Rated

by Melissa Grey

“Sorry, guys,” Javi said. “My head’s not in the game. Literally.”

  “No worries,” Domino said. “We all have off days.”

  Before Javi could say anything else, the doorbell rang.

  “Sorry, gotta run, bye!” He logged out at lightning speed and tossed his headset off. He needed to get to Noah before his family did. He loved them all, but they were A Lot.

  Javi bounded down the stairs, but when he arrived at the foot of the staircase, he saw that he was too late.

  Eva had already opened the door. She stood on the threshold, staring up at Noah. The boy had his hands in his pockets as he gazed down at Javi’s frowning sister.

  “Who are you?” Eva asked, in lieu of a proper greeting. She looked like a little lioness ready to defend her den. She was a savage child, and while Javi normally enjoyed her savagery, he didn’t want it directed at Noah.

  “I’m Noah. I’m a friend of Javi’s.”

  There was nothing wrong with what Noah said. It’s just that Javi never had friends over. He was always too busy gaming to have anyone over. He knew exactly what conclusion the younger Luceros would draw from so innocuous a statement.

  Noah caught Javi’s eye just as a chorus of frenzied oohs erupted from his siblings.

  “Ooh, Javi’s got a boyfriend.”

  “How come you haven’t said anything, Javi?”

  “Are you dating?” Eva asked as she ushered Noah inside. And then, assuming that the answer to her inquiry was yes, she asked, “How long have you been dating?”

  Javi buried his face in his hands. “Oh my god. Please shut up, all of you.”

  “Look at him,” his grandmother chimed in. “All skin and bones.”

  Noah patted his stomach self-consciously.

  “Don’t overthink it,” Javi said. “She says that to everybody.”

  His abuela shot him a look that softened when it then landed on Noah. “I cooked.”

  Javi’s grandmother always cooked. Her baseline state of existence was cooking. With a small child army at her command, there was always someone to eat her offerings. But that did nothing to abate her insatiable need for even more mouths to feed.

  “I made mofongo.”

  Noah leaned closer to Javi to whisper in his ear, “What’s mofongo?”

  “A dish made out of plantains. It’s not my favorite.”

  “I also made tostones,” his grandmother said. “You like those.”

  “What’re tostones?” Noah asked.

  “Another plantain dish,” Javi said. “They’re mashed and fried into salty discs of deliciousness.”

  “That actually sounds really good,” Noah said. He smiled at Javi’s grandmother. She beamed back at him.

  “Abuela, if I take a plate of tostones, will you leave us alone?” Javi asked.

  “Sí,” she said, though they both knew she was lying. Within ten minutes, she’d probably be banging Javi’s door open, telling them to make sure they left room for the Holy Ghost.

  She beckoned them into the kitchen, which, he had to admit, smelled divine. Javi accepted a large plate piled high with tostones. Noah took the two glasses of iced tea Javi’s abuela thrust at him without complaint.

  “Thanks, Mrs. Lucero,” Noah said. Javi had mentioned that his grandmother was his dad’s mom, so it wasn’t really a surprise that Noah got her name right. But it still warmed something inside Javi that Noah remembered such a minor detail.

  His grandmother patted Noah’s cheek and smiled. Nothing made her happier than someone shutting up and eating her food.

  “Be good, you two. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

  “Abuela!”

  Her cackle followed them up the stairs and into Javi’s room. He kicked the door shut behind him.

  “I am so sorry.” Javi placed the plate on the center of his bed and sat to one side of it. Noah sat on the other. “They’re a lot to handle.”

  “It’s okay,” Noah said. “They seem nice.” He picked up one of the tostones and sniffed it.

  Javi smiled at him. “You’re supposed to put a little bit of the mojo on them and eat them like that.”

  “What’s mojo?”

  “A garlicky type of sauce. I don’t know what else is in it, to be honest, but it’s good. I wouldn’t recommend it right now, though.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because I don’t want to taste like garlic when I do this.”

  Javi leaned forward, driven by impulse, and kissed Noah.

