Strange Lies by Maggie Thrash (3)

Saturday

The Beau Ideal Driving Club, 11:30 a.m.

“Stop looking at me like that.”

“What? You look . . . good.”

Benny ignored her. His grandma had said the same thing (“handsome” was her word), but he didn’t take the compliments seriously. They only showed how conforming to the dominant paradigm created an illusion of attractiveness in people’s eyes. He’d blow-dried his hair, mimicking the shiny, Beatles-esque mop that was popular at Winship. He’d put in contacts, which he only owned in the event of his glasses needing to be repaired. And finally, perhaps most importantly, he’d donned the consummate item of preppy attire: a pink Polo shirt.

His mother had not appreciated the transformation. She hadn’t said anything, but he knew what she was thinking. That he had violated the unspoken condition of his attendance at Winship: thrive, but do not assimilate. In a childish way, it pleased Benny to annoy her. Let her think he was being coopted by the preppy hive-mind. It served her right, making him go to this school full of trad, pink-Polo-wearing lemmings.

To get them to the city, he’d employed his usual tactic: a made-up meeting for the Model UN at the public library. Once Mrs. Flax’s car had disappeared down Peachtree Street, he and Virginia had crossed the park to the hill where the sprawling white buildings of the club lorded over Midtown. It was getting easier and easier to lie to his mother, which reduced Benny’s stress level but was also slightly alarming. How many lies did it take before you were officially “a liar”?

“So, do we just walk in?” Virginia asked him. They were standing in front of the club entrance, a massive rotunda where a line of sleek-looking cars were being met by energetic valets. Evidently it was not common to approach the club by foot.

Benny smoothed his hair self-consciously. Be confident, he told himself. He looked fine, and Virginia looked fine too, though her yellow-and-green dress was too small. Benny had noticed that about a lot of her clothes. It wasn’t like Zaire’s gold skirt, which was designed to be skimpy. This was more like, someone needed to buy Virginia new clothes, because she’d outgrown everything in her wardrobe. The fabric stretched tight across her shoulders and her chest. Benny averted his eyes. Don’t stare at her breasts.

He took a breath. “We just walk in.”

As Benny predicted, no one tried to stop them from entering. He perceived a few looks from the valets, which he interpreted not as suspicious but just wondering where their parents were.

The inside wasn’t what Benny expected. It was grand but not like a palace or anything. It was just a large room with nice furniture, elegant but muted.

“This way,” he said to Virginia. He’d studied the floor plan of the club ahead of time so they wouldn’t have to ask directions. The next room was similar to the first but contained a quiet bar. Benny gestured toward a cluster of leather armchairs overlooking the golf course. “Let’s sit for a minute. I have to talk to you about something.”

“Am I in trouble?” Virginia flopped into one of the chairs. “Mm, comfy.” Benny sat down across from her. He crossed his legs one way and then another, trying to fit the role of country-club teen.

“Not like a girl,” Virginia told him. “Put your ankle on your knee.”

Benny shot her a look but then did it. Instantly he looked completely cool and composed, like he spent every Saturday relaxing in the bar at Atlanta’s most exclusive club. Virginia had forgotten he had this weird ability. She’d seen him do this once before, at the Sapphire Lounge, where he’d managed to fit in among the creepy lounge lizards and boozy jazz fiends just by standing in a certain way. It was sort of annoying. It proved that Benny chose to be an outsider, which made his victim-y glasses and out-of-style turtlenecks suddenly seem less dweeby and more self-righteous.

She couldn’t stop looking at him. He looked hot. Except not really. It was just that the pink shirt brought out a different tone in his normally sallow skin, and without his glasses, he actually seemed smarter for some reason. Maybe because she could see his eyes better, see him thinking. She arranged herself vampishly in the chair, hoping she looked as cool as he did. She suspected she didn’t, though. These flowery Lilly Pulitzer getups weren’t designed to make girls look cool, they were designed to make them look like pea-brained dolls.

“I know what’s going on,” Benny was saying, his fingers tented like a Bond villain. “It was Calvin Harker.”

“Do you have any money?” Virginia asked. “I want a ginger ale.”

“They don’t use money here. All the members have accounts. Did you hear what I said? It was Calvin Harker.”

“What was Calvin Harker?”

“The person who tried to kill DeAndre Bell.”

Virginia snorted. “What?”

“He was probably the drug dealer in the bathroom. You said the guy had ironed pants? Calvin’s clothes are always perfect. I think he gets them dry-cleaned.”

“That’s not super unusual,” Virginia said, even though it kind of was. The guys at Winship were famous for being unkempt; their uniforms tended to be handed down from older brothers or cousins, full of holes and barely cared for.

“Did you see his project at the science expo?”

Virginia shook her head.

Benny lowered his voice. “It was strange. It was like, a compilation of random deaths. How life is pointless because at any moment you could be hit by a bus, or a possum could fall from the sky.”

“A possum?”

“Whatever, not a possum. His point was that every day, people die in random and unpredictable ways.”

“So?”

“So he designed this insane death scenario for DeAndre to prove his thesis! To win the science expo! But it backfired, because in the chaos the judges never declared a winner.”

Virginia gawked at him. Was he serious? “You think Calvin Harker orchestrated murder. To win a science expo. Don’t you think that’s a little juvenile?”

Benny waved his hand impatiently. “Well, fine, maybe it’s not about winning. But it is about proving his philosophy.”

Virginia was trying to be open-minded, but the idea was too stupid. Though “stupid” wasn’t a word that Benny would react well to. “That’s kind of . . . absurd,” she said. “Also, it doesn’t make sense. If his thing is about death being random, why would he concoct a murder scheme? That’s not random. That’s on purpose.”

“The victim was random. I don’t think Calvin cared who got killed. In fact, that was the whole point.”

Benny’s face was triumphant. It was a good look on him. Stop thinking about his dumb hot glasses-less face! Virginia yelled at herself.

“So . . . what are you saying? That Calvin planted the banana Trevor slipped on?”

Benny stared out the window at the golf course. “I know it sounds crazy. It is crazy. That’s the whole point. Maybe Calvin drops banana peels wherever he goes, on the off chance that someone will slip and die. Virginia, I’m serious! Think about it. The banana peel is the perfect instrument of murder—silly and cartoonish but ruinous. For Calvin, it probably symbolizes lack of dignity in death. . . . He was in the hospital for a year in eighth grade—remember that? After a year in a hospital, you’re not gonna be romanticizing death anymore.”

Virginia tried to think. She didn’t feel convinced. She thought of Calvin’s tearstained face last night. He’d seemed so . . . sad. But in an endearing way, not a banana-peel-dropping murderer way.

“Okay, well,” she started awkwardly, “I went to his house last night—”

“You went to his house?” Benny interrupted. “Why?”

“We were supposed to have dinner.”

“Why?”

“Because I asked him.”

“Why?”

“Oh my god, stop saying why. I’m allowed to hang out with people other than you.”

Benny bristled. “I didn’t—I never—”

“Okay, whatever,” Virginia cut him off. “It wasn’t a big deal and it didn’t even happen. Because when I got to his house, I was standing outside and I saw his dad, like, strangling him.”

“Headmaster Harker? Strangling him?”

“Sort of. It was like . . . Here, stand up, I’ll show you.”

Benny stood up and looked around to make sure no one was watching them. The bartender was wiping down wineglasses and didn’t seem interested in the two teenagers hanging out at the other end of the room. Benny’s mind was whirring. Virginia and Calvin having dinner? What the hell was that about? Was it a date?

Stop it, Benny told himself. He didn’t support the predominant societal expectation that a guy and a girl couldn’t hang out without it being some romantic thing. Girls and guys could be friends. And Virginia could have dinner with whomever she wanted. Except not a murderer, please.

“So I’m the dad, and you’re Calvin,” Virginia was saying. She positioned herself across from him, seeming taller than usual. Benny glanced down; she was wearing heels. She extended her hand and touched Benny’s neck, just below the jaw—tentatively at first, and then firmly once she sensed he wasn’t going to swat her away. Her hand felt cool and warm at the same time. She squeezed his throat and looked directly in his eyes.

Benny felt a jolt. He wished he had his glasses on. He felt vulnerable without those little walls standing between him and the world. Virginia’s eyes—mere inches from his own—contained chaotic specks of green and brown and gold. He almost expected the colors to move, like stardust swirling in space.

“And then he leaned in like this. . . .”

Benny barely breathed. He felt an urge to hug her, or wishing she would hug him, which was weird. When someone was gripping you by the throat, the normal reaction was to push them away, not pull them closer.

How long is this going to last?

“Then his dad saw me, and I hid behind a tree.” Virginia dropped her hand unceremoniously and flopped back down in her chair. Unconsciously Benny touched where her fingers had been.

“Sorry. Did I hurt you?”

“Hm? No, it’s fine.” Benny sat back down. The temperature of his neck slowly returned to normal. “So wait, what happened after that?”

“After that, they were both gone. And I left.”

Benny looked out the window. He didn’t see how this new information contradicted his theory. Headmaster Harker being abusive and Calvin being a killer were by no means mutually exclusive.

“I’d like to hit pause on this conversation,” Benny declared, standing up again. “Let’s focus on the golf team for now, and why Craig Beaver was really expelled. If we can track down the caddie they used—the black guy in the background of Trevor’s photos—we can find out what happened that night.”

“Okay,” Virginia said simply. It’s one of the things Benny liked about her. She didn’t dwell on things. If you wanted to move on, she moved on too. He glanced at the bartender, who was now eyeing them suspiciously.

“Let’s not do anything else weird,” Benny said quietly, touching his neck again. The feeling of her fingers was gone now. He looked out the window again. The sky was filled with puffy white clouds, and the grass of the golf course was an unnatural, uniform shade of green. Of all the recreational activities of man, golf had to be the stupidest. The massive effort to beat nature into submission—daily mowing, watering, and dousing of chemicals—so a man could pay ninety thousand dollars to push a ball into a hole. It was like they’d deliberately dreamed up the most expensive and ecologically damaging way to enjoy a day in the sun.

“Hey, look,” Virginia said. She was pointing to a spot far out on the green. Benny squinted. His contacts weren’t great for long distance. But he could make out a lean figure hunched over a golf club. His too-long arms were bent oddly to maintain the proper golfing stance.

“Is it Calvin?” Benny asked excitedly. “You see? It’s not a coincidence that he keeps popping up. It’s just like Zaire Bollo. You have a bunch of odd occurrences spinning in the chaos of space. Then you realize it’s not chaos—it’s a galaxy, and at the center of the galaxy is a black hole. A person who’s set everything in motion.”

Virginia patted his shoulder patronizingly. “It’s his dad. Nice analogy, though.”

“Metaphor,” Benny corrected. “An analogy would be, ‘Clues are to a galaxy as what Calvin is to a black hole.’ ”

“. . . Cool to know.”

Benny’s jaw tightened. It didn’t matter which Harker was golfing. It didn’t matter if Virginia was skeptical. Calvin was still the black hole. Benny knew it, the same way he’d known it was Zaire Bollo last time. It was a gift he had, like how dogs could supposedly smell fear; Benny could smell truth. He didn’t know what it was exactly, but he could sense that it was there. . . .

“Benny? Hello? You’re spacing out.”

“Just give me a minute.”

He was thinking about the deer. Its maimed, blood-splattered head loomed in his mind, at odds with the perfectly manicured and civilized scene in front of him. But suddenly the golf course didn’t seem so civilized—it seemed repulsive. A piece of raped land where men gathered to roll balls around and consolidate power. It wasn’t something Benny would ever say out loud—the stereotype about Jews being Socialists made him self-conscious. But he didn’t want to be there. He didn’t want to be wearing this stupid pink shirt and these sucky contacts, or to be complicit in their endless golf course of a world.

