Art didn’t answer.
I had to stagger to my feet and move over to stand next to him. I looked at what he was looking at. It was a weird arrangement of pencils on the tabletop.
“What’s that?”
“It’s binary code,” said Art.
“What does it say?”
“It says ‘Gotcha.’“
I didn’t get it.
“This isn’t it,” said Art. “It’s not my lab. It looks just like my lab, but it isn’t. It doesn’t work.” He went over to the petri dishes with the bacteria cultures and started touching them.
“What are you doing!” I shouted. He said those took away luck. Why would he touch them all at once?
“Nothing,” said Art. “Nothing at all. This isn’t the right bacteria. It’s probably streptococcus or something equally common.”
I stumbled back to sit with my back against the wall and thought about all the things Laura had done to hurt other people that I’d seen. This was the worst of them, saved up and planned for, just for me and Art and Trudy.
Chapter 13: Trudy
Thursday afternoon, I followed Laura back to her dorm and watched the door for several hours. I was uncomfortable, sitting on the cold cement outside. I didn’t really think she had Rob tied up in her room somewhere. But she knew more than she was admitting. She was behind this somehow. And she might seem like the smarter, more ruthless one. But I was determined and I was in love. You can’t win against that.
Finally, about six o’clock, Laura left her room. She was dressed to the nines, her hair flowing over her shoulders in curls, her makeup precise, her skirt just a little shorter than I would dare wear mine. I followed her for a few minutes, then made a quick decision to double back to her dorm, figuring there might be some information there that could be useful.
Once I got into her hall, I looked around for some way to break in. There were chairs in the common room. I could use one of those to break down the door by blunt force. But that was only going to draw more attention to me, which I didn’t want. I needed subtle here. I had no idea what Laura might have in her room that would help me, maybe notes, an address list, or maybe a live video feed of where Art and Rob were.
Finally, I took a bobby pin out of my hair and shrugged. In the movies, people used these to pick locks all the time. I had no idea how to do it, but I was smart and I still had more luck than most people.
I looked around again to see if anyone was watching, held myself to the door while I heard someone downstairs, then knelt down in front of the lock and went to work.
After about ten minutes with my hands getting gradually more cramped and sweaty, I heard a click and the doorknob turned.
I went inside, leaned back against the door, and felt light-headed with relief for a minute.
Laura’s dorm room was immaculate. Her red satin bedspread was so tightly tucked into her bed that it made me wonder if she ever slept there. Maybe she slept hanging upside down somewhere, like a vampire or a human bat. She had a computer on her desk, and I touched it. It was password-protected, but when I sat down and tried “RobC” after a couple of combinations of Rob’s name, it opened up to me. But there was nothing there that I could see that anything to do with the experiment.
I opened her closet and looked in there. If anything was hidden, I didn’t know where it would be. Everything looked perfectly stacked.
I went back to the desk. This time, I opened drawers and that was when I found it. The little jewelry box. There was a necklace with a nice stone on it, but it was the paper folded underneath that I cared about. It was a sketch of Art’s dorm room, with tables and experiments neatly marked. Laura should not have this.
I pocketed the box and went out of the room. I didn’t once think of cameras in the dorm room, and I didn’t think about an alarm. You can either call that stupid or luckless. I guess for me they are a lot the same because I’m so used to being lucky it makes me stupid.
By the time I walked out of her dorm, I could hear the faint sound of sirens. I didn’t think they were coming closer until I could see the lights of the police car. I kept walking back to my own dorm and when I heard doors opening and closing, I started to run. I had a bad feeling about this. I was in my hallway, reaching for my key, when the police came in and told me to put my hands up.
A police officer came over and frisked me. He found the jewelry box. “Here it is,” he said, holding it up.
“This is not what it looks like,” I said, trying to figure out how valuable the necklace was. If the stone was real, it might be worth a couple hundred dollars. What in the world were my parents going to think of me? I couldn’t tell them the whole truth.
“It looks like a schematic of a science experiment,” said the police officer, pulling the paper out and unfolding it before my eyes. He held it up in front of me and I was so surprised I didn’t know what to say. I thought this was about the necklace.
Hot and cold hit me in flashes as I realized that Laura had known exactly what I would do, when she left her dorm. She’d known I was waiting for her to leave. She’d known I would double back. She’d wanted me to take something and to trigger an alarm. She wanted it to look like I was the one who had wrecked the experiment that Art was working on. And I had willingly given up just enough luck that I made it easy for her.
I put up my hands and walked out to the police car with the officers. There were plenty of faces staring out at me from the dorms all around. I’m sure they were all thrilled to see me taken down a notch, everyone except maybe Mabel and Arlee.
They came rushing out as soon as they saw me.
“What’s going on? Trudy, are you all right?” said Mabel.
“Step back,” said the policemen. “We’re taking her down to the station.”
“But she hasn’t done anything wrong,” said Arlee.
“You don’t know what she’s been accused of, but I assure you, we have solid evidence and there will be trial,” said one of the officers.
