Friday
The assembly hall, 8:00 a.m.
Three announcements were made in succession, each seeming unrelated to the others. The first: DeAndre Bell was alive. He’d been in surgery for twelve hours and was now in stable condition. A crippled condition, but a stable one. The second: Craig Beaver was being suspended for two weeks due to a disciplinary infraction. No details were given. The third: the governor of Georgia would be inviting the top two students from each grade to a special leadership luncheon at the Governor’s Mansion—invitees TBA.
The second two announcements were barely heard, because the whole assembly hall burst into relieved applause at the news that DeAndre was alive. It wasn’t like a few weeks ago, Benny noted, when Brittany Montague turned out to be alive. At that announcement, the joy had been so boisterous and out of control, it was like all the angels in heaven cheering the victory of God. This was more like a collective sigh: Thank god we don’t have to deal with this. Maybe Brittany’s close call with death had inoculated the student body against future close calls. Or maybe it was just because DeAndre, though popular and beloved, was fundamentally not one of their own. He was from Lakewood Heights; he took a public bus to school; if he went to Harvard for college, it would be as a scholarship student, not a legacy. And he was black. Winship Academy had been the last private school in Atlanta to desegregate in the ’60s. The depressing truth was that DeAndre could win student body president and still be regarded as an outsider. He would have been mourned but ultimately forgotten, whereas for Brittany they would have built immortal statues.
“Many of you will be called to answer some questions in the library conference room today. The police are here, and I have assured them that our students will be cooperating one hundred percent.”
People were murmuring and not really paying attention. Mrs. Jewel had not managed to command much respect at Winship in the two weeks since her arrival. Maybe it was her diminutive height, or her Barbie-ish surname, or her obsession with the girls’ skirt length (“two inches above the knee!”), or the fact that she constantly corrected people for calling her “Mrs. Jewel” instead of “Principal Jewel,” which only made everyone double down on calling her the former. She just didn’t seem to understand how things worked at Winship.
The bell rang, and the assembly hall began emptying out, everyone talking loudly and squeezing into the aisles like herded animals. Benny always stayed seated after assembly so he could leave in a more civilized manner once the crowd thinned out.
“So, apparently, when the lights went out, Trevor slipped on a banana peel. Can you believe that? A banana peel. Is life an insane cartoon or what?”
Benny turned to look at Virginia. She was slumped in her seat with her legs sticking completely out, forcing everyone to step over them on their way out.
“Wait, what are you talking about?” Benny asked.
“Trevor was next to his dumb deer in the gym, and when the lights went out, he slipped on a banana peel and fell on the deer, and it launched into DeAndre’s chest.” Virginia shuddered. “It’d be hilarious if it weren’t so horrible.”
“Wait, where did you hear that?”
“I dunno. It’s just what everyone’s saying.”
How come I didn’t hear it, then? But he already knew the answer to that question. He always managed to be in the same place at the same time with the same people as Virginia, yet he may as well have been on Mars, socially-speaking.
“Surely that’s a joke,” he said. “A banana peel? Did you see it?”
“No. I was kind of distracted by the fountain of blood and everyone freaking out.”
“All right, all right. . . . Well, Trevor was holding a banana. That much is true. I saw it myself. There was a ninth grader doing a project on the banana-ripening process. Did you see her?”
“Yancey Kemper?”
“Yeah. Does she have any connection to DeAndre?”
“Probably. I mean, we’re all connected.”
Benny knew she wasn’t speaking in a hippie-dippy collective soul kind of way, just that it was a small school, and most everyone had been cooped up together since they were five. You could probably take any two students at random and come up with a plausible reason why they’d want to kill each other.
“Did you see that purple light?” Benny asked.
“Yeah, it was Yasmin’s crazy project. It caused the power outage. Did you ever find Winn?”
“Hm?”
“Remember? The drug dealer in the bathroom?”
Benny nodded. “Oh yeah. Let’s give that case second priority for the moment. I want to concentrate on DeAndre.”
“Trevor’s saying it was an accident,” Virginia said. “But I guess if that were true, the police wouldn’t be here.”
“I don’t believe in accidents anyway.”
The assembly hall was mostly quiet now, the outpouring of four hundred people reduced to a trickle of dawdlers.
“Your Highness,” a guy said to Virginia, bowing affectedly as he passed down the aisle. Then another guy did the same thing, and the two of them went off snickering together.
Benny looked at her. “What was that about?”
Virginia shrugged. “No idea. Guys have been doing that to me all morning. People are freaks.”
People are freaks. It was statements like these that made Benny realize that Virginia didn’t really understand what Mystery Club was about. Life wasn’t “an insane cartoon.” People weren’t simply “freaks.” Everything had an explanation. And the entire point of the club was figuring out what it was.
“Okay, well . . . who was around the booth when the lights went out? Besides Trevor.”
“Um, it was so chaotic. . . . I think Constance and Beth were there. A bunch of parents. Oh my god, did I tell you about the lady who barfed everywhere?”
“Mm-hm. . . . Why is Craig Beaver being suspended? Have you heard anything about that?”
Virginia shook her head. “Not really. Apparently he brought a bunch of bullets to the science expo and was throwing them at people. Did you see it?”
“Yeah, I saw it,” Benny said. “But Winn Davis keeps an entire gun in his car all the time, and he never gets suspended. Something else must be going on. . . . Craig isn’t on the football team, is he? Or student government?”
Virginia shook her head again. “I think he just does golf. But so does Trevor. All those preppy guys do. DeAndre doesn’t.”
Benny realized he was biting his lip. There were too many threads here, and he didn’t know where to begin. It wasn’t like his other mysteries, where the path had been very clear. He pulled out a notebook.
INCIDENT:
1) Deer in the Blackout
2) Drug Dealer in the Bathroom
SUSPECTS:
Yasmin Astarabadi
Winn Davis
Trevor Cheek ?
Craig Beaver
“Let’s take this one by one,” he said. “Process of elimination. Starting with Yasmin.”
“Why Yasmin?”
“With any odd occurrence, begin at the most basic point. If the power hadn’t gone out, none of this could have happened. Think about how forcefully Trevor must have pushed that deer to be able to pierce DeAndre’s organs. You’d have to be a professional stuntman to finagle an assault like that while making it look like an accident in view of a hundred people. But in the darkness, you could just stab away. And when the lights came on, pretend you slipped on a banana.”
Virginia looked skeptical. “You’re saying Yasmin Astarabadi and Trevor Cheek were, like, coordinating? She and Trevor barely live in the same universe.”
“Exactly. That’s why they would be the perfect co-conspirators. But it’s far too early to get attached to a particular narrative. Keep your mind open.”
“Okay. . . . Why is Craig a suspect? Just because he’s being suspended for some mystery reason?”
“Yes, that,” Benny allowed. “But also his presentation at the science expo. Did you hear it? It was about how, like, bullets are just small bits of metal alloy. There’s nothing inherently deadly about them. It’s the act of propelling them, forcing them, exploding them at 1,700 miles per hour—that’s what kills. And the same could be said of a taxidermied deer. It’s just skin and stuffing, an inanimate object. A grotesque trophy. But shoved into someone’s chest with enough force? Suddenly it’s a deadly weapon. Any object is a weapon if you use it like a weapon.”
“Huh . . .” Virginia was picking at the scab on her leg again. Benny wondered how much she’d absorbed of what he’d just said.
“Anyway. I want a list of witnesses. People in the blackout who were near Trevor when he supposedly slipped on this alleged banana.”
Virginia said nothing for a moment, then sat up. “Wait, myself? Make the list myself?”
“Yes. What, are you not equal to the task?”
“No, I am, I totally am,” Virginia said quickly. “I was just—you usually do everything yourself. But I can do it!”
Virginia’s excited grin made Benny feel deceitful. The truth was, Benny had no idea how to find out who was around Trevor when the lights went out. The idea of going up to people like a clueless fool and grilling them for details made him want to crawl into a hole. But Virginia didn’t care. She’d go up to anyone and say exactly what she wanted. It was one of her more annoying qualities, but in this case it would actually be useful.
“Min-Jun e-mailed me last night.”
“What?”
“He sent me a sex tape of Corny and Winn. Can you believe it? After everything that happened, he’s still skulking around trying to make Locker Room Wildcats happen. Dude needs to learn when to fold.”
Benny looked around. No one was listening and the assembly hall had almost entirely emptied out. But Virginia was still talking way too loud.
“Shhh!” He leaned in. “What did he want?”
“Just . . . same thing. An inside man to replace Choi. Inside girl. Obviously I’m not going to do it.”
“Did he threaten you?”
“No, no. He’s not like that. I think it’s just business for him.”
Benny squinted, examining her face. “How did he know your e-mail address?”
“Um, I dunno. I guess he just figured out the formula for Winship accounts. Last name, first initial.”
“You hadn’t contacted him before?”
“No! Of course not.”
Benny didn’t say anything.
“What, you think I’m lying?”
Benny shrugged. He knew it was a sore spot with her, not being trusted. But it was hard to trust her when sometimes it seemed like she operated with a slightly frayed tether to reality. “I don’t think you’re lying,” he said carefully. “I just wonder . . . what the facts are.”
“I just told you the facts. You are so annoying! It’s like a fact isn’t a fact unless Benny Flax saw it with his own eyes. God! If I tell you something, it’s a fact!”
“Okay, sorry!” Benny said.
Virginia folded her arms. “So should I call the police on him or what?”
“The police? Of course not.”
