“Oh, I’m easy,” I say. “As long as it’s got loads of caramel, I’m a happy camper. Besides, you look pretty confident back there. I’m sure you’ve got it down.”
Compliment, compliment, compliment. But keep it focused on the job at hand. Telling him he looks great in that shirt sounds like you’re flirting rather than impressed with his handiwork. Flirting has its place, for sure, but not in this situation. You need generosity, not a date.
“That’ll be four-fifty,” he says, putting the cup of caffeinated sugar rush on the counter in front of me.
I rummage around in my bag. “Oh, jeez. Looks like I forgot my wallet. I guess I should cancel the drink order.”
“Might as well take it since I already made it,” Mike says, pushing the drink toward me. “Call it practice.”
“You’re a gem, Mike. You have no idea how much I need this coffee.”
“I’ve been there,” he says, smiling and wiping his hands on a caramel-smudged cloth.
“Thanks. I won’t forget this!”
I take a seat on a ratty sofa that’s been through the Goodwill mill a time or two and then pull out my phone. I left the gun in my apartment last night. I can’t tell if it’s a clue, a warning, or a loaded (ha) attempt at offering protection. If it’s a clue or a warning, I can puzzle it out without the actual gun; if it’s protection, well, it’s not going to do me much good. I’ve never even seen a gun—loaded or not—in real life, let alone fired one. My dad’s a con artist, not a thug, and he always says: Your story is your best offense; your disguise is your best defense. Weapons will only get you killed.
A clue, then. But I have no idea about what, so I set aside the gun conundrum for now and pull out the note.
I type “Field of Miracles” into my search engine app. The first page of hits all seem to be related to Pisa. As in, the famous leaning tower. I click on a link titled “Why is the area behind the Tower of Pisa called the Field of Miracles?” The answer has something to do with the Italian poet Gabriele D’Annunzio. I’m pretty sure my dad is not suggesting I take up Tuscan poetry. So what else could Pisa mean? Maybe there’s a museum display somewhere in Chicago showcasing blunders of an architectural nature? Another search dead-ends that theory.
Maybe Italy is the key. I look up the number to my father’s favorite Italian restaurant and tap Send. But a five-minute conversation confirms that the restaurant manager hasn’t seen my dad in weeks, and there are no reservations for him on the books.
I disconnect, discouraged but far from throwing in the towel. I scan the Wikipedia entry for Pisa, but nothing grabs me. I change tack and look more into the building itself, the design, the flaw, the man who built it. But there’s nothing that leads me to my dad.
Problem is, my dad is a voracious reader. He’ll read anything from physics texts to pulp private-eye novels. And he never reads a book twice, because his mind’s like Alcatraz—once something’s in, it never gets out. All good con artists are like that. We need to be knowledgeable on a thousand different subjects in order to convince a thousand different marks of our authenticity. So my dad might have been reading up on some obscure piece of Pisa history and it didn’t occur to me to notice. Or Pisa could just be a red herring.
I sigh and put down my phone, rubbing the bridge of my nose to ward off a sudden prickling in my eyes. It’s just hit me—what an impossible task this is. The note could mean anything, or nothing at all. I could be looking in the exact wrong direction. He could be anywhere, waiting for me to figure it out and lead in the cavalry. But what if I don’t figure it out? What if he’s waiting for reinforcements that never come?
I tamp down a wave of nausea and try to rein in the fear galloping through my chest. Having a mental break is not going to do my dad any good. I count silently back from ten, forcing myself to breathe. To think. There’s got to be something I’m missing. And then I look at my phone again and realize that I’m going to be missing the beginning of second period if I don’t get moving.
I force myself to my feet and nod a final thanks to Mike as I head back toward campus and, more specifically, my locker. I need to switch out a couple of books before heading to my morning classes. Plus, I need to set Murphy’s job in motion.
As I pass the girls’ bathroom, I duck in and dig in my bag for a pocket mirror. I lean back against a sink and check the reflection of the back of my head, fluffing my hair and waiting for an opportunity to present itself.