“It doesn’t matter what she’s accused of,” said Mabel. “We know Trudy and she would never do anything wrong. Whatever it is, it’s been made up.”
It was nice to know that I had such loyal friends, but I didn’t want them to get involved in this. “It’s OK,” I said. “Just go back to your dorms. I’m sure this will all work out.”
“But they’re just prejudiced against you because you’re not in one of the families. They would never take one of the named kids down to the station without talking to their parents first,” said Arlee.
“Are you accusing us of corruption?” asked the taller of the two officers.
“No, sir, of course not,” said Mabel, shooting glances at Arlee and trying to pull her away.
“Just go find my parents and tell them—” I stopped because I didn’t know what to have them tell my parents.
And then it didn’t matter because I saw Dad. “Trudy?” he said.
He was coming out of my dorm building. What was he still doing here? I thought they were going to a hotel. Talk about bad luck. I wanted to cry.
“Dad, I’m really sorry about this. It’s not your fault. I love you and I love Mom!” That’s what I wanted him to remember about me, in case I never saw him again.
“Trudy, don’t worry about this. I’m going to call a lawyer. A good one. I just need to figure out which one we can afford.” That was my dad, calm and collected, even in an emergency.
I got into the police car and Laura came over to sneer at me.
“Once you gave up a little of your luck, it was so easy,” she said, leaning forward into the open window of the car. “I wasn’t sure how long it would take to get you to do that, but the rest was so absurdly easy. Lucky people never realize how much the luck really works for them. They think it’s just a little bit of what makes them who they are, when really it is everything.”
“For people like you, maybe that’s true,” I said. “But not for me.”
“And what about Rob?�
� asked Laura. “You think he’s like you in his luck? He isn’t, I can assure you. But what do you really know about him? You say you’re in love, but you and Rob have been lying to each other from the first. At least when Rob and I were together, we knew it was a fraud. You two think it’s for real.” She smiled toothily at me.
“You’re wrong,” I said.
“Oh, am I?” she asked. But she looked so confident that I started to wonder. What did she know that I didn’t know? Where was Rob? Why did she seem to know everything that was going to happen?
As the car drove off into the night, the police officer informed me of the weight of evidence against me. They had the camera showing me breaking into Laura’s room. They had my fingerprints everywhere. They had me holding the jewelry box. And then there was all the evidence in Art’s room. My fingerprints there, too, showing I had been there and had used the equipment on myself for my own purposes.
The officer said he didn’t know what had happened to Rob and Art, but he hoped that I would see the position I was in could only be improved by telling the truth about their whereabouts. If they weren’t harmed, the charges against me would be much reduced.
I wished very much I knew they weren’t harmed, but I didn’t.
Would Laura go so far as to hurt them and let me take the blame? I was pretty sure she would. I wouldn’t put anything past her at this point.
Mr. and Mrs. Chiltern were waiting for me when I got out of the car at the station. They had never liked me before, and now they didn’t have Rob around to pretend for anymore.
“Where is Rob?” Mr. Chiltern asked me. She looked pretty distraught, her makeup smeared and the collar of her dress askew, which normally would never have happened. The dress wouldn’t dare, not with all of her luck. Now it only made her look more upset, which would help when she testified in court against me. “That’s all I want to know. Tell me where he is so I can make sure he’s safe,” she went on, pleading.
“I don’t know where he is,” I said. “I swear it. I had nothing to do with this. I know it looks bad, but I’m innocent.” I don’t think they were even listening to me. They probably never had, and now there was no reason for them to see me as anything other than a dirty little gold-digger who could have done anything to their son.
“Please. We’ll pay you any reward you want. Just give us our son back,” said Mrs. Chiltern.
Mr. Chiltern got out a checkbook. “I can write you a check right now. A half million dollars if you tell us where Rob is and promise never to see him again.”
“I don’t want your money,” I said. “I never have.”
“Then what do you want?” asked Mrs. Chiltern.
“I want Rob,” I said. “I want him to love me no matter what.” Was that too much to ask? I started crying, and the two cops next to me made their apologies to the Chilterns and tugged on me.
Call it good luck or call it bad, but at that moment, I slipped on the slick floor of the police station and my body dived backward. I couldn’t see where I was going, but I could feel my feet crash into someone. That person fell down, swearing, and knocked another person down. Then they were both piled on top of me. I couldn’t move because of my stupid handcuffs and I could taste blood running down my face and into my mouth. My nose was broken. I yanked my hands up and my handcuffs broke. The two policemen were worried about Mr. and Mrs. Chiltern, trying to help them. Distracted.
So I ran for the doors. I could hear the cops behind me shouting after me, but I kept running as fast as I could. I guess all those horrible sprints in gym class turned out to be useful, after all, because the cops couldn’t catch me.
I had to think madly as I went, which was hard when all my energy was going to muscles and my heart and lungs. If I went back to my dorm, they would catch me. If I went to school, they would catch me. If I called my parents to meet me someplace, they would catch me.
