by Spencer Baum
“What stuff?” Jill said. “You mean the containers?”
“I mean the stuff inside the containers,” said Zack. “There’s hundreds of containers on that boat, and each one has tons of stuff inside of it. Thousands of pounds of junk from China.”
Jill watched as the crane dropped a container on the back of a truck. The workers locked the container into place and the truck drove away, only to be replaced by another one, which received another container.
“The boats bring it over,” said Zack, “and the trucks take it away. Where does it all go?”
“From here? It probably goes to a warehouse,” said Jill.
“I’m sure it does,” said Zack. “But then where? Just imagine all the steps. You and I order things off the Internet, and this is how it gets to us. Boats load containers onto semi-trucks that take it to warehouses where pallets go onto airplanes and then boxes get unloaded on smaller trucks—it’s kind of incredible, don’t you think? I mean, all over the roads of America right now, people are just carting stuff all over the place.”
“I suppose most people don’t appreciate all the work that goes into the things we all take for granted,” Jill said. “Like the stuff we order that…”
“That what?” said Zack.
“That just arrives at our door,” Jill whispered.
“Are you okay? You seem like your mind has gone somewhere else.”
“I’m fine,” Jill said.
But her mind had gone somewhere else. She was thinking about a room in the back of Daciana’s house, and dozens of empty shipping crates inside that room.
Every crate had a label from the same shipping company. Safari Freight & Storage.
“Can we go back now?” said Jill “I should check in with my friends.”
“They miss you when you’re gone?”
“One of them is going to be angry I never returned,” said Jill.
“That guy you were with last night.”
Jill nodded. She meant for her time with Zack to be a quick escape that had her back at the festival in a few minutes. Now, nearly twelve hours later, she had some explaining to do.
Zack drove her back to her house and they said goodbye with a promise from Jill that she would see him again soon.
“Soon as in a few days, not a few months,” said Zack.
“As soon as I can,” said Jill.
She kissed him and got out of his car. As she watched him drive away, she pulled her phone from her pocket and sent a text to Ryan.
Sorry about last night. Hope everything is okay.
Ryan’s response came back almost immediately.
Everything’s fine. When can you come to my house? We have a lot we need to talk about.
Coming over right now, she wrote back.
Twenty minutes later, she rang the doorbell at Ryan’s house. Shamus opened the door and led her inside.
“Ryan is upstairs,” he said. “Shall I call him down?”
“If it’s alright with you I’ll just go up and find him,” Jill said.
“I’m sure he will be thrilled to see you.”
Jill found Ryan in his bedroom, seated at his desk and looking out the window.
“Hey,” she said.
It took him a few seconds to answer.
“Hello, Jill.”
Two words were all it took for Jill to understand where he was coming from. Ryan was angry at her.
“I’m so sorry for what happened last night,” she said.
Still staring out the window, his back to Jill, Ryan said, “It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine. I owe you an apology. I meant for my visit with Zack to be short and then I’d come back to the festival.”
Ryan pushed his chair away from his desk and stood up. He turned and looked at Jill. His eyes were puffy and red.
“Did you sleep okay?” Jill asked.
“I slept fine. I’m totally fine. And it’s no big deal that you didn’t come back. Everyone was scattered all over campus. I don’t think anyone realized you were gone.”
“Oh, alright. Good.”
“Did everything go okay with that guy? What was his name?”
“Zack.”
“Right, did he get what he needed from you?”
“Yes, I took care of that.”
“Is he going to be a problem for you anymore?”
“A problem? No, he’s not a problem.”
“He seemed like a problem last night.”
“He won’t bother us again.”
“What we’re doing is important. Winning Coronation for Nicky-”
“Please don’t lecture me about my own operation, Ryan.”
“I just want to make sure your head is in the right place.”
“My head is fine and I’m ready to be done talking about Zack. What happened at the festival after I left?”
Ryan stared at her for a few seconds before answering. He seemed so angry. Jill might have predicted him to be a little put out about the way the night ended, but not like this. He was holding himself together, but Jill could sense that inside, he was fuming.
“After you left the girls wearing black counted all the money people gave them,” Ryan said.
“How’d that go?”
“Nicky’s in third place now. Six people gave money to Kim. One of them gave her a lot of money. Between the poker game at Daciana’s house, and the checks Kim got last night, she’s overtaken Nicky in the contest.”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Jill. “Maybe it’s even a good thing. There’s enough money in that safe that none of the other games mean that much.”
“Something happened with the safe too.”
“Really? Something bad?”
“No. Something very good, actually. While you were off with that guy, Nicky was keeping her ears open.”
There was an accusatory tone in his voice, as if reminding Jill that she should have been at the festival keeping her ears open too.
“So she heard something,” Jill said. “Something we can use?”
“She overheard Kim’s number.”
“Kim’s number on the safe? Is she sure? Kim wouldn’t let that slip. Maybe it’s a fake.”