Luckily, I don’t have to wait long. A couple of girls walk in, gabbing about boys. Not surprising, really, since everyone’s obsessed with the upcoming dance. Heather’s one of the organizers, so she’s been subjecting Sam and me to gossip about it for the last month. In any case, I can use the conversational topic to my advantage.
“Who are you going with?” Paula, a thin, reedy girl on the cheer squad with Bryn, asks Harper, a curvier girl on the dance squad.
“Matt, of course,” Harper says. “You?”
“Well, I’m throwing hints at Sebastian, but he’s not getting it.”
“I wonder who Tyler is going to ask,” Harper says, referring to the masculine object of every St. Aggie’s girl’s (and some of the guys’) fantasies.
“And how he’s going to ask,” Paula says. “Jack’s formal proposal to Elise last year was epic.”
I clear my throat, pulling out a tube of lip gloss. “You know, Murphy still hasn’t asked anyone.”
“Murphy? The AV nerd?”
“Geek is the new black, you know,” I say, hiding a smirk behind the applicator brush. “Besides”—I lower my voice to conspiratorial—“I hear he’s the envy of the guys’ locker room, if you know what I mean.” Then I stow the gloss, leave the bathroom, and meander to my nearby locker.
While I twirl the locker dial this way and that, I notice the girls from the bathroom passing by, heads bent together. They are no doubt dissecting my comment from every possible angle. I can’t help but smile—easy as selling candy to a PTA mom.
Then I notice something off about my locker. It smells funny, like wet alley trash. I pull up the metal latch and swing the door open slowly.
A girl behind me screams.
THE WARNING
“You really have no idea who would have done this?”
Susan Porter, St. Agatha’s bulldog dean of students, is glaring suspiciously at me as she calls the janitor on her walkie. I keep my snark in check, but it isn’t easy. My relationship with the dean isn’t what you’d call amicable.
“I really don’t,” I say. I’m not great with authority. Especially when that authority is on to me. “I certainly didn’t put a dead rat in my own locker.”
Her expression tightens, and since her features are already sharp enough to cut, the effect easily cows the more naive students. She’s wasting it on me, but I suspect it’s not something she can turn on and off. Her face just looks that way when she’s aggravated, and she’s almost always aggravated. Don’t get me wrong; she’s great at her job. She somehow manages to keep twelve hundred or so teens from outright revolt without getting so much as a strand of her titian bob out of place. And she’s perpetually suspicious of me, so she must be doing something right.
She scribbles something in a Moleskine notebook with a tiny pencil, both of which she carries in her navy-blue suit-jacket pocket. I’m sure whatever she’s noting is going straight into my file. The dean’s been on my case almost since I started at St. Agatha’s. She can’t have anything substantial against me or she’d have used it by now, but her ability to sense the criminal element is uncanny. I have yet to get a connection to the dean’s office, but when I do, I’m going to prioritize pilfering said file.
“Rest assured, Miss Dupree, that I will find the culprit,” she says, and stalks off.
It sounds more like a threat than a promise, but I’ll take what I can get. If it’s a student prank, she’ll find out. If not …
The janitor arrives, and I move out of his way to give him full access to my gore-covered l
ocker. I try not to watch as he wraps the furry corpse in a piece of brown butcher paper before detaching its tail from the coat hook. I’m not really an animal person, but I still feel sorry for the little guy.
The puddle of guts on the floor of the locker is going to take the janitor longer to clean, so I decide to give up on my books. I turn to head for class and run smack into a hard, warm pillar.
“Are you all right?” asks the pillar.
I step back in surprise and look up, immediately recognizing Tyler Richland, the St. Aggie’s demigod/senior Harper name-dropped in the bathroom. He’s captain of the fill-in-any-sport-here varsity team, he’s popular, and he has a hotness factor that approaches solar levels. You don’t go to St. Agatha’s and not know Tyler Richland. In fact, you don’t live in Chicago and not know Tyler Richland. His dad’s a senator.