  It was even nicer than he remembered. He hadn’t thought it was possible, but every time their lips touched was better than the last.

  There was a poster of Javi rolled up under his bed, of him holding an ergonomic Panthera controller and smiling at the camera, the words Practice makes perfect scrawled across the bottom in some kind of futuristic font. He’d thought it was just a stupid aphorism, but now Javi had a greater appreciation for the sentiment. The more he kissed Noah, the more he learned how. He was learning just how much pressure to apply, when to press on and when to pull back. When to—

  “Oooooh, I’m telling Abuela!”

  Javi jerked back fast enough to hit his head on the wall behind him. The pain was bad but not bad enough to interfere with his aim when he grabbed a sneaker off the floor and hurled it toward the doorway, where Daniela and Dario stood ogling at him.

  “Get out!” Javi hollered loud enough for the entire house to hear him. Two pairs of feet scampered down the hallway, leaving a trill of giggles in their wake.

  Eva peered into the room after the twins departed, her expression somber. “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure they won’t tell.”

  “And you’re not?” Javi asked, incredulous.

  Eva shrugged. “I ain’t a narc.”

  With that, she left, thoughtfully closing the door behind her.

  “How does she even know what a narc is?” Noah asked, laughter lightening his voice.

  “Oh my god.” Javi buried his face in his hands. He could feel the warmth in his cheeks against his palms. “Kill me now.”

  “No, thanks,” Noah said. “I kind of like you alive. And this is good. I needed a distraction.”

  Javi wanted to kiss Noah again. He wanted it very, very badly. But there was something about the way Noah held himself, something stiff and pained, that gave him pause.

  “What happened?” Javi asked.

  “It’s my sister,” Noah started. He stopped, letting that awful sentence hang in the air.

  “Is she okay?” Javi couldn’t imagine what he would say or do if Noah said she wasn’t. If it was one of Javi’s siblings, there’d be nothing anyone could say or do to comfort him. His hand itched to take Noah’s. He resisted the urge for less than a second before deciding that maybe Noah needed him to. Noah didn’t seem to mind.

  “Cece’s fine … It’s just …” He sighed heavily, picking apart his food and leaving a small mountain of fried plantain crumbs on the plate. “She has to leave the hospital she’s in. Magnolia Children’s Hospital.”

  “The good one.” A few years ago, Eva had fallen out of a tree Javi told her not to climb and broken her leg. Javi’s rating had been just good enough to get her in the front door. The level of care she’d received had been miles better than Javi’s own experience at the public hospital.

  It was just a few months after the accident, when the grass hadn’t quite grown over his parents’ graves. Javi got into a fight with some kids in the neighborhood. He’d started it, but they had finished it. His grandmother had taken him to the Jackson Hills General emergency room, where they waited eleven hours before a doctor deigned to tend to Javi’s broken wrist. No one went to Jackson Hills General if they had better options. His abuela’s rating hadn’t been high enough for anything else. That was the night Javi had sworn that he would do anything he could to make sure his brothers and sisters had more than he did.

  “Yeah. My dad got laid off and his rating tanked.” Noah swallowed thickly. Javi watched the movement of hi
s Adam’s apple. He wanted to do more than hold Noah’s hand, but he didn’t. Not yet. “They won’t let her stay if he doesn’t get it back up. They’ll move her to Jackson Hills General.”

  The not so good one. Javi kept that observation to himself.

  Javi swore, once in English, then again in Spanish for good measure. “That’s not fair.”

  “No, it’s not.” Noah’s voice was thick with bitterness. He looked down at his hands. The nails had been bitten to the quick. “And there isn’t a thing anyone can do about it.”

  “Actually,” Javi ventured, “there might be.”

  Noah’s eyes shot up. He somehow managed to look both guarded and hopeful, all at once. “What? What is it?”

  Javi looked over his shoulder to make sure the door was still shut. It wouldn’t do to have any curious ears overhear what he was about to propose. “Tell me … do you have any moral reservations when it comes to hacking?”

