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I start to say something back, but the line goes dead.
“You in trouble?” Sam asks. The way he says it, I wonder if he’s thinking about how to get out of here if I am.
I shake my head. “Family dinner. I’m late.” I want to tell them how grateful I am, how sorry I feel that they had to get dragged into my mess, but none of it’s true. I’m just sorry for myself. Sorry that now they know something I didn’t want them to. I wish I could make them forget. For a moment I understand that memory working impulse right down to my bones.
“Uh,” I say. “Can either one of you hold on to the cat for a few hours?”
Sam groans. “Come on, Sharpe. What’s really going on here?”
“I’ll take her,” Daneca volunteers. “On one condition.”
“Maybe I could keep her in the car,” I say. Mostly I want to stare into her strange cat eyes and look at her tiny paws and ask her if she’s Lila. Even though I’ve already decided. I want to decide again.
“You can’t keep a cat in a car,” she says. “She’ll get too hot.”
“Of course. You’re right.” I smile, but it feels like a rictus. Then I shake my head, like I’m trying to shake off my expression. I’m way off my stride. I’m rattled. “Could you hold on to her overnight?”
The cat growls deep in her throat.
“Trust me,” I say to the cat. “I have a plan.” Daneca and Sam look at me like I’ve lost my mind.
I don’t want to be away from her, but I’m going to need a little time to get the rest of my money out of the library and get a hold of a car. Then we can go somewhere far from here, lay low. I’ll keep her safe until I can figure out who I have to bribe or con to turn her back into herself.
Daneca shrugs. “I guess, but I’m going to the dorm tonight. My parents have some conference, so they’re driving up to Vermont after dinner. My roommate’s not allergic or anything, though, and I’m pretty sure we’ll be able to hide her. I think it will be okay.”
Lila hisses, but I get up anyway. I wonder what kind of dreams Daneca is going to have.
“Thanks,” I say mechanically. My mind is racing with plans.
“Wait,” she says. “I told you there was a condition.”
“Oh,” I say. “Sure.”
“I want you to give me a ride home.”
“I can—,” Sam starts.
Daneca interrupts him. “No, I need Cassel to take me. And to agree to come in the house for a minute.”
I sigh. I know her mother wants to talk to me, probably because she thinks that I’m a worker refusing to join the cause. “I don’t have time. I have to get to my brother’s place.”
“You have time,” Daneca says. “I said just a minute.”
I sigh again. “Okay, fine.”
Daneca’s house is just off the main street in Princeton, an elegant old brick Colonial with green and amber hydrangeas framing the front walk. It stinks of old money, overwhelming privilege, and the kind of education that ensures the elite will continue looking down on everyone else. I have never even broken into a house like that.
Daneca, of course, goes inside like it’s nothing. She drops her book bag in the entryway, sets down the cat carrier on the polished wood floor, and heads down a hallway filled with old etchings of the human brain.
The cat cries softly from her cage.
“Mom,” Daneca calls. “Mom.”
I stop in the dining room, where a blue and white vase filled with only slightly wilted flowers rests on a polished table, between silver candlesticks.
My fingers itch to shove those candlesticks in my bag.
I look back toward the hall, instinctively, and see a blond boy—he looks like he’s around twelve—standing on the stairs. He’s watching me like he knows I’m a thief.
