“I heard SAT scores are coming out this week,” he said.
“They’re supposed to. Here’s hoping I didn’t tank it.” I raised my carton of milk in a mock toast.
“You didn’t.” He sounded confident. I wished I could be too.
“I’ll find out one way or another soon enough,” I said.
He reached over to Julia’s lunch tray and started eating her fries. “What?” he said when I made a face at him. “She won’t notice. I’ve gotten double fries for weeks now.”
He was right that Julia and David didn’t seem to notice anything. Or require air. I could see over their heads to where Alex and Raj were sitting. I could tell they were arguing, though their heads were low and close together. They were probably whispering to keep Justin from hearing. I hoped she was able to convince him to talk to us. The more I thought about it, the more sure I was that he wasn’t involved, that I’d been wrong to ever think he was. It made me feel terrible.
“You should go back over there,” Arthur said. He didn’t sound mean about it, just matter-of-fact. “It’s where you’d rather be, isn’t it?”
“I’m happy here,” I said.
I wasn’t getting any better at lying.
Alex met me at the door of the cafeteria on my way out. “He’s still mad but he’s coming around,” she said. “He said he’ll meet us later this week or over the weekend. You around?”
“Doing nothing but waiting for my stupid SAT scores,” I said.
“You’re going to do great,” she said. “I’ll let you know when I hear from him.”
At least he was willing to talk to us. For that, I could be patient. I was just worried that Blocked Sender would give me more instructions when I hadn’t managed to pull off the last ones yet.
Back to waiting.
I spent so much time checking and rechecking my phone for texts that I wasn’t at all prepared for Wednesday afternoon when the email popped up from the Educational Testing Service. My SAT scores were available, it said, and told me where to log in.
I’d been home from school a couple of hours, sitting on the living room couch surrounded by books, trying in vain to study for finals but really chewing my nails over what Blocked Sender would tell me to do next. But the ETS email jolted me back into reality, or at least the reality I wanted to be in. I wanted my only source of stress to be finals and SATs and college applications; I already missed the days when I thought those were my biggest problems.
I ran upstairs and got on my computer. I clicked through all the menus, typed in my username and password, and waited for the page to load. Normally the internet around here was lightning fast—we were in Silicon Valley, after all—but with every high school student who’d taken the SAT online at once, things were bound to be slow.
Finally, though, the page showed up.
READING: 750
MATH: 780
ESSAY: 23
Holy crap, I’d nailed it.
NAILED IT!
I couldn’t believe it. I hit refresh a couple of times to make sure what I was seeing was real, then logged out and logged in again to check that I’d given the right information, that it wasn’t some sort of mistake. But there it was, over and over again.
The Novalert had really worked. All I’d needed to do was get over my own anxiety and fear. I didn’t know who to call first. Mom? Dad? Alex? They’d all made me promise to get in touch as soon as I’d heard. I decided to be a good daughter and check in with Mom. She must have been waiting to hear from me—the scores were supposed to come out after two weeks, and it had already been two and a half—because she picked up her cell right away, a rarity when she was at work.
“Honey, I’m so proud of you!” I could hear her beaming over the phone. I loved hearing her say it. “You’re a lock for Stanford now. Make sure to call your father, and we’ll go someplace nice for dinner tonight.”
“On a school night?” I asked, in mock horror, ignoring the Stanford comment.
“You’ll survive one night without studying through dinner. See you when we get home.”
I called my dad next, then Alex. I even texted Ms. Davenport, who’d made me promise to tell her how things had gone. Everyone wanted to celebrate with me, which made me feel great, though it also made me want to call Becca. She’d seen me through the disastrous PSAT sophomore year, and she would understand exactly what this meant to me in a way Alex and Raj never could. But I couldn’t call her.
Dinner with my parents that night was actually kind of fun, at least until they started getting all excited about Stanford and reminiscing about their time there, how they’d met, what all their friends were doing now.