  And so it begins.

  Founder’s Day approached with a flurry of activity. The school took John Maplethorpe’s birthday seriously. Too seriously, if you asked Chase. Nobody did.

  The gymnasium was decorated in rich maroon and shimmering gold, transforming it from a utilitarian space to something that could almost resemble a ballroom. Someone had placed a little wreath of flowers on Maplethorpe’s bust in the foyer of the main building. The remnants of paint on his face had been washed away as much as possible, but you could still see minuscule flecks of color if you looked hard enough.

  It was a lot of worship for a false prophet, as Chase had come to think of him.

  Any other year, Chase would have looked forward to the dance. Tickets were sold at the door, but if you were wearing a Maplethorpe letter jacket, you could just walk right in without paying. It wasn’t fair, but then neither was life, so Chase didn’t feel particularly bothered by that small act of inequality. It was a free way to have a fun time, to do something besides stress about his future and his grades and his dad and his house.

  But not this year.

  This year, he left at the same time he would have if he were going to the dance. His father was out, probably at the bar a few blocks away where he liked to watch football games. There was no one to ask Chase questions as he left. But instead of heading to the school, he took a different route. Twenty minutes later, he was waiting outside Bex’s house, in the part of town that might as well have been another universe for Chase.

  She’d asked him to text when he got there instead of ringing the doorbell.

  “My parents wouldn’t approve,” she’d said.

  “Of me?” Chase had asked.

  “Of your gender. And, well, of the general fact of your existence,” she’d replied. “It’s not personal. They think boys are a distraction I don’t have time for. So just text me when you hit my block and I’ll meet you outside.”

  Chase quite liked the notion that he might be distracting. As promised, he texted her when he turned the corner onto her block. By the time he reached her house, she was bounding down the walkway toward him.

  There was a sparkle in her eyes that wasn’t normally there. Her voice was high and breathy with excitement when she asked, “You ready?”

  “As I’ll ever be.” He offered her his arm. They weren’t going to the dance, but that was no excuse not to at least pretend to be a gentleman. “Let’s go to Lucky’s and find out what this weirdness is all about.”

  * * *

  The Lucky Penny was emptier than Chase had ever seen it.

  On a normal Friday night, it would be packed with Maplethorpe students, but tonight it was practically devoid of patrons.

  Except for two.

  “They’re sitting at the booth,” Bex whispered to Chase. “The one with the gold jukebox.”

  They were. Two boys, both in Chase’s year. He recognized one of them. Javi Lucero. An athlete of sorts, if one considered e-sports to be actual sports, which Chase didn’t. But still, he was a pleasant enough dude. Chase had shared a few classes with him over the years.

  “That’s Javi, but who’s the pale kid?” Chase asked Bex as they slowly approached the booth.

  “Noah Rainier,” she said. “He does photography. I was going to recruit him for the Lantern, but … well, you know.”

  When they reached the booth, both boys looked up at them.

  “Can we help you with something?” Javi asked. His gaze wandered from Bex to Chase and back again, as if he was trying to solve the puzzle of their odd pairing.

  “So, this might sound weird, but … we need this booth,” Bex said. It did sound weird, but Chase supposed there was no better way to put it.

  The pale kid—Noah—frowned. “So do we.”

  The bell above the door jingled, and four heads swiveled in its direction. Two more Maplethorpe students entered. The shorter one was the figure skater, Hana. Chase had always been a little in awe of her. He was good at baseball, but as an elite athlete, she was on another level entirely. She competed internationally, in places Chase had only ever dreamed of visiting.

  The girl beside her frowned when she saw the four of them at the booth. Chase knew her, too, but only by reputation. Tamsin was the weird witchy girl who charged forty bucks for fortunes Chase was pretty sure she just made up. The heavy makeup around her eyes made her frown look especially severe. After saying something to Hana in a soft voice, she marched up to the table with the gold jukebox, the many bangles around her wrists jingling as she moved.

  “You guys are gonna have to move,” Tamsin said by way of greeting.

