“As a matter of fact, I do.”
“Are we ever going to get to meet this guy?” Alex asked. “You’ve been hiding him for kind of a ridiculously long time. I bet he’s some adorable closeted sophomore.” Her words were light, but her voice was sharp. Almost like she was jealous. Weird, since there was no reality where Justin was a feasible Prospect.
“My lips are sealed,” Justin said.
“That won’t make for a very fun date,” Raj said. “We’ll have more fun watching movies. My house, as usual? My parents will be out Saturday night.”
“Excellent,” Alex said. “Your place is perfect.” She nudged me with her elbow.
“I’m in,” I said. Clearly Alex had a plan. I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like it, but that wasn’t going to stop me from going along.
I picked up Alex on my way over to Raj’s—she knew where it was, and Raj had put us on snack duty, so it made sense to go to the Quik-Stop in between her house and his. When she came out, I immediately realized I’d picked the wrong outfit—I’d gone with casual-but-cute, with colored skinny jeans, a tank top, sweater, and flats, but she was basically wearing pajamas, hair tied up in a ponytail, no makeup.
“I’m totally overdressed,” I said.
“You look great. This is what I always wear to movie night.”
“It’s very seventh-grade sleepover,” I said. “You’ll have to warn me next time.”
“I bet Raj will appreciate the effort,” she said, and elbowed me as I started to drive.
“Don’t get your hopes up. I’m not in a dating frame of mind right now. Are you going to tell me what the plan is?”
“Just follow my lead. Better that you don’t know the details.”
We pulled into the Quik-Stop; it turned out we’d both skipped dinner, so we were starving. It didn’t take us long to pick out three different kinds of Pringles (plain, barbecue, and pizza-flavored), three different kinds of M&Ms (plain, peanut, and pretzel), and an assortment of the weirdest sodas we could find. We’d brought a Whole Foods reusable grocery bag to put everything in, which struck us as hilarious, since the food we’d brought was pretty much the opposite of Whole, and we were still giggling about it when we rang Raj’s doorbell.
“Hello, ladies,” Raj said when he opened the door. He was wearing jeans and a short-sleeved green T-shirt over a long-sleeved black one. He looked as good as ever, and I felt a pang of guilt about whatever it was we were about to do. Except, I reminded myself, there was no reason to feel guilty if it turned out he was the reason why we had to do it in the first place. “Kara, you look lovely. Alex, you forgot your teddy bear.”
“I was going to borrow one of yours,” she said, and handed him the bag of snacks.
He took it and pretended to collapse under its heft. “Did you spend your body weight in money at Whole Foods?” he asked, then peered in. “Ah. The bag is just a ruse. I sense Kara’s influence in all the plain variations here.”
Alex smirked at me. “Raj seems familiar with your taste in snack food,” she said. “Interesting.”
“That’s the kind of thing friends know about each other. What are we watching?” It wasn’t a subtle way to change the subject, but it was the best I could do.
“Come in and get settled and we’ll go through the Netflix queue,” Raj said. “Alex made her own list last time. Apparently my selections were insufficient.”
“Wait, aren’t you going to give Kara the tour?” Alex asked. “This is her first time here. Unless you guys aren’t telling me something.”
I rolled my eyes at her. But I’d said I’d follow her lead, and this was most likely part of the plan.
“Happy to oblige,” Raj said. “Follow me, ladies.” He led us down the hall. “Kitchen and dining room over here to your left. Note the predominance of takeout menus on the fridge. Workaholic parents equals a lack of home cooking.”
“It’s like being in my own house,” I said.
“What’s your favorite restaurant?”
“Alex’s house,” I said, and she laughed. “What’s yours?”
“I’m partial to Thai Palace myself, not having gotten an invitation to dinner from Ms. Nguyen lately. But after living in England, I’ll eat just about anything—I basically survived on takeaway curries for years. The only thing I’m picky about in the States is Indian food. Once you’ve had Indian food in India, there’s no going back.”