“Fine,” I say, and move to go around him.
“I meant about your locker. You must be pretty shaken up.”
I frown at him. I don’t like people telling me how I should feel. And it’s weird that he’s talking to me at all. I’m a sophomore, on top of which I’ve gone to a lot of trouble to stay relatively anonymous. But then, maybe he has a job for me.
“I’d be shaken up,” he continues, turning his charm up a couple of notches. “I’d probably faint.”
“I suppose it’s not the nicest present someone’s ever left me,” I say. My chilliness is starting to thaw under the onslaught; that’s how powerful those molten-chocolate eyes are. But I am nothing if not professional, so I keep my expression neutral.
“Do you know what it’s about?”
“I have an inkling,” I admit, thinking about my trashed apartment. Coincidences are like unicorns—you can believe in them all you want, but that doesn’t make them real.
“Why didn’t you tell the dean?”
“Because it’s none of her business.” I start again in the direction of class. Tyler slides into step next to me. “Can I help you, Tyler?”
“I think I may have seen something.”
I nearly trip over my own foot. “What? Who?”
“I only saw him from the back. Long black coat, black boots. He didn’t look like he belonged here.”
“Do you think you’d recognize him if you saw him again?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Why didn’t you say anything to the dean?”
“I was about to, but it seemed like you didn’t want her involved. I won’t tell her what I saw if you don’t want me to.”
“That’s weirdly thoughtful of you,” I say. “Why so chivalrous?”
He shrugs and smiles. “It’s what I would want. Besides, I’d hate to be on your bad side. It looked like you were on the verge of going for her jugular.”
“That is possibly true,” I say with a half smile. “So, yeah, if you could keep what you saw between us, I’d be grateful.”
“Grateful enough to clue me in?”
I study his face, trying to make out the reason for his interest. Simple curiosity? Concern for my, or his, safety? Something else? I do see concern, but I’m more worried about the curiosity.
“It’s too dangerous.”
Wait, what did I just say? Crap! I meant to say “it’s nothing” or “just a prank” or anything else that would put him off. Not “it’s freaking dangerous and you should definitely be interested now.” Is some errant part of my psycho-girl psyche trying to show off for him? Without permission? I mentally smack that part of me back in line. Unfortunately, it’s not in time to avoid piquing Tyler’s curiosity even more.
“Really?” he says. Yep, definitely more interested. “Well, if it’s too dangerous for me, it’s certainly too dangerous for you.”
I glare at him, though it’s hardly his fault that some ridiculous pubescent impulse hijacked my mouth.
“Maybe I should tell the dean,” he says. His expression reads as cagey. He might not have any intention of telling the dean, but then he steps back a pace or two like he’s going to make good on his threat.
“Wait,” I say, and then change my mind. “Maybe I don’t care that much if you tell the dean.”
“If that were true, you wouldn’t have asked me to wait.”
Ugh, what is wrong with me today? Maybe the rat spooked me more than I thought. Or it’s hormones. Stupid fear-triggered hormones! My dad’s out there. And there are dead rats in my locker. I do not want a rookie, cute or otherwise, underfoot. But the last thing I need is to have the dean breathing down my neck.
“Look, I appreciate your concern, Tyler, but I can handle it.”
He bends his head closer to mine. “You shouldn’t have to. At least, not without help.”
There’s something unreadable in Tyler’s expression, which bugs me. People are generally open books. You can tell what their motivations are in a single exchange, if you know what to listen for. That said, I’m used to being the pursuer, not the target.
“Do you even know my name?” I ask.
“What does that have to do with accepting my help?”
“It has to do with me trying to figure you out. Why are you so insistent on helping me?”
He doesn’t answer right away, but it’s not because he doesn’t have an answer. I can see it there, hovering just behind his eyes.
“Honestly?”
“Yes, please.”