I started running to the only place I could think they wouldn’t look to find me. To Rob’s house. I might find a clue there about where he was, and they would have phones and a computer I could use for a while. It was more than ten miles away from St. James, across town and on the other side, toward the hills. I had driven there several times, but running there was something else. By that time, I was staggering more than running. I wouldn’t let myself rest, though, not until I got all the way there, to Rob’s twenty steps, his four Roman pillars at the front, and his dark walnut front door.
Chapter 14: Rob
“My house,” I said just before noon on Thursday, after I’d had time to think. It would be the perfect taunt to me to tell my parents the truth or break down and try to get the luck from the experiment. But no doubt there would be booby-traps everywhere if I tried to use it, and some humiliation waiting for when I admitted I’d spent my whole life lying.
“Ahh,” said Art. “You’re right. That’s brilliant.”
“Thanks,” I said. I might not have luck, but at least Art could give me props for intelligence.
But he added, “Not you. Laura.”
“You know, maybe you shouldn’t sound like you admire her so much when she’s the one who is wrecking your life, too,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, but she’s doing it so cleverly. You have to admire that,” said Art. “Speaking purely theoretically.”
“Art, she’s scary.”
“Right.” He shivered a little. “I need to remember that. If the electricity thing gets out and people start to duplicate it, then that will be the end of any advantage that we have at St. James. A world of people who all have good luck could be coming. Which is almost the same thing as no one with good luck, isn’t it?” said Art.
It was true, but it wouldn’t necessarily be bad for me. For my parents and the rest of my extended family, maybe. For almost everyone at St. James, including even Trudy. But for me, it could be good. After I apologized to Trudy properly, we might be set for life.
Not that Laura had done it for anything other than her own selfish reasons. No doubt she planned to give the plans to Excel Pharmaceutical. Then she and her family would have control of who got the formulas when and how much they sold for. She also had the added bonus of seeing me and Trudy ruined.
“Actually, speaking statistically, the release of either or both of these widely will produce the same effect in the long term. Anarchy,” said Art, nodding his head happily.
“And you think that’s a good thing?” I asked.
“Card-carrying anarchist,” said Art, and he actually pulled a card out of his back pocket and showed it to me. It read, “American Anarchy Association.”
“Triple A?” I said. Only instead of being a backup in an emergency, they caused the emergencies and made them worse. On purpose.
“The irony,” Art pointed out. “That tells you a lot about us, I think.”
I drove back to my house without much regard for speed limits. Art pointed out that this was proof that I was an anarchist at heart, too.
“Don’t take it hard, though. Most people are. They just don’t realize it,” he said.
“Art, I’m not an anarchist. I think there should be speed limits posted. I think people should follow the speed limits. I usually do. I just can’t right now.”
“Anarchy at work. You see? You don’t need the government to impose rules. They are part of your natural thought process. You know that in an emergency, rules have to be changed or suspended. Why do you need a government to tell you when you can do that? By the time you get permission, the emergency is over.”
I hit a big bump and we caught some air. I admit it, I thought we were going to flip over and die. It was not what I wanted to spend my last moments of life doing, listening to Art talk about anarchy. This was definitely proof of my bad luck yet again. I just hoped Art’s good luck canceled out mine and we survived this. Otherwise, Laura was going to win big time.
“Do you think she’s given herself a lot of good luck already?” asked Art. “She could have shocked herself a thousand time
s in the last twenty-four hours since the lab went missing. Think how much luck she might have. She could be the luckiest woman in the world. If she could stand the pain of all those shocks, that is. But something tells me that if there’s any woman who could do that, it would be Laura Chevely.”
“Shut up Art,” I said.
I think Art muttered something about anarchy at work again. If I hadn’t needed both hands on the wheel I would have used one to strangle him. I swear I would.
Luckily by the time we got to my house, the urge had passed. I’d say that was proof that anarchy hadn’t won, because my sense of rules had returned. I don’t know what Art would have said. He was finally keeping his mouth shut.
“My parents aren’t here, thank goodness,” I said. It was mid-afternoon by now and I could see from the window in the garage that their cars were both missing. I went around the back to my usual entrance, the one closest to my room.
Art grabbed me just in time. I glanced up and saw a brick falling overhead.
It landed on the sidewalk in pieces and I stared down at it, thinking that could have been my head.
I couldn’t decide if it was a booby-trap from Laura or just bad luck. Either one made me really, really nervous.
I used my key to open the door. Art followed me.
“Where do you think she put it all, then?” I asked, closing the door behind us.
“Basement?” said Art.
Another basement. Of course. We had a big racquetball room down there. “Let’s go down and see,” I said. I led the way, turning lights on as we went.
“I can tell it’s here. I can smell it,” said Art, excited.
Sure enough, when we opened the final door, the bright lights of the court hit our eyes, along with the sight of Art’s lab set up neatly on tables that Laura had to have become an expert and setting up and taking down.
“You better check to make sure it’s the real one this time. And that it’s all here,” I said.
Art was leaning against the wall, with his forehead away from me. He kept taking in deep breaths like he was an asthmatic.
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