Get a grip, he ordered himself. Just because he’d blow-dried his hair and put on a Polo didn’t make him one of these people. In fact, that was the whole point of them: “born, not made.” They even had bumper stickers. There was no power in declaring that you didn’t want to be one of them. They’d cut you back down to size with a single look:

We didn’t want you anyway.

The women’s steam room, 12:10 p.m.

Hello baby in my heart!

In the land of the free may you start

To grow in the light of Jesus

And to delight and please us.

Sorry I did not wait for marriage,

But please God fill my baby carriage!

Corny solemnly recited the poem, which she’d written herself. The paper was damp from the thick steam, and a few of the puppy and angel stickers had fallen off and dropped onto the wet tile floor. She took a sip of pink strawberry-kiwi Gatorade in case it was a girl, then one of blue “Glacier Freeze” Gatorade in case it was a boy. She and the Montague twins had created an elaborate conception ritual inspired by witchcraft they’d found on the Internet, taking all the sacrilegious parts and replacing them with Jesus and patriotic references, and substituting the gross potions with pink and blue Gatorade.

“Wait!” Angie Montague gasped as Corny took alternating sips from the pink and blue bottles. “What if they mix in your stomach and turn purple, and then you have a gay one!”

She and her twin sister, Brittany, burst into giggles.

“Omigod!” Corny shrieked. She laughed along but was mostly humoring them. The twins were just girls, whereas she was a woman now—a mother. At least hopefully she was! The thought made her so excited she wanted to scream. But she needed to remain calm and complete the ritual. She and the twins sat in a triangle in their Kate Spade string bikinis, their knees touching each other. Corny had chosen the club’s steam room for the ceremony because it was warm and steamy and safe, just like a womb. She wanted the baby to feel as welcome as possible in this world.

“Okay, now hold Sarah-Ann-Elizabeth-Jane over my head and do the chant.”

Sarah-Ann-Elizabeth-Jane was Corny’s baby doll from childhood, a peach-colored hunk of plastic dirtied from a decade of love, with a smear of purple marker on its bald head. The twins lifted the doll in the air like Simba from The Lion King. Then they shouted together:

“BRING CORNY A CUPID BABY!”

“Five more times,” Corny instructed, and the twins obeyed. But by the fourth recitation, they were so tongue-twisted the chant ended up sounding like, “Beep Corby a poop cupid.”

All three of them collapsed into giggles, even Corny. She couldn’t help it! She shrieked, “Y’ALL! I don’t want a poop cupid!”

Angie dropped the baby doll. It landed smack on its face and then rolled away, making them laugh even harder. Corny took a few deep breaths, trying to stop laughing.

“Okay, do it right this time,” she ordered. But the twins completely broke down in hysterics and ended up shouting what sounded like, “Bring Corbin a stupid boopid!”

“And not a gay one!” Angie screamed between laughs.

Corny giggled and swatted her. It was okay. It didn’t matter if they’d accidentally asked for a stupid boopid or a poop cupid or a gay one. Jesus knew what they really meant: a perfect angel from heaven who looked just like Winn, and had deep philosophical thoughts like Winn, and played football like Winn—unless it was a girl, and then she could be a Gap Kids model like Corny!

Corny hit “play” on the playlist she’d created of all the Justin Bieber songs containing the word “baby” in the lyrics.

“You should name it Rory like in Gilmore Girls,” Brittany suggested. “And then you can be best friends!”

“I already have the names picked out.” Corny reached under her towel and pulled out an Anne Geddes journal she’d bought especially for baby-related thoughts. The cover had the cutest baby wearing a cabbage on its head and the words Water daily—with LOVE! written in pink flowery letters. “Judd Winn Rufus if it’s a boy, and Blue Hydrangea if it’s a girl.”

“Omigod, those are so cute!” Brittany squealed.

“Will you have to drop out of cheerleading?” Angie asked, frowning like a sad puppy.

“Just for basketball season, when I’m all fat,” Corny said.

“Oh good,” the twins said in unison, sighing. Basketball cheerleading was a joke and didn’t matter, especially now that DeAndre Bell wouldn’t be able to play.

“Your boobs are going to be gigantic,” Brittany said.

“I am soooooo jealous,” Angie whined. “I wish Big Gabe wanted to have a baby with me!”

“Dad would kill you! Aren’t your parents going to be mad, Corny?”

Corny shrugged. “If they’re mad, then me and Winn will just run away to Sea Island and have it be a beach baby!”

“Awwwww! I want a beach baby!”

Corny turned up the volume of the playlist. She lay back on her towel, her body wet and gleaming from the steam. She wished Winn were there to touch her all over and have sex with her and tell her she was the most beautiful girl in the world. Thinking about it made her so horny it was confusing. It didn’t seem very maternal or appropriate to be dreaming of a penis when there was a baby inside her! But she couldn’t stop thinking about him—how passionate and magical he’d been the other night, how his love had felt almost painful. She’d had sex with Winn before, but not like that. She’d tried to describe it to the twins, but they didn’t get it. Brittany was a virgin, and Angie basically was too, except for that one time at church camp that didn’t count because the guy had jizzed himself before getting it in.

Poor Angie! Corny thought, feeling grateful she had such a wonderful stud like Winn to have sex with. She wanted to have sex with Winn one hundred million times and have one hundred million babies, each little angel a unique memento of the power of his penis!

Brittany was fishing around in her pink Vera Bradley bag. “I got four different kinds of pregnancy tests. Are you ready?”

I love you. I love you. She heard the words over and over in her mind. He’d finally admitted it. After years of waiting, she’d finally gotten to hear those three exquisite words. He’d said it over and over, as if making up for lost time. And now time was infinite, because they would be together forever. Corny closed her eyes and inhaled the thick, steamy air, giddily aware that every breath was one she shared with the teeny tiny microscopic angel baby inside her.

I love you. I love you. I love you.

The pro shop, 12:20 p.m.

Virginia picked up a plain green visor and looked at the price tag: $88.

“Oh my god. Benny, look at this. Want a visor for eighty-eight dollars?”

“Virginia—” Benny turned to tell her to shut up, but stopped short. She’d put the visor on her head, and it looked so cute on her that Benny felt disarmed. She looked like a little kid tennis champ, grinning at him like she’d won the big match and expected a cookie. Then she grabbed a pink visor and shoved it on Benny’s head.

“I’ll give you five hundred dollars if you wear that to school on Monday.”

He removed the visor and returned it to the display. “That would be a tremendous waste of money.”

“No it wouldn’t,” Virginia said. “I’d be getting valuable information.”

He rolled his eyes. “What information?”

“That your dignity is for sale.”

Whoa. He looked at her. Where had that come from? It was one of the most incisive things he’d ever heard her say. But if Virginia realized she’d just said something really smart, she didn’t show it. She was posing vapidly in front of a mirror with a sweater around her shoulders like she’d stepped into a Brooks Brothers catalog.

“Come on,” he said to her. He led the way to the front desk, where a very tan man in a Beau Ideal uniform grinned at them eagerly. His name tag said “Curly” even though his hair was straight. From across the room he’d seemed young, but up close his face was lined and hallow. It made Benny feel vaguely superior. He did not intend to become a forty-year-old man whose entire job was sucking up to rich men while they played the most boring sport ever invented. But Benny’s snobbishness quickly melted into self-reproach. It’s not like he actually had a better plan. He hated thinking about the future. What do you want to be when you grow up? People assumed he had an answer to this question, because he studied and got good grades and seemed forward-thinking in many respects. But when Benny thought about the end of high school, it felt like an edge of a cliff facing an infinity of empty space.

“Can I help you?” Curly practically shouted at them.

“Um, I, um . . .” Christ, be confident, Benny commanded himself. “I’d like to arrange a golf match. Golf game. And I was hoping to employ a caddie I used before. But I can’t remember his name. Do you have a directory?”

“We sure do!” Curly grinned, showcasing a set of unnaturally white teeth. “But if you give me your account number, I can just look up who you’ve used in the past.”

“Well, it was a friend’s account. I’d like to use their caddie.”

“Name?”

“Um . . . Cheek? The Cheeks?”

He typed into a computer. “Uh-huh. Looks like Cody MacPhearson is your man! Do you want to check his availability?”

Benny and Virginia exchanged a look. Cody MacPhearson? The name sounded very . . . white. “Um, I think it might have been someone else. I’d recognize him if I saw his face. Can I look through the directory?”

“Sure, son.” The man reached behind the desk and pulled out a binder. He flipped to a section in the middle and pushed it across the desk.

Benny scanned the names and faces, looking for a thin black man. But the directory was one sandy-haired, sun-tanned guy after another, with names like Cody and Bradley and Brett. He flipped through twice to make sure he hadn’t missed anyone. There was not a single black caddie employed at Beau Ideal. So who was that man in the pictures?

Virginia pushed Benny to the side and looked for herself, still wearing the green visor on her head.

“This is all of them?” she asked.

Curly nodded. “Yep.” His sparkling grin had dimmed. Virginia could tell he was starting to lose patience with them. He turned back to Benny. “Who did you say your dad was, son?”

Benny seemed startled. “Hm?”

“Your father. Who is your father? I need to know the name on your account.”

Virginia gave Benny a kick. She knew there was some weird situation with Benny’s father, like he’d been in an accident and was a paraplegic or something. But she hadn’t known Benny was sensitive about it.

“You don’t recognize him?” Virginia jumped in, pointing at Benny. “That’s Benjamin Maximilian Coca-Cola the Third!” The words were barely out of her mouth before she’d cracked herself up. She felt a yank on her arm, and she let Benny lead her out of the pro shop. He plucked the green visor from her head and set it on a rack of Polo shirts.

Outside, Virginia stopped laughing and braced herself for a lecture from Benny about goofing off during an investigation. But he just sat down in one of the wicker lawn chairs and pulled out his phone. Virginia sat down too, choosing a spot under a large beige umbrella. The air smelled like mowed grass. She waited a minute, and when Benny still hadn’t looked up from his phone, she said, “Um, hello?”

“Hang on. I need to check my Google alerts.”

Virginia stretched out her legs and scanned the golf course for Headmaster Harker. It was creepy, knowing that all around you, men who just looked like boring, upstanding, golf-loving citizens could be secretly strangling their own sons at night. She wondered if Calvin was okay. Maybe he was dead. He’s not dead, she assured herself. She’d seen bruises on his neck in the library the other day; that meant this was probably something his dad did to him often. Which was still disturbing, but at least suggested that the headmaster wasn’t trying to kill his son, just . . . hurt him. Benny would probably be impressed by her deduction if he weren’t so busy obsessing over his Google alerts.

As she waited for Benny to be done, her mind wandered. She thought about Calvin’s face and how he’d looked when he was crying. Some people looked ugly and babyish when they cried, but Calvin hadn’t. He’d looked . . . beautiful. Like a slightly distorted angel mourning Christ in a medieval painting. She wished she could have seen him even closer. His eyes already resembled emeralds, and she imagined that tears would make their color gleam even brighter. She tried to picture Calvin evilly dropping banana peels around for people to slip and die on. She could sort of see it, but not really. Was Calvin the devilish type? She guessed she didn’t really know.

“Do you know if Chrissie White is related to Garland White? The political lobbyist?” Benny asked suddenly.

