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“Fine, go. But just show up and screw it up. What are they going to do, give you a good scolding? Mistakes happen. You screw up everything anyway.”
“They’ll just set me up again,” I say.
“Now you’ll be looking for it.”
“I was already looking for it,” I say. “I still didn’t see what was going on. Besides, someone should stop Patton. I have a chance.”
“Sure,” he says. “Someone should. Someone who’s not being set up. Someone who’s not you.”
“If I don’t go along with this, the Feds are threatening to go after Mom. And that’s the best we can hope for—because Patton will kill her. He’s already tried once.”
“He did what? What do you mean?”
“She got shot and she didn’t want us to know. I would have told you, but the last time we talked, you hung up on me abruptly.”
He ignores the rest of what I’ve said. “Is she okay?”
“I think so.” I belt myself into the driver’s seat. Then, sighing, I turn on the ignition. “But look, we have to do something.”
“We aren’t doing anything. I’ve done all I’m going to do, looking through those files. I’m looking out for myself. Try it sometime.”
“I have a plan.” The vent floods the car with cold air. I crank up the heat and rest my head against the wheel. “Or, well, not a plan exactly, but the beginnings of one. All I need you to do is stall Patton. Find out where he’s going to be on Monday and keep him there so he’s late to his speech. For Mom’s sake. You don’t even have to visit me in jail.”
“Do something for me, then,” he says, after a pause.
The chances of me pulling this off and getting away with it are so bad that I’m actually not that concerned about whatever evil scheme my brother will try to involve me in next.
It’s kind of freeing.
“Fine. I’ll owe you a favor. But after. I don’t have time right now.” I look at the clock on the dashboard. “In fact, I don’t have any time. I have to get to Wallingford. I’m already late.”
“Call me after your school thing,” Barron says, and hangs up. I toss the phone onto the passenger seat and pull out of the driveway, wishing that the only plan I’ve got didn’t depend on putting my faith in two of the people I trust least in the world—Barron and myself.
* * *
It’s ten after ten when I pull into the Wallingford parking lot. There’s no time to go to my room, so I grab for my phone as I’m crossing the lawn, figuring I’ll call Sam and get him to bring the photos of Wharton. But as I start thinking about the pictures, I have that awful feeling that there’s something I’ve overlooked. In the diner I said that I thought Mina must have intended for us to see the pictures, but she didn’t just let us see them. She made sure that we had copies.
Cold dread works its way up my spine. She wanted someone else to blackmail Wharton. Someone to claim they took photographs and they want money. But we don’t have to really do it. We just have to seem like we’re doing it.
Stupid, stupid. I am so stupid. As I am thinking that, the phone rings in my hands. It’s Daneca.
“Hey,” I say. “I can’t really talk. I’m so late to detention, and if I get another demerit—”
She sobs, liquid and awful, and I bite off whatever I was planning to say next. “What happened?” I ask.
“Sam found out,” she says, choking out the words. “That I was seeing your brother. We were in the library together this morning, studying. Everything was just normal. I don’t know, I wanted to see him—and figure out if there was still anything between us, if I felt—”
“Uh-huh,” I say, crossing the green, hoping that Wharton is still in his office. Hoping that I’m wrong about Mina’s plans. Hoping that Sam is somewhere burning those photos, even though I’m pretty sure he’s too busy being devastated, and even if he wasn’t, he has no reason to think we’re in trouble. “Maybe he’ll get over it.”
It’s pointless to think about the fact that neither of them getting over things is what broke them up in the first place. He’s going to be furious with her and doubly furious at me for not telling him about Barron. Which, predictably, I deserve.
“No, listen. I left the room for a minute, and when I got back— Well, Barron must have texted me. And Sam read it—and read the other ones too. He started screaming at me. It was really ugly.”
I pause. “Are you okay?”
“I don’t know.” She sounds like she’s trying to fight back more tears. “Sam’s always been so gentle—sweet. I just never thought he could be that angry. He scared me.”
“Did he hurt you?” I am pushing open the doors of the administrative building, trying to think.
