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“Do you have any idea what time it is?” he says groggily.
“I need you to pick me up,” I tell him.
“Dude, where are you?”
I give him the address and he hangs up. I hope he doesn’t just roll over and go back to sleep.
In the bathroom, as I brush my teeth, I see that my cheek is purpled with bruising above the thin beard that’s grown in. My hair was getting too long before and it’s even shaggier now, but I wet it down and try to comb it into shape.
I don’t shave, even though it’s against the rules to be anything but as smooth as a baby’s bottom, because I can just guess how bad that bruise would look if they could see the rest of it.
Downstairs, as I brew the coffee and watch the black liquid drip down, I think of Lila looking out at the sea. I think of her with her back to me as I’m walking out the door.
Mom says that when you’re scamming someone, there needs to be something at stake, something so big that they’re not going to walk away, even if things get sketchy. They have to go all in. Once they’re all in, you win.
Lila’s at stake. She’s not walking away, which means I can’t walk away either.
I’m all in.
They’re winning.
* * *
All the teachers are really nice to me. They mostly—with the exception of Dr. Stewart, who gives me a whole bunch of zeros, enunciating the numbers carefully as he puts each one in the grade book—understand that I failed to keep up with the homework, even though they emailed me assignments daily. They tell me they’re happy I’m back. Ms. Noyes even hugs me.
My fellow students look at me like I’m a dangerous lunatic with two heads and a nasty communicable disease. I keep my head down, eat my Tater Tots at lunch, and try to look interested in my classes.
All the while I’m daydreaming schemes.
Daneca sits down next to me in the lunchroom and pushes her civics notebook in my direction. “You want to copy my notes?”
“Copy your notes?” I say slowly, looking at the book.
She rolls her eyes. Her hair is in two braids, each one tied with rough string. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
“No,” I say. “I do. I definitely do.” I look at the notebook in front of me, flipping the pages, seeing her looping handwriting. I outline the marks with my gloved finger, an idea starting to form in my mind.
I start to grin.
Sam sets down a tray on the other side. It’s piled with a gooey lump of delicious-smelling mac-n-cheese.
“Hey,” he says. “Prepare to be very happy.”
That’s the last thing I expect him to say. “What?” I ask. My fingers are tracing new words in the margin of Daneca’s notebook. Plans. I’m writing in a familiar style, but not my own.
“Nobody thought you were coming back. Nobody. Noooooobody.”
“Thanks. Yeah, I can see how you’d think I’d find that thrilling.”
“Dude,” he says. “A lot of people just lost a lot of money. We made up for that bad bet. We’re kings of finance!”
I shake my head in amazement. “I always said you were a genius.”
We punch each other in the shoulder and punch fists and just keep smiling like morons.
Daneca wrinkles her brow, and Sam stops. “Uh,” Sam says. “There were some other things we wanted to talk to you about.”
“Less fun things, I’m guessing,” I say.
