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“Sure, man,” he says, but I don’t think he’s decided yet. I’m freaking him out.
“When we go in there, I am going to have a coughing fit, and you are going to volunteer to get me a glass of water. But you’re going to get me hot water—as hot as you can get it out of the tap. Okay?”
“Why?” asks Sam.
I force a grin. “Easiest way to fake a fever.”
Even semiconscious I can still manage a minor con.
* * *
Hours later I wake up in the nurse’s office, drooling on a pillow. I’m ravenously hungry. I get up and realize I’m still wearing my boots. I lace them and pad out to the front room.
The school nurse is gray-haired, short, and round. She moves around her white room, with its anatomical posters, with purpose born of the fact that she believes that all student problems can be cured with (a) rest on one of her cots, (b) two aspirin, or (c) Neosporin and a bandage. Luckily, there’s nothing else I need.
“Hey,” I say. “I’m feeling better. I’m going to go back to my room now if that’s okay?”
Nurse Kozel’s in the middle of giving pills to Willow Davis. “Cassel, why don’t you sit down and let me check your temperature. It was pretty high before.”
“Okay,” I say, slouching in a chair.
Willow swallows her medicine with a sip from a paper cup as Nurse Kozel crosses to the other side for the thermometer.
“You might as well lie down in the back until the pills start working,” Kozel calls. “I’ll come in a little while to check on you.”
“I’m so hungover,” Willow says to me under her breath.
I smile the conspiratorial smile of people who have used the nurse’s office to sleep off the night before.
She heads for the back, and I get a thermometer stuck under my tongue. While I wait, I consider for the first time what happened—and didn’t happen—with Lila.
It’s just a matter of time.
Even in the light of day, the thought feels no less true.
Temptation is tempting. I like my shiny new Mercedes-Benz; I like getting fancy dinners with the head of a crime family; I like the Feds off my back and my mom safe. I like having Lila kiss me as if we could have some kind of future. I like it when she says my name as though I’m the only other person in the world.
I like it so much that I’ll probably do anything to get it.
Ignore that Lila doesn’t really love me. Kill my own brother. Become a hired assassin. Anything.
I thought that I could never betray my family, never work someone I loved, never kill anyone, never be like Philip, but I get more like him every day. Life’s full of opportunities to make crappy decisions that feel good. And after the first one, the rest get a whole lot easier.
14
THE GREAT THING ABOUT a sick day is that it’s not hard to walk out of school. I do. I could drive, but I worry they’d notice my car missing. I can’t afford to take any more chances.
Besides, right now I’m not sure I should be trusted with nice things.
I have woken with a new resolution. No more stupid risks. No more trying to get caught. No more leaving things up to fate. No more waiting for the other shoe to drop. I walk until I get far enough off campus to be safe. Then I call a cab with my cell phone.
Barron doesn’t want to go to the Feds. If he tells them everything, then he gets nothing from the Brennans. But if he really believes I’m not going to cave to his demands, he might turn me in, and I need to tidy things up before he gets the chance. Especially because I know something that he can’t—there isn’t evidence just of what I’ve done at the old house. There’s evidence of Mom’s crime too.
First things first, I have to get rid of that.
I’m her son. It’s my job to keep her safe.
I wait on the tree-lined sidewalk in front of a bunch of nice-looking houses. Ones with backyards and swings. A white-haired lady smiles at me when she ducks out to get her mail from a polished brass box.