“Um, I dunno, possibly,” Virginia said, wishing she had a pair of sunglasses. The sun was bright, and she felt like a dork squinting and shielding her eyes with her hand. “I know she’s from Washington, DC. Her family only lives here part of the year, which is why they dumped her at Winship. Her dad has this gorgeous mansion in Brookhaven, but it just sits there empty. Meanwhile, she has to live in the Boarders. Isn’t that totally depressing?”

Benny put his phone into his pocket and sat at the edge of the wicker chair. He looked serious. Benny always looked serious, but was managing to look even more so than usual. Virginia sat up in her chair.

“Okay, listen. We need to change our approach here. I’m giving you lead on this case.”

“Huh? What does that mean?”

“It means you’re in charge. On a probational basis,” he stressed. “You’ve been ahead of me on this from the beginning. Just keep going. Find the caddie. And focus on Calvin. Find out everything about his medical condition. Marfan syndrome, I think it’s called?”

“Wait, whoa, hold on. You want me to do this by myself?”

“Not by yourself. I’m here for whatever you need. But I have some stuff I need to attend to.”

“Stuff like what?” Virginia asked incredulously.

“It’s . . . a personal thing.”

Virginia balked at him. Personal? She felt the familiar itch to wrangle the goods from him immediately. In the past, moments like these had been her reason for living. She loved getting juicy stuff out of people. She’d even created an entire website devoted to reporting and discussing Winship goings-on. But at a certain point she’d gotten tired of everyone’s business, and tired of herself for being obsessed with it. She’d looked at her life and realized she’d inadvertently developed a reputation as a brainless gossip-mongerer. That’s not who she was anymore. Except actually maybe it was. Because right now she wanted to know what Benny’s “personal thing” was so badly she thought she might implode.

Benny was rambling on, “Try to get a copy of Calvin’s science expo presentation. You’ll need to study it. But be careful! If he senses that you’re onto him, there could be another ‘crazy accident.’ Are you paying attention? Do you need to write this down?”

“You seriously think Calvin planted that banana,” Virginia said.

“I think it’s a strong possibility. He’s already demonstrated an ambiguous sense of ethics. He didn’t hesitate to lead you to the evidence on Trevor’s phone despite being legally bound to secrecy. He’s playing a game.”

“No he’s not. He just wanted to help me because—because he likes me.” She hadn’t really intended to tell Benny that part. But he was annoying her, so it served him right. She watched his reaction. He froze for a second, barely perceptively. Then he said, “Well—well, good. Keep him liking you. It’ll make it easier to investigate him. In fact”—his voice cracked slightly—“if he really likes you, maybe he’ll violate his nondisclosure. Just get him to tell you what happened that night with Craig.”

“Shouldn’t we figure it out ourselves?” Virginia said.

“This is figuring it out ourselves. We use what we can use. Calvin likes you? Use it.”

Virginia shook her head. “I don’t want to do that.”

“Why not?”

She shrugged. “I’m not running to Calvin just because we hit a snag. He’ll think I’m an idiot.”

Benny shifted uncomfortably. “Okay, well, the goal is to solve the mystery, not to impress Calvin Harker. . . .”

Neither of them looked at each other. The silence between them stretched out awkwardly. Laughter echoed from a distant corner of the club.

“Are you going to the fundraiser tonight?” Virginia finally asked, changing the subject.

“What fundraiser?”

“The one at Trevor’s house. It’s a silent auction, and all the money goes to help DeAndre with his medical bills. Everyone’s gonna be there.”

As usual, it seemed Benny was the last to know. He never understood how Virginia magically absorbed this information about where “everyone” was going to be on a given Saturday night.

“Craig Beaver might be there,” she was saying, “since it’s not on school grounds.”

“Do you think Chrissie will be there?”

Virginia snorted.

“I just need to know for my thing,” he said defensively.

“Uh-huh . . .” Virginia narrowed her eyes at him. Why wouldn’t he tell her what his thing was? Was he trying to lose his virginity or something? Chrissie was kind of famous for being a huge slut. Maybe Benny had seen her boobs on Trevor’s phone and decided it was time to become a man. Maybe he’d programmed his Google alert for sex tips.

“What’s so funny?”

Virginia couldn’t stop laughing. “Oh, Benny!” she said, sighing. Then she casually reached out her hand. “Give me your phone and I’ll call Chrissie and ask if she’s coming tonight.”

Benny hesitated. He hated other people touching his phone. “Just give me the number,” he said. Virginia gave him a second to realize it was a terrible idea to call Chrissie White out of nowhere like a fifth grader with a crush. Sure enough, after a moment he passed her the phone.

Virginia knew she had approximately two seconds to do what she needed to do without Benny getting suspicious. And two seconds was already pushing it since she wasn’t 100 percent adept with phones. She quickly located his “alerts” app and pressed. She couldn’t believe she was doing this. This was so not the new and improved Virginia. But whatever, she was doing it. It was driving her insane that Benny wouldn’t tell her what his “thing” was. She was vice president of Mystery Club! She was entitled to know! At least that was what she told herself as she quickly scanned the alerts while pretending to dial the number for Chrissie’s room.

“It’s ringing,” she lied. Her heart pounded. The alerts all seemed to be news items involving the governor and some e-mail scandal. Yawn! It definitely wasn’t worth breaking a six-month streak of minding her own business if the goods were going to be this boring. But what did she expect, really? It was Benny.

Virginia closed the app and handed the phone back to Benny. “She didn’t pick up.” She made a point of maintaining eye contact with him as he slid the phone back into his pocket. Benny had told her once that people avoided eye contact when they were lying or being devious.

Why was a bunch of political news such a big secret? Virginia felt offended that he didn’t think she deserved to know. Though probably not as offended as Benny would be if he ever found out she’d just deliberately invaded his privacy. The idea made her stomach twist with anxiety.

Maybe I shouldn’t have done that, she thought. Oh well, whatever. There was no point feeling guilty unless she got caught. And she’d been smooth; Benny was gazing at the golf course, being his normal, deep-in-thought self. Virginia still couldn’t decide if the gambit had been worth it, though. The alerts weren’t about sex or Chrissie or anything remotely juicy. Maybe she’d missed something? She wished she could have his phone back. That was the thing about snooping on people—once you started, it was hard to stop.

“You’ll be there tonight? At Trevor’s?” Benny asked her.

“Yeah, I’ll be there. I’ll get a ride with someone. You gonna wear that outfit?”

“If you give me five hundred dollars.”

Virginia looked at him. Was he serious? Benny was always serious. But there was the tiniest little grin on his face. He was joking. It was such a shock that Virginia almost didn’t know how to respond.

“Well, okay!” she said finally. She felt a rush, calling his bluff. “You’re on.”

Benny scoffed.

“I’m serious! I’ll give you five hundred dollars if you wear that tonight. Including the contacts.”

Benny narrowed his eyes. “You don’t have five hundred dollars.”

“You have no idea what I have.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Virginia was so impressed with herself she wanted to scream. It was probably the sexiest thing she’d ever said in her life. She wanted this weird conversation to go on forever.

Benny’s phone buzzed and he fished it out of his pocket. He read the screen. “We have to go meet my mom in ten minutes.”

Wow. No sentence in the English language felt more like a bucket of ice water than “We have to go meet my mom in ten minutes.” Before leaving the sunny patio, Virginia took a moment to cement the image in her memory—Benny smiling—in case it never happened again.

The Harkers’ house, 5:30 p.m.

All he wanted to do was to look at something beautiful. But he was trapped in a locked, windowless room with only a calculus textbook, a laptop with no Internet, and a copy of Moby Dick.

It wouldn’t be so bad if he could escape using his imagination—close his eyes and ascend to some fantasy world like Narnia or the Land of Oz. But Calvin didn’t have the greatest imagination. It was something he’d been forced to accept about himself. He envied artists and their power to summon fantastic, alien landscapes to their mind’s eye. Calvin had a hard time seeing things that he hadn’t actually seen. How did they do it? If only he knew their secret.

Calvin had been grounded before, but not to this extreme. At first it had been a normal grounding: no leaving the house, in bed by ten thirty. But when his dad had realized he was just getting stoned and gazing out the window instead of doing homework, he’d locked him in the basement with only his computer and his textbooks. Calvin had happily watched Enya music videos on YouTube for a while—all waterfalls and falling leaves and otherworldly harmonies—until his dad had cut the Internet connection, leaving him with nothing.

“DAD?” Calvin yelled. “MOM?”

No answer.

They were probably at Beau Ideal, where his dad played golf and his mom Zumba’d within an inch of her life every Saturday. He was pretty sure it was illegal to lock your kid in a room and leave the house, but at least his mom had slipped a sandwich under the crack of the door before they’d gone. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do if he had to go to the bathroom.

“CAMILLAAAA?” he yelled for his sister. But if his parents were at the club, Camilla probably was too. She made no secret that she thought her little brother was weird and difficult and deserved all the maltreatment he got. He’d never counted on her to save him. He jiggled the door handle futilely.

Think, he commanded himself, looking around the room. How are you going to get out of here?  He was supposedly the smartest kid in the tristate area. That bit of data had been shoved down his throat since the age of seven. He’d aced every test he’d ever been given. Surely he could figure out a way to get out of a locked room. But he felt irritable and short-fused. The pot he’d smoked had worn off hours ago, and he hated being sober. He hated the boring prison of his brain, which was only good for differential calculus and solving stochastic systems.

Most of his stash of mind-altering substances was gone. His dad had hired a former police detective to search Calvin’s room and trash everything he found. Calvin had known it was coming, so he’d tried to give some of it away at the science expo; he couldn’t bear to see all those stupendous chemicals going to waste. And it had been worth it to see Winn Davis staring into his cheerleader girlfriend’s eyes like they contained the secrets of the universe. And seeing what happened to Trevor had been even more fascinating. . . . There was still some pot and some mescaline hidden in an Academic Decathlon trophy in the living room display case, but that may as well be on Mars if he was trapped down here.

Calvin examined the doorknob. It was an old house, and the doorknobs were white marble, with iron locks opened by skeleton keys. He looked around the room for some sort of tool he could use to bash the entire lock off the door. It was a barbaric approach but a potentially effective one. Unfortunately, his copy of Moby Dick was a paperback. There was no lamp in the room, only a bare light bulb screwed into the ceiling. The desk chair was large and unwieldy.

His eyes landed on his laptop. It contained his Moby Dick essay for AP English, plus about two hundred poems he hadn’t backed up yet. If he destroyed the computer, they would all be gone. It made him want to laugh and cry at the same time.

Fuck. You, Calvin said to the universe. But if this was the sacrifice it required, fine. The universe could have his poems. He would do whatever it took to be free.

He grabbed the laptop and brought it crashing down on the lock. The computer cracked, but the lock remained. He slammed it down again and again, until his heart began to pound from the exertion.

Careful, he told himself. He took a breath, waiting for his heart rate to normalize. It was dangerous to overdo physical stuff with his condition. He’d been born with an enlarged aorta that put him at extreme risk for heart failure. The only sport he was allowed to play was golf. Calvin knew his boundaries; he’d spent most of his life testing them. If he pushed too far, it could be deadly. And a second heart transplant was not an option, Calvin had long resolved. The first transplant had saved his life but left him physically weaker. A second would weaken him even further, and not just physically this time—emotionally and psychologically and mentally and spiritually. He could not survive another year spent in beds in and out of hospitals.

He smashed the laptop again. It was falling apart, battered pieces skittering across the floor. Two hundred poems: gone. But the nails of the lock had begun to come loose. A few more whacks, and it fell to the floor with a clang. The door swayed open.

He was free.