“Nicky thinks it’s legitimate. She told me she was standing around the corner while Kim and Rosalyn were talking. They didn’t know she was there. They spoke about Kim’s number. It’s nineteen.”
Jill pulled her phone from her pocket and flipped through the screens until she was able to access her spreadsheet of names and numbers. She went to Kim’s row, and changed the question mark to “19.”
“This is great!” she said. “There’s only one number left to find!”
“That’s right,” said Ryan. “One number. Hopefully we can all stay focused on the task at hand and figure it out.”
Another accusation. Stay focused on the task at hand—clearly meant to remind her that she had strayed from the task she was doing last night. What was with him? Where did he get off talking to her like this? Maybe she needed to remind him that while he spent three years sulking in his bedroom, she had been laying the groundwork for this whole mission to happen.
“Do you have something you want to say to me?” she asked him.
He thought about it before answering. “Yes,” he said.
“I’m listening,” Jill said.
He walked to the other end of his bedroom and opened the door to his closet. He pulled out a paper lantern.
It had Jill’s name on it.
“You need to open your present,” he said. “At school, people might ask what I gave to you.”
“Oh, yes I can do that.”
Ryan handed the lantern to Jill. She reached underneath it and pulled off the canvas pouch attached to the underside. She set the lantern down on the bed, opened the pouch, and poured the contents into her hand.
A pair of diamond earrings came out.
“This is good,” Jill said. “It’s probably exactly what people would expect you to give me.”
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“I thought so,” said Ryan.
“I’ll wear them to school on Monday.”
“Sounds good. Hey, I’ve got some homework to catch up on, so if you don’t mind-”
“Of course,” said Jill. “I’ll see myself out.”
She couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Out of his bedroom, down the hall, down the stairs, through the living room—Shamus was about to open the front door for her when Ryan called out, “Jill, wait!”
She turned around. “Yes?”
“Before you go, I want to give you something.”
A minute later, she was back in Ryan’s bedroom, and he was pulling a glass ring out of the top drawer of his desk.
Seeing the ring took her back in time.
“Oh my God,” she said. “I can’t believe you kept this.”
He handed it to her, and she slid it onto her finger. The feel of it on her skin made her heart race, and transformed everything around her. Ryan’s bedroom, of late a place to talk Network business and strategize about the contest, became an exciting, romantic place when she put on the ring. The smell of his house, the look in his eyes, the way she felt when she was near him—the ring reminded her of how all of that had been.
Once.
“Ryan, I--”
“This ring is what you were supposed to find in the lantern last night. Not a generic pair of diamond earrings.”
“But this ring. It wouldn’t mean anything to the other people at school.”
“No, but it means something to us.”
And now she understood. The kiss at Daciana’s house. The way they danced at Samantha’s party. Her sense that those moments were more than an act.
“A few months ago you came to my house and told me something about Kim Renwick, and the meaning of a secret she was holding over my head,” Ryan said. “I should have given you this ring right when you told me. I’m sorry it took so long.”
“Ryan, this ring…”
She didn’t know what to say. The ring was so charged with emotion for her. It was so special.
“My feelings for you have never changed, Jill. When we broke up, it wasn’t because I wanted to.”
“I know. And I’ll always be grateful to you for what you did for my family. Holding onto that secret—you know how I feel about what you did.”
“The day you released me from that secret, I knew,” Ryan said. “We didn’t have to be broken up anymore. I didn’t have to pretend I didn’t want to be with you.”
“Ryan--”
“Just let me say my peace, Jill. Lord knows I’ve been keeping this bottled up for long enough. I should have given you this ring on the day you told me the truth about your mother and Kim Renwick. I should have told you that, in my heart, you and I never broke up, that for those three years when I separated myself from everyone else at school, my heart was still with you. But I didn’t tell you that day because I was confused. I thought I had feelings for someone else, and I didn’t know what it meant.”
“It’s okay to have feelings for someone else, Ryan. I’ve known from the very beginning how you feel about Nicky.”
“My love for Nicky is different than my love for you,” Ryan said. “I didn’t get that last fall. But I do now. You can love two people, but you can only give your heart to one. It’s you, Jill. It’s always been you.”
She twirled the ring around on her finger.
“You were so angry at me when I got here today,” she said quietly.
“Forgive me for that,” he said. “It’s the pressure of doing all this—sometimes it makes me a total train wreck. I’m getting so obsessed about winning the Coronation contest for Nicky and sometimes I lose sight of what’s really important. What’s right in front of me.”
Still twirling the ring, Jill thought of a few marvelous days from freshman year, when she wore this ring to school and twirled it around on her finger, waiting eagerly for lunch or the final bell so she could be with Ryan again.
“It’s true, Ryan,” she said. “You can love two people, but you can only give your heart to one.”
She took the ring off her finger. Ryan’s eyes opened wide.
“That guy from last night?” he said.
“His name is Zack,” Jill said.
Ryan stepped away. He looked like he could hardly breathe.
“I’m so sorry, Ryan. What you and I had was special. It always will be. But I’ve moved on. I’m with Zack now.”
