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We trek over to the baseball field, the dampness wetting our shoes. No one is there yet, which is the idea. You never want to be the last person to a clandestine meeting.
“Now what?” Sam asks me.
I point toward the woods. It’s not ideal but will be close enough to see if anyone shows up, and after chasing down a death worker, I am confident that I can catch up to a student if I really have to.
The ground is frozen. The grass crunches as we sit. I get up to check from a few angles until I’m sure we’re pretty well hidden.
Mina arrives about fifteen minutes later, just at the point when I think that Sam is about to fidget himself to death. She’s clutching a paper bag nervously.
“Um, hello?” she calls from the edge of the trees.
“Here,” I say. “Don’t worry. Just go to the middle of the field—to the right, by first base—and make sure to turn so that we see you.”
“Okay,” Mina says, her voice shaking. “I’m sorry to have dragged you into this, but—”
“Not right now. Just go stand over there and wait.”
Sam lets out a long-suffering sigh as she walks off. “She’s scared.”
“I know,” I say. “I just didn’t know how to— We don’t have time for that.”
“You must be the worst boyfriend in the whole world,” Sam whispers.
“My track record isn’t great,” I whisper back.
Waiting is hard. It’s boring, and the more bored you get, the more you want to close your eyes and take a catnap. Or pull out your phone and play a game on it. Or talk. Your muscles get stiff. Your skin gets that pins-and-needles warning that your foot is falling asleep. Maybe no one’s coming. Maybe you were spotted. Maybe you made one of a million other miscalculations. All you want is an excuse to leave your post and get a cup of coffee or take a nap in your own bed. Time slows to a jagged crawl, like the passage of an ant along your spine.
Getting through it once makes it easier to believe that it can be gotten through again. Sam shifts uncomfortably. Mina looks pale and anguished, pacing back and forth. I alternate between watching her face for some sign that the blackmailer has arrived, and planning what I will say to Lila.
Daneca won’t believe me. Please just tell her what Barron did.
I get as far as that, and my mind stalls. I can’t picture what she says back. I can’t imagine the expression on her face. I keep thinking of how she wouldn’t look at me after I told her that I loved her. The way she wouldn’t believe me. And then I remember her mouth on mine and the way she looked up at me when we were lying on the same grass I am looking at now, except the grass was warm and she was warm and she said my name like nothing else in the world mattered.
I press the tips of my gloved fingers against my eyes, to force away the images.
Sam jerks next to me, and I take away my hands slowly. Mina’s posture has stiffened, and she’s looking across the grass at someone we can’t quite see. Adrenaline floods my veins, making my heart pound. The risk at this point is that we’ll be too eager. We need to wait until the blackmailer has his back to us, and then we need to move as quietly as we can.
Mina turns slightly as the figure approaches her. She does exactly what I told her, except for a glance in our direction. Our gazes lock, and I try to silently communicate that she needs to never look over here again.
Then the figure comes into view.
I don’t know exactly what I was picturing, but it wasn’t a freshman, tall and gangly and so twitchy that I relax at the sight of him. Maybe he found the camera and decided he’d make some fast cash. Maybe he thinks blackmail is the high school equivalent of shoving a girl you like into a mud puddle. I don’t know. All I do know is that he is playing way out of his league.
It seems cruel to jump him, so instead I pull the lamest trick ever. Making sure his back is to me, I stuff my hand into the pocket of my jacket, point my first and middle fingers so that I’m making the little-kid gun shape.
I cross the lawn quickly, fast enough that by the time he hears me coming, I am pretty close.
“Freeze,” I tell him.
It’s comical, the sound that the kid makes when he sees me. A scream so high pitched, I can’t hear half of it. Even Mina looks rattled.
Sam walks up until he’s looming over the freshman. “That’s Alex DeCarlo,” he says, looking down. “We’re in chess club together. What’s he doing here?”
I raise my fake pocket gun. “Yeah. What exactly did you want with five grand?”
“No,” Alex says, his face gone bright red with misery. “I didn’t want to—” He looks over at Mina and takes a nervous breath. “I don’t know about the five thousand dollars. I was just supposed to bring the envelope that, uh, he gave me. Mina’s my friend, and I would never—”
Lying, lying. Everyone is lying. I can hear it in their voices. I can tell in the way their expressions don’t quite match the words, in a dozen small tells.