The Boarders, 6:30 p.m.

“What do you mean, there’s no money?” Virginia smashed the clunky eighties-looking cordless phone to her ear, certain she must have misheard.

On the other end of the line, a crackly voice said, “Your mother hasn’t made a deposit in two months. There’s barely enough to cover your spring tuition right now. I can’t give you anything.”

“But I need five hundred dollars!” she shouted into the phone.

“Is it an emergency?”

“Yes! Well, no. But call my mom and tell her to make a deposit!”

“I don’t know where she is.”

“Then call Esteban!”

“Ginny . . .”

Virginia paced back and forth across the empty common room. She opened the refrigerator, hoping to miraculously find something worth eating in there. But there was only a can of reduced-fat whipped cream and Mrs. Morehouse’s gross yellow buttermilk. She slammed the door shut, getting more frustrated by the minute. Daniel Wham, her family’s accountant (called Dan-Wam by Virginia since she was ten years old), was being unbelievably annoying. There was no money in the account? Get some! He didn’t know where her mother was? Find her! Life wasn’t that hard!

“Have you not been getting my e-mails?” Dan asked.

Virginia thought about all the e-mails from him that she’d sent directly to the trash. Why should she have to pay attention to e-mails from an elderly accountant? She was fifteen years old. Adults needed to get their shit together and leave kids out of it.

“If your mother doesn’t make a deposit soon . . . Let’s just say . . . the bills are . . . mounting.”

Virginia hated how Dan couldn’t say a sentence without adding ten dramatic pauses. “Well, where the hell is Esteban?”

“Ginny . . . you know I can’t tell you that.”

“If he knew how badly you were treating me right now, he’d kill you.”

There was silence on the other end of the line. Finally Dan said, “If you hear from your mother, please have her contact me. It really is . . . quite urgent.”

“Okay, okay. Bye, Dan-Wam.”

“Bye-bye, Ginny.”

Virginia slammed the phone back on the receiver. This was not good. She actually needed more than five hundred dollars; she needed nine hundred dollars. Five hundred for Benny (Would he actually go through with the dare? Virginia didn’t know, but it would be incredibly embarrassing if he did and she didn’t have the cash), and four hundred to pay back Min-Jun so he couldn’t extort her into working for his gross and scary porn ring. Plus a few twenties for whatever crap they’d be auctioning off at the fundraiser tonight. Money hadn’t exactly been flowing for a while now, but she’d always been able to count on ol’ Dan-Wam when she really needed something. Now what was she supposed to do?

I’ll think about it later, she decided. Right now she needed to change her clothes. She hadn’t done laundry since the science expo, which meant her go-to sweater still had lobster paste all over it. She put on Zaire’s gold skirt and paired it with a white Polo, which didn’t really work, but whatever. She’d been getting too obsessed with clothes lately anyway. It was important to look like crap every once in a while to make sure your personality was still the best thing about you.

There was a knock on her door. Virginia opened it. It was Chrissie, wearing a tiny black top that made her boobs pop out, and a pink add-a-pearl necklace around her neck. The idea of Benny losing his virginity to her made Virginia want to laugh for ten hours. Benny would probably lose his virginity to a Tibetan monk while checking his Google alerts.

“You ready? Corn Flakes is giving us a ride.”

“No, not Corn Flakes!” Virginia moaned. “We’ll all smell like pizza if we go in his car!”

Corn Flakes was the Domino’s delivery guy. He was pasty white with blond cornrows, and everyone called him Corn Flakes because he had a dandruff problem. He was in love with Lindsay Bean, and always got her free pizza toppings and drove her friends around, even though he was like twenty years old and should have better things to do. He claimed to be pre-med at Georgia State, but it was pretty obvious he was just a townie loser who would probably be delivering Domino’s till he died.

Outside, it was already dark. Autumn had not been particularly impressive that year. Most of the leaves had gone straight from ugly yellow to drab brown. Lindsay Bean was being pushed into the front seat of Corn Flakes’s run-down delivery car, shooting furious looks at Chrissie that clearly said, I can’t believe you’re making me do this. Virginia piled into the back with Chrissie and two other girls from the Boarders, both wearing tight black skirts and spaghetti strap tops. Virginia used to do this all the time before she joined Mystery Club—cram herself into a car with whoever was going anywhere, usually a squealing group of girls heading to the mall or some church youth group’s bowling night. She’d kind of forgotten how fun it was. They pretended Lindsay and Corn Flakes were their mom and dad, and screamed “ARE WE THERE YET?” every two minutes. They made predictions about who would get their butt squeezed by Trevor’s dad, who was a notorious horndog. No one wore seat belts, which felt thrilling, and they laughed at Corn Flakes’s dumb dad jokes (“Don’t make me pull over and spank you!”) and screamed whenever they spotted anyone remotely weird-looking or old in a neighboring car.

The backseat was a tangle of long legs, arms wrapped around each other, and boobs nearly popping out left and right. Virginia was half sitting on Chrissie’s lap, straddling one of her thighs. Min-Jun would love this, she thought. It made her feel smug, but also sort of gross and self-conscious.

“Settle down back there, or no dessert!” Lindsay shouted, making them shriek with laughter.

“I think Mommy and Daddy need a little grown-up time away from the kids,” Corn Flakes said, and they all groaned.

Cars were lined all the way down Tuxedo Park, the ritziest and most ostentatiously named neighborhood in Atlanta. Girls in black dresses and boys in blue blazers walked from their cars toward Trevor’s house, a white mansion at the center of a sprawling green lawn.

“Bye, cupcake!” Corn Flakes called to Lindsay as she stepped out of the car, clearly way too into the fantasy of being married.

“Bye, Dad!” Virginia and Chrissie shouted. They slammed the door shut and waved as Corn Flakes drove away to deliver shitty Domino’s to the people of Atlanta. The girls sniffed each other to make sure they didn’t smell like pizza, and Lindsay spritzed everyone with Clinique Happy perfume. Usually Virginia preferred to go to parties alone like a devastating femme fatale. But it was fun to be with a group for once and feed off everyone’s excitement. She’d almost forgotten the dismal cause of the night, which was that DeAndre was in the hospital and his family couldn’t afford to pay for it.

Oh well, she thought. You can’t take the fun out of fundraiser!

From the outside, the Cheeks’ house looked like a palace. Every window was lit, and the driveway was lined with enchanting strings of tiny lights. As they approached the front steps, the door flung open and a trio of girls stumbled out. It was Constance, Yu Yan, and Beth. They looked shaken and slightly hysterical.

“Oh my god, don’t go in there!” Constance shouted, slamming the door closed behind her.

Virginia screeched. This night was getting better and better. “Why not? What’s happening? Tell me tell me tell me!”

“Fuck you, Virginia.”

Whoa. Virginia felt like she’d been slapped. Constance was one of those prissy girls who never cursed. What the hell was up her ass?

“Whatever, go in if you want,” Constance was saying. “Actually, you’ll probably love it. Your Highness.” She curtsied mockingly and then clomped down the steps on her ugly tan high heels. Beth and Yu Yan scurried after her.

Virginia looked at Chrissie. “What is this ‘Your Highness’ thing?”

Chrissie shrugged but wouldn’t look her in the eyes.

Inside the house, there was an enormous roar of shouting. Only the door stood between them and whatever was inside.

Virginia opened it.

Benny’s house, 7:30 p.m.

She investigated me. She investigated me. The words played over and over in Benny’s mind. His whole body felt wired.

Virginia hadn’t called Chrissie at the club. He’d known it the second she’d picked up his phone. It’s not that she hadn’t been smooth—she’d actually been very smooth. If he hadn’t been Benny and she hadn’t been Virginia, he never would have known. But she definitely had not called Chrissie. She’d gone into his Google alerts. She’d investigated him. The weirdest part was that he didn’t even feel angry. He felt . . . impressed.

Focus, he commanded himself. He was on his laptop trying to fill in a spreadsheet of data from his Google alerts. But he could barely concentrate. His mind was going in five thousand directions. Benny wasn’t normally prone to hyperbole, but it really felt like five thousand equally urgent thoughts were clamoring for his attention. Seventeen Google alerts. The aeronautics plant in Waycross. Was Chrissie’s father Garland White? Was Virginia serious about the five hundred dollars? Should he really wear this outfit or should he change? How much money did he need for the auction? Hundreds? How much were kids expected to spend on some crappy vase or a steak dinner for two? Benny’s mind was chaos, underscored by one incessant thought: She investigated me. She investigated me.

“Whatcha doin’?” It was his dad’s nurse, Rodrigo. He came to the house every other day to help with Mr. Flax. Benny was so used to his presence that it felt like Rodrigo was almost a member of the household. He pulled up a chair next to Benny at the dining room table. Benny’s mom and grandma were running errands, making it one of the rare evenings where he was alone with his dad and Rodrigo, just the men. Mr. Flax was in the living room messing with a plastic piggy bank Rodrigo had brought for his physical therapy. Benny couldn’t bear to watch. It was too depressing to see his dad’s fingers fumbling with a single coin when once they’d circuited entire aircraft panels.

“I’m trying to get organized,” Benny answered tersely, not needing another distraction.

Rodrigo didn’t go away. “You okay, man?”

“Mm-hm.” The information from the alerts was still in disarray. It seemed that the Waycross plant had actually been slated for closure two years ago, when Mr. Flax was still their principal consultant. But the closure had been delayed, which for some reason had caused the feud between the governor and Garland White to explode. Benny didn’t even know why he was obsessing over this. Just because it was tangentially connected to his dad? This was stupid.

“I like your hair,” Rodrigo was saying. “Shiny.”

“Thanks,” Benny said. Then, abruptly, he slammed his laptop shut and dropped his head on the table. “Oh my god,” he moaned.

“Whoa, whoa,” Rodrigo said. “I think you need to chill a minute.”

Benny buried his face in his arm. “I have to go to a party in thirty minutes and I don’t know what to wear.”

“What’s wrong with what you’ve got on? It’s very Ivy League, very Yale Law School.”

“It’s more complicated than that.” Benny sat up. Was he seriously about to unload his girl problems on his dad’s in-home nurse? “. . . Okay. So there’s this girl. I . . . like her. I don’t know. She hates me. Whatever. She thinks I’m a nerd. I am a nerd. Whatever. I don’t know.”

“Whoaaaaaa. Here, take a sip of this.” Rodrigo held out his bourbon.

Benny balked. “That’s illegal. I’m only fifteen.”

“It’s cool, Ben. Just take a nice sip. I’m not getting you drunk, I promise. I know you’re a responsible kid.”

Benny eyed the glass, considering. Then he took it. He was so used to the smell of bourbon, he imagined he knew exactly how it would taste. But he hadn’t anticipated the warm burn down his throat. It sent an instant buzz to his head—not unpleasant.

“Okay, let’s start over,” Rodrigo said. “So there’s a girl.”

Benny nodded. “So I wore this outfit today, sort of as a costume. And the girl said, ‘I’ll give you five hundred dollars if you wear that for real to the party tonight.’ She was daring me. And she was serious. I think she was serious.”

“Well, you should call her bluff! That would be a badass move. Like, James Bond level.”

“Okay. Okay. But here’s the thing . . .” Benny felt a tad spaced-out from the swig of bourbon—again, not unpleasant. “Earlier in the day, she’d said this little thing about people’s dignity being for sale. And I got the impression that she, like, didn’t respect people who were ‘for sale.’ So maybe she’s . . . testing me.”