  “Hello to you, too,” Javi said.

  “We need to sit here,” said Tamsin.

  “Why?” Bex asked.

  Hana drew up beside them, her lips pressed together in a tight line. She looked worried and a little confused.

  “Why do you need to be here?” Tamsin asked. Chase wondered if she talked to everyone this way, or if she was being aggressive just for their benefit.

  This was getting them nowhere.

  Chase reached into his pocket and retrieved the letter he’d carried with him every day since he and Bex had first discovered it.

  He held it up, displaying the jester affixed to the front. “I got an engraved invitation. How about you?”

  A few impossibly long seconds passed before heads nodded all around. Tamsin took out a tarot card. Hana, a page covered in letters cut out of magazines, like a ransom note in a bad movie. Noah, a photograph with words written on the back. Javi pulled up a picture on his phone of an image on a computer screen. Each one displayed the same poem that had led Bex and Chase to the Lucky Penny on the night of the Founder’s Day Dance.

  “I didn’t think things could possibly get weirder,” Tamsin said. “And yet, here we are.”

  “How about we all sit down and try to look normal?” Bex suggested.

  They tried. And failed. The assortment of wildly disparate personalities crowding into a booth at the back of the Lucky Penny looked like the setup for a bad joke.

  A jock, a Goth, and a handful of nerds walk into a diner …

  Chase shook the thought away. He didn’t want to guess what the punch line would be. Perhaps they were the punch line. A group of teenagers, each from a very different walk of life, comparing notes on a conspiracy theory about a deranged clown.

  It was all very funny, but none of the studiously serious faces around the table were laughing.

  The lone waitress working that night came by to take their order. It was the same blonde who’d been there the night he and Bex found their note. Chase hadn’t planned on getting anything, but Bex insisted. It would have looked odd, she said to him in a hushed whisper, if none of them ordered. It was a diner, after all.

  Bex ordered a strawberry milkshake and asked for an extra straw when it became apparent to her that Chase had no intention—and no money—to order anything. Javi asked for a cheeseburger deluxe, Noah a grilled cheese, and Tamsin a black-and-white shake. Hana asked, in a voice so quiet the w
aitress had to bend down to hear her, for just a Diet Coke.

  They waited in tense, awkward silence for the waitress to leave. When she was finally back behind the counter, Javi spoke.

  “So,” he started, “which one of you sent the messages?”

  No one answered. They looked at one another with varying degrees of suspicion.

  “Oh, great,” Tamsin said. “I was worried tonight was gonna be too straightforward.”

  Bex spread her hands on the table, leaning forward. “If none of us sent the messages, then someone else did. Someone who wants us to come together.”

  “Yes,” Hana said. “But why?”

  “Million-dollar question,” Tamsin said, popping her bubble gum.

  “Another thing I don’t get,” said Noah, “is what these messages have to do with the vandalism of the Maplethorpe statue.” He shared a look with Javi. “We know they’ve gotta be connected somehow.”

  Chase traded glances with Bex. They were both thinking about the book, safely tucked away in Bex’s backpack.

  “I don’t know …” she said.

  “We’ve gotten this far by working together,” said Chase. “We should show them, Bex.”

  “Show us what?” Tamsin asked, her eyes narrowing.

  “The quote on the base of the statue,” Bex said. “I found the book it’s from.”

  Chase shuffled a few inches to the side to allow Bex to pull her backpack up from where it rested at her feet. She took the book out and placed it on the table. It sat there under the neon lights reflecting off the windows, looking like an object of great significance, out of place among a bunch of glossy diner menus.

  A battered copy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s The Social Contract—in the original French—calmly absorbed their stares.

  “Ah, yes,” Javi said. “A book. I am familiar with such things.”

  Tamsin, the Goth/witch/whatever-she-was, snorted. Chase had never gone to her for a tarot reading—he didn’t believe in such nonsense—but a few of his buddies had. All their readings had taken on distinctly dire tones that Chase suspected had more to do with Tamsin’s general view of athletes than it did with mystical divination.