“Well, why not? He’s still out there. Apparently getting his face bashed in by Winn Davis didn’t hamper his ambition to creep on every cheerleader in America. I mean, come on. Let’s just turn him in and be done with it.”
“You can do what you want,” Benny said tersely. “But if you call the police, don’t expect me to back you up.”
“Oh my god. What is your angst about cops? Were you a donut in a past life or something?”
“A cop shot my dog right in front of me.” Benny didn’t look at Virginia but sensed her shock.
“Whoa. Jesus . . . I mean, I heard there was something with a dog. Was it attacking someone? Was it justified?”
“No. It was not justified.” Benny punctuated the words with steely silence.
“Well, what happened? Tell me the whole story.”
“It’s not a story,” Benny said. He wished he hadn’t mentioned Tank at all. It was a weird effect Virginia had on him sometimes—he opened up and things slipped out. But he couldn’t explain what happened to his dog without explaining his father’s accident. And Virginia had that look in her eyes—that tell me tell me tell me look that made him snap closed again like a clam.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” she was saying. “Just tell me what happened. I’m sure I’ll be on your side.”
Benny stood up abruptly. “It was . . . whatever. It wasn’t a big thing.”
“Obviously it was, or it wouldn’t have formed your entire attitude toward police officers.”
“Just drop it, please,” Benny said firmly. “And get me the list of witnesses by lunch.”
“Okay, fine.” Virginia didn’t look at him, making a show of getting her backpack together.
Benny turned to leave. Then he turned back. “Thank you. For making the list.”
Virginia looked up, meeting his eyes with such open blankness that Benny felt suddenly flustered. Thank you? What an awkward thing to say. She wasn’t doing him a favor, she was doing her job. He was about to retract it, but then she said, “You’re welcome.”
They left the assembly hall through separate exits. Benny went through the lobby, where the Fellowship of Christian Athletes had already produced a poster-size “Get Well” card for DeAndre. A group of people were huddled around with brightly colored markers.
“Everyone sign!” Corny Davenport called out in her tinkling, Bambi-ish voice. Benny tried to pass, but she caught him by the arm. “You don’t have to be a Christian, and you don’t have to be an athlete!” The FCA people were constantly saying that. It always made Benny want to scream at them, Then get a different name!
“Let me see that,” Benny said, picking up the giant card. About a hundred people had already signed it. He looked for Yasmin Astarabadi’s signature. He was familiar with her perfect, tiny handwriting. He didn’t see it anywhere.
“Has Trevor signed it yet?”
Corny nodded gravely. “He feels awful. He’s the one who bought the poster! Wasn’t that nice?”
Wow, a forty-five-cent piece of cardboard. What a guy.
“Show me where he signed.”
Corny pointed to a spot in the corner where some scrawled words to “DeBalls” were made out in green marker. What was it with boys having the handwriting of serial killers? Benny read the message, feeling his mouth twitch with anger:
SORRY MY DEER HATES YOU. HE DIDN’T MEAN IT! GET WELL SOON . . .
The library conference room, 9:20 a.m.
The detective had a smooth, deep voice, like those commercials where they make it seem like diet margarine will give you an orgasm. Yasmin felt smug that they’d sent the man detective instead of the dog-faced lady one; it meant they didn’t think she’d be easy to intimidate. She sat in the middle of the conference table, flanked by her father on one side, and on the other side Bruce Sherazi, a lawyer so notorious that in Yasmin’s family they called him the Shark.
“Are you friends with Trevor Cheek?” the detective asked. His last name was Disco. Yasmin wondered if that was Italian, or if it was just a stereotype that all cops were Italian. She leaned over to Bruce and whispered, “No.” Bruce nodded, and only then did Yasmin turn to the detective.
“No.”
Detective Disco narrowed his eyes at her. “We have a court order for your phone records. If you have ever had direct contact with Trevor Cheek, we will know about it within the next twelve hours. Better get it out in the open now. I don’t like surprises. Do you like surprises, Yasmin?”
“Do not answer that question!” Bruce shouted. Unlike Mr. Astarabadi, his Persian accent was perceptible.
Mr. Astarabadi growled, “You say you have the phone records? Then do your job. Find out for yourself. You Americans. You want everything handed to you.”
The detective folded his arms. “I grew up in the American foster care system, sir. Some days, lunch was a spoonful of ketchup. Nothing has ever been handed to me.”
Yasmin smiled to herself. Her dad was winning. Detective Disco’s hard-scrapple orphan ketchup story was pathetic and wouldn’t make Mr. Astarabadi respect him. All he’d done was brand himself the ketchup-eating cop in Mr. Astarabadi’s eyes forever.
“Tell me about your project, Yasmin,” the detective said, changing course. “It’s called”—he looked at his notes—“a Jacob’s Ladder?”
Yasmin looked at Bruce, who gave a terse nod. Yasmin recited her lines: “It’s a high-voltage climbing arc. It’s an electric spark that jumps between two parallel wires. I tested it in our home one hundred times and it never once caused any power problems. In a gym with the electrical support to power four-hundred-watt metal halide fixtures, the idea that my simple project caused a minute-long blackout is preposterous.”
For a moment the detective just stared at her. “Would you like to repeat that in your own words?”
Yasmin scowled. Her own words? Just because she was a teen girl, he expected her to talk like an idiot?
“Like, omigod,” she squealed mockingly. “The gym is like, bananas huge. My project used, like, a lip gloss amount of power. If you think this was me, you’re like totally buggin’.”
Unexpectedly the detective smiled—a long, slow smile that changed the entire look of his face. Then it disappeared. “You’re a good student, Yasmin,” he said. “I understand you have your sights set on Harvard?”
Yasmin looked at Bruce, who nodded.
Yasmin also nodded.
“How many students does Harvard typically accept from Winship each year?”
“Typically?” Yasmin shrugged. “A few.”
“Hm. A few. You sure about that? When I looked into it, it seemed more like . . . one. One student from each graduating class. And I understand they’ve already expressed interest in DeAndre Bell. Have they expressed interest in . . . you?”
The word was loaded with contempt. You. Small, ugly, unpopular, Middle Eastern you. Yasmin wanted to throw his cup of coffee in his face.
“This is outrageous! We’re finished here!” Bruce yelled loudly. He slammed his fist on the table, providing the violent counterpart to Mr. Astarabadi’s silent, brooding glare. Bruce stood up so aggressively that his chair fell over. Then he did his signature move, which was to snap his fingers and then point them like pistols at whoever was offending him, in this case the detective.
“Pow,” he said. “Watch your step, detective. I’ll shoot so many holes in your case, your pants will fall down.”
The detective smiled again, almost a laugh. “Guess I better buy some nicer underwear, then.”
Fuck you and your sad, cheap underwear! Yasmin screamed at him in her mind. But on the surface she stayed glassy and cool, a trick she’d learned from her dad. She followed Bruce out of the conference room, and Yasmin could feel the detective watching her as they left. His eyes drew hers like a pair of magnets, and she looked at him, not meaning to. For a second it felt like he could see every secret thing about her. He could see her soul, and he found it . . . unbeautiful.
Yasmin looked away, wishing she could disappear. There was no protection from what other people decided to think about you. Not even her dad and the Shark could protect her from that.
The gym, 9:45 a.m.
The yellow DO NOT ENTER tape drooped, flagging in its cautionary duty. Benny gave the doors a slight push. They were unlocked. He looked over his shoulder to make sure no one was there, then slipped inside.
His whole body felt tense. He was already wincing, dreading seeing the mangled deer again. But when he arrived at the scene, the deer was gone. The blood had been cleaned up, and the floor shined brightly from bleach. DeAndre’s volcano had fallen off the table and lay upside-down on the floor. The gym was quiet and empty. It felt like a science expo from a ghost town; Benny half expected to see a tumbleweed blowing past the rows of abandoned booths.
He looked around quickly, having only ten minutes until fruit break was over. Benny had a free period later, but by then the scene could be even further corrupted. He examined the area from every angle. He looked for a banana peel or any sign of one, but was unsurprised not to find one. If there had been a banana, it would have been cleaned up with the blood, or taken by the police as evidence of Trevor’s supposed fall. Benny felt a surge of irritation at the thought of the police having a leg up on him.
He moved on to the next row of booths, looking for the spot where the purple light had come from. He found Yasmin’s presentation, which she’d called, straightforwardly: HIGH-VOLTAGE TRAVELING ARC. It was a tall pair of attached copper wires sticking in the air. Benny found the switch on the transformer that powered the apparatus. He looked around again, making absolutely sure that he was alone. Then he turned it on.
A flash of purple light traveled quickly from the bottom of the wires to the top, over and over again. Benny had seen this experiment before in science videos online. It was also called a Jacob’s Ladder, named after a scene in the Torah where Jacob dreams of God. Benny pulled up the verse on his phone, Genesis 28:10–19:
Jacob dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it! And behold, the Lord stood above it and said, “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your descendants.”
Benny remembered the passage from Hebrew School. It was an important moment in the Torah, one that could be cited as the very formation of the Jewish people. In it, Jacob is chosen over his twin brother, Esau, and shown a ladder to Heaven by which he and his descendants would climb to meet God, while the descendants of Esau would be left to rot. All Jews were supposedly the descendants of Jacob, and thus chosen by God. Benny stared at the swiftly moving purple light, feeling slightly mesmerized. When he died, would he climb a high-voltage traveling arc to Heaven?
