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Silas sat up straight, as did Nathan. “Something up?” Silas asked.
“I need to get back. Something’s happened.” He looked to the others. “We have to go.”
Nathan stood up quickly and looked to Mr. Ramirez. “Will you do this?”
“Sure, I can get started,” he said. “But I want answers when I talk to you all again.”
Victor held out a hand. “Deal.”
Mr. Ramirez shook hands with him. “I’ll reach out to you when I’ve got something.”
Getting Ahead of the Game
Victor was on the phone the moment they got back into the car. Silas tilted the pedal until they were going over the speed limit, hovering between five and nine miles over. Just enough to be uninteresting to police, hopefully. The streets were mostly empty once they were clear of downtown.
Victor’s voice was tense as he continued to talk. “We need to do this tonight,” he told Mr. Blackbourne into the phone. “I’ll get the lines and emails covered. It’ll take time to set up.” Silence. “We’re on our way.”
They were halfway there before Victor was able to hang up.
“What’s going on?” Silas asked the moment he put the phone down.
“This keeps getting crazier,” Victor said. “Some students got sick. Food poisoning of some sort. They had to call in someone to come inspect all that food that’s in there.”
“Sick?” Nathan asked, sitting forward. “How sick?”
“It seems to be a low number, now,” Victor said. “Only we don’t know exactly what it is. From the reports coming in so far from Sang and Mr. Blackbourne manning the phones and emails, it could be anything in the cafeteria.”
“From that delivery that was made?”
“They think so. Only they are trying to keep in under wraps if they can. Mr. Blackbourne suspects it’s Hendricks trying to sabotage him. That this was a set up.”
The food that was swapped. “How long does inspection take?”
“I don’t know,” Victor said. “They’re trying to find out.”
“We can’t risk anyone else getting sick,” Nathan said. “So...wouldn’t it be faster to replace it?”
Victor was silent for a moment, gazing out the front of the windshield. “Replace what they brought in?”
“Sure,” Nathan said. “Let’s buy good stuff, put it in. We’ll know for sure it’s gone. They can take their time to test to see what it was if we need.”
“It definitely stops others from getting sick,” Victor said, and he brought his phone to his face, looking at it. “This is why we’ve got a team. I wouldn’t have thought of that.”
“This is why we need us together,” Silas said. He tilted his head, meeting Nathan’s eyes using the rearview mirror. “Right?”
He was talking about the thing with Lily. “You know I didn’t go to her to break us up.”
Victor and Silas were silent for so long that it bothered Nathan they weren’t answering.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Silas continued. “You had me wondering, though, since you wouldn’t talk to us all week.”
“I believe you,” Victor said. “North was pissed.”
“And Dr. Green,” Nathan said. “But they didn’t understand me.” He pressed a hand to his chest, his voice raising as he became more animated. He’d been dwelling on this for days. It was time he released it. “I couldn’t get on board if she’s not okay with it.”
“Is that why you’re not happy with the idea?” Silas asked. “You’re putting it on her? You’re not weirded out by it? Jealous?”
Nathan sat back, looking out one of the side windows. “Aren’t you?”
“I wanted to go out with her from the start,” Silas said. “If you had told me back then, I would have said no to all of this.”
“When we thought Kota liked her and wanted to ask her out?” Victor asked. “That’s what I thought was going on.”
“No, I’d already asked her out. Told her I’d take her to a baseball game or something. Only I didn’t realize about her parents. I backed off when I realized how much trouble she was in and that needed to be handled first. And then later Mr. Blackbourne made us agree not to approach her like that. She had to approach one of us, if she was going to at all.” He smirked and shook his head at the windshield. “You know, that’s what did it to us. She’s too sweet to realize what was going on. And we were too naïve to think we could be around her and not grow to care for her like we’ve done.”
“She does have that way of making you feel like you’re special,” Victor said. He leaned his elbow against the door, putting his hand up to brace his cheek against it. “When she gets you alone...”
Nathan grumbled and sat back, rolling his head back against the headrest. The conversation was making him uncomfortable. “She could still just decide to go out with one of us,” he said. “If she really wanted.”
The car fell into silence for a moment. It was Victor that spoke eventually, in hushed tones and slowly. “Are you willing to ask her to pick one? Do you think she’ll pick you?”
It wasn’t a challenge, but a genuine question filled with worry. Nathan realized Victor feared this possibility.
And he hadn’t thought of it until then. It was in the back of his mind, but his default was always himself, because she spent so much time with him. But if it came down to it, if she chose anyone, was he the one?
“North said she wouldn’t,” Nathan said. “She wouldn’t because she’d try to keep us together.”
“That sounds more like her,” Silas said. “Not that I wouldn’t trust you all around her. But...I don’t know. Maybe this is the right thing to do. I’d rather just know you’re all taking her out and doing things with her than wonder if you’ll forever do it behind my back.”
“It’s what we do,” Victor said. “The Academy. We can’t always be around her. We’re so busy. And I don’t trust anyone else with her. I don’t trust anyone else wouldn’t try to talk her into running off together. But I know if we say we won’t, then...you won’
t.” He sighed. “That’s all I worry about. When I’ve got time between what we do, I just want to see her.”
The car fell into silence again. Victor got distracted again with typing and scrolling in his phone. Silas glared out the front window.
Nathan had nothing more to add. Every time he talked to the others about this, the more it felt like there was an ultimate choice for all of them. If they wanted to stay together, and be happy...
What North and Dr. Green had said to him echoed in his brain, mixing in with Silas and Victor’s expressed thoughts.
He hadn’t considered what he was asking when he thought of what if Sang couldn’t do this. What if she needed to back off and pick one?
Who would she pick, if any?
And if it wasn’t him, what would he do then?
Would he be able to live the rest of his life in the group knowing she picked one of the others? Could she continue to work in the group like that?
No. Every angle he pictured, North was right.
The dark mood he’d been in for days settled in more now. His stomach turned in turmoil. In confusion.
They needed to either decide to do this together, or they were asking to splinter the group forever.
The Exchange
Sang
Close to one in the morning, I stood with Mr. Blackbourne near the back of the school as a large truck that normally brought in food for Bob’s Diner backed up toward the same two doors that opened up into the cafeteria.
Mr. Blackbourne signaled to them, noting where to back up and how far.
I kept an eye out on the surrounding grounds. North and I had witnessed something similar days ago. Paranoid, I kept particular attention on the woods and underneath the nearby buildings.
The truck parked. Both doors opened.
