Pushing Perfect

by Michelle Falkoff

  “Maybe,” Raj said.

  “I’d like to think so,” Alex said. “If I’m wrong about him, then I don’t think I can trust my judgment about anyone.”

  She got out her phone and sent the text message.

  Raj polished off the rest of the fries while we waited, but Alex just sat and nervously stirred her shake.

  Finally, Justin texted back.

  Be there at 5:30.

  That meant we had hours to kill—it was only two—so we decided to go back to Raj’s house and watch the rest of The Usual Suspects. Alex was right; I hadn’t seen the ending coming. The creepiness of it made us all anxious, though, and we still had time, so we watched some dumb comedy to try to take our minds off things before we headed back to the diner.

  Eventually it was time to go. We drove over together in my car, Raj in the front seat, Alex in the back, complaining about the radio station like a little kid. The music was a distraction, but it lasted only until we sat back down at the table we’d left just hours before. Not-Pinky-the-waitress didn’t seem super happy to see us, at least not until we ordered more food.

  And then we sat, waiting for Justin to arrive.

  I was dying to know what he’d say.

  17.

  Five thirty came and went with no Justin.

  “He’s bailing on us,” I said.

  “He wouldn’t do that,” Alex said.

  “You keep saying that. I don’t understand why you’re so sure. I mean, I haven’t known him that long, but isn’t he always bailing on stuff? He leaves parties early to go see his secret boyfriend, and he doesn’t come out when you ask him.”

  “I know him,” she said simply. “He’ll be here.”

  And then, at six, he was. He took the seat next to Alex, across from me. I couldn’t quite make eye contact yet. “I take it this isn’t just a social call.” He didn’t look super surprised to be there, which didn’t answer the Blocked Sender question, though it clarified that his presence at Walmart wasn’t random.

  “Don’t be glib,” Alex said. “Raj does glib better than you.” She wasn’t looking at him either.

  “This is serious,” Raj said.

  Justin slumped back in his seat, chastened. “Okay, okay. Sorry.”

  I wasn’t sure what to ask him first—I wasn’t sure that Justin could be Blocked Sender, but even if he wasn’t, I didn’t know whether confronting him right away was the way to go. Alex wasn’t about to wait for me to decide what to do, though.

  “What’s the deal?” she asked. “Do you just happen to have a job at Walmart you never told me about, or did someone get to you?”

  “As soon as I saw Kara, I had a feeling it was all about to hit the fan,” he said.

  “Please, just tell us what you know,” I said. “Tell us what’s going on.”

  He ran his hands through his hair. “I don’t know what you know,” he said. “How about you guys tell me first?”

  It was one thing for me to tell Alex and Raj what was happening, but I didn’t know Justin very well. “I think you have a better idea of what’s going on than we do,” I said. “And you didn’t seem all that surprised to see me. Not as surprised as I was to see you.”

  “Oh, I was surprised,” he said. “You were the last person I expected.”

  “But you expected someone.”

  He sighed. “Okay, fine. I started getting these text messages about a month ago from someone who knew things I didn’t want them to know. A smartass, too—said if I was such a good actor, I’d find a way to convince Walmart I was a pharmacy student so I could get an externship. I was supposed to get the gig and then await further instructions.”

  Await further instructions. I’d heard that before. He was one of us, then. If he was telling the truth.

  “I basically just finished training and today I got another text telling me to do a good job on my first official day of work. I didn’t know what it meant until I saw you, Kara. I’m assuming that Novalert prescription wasn’t for you?”

  “Not exactly.” I didn’t want to say anything else, though. This whole situation was getting weirder with every new thing we learned.

  “So this started a month ago?” Alex asked. “That’s it? What does Blocked Sender have over you, Justin?”

  “I’d really rather not talk about it.” He looked away from Alex when he said it, though, and she sharpened her gaze.

  “Why not? Keeping more secrets? Or is this about that boyfriend of yours?”

  “Like I said. Not talking about it.”

  “Even with me,” she said. I watched them argue. Were they that close? Justin frowned and leaned back in his chair, clearly not ready to talk.

  “Let’s just skip the airing of laundry for now and move on to exactly what’s going on here,” I said. “I haven’t been hanging out with you guys for that long, but it’s clearly not random that the four of us all got roped into this.”

  “And we don’t know that it’s just us four,” Alex said.

  “Or who’s behind it,” Raj added.

  “Can’t help you there,” Justin said. His leg was bouncing so hard I could feel the table vibrating.

  Alex banged her hands on the table. “Come on. I know you know more than you’re telling us. You think I can’t tell when you’re lying?”

  “I’ve got nothing. Really.”

  For someone who was such a good actor, he wasn’t doing a great job of sounding convincing.

  “What are we supposed to do now? We’re no closer to figuring this out than I was when I thought it was just me,” I said.

  “What’s to figure out?” Justin said. “We’re screwed. Whoever this person is has us just where he wants us. He knows everything about us, and we know nothing about him. And it doesn’t seem like anything bad has happened to us so far. All our secrets are safe. Aren’t we better off just going along with it?”