Benny turned it off. Heaven was a ludicrous fiction, quite literally a dream. If a man in modern times claimed God chose him in a dream, he’d probably be institutionalized.
He switched the apparatus on again, then off again. Three more times he turned it on and off. The lights overhead didn’t so much as flicker.
The bell rang. Benny knew he needed to leave. He cracked open the gym doors and peered out between the pieces of DO NOT ENTER tape. Across the lobby a door was open. Inside was a tiny room filled with circuit breakers and transformers. Benny had passed that door a thousand times and had never seen it open. It was an electrical closet. And Benny immediately recognized the man and woman inside: they were detectives.
Benny had seen this pair before. They’d investigated the “suicide” of Mr. Choi a few weeks ago. The woman had a sharp, cold face; of the two of them, you’d assume she was the smart one. But it was the man, the handsome and muscle-bound Detective Disco, who’d suspected that Benny and Virginia were involved in the strange case. Benny knew that if he were caught lurking around the crime scene right now, Detective Disco’s internal alert would go haywire.
He watched them from the tiny crack in the gym doors. He couldn’t hear their voices, but they were discussing something and shining their flashlights at a particular electrical panel. Rick the janitor stood by, holding the keys. Then the two detectives did something odd: they began circling the entire lobby, seeming to be examining the walls.
They’re looking for power outlets, Benny realized. When they didn’t find any, they talked for another minute. Then they took some notes, and Rick shut and locked the closet door. Then they all left.
Benny waited a beat before slipping into the lobby. He went to the door and turned the door handle, hoping by some stroke of luck that Rick hadn’t locked it properly. It didn’t open. Benny stepped back and surveyed the area. That’s when he suddenly understood:
The girls’ bathroom.
It was directly next to the electrical closet. They shared a wall.
The second bell rang. Benny was now officially late for Chemistry. He stood for a second, deciding whether to go to class or pursue his line of thought. Benny hated being late. It was rude and attracted unwanted attention. But he couldn’t leave now.
He pushed the door to the girls’ room open with his foot. It didn’t sound like anyone was inside. The anxiety of getting caught—the scream of girls, being labeled a pervert forever—made his stomach hurt.
Go, he commanded himself. He opened the door, his heart pounding. The bathroom was empty. He remembered how it had seemed last night—dark and dingy, the lair of a mysterious drug dealer. Now it seemed bright and clean and normal. A place girls went to brush their hair. Benny wasn’t sure exactly what he was looking for. He quickly scanned all the walls, searching for power outlets. There weren’t any.
The fluorescent light in the ceiling caught his eye. It seemed a little dim. He squinted at it. Under the plastic shield it appeared that one of the long, tubular bulbs was missing.
There.
Benny jumped onto the sink. He wasn’t strong, but he was nimble and had excellent balance from his aikido training. He swiftly pushed the large, rectangular piece of plastic from the ceiling. Peering into the exposed fixture, he saw that where the second bulb should be, there was a homemade outlet with a pair of wires sticking out. And plugged into it was a little white square.
Benny reached and grabbed it. He hastily returned the plastic shield to its place and hopped down, then bolted out of the bathroom. He instantly realized he should have looked first. The detectives were standing right outside. He tried to hide behind a trophy case, but they’d already spotted him through the lobby’s immense windows.
Idiot! he yelled at himself. Trying to hide had just made him look ten times more suspicious.
“Well, hi!” Detective Disco said, swaggering through the lobby doors. “I was wondering when I’d bump into the Mysterious Club.”
“Mystery Club,” Benny corrected him.
“Of course, of course. Because where there’s crime . . .” He let the words dangle, as if they were the first half of an expression that he expected Benny to complete.
Benny clutched the plastic square in his right hand. He tried to relax his fingers so it wouldn’t be so obvious that he was holding something. But he was afraid he would drop it.
“I’m just on my way to class,” he said.
“Well, you’re late, son! Want us to write you a note? We can say you were helping us. It doesn’t even have to be a lie. Do you want to help us?” While Detective Disco spoke, his partner looked Benny up and down.
Don’t look at my hand. Don’t look at my hand.
“I-I don’t have any help to be,” Benny said ineptly.
For a long, torturous moment, the detectives stared at him.
“Well!” Detective Disco said finally. “Let us know if you want to combine efforts this time, son.”
Stop calling me “son”! Benny yelled in his mind. He’d disliked Detective Disco since the moment they’d met during the investigation of Mr. Choi. Detective Disco had the same smarmy demeanor as the officer who’d shot Tank. The same impenetrable wall of smugness. The kind of man who’d never admitted that he’d done anything wrong in his life.
“Here’s my card.” Detective Disco reached inside his pocket. It was obvious he was right-handed; he removed the card with his right hand, and presented it unconsciously (or possibly consciously) toward Benny’s right hand, which was clutching the white square. Awkwardly Benny extended his left hand to take it. The detective clearly perceived the awkwardness of the handoff. He narrowed his eyes, then gave Benny’s shoulder a weird squeeze.
“Do you work out, son?”
“Excuse me?”
“You should work out. I used to be a scrawny guy like you. Felt like a stranger in my own body. Now I feel great!”
“Great.”
The woman detective’s cell phone rang. “We gotta go, Mitch,” she said.
Detective Disco gave Benny a final look. “Well, I’m sure we’ll meet again.”
“Where there’s crime . . . ,” Benny replied weakly. The detectives both laughed. Their laughter was fake and hollow. Benny didn’t like it.
As soon as the detectives were gone, Benny exhaled and looked at his watch. He was now ten minutes late for chemistry. But he couldn’t go to class without taking a closer look at the thing he’d found plugged in the bathroom. He moved to an empty hallway in case the detectives came back. Then he opened his hand.
He was pretty sure he already knew what it was. He’d have to google it to be certain, but it looked like an X10 controller. When plugged into an outlet, it could be linked to a smartphone and used to control the electricity on that particular circuit. Which meant Yasmin Astarabadi hadn’t caused the power to go out. It was the drug dealer in the bathroom.
Benny took photos of the device from every angle. Then he snuck back into the girls’ room and returned it to the hidden outlet in the ceiling. Whoever had put it there would have to come back for it eventually. If Benny could figure out a way to sneak a motion-sensitive camera into the light fixture, all he’d have to do is wait for the drug dealer to show up and expose himself.
Benny grinned at the photos on his phone, feeling creepily like Gollum with the Precious. The proof was his and his alone. The detectives were idiots. They should have looked in the bathroom immediately. But their minds were limited and full of walls.
It was the drug dealer, Benny thought triumphantly. And now all that was left was to find out who he was.
The library, 11:31 a.m.
Virginia felt very Benny-ish and smart, sitting in the empty upstairs part of the library drawing a diagram onto graph paper. She’d spent every minute between classes plus her free period tracking down who had seen Trevor slip on the banana. The information had been pretty easy to get. Everyone was talking about DeAndre and eager to spill their guts to anyone who would listen. From what Virginia had gathered, there’d been a number of people near Trevor and DeAndre’s booths at the moment of the blackout, but only three people had actually heard Trevor slip. Two were Constance Bouchelle and Yu Yan. And the third person—Benny was going to freak—was Craig Beaver.
“Isn’t there some guy who solves mysteries?”
“Like Sherlock Holmes?”
“No . . . Scooby-Doo.”
“Winn, you’re so silly! Scooby-Doo is a dog!”
Virginia twisted around in her chair. In the corner, half obscured by a bookshelf, Winn Davis and Corny Davenport were making out in a fake leather armchair. Corny’s shirt was unbuttoned, and Winn’s hand was practically on her boob. Virginia felt her face flushing hot. The video flashed in her mind: Winn’s ecstatic expression, Corny’s legs in the air. Stop being perverted, she told herself.
“Benny Flax solves mysteries,” she said loudly.
Corny and Winn looked up from their make-out session. Winn seemed embarrassed, and Corny squealed. She fell off Winn’s lap, giggling.
“What did you say?” Winn asked.
“Benny Flax solves mysteries,” Virginia repeated, leaning back in her chair.
“Shhh!” the witchy upstairs librarian hissed at them.
Corny was quickly buttoning herself up. She yanked Winn’s arm and skipped out of the library, giggling and dragging Winn behind her. Winn seemed slightly dazed, looking over his shoulder at Virginia as he clumped down the stairs. Then they both disappeared.
What was that about? Virginia thought. Maybe Winn was the drug dealer in the bathroom, and he knew Mystery Club would be on his trail. She thought about the suspect list: Winn Davis and a question mark. She knew she should have told Benny to add Min-Jun, but he’d been so annoying when she’d mentioned his e-mails. It was obvious that Benny didn’t think Virginia could handle herself around Min-Jun, which was totally unfair. She’d handled herself fine—twice—once in his car and once on the bridge. Benny was just a control freak who didn’t want her to do anything besides make dumb diagrams. He wouldn’t even tell her what happened to his dog. But it was hard for Virginia to feel too indignant when she knew there were things Benny didn’t know about her, either. Things she wasn’t eager for him to find out.
She went back to the diagram, drawing an X on the graph paper to represent the deer, a T for Trevor, a D for DeAndre, and three W’s indicating the three witnesses. The W’s formed almost a perfect triangle around the X and T.
“What’s that?”
Virginia whirled around, instinctively covering the graph paper with her hand. At the height where a normal person’s head would be, there was a pair of shoulders. Virginia raised her eyes higher. It was Calvin Harker.
“Oh, hi,” she said. “Um, it’s for Mystery Club.”
“Cool. Can you show me?”