“I am so doing that someday,” I said.
“Into travel, are you?” Raj asked.
“Anything to get away from Marbella.”
“Well, you can’t get much farther than India.”
We passed a couple of closed doors—“Parental office and the bathroom, respectively,” Raj said—before we reached the end of the hall and a staircase. “Bedrooms on the next level. Are you sure you ladies will be able to contain yourselves?”
“We’ve managed so far,” Alex said as we followed him up the stairs.
He led us to a foyer surrounded by three doorways. “Parents’ room to the left, Priya’s room to the right, mine in the middle,” he said. “Explore at your leisure.”
All three rooms were tidy and simply decorated—his parents’ was navy and cream, his sister’s was pink and yellow, and Raj’s was white. But where his parents’ walls were covered with art, and his sister’s were covered with pictures of British boy bands, Raj’s walls were bare.
Or were they? I walked in and peered a little closer. I could see the edges of some pieces of tape, as well as pin holes. I turned to Raj, who was trying to keep from cracking up. “I wondered if you’d be able to tell,” he said. “I did some editing.”
“No kidding,” Alex said, emerging from Raj’s parents’ room. “Aren’t your walls usually covered with soccer players and swimsuit models?”
“Guilty as charged,” he said, holding up his hands. “But I wanted to make a good impression.”
“Way too late for that,” Alex said.
I thought it was sweet, actually, but I wasn’t about to say so. “Let’s go pick the movie,” I said.
We went back downstairs into the living room, all fluffy rugs and comfy couches and brightly patterned blankets, though hardly the explosion of color Raj had told me about, along with a huge flat-screen TV. Raj went to the kitchen as we got settled in, putting snacks into bowls and ice into glasses for our sodas. “We can watch whatever suits your fancy,” he called out. “You can go through Alex’s list or pick a category.”
“Quick, come here, while he’s busy,” Alex whispered.
I scooted over on the couch.
“I did a quick scan of his parents’ room to see if they kept their doctor stuff there. Didn’t find anything. One of us is going to have to get into their office.”
“We can’t do that!” I whispered back.
“Sure we can. The office is right by the bathroom. We’ll just say we have to go, and if he catches us, we’ll say we went into the wrong room by accident. I’ll do it if you want.”
I got the sense that she kind of wanted to—her eyes were all shiny and she looked excited. But it was too much of a risk. “I’ll do it,” I said. “It’s my problem; I have to deal with it. But why the office? Why not get the ones Raj already stole?”
“He might notice,” she said. “And we already know his parents didn’t notice when he took theirs.”
“What’s all the whispering?” Raj asked, setting snacks and drinks on the coffee table and sitting at the other end of the couch.
“Just picking the movie,” Alex said. “How about a nice conspiracy theory? Have you guys seen The Usual Suspects?”
“About a million times,” Raj said, at the same time as I said, “No.”
“That’s the one, then,” Alex said. “Raj, you don’t mind watching it again, right?”
“It will be a pleasure to introduce it to someone else,” he said.
“Are you sure?” I asked. I didn’t know what Alex was thinking, bringing attention to conspiracy the
ories right now, but I’d rather have watched something else. Something light and fun. “Wouldn’t a comedy be better?”
“Trust me, this will be worth it,” Alex said.
Raj grabbed the remote from Alex—“Such a guy move, Raj. Not cool.”—and started the movie. I was afraid at first I wouldn’t be able to concentrate now that I knew what I’d have to do, but the story grabbed me right away. I was usually good at figuring out who the bad guy was in movies like this—the logic problems came in handy—and I had a pretty good idea this time, too. But Alex nudged me just as the cop started accusing the narrator of lying, and I couldn’t wait any longer.
“Can we take a break for a sec?” I asked. “Raj, the bathroom is that way, right?”
He pointed toward the hallway. “I’ll pause it,” he said.