  “That’s not going to work for me,” I said. “We need to figure out who’s doing this.”

  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” Justin said. “We don’t want to make him mad.”

  “Wow, whatever he’s got on you must be big,” Alex said.

  Justin ignored her. “I’ll do whatever I have to. And I need you guys to do the same.” He was almost pleading now. “If one of us doesn’t follow directions, the rest of us could be in trouble. That can’t happen.”

  “Sounds a little like a threat,” Raj said.

  “That’s not what I meant,” he said, as my phone buzzed. There was no question who it would be.

  Leave pills behind the copies of The Mystery of Edwin Drood in the library by end of school Monday. Tell no one.

  All eyes turned toward me.

  I put my phone in the middle of the table, and they took turns reading it. “That’s the spot,” Raj said. He glanced at Justin. “Or it was, before.”

  Alex and I nodded. “Before what?” Justin asked.

  “Nope,” Alex said. “No info from you, no info from us. You want in, you have to pay up.”

  Justin frowned. “Fine. I’ll stay out of it, then. You guys do what you have to, as long as you don’t get me involved.”

  “You’re already involved,” Raj said.

  “I’m happy to be a bit player in this little drama. I’ll see you guys at school.” He got up so fast he almost knocked over his chair, and then left without looking back.

  “That went well,” I said.

  Alex was fuming. “God! Why was he being so unhelpful?”

  “Because he doesn’t trust us,” I said.

  “Yeah, I get that,” she said, with more bitterness than sarcasm.

  “Maybe his stuff is just worse than ours,” I said. “Our secrets are all things we want to keep from our parents, but Justin seems more concerned about keeping things from us. Different category.”

  “That could be true,” Raj said.

  “Easy for you to say when we don’t know what Blocked Sender has on you,” Alex said.

  “You
don’t have to tell us that,” I said. I wanted to know, but not just because Alex was mad. Alex and I had shared our secrets voluntarily; making someone spill his who didn’t want to made us almost like Blocked Sender.

  “No, you’re right,” he said. “I’ve avoided telling you guys because it doesn’t make me look so good. But I’m in the same position you are. What Blocked Sender had on me was something I didn’t want my parents to know. We moved here because I did terribly badly on some exams that I needed to move on to the next level at school, and instead of moving on, I flunked out.”

  “Like the SATs?” I asked.

  “Kind of. Similar enough, anyway. My parents were humiliated and convinced that I had no future in England, so they panicked and decided to move here so I could start over. My sister was furious—she’d been doing great in school and had lots of friends, and she hates it here. I don’t think she’ll ever forgive me.”

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “Your parents already know you flunked out.”

  “That’s not the problem. Blocked Sender somehow found out that I’d tried to cheat on those exams. I hadn’t studied at all. Instead, I’d arranged to buy a copy of the test, but it turned out to be a hoax and I’d memorized all the wrong answers. I was totally unprepared for the actual test, which is why it went so poorly. One of my teachers told me the school knew what I’d done but were helping my parents save face by just throwing me out for failing instead of for cheating. I can’t ever let them find out what really happened. My parents moved to another country to help salvage my future—they’d be devastated if they realized why.” He looked back and forth at Alex and me. “So, have you both lost what little respect for me you might have had? Do you see why I didn’t want to tell you?”

  Alex had leaned forward while Raj was talking, the angry expression slowly leaving her face. “We’re hardly in a position to judge you, Raj.”

  “But what I did was so much worse than anything either of you have done.”

  “Your family obviously loves you a lot, to make this kind of sacrifice,” I said. “I understand why you don’t want them to find out, but they’d forgive you.”

  “Maybe my parents will. Especially now that I’ve discovered I share their love of science. But my sister never will. Anyway, I think Kara’s right that our secrets are all in the same family, pardon the pun, and it seems clear that Justin’s are not. That changes things. I don’t think he’s our Blocked Sender, though.”

  I wasn’t so sure. Not yet, anyway.

  “I don’t think so either,” Alex said. “I don’t know about the boyfriend, though. This has to be about him in some way. We’ve been teasing him about it all year and he’s never slipped. Not once.”

  “Do you think the boyfriend might be Blocked Sender?” I asked.

  “There’s only one way to find out,” she said. “We’ve got to catch Blocked Sender in the act.”

  “How are we supposed to do that? I’m not about to stick around in the library after I drop off the pills. Blocked Sender’s not stupid.”

  “I could do it,” Raj said.

  “That won’t work. Blocked Sender knows that you and I know each other. Remember the pictures? But we don’t know how much he knows about us as a group.”

  “We should assume he knows everything,” Alex said. “It’s safer that way.”

  “That means none of us can be there, then,” Raj said.

  “Exactly,” Alex said. “This is where I get to be helpful, finally. We’re going to watch the pickup from the comfort of my bedroom.”

  “What, you’re going to set up a video camera?” I asked. “That’s not exactly inconspicuous.”

  “Oh, my dear Luddite Kara, you have no idea what changes the world has brought. Cameras have gotten super tiny—didn’t you see that thing on YouTube where a squirrel picked one up and climbed a tree? It was adorable. We’ll hook something like that up in the library.” She was getting excited.