“Uhh . . . sure.” Virginia knew Benny hated it when she showed Mystery Club stuff to random people. But it’s not like the diagram showed anything other than public information. Calvin sat down in the plastic chair across from her, which made her feel unsure of him. If he liked her, wouldn’t he have chosen the seat next to her?
“So, we’re trying to figure out if Trevor slipped on purpose or not. The W’s are the three people who saw it happen. That’s Constance, that’s Yu Yan, and that’s Craig Beaver.”
Virginia watched Calvin squint at the diagram. She’d been thinking about him all night, but now she realized she’d mentally Photoshopped his face a bit—warmed up the pallor of his skin, plumped the hollows of his cheeks. Now faced with his real-life gauntness, she wasn’t certain if he was good-looking anymore. One thing she hadn’t exaggerated were his eyes, which were a crazy green, the green of emeralds and leprechauns. Virginia had green eyes too, but not like Calvin’s; hers were murky and speckled, like a pond covered in gross algae. She decided to focus on Calvin’s eyes until she figured out if she liked the rest of him.
“What?” Calvin said suddenly, startling her.
“What . . . what?”
“You’re looking at me weird.”
Virginia tried to think of something to say. But before she could, Calvin said, “How do you know Craig Beaver was there?”
“Constance and Yu Yan said he was. Apparently he tried to grab Trevor, but then he slipped on the banana too.”
“Wow, that is one banana on a mission.”
Virginia laughed, and Calvin looked surprised, like he’d been telling that banana joke all day but this was the first time anyone had actually laughed. Virginia’s mind raced, trying to think of something smart to say. What would Benny say? Something cynical and skeptical that showed he didn’t think the same way as everyone else.
“I don’t think Craig was suspended for the bullets,” she said breezily, as if the idea had been hers and not Benny’s. “There must be something else going on. . . .”
“Oh, I know what’s going on.”
Virginia cocked her eyebrow at him. He’d said it so casually—surely he was joking. “Oh yeah?”
“I’m serious. I know why Craig was expelled.”
“Well . . . tell me!”
“I can’t.” He shrugged and grinned as he said it.
Virginia didn’t like being teased. She didn’t think it was cute. “Shut up,” she said. “Are you screwing with me or what?”
“I swear to God—I swear to the universe—I’m not screwing with you. I seriously cannot tell you. I signed a nondisclosure agreement, and if I tell you, there will be a court order. I will immediately be expelled and then sued in civil court.”
Virginia’s mouth fell open. “What? You can’t possibly be serious.”
Calvin pressed his abnormally long fingers to his chest. “Virginia Forsythia Leeds, I swear upon my own eternal soul that I am serious.”
“Okaaay . . . ,” Virginia said, feeling half thrilled and half weirded out that he knew her middle name.
Calvin leaned across the table. The collar of his shirt shifted, showing a small purple bruise on his neck. Is that a hickey? Virginia thought, feeling curious and also faintly jealous. Who was giving Calvin Harker hickies? But on closer look, Virginia didn’t think it was. It looked more like . . . a fingerprint.
At that second, Calvin swiftly adjusted his collar to cover the bruise. The motion was so casual, Virginia couldn’t be sure if he’d done it unconsciously, or if he’d noticed her noticing. He lowered his voice to a whisper and said, “Listen. You can figure this out yourself. All you need is Trevor Cheek’s cell phone.”
“His phone,” Virginia repeated.
“Don’t. Get. Caught,” Calvin said seriously. “If you’re caught, they’ll know I tipped you off. And then I’ll be expelled, along with about ten other guys.”
“How would they know it was you who tipped me off, then? If there are ten other guys?”
Calvin leaned back. “Because it’s obvious that I like you.”
Virginia inhaled sharply. So he did like her—unless he was teasing her. She didn’t think he was, though. He was reminding her of Min-Jun right now. This seemed to be the kind of guy she attracted: older, slightly weird-looking ones who didn’t bother hiding the fact that they liked her. Calvin was 100 percent better than Min-Jun, though; he was smarter and more interesting, and hopefully he wasn’t an icky pervert.
“I better go,” Calvin said, standing up. “I have Calculus next. I’m not gonna make it without some sativa.”
Virginia nodded vaguely, not wanting Calvin to know she was in remedial math and didn’t know what “sativa” was. She assumed it was some kind of study guide.
“Hey, did you like my poem?”
Virginia let him dangle for a second. “It was very . . . stimulating.” She’d pulled the word out of thin air, but was pleased with how it sounded. Stimulating.
Calvin’s face brightened. “Stimulating! Really!”
“Do you have any other poems?”
“For you? A million.”
“Shut up,” she said, her mouth twisting as she tried not to smile.
“Good luck with your case. Maybe we’ll meet again once you figure it out.”
“Maybe,” Virginia said coolly. She went back to her graph paper. When she was sure Calvin was walking away, she snuck a look at him over her shoulder. She liked the way he walked, and the way his nose looked in profile. Suddenly she wanted him to come back. Had she been too chilly toward him? Would he find a nicer girl to send poems to?
You did fine, she assured herself. She’d lived with Chrissie White long enough to know that throwing yourself at guys only worked in the short term. It was better to play the field and stay in the power position until you were really sure about somebody.
Stop thinking about boys. Virginia took a deep breath to clear her head. There was fifteen minutes of her free period left, and if she worked quickly, she could have a whole dossier of information to present to Benny at lunch. She felt as hyper as a dog chasing a squirrel. Maybe Benny would be so impressed with her dirt that he’d make her co-president of Mystery Club!
She swept her pens and graph paper into her backpack. A little folded note slipped out and dropped to the floor. Virginia picked it up and slowly opened it.
THE FA/NT/NG G/RL
When she went out
like a light
So did the light
Of her consciousness
And for a moment
All the world
Sucked
The cafeteria, 12:21 p.m.
“I wonder whose blood it was.”
“Omigod, remember that episode of Seinfeld where he gets a blood transfusion from Newman?”
“Helloooo, Newman!”
“NO SOUP FOR YOU!”
How come everyone loved Seinfeld but still hated Jews? It was something Benny wondered about a lot. He presumed it was the same cognitive glitch that caused people to love rap music while hating black people. He sat alone at a table for four eating his standard lunch, which was a turkey sandwich and two cartons of 2 percent milk. He tucked an earbud in each ear so people would think he was listening to music instead of to their conversations. Most people were discussing DeAndre. Someone had gotten in contact with the hospital, and it seemed the situation was worse than Mrs. Jewel had made it out to be in the assembly. Multiple vital organs had been punctured, and he’d required a massive blood transfusion. The main headline was that his football days were almost certainly over. There was much moaning over the fact that he’d miss the wonderful joy of the Homecoming game next Friday. People seemed very unaware that for DeAndre, football might be more than a game. That he’d probably been hoping to land an athletic scholarship somewhere, a hope that was now down the drain. Nothing in life was secure. No matter what you had, you could lose it in a second. That was the lesson life seemed intent on teaching over and over. I get it! Benny felt like screaming sometimes. I get it.
“Are you Scooby-Doo?”
“Hm?” Benny took the earbuds out of his ears.
“Scooby-Doo? That’s you?” It was Winn Davis. He looked tired and frazzled. There were deep circles under his eyes, and his hair lacked its usual Ken-doll shape.
“Yes. I mean, I’m Benny.”
Winn plunked down in the chair next to him and set down his lunch tray, which was piled with enough food to feed a family of four. Benny glanced around. People were looking at them, obviously wondering why in hell Winn Davis was choosing to eat lunch with Benny Flax.
“I need help,” Winn said in a low voice.
“Um, of course. What can I do for you?”
Winn didn’t look Benny in the eye. Instead he stared somewhat vacantly at his pile of food. “Last night . . . there was a . . . guy. In the girls’ bathroom . . .”
“Yes, I’m aware of that,” Benny said.
This seemed to perk Winn up a little. “Oh, really? Okay, cool. I need to know who it was.”
“Well, I’m afraid I don’t know at this time. But I can assure you that Mystery Club is working on it.”
“Cool . . . Okay . . . Well, I need to know as soon as you know. How much do you charge?”
“Charge? Oh, nothing. No charge,” Benny said. “We’re a nonprofit club.”
“Cool . . .”
Benny narrowed his eyes, appraising him. Was it possible that Winn was the drug dealer, and he was just doing this to throw Benny off? Benny didn’t think that was a likely scenario. Winn wasn’t that clever, and he seemed genuine.
“Listen, um . . . Hey, do you have a pen?” he was saying. “I think it would be better if I wrote this down.”
“Of course,” Benny replied, quickly pulling a pen and a small notepad out of his pocket. Winn took them, pushing away his tray of untouched food. He paused, apparently deciding what to say. Then he wrote in sloppy capital letters:
IF YOU DON’T FIND HIM I THINK I MIGHT DIE.
Whoa, Benny thought. But he tried to look unfazed. It was unprofessional to seem freaked out by your clients.
Abruptly, without saying another word, Winn picked up his tray and walked away. Benny watched him join his football player friends at a faraway table. Benny looked at the note again.
If you don’t find him I think I might die.
Suddenly he felt a pair of hands closing around his throat.
“BENNY.”
Benny jumped and almost toppled over in his chair. He swatted the hands away. They were Virginia’s.
“Geez, don’t do that.”
“Omigod. Omigod. Omigod.” Virginia crashed into the chair next to him. “You won’t believe the dirt I got.”
“What? What is it?”