“You realize I’m applying to more schools than just Stanford, right?” I said.
“Of course,” Mom said. “You need a backup plan. Berkeley, maybe UC Davis, just in case?”
“She doesn’t have to live in our backyard,” Dad said.
Finally, I thought. He understands.
“Los Angeles isn’t so far. UCLA is always an option.”
Or not. This was as good a time to bring it up as any, given what a good mood everyone was in. “I was thinking about applying to some East Coast schools,” I said.
“Oh, you don’t want to do that,” Mom said. “You’d be so far away. And you’ve never had to deal with that kind of weather. You’d miss the sun.”
As if she knew better than I would what I’d like. I hated that she’d even assume it. I was actually kind of excited about the idea of winter; I’d only seen snow in Tahoe, and it wasn’t the same. California was so bland with its near lack of seasons. “There are some really great schools out there. And it’s not like I couldn’t come home and visit.”
“It will be harder than you think,” Mom said. “It’s not like you could just come home for the weekend and do laundry.”
“I can do my own laundry.”
“And the time difference—we’d have trouble finding time to talk.”
I was tempted to point out how little we talked even with me living here, given how much time the two of them spent at work, but I didn’t want to make them mad.
“Well, you do what you have to,” Dad said. “As long as it’s not Harvard!” He said it jokingly, but I had a feeling he was serious.
“What’s wrong with Harvard?” I asked, though I knew the answer. I’d been hearing them complain about it for years. “It has one of the best math programs in the country.”
Dad shook his head. “Listen, I’m not saying it isn’t a great school. But you have to understand its reputation out here. It’s one thing to go off to college someplace far, but there are so many jobs out here for someone with your skills, and if you want to come back, that degree comes with a lot of baggage. People here just don’t respect it the way they do out east. And Stanford grads are very loyal—they’d be skeptical that you chose Harvard over Stanford, especially since you’re from here and both of us are alums.”
“Besides, we were so happy there,” Mom said. “We just want you to be as happy as we were.”
“Just because something made you happy doesn’t mean it will work for me,” I said.
“You’ve got a little time to think about this,” Dad said. “How about we have our nice dinner and talk about it more later, when we’re done celebrating your wonderful accomplishment?”
My wonderful accomplishment that required taking illegal drugs and had led to me getting blackmailed? Sure. I almost laughed at the thought of telling them, but then I felt kind of sick. It wasn’t funny; it was awful. But I didn’t want them to know that. Maybe I could avoid dealing with this for a while. Maybe Blocked Sender would leave me alone.
“Let’s get dessert,” I said.
15.
I woke Saturday morning to the sound of the doorbell ringing. “Kara, it’s for you,” Mom called out.
I hadn’t even gotten out of bed, let alone started SCAM. “Give me a minute!” I yelled back. It was probably Alex; I’d texted her last n
ight that I’d be home today, and we’d talked about hanging out. I threw on jeans and a sweatshirt, ran into the bathroom, and got ready as fast as I possibly could.
But when I came downstairs, it wasn’t Alex hanging out in the kitchen with my mom, drinking coffee and chatting. It was Raj.
“What are you doing here?” I blurted out, before I had a chance to think about it.
“Kara, that’s not how we greet company,” Mom said. “I’ve been enjoying getting a chance to meet one of your new friends.”
Did that mean Raj was my friend again? “I thought you might want to go talk,” he said.
“Uh, sure,” I said. “Let me get my coat.” I ran back upstairs and put on a jacket.
Raj was waiting by the door when I got downstairs. “I didn’t know you had a car,” I said, for lack of anything better to say.
“I borrowed one from my parents,” he said, clicking the remote so the doors unlocked. The car was gray and bland and very adult, nothing I’d imagine Raj would pick out for himself. He went around to my side and opened the door for me. It was such a nice, unexpected moment of chivalry that I almost wanted to cry. Who did that? Especially someone who was mad at you?
