“Oh, hey, Alex. Are you okay?”
“Dad, it’s fine. I’ll talk to him outside.” I set the popcorn bowl down and moved past my dad to join Tucker on the porch. “It’s okay, really,” I said one last time, and with a reluctant smile, Dad closed the door.
“So . . . you’re okay?” Tucker said quickly. “Are you coming back to school?”
“No, I’m really not okay,” I said. “But yeah, I am coming back. We only have two months left, after all. And if I don’t go back, things are only going to get worse.”
High school dropout. That was exactly what colleges wanted to see on applications.
Tucker stood there for a moment, running his hand through his black hair, fixing his glasses, spinning his watch around his wrist.
“How’d you find out?” I asked.
“Text message.” He held up his phone. “I think . . . most everyone in the school got one.”
I nodded. I had figured that pretty much everyone knew by now—that’s why they’d been ignoring me, and whispering behind my back the past few days. Celia’d been leaking the information for at least a week now. The band competition was just a way to scare me.
“So . . . now you know,” I said.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what? It’s not your fault I’m crazy.”
“No, I . . . I don’t care about that. My dad has schizophrenic patients. He calls them ‘normal people with more quirks.’ I’m sorry that I got so mad at you. And ignored you for so long. And I’m sorry I didn’t trust that you could handle Miles. I shouldn’t have butted in.”
“But you were right—I shouldn’t have done that to you. Or to anyone. I should’ve stopped him.”
Tucker laughed hesitantly. “Well. I kind of deserved it.”
I waited.
Tucker sighed and sat down on the porch swing. “He got that job from Cliff. I’d been waiting for it all semester. Do you remember Celia’s bonfire, on Scoreboard Day?”
“Yeah . . .” My stomach sank. I knew where this was going.
He blushed and looked away. “I slept with Ria.”
Before I knew what I was doing, I had his face in my hands and was yelling, “TUCKER. THAT IS NOT TRUE. You are the one source of GOOD in this godforsaken place! You can’t have gone along with Ria’s plans—I’m the one who screwed up and put IcyHot in your underwear!”
Tucker shook his head, and I dropped my hands.
“No, you’re not a bad person,” he said. “And Richter isn’t a bad person, and I’m not a bad person. We’re just people, and people sometimes do stupid things.”
I stared at him. After a few seconds, I said, “So. You and Ria.”
“Me and Ria,” he replied.
“You had sex with Ria Wolf.”
“I had sex with Ria Wolf,” he admitted, raising his hands in defeat.
“And how was that?”
“It sucked,” he said, laughing suddenly. “It was awful. I’ve never felt more awkward in my life. I mean, it was pretty obvious from the beginning that she was using me, but you’ve seen her—she’s hot. Like, beyond hot. Like hotness to the nth power.”
“Tucker, I get it.”
“You’d think hotness would make it better, you know? But it’s kind of hard to enjoy yourself when the other person keeps hitting you and telling you how terrible you are at it and what you’re doing wrong.”
“That would suck.” I laughed only because he did. “Why’d you do it? I mean, it couldn’t have been because she was hot.”
Tucker turned a little red again. “Honestly? Richter and I sort of had a war going over her during middle school.”
“Over Ria?” I laughed again.
“Yeah, that’s why he hates her,” Tucker said. “I mean, we both knew it was pointless, but he never understood why she’d pick brawn over brains. She came up to me at Celia’s bonfire and started flirting with me—”
So it was Tucker with Ria in that bedroom, and I had almost walked in on them.
Peachy.
“—and then it sort of happened. I knew she was just doing it to make Cliff mad—everyone knows that, she does it every year—and I knew I’d have to deal with him afterward. That’s why Richter had you guys break into my house and do all that stuff to me, because Cliff paid him, so really it was my fault in the first place—”
“Tucker, shut up.”
“Okay.”
We lapsed into silence, staring across the street at my neighbor’s bright green lawn. After a few minutes, Tucker said, “So, you still think something is up with McCoy?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I never told you—I got to talk to Miles’s mom.”
I explained everything I’d learned from June. Then I told him about confronting Celia outside the gym, and about Miles being an obstacle.
“I think McCoy’s going to do something. But I don’t know when, or how. And I’m afraid that if I don’t figure it out, something bad will happen.”
“And you’re positive,” he said slowly, “that this is all actually happening?”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m never positive of anything, Tucker, I’m just telling you what I know. But you said earlier this year that Celia and her mom didn’t get along, right?”
“I—well, I mean, I’ve seen them come into school a few times before, and I’ve heard things, but it’s not like I’m in with their family.”
“Well, look—even if I am making up parts of it, I know that something is going on. I know McCoy is messed up and I know he’s taking Celia along for the ride. And I feel like . . . like if I don’t do something about it, then no one will.”
Tucker was quiet for a moment. Then, finally, he said, “I don’t know if I should tell you this, but . . . I know where McCoy lives. You won’t find anything incriminating in his office or at school. If there is anything, you’ll find it where he lives.”
“Mr. Soggy Potato Salad,” I said, putting my hand over my heart. “Are . . . are you suggesting we break into someone’s house?”
Tucker shrugged. “Not to take anything. Just to look around.”
“Should I ask Miles to come with us? He has more experience breaking and entering than we do.”
“He knows about all of this?”