She slammed a piece of graph paper onto the table and then proceeded to talk a hundred miles an hour about Calvin Harker and Craig Beaver and a conspiracy and nondisclosure agreements and golf-related Satanic orgies. Christ, Benny thought. Give Virginia an hour and who knew what kind of crap she’d dig up.
“Stop, stop,” Benny said. “Please speak in a linear manner. You sound like you’re on crack.”
Virginia raced on, “It has to be the golf team. Ten guys? And there’s no other group in school that has Trevor, Craig, and Calvin in it. I checked.” She slammed a yearbook on top of the graph paper. “And they do blood-letting ceremonies on the golf course to appease the gods of victory. Did you know the golf team hasn’t lost a tournament in four years? I checked that, too.”
“Hang on. Calvin Harker told you this? That the golf team are Satanists?”
“No, Calvin wouldn’t say anything! That’s just my theory.”
Benny gritted his teeth. “Virginia. Tell me exactly what happened. Do not embellish a single detail or inject any theories about Satanism.”
Virginia took a breath and started over. Benny listened, feeling only slightly less overwhelmed by her second recitation. What was with this case? Everything seemed to be happening around Virginia, with a complete lack of regard for the fact that it was Benny’s club. And what was with Virginia “checking” stuff without him? Research was his thing!
“So what do we do?” Virginia asked breathlessly. “We get the phone, right?”
Benny tried to think quickly. Virginia was leagues ahead of him on this one. How was he supposed to judge the proper course of action relying entirely on her reporting? He wished he could have seen Calvin’s face, observed his posture, heard his exact words. Maybe he was trying to trick them. Benny just had no idea, because he hadn’t been there.
“I . . . I don’t think so. I think we should stick to the plan. Interview the witnesses near Trevor when he fell.”
“Constance and Yu Yan? Come on, they’re idiots. They don’t know anything.”
“Then we should focus on the drug dealer in the bathroom. I have new information. It wasn’t Winn Davis. Look what I found.” He pulled out his phone and discreetly showed Virginia the pictures of the X10 device he’d found in the bathroom ceiling. “It’s what the drug dealer used to control the power. It was him. We can cross Yasmin off the suspect list.”
“Okay, fine! Then we move on to the next person, which is Trevor!” Virginia hissed excitedly. “So we have to get his phone!”
“Okay, well . . . except how would we even do that?”
Virginia grabbed half of his turkey sandwich and helped herself to it. She took a large bite and said, “I haf de puffak pwan.”
Benny sighed. “Chew, swallow, then speak.”
Virginia swallowed hard. “I have the perfect plan. You’re gonna love it because it’s simple and classic. It’s textbook.”
Benny narrowed his eyes. Was she calling him boring? Virginia had clasped her hands together and was making a pathetic “pleeeease” face. He had a feeling that if he didn’t say yes, she would just go behind his back and do it anyway. Better to maintain some semblance of control over the situation.
“Fine, we’ll get the phone.”
Virginia clapped her hands like a five-year-old and took another huge bite of his sandwich.
“You’ll choke one day if you don’t learn to take smaller bites,” Benny said.
“Fanks, Dad.”
“You’re lucky I know the Heimlich maneuver.”
Virginia swallowed. “Gee, I’m the luckiest girl in the world!”
Benny frowned. He was not enjoying being the Watson in this situation. He was almost afraid to ask what Virginia’s “simple and classic” plan entailed.
“I’ll do most of it,” Virginia assured him, as if reading his mind. “All you have to do is one tiny, tiny thing.”
The second-floor hall, 1:15 p.m.
I can’t do this.
It wasn’t a tiny thing. It was a huge thing. It was the very entry point of juvenile delinquency. All the atoms of Benny’s being begged him not to do this.
Every child in America was acquainted with the terrible temptation of the fire alarm. It was bright red, every kid’s favorite color. It had a handle that pretty much screamed “PULL ME!” It promised instant chaos: the power to upend an entire school, the power to create deafening noise and fear and disorder. All within your reach.
It was the first thing they learned in kindergarten, drilled into their skulls over and over: never pull the fire alarm. If you pull the fire alarm, you are a worthless, selfish, evil miscreant. If you pull the fire alarm, your life will be over. You will never become the president; you’ll become a garbage collector on minimum wage, surrounded by garbage and smelling like garbage, because if you pull the fire alarm, you will be garbage.
Benny’s heart was pounding in time with his thoughts: I can’t DO this, I can’t DO this, I can’t DO this. His palms were clammy and cold. He was clutching a paper towel to avoid leaving fingerprints on the handle; already the brown sheet was damp with sweat.
Logically, he understood why it had to be him. If Virginia was going to do the dirty work of stealing the phone, it made sense for her to have an alibi when the alarm went off. She was in class right now with fifteen people around her; even if she got caught stealing the phone, no one could accuse her of having pulled the alarm. And no one would accuse Benny, either, if no one saw him. He’d be one of twenty to thirty unaccounted-for students with free periods right now—not a huge pool of suspects, but few with Benny’s 100 percent spotless disciplinary record. In his five years at Winship, he’d never received so much as a uniform infraction. No one would ever imagine Benny Flax pulling a fire alarm—Benny could barely imagine it himself. And yet here he was, standing in the empty hallway, willing himself to yank down that forbidden handle.
The longer I stand here, the more I’m putting myself at risk.
He was starting to feel queasy and ill. He reviewed his plan in his mind. Brisk walk along the wall, hand outstretched and ready. A single, swift, forceful pull. Keep moving, duck into the boys’ restroom as quickly as possible. He’d already checked to make sure the restroom was empty. Everything was going to be fine. He wouldn’t be caught, as long as he did it right now.
Seconds passed. Benny felt paralyzed.
Do it. Do it, you coward!
He took a deep breath, willing himself to move. If he wimped out on this, Virginia would never let him live it down. Who cares? a little voice inside his head demanded. Virginia’s a weird, annoying ditz! She can’t judge you! But it wasn’t just Virginia’s judgment he’d have to face; it was his own. Why did this feel like the defining moment of his life? Who was Benny Flax? Someone who could pull a fire alarm? Or someone who couldn’t?
Either way, there would be consequences.
Room 202, 1:15 p.m.
Skylar Jones read the poem in a flat, monotonous voice:
“. . . toward heaven till the tree could bear no more. But dipped its top and set me down again. That would be good both going and coming back. One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.” He slammed the book closed and slumped back down in his desk.
“Thank you, Skylar!” Mrs. Hope said. “That was wonderful.”
Virginia rolled her eyes. It definitely had not been wonderful. But Mrs. Hope was one of those teachers who believed that even morons should have self-esteem.
“So what is Robert Frost saying in this poem? What is a ‘swinger of birches’?”
Her question was met by a long, customary silence. None of them ever knew what the hell any of these old cheeseballs from a century ago were talking about. It wasn’t like Calvin’s poems, where maybe they weren’t traditional, but at least you could see the passion and pizazz.
“The birch is a tree that grows in New England,” Mrs. Hope explained. “And children would swing on the long, white branches. It represents escapism, and the poet’s lost sense of childlike wonder.”
“Why do we have to read about a Yankee tree?” Big Gabe piped up. “Why can’t we read about a Southern tree?”
There was a smattering of agreement: “Yeah!” “Why not!” “Why not a Southern tree?”
Mrs. Hope tried to suppress the revolt: “I’m afraid the great movements in American poetry all occurred in New England. The Fireside Poets, the Transcendentalists, the Romantics . . .”
Virginia was barely listening. Every minute that passed, she felt more and more tense. At any second, the fire alarm would start blaring its deafening, high-pitched tone. It was like waiting for a jack-in-the-box to pop.
What are you waiting for, Benny?
The debate about Yankee trees versus Southern trees was heating up. Mrs. Hope always let her classes get hijacked by dumb discussions. “Let’s hear some different voices,” she was saying. “Virginia?”
“Hm? What?”
“Would you like the poem better if it were about a Southern tree?”
“Um, I guess . . .” In a halfway decent world, the alarm would have gone off right then. But it didn’t, so Virginia was forced to go on, “I mean, it’s hard to relate to some old dude’s nostalgia for a tree that we don’t even have down here.”
Mrs. Hope’s face looked like she’d been electrocuted by happiness. “Virginia, what an astute point!” She immediately told everyone to get out a piece of paper and rewrite the poem by replacing the birch tree with something precious from their own childhood. Virginia stared at her desk, praying the alarm would go off before her turn to share.
“One could do worse than be a watcher of NASCAR.”
“Excellent, Gabe!”
One could do worse than be . . . Virginia didn’t know. It was dumb to dwell on your childhood. As her stepdad Esteban always said, “He who looks behind him gets a crick in his neck.”
“One could do worse than go to Disney World the same week Kylie Jenner was there!”
“Very poignant, Beth! Virginia? Your turn.”
Virginia took a slow breath. “One could do worse than be . . . a . . .” Come on, Benny!
BEEEEP. BEEEEP. BEEEEP.
“Walk calmly! You know the drill!” Mrs. Hope was shouting. “No stopping, leave everything!”
Virginia covered her ears. Christ. She’d forgotten just how hellishly loud these alarms were. She stood up and maneuvered herself to the end of the line out the door. When Mrs. Hope’s back was turned, she slipped into the river of students away from her class. She knew exactly where to go: first floor, room 114. Trevor had Marine Biology (the “dumb” class). It would be easy because she could just flow down the stairs with everyone else; it would be hard because once she ducked into the classroom, the huge windows would expose her to anyone walking past outside. She’d have to work very quickly.