“Hmmm . . . I see your quandary.” Rodrigo tapped his finger on his glass for a minute. Benny glanced at the living room, where his dad appeared to have fallen asleep. It was hard not to feel like this was one of those touching father-son moments from a Folgers commercial, except in a strange casting decision the “father” role was being played by a twenty-eight-year-old Hispanic man.

“Well, Ben, I guess what you have to decide is, are you for sale?”

Benny thought about it. “No. No, I am not.”

“Okay, then. There’s your answer.”

“Well, maybe I am? Just for tonight?”

Rodrigo cocked his eyebrow, and Benny knew exactly what he was saying:

Just for tonight, or just for her?

Trevor’s house, 8:00 p.m.

Craig Beaver scanned the room, looking for anything that might be funny to put on his head. It was a skill he had, making ordinary things funny. He even had his own YouTube channel called “U Craig Me Up!” where he comically reviewed everyday objects. “I give ‘the tampon’ one star. Not a good product,” he’d say, pretending to be frustrated while using a tampon to stir coffee. Craig had been a nobody at Winship for years, until one fateful day Trevor Cheek had posted one of his videos on Facebook. Then suddenly everyone was watching them, earning Craig the coveted position of School Funny Guy. At this point, Craig pretty much lived to make Trevor laugh. Trevor dominated the school, especially the guys; if he laughed, all the guys laughed with him.

The chips bowl sort of resembled a Martian’s helmet. Craig could definitely work with that. But unfortunately, it was full of chips, and it was way too early in the night to be dumping food around and making a scene. He’d wait till Mr. and Mrs. Cheek went to bed for that one. For now, he grabbed Lindsay Bean from behind and nestled his chin on her shoulder.

“Hey, Trevor! Take our picture! We’re a two-headed monster! Three-headed, if ya know what I mean. . . .”

“Ew! Get off me, Craig!” Lindsay screamed, trying to squirm away. But Craig held on to her tightly. Across the room, Trevor shouted back, “Lost my phone, man!”

Lindsay extricated herself from Craig and elbowed him in the ribs.

Bitch, Craig thought as he watched her walk away, her amazing ass jiggling in her tight skirt. He looked around. What else could he do that would be funny? And when were the non-bitchy girls going to get there?

Wait, he thought suddenly. Trevor lost his phone?

Craig pushed through the crowded room toward the dining room.

“Trevor,” he said, squeezing into the conversation. Trevor had taken Polaroid pictures of all the girls at the party, and was spreading them out on the immense dining room table. “Trevor. You lost your phone?”

“Huh? Yeah. You wanna be in charge of this shit? I need a BEEEEER!” The guys around the table cheered. “Beer” was the magic word.

“Okay, except, well, did you delete the”—Craig leaned in—“you know what?”

Trevor shrugged. “Fuck if I know.”

“Trevor, seriously—”

But Trevor was ignoring him completely now. That was the thing about Trevor: the guy liked to laugh—the guy only liked to laugh. If you tried to get remotely serious with him, he put a wall up and blamed you for being a bummer.

“Trevor, come on—”

“Craig, if you don’t get off my dick, I’m gonna take a red pill and kill you.”

Take a red pill? What the hell did that mean? Sometimes Craig felt like a long-suffering wife, trying to read her husband’s mind so she could kowtow to his moods. He couldn’t afford to be on Trevor’s bad side; Craig was smart enough to know that he lived or died by Trevor’s social patronage.

Shit, Craig thought. Trevor didn’t give a fuck about his lost phone. Trevor didn’t give a fuck about anything! But Craig gave quite the fuck. His mom and dad plus several lawyers had rammed it down his throat that if anyone ever found out what they’d done on that golf course, his life would be over. Hundreds of thousands of dollars had been spent to assure that the matter would never see the light of day. But all the money in the world meant nothing if Trevor had lost his fucking phone!

He went to the kitchen and ladled himself a very full cup of Chatham Artillery Punch, the most diabolical and drunk-making alcoholic concoction ever devised by man.

“Thirsty?” Mrs. Cheek chirped, giggling as she took a tray of hors d’oeuvres out of the oven. Craig considered Trevor’s mom to be one of those amazing Southern women who managed to stay completely fuckable without being fake about it. She wasn’t face-lifted or Pilates-ified or yoga-fied; she was a pink-cheeked, big-chested, natural woman from whom Craig would definitely accept a hand job if the opportunity ever presented itself. That would show Trevor. You think you rule this place? I fucked your mom!

“Yes ma’am,” he said, downing his cup and filling it again. “Nectar of the gods!”

“Well, you deserve it, Craigie.” She rubbed the peach fuzz on his shaved head. “You’ve had a bad week.”

Yeah, and it just got worse, Craig thought. It wasn’t fair that he was getting singled out for what happened. Trevor had been just as much a part of it! The whole team had! But Craig was expected to dutifully fall on his sword for them, like the doomed and barefooted Confederates who sacrificed themselves to the Cause long after they’d known it was lost.

At first it had felt like an honor, being offered up for the good of the team. But suddenly Craig saw himself for who he really was: a patsy sucker. They would destroy his life, buy him a nice “You’ve been fucked” bottle of Woodford Reserve (which he’d be expected to share with them, of course), and then they’d go on with their lives and never think of him again.

No, Craig decided right then and there. If he went down, he’d take the team with him. He’d take the entire school! Their futures, their dreams, their comfy, consequence-free lives. He’d take their fucking souls.

Trevor’s driveway, 8:30 p.m.

Benny and his mother squinted at the house from the car. It was possibly the biggest house Benny had ever seen in real life. It was obscenely large for a family of four. But it was undeniably beautiful.

“These people need your Bar Mitzvah money?” Mrs. Flax said, pursing her lips in that way she had that drove Benny insane.

“Mom, it’s not for them. It’s for DeAndre Bell. He’s a scholarship student.”

“And you’re not?”

“It’s different. DeAndre is . . . black.” Benny felt horrendous saying it, especially given that the richest student to ever attend Winship in history was probably Zaire Bollo, also black. But it was the easiest way to get his mother off his case.

“And he’s the one who got impaled by a deer,” Benny explained further. “It’s for his medical bills.”

“Oh,” Mrs. Flax said. “Well, you’re very generous.” She still sounded slightly suspicious.

“I’ll call you when it’s over.” Benny got out of the car and smoothed back his hair. Then he walked up the long driveway. He could hear a lot of noise coming from inside the house. The front door was slightly ajar. He pushed it open.

Oh my god.

Nothing about the scene before him resembled a fundraiser. Benny had expected banquet chairs arranged in rows, a collection of ugly antiques and gift cards for massages, polite chitchat, and sparkling apple cider. But as soon as he stepped inside, he realized this wasn’t a “fundraiser.” This was . . . a party. Benny Flax was at a real-life, boy-girl underage drinking high school party. He looked around, slightly in shock. Where were the chaperones? Where were Trevor’s parents?

Mrs. Cheek appeared, as if summoned by Benny’s mind. She fluttered across the room to where a group of boys were drinking beer around a table. She snatched up their bottles, and Benny felt relieved. But then it became clear that she wasn’t taking their drinks away, merely setting them on coasters! First Rodrigo and now Trevor’s mom—what was with these grown-ups aiding and abetting the consumption of alcohol by teenagers?

“SCOOBY’S HERE!” someone in the living room shouted, and soon everyone was shouting, “SCOOBY-DOO! SCOOBY-DOO! SCOOBY-DOO!”

Benny froze in the doorway. Never in his life had he so powerfully wished to disappear into a cloud of atomic dust particles. The chanting lasted about ten excruciating seconds, until thankfully, the door opened behind Benny and a new guest’s arrival was raucously heralded. Benny took the opportunity to duck into the hubbub in the dining room. A huge crowd was packed around the table.

“Need a Scooby Snack, Scooby?” Skylar Jones shouted at him, holding up a chip overflowing with dip. Benny took the chip, not knowing what else to do. “Nice hair!”

“Thanks.” Benny’s hair was still shiny and straight. The rest of him, however, was back to his regularly programmed self: glasses, maroon sweater, plain brown pants. In the end, he’d decided the preppy outfit was too much of a gamble. What if Virginia thought he was a dweeb for taking her dare seriously? What if she thought he was a sell-out? There were just too many uncertainties.

He looked around for her fluffy blond head. He was so nervous to see her that his palms were sweating. He’d know instantly whether he’d made the correct choice as soon as he saw her face. Where is she? It took Benny a second to realize that the crowd was made up entirely of boys; there were no girls in the room at all. Benny was startled by a huge cheer as Trevor pushed his way through the group.

“Last one, dickheads!” Trevor yelled. He slapped a sheet of paper on the table, which was already filled with sheets, each stapled to a Polaroid picture of a Winship girl. All around Benny, guys were pledging their names and amounts of money, sometimes returning to the same Polaroid over and over to outbid someone else. Some of the pictures had elicited only one or two bids. Others had ten or twelve.

They’re auctioning the girls, Benny realized. It felt like the Wall Street trading floor, with numbers being shouted left and right by boys with fistfuls of cash.

And then he saw it. Virginia’s face on one of the Polaroids. She’d clearly been taken by surprise by the camera—her expression was amused but slightly bewildered. Under her name at least twenty bids had been placed, and the amount had reached $255.

Jesus. Since when was Virginia so popular? The only other name that had that many bids was Brittany Montague.

“Do the girls know you’re doing this?” Benny shouted to Skylar over the noisy din. But Skylar wasn’t paying attention. He was in a mock fistfight with Sophat Tiang over Lindsay Bean’s bidding sheet, yelling, “Dude, stab me in the face why don’t you! You know I only brought sixty bucks!”

Benny scanned Virginia’s sheet. Most of the names were guys Benny barely knew—football players and seniors. Why were they interested in Virginia? One name was written six separate times, each time increasing the bid by at least fifty dollars. Calvin Harker.

Calvin’s here? Benny looked around, but didn’t see his towering figure in the crowd.

A pair of seniors pushed themselves to the table, shoving Benny aside. One of them bent over Virginia’s bidding sheet and scrawled his name and raised the amount to $275. Then he high-fived his friend, shouting, “Long live the Queen!”

“CHICK-FIL-A IN THE HOUSE!” a voice boomed from the front door. Trevor Cheek’s dad entered with an enormous platter of chicken strips, and was met with a cheer so loud it felt like the voices were inside Benny’s own head. Suddenly he felt very overheated. He pulled at the neck of his turtleneck sweater, wishing he could drink a gallon of water. He needed to find Virginia. He needed to escape this den of barbarians.

He squeezed out of the dining room, not knowing where to go. He wanted some air, but he couldn’t go outside for fear that when he came back in, everyone would chant “SCOOBY-DOO” at him again.

He went down a wide, dimly lit hallway, peering in the various rooms to see if any were less insane than the living room and dining room. In one room some guys were playing video games on a massive TV. In another, a group of girls were shrieking over photos from the Cheeks’ wedding album. Where was Virginia? She really needed to get a cell phone. He resolved to finally broach the awkward subject with her as soon as he located her. But first he needed to collect himself.

Finally Benny found a room that seemed empty. It was dark and quiet and filled with masculine furniture. He closed the heavy door behind him, blocking the noise. Benny chose a leather sofa and sat down gratefully, closing his eyes.

I am calm however and whenever I am attacked. I have no attachment to life or death.

It was an aikido saying that Benny found relaxing. He opened his eyes. As they adjusted to the dim light, he saw that about twenty pairs of dead eyes were staring at him. Every surface of the wall was covered in taxidermied deer heads. Benny’s body went cold. This wasn’t a room—it was a tomb.

