here?” Sloane said.
I turned to Digby. “What are you doing here?”
“I’ll tell you what we’re not doing here is cheating on Sloane,” Digby said.
“What’s going on?” I said.
“Obviously, nothing,” Digby said. “So go home now. Bye-bye.”
“You thought I was cheating on you?” Henry said.
“Why did you lie about going to work?” Sloane said.
Henry looked like he was going to answer, balked, and then looked at Digby to bail him out.
“We came here to eat,” Digby said. “This is one of those hipster speakeasy hamburger stands.”
“Here?” I said. It looked like at least twenty years had passed since the place last served any food.
“Is he serious?” Sloane said. “I can’t tell.”
“Fine. Order something,” I said.
“The truth is, we’re here because . . .” Digby took a deep breath. “Because . . .”
Finally, Henry said, “Some guys on the team have been juicing.”
“Steroids?” Sloane said.
“Yeah,” Henry said.
“Have you been taking them?” Sloane said.
“Of course not. Most of us aren’t. But these guys are going to ruin it for all of us.”
“Henry, there are always going to be steroids. Guys need to bulk up,” Sloane said. “Especially now. The college scouts are coming.”
“No, I mean . . . some guys on the team are selling them,” Henry said. “And we thought if we could just talk to their supplier—”
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