She held out the ring for Ryan. He shook his head.
“It’s yours,” he said. He was beginning to cry. “It’s always been yours.”
Feeling tears welling up in her own eyes, Jill spoke quickly, before she was too emotional to get the words out.
“We don’t need to play this game at school anymore,” she said. “This thing where we’re pretending to be a couple—we don’t have to do it now. Coronation has changed since Daciana rolled out that safe. The cover story, about us, we don’t have to do it.”
“Like hell we don’t!” Ryan snapped. “There are still blank numbers on your spreadsheet, right?”
“Ryan, please don’t be angry. This is hard for me too.”
“If people at school think we’ve broken up they won’t talk to me,” Ryan said. “And I’ll be damned if I’m going to get frozen out when we’ve only got a few numbers left on the spreadsheet. We’re only a few numbers away from opening that safe!”
“You don’t have to do this,” Jill said. “You’re not a part of this. I can handle the mission.”
“You will not push me out! I will make sure Nicky wins the Coronation contest!”
Jill sat still for a moment while Ryan’s voice echoed in the bedroom. She didn’t know that she had ever seen him like this.
“Okay, if that’s what you want,” she said quietly. “I think I should go.”
“I’ll pick you up on Monday morning,” Ryan said. “We arrive at school as a couple. We focus on filling in the blanks on that spreadsheet. We will open that safe and Nicky Bloom will win the Coronation contest.”
“Right,” Jill said. “See you Monday, Ryan.”
Chapter 33
The final weeks of February are a time of conflict in Washington, DC. Virginia is ready to be warm. Maryland still wants to be cold. Washington, trapped in the middle, becomes a mixing pot of stagnant air and low pressure systems. The political gridlock on the Hill gets mirrored in the air surrounding it, with cold and warm fighting for space. Rapid winds begin to swirl, grabbing trash from the gutters and spreading it across the streets and sidewalks, where it inevitably gets soaked in wet, slushy snow.
And sometimes ice.
On the Monday following the paper lantern festival, the eclectic DC weather struck, drenching the Washington-Baltimore corridor in slush during the day, which turned to ice overnight. The nation’s capital became a skating rink. School was cancelled for the first half of the week, and when it resumed, it was in spirit only. Most of the Thorndike student body skipped class, choosing to return to campus on Friday night, when Daciana called eight more people to the front of the chapel to try the safe.
Petra, Anthony, Emma French, Emma Langner, Ben, Riley, Jordan, and Matt went to the altar that night. All of them spun the first dial to number thirteen, unaware that they were falling for a ruse about Samantha’s number.
None of them got the safe open.
The week following saw more sunshine, more students at school, and eight more people fail to open the safe. For Nicky, it was comforting to watch. The entire school was mixed up about the first number of the combination, and no one seemed close on the second or third numbers either.
Ninety-eight, seventy-seven, nineteen. Nicky had the numbers in her head, and Jill had them written on her spreadsheet. All they needed was Mary’s number and the safe was theirs to open. Sadly, Mary had done a superb job of keeping her number a secret. No one at school had a clue what it was.
The same went for the most loyal members of Kim’s crew. As winter
gave way to spring, there were only eight names left on Jill’s master list that didn’t have numbers attached. Jill, Ryan, and Nicky focused in on those names, dividing them up between the three of them and trying anything and everything to get them to talk. Ryan offered bribes. Jill hacked into their email accounts. Nicky followed them around at school.
None of them had any success.
It was only at the chapel gatherings on Friday nights that they were able to shrink the unknowns on Jill’s spreadsheet. On the first Friday in March, Daciana pulled number sixty-four from the bin and Alex McCombs came to the altar. Jill filled in his number on the spreadsheet, and eight question marks became seven. On the next Friday, Pauline Wabash was called up, and the seven question marks became six.
Helena and Phillip were growing impatient with the whole process.
“You kids have got to do something more than wait for Daciana to announce the numbers,” Helena said to Nicky. “You’re finding out the numbers at the same time as everyone else.”
“I know,” Nicky said. “But we’ve got a few people who can’t be persuaded to speak, and until they talk to us, we don’t have any other options.”
“Who isn’t talking to you?”
“Kim’s people.”
“But you already have Kim’s number!”
“You know that, and I know that, but Kim doesn’t know that. She and her father are using the good old Renwick powers of persuasion to make Rosalyn, Art, and Andrea keep their mouths shut about their own numbers. Kim has a master list of everyone’s numbers just like we do, and she wants to make it as hard as possible for us to fill in our list.”
“I don’t understand why people like Art Tremblay aren’t talking to you,” Helena said. “Kim had him under her thumb before, and you worked around it.”
“That was when I was new and interesting,” Nicky said. “I’m not new and interesting anymore. I’m the girl who got used in a scheme to put Samantha over the top.”
“Then Jill and Ryan need to be doing more.”
“They’re doing all they can. This game is a tricky one for us to play. Kim and her father are good at making people keep secrets.”