Then he noticed a languid tendril of smoke curling in the air. Benny followed its trail to a cigarette balanced in an ashtray. He wasn’t alone. A low, growling voice spoke:

“Do you have the password?”

The upstairs parlor, 9:20 p.m.

Every surface in the room was covered in lace doilies and porcelain Cinderella figurines. There had to be at least nine hundred. The story was that Trevor’s mom was obsessed with Cinderella, because she’d grown up in a trailer park and was so poor her family didn’t even have soap. But then she’d met Trevor’s dad at a Hooters, and he’d married her and made her the richest woman in Atlanta. A real-life fairy tale! Except Virginia wasn’t buying it. The story made her think about all the other girls in the trailer park. Was Mrs. Cheek just going to let them rot?

Virginia pulled out Trevor’s phone from her purse. Did you delete the . . . you know what? She’d been right behind Craig Beaver when he’d said it. She’d been trailing him from the moment she got in the house until all the girls had been herded upstairs. It hadn’t occurred to her to check if any photos had been deleted. She tapped on the camera app. Recently deleted files.

“Brittany’s up to three hundred dollars!” someone was squealing. In the corner a group of girls were huddled around a phone.

“Y’all, stop!” Brittany yelled at them. No one was supposed to know how much anyone was going for. The twins had specifically arranged it so that the boys would be downstairs and the girls would be upstairs while the bidding occurred, so that no one would get their feelings hurt by finding out who among them had gotten more bids than others. But Alexis Zeist was making her boyfriend text her photos of the bidding sheets, which she was now showing to everyone.

Virginia suppressed her curiosity over the bidding sheets. She was the lead on the golf case now. She needed to focus on her investigative duties, not on which Montague twin was racking up more money downstairs.

Most of the deleted photos were blurry pictures of dogs. Virginia swiped through about twenty of them, which were followed by blurry pictures of gross deer carcasses.

“Virginia, oh my god. Calvin Harker bid on you like eight million times.”

Virginia’s face instantly grew hot. Calvin was here? She wanted to know more, but Brittany snatched Alexis’s phone away and threw it in a gold-lacquered bureau. The dozen Cinderella figurines on top quaked as she shoved the drawer shut.

Virginia barely knew what she was doing there, cooped up in a princessy room with a bunch of idiots, allowing herself to be auctioned off like a cow. It was the twins’ idea to have all the girls do body shots because they were DeAndre’s “favorite thing in the world.” Virginia knew what a body shot was; it was when a girl takes her shirt off and lets a guy drink tequila out of her navel. She’d never done it before, partly because it seemed slutty, and partly because no one had ever asked her to. She wasn’t sure if body shots matched her idea of herself. Did Virginia Leeds—woman of intrigue—do trashy body shots? But surely it wasn’t trashy if it was for charity. And besides, it was her choice and she could do what she wanted. Except Virginia wondered how much that was really true. No one had actually asked her if she wanted to participate. Trevor had just taken her picture and the bidding had started, and now she would look like a prissy loser, like Constance Bouchelle, if she objected. Was it really a choice if you never had the chance to say no?

Virginia didn’t feel like agonizing over it. She was having fun. She hadn’t been to a decent party in months. She’d forgotten how Lindsay Bean got really mean when she was drunk and made fun of everyone. She’d forgotten how the cheerleaders were obsessed with Madonna, and how at a party even the most boring conversation could seem exciting, like whether pink or red lipstick made your teeth look whiter. And getting to investigate Craig all by herself was the cherry on top.

“You better be careful with Calvin,” Chrissie slurred. She was sitting next to Virginia on a pink velvet settee. Virginia was tired of Chrissie and was ready to hang out with someone else, but Chrissie was always pathetically clingy at parties until she got wasted enough to be an autonomous person.

“Excuse me?” Virginia said.

“His dick won’t fit in you.”

“Oh my god! Shut up! Ew!”

Chrissie shrugged. “It’s gigantoid.”

Virginia gaped at her. How the hell did Chrissie know Calvin’s endowment? Had they hooked up or something? Virginia felt a surge of jealousy and annoyance. Chrissie was the most banal and predictable girl on the planet; why would Calvin hook up with her? Didn’t he have standards?

Relax, she told herself. Chrissie was probably just guessing. Calvin was seven feet tall and had hands the size of dinner plates. So it followed that his member would be equally . . . gigantoid.

“Chrissie, you look like a booze hound,” Lindsay Bean said loudly, and Chrissie’s lip twitched like she was about to cry. It was true that Chrissie got the worst drunk eyes and started to resemble a sleepy, droopy-faced dog after about three Jell-O shots. She was definitely an effective advertisement for sobriety; when the tray of shots came Virginia’s way, she passed.

“I drink sidecars,” she explained. It wasn’t exactly true. One time she’d had a sidecar, but whatever. Jell-O shots were for children, and she wanted the sidecar to be her signature drink.

She went back to Trevor’s phone, swiping through more crappy deleted photos. She was starting to get bored, and wished Benny were there to do this part. Then she saw it.

Oh my god.

Virginia quickly covered the screen, glancing at Chrissie to make sure she hadn’t seen it. Then she peeked at it again. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She had to tell Benny. Now.

“Hey, where are you going?” Chrissie whined, grabbing Virginia arm.

Virginia twisted away. “I’ll be right back.”

She slipped out of the room, closing the door on the babbling chorus of girlish voices. Downstairs the boys were all shouting. Virginia peered over the banister of the immense staircase, searching for Benny, or for his preppy double. She didn’t know which one to expect, or which one she wanted. If it was regular Benny, he’d be totally lost and square and she’d have to socially navigate him through the whole evening. She hated babysitting people at parties. But she didn’t want to see his double, either, because she didn’t have five hundred dollars, which would make her look like a phony bluffer. And because it was confusing. It’s not like Virginia was gaga for preppy dudes; in fact, she avoided them. She’d dated Skylar Jones, for Christ’s sake. Who had a dreadlock. But she liked Benny better without his mammoth glasses deflecting the twinkle in his eye that Virginia hadn’t realized was there.

She spotted him. He was sort of wandering around in the hallway below, opening and closing doors like someone’s lost kid. He looked completely out of place. He was wearing maroon.

Great, Virginia thought. She felt a flood of disappointment, but it quickly dissolved. What had she expected? It was Benny.

The parlor bathroom, 9:30 p.m.

Yasmin was hiding from the party and reading Wikipedia articles on her phone. The seat on the toilet was covered in a pink satin cushion, like it was a prissy throne instead of a big shit bowl. It was one of those bathrooms where nothing was functional. Lacy linens hung from the towel rack, which you obviously weren’t supposed to touch or they would get wrinkled. The gold soap dish was full of shell-shaped soaps that you obviously weren’t supposed to touch either or they would lose their delicate shape. Yasmin felt claustrophobic and oppressed. She wanted to go home. She’d already texted her dad and asked him to come pick her up.

The only reason she’d come to this ludicrous fundraiser at all was because it would look too suspicious if she didn’t. She was being more or less investigated for attempted murder by that smarmy, butt-chinned detective, plus she was the de facto student body president now, which meant she had to show her face at school-related events. But she didn’t feel like a president. She felt like an ugly nanny who’d been banished while the kids had fun.

If Yasmin were honest, the truth was that she’d banished herself. No one at the party had made fun of her or made her feel particularly unwelcome. In fact, everyone had cheered her name as she arrived. But she hadn’t let any of the guys near her with that Polaroid camera, and as soon as the girls were herded upstairs, she’d shut herself in the bathroom. The entire scene was sexist and degrading. As if she’d ever let some slobbering guy fish tequila out of her navel with his tongue.

All of a sudden the bathroom door swung open. Brittany Montague sprang inside like a blond bouncy ball.

“Oh, sorry!” she said, realizing Yasmin was there. “Do you mind if I pee?”

Yasmin stood up. “Sure, sorry—”

Before Yasmin had time to even get out the door, Brittany had plopped down on the toilet and was peeing away. Then she started talking.

“Hey, you’re super smart,” she said. “Can I ask you a question?”

Yasmin stopped. She wasn’t sure where to look. The floor? The ceiling? Was she supposed to make eye contact? She’d never had a conversation with someone while they were peeing before. It seemed like something only close friends or siblings did, of which Yasmin had neither.

“Um, okay,” she said.

“I’m just sort of confused. Do guys like it better if you wait for marriage to have sex or if you go all the way? It’s confusing because it seems like they want both. It’s like, they really want you to have sex with them, but if you do, they’ll blame you for being dirty and not love you anymore. But if you don’t have sex with them, they won’t love you either! So what do you do?”

“I’m not that variety of smart,” Yasmin said. “I don’t know anything about boys.”

“Oh, really?” Brittany seemed sincerely surprised. “But you’re so pretty.”

Yasmin gawked at her. Was Brittany making fun of her? That didn’t seem likely. The Montague twins were famously nice, and of the two of them, Brittany was the even nicer one. People didn’t see them as individuals, but it was obvious to Yasmin that they were different. Brittany was a little dumber, but also more genuine and incapable of lying. Brittany Montague thinks I’m pretty? And on top of that, Brittany thought that being pretty meant you had all the answers about boys? If that were true, Brittany could just look in the mirror and ask herself.

“I’m not pretty,” Yasmin said, dumbfounded.

Brittany laughed like Yasmin was crazy. “Yes you are! And you’re so lucky to be exotic.”

“You can’t call people exotic,” Yasmin said. “It’s racist.”

Brittany frowned. “Oh. I’m sorry! You’re just so interesting-looking. And your hair is so shiny.”

Brittany took a strand of Yasmin’s black hair between her fingers. Then, with no warning, she buried her whole face in Yasmin’s neck.

“Mmmmm! And you smell so good! Like spices!”

Yasmin froze. Her entire being felt jolted, like the high-voltage electric arc from the science expo was moving through her body. Brittany was inhaling deeply and sort of hugging her. Obviously she was drunk; that was her excuse. But what was Yasmin’s?

Then Yasmin’s phone buzzed, and Brittany jumped away. “Make room for Jesus!” she chirped, and then laughed at her own random joke.

“My dad’s here . . . ,” Yasmin said, now wishing she hadn’t texted him. The bathroom didn’t feel stuffy and suffocating anymore. Brittany made all those stupid little soaps and towels seem suddenly cute and pretty.

What is happening to my brain? Yasmin thought.

“Oh, that’s too bad. We could have hung out. I’m so scared of all those boys. Don’t tell anyone I said that, okay?”

“I won’t,” Yasmin swore. Who did she even have to tell?

“See you Monday!” Brittany said, giving Yasmin a little boop on the nose. Yasmin was so baffled she barely managed to say “See ya” back to her. Brittany bounced away, and Yasmin wondered if she should text her dad to come back in an hour. But that would be too weird. Besides, she needed to do her extra-credit lab for AP Physics and finish reading volume six of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

She walked through the parlor on her way to leave. She scanned the room for Brittany and saw her talking to her sister and some other girls. She tried to make eye contact, but the girls were giggling about something and Brittany didn’t see her.

Why do I care? she thought. A feeling had come on very suddenly, and Yasmin didn’t know what to make of it. She’d thought she was immune to wanting popular girls to like her. But it wasn’t about being popular. It was something else. Something weird.

Whatever, she thought. She slipped downstairs past the rowdy boys in the dining room—to whom she was invisible—and out the front door. To her dad’s Lexus, to her books, to her life, a world that suddenly seemed much smaller but which at least made sense.

The master bathroom, 9:40 p.m.

Winn knew he was being pathetic. He was sitting in the bathtub drinking an entire bottle of Woodford Reserve, hiding from Corny. He’d thought getting drunk might make it better, but actually it was making it worse.

