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Some days my mind is blank when I run. Other days I can’t stop thinking, turning everything over and over again in my head.
Today I come to a couple of different conclusions.
One: No one is blackmailing Mina Lange.
Two: Mina Lange is a physical worker, fixing Wharton’s Alzheimer’s.
Three: Since Alzheimer’s can never be cured, she can never stop working him, which means she just gets sicker and sicker, while he stays the same.
Four: Despite all her lies, Mina is probably actually in trouble.
* * *
Sam looks up from his bed when I walk into our dorm room. I’ve got a towel wrapped around my waist and am fresh from the shower.
He’s got a bunch of brochures scattered beside him, colleges his parents want him to consider. None of them have a department that teaches visual effects. None of them will let him make his own rubber masks. All of them are Ivy League. Brown. Yale. Dartmouth. Harvard.
“Hey,” he says. “Look, I was talking to Mina over lunch yesterday. She said she was sorry. She basically admitted what you said. That she wanted us to blackmail Wharton for her.”
“Yeah?” I start rooting around for sweatpants, and put them on when I finally locate them under a pile of other clothes at the bottom of my closet. “Did she say why she needed the money?”
“Said she wanted to leave town. I didn’t really understand it, but it seems like someone’s brokering the deal between Wharton and her. That person won’t let her leave, so she’s got to run. Do you think it’s her parents?”
“No,” I say, thinking of Gage and myself and Lila and of what Mrs. Wasserman said when I was sitting in her kitchen. Lots of kids are kicked out onto the streets, taken in by crime families and then sold off to the rich. “Probably not her parents.”
“Don’t you think we can help her?” he asks.
“There’s too much that’s fishy about this situation, Sam. If she needs the money, then she should blackmail Wharton for it herself.”
“But she can’t. She’s afraid of him.”
I sigh. “Sam—”
“You nearly yanked her wig off in public. Don’t you think you should make it up to her? Besides, I told her that the investigative firm of Sharpe & Yu was still on the case.” He grins, and I’m glad to see him distracted. I wonder again if he likes Mina. I really, really hope not.
“I think she’s sick, Sam,” I say. “I think that she’s curing Wharton and it’s making her sick.”
“Even more reason to do something. Tell him he’s got to give her the money. Explain the situation. You know, make it clear she’s not alone. Wharton’s the one who got her into this. We’ve got pictures.”
“She’s a player,” I say. “She could still be playing us.”
“Come on, Cassel. She’s a lady in trouble.”
“She is trouble.” I scratch my neck, where I cut myself shaving. “Look, I have a Saturday detention with Wharton. He’ll be alone in his office. Maybe we can talk to him then.”
“What if she can’t wait until the weekend?”
“We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.” I open my laptop. “What’s with the brochures?”
“Oh,” he says. “I’ve got college applications to write. How about you?”
“I’ve got to plan an assassination,” I say, logging into the school’s wireless and bringing up the search engine. “I know. Weird, right?”
“Cassel Sharpe: boy assassin.” He shakes his head. “You should have your own comic book.”
I grin. “Only if you’ll be my runty spandex-wearing sidekick.”
“Runty? I’m taller than you are!” He sits up, and the springs of the bed groan, echoing his point.
