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I head down the hallway the opposite way from the bathroom, lean against the wall, and take out my phone. As it rings, I think over and over about Millionaires at Home or whatever that stupid magazine was.
“Hello, sweetheart,” my mother says. “Let me call you back on a landline.”
I clear my throat. “First, would you explain what you were doing on television?”
She laughs girlishly. “You saw that? How did I look?”
“Like you were wearing a costume,” I say. “What were you doing with Governor Patton? He hates workers, and you’re a worker ex-convict.”
“He’s a nice man once you get to know him,” she says sweetly. “And he doesn’t hate workers. He wants mandatory testing to save worker lives. Didn’t you listen to the speech? Besides, I’m not an ex-convict. My case was overturned on appeal. That’s different.”
At that moment I hear shouting back where the HEX meeting is being held.
“I got you freaks,” someone yells.
“I’ll call you back,” I say, folding the phone closed against my chest as I head back down the hall. Greg is watching as Jeremy holds a video camera in front of the doorway, swinging it back and forth, like he’s trying to get everyone. Jeremy’s moving so fast that I wonder if he’s recording.
Ms. Ramirez steps into the hall, and the boys stumble back, but they keep filming. Now they’re just filming her.
“I am giving you both two demerits,” she says. Her voice sounds odd, shaky. “And for every second that you don’t turn off the camera, I am giving you another one.”
Jeremy swings it down, right away, fumbling with the controls.
“You are both going to have detention with me for the rest of this week, and you are going to erase the recording, do you understand me? That was an invasion of privacy.”
“Yes, Ms. Ramirez,” Jeremy says.
“Good. Now you can go.” She watches them lope off. I watch her watching them, a cold dread settling into my bones.
* * *
The website goes up that night. On Thursday morning I hear the rumor that Ramirez goes ballistic, but Northcutt doesn’t know who to blame. Jeremy claims he was intending to delete the footage, that someone snuck into his room and stole his camera. He says he didn’t upload the stills; Greg says that he never touched any of it.
The bets start flooding in. Are they or aren’t they? It seems like everyone in the school wants to put down money on which of the people at that meeting were workers. A room that I would have been in too, if it wasn’t for the barest coincidence.
“Do we take the money?” Sam asks me in the hallway between classes. He looks miserable. He’s a clever guy and he’s thought through this far enough to know that there are no easy answers.
“Yeah,” I say. “We have to. If we don’t, we won’t be able to have any control.”
We take their money.
On Thursday afternoon the website goes down without a trace.
9
BACK AT THE DORMS SAM is stripping off his uniform and putting on a T-shirt with I’M THE HONOR STUDENT YOU READ ABOUT across the front. He sprays some cologne at his neck while I dump my books onto the bed.
“Where are you going?” I ask.
“The protest.” He rolls his eyes. “Don’t try to weasel out of it. Daneca will kill you. She will skin you.”
“Oh, right,” I say, combing my fingers through my hair. It’s getting shaggy again. “I guess I thought, with all the craziness…”
He lets me trail off vaguely but doesn’t say anything helpful. He is probably used to me being an idiot. I sigh and kick off my dress shoes and black dress pants, pulling on jeans. After unknotting my tie and tossing it onto my rickety desk, I’m pretty much ready to go. I’m not even bothering to change out of my white button-down.
We cross the quad together and find Daneca with Ramirez outside of Rawlings Fine Arts Center, home to Ramirez’s music room, and the location of most HEX meetings. The day is warm for September. Daneca’s dressed up in a long batik skirt with bells dangling from the hem. She’s even dyed the tips of her braids a muddy purple.
“It’s canceled,” Daneca says, turning to us. She’s practically shouting. “Can you believe it? All Northcutt cares about is placating alumni donors! This isn’t fair! She already said okay.”