BEEEEP. BEEEEP. BEEEEP.
Virginia covered her ears as she snuck into the room. Most teachers at Winship made everyone drop their phones into a basket at the beginning of class. Sure enough, a large plastic bowl with cartoons of fish and dolphins sat on Mr. Howe’s desk, full of sleek black phones. Then Virginia felt her stomach sink.
Shit.
She hadn’t thought about how she would actually determine which phone was Trevor’s. This wasn’t fifth grade; no one used cute name labels anymore. Outside, a group of students led by a frantic-looking teacher passed. Virginia crouched behind Mr. Howe’s desk. She picked up a random phone and pushed the button on the front. She’d never had a cell phone, but she’d seen other kids using them.
ENTER PASSCODE.
Shit!
She threw it down and picked up another. It also had a passcode. The earsplitting tone of the fire alarm made her feel like she was going insane. Maybe she could just take all the phones and figure out which was Trevor’s later. No, Benny would hate that, she knew. Fifteen vanished phones would be a huge deal, and make it immediately obvious that the fire alarm had been a ploy.
BEEEEP. BEEEEP. BEEEEP.
It felt like the alarm was personally attacking her. She went through six more phones until she finally found one without a passcode. She swiped it open and went through the contacts. Please have Trevor’s number. Please have Trevor’s number.
“Yes!” She pressed and waited. After an agonizing moment, one of the phones lit up—a surprisingly crappy one—and she heard the tinny sound of its “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy” ringtone. She shoved the phone into her jacket pocket. Then she threw the other phones back into the bowl and put the bowl on the desk. If she heard that obnoxious BEEP one more time, she was going to seriously lose her mind. She covered her ears and ran out into the hall, not even bothering to check if the coast was clear first. She felt so stressed out and harassed she wanted to explode into a million pieces.
BEEEEP. BEEEEP. BEEEEP.
She burst through the front doors. The second she was outside, the volume of the alarm dropped about a million decibels. She hurried away from the building. A pair of sandy-haired guys saw her and quickly got out of her way.
“Your Highness,” one of them said, bowing.
She shot him a sideways look. Why did people keep calling her that?
“Virginia. Virginia!”
She turned and saw Benny. He was standing at the edge of the crowd of students being herded into the courtyard. He looked pale and nervous. Without thinking about it, she ran over to him and flung her arms around his shoulders. An immense wave of relief washed over her. She’d gotten the phone, and no one had seen her.
“Oh my god,” she said, her voice half muffled by his sweater. She could feel that Benny had stiffened. He patted her shoulder like a humoring grandma. Virginia rolled her eyes. I need a hug. Deal with it. Just as she started to detach herself, Benny’s arms relaxed and it seemed like he might actually hug her back. But it was too late; she was already pulling away. Whatever, she thought. She was way too frazzled to deal with Benny’s fraught internal struggle to hug or not to hug.
“Did you get the phone?”
Virginia grinned and patted her pocket. “Yep. God, you look like a ghost. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. I was just worried.”
“About getting caught?”
“About you getting caught.”
“Oh.”
They stood there awkwardly for a moment. Virginia didn’t know if Benny expected her to give him the phone, or if she was allowed to hang on to it herself. The last time she’d been responsible for a piece of evidence, Zaire Bollo had managed to steal it from her and destroy it. Now would be the time for Benny to bring that up. But he didn’t.
“I better go sign in with my homeroom,” she said.
“Yeah. Can I come over later? To your room?”
It was a normal question. Virginia knew he just wanted to look at the phone. But something about the way he’d asked felt . . . different. The fact that he’d asked at all was new. Usually Benny just barked orders and Virginia obeyed.
“Sure,” she said. “Come over at four?”
Benny nodded and started walking back to his homeroom. “See ya.”
“See ya.”
The alarm was still blaring inside the building, screaming of a nonexistent danger. All around Virginia, students were loudly fretting about the school burning down and whether they’d ever see their Michael Kors backpacks again. Virginia looked up at the sky, where a bunch of puffy, slow-moving clouds hung above their heads. It was hard to believe how peaceful the world was up there, when down here it was such a clusterfuck of insanity. Not that she’d prefer to live in the clouds. It was like in Bible class when they learned about Heaven: supposedly it was a bunch of angels sitting around singing God’s praise for eternity, which sounded soul-crushingly boring to Virginia. She’d rather have her feet on the ground down here.
What was heavenly about Heaven if you had to miss out on all the action?
The fountain, 1:40 p.m.
Yasmin Astarabadi was slowly going insane. Actually, she was quite quickly going insane. She couldn’t tell if the last twenty-four hours were going perfectly or horribly for her. On the one hand, if DeAndre Bell was hurt so badly he had to miss a bunch of school—that wasn’t such a bad thing for her. It meant Yasmin would get to fill in and add student body president to her resumé for at least a semester. But on the other hand, if he was only hurt badly enough to be forced to drop his sports teams—well, shit. That just meant he’d use extra time to study harder and possibly surpass her academically.
And now someone had pulled the fire alarm, which also was either a blessing or a curse. Her English class had been scheduled for an in-class essay, which would now be postponed till tomorrow. That meant she’d have a whole evening to improve her answer, but then again, so would everyone else, which would ruin the curve. And besides, every hour of today was already accounted for. She didn’t have time to squeeze in extra prep for an essay that was postponed because some fucktard was bored and wanted a break from Remedial Dum-Dum class.
All around her, people were chatting and laughing and wasting their lives. A group of boys were kicking a hacky sack. Though it was chilly out, all the girls were holding their jackets instead of wearing them, and counting all the goose bumps on their arms.
“Every goose bump burns a calorie,” Angie Montague informed all her friends. “So we can eat an entire poppy-seed muffin after this!”
Have fun with that! Yasmin thought icily. She grabbed her SAT flash cards from her pocket, refusing to allow her path to glory to be derailed. If she was going to be stuck out here, she was going to use the time to memorize ten new vocabulary terms to have at her fingertips for the leadership luncheon in December. Governor St. Martin was never going to forget Yasmin Astarabadi, the girl with the vocabulary of a PhD candidate.
She wandered to the thicket of bushes and trees at the edge of the courtyard, away from the hubbub of the crowd. She chose an isolated tree and leaned against it. The fire alarm was still beeping faintly from the building. Who knew how long this was going to take.
Chicanery: the use of trickery to achieve a political or legal aim. From the French meaning “to quibble.”
She heard a pair of muffled voices behind her. She looked over her shoulder. Two people were standing in the clearing between the trees about twenty feet away. Their tall, matching frames were unmistakable: it was Headmaster Harker and Calvin. And it was immediately obvious that something was off.
There had always been stories that the Harkers were aliens, which everyone pretended to believe as a joke. The alien comparisons came easily: both were freakishly tall, and freakishly smart. Yasmin had never seen either of them laugh. She’d never seen either of them eat. Calvin’s long absence from eighth grade had created a stir of jokes that he’d returned to his home planet. But when it turned out he’d been in the hospital and had almost died, the jokes stopped. Yasmin hadn’t heard anyone call him “Martian Boy” in years.
But suddenly the alien thing seemed creepily apt. Yasmin found herself staring. They were standing across from each other, about two feet apart. The headmaster was holding Calvin’s neck, his long arm outstretched. The scene was tense and silent. It was like they were speaking telepathically, or waiting to be beamed up to an orbiting ship. Yasmin didn’t have a brother, so she didn’t know much about fathers and sons. But she didn’t think fathers went around gripping their sons’ necks like that. It was spooky.
Suddenly, as if they’d heard her thoughts, the headmaster and Calvin looked right at her. The headmaster’s hand immediately dropped from his son’s throat.
“Sorry!” Yasmin called out. “Sorry! I didn’t see anything . . .” She held up her flash cards feebly, as if they were an excuse. The Harkers just stared at her. For a second she felt afraid they might actually pull off their faces to reveal green Martian scales and menacing red eyes.
“Sorry!” she said a third time. Then she walked away. Don’t look back, she commanded herself. Was this going to screw up her goal of getting the headmaster to recommend her for Harvard? Scoring the headmaster was the ultimate prize in teacher recs; she didn’t want some stupid thing she accidentally saw during a fucking fire alarm to affect her college ambitions. But then again, maybe this was a good thing. Like everything else lately, it could go either way. Maybe Headmaster Harker would do whatever she asked now, to keep her from telling anyone what she’d seen.
Which was . . . what exactly? She didn’t even know. But she didn’t think it was normal.
The Boarders, 4:15 p.m.
Trevor Cheek’s text history was the most boring reading material in the English language. Virginia scrolled through an endless exchange with Winn Davis that was mostly pictures of dachshunds and GIFs from The Avengers. It was kind of cute, actually. Winn and Trevor seemed so huge and intimidating (They were juniors! They had cars!), but really they were just boys who liked dogs and movies. There was a short conversation with “Crissy” (Chrissie White, Virginia presumed), the extent of which was Trevor asking “can I see yr nips?” followed by a picture of boobs clearly taken in the dingy Boarders bathroom mirror.
“Anything interesting?” Benny asked. He was sitting at her desk and messing with a figurine of a mermaid.
“Chrissie’s boobs,” she said. “Where’s the camera app on these things?” She held out the phone toward him.
Benny averted his eyes. “Can you—please—”
“Oh, sorry.” She tried to swipe closed the picture of Chrissie’s boobs, but it didn’t work. “Ugh, I don’t know how to use this.”