  “Wouldn’t we have to go back and pick it up later?” Raj asked. “And aren’t they quite expensive?”

  “We can stream it. They’re so cheap we wouldn’t even have to go back and pick it up if we didn’t want to.”

  My shoulders finally unclenched. I was grateful to have a friend who was so much smarter and savvier than I was. “You’re a genius,” I said.

  “Hardly. But at least we’ll know who’s doing the pickup. If it’s Justin, we’ll need to have a very different conversation than we did today.”

  “And if it’s someone else?” Raj asked.

  “We’ll either have another member of our little Scooby gang, or we’ll learn who Blocked Sender is. Either way, we’ll know more tomorrow than we do now. And isn’t that the point?”

  The point was for all this to be over, and we were nowhere near it. But this was a start.

  18.

  Monday morning came way too fast. Alex, Raj, and I met at lunch in the cafeteria to walk through our plan; Justin knew enough to stay away, at least for the day. Alex brought the camera with her and showed me how it worked—it was just a little square with some adhesive on the back, so I had to find a shelf or a spot on the wall with a good line of sight and stick it there. It was so tiny that no one would notice it. Or so I hoped.

  I got a bathroom pass during study hall, clutching my stomach to make clear that I was planning to be gone a while, then headed to the library. The high school’s librarians were mostly recent library science grads from local universities, hipsters with thick bangs and glasses with equally thick frames who would rather have been working in an archive. The library’s checkout system was completely automatic, so the librarians just sat around looking bored and waiting for people to come in for help with research projects. They smiled at me hopefully when I came in and then ignored me when I walked right past them.

  The library contained a broad expanse of open space in the middle, filled with tables where students could study, though right now they were deathly quiet. I headed toward the back right, where signs informed me I could find the fiction section. There were three copies of The Mystery of Edwin Drood in the back; I’d had to look up the book online to learn that Charles Dickens had written it. Ironically enough (or maybe purposefully?) it was a book about drugs and murder. All three copies looked relatively new and untouched, especially as compared to the surrounding books—there must have been twenty copies of Great Expectations, all battered, as were the copies of David Copperfield. They’d probably been assigned for an English class.

  I didn’t want to end up on camera myself, so I decided to drop the pills right away. I pulled out the center copy of Edwin Drood and placed the bottle of pills behind it. I could see why Blocked Sender had chosen the spot; the bookshelves were lined up in rows, so while the Dickens books were on a shelf that faced a wall, there was a shelf of books behind them that shielded the back of the bookcase from the rest of the room. It was a private little spot. I replaced the book, leaving it sticking out just a little so it would be clear to Blocked Sender where I’d been, without it being obvious to anyone else.

  Now for the hard part: setting up the camera. “Think of it as a replacement for your eye,” Alex had said. “Make sure you’ve got a clear line of sight.” I used my finger to trace a line between my eye and the book as I walked back and forth, searching for a good spot. The key was to get a good angle so we could see the face of the person who picked up the pills.

  Finally, I found a spot on the adjacent wall that had a bunch of posters tacked up already. The camera wasn’t so conspicuous when I stuck it in between a couple of different flyers, and it lined up perfectly, as far as I could tell. I made sure it was securely fixed there, pushing on its sides to test that it was really stuck.

  And then I ducked out of the library as fast as I could.

  Once school was over, Alex, Raj, and I piled into my car and headed back to her house. Having the two of them in my car was starting to feel comfortable; the front seat was already moved far back to accommodate
Raj’s long legs, and Alex tapped my shoulder from the backseat in what had quickly become the signal for me to turn the radio on to the indie station she liked.

  “Any problems with the camera?” she asked.

  “Nope. I think I found a good spot.”

  “We’ll find out soon enough,” Raj said.

  We stopped at the store to pick up junk food for our afternoon of waiting, since we had no idea when the person would come get the pills, or even if it would happen today. Armed with snacks, we settled into Alex’s lair while she set up the feed on her computer. The camera worked amazingly well—the video quality was a little fuzzy, but I’d picked a good location, and we had a clear view of not just the bookshelf itself but the whole row, so we could see when people walked by even if they weren’t the people we were looking for. Alex had set it to record, too, so the first thing we did was to rewind back to right after I’d set it up, just in case.

  We scanned through the hour and a half of video that had accumulated since I’d dropped the camera, but no one had come. No one had even walked through the stacks. “This does give some context for why I never have to wait for any of the books I want,” Raj said. “One would have thought a school of this quality would have some students interested in classic literature.” He shook his head in feigned despair, his dark hair flopping over his eyes. I was tempted to brush it back, but I didn’t want to start something I wasn’t prepared to follow through. And right now, all I could think about was Blocked Sender. Well, almost all.

  “Watch the judgment there,” Alex said. “Just because you’re British doesn’t automatically make you classy.”

  “Compared to you lot? Please.”

  “You’re responsible for tabloids and at least half of the boy bands.”

  “That’s true,” Raj admitted. “But we’re much better at chocolate. Right, Kara?”