“No need. I’ll catch up in a minute.” I didn’t want to risk the quiet, even if Alex could probably cover for me.
I walked down the hall and started opening doors, figuring out which room was the office and which one was the bathroom. I turned the bathroom light on and closed the door, then went into the office and closed that door too, using my phone as a flashlight.
Being there was creepy, and not just because it was dark, though that was part of it. The office was a mess, with stacks of paper all over the floor and on the ornate wooden desk. I had no idea how I was supposed to find anything, though it was a comfort to know that not everyone in the house was perfectly neat all the time. How his parents actually got work done in here was beyond me.
I moved the flashlight toward the desk and sat in the desk chair so I could start going through the drawers. They were all full of junk, though—pens and notebooks and toys embossed with drug company logos. There was a stress ball with a smiley face on it and Novalert’s logo, which seemed appropriate. I was tempted to steal it, but I reminded myself of the task at hand.
Digging through the drawers didn’t get me anywhere—there wasn’t a prescription pad in sight. And it was taking me longer than I thought. I had to get back to the movie. Besides, I really wanted to know who the bad guy was.
I stood up to push the chair back, but my shoe caught in the wheel, and when the chair rolled back on the hardwood floor faster than I expected, it took me with it. Why couldn’t there have been a fluffy rug in this room? Then I wouldn’t have wiped out loudly enough for Raj to hear. Because I’d barely managed to stand up again when the door opened and the light went on.
“This isn’t the bathroom,” he said. And he sounded mad.
14.
Busted.
But maybe I could cover. “Um, no, I just got a little lost,” I said. Just like I’d planned. Except I’d been gone way too long for that story to work now. I tried to pass it off with a joke. “Good thing you showed up or I’d have peed in the closet by accident.”
He didn’t look amused. “You’d have figured it out a lot faster if you’d turned on the light. And the light in the bathroom is on. So you must have found that first. What’s going on, Kara?”
“I can explain.” But I didn’t know where to start, or how much to admit.
Raj stood in front of me with his arms crossed over his chest. “Go for it.”
“I just— I have to—”
“She needs a Novalert prescription,” Alex said. She’d come up behind Raj and I hadn’t even noticed.
“I don’t understand. I thought you didn’t want any more Novalert after the SAT.”
“I don’t.”
“Then why do you need a prescription?”
“I don’t, exactly.”
“But Alex just said—”
“It’s complicated,” I said. “I don’t need a prescription for myself, but I do need one. I remembered you said you got prescription pads from your parents, so I thought it might be easiest to just get one of theirs, if they were just lying around.” No need to tell him this was Alex’s idea; he was clearly furious, and his fury might as well be directed at me. They’d been friends longer, after all.
“Let me see if I understand.” His voice was quiet, but in a scary way. “You needed a prescription but not for yourself, so you thought it would be easier to steal from my parents?” Getting louder now. “Rather than just asking me?”
“I had my reasons,” I said. True, they didn’t feel like great reasons now that I’d been caught, but still.
“You want to tell me what they are?” He looked over at Alex. “How about you? I’ll take an explanation from either one of you.”
“It’s complicated,” she said.
“Yeah, I think Kara covered that already,” he said.
I didn’t know what to do. He seemed genuinely angry, which indicated that he really didn’t know why I was doing this; if he was Blocked Sender, or was working with him, he’d know why I needed the prescription. Maybe telling him was the right thing to do; then we’d find out whether he was in the same boat we were.
But what if I was wrong? What if he was a better actor than I thought, or there was something else we hadn’t considered? I stayed quiet.
“So this whole movie night was just a cover,” he said, finally. “This was the plan all along.”
I looked at Alex, helpless. She didn’t know what to say either. I felt awful. How could we ever have thought this was the right move? “I’m really sorry,” I said. “We’ll go.”
“That’s probably a good idea,” he said.
I grabbed Alex’s arm and practically dragged her out of the house. “That was a disaster,” I said.