What have I done?

“Sugarplum?” Corny’s little voice called from the other side of the door. Ever since they’d fucked on the football field Thursday night, she’d been calling him that. It was what he’d called her when he’d realized he was in love with her. But once the drug had worn off, he’d felt differently. It was weird. He could replay everything in his mind—Corny’s warmth, her extraordinary hotness, her lovingness, her perfection, how he’d wanted to worship her forever. But while he could remember the feelings, he couldn’t quite . . . feel them. They’d left his system the same time the drug did. He was back to his old self. He wished Scooby-Doo would find out who that creepy drug dealer at the science expo was, so he could get some more of whatever he’d given him.

Corny tapped on the door. It was unlocked, but she would never barge in on him. She always tried to obey Winn’s desires, a quality he appreciated and found irritating at the same time.

“Come in,” Winn said weakly.

The door squeaked open and Corny came inside. When she saw Winn in the tub, she squealed, “Oh my god! Let’s take a bath!” and immediately began shedding her clothes. That was another weird thing—ever since the football field, Corny had turned into a sex maniac. All she seemed to want to do was give Winn blow jobs and tell him how much she loved him. She was so cute and sweet and gave pretty much the best head known to man. Surely he loved her. He’d be a crazy idiot not to love her. And yet . . .

She was taking off his clothes. Winn let her. He’d been trying to come up with a way to tell her that there was no way they could actually have a baby, that the idea had been an insane and drug-induced fantasy. He knew it was going to crush her. Corny had been talking nonstop about how excited she was to get pregnant and have his child. She’d even named it already—Winn Roofus Jughead or something.

They were completely naked now, and Corny was filling up the tub with steaming hot water. She looked so cute when she was naked, with her huge breasts popping out of her little girlish body.

“Are you ready to be the happiest man in the world?” Corny was asking in a dramatic, hushed tone. She leaned over the side of the tub and pulled a small white stick out of her purse. Winn knew instantly what it was. His stomach sank.

Fuck. It’s too late.

The whole world kind of stopped for a moment. Winn felt dizzy. He wasn’t sure if it was from drinking, or from realizing that his life was over. Maybe he could hide in the forest for ten years, and Corny would forget about him. But when he looked at her bright, adoring face, Winn knew she never would. She’d search for him forever, accompanied by cartoon birds like a Disney princess.

He just needed to stay calm till Scooby-Doo found the drug dealer. Then he could feel those feelings again—feel love again—and everything would be fine. He took a swig of bourbon and tried to relax so he could get an erection. Corny deserved more than his pathetic half-boner. He sank into the warm water, wondering what it would feel like to have no thoughts. Probably nice, like being a dog or the ocean. Corny was kissing him.

I love her, he thought, commanding it to be true.

The study, 9:45 p.m.

“Do you have the password?” the voice repeated. Someone was sitting in a high-backed, thronelike chair that had been turned to face the wall. In the darkness, Benny couldn’t discern any hint of who it was.

“No.”

“I’m afraid that’s not the password.”

Between the hysteria of DeAndre’s impalement and the mysterious nocturnal activities of the golf team, Benny had sort of forgotten about the drug dealer with the password. Not forgotten, but given it a low priority. Now here it was, right in front of him. Feet away. All Benny had to do was get up and walk across the room, and he’d know who he was. But for some reason he was frozen. Whoever it was, it was like he possessed a force field that prevented anyone from coming near him.

“I’ll give you one hint,” the voice whispered, and the whisper was somehow far more creepy than the growl. And Benny wasn’t so sure it was a guy anymore. “The hint is: Who are you?”

Who are you. “I am someone . . . who wants to know who you are.”

There was a long, silent moment. “That’s not the password. The password is . . .”

Benny tensed. Was it going to be this easy?

“BENNYFLAX!”

A yellow head popped up and the entire chair tipped over. A girl spilled out onto the floor, cackling with laughter. Benny sighed. It was Virginia.

“Oh my god, your face!”

“What are you doing in here?”

Virginia rolled onto her back on the Oriental rug. “Nothing. I was upstairs and I saw you looking in different rooms, and I thought I could beat you here.” She started cracking up again. The stiff fabric of her gold skirt had flopped up, revealing the entirety of her legs. Benny tried to focus on her face, but that felt weird too.

“Are you smoking?” He nodded at the cigarette in the ashtray.

“No, not me. Someone left it in here.”

“Someone who?”

Virginia shrugged. “I don’t know, someone. Everyone smokes at parties. Not every single thing is a mystery, Benny. . . .”

Virginia had propped herself up on her elbows and was looking at him. Benny’s cheeks heated up, knowing she was assessing him. Had she wanted him to wear the outfit? He’d been certain he’d be able to tell when he saw her face, but now he couldn’t. Her expression was totally blank and unreadable. Maybe she’d forgotten about it already. Virginia’s mind was kind of unpredictable, Benny had learned. He sat there self-consciously, pretending to be interested in the deer heads on the wall, until Virginia said, “I have a present for you.”

She pulled something out of her bag. It was Trevor’s phone. She extended her arm, not getting up from the floor. “Look in the deleted pics file. I found it.”

“Found what?”

“You’ll know when you see it.”

Benny swiped the phone open and hurriedly scrolled through the deleted files in the camera app. He didn’t like Virginia knowing something he didn’t. He wanted to catch up with her as quickly as possible.

What he saw made a chill run down his neck. It was a photo of the golf course. It was grainy and dark. About eight boys were piled into a golf cart, hanging out the sides. A man was lying facedown in the grass, tied to the cart. They were dragging him across the green. It was the caddie.

Benny’s mouth fell open. “Jesus . . .”

There had been . . . incidents at Winship before. A weird strain of identity confusion existed among the richest boys at their school, who seemed to compensate for the froufrou-ness of their wealth by pretending to be hicks. This resulted in such redneck affectations as eating sunflower seeds, an obsession with hunting and NASCAR, off-roading their pricey Jeep Wranglers, and displays of Dixie pride that verged uncomfortably into white supremacy territory. Graffiti of Confederate flags was rampant on desks and textbooks; Trevor had famously stuck a stem of cotton into a black freshman’s backpack once. These incidents went largely ignored by an administration unwilling (or unable) to exert authority over the spoiled sons of the Board of Trustees—Trevor, Craig, Connor Tate, Big Gabe, even Winn Davis to a certain extent. . . . It was a character they played: the good ol’ boy, the hayseed in the mansion.

But this wasn’t a cotton stem or a doodle of a flag. This was . . . heinous. This was a grown black man being dragged by drunk teenagers across a golf course. Benny felt stunned. Meanwhile, Virginia was on the floor grinning at him like an excited kid.

“Isn’t it, like, the jackpot of clues?”

The jackpot. Yes, it was a “jackpot” of a find. But first and foremost, it was terrifying. It felt like a mile stretched between him and Virginia, all of a sudden. Their lives were not the same. Yellow-haired Virginia could see a photo like that without wondering if next time it would be her being dragged behind a golf cart. It did something to your psyche, going through life knowing your people were hated—something untranslatable to anyone who hadn’t experienced it.

Benny zoomed in the photo, hoping to get a better look at the caddie. Was he dead? It was impossible to tell. The man’s pants were smeared with dark stains. The boys in the golf cart were more visible: Trevor Cheek was one, plus a senior whose name Benny didn’t know, and two guys whose faces were blurry. Maybe one of them was Craig? They looked bigger than him, though.

“Calvin isn’t one of them,” Virginia said, as if Benny had asked.

“Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure. He must have left or something.”

Benny squinted at the photo. “I don’t think Craig is in this photo either,” he said.

“He’s probably taking the picture.”

“I don’t understand why Craig is getting the brunt of the punishment. No one could prove he was the photographer, and he’s not in the photo. . . . He’s not in any of the photos. I’m starting to doubt that Craig was even there that night.”

“Really?” Virginia sat up.

“He’s not in a single picture. . . . Maybe they beat up the caddie and Craig paid him off? Or maybe . . .” Benny trailed off. He couldn’t think of anything else. And how was this connected to DeAndre? Normally it wasn’t Benny’s modus operandi to force a narrative, but this was getting frustrating. The two scenarios contained so many parallels: both involved a black male, and an assault relating to Southern recreational activities (DeAndre: hunting; the caddie: golf). Both involved Trevor. Both occurred in darkness. They had to be connected.

On the floor, Virginia was lying on her back with her limbs stretched out like a starfish. She was starting to get bored of this party. She hadn’t predicted how disappointing the return of normal Benny would feel. It was like having the possibility that their relationship could actually be exciting dangled in front of her like a cat toy, then yanked away. Maybe she’d imagined the twinkle in his eye. She certainly couldn’t see it anymore.

“Do you know what a red pill is?” she asked Benny.

“A red pill? What do you mean?”

“It’s something I heard Trevor say to Craig. It was like, ‘If you don’t leave me alone, I’m gonna take a red pill and kill you.’ ”

Benny chewed his thumbnail, which he always did when he was thinking. “Well, my mind immediately goes to The Matrix.”

“Oh, I haven’t seen that.”

“You haven’t? It’s really good. I named my dog after one of the characters. . . .”

His voice trailed off, but Virginia’s ears had already pricked up at the mention of Benny’s mystery dog. She made a mental note to definitely see The Matrix. It was the first time Benny had ever recommended something that wasn’t, like, a newspaper or the writings of an obscure Zen master.

“Anyway, in The Matrix, you get a choice between a red pill and a blue pill,” Benny explained. “And the red pill allows you to transcend the simulation and understand true reality. It doesn’t really have anything to do with murder, though.”

“Maybe Trevor’s true reality is that he’s a violent animal who likes to kill people.”

Suddenly the door slammed open with a bang.

“VIRGINIA!” high-pitched voices shouted. The sound of cheering spilled in from the other room. Big Gabe and another football player appeared in the doorway, and a pair of girls rushed into the room with no shirts on. It was the Montague twins, wearing identical pink bras and their hair in identical pink pigtails with ribbons. They looked like little girls that some pervert had Photoshopped pairs of perfect jiggling breasts onto.

“Omigod!” Virginia yelled, startled.

The twins ran at her, screaming. For a second Virginia thought they were attacking her. They were attacking her. But they were shrieking with laughter. Before she knew what was happening, the twins had grabbed her shirt and were yanking it over her head.

“TAKE IT OFF! TAKE IT OFF!” a group of football players shouted from the doorway.

Then a pair of hands grabbed her, and Virginia felt herself being dragged away from the twins. She looked down and saw Benny’s maroon-sleeved arms encircling her waist from behind. Her shirt was half-off, hanging around her neck. He had backed against the wall, and was clutching her to his chest. She could feel his heart beating against her back.

He held his hand up like a traffic cop. “Back away!”

Angie stumbled and laughed drunkenly. The boys in the doorway yelled, “BOOOOOOO!”

Virginia twisted around in Benny’s arms. His face was so close, she could see a thin sheen of sweat glistening on his forehead. His breaths were jagged. He looked at her, and the expression on his face was so weird that at first Virginia didn’t know what was going on. Then she realized:

He’s protecting me.

What did Benny think, that the twins were ripping off her clothes so the guys could gang-rape her? At a fundraiser? She felt so baffled she didn’t know what to think. Was this annoying or amazing? Virginia was used to taking care of herself. No one had ever tried to save her before.

“Benny, it’s okay,” she whispered. “It’s a joke.”

He didn’t seem to believe her. He didn’t let go.