Benny grabbed the phone and made a big deal of closing his eyes while swiping the photo off the screen. Virginia flopped back on her bed and looked at the ceiling. She wondered if boys would text asking to see her nips if she had a cell phone. Let me see your dick first, she imagined saying. Except she didn’t actually want to see a dick. Which made sexting kind of a losing proposition.
“I think you’re right about the golf team,” Benny said.
Virginia sat up. “Oh yeah?”
“I don’t know if you want to see this. It’s a lot of . . . butts. Boys’ butts.”
Virginia burst out laughing. “Oh my god! Let me see!”
Benny reluctantly handed her the phone. The first photo was of a golf tee at night. The sky was black, and the camera flash turned the grass a ghastly shade of green. Virginia assumed it was the Beau Ideal Driving Club, a very exclusive country club in Midtown where the golf team practiced.
“Swipe left to see the rest. No, left.”
The next photo was of a group of juniors appearing to sword-fight with golf clubs. In the next, they were swigging from a Jack Daniels bottle. And then there was the first butt. It was someone with their pants dropped, mooning the camera. There was nothing sexy or raunchy about it; it may as well have been the butt of a rascally fifth grader. She swiped to the next photo.
“Ew!” she shrieked, though what she saw wasn’t gross, necessarily—just unexpected. It was a close-up of a butt. A tan, manly butt with tight, sculpted muscles clenching a pristine white golf ball. A golf ball! In his butt! Virginia wondered if the butt was Trevor’s. It was a really nice one, she decided. But at the end of the day, you could be a man with the nicest butt in the world and it was still the part of the body you sat on a toilet. It wasn’t like women’s butts, which somehow managed to be beautiful.
Virginia swiped to the next photo, not wanting Benny to think she was excessively interested in dudes’ butts. But the next photo had three butts, all clenching golf balls like the first one.
“There’s Calvin,” she said.
“Wait, where?” Benny leaned in to look.
Virginia pointed to a grainy figure behind the trio of asses. He was hunched over a golf club, fully clothed. “He’s golfing.”
The rest of the photos were more of the same. The boys—no girls—running around the golf course pantsless, red-faced and laughing in various stages of drunkenness. There were about twenty photos in total, the Jack Daniels bottle becoming increasingly empty in each one. Virginia searched them all for Calvin and found him in four. In three he was golfing—pants on. In one he was looking at the camera, his unsmiling face slightly out of focus.
“Where’s Craig?” Virginia said. She went through the photos again, looking for him. “And where’s Trevor?”
“Well, obviously Trevor took the pictures, so that explains why he’s not in most of them.”
Maybe Craig is the amazing butt, Virginia thought. The idea made her laugh. Craig’s body type was more like Benny’s: thin and kind of scrawny. But then again, that was the thing with boys—you never knew what they were hiding in their pants. Maybe Benny had the butt of an Adonis and an eight-inch sausage in there!
“What’s so funny?” Benny asked. “Can we please be adults here?”
“Sorry, sorry,” Virginia said, letting out a final peal of laughter and wiping the tears from her eyes.
“This could be Craig,” he said, taking the phone and pulling up a particular photo. It was one of the juniors sword-fighting with their golf clubs. In the foreground were the legs of someone lying facedown on the grass. Benny pointed at them. “This could be Craig. He could be posing. Or maybe he drank himself unconscious. Or maybe they actually hit him with their clubs. Do you see the smears on his pants? It could be dirt, or it could be blood.”
“Maybe they are Satanists!” Virginia said excitedly.
Benny held up his hand. “Please don’t corrupt my thought process with hasty narrative-forming.”
Virginia rolled her eyes. Your precious, precious thought process.
“Did you notice the caddie?”
“Huh?”
Benny pulled up a different photo. “Here.” He pointed. “And here.”
In two photos there was a man in the background. He was hard to see because the image was so grainy. Virginia squinted. He was a black man, and he was wearing a white polo and a green visor and carrying one of those golf bags.
“This is what’s really weird to me,” Benny was saying. “Obviously they broke into the golf course to drink and conduct their shenanigans—”
Virginia snickered. Shenanigans. Sometimes hanging out with Benny was like hanging out with an eighty-year-old man.
“—which is breaking and entering. It’s illegal. Why would the caddie allow them to do this?”
“Maybe they hired him privately?” Virginia suggested. “Maybe he’s just some guy who doesn’t care.”
Benny got out his own phone and pulled up the website for the Beau Ideal Driving Club. “Look,” he said, showing it to Virginia. “White polo, green visor. It’s the Beau Ideal uniform. Why would a Beau Ideal caddie just stand around watching them debauch the golf course?”
“Maybe he’s the cult leader!”
Benny shot her a look. “Stop.”
“Fine. Money, then.” She made the “money” gesture with her fingers.
Benny shook his head. “Unless he’s a moron, he’s not going to take some cash from a bunch of children over the prospect of losing his job.”
“People are morons,” Virginia said, shrugging. “It’s pretty much the one thing you can count on.”
Benny looked out the window, thinking. “We’ll go to Beau Ideal tomorrow. I’ll pick you up here at eleven?”
“Me and you?” Virginia balked. “At Beau Ideal? You’re not a member. I’m not a member.”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s not like they check names at the door. The whole point of a country club is that people pay ninety thousand dollars to feel like they belong. They don’t stoop to prove themselves to the staff. We just have to blend in and act like we belong too.”
“Um, blend in?” Virginia repeated. Benny was a little delusional if he thought he was going to “blend in” at Beau Ideal. She was pretty sure they didn’t have a ton of Jewish people there.
“Don’t worry about me,” Benny assured her. “Just make sure you look the part—pink and green and all that.”
“Okay!” Virginia said, starting to feel excited. Investigating incognito! She only wished her character were more interesting, like an eccentric young widow or a visiting French circus performer instead of a boring and blah preppy girl.
Benny kept staring out the window, appearing deep in thought.
“Do you want to hang out tonight?” she asked him. “Just like, watch a movie?” Did Benny watch movies? Virginia imagined not. He probably spent all his free time reading the Wall Street Journal. But she was bored, and there wasn’t a football game to go to or anything.
Benny was looking at her like she’d suggested they go to the zoo and set all the animals free. “Hm? Oh, I can’t. I need to go to a camera store. I’m installing a motion-sensitive camera in the girls’ room to catch the drug dealer when he comes back for his X10 device.”
“Oh. . . . Well, what about after that?”
“Um, after? I have to go to temple with my grandma. It’s Bingo and Chinese Night.”
“Cool! I love Chinese food.” She let the words dangle, leaving a wide opening for Benny to invite her. She’d never been to a temple before, and she was curious to see Benny’s other world—his true world. Not to mention it was taco salad night in the cafeteria, a fate she was eager to escape.
“Well . . .” Benny stood up. “I better go. See you tomorrow.” He waved, not quite meeting her eyes. Virginia kept looking at him. Is he seriously not going to invite me?
He left.
Virginia sighed and flopped back on her bed. She was not going to eat gross, soggy two-day-old taco salad. That was just totally out of the question. She racked her brain. Who has a car. . . . Impulsively she got up and went to the common room. She turned on the computer and logged into her e-mail.
From: [email protected]
Subject: hungry
Craving Chinese food. Wanna take me out to dinner?
She pressed “send.”
Oh my god. Maybe she should have thought about that for more than five seconds. What was she doing? There were other ways to get Chinese food. She could have asked Chrissie to order take-out and charge it to her AmEx. You pretty much just asked Calvin on a date! Her heart was pounding. She was about to turn off the computer and pretend the whole thing hadn’t happened when an e-mail popped in her in-box.
From: [email protected]
Re: hungry
I’m grounded. Parents go to sleep around ten. Come over then if you’re still hungry. Back door.
Benny’s house, 9:15 p.m.
BANANA PEEL: HISTORY
Benny pulled up a Word doc on his laptop and started typing. He’d been researching the cultural significance of the banana. The yellow fruit (technically a berry!) had a very racially charged history. There were incidents—even recent ones—of bananas being thrown at black athletes, stemming from an age-old idea that Africans were inferior and related to monkeys. It reminded Benny of all the Nazi-era propaganda equating Jews with rats.
And that wasn’t all. The classic slip-on-a-banana gag, it turned out, came from minstrel shows in the 1800s, where black characters were portrayed as clumsy, dim-witted, banana-peel-slipping fools for the enjoyment of white audiences. By the time Donald Duck was slipping on banana peels in cartoons on TV, the gag’s racist origin had been largely forgotten.
But maybe all that symbolism was a coincidence. Maybe Benny was the racist one for focusing on racial undertones instead of viewing the situation color-blind: a couple of kids, a deer on wheels, a banana. Besides, Benny couldn’t imagine Trevor being that subtle. He was the biggest Neanderthal in school, a designation he seemed to wear like a badge of honor. If Trevor wanted to kill DeAndre, he’d probably just get drunk and beat him to death.
Benny sighed and closed the laptop. He was tired and distracted and his stomach was growling. He’d barely eaten dinner, even though he loved Chinese food. Who didn’t love Chinese food? But he kept picturing Virginia in the dingy Winship cafeteria eating meatloaf resembling roadkill or whatever vile slop the evening staff had uncaringly nuked for the boarding students. Why hadn’t he invited her? She had clearly wanted him to. But the proposition had just seemed impossible. He couldn’t bring Virginia to his temple. With his grandmother. Who knew what sort of random things she might have said to people. Her yellow hair would have attracted everyone’s attention, and she probably would have worn that way-too-short skirt of Zaire Bollo’s. It was better that he didn’t invite her, he’d assured himself. But he’d felt so guilty he’d hardly eaten a bite.