“I know, I’m sorry,” she said as we got in the car. “I thought it would be easier. And I thought I’d be able to keep him from going after you. But he was so worried when you were gone so long. It was kind of sweet, really. I almost forgot that there was a possibility he was behind all of this. I kept alternating between wanting to tell him and wanting to kill him.”
I wanted to get out of there, but I felt too shaky to drive, so we sat in the car for a minute. “Do you really think he’s part of this?” I asked. “I mean, now? He didn’t seem to know what was going on.”
“I know,” she said. “I kind of feel like the worst person ever for even thinking such bad stuff about him.”
“What do we do now? Should we go back and talk to him?”
“We should give him some time to cool off,” she said. “Give him the weekend. He’ll calm down, and we can explain everything.”
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do in the meantime. I have to get that prescription, and I have no other way.” If we weren’t going back in, then we needed to leave. I pressed the button to turn the car on and the stereo started screaming at us. We’d been in such a good mood on the way over, listening to music and singing as loudly as we could, windows down in the cool Northern California evening air. I turned the radio off and the silence was eerie. The Prius was in electric mode, so even the car wasn’t making any noise.
“We’ll think of something,” Alex said. “After we’ve talked to him.”
“I don’t think he’s going to want to talk to us. What we did wasn’t very cool.”
“Trust me, I’ve known him longer than you have.”
“Not that long,” I said. He’d only been here a year, after all.
“Yeah, but we kind of bonded early. He showed up at a rough time for me.”
I glanced over at her, but she was looking down. We’d never really talked about what our lives had been like before we started hanging out. I wasn’t about to get into all the drama with Becca and Isabel, and I’d assumed Alex was exactly what she seemed to be: a fun party girl with lots of guy friends but no one she was really close to. “What was going on?”
“It’s not worth getting into right now. But he was a good friend to me. He’s got a really big heart, for all his flirty goofy stuff.”
“And we tried to take advantage of it,” I said.
“We had reasons. And if we’re right that he isn’t Blocked Sender, then there’s a pretty good chance he’s
in the same position we are. Which means he’ll definitely understand.”
“I hope so,” I said.
“I’m sure of it. Besides, we still haven’t finished the movie.”
I looked over at her again. She was smiling now. “We’re never going to get to finish it,” I said. “Maybe you just need to tell me how it ends.”
“It’s the person you least expect,” she said. “It always is.”
Raj glared at Alex and me as we walked into the cafeteria on Monday. “I don’t think the weekend was long enough,” I said.
“You may be right,” she said. “But I don’t think we should wait too long. Let me go over there and see if he’ll meet us after school. You lie low for a bit.”
“What makes you think he’ll be willing to talk to you? He’s mad at both of us.”
“Yeah, but I’ve got the history. Let me try, anyway.”
“Good luck,” I said, and went to go sit with the Brain Trust.
They looked surprised to see me, which was understandable. “What an honor,” Arthur said. His black hair was as disheveled as ever, though he still constantly ran his hands through it to try to smooth it out. Julia and David had discovered the joy/grossness of PDA and ignored me to make out.
“I’ve just been branching out a little,” I said. “Is it okay for me to sit here?”
“Sure. It’s not like I have anyone else to talk to.” He glanced over at the liplock. “Things have escalated, as you can see.”
We started talking about classes, as if I’d never left. But it was different now. I saw everyone through the filter of Blocked Sender: Could this person be capable? Could this person hate me? Arthur and I had never been anything more than acquaintances, and his parents were Harvard alums so I probably wasn’t even competition for him, really. He had a big crush on a girl in orchestra with him, so it wasn’t like he was pining away, angry at me for not being into him. Julia had tried to get us together a while back, when she and David were sneaking around thinking the rest of us didn’t know, but he’d made it clear I wasn’t his type. Which was fine; he wasn’t mine either.
He was safe. He wasn’t Blocked Sender.
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