“Thanks,” I said. I looked away as I buckled my seat belt so he didn’t see me tearing up.
He got in and put on his seat belt, not turning the car on right away, and not turning to me. “Look, I know Alex and I talked about us all meeting up together, but I thought it might be easier for us to talk one-on-one. It seems like what’s going on is more about you, anyway.”
That was true, and there was no need to tell him that the whole mess at his house was kind of Alex’s idea. I didn’t want to get her in any more trouble with Raj than she was already in. “You’re right about that,” I said. “I’m really sorry about what happened. I can explain.”
“I’m ready to listen.”
I hoped he really meant it. “I appreciate it,” I said as he started driving. “Where are we going?”
“I thought we could probably use some coffee.”
“Philz, then?” It was pretty much the only place anyone from school hung out.
“Too many people we know. There’s a place the next town over that’s not bad—okay if we go there?”
“Wherever you want.” I was so relieved he was willing to talk to me that I didn’t care where we went. In my head I rehearsed explaining what happened, though I wasn’t sure knowing the whole story was going to make him any less mad.
We rode quietly for a while, down El Camino Real, past strip malls and car washes and fast-food places, until we got to a small café called Mary’s Place. It was run-down and mostly empty, with little tables in front and a row of booths in the back, which was perfect. I ordered a mocha and Raj got a black coffee and we sat in a quiet booth where no one who came in could see us.
Best to just launch right into it. “I’ve been getting these text messages,” I said. “Pictures of us at that party, when I got the Novalert from you, and other stuff too.” I got out my phone to show him, watching his face as he skimmed through the texts to see if I could read anything in his expression. I had a feeling I’d learn more from that than anything else.
And I was right. No shock, no confusion. A nod of recognition. Just like Alex.
“This is happening to you too,” I said. It wasn’t a question.
“It was,” he said. “I should have realized what was going on. This is all my fault.”
Wait, what? Had I been wrong again? Was it his fault because he was responsible for this somehow? I opened my mouth, but I wasn’t sure whether to ask questions or start yelling. My instincts had been wrong before, though, so instead I just took a sip of my coffee and waited.
“My turn to explain,” he said. “I’ll start at the beginning.” He took a deep breath. “I started getting texts maybe a few months after I got here. I’d had some problems in England, and somehow this person seemed to know about them.”
“Problems?” I asked. Raj seemed so carefree; it was hard to imagine him having real problems.
“Some school stuff. Things I didn’t want my parents to know about. I don’t know how he found out, but he knew, and he knew my parents were doctors and told me to find a way to get drugs from them that I could sell to kids at school. Then I’d have to get him a cut.”
“That’s crazy,” I said.
“I know, right?”
But I hadn’t necessarily meant it that way. The story sounded so crazy I wasn’t sure I believed him. I waited for him to keep talking.
“Every month I’d leave money in an envelope somewhere in school, and when I went back to check, the money was gone. I tried hanging around and waiting to see who came, but I never managed to catch the person in the act.”
So far, I wasn’t getting a sense of why any of this was his fault, though I was starting to worry about what Blocked Sender was going to ask me to do. And what he might know. What if he somehow had pictures of the monster? The thought of people seeing my actual face wasn’t as scary as the thought of going to jail, but it was still horrible. My stomach started feeling all twisted up.
“A while ago I got instructions to start sending the money online.”
Now at least some of the pieces were starting to add up. I wasn’t sure what Alex had told him, if anything, so I didn’t mention that this had probably happened when Alex helped Blocked Sender set up his finances.
“It was this whole horribly complicated thing, but I did it. Except . . .” He stopped and took a sip of his coffee, then put the cup down and started picking at his fingernails. I hadn’t noticed the torn cuticles before. I guessed we all dealt with our stress in different ways.
“Except?” I prodded.
“Except recently I stopped sending money,” he said. “Or rather I stopped selling. I think that’s why he came after you—to get me to start again.”