“This is going to sound kind of strange, but …” He pauses, and … blushes? Really? There’s only a hint of pink, but it’s definitely there, on his perfectly sculpted cheekbones. “You didn’t scream.”
“I didn’t scream?”
“When you saw the rat.”
I struggle and fail to come up with why this is a compelling reason to want to help me. Not just want to, but really want to. Enough that he’s blackmailing me for the privilege.
My doubt must be evident on my face, because he continues his explanation. “There’s something about you. Something different.” His eyes linger on mine too long. “I want to find out what it is.”
Okay, that’s unusual. As is the way my heartbeat stumbles when he says it.
“I don’t need help,” I say, and swallow. It’s a losing battle at this point, but so was the Alamo.
“Not even from someone who can potentially ID the guy?”
“You haven’t given me any reason to trust you,” I say.
“I haven’t given you any reason not to, have I?” he says.
I remain skeptical, but he does have a point.
“Besides,” he says, softening his tone. “If something like that happened to my sister and some guy could help her out and didn’t, I’d have a problem with that.”
And my insides have officially melted. For those of you keeping score at home, that’s game, set, and match to Tyler. My inner grifter throws her hands up in disgust.
“What exactly did you have in mind?”
“Meet me tomorrow at the Ballou? I can ask my wide receiver to sketch the guy in the black coat. His senior project is figure drawing.”
“What time?” I ask.
“Four?”
I nod reluctantly. His smile widens, flashing his blindingly white teeth. The late bell rings and students scramble into classrooms.
“See you tomorrow, then,” he says with a wink. “Julep.”
“It’s time to call the cops.”
Around five o’clock the Ballou rapidly loses patronage. St. Aggie’s folks have, for the most part, all shuffled home for dinner and family game night and the perpetual gloating that comes with the extremities of privilege. No one else in the surrounding community seems to need overpriced, froufrou stimulants, or at least, not of the coffee variety. My own coffee was legitimately purchased this time—by Sam, but it counts.
“So you said.” I roll my eyes at Sam over his double-chocolate-hold-the-whip mocha. “But we both know why I’m not going to. It was just a rat, Sam.”
“Yeah, now. But what happens when you ignore the warning? You have to
assume the worst.”
“Whoever’s behind the redecorating of my apartment can’t possibly know about my dad’s note.” I lower my voice in the unlikely event someone is around to hear us. My new friend Barista Mike is the nearest human, but he’s wiping down the bar and seems lost in his own thoughts.
Sam leans forward, lowering his voice to match mine. “They apparently don’t need to know about it to think you have something they want.”
“What if they’re just trying to keep me quiet rather than trying to get something from me?”
“It doesn’t matter why they’re harassing you. It just needs to stop.”
“It does matter if I intend to stop them myself. If I can figure out what they want, I might be able to find out who they are.”
“Find out who who is?” Heather Stratton slides into the seat between me and Sam at the small wooden table. “Are you talking about the rat thing? Paula filled me in. She said Rachelle had a fit.”
Rachelle must have been the one who screamed. Figures. She’s always such a drama queen.
“It was more of a surprised squeak,” I say, taking a sip of my coffee. Bleh—hazelnut. Barista Mike is still on the steep syrups learning curve, apparently.
“Do you know who did it?” she asks in full gossip mode.
It’s clear she thinks our business relationship gives her a backstage pass to Team Julep, which would be annoying if I actually knew anything. Since I don’t, it’s merely amusing.
“No,” I say.
Sam gives me a meaningful look, which Heather correctly interprets to mean that I’m holding out on her. I’d say he’s getting sloppy, except I think he’s done it on purpose.
“But you know why it was put there?” Heather leans forward.
“Just a prank,” I say, adopting the defense I should have used with Tyler.
“Pfft.” She waves a hand. “Val said Tyler saw the guy who put it in your locker.”
Fabulous. Valerie Updike, Heather’s BFF, is only the world’s most proficient gossip. I would know, since I’ve used it to my advantage a time or two. So much for keeping it between us.
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