“Omigod! Scooby-Doo is the cutest!” Brittany was squealing. But it felt like she was a thousand miles away.

Virginia squirmed to bring her lips closer to Benny’s ear. She didn’t know what to say to calm him down. “Benny, it’s just body shots. It’s for DeAndre. They’re not attacking me. They’re goofing off.”

It was weird to whisper in a guy’s ear with your shirt half-off while a bunch of guys screamed at you and a pair of topless twins giggled on the floor. It felt strangely intimate, like she and Benny were alone on a raft in the sea of insanity.

Then she did something really weird. She didn’t think about it before she did it; she just did it. She lifted her chin and kissed his mouth. It wasn’t a real kiss; in a real kiss the other person kissed you back. This was more like, she put a kiss on his lips with her lips. But it still felt like the most weirdly intense thing she could have chosen to do in that moment.

The crowd around them started to come back into focus. The twins were screaming about how cute Benny was, and more and more people were spilling into the room. Half were guys with red Dixie cups, and the other half were girls with their tops off, showing a variety of pastel-colored bras. Virginia felt a quick hit of satisfaction: she was the only one whose bra was black. She wished Benny would let her go. Everyone would think she was some priss like Constance Bouchelle, traumatized by a body shot and needing to be saved by the biggest nerd in school.

“Benny, I’m okay,” she whispered, more firmly this time. As if those were the magic words, Benny’s viselike grip on her loosened. His arms went limp.

“SHOT! SHOT! SHOT!” the guys were chanting. Someone was yelling, “Who won the come queen?”—words Virginia assumed she hadn’t heard correctly.

Benny stood up, extending his arm to help Virginia off the floor. Her shirt hung around her neck like a scarf. Benny didn’t look in her eyes. He was looking around like he might throw up or something. Virginia could tell he was searching for a way out of the room. The doorway was jammed with people.

“Benny . . . ,” she said, reaching for his hand. But in a single, unbelievably smooth motion, he darted to the corner, threw open a large window, and leaped out of it.

“Whoaaa!” all the guys shouted, and the girls cheered.

For a second, Virginia panicked—was Benny dead?—but then she remembered they were on the first floor.

“That was awesome!” a guy was shouting.

“Did you see that? Scooby-Doo just jumped out the window!”

Virginia ran to the window. It was dark outside, except for a pair of blue and red lights down the street. Is that a police car?

“Benny! Benny!” she called.

But he was gone.

The roof, 11:00 p.m.

Calvin turned the volume up on his headphones and let the Enya song wash over him. The song was called “Lazy Days,” and it was about balloons. When Calvin was a little kid, he’d been scared of balloons. Not of the balloon itself, but of letting it go. The idea that if he let it go, it would fly higher and higher and higher until it exploded. Good-bye, balloon! He remembered being six years old at a carnival, and holding his balloon so tightly that his fingernails broke the skin of his palm, and he bled. He wished he could go back in time and tell himself, Just let it go.

Next to him, Craig Beaver was yakking away about something. Calvin and Craig had shared bowls before, but normally Craig would just stay long enough to get moderately high before resuming his life’s purpose of following Trevor around like a tongue-wagging dog. But apparently the two of them were having a lovers’ spat or something, because Craig seemed antsy and irritable and wouldn’t leave.

Calvin reluctantly lifted his headphones. “Are you talking to me or to yourself?”

“I’m just saying, if you want to get your body shot from the cum queen, you better do it quick.”

“What are you talking about?”

Craig gave an artificial shrug, obviously expecting Calvin to beg him to explain himself. Calvin just rolled his eyes and put his headphones back on. Above his head, mauve-colored clouds floated past the moon. The air felt magnificent. He was excited and nervous to see Virginia. He hoped she liked him. If she didn’t, that was okay. But if she did, he wanted to lick tequila off her torso and see what that felt like. He’d already begun writing a poem about it in his mind. He hoped it would feel like an act of carnal worship, a powerful mingling of the debauched and the holy. Basically, he hoped it would feel awesome.

For a long moment, Calvin thought the pretty blue and red flickering lights he saw were only in his mind. The strain of marijuana he’d smoked was known to have mildly hallucinogenic effects. But then suddenly he realized they were real. Two police cars were coming up the driveway. He yanked off his headphones.

“Oh my god. Did you call the cops?” he yelled at Craig. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Craig grinned evilly. “Where’s your red pill now, Trevor?”

Calvin froze for a second. “What did you just say?”

On the dark lawn below, a male voice boomed: “EVERYBODY FREEZE. PARTY’S OVER.”

Within seconds, people were pouring out of the house. Everyone was shouting to each other and running for their cars. Topless girls spilled onto the grass in their bras, not seeming to know where to go. The scene felt like a bust of a teen brothel that catered only to pleasures from the waist up.

“Bang, you’re dead. Bang, you’re dead.”

Craig had pointed his finger like a gun, and was pretending to shoot the topless girls one by one. Calvin felt a strong urge to shove him off the roof and watch him die. Craig deserved to die for deliberately ruining such a beautiful moment of peace. For a second, Calvin actually considered it. He quickly calculated Craig’s distance from the edge of the roof, and the degree of force it would require to push him to his doom. But he stopped. He had himself to worry about right now. He couldn’t risk a run-in with the police. The thought of getting caught, and his dad being called . . . Calvin shuddered. It was not an option. He had to get out of there.

His heart was pounding. Calm down, he commanded himself. He wouldn’t do himself any favors by having a fucking heart attack. He started climbing across the roof like a gangly cat. He heard Craig trying to crawl after him, laughing stupidly, saying, “Whoa, I’m really high. . . . Wait, how do I get down? Hey, come back, man!”

Good-bye, Craig!

Calvin slipped around the chimney and located the window that he and Craig had climbed out of. If he could sneak to the second floor, there was a balcony Calvin estimated he could safely dangle from to get to the ground. He was getting better and better at escaping situations. The key was to realize that your life actually depended on it. Every moment was a pass/fail test:

Escape or die.

The driveway, 11:11 p.m.

“Stop touching me,” Virginia said, swatting Brittany’s hand away. Brittany was trying to braid her hair, and it was annoying.

“It relaxes me!” Brittany whined.

“Well, it doesn’t relax me.”

All around, people were scattering from the police. Underage drinking was tolerated to a point at Winship, but once the police were involved, all bets were off. Everyone was panicking, and somehow Virginia had become responsible for the tipsy and topless Montague twins. Which didn’t make sense because they were older than her, and they had a billion friends, whereas she just had Benny Flax, who had jumped out a window and vanished from the face of the earth. But they were following her around like little sisters, expecting her to take care of them.

Virginia scanned the lawn for anyone who looked sober enough to drive them out of there. Big Gabe was getting into his Hummer, but he looked so wasted he’d probably immediately drive them into a pole. Then she saw a tall, dark figure dashing toward a black Jaguar.

“Calvin! Calvin!”

She grabbed the twins’ hands and dragged them across the street, darting around shirtless girls and drunk boys and a pair of dogs that were barking at everyone.

Calvin barely paused to look at her. He just flung open the back door and said, “GET IN GET IN GET IN GET IN!”

Virginia threw herself in the backseat of the car, and the twins tumbled in after her.

“Fuck,” he hissed. “Craig boxed me in. Put your seat belts on.”

Virginia scrambled to put hers on, and then Angie’s. Brittany was sprawled across their laps, and Virginia couldn’t get her to sit up.

SMASH!

The car lurched forward, engine roaring.

“Oh my god!” the twins screamed.

SMASH!

Calvin rammed the Jaguar into Craig’s car over and over, violently smashing his way out of the tight space. Virginia barely breathed, her heart slamming in her chest. She felt half-terrified, half-exhilarated. Were they going to die?

SMASH!

Finally there was enough room to maneuver and the car pivoted into the street.

“It’s Chrissie!” Angie was yelling, pointing at a stumbling silhouette in a skintight dress outside. “Stop the car! We have to get Chrissie!”

“Cheerleaders stick together!” Brittany chimed in.

Calvin accelerated. “I’m not a cheerleader.”

“Neither am I,” Virginia agreed. “Go!”

“Chrissieeee!” the twins moaned, as if they would never see her again.

The car sped away, lurching around a dark corner. Virginia wondered if Calvin always drove this insanely, or if it was just the situation. Either way, she felt so excited she could barely stand it. It felt like the seat belt was cutting off her circulation. She ripped it off, feeling a crazy surge of adrenaline. Calvin was wild and it made her feel wild too.

She pushed Brittany off her legs and hurled herself into the front seat, landing on Calvin’s lap and straddling him. Approximately a half second later, her tongue was down his throat.

He slammed the brakes. The tires screeched, and there was a thud as Brittany rolled off the backseat.

“Virginia, stop.” Calvin pushed her back, pressing one hand to his chest. She dodged him and kissed him again. He grabbed her by the hair. “Stop it! You’re killing me. You’re going to kill me.”

The next second, there was the sound of breaking glass and metal on metal. Virginia felt a weird sensation in her arm. For a second it was just fuzzy numbness. Then it ruptured into a visceral, hellish pain. It was beyond pain she’d ever experienced, beyond pain she’d ever imagined. She heard a blood-chilling scream. She didn’t realize it was her own voice.

Then everything went white.

Then everything went black.

The garden, 11:30 p.m.

Why does no one love me?

Chrissie White was crying. No matter how many times she thought it might be different, this was how it always ended: her phone lost, her makeup ruined, throwing up in a bush and then crying.

She lay in the grass and looked at the stars. They were spinning. Or maybe the earth was spinning. She wished a flaming comet would come and destroy it all. What was the point of a planet with eight billion people on it, if not a single one of them loved her? She cried even harder, pressing her face into the dirt. She didn’t understand it. Why didn’t anyone see her? Her boobs were bigger than the Montague twins’, and unlike them, she had four-pack abs. She’d given so many blow jobs last year that the football team had given her kneepads for Christmas. Yet no one had asked her to Homecoming, and no one had bid on her for the auction except for that slimeball Craig Beaver, and Gerard the water boy, which didn’t count because he’d bid on everyone.

“Why . . . Why . . . Why . . . ,” she moaned over and over. She was so drunk she could barely see. She closed her eyes. The only thing she wanted in the world was to be someone’s girlfriend. To be special to someone. Anyone. She didn’t even care who it was.

Please God, bring me a boyfriend. I’ll be a good person for the rest of my life if you bring me a boyfriend.

“Chrissie?”

Chrissie opened her eyes. Someone was standing over her. A boy. She couldn’t believe it. God had listened! God had sent her a boy! She reached out to touch him.

“Are you okay?” He was sitting down on the grass next to her.

“I’m finne, I’m finnne,” she said. She sat up dizzily and flopped her arms around his neck. Maybe she really was fine. Maybe this guy was actually the one. He felt skinny but nice. His arms were lean and wiry, and he smelled like bourbon. She liked the smell of bourbon because it reminded her of her grandfather, who had given her a beautiful Tiffany charm bracelet. He was dead now.

She sighed and looked at the sky again. She wished there were more stars. She could only see one. The rest of the sky was the color of a dirty sock. It made her sad.

“That . . . ,” she declared, pointing at the star, “. . . is our starm. Star.”

“That’s a satellite,” the boy said.

“Then it’s our sat-tuh-lite.” She squeezed him tightly.

“Chrissie? Can I ask you something?”

“Anything,” she breathed. Except she hoped not a blow job because she thought she might throw up.

“Are you related to Garland White?”

She started crying again. Really crying. She couldn’t remember who she was talking to. Then she remembered it was the boyfriend God sent. And before she knew it, she was telling him everything.