He got up from the dining room table and peered in the refrigerator. Nothing looked appetizing. He poured himself a glass of chocolate milk. In the next room his dad was asleep in the big leather easy chair. His mother and grandmother were watching the TV intently. The volume was very low—unusual for them. When Mrs. Flax noticed Benny, she picked up the remote and changed the channel.
“What are you watching?” he asked her.
“Nothing worth interrupting your studies.”
Benny went into the living room and picked up the remote from the side table. He hit the “last” button, bringing the TV to the previous channel.
“Benny, stop. Stop!”
A business-looking man with silvery-blond hair was speaking haltingly to a group of reporters: “The situation is—regrettable, but—I assure the public that—a new plant will be opened in Alabama—”
“What’s this?” Benny asked.
His grandma waved her hand dismissively. “Oh, some silliness your mom and I are watching. Just frittering away our brain cells. Not that I was using them! You know what they say, use it or lose it!”
Benny gave his grandma a sideways look. He was pretty sure that saying was about sex, not brain cells. But maybe it applied to both. Mrs. Flax sat stonily while her mother rambled.
Benny watched the TV for another minute, trying to figure out what they were guarding from him. The blond-haired man was “lobbyist Garland White,” according to the text on the screen. He looked uncomfortable in front of the microphone. Clearly he was accustomed to machinations that played out behind the scenes, not on national news. He continued to speak awkwardly, while across the bottom of the screen, the news scroll read: SHUTDOWN OF WAYCROSS PLANT, STATE TO LOSE 4,000 JOBS.
Then the news switched to a story about a bombing in Indonesia. Benny handed the remote back to his mom. They shared a long, tense look in which Mrs. Flax barely blinked.
“Isn’t that the plant where Dad worked?” he asked.
No one answered.
“I’m going to bed.”
“Good night, bubele!” his grandmother chirped.
In his room Benny got out his laptop and searched “Garland White, plant shutdown.” The full story was a lot more interesting than the brief clip on the news had shown. An aerospace engineering plant outside the city was being shut down, disgracing Governor St. Martin with massive job losses. Furthermore, a reporter from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution was claiming that the plant closure was due to a personal feud between the governor and an airline lobbyist, Garland White. Leaked e-mails showed the two men engaged in vicious personal attacks: the lobbyist had called the governor a “Jay Leno–faced bastard”; the governor had called the lobbyist a “greedy, money-grubbing cum rag.” Each described a desire to crush the other “like a cockroach.”
The scandal had reached a national level of interest. People were outraged that four thousand hardworking men and women with families had lost their jobs because two hotheaded alpha males with the maturity level of sixth graders couldn’t make a compromise. But the story was confusing; the reporter didn’t seem to know exactly what the root of the hatred between the two men was, or how it had escalated into such an extreme political screw-up. The governor’s office had released a statement that the plant closure was in no way related to the e-mails, or to the acrimonious relationship between the state executive and the “discontented lobbyist.” The lobbyist hadn’t commented one way or the other, and seemed mostly focused on bringing attention to the new plant in Alabama.
Benny couldn’t figure out why his mother and grandmother hadn’t wanted him to see this. Just because it was an aerospace plant, which would remind him of his dad? He was reminded of his dad every day. His dad was still there, for god’s sake—a permanent fixture in the living room. Benny wished the women in his household would stop treating him like a neurotic child who couldn’t deal with life.
He created a Google alert for himself flagging the following words: Garland White, Waycross plant, Georgia plant shutdown, Governor St. Martin. Then he closed the computer.
He felt so tired all of a sudden. He took off his shoes and turned off the lamp, not bothering to change out of his clothes. The second he closed his eyes, the face of the deer and its severed antlers accosted him. Get out of my head! he wanted to yell. Why couldn’t he stop thinking about it? The deer’s eyes seemed to grow angrier every time he pictured it, sometimes morphing with DeAndre’s pained face. Benny wondered what had happened to the deer after the science expo. Had Trevor taken it home? Had it ended up in a garbage heap somewhere? He felt haunted by it.
Benny fell asleep and slipped into a dark dream. He was at a dance, but his clothes were wrong. Virginia was laughing at him. He knew he had the right clothes in his bag, but every time he reached inside, he couldn’t seem to pull them out. By the refreshments table, the wheel from Wheel of Fortune spun around and around. Benny knew that when it stopped, someone somewhere would die. As the spinning slowed down, Benny could see that the deer head had been nailed to the wheel’s center, its black eyes staring into a reeling void. Then somehow Benny was the deer head, and he felt relieved. I can’t die, I’m already dead.
He awoke with a jolt, covered in a sheen of cold sweat. It was two a.m. Suddenly he knew what was going on. He knew exactly what was going on.
It was Calvin.
Calvin’s house, 9:50 p.m.
It was scary to walk alone at night, a fact Virginia always managed to forget. The rubber soles of her cheap shoes padded quietly on the pavement, but even that sound seemed too loud. The road to the headmaster’s house was deserted and silent.
Virginia had seen the house a million times, but never imagined she’d actually go inside it one day. It was technically on-campus, just up the hill and past the tennis courts—a five-minute walk from the Boarders (though in the emptiness of night the walk felt longer). It was a large brick mansion with old-fashioned dormer windows and a grand columned portico framing the front door. The yard was illuminated by floodlights placed strategically in the surrounding trees, creating the effect of supercharged moonlight. Virginia stood in the darkness at the edge of the grass, nervous to set foot on the property. She checked the time on her Indiglo watch. She was early—too early. She’d felt so hyper and restless sitting around in her room waiting for ten o’clock that she’d left at the earliest reasonable moment. And now she was here.
She crept along the trees at the edge of the property toward the back. Around ten. What did that mean? 10:01? 10:15? She guessed she’d knock lightly on the back door. Would Calvin be there waiting? Would there actually be Chinese food? What if as soon as she was alone with him, she didn’t like him anymore? It was a pivotal move, going to his house at night. She wasn’t sure why she’d put herself in this position. But it felt exciting and daredevilish.
She reached the back of the house. Huge windows revealed a beautiful living room full of dark wood and crimson furniture, and a vaulted ceiling at least twenty-five feet high. There was a fireplace, and an immense leather sofa, and a spotless tile floor covered in Oriental rugs. It looked like a photograph from Better Homes and Gardens. Virginia wasn’t usually the type to go apeshit over interior design, which in Florida meant making everything look like a hotel. But Calvin’s house was spectacular, and she couldn’t wait to be inside. There was so much to look at that for a second she didn’t notice Calvin and his dad were standing in the middle of the room.
She jumped back into the shadows instinctively, though she knew they probably couldn’t see her. They were talking—or rather, Headmaster Harker was talking. And the conversation was obviously not a pleasant one. Virginia watched Calvin, who kept opening his mouth to speak, but his dad wouldn’t give him a chance. Suddenly Virginia felt a surge of . . . she didn’t know what to call the feeling. Pathos? Was that a word?
Calvin was crying. His chin quivered and a tear fell down his cheek. Virginia had never seen a man cry before. She’d seen boys cry, but Calvin was so grown-up-looking, she’d unconsciously categorized him as a man.
What’s going on? She couldn’t look away.
Calvin was shaking his head. More tears were streaming down his cheeks. He wiped them away with his hand. Virginia couldn’t tell what they were talking about at all, but it definitely involved Headmaster Harker saying “yes” and Calvin saying “no.”
And then the headmaster did something that chilled Virginia to the core. He grabbed Calvin by the throat. His face was calm but menacing. He leaned toward his son, their faces now inches apart, and stared into his eyes. Just stared at him. They were the same extreme height, almost mirror images, as if Calvin were looking at a projection of himself from the future, hardened and corrupted by time and now turning on his young self. It made Virginia shiver.
At that second, Virginia realized that Calvin could see her through the window. He looked right at her, inching his head to the left as far as the grip of his father’s hand would allow.
Go.
He hadn’t been saying “no” to his dad. He’d been mouthing the word “Go.” To her.
Virginia shook her head. She wasn’t going to abandon him to be strangled in his own house! Not that his dad was strangling him, exactly, he was just . . . gripping him. But it was scary.
Go.
Headmaster Harker’s eyes cut to the window, following his son’s gaze. Virginia ducked quickly behind a tree. Oh my god. She stood frozen, trying not to make a sound even though she knew there was no way they could hear her inside. After a long moment she peeked around the tree. The living room was empty. They were gone.
She stood in the shadows for five entire minutes. Was Calvin coming back? She checked her watch. It was long past ten at this point. A strong gust of wind blew against her face, like it was trying to push her away. But the immaculate living room—warmly and perfectly lit—still seemed to say, Hello, do come in.
What would Benny do? Virginia knew what he would do. He would leave, and enter all the data into a color-coded spreadsheet and then stare at it for four hours. But how could she leave Calvin alone with that man? She’d always been scared of Headmaster Harker—everyone was. He was strict and dour and notoriously harsh. But that was like, scared he’d call your parents and give you six hundred detentions, not scared he’d strangle his son to death.
She decided to go. Calvin could take care of himself. Could he? She didn’t really know him at all. But she liked people who could take care of themselves, and she wanted Calvin to be one. And anyway, he’d told her to go. So what else was she supposed to do? She slipped back into the darkness, away from the house’s alluring glow.