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Lila hops off the desk.
“Greg Harmsford is about to join HEX,” she says. “He’s going to attend his first meeting today. Right now, hopefully. Before he wakes up.” Her eyes are brimming with manic glee, and I realize how much I’ve missed her like this, ferocious. Missed the fearless girl who used to beat me at races and order me around.
I laugh. “You are evil,” I tell Lila.
“Flatterer,” she says, but she seems pleased.
“I don’t know if I can get anyone to come out for a meeting,” Daneca says. She walks to the door and checks the hallway, then looks back at us. “Do you think people would believe it? Could we pull it off?”
Lila reaches into her bag and pulls out a tiny silver camera. “Well, we’ll have pictures. Besides, stuff like this is in the news all the time. Government officials who are all anti-worker turn out to be workers themselves. It’s totally believable. The fact that he got the footage the first time will make him seem guiltier.”
I grin. “I guess we better make some calls if we want to convene an entire HEX meeting.”
It takes Daneca a lot of begging to get even a small group together. No one wants to be associated with HEX right now. They’ve all got stories about being hassled. Some even have stories about classmates’ parents trying to hire them to do shady things. They’re freaked, and I don’t blame them.
Daneca gives each one the same song and dance about how important it is that we stick together. Lila gets on the line and swears up and down that it’ll be funny. I try to prop up Greg Harmsford.
Posing an unconscious body isn’t easy. Greg’s not comatose, just sleeping. He still moves when I put him in an uncomfortable position, still makes a face and pushes away my hands when I try to make him sit up. I search around in the desk until I find some tape and pencils. I use those to build a kind of splint on the back of Greg’s head. From the front he might look like he’s slouching, but at least he’ll seem awake since his head will be upright. He makes a protesting sound as I attach the tape, but after a minute, he seems to get used to it.
“Nice work,” Lila says absently. She’s busy writing “HEX MEETING” in chalk on the board.
“How long will he be like that?” Daneca asks, poking Greg’s shoulder. He twitches a little, almost shifting enough to ruin the effect of my pose, but not quite. Daneca smothers a shriek with both her hands.
“I’m not really sure, but when he wakes up, he’ll probably be sick. Side effect.” Lila says distractedly. “Cassel, can you put Greg’s arm up on the chair or something? I don’t think he looks very natural.”
“We should get Sam,” I say with a sigh. “Special effects are his area of expertise. I have no idea what I’m doing.”
“No,” says Daneca, taking my phone out of my hand and setting it down on a desk. “We’re not calling him.”
“But he’s—,” I start.
“No,” she says.
Lila looks at us in confusion.
“They’re having a fight,” I explain.
“Oh,” she says, then tilts her head and squints at Greg. “There’s something still off. Maybe if we had some junk food? We’ve always got stuff at real meetings. Daneca, can you go to the vending machine before people start showing up? Cassel, maybe you can look and see if there are empty chip bags in the trash? They’d just be props. I could run to the store—”
“I’ll go if Cassel promises not to call Sam,” Daneca says.
I groan. “I’ll pinky swear if you want.”
Daneca gives me a dark look and heads into the hallway. Instead of following, I turn toward Lila, who’s rifling through her bag.
“Why do you think this is your fault?” I ask.
Her gaze darts from me to Greg. “There’s not a lot of time. We should…”
I wait, but she doesn’t say anything else. Her cheeks pink and she turns her gaze to the floor.
“Whatever happened,” I say, “you can tell me.”
“It’s nothing you don’t already know. I was jealous and stupid. After I saw you and Audrey together, I went and talked to Greg. Flirted with him, I guess. I knew he had a girlfriend and it was a mean, bad thing to do, but I didn’t think things would get—I didn’t think it would be as bad as it was. Then he asked about you, wanted to know if we were together. I told him ‘sorta.’?”
“Sorta,” I echo.
She rubs her hand over her eyes. “Everything was so complicated between us. I didn’t know what to say. Once he heard that we were—whatever—he started really hitting on me. And I just wanted to feel something—something other than the way I felt.”
