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“We don’t,” she says, and she shifts a little.
Sam winces. I think she kicked him under the table. “I didn’t mean crazy like ‘You’re crazy,’?” he says. “I meant it like ‘Whoa.’?”
“Sure. Okay.” I’m not sure if they believe me, but I feel a dizzy sense of hope.
It occurs to me that I’ve done exactly what I need to in order to set up Daneca and Sam for a con job. They’re already invested. They trust me. They’ve seen me pull a scam before. This is bigger stakes; I just have to promise them a bigger score.
My phone buzzes and I look down. It’s a number I don’t know. I flip it open and bring it to my ear.
“Hello?”
“This is what I want you to do,” says Lila. “You’re going to go to the party on Wednesday and pretend to work my dad—the same way you were supposed to. I’m trusting you to fake it. I think Dad’s smart enough to go along with you.”
“That’s the plan?”
“That’s your part. I can’t talk for long, so you have to listen. A few minutes later I’m going to come through the door with a gun, shoot Anton and save Dad. My part. Simple.”
There is so much that can go wrong with that plan that I don’t even know where to start. “Lila—”
“I even got your brother Philip out of it—just like you wanted,” she says.
“How?” I ask, startled.
“I told my bodyguard he was poking around the penthouse and saw me. They let me lock him up here. That means we just have Barron and Anton to worry about.”
Just Barron and Anton. I rub the bridge of my nose. “You said you were going to keep both my brothers out of it.”
“Our arrangement has changed,” she says. “There’s just one problem.”
“What’s that?”
“No one here is supposed to carry a gun at the party. They won’t let me have one.”
“I don’t have a—” I stop myself. Really not a good idea to talk about me and guns in school—especially not in the same sentence. “I don’t have one.”
“There’s going to be a metal detector,” she says. “Get one and think of a way to get it in.”
“That’s impossible,” I say.
“You owe me,” says Lila. Her voice is as soft as ash.
“I know,” I say, defeated. “I know that.”
The line goes dead.
I am left staring at the cafeteria wall, trying to convince myself that she isn’t setting me up.
“Did something happen?” Sam asks.
“I’ve got to go,” I say. “Class is going to start.”
“We’ll skip class,” says Daneca.
I shake my head. “Not on my first day back.”
“We’ll meet up at activities period,” Sam says. “Outside the theater. And then you’re going to tell us what’s going on.”
On the way to class, I call back the number Lila called from.