“I don’t understand. Why would coming after me make you start again?”
“Because I think he thought you’d ask me for the prescription. And he must have known why I stopped, though I can’t imagine how.”
“Well, why did you stop?”
He looked away for a minute, trying to decide what to say. I remembered reading about microexpressions and ways to tell people were lying, but I couldn’t remember which direction they’d look in when they weren’t telling the truth. Finally, he turned back to me. “I stopped selling because of you.”
“What?”
He started picking at his nails again. “I know Alex always jokes about how I’m this big flirt, and she doesn’t take me seriously. I asked her about you right after we met, whether you could ever be into me. She told me drug dealers weren’t your type.”
That was horrifying. I’d said that to Alex in confidence; I’d never meant for him to find out. I’d thought she was someone I could trust; I’d thought we were really starting to become friends, even if it would never be the same kind of friendship I’d had with Becca. “We were joking around,” I said.
“Oh, I know. She thought she was teasing me. But it hit me really hard—I liked you as soon as I met you, and you weren’t going to take me seriously if I kept doing what I was doing. So I stopped selling.”
“Because of me.” I had trouble believing that too, though I was pretty close to convinced that he was telling the truth about the other stuff now.
“Because of you. Or the idea of you. You’re smart and independent and lovely and you don’t seem caught up in any of the stupid things other kids at this school are into. I liked being able to help you with your SAT problem; you seem like someone who doesn’t ask for help all that often, and I liked how it felt to be useful to someone in that way. And maybe I’m not the guy for you, and maybe we’ll just be friends, but I didn’t want anything to get in the way of the possibilities. I don’t want to be that guy, the one someone like you couldn’t be with because of all this sordidness.”
I didn’t know what to say. I’d believed Alex when she
said he was a big flirt, and even when there had been signs that maybe he really was into me, I’d brushed them aside. I hadn’t thought about how that might have made him feel. “I never meant to make you feel bad,” I said. I was tempted to reach out and touch his hand, but that didn’t seem like a good idea. Somewhere in the back of my mind was a flutter of excitement that he really did like me, a flutter that threatened to turn into a whole flock of butterflies if I thought about the implications of what he was saying. He’d been blackmailed into selling drugs; he wasn’t a dealer by choice. Which meant the only thing that had kept me from admitting how much I liked him was gone. But now wasn’t the time.
“I never thought you had,” he said. “But you see it now, don’t you? How me quitting handing out pills and sending money to some stranger set all this in motion?”
“So that’s what you meant in saying this was your fault.” I was relieved to hear it; I finally understood his logic, at least. But he was falling for the same thing Alex and I both had at first, thinking that we were the center of everything. She’d thought she was the only one being blackmailed until I told her what was happening to me; I’d immediately started suspecting old friends who had nothing to do with any of this because I felt guilty about lying to them. The more I learned, the more I was sure we were all wrong. “I don’t think so,” I said. “I think it’s bigger than that. But I don’t know what to do about it. Maybe it’s time for us to come clean.”
“We can’t do that!” He sat up straight, like I’d just poked him with a Taser or something.
“God, whatever Blocked Sender’s got on you must be pretty bad,” I said.
“It’s not that. I just can’t put my parents through more than I already have.”
“It doesn’t sound like you put them through anything so far—you said you were trying to keep them from finding things out.”
“It’s not quite that simple,” he said. “If you don’t mind, I’d rather not talk about it right now. I feel I’ve revealed enough for the moment, don’t you think?”
He had; he was a whole lot braver than I was, that’s for sure. I knew the nice thing to do would be to tell him that I might be starting to have feelings for him too, to tell him that he hadn’t done all this for nothing, but I wasn’t sure I was ready to follow through on what could come after that. I was too worried about the whole Blocked Sender situation to think about what I could finally acknowledge was my own stupid crush. “I really am sorry about all this,” I said instead, hoping he understood at least some of what I was trying to tell him.
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