I turn to Sam to make some crack and notice him scanning the auditorium. He looks nervous.
The problem with being a con artist is that it’s hard to turn off the part of your brain that’s always assessing the situation, looking for a mark, a sucker you can sucker out of stuff. Trying to figure out what that mark wants, what’s going to convince him to part with his money.
Not that Sam’s a mark. But my brain still supplies me with the answer to what he’s looking for, in case it comes in useful.
“Everything okay with you and Daneca?” I ask.
He shrugs his shoulders. “She hates horror movies,” he says finally.
“Oh,” I say as neutrally as I can.
“I mean, she cares about really important stuff. About political stuff. About global warming and worker rights and gay rights, and I think she thinks the stuff I care about is for kids.”
“Not everyone’s like Daneca,” I say.
“No one is like Daneca.” Sam has that slightly dazed look of a man in love. “I think it’s hard for her, you know. Because she cares so much, and most people barely care at all. Including me, I guess.”
Daneca used to annoy me with all her bleeding-heart crap. I figured there was no point in changing a world that didn’t want to be changed. But I don’t think that Sam would appreciate me saying that out loud. And I don’t even know if I believe it anymore.
“Maybe you could change her mind about the horror genre,” I say instead. “You know, show her some classic stuff. Rent Frankenstein. Do a dramatic reading of ‘The Raven.’ Ladies love ‘Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore! Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul has spoken!’ Who can resist that?”
Sam doesn’t even smile.
“Okay,” I say, holding up my hands in the universal sign of surrender. “I’ll stop.”
“No, it’s funny,” he says. “It’s not you. I just can’t—”
“Mr. Yu! Mr. Sharpe,” Ms. Logan says, coming up the center aisle to sit right behind us. She puts her finger to her lips. “Don’t make me separate you.”
That thought is humiliating enough that we’re quiet through Dean Wharton’s long list of things we will be punished for—a list that ranges from drinking, drugs, and being caught in the dorm room of someone of the opposite sex, to skipping class, sneaking out after hours, and wearing black lipstick. The sad truth is that there is probably at least one person in each graduating class who’s managed to break all the rules in a single wild night. I am really hoping that, this year, that person is not going to be me.
I don’t look all that good in lipstick.
Daneca finds us on the way to dinner. She’s got her curly brown hair divided into seven thick braids, each one ending in a wooden bead. The collar of her white dress shirt is open, to show seven jade amulets—protection against the seven types of curse work. Luck. Dreams. Physical. Emotion. Memory. Death. Transformation. I gave her the stones for her last birthday, just before the end of junior year.
Amulets are made by curse workers of the type the amulet is supposed to protect against. Only stone seems able to absorb magic, and even then it will work only once. A used stone—one that has kept a curse from its wearer—cracks instantly. Since there are very few transformation workers in the world—perhaps one a decade—real transformation amulets are rare. But Daneca’s transformation amulet is the real thing. I know; I made it myself.
She has no idea.
“Hey,” she says, bumping her shoulder against Sam’s arm. He puts his arm around her.
We walk into the cafeteria like that.
It’s our first night back, so there are tablecloths and a rose with some baby’s breath in little vases on all the tables. A few parents of new students hang around marveling at the high paneled ceiling, the stern portrait of Colonel Wallingford presiding over us, and our ability to eat food without smearing it all over ourselves.
Tonight’s entree is salmon teriyaki with brown rice and carrots. For dessert, cherry crumble. I poke at my carrots. Daneca starts with dessert.
“Not bad,” she pronounces. And with absolutely no segue she launches into an explanation of how this year it’s going to be really important for HEX to get out the word about proposition two. About some rally happening next week. How prop two augurs a more invasive government, and some other stuff I tune out.
I look over at Sam, ready to exchange a conspiratorial glance, but he is hanging on her every word.
“Cassel,” she says. “I know you’re not listening. The vote is in November. This November. If proposition two passes, then workers are going to be tested. Everyone will be. And no matter how much the government of New Jersey says it is going to keep that information anonymous, it’s not. Soon workers are going to be refused jobs, denied housing, and locked up for the crime of being born with a power they didn’t ask for.”
“I know,” I say. “I know all that. Could you try to be a little less condescending? I know.”
She looks, if possible, even more annoyed. “This is your life we’re talking about.”
I think of my mother and Clyde Austin. I think of Barron. I think of me and all the harm I’ve done. “Maybe workers should all be locked up,” I say. “Maybe Governor Patton is right.”
Sam frowns.
I shove a big hunk of salmon into my mouth so I can’t say anything else.
“That’s ridiculous,” Daneca says after she recovers from her shocked silence.
I chew.
She’s right, of course. Daneca’s always right. I think of her mother—a tireless advocate and one of the founders of the worker-rights youth group, HEX—and of Chris, that poor kid staying at her house, with nowhere else to go and maybe no legal reason to be allowed to stay. His parents kicked him out because they thought workers were all like me. There are workers who aren’t con artists, workers who don’t want anything to do with organized crime. But when Daneca thinks of workers, she thinks of her mother. When I think of workers, I think of mine.
“Anyway,” Daneca says, “there’s a rally next Thursday, and I want the whole HEX club to go. I got Ms. Ramirez, acting as our adviser, to apply for buses and everything. It’s going to be a school trip.”
“Really?” Sam says. “That’s great.”
“Well.” She sighs. “It’s not exactly a go. Ramirez said that Wharton or Northcutt would have to approve her request. And we’d have to get enough HEX members to sign up. So, can I count on you guys?”
“Of course we’ll go,” says Sam, and I level a glare in his direction.
“Whoa,” I say, holding up my hand. “I want more details. Like does this mean we have to make our own signs? How about ‘Worker Rights for Everyone Except People Who Don’t Need Them’ or ‘Legalize Death Work Today. Solve Overpopulation Tomorrow!’”
The corner of Sam’s mouth lifts. I can’t seem to stop myself from being a jerk, but at least I’m amusing someone.
Daneca starts to say something else, when Kevin LaCroix comes up to the table. I look at him with undisguised relief. Kevin drops an envelope into my messenger bag.
“That stoner dude, Jace, says he hooked up with someone over the summer,” Kevin whispers. “But I hear all the pictures he’s showing around are really pictures of his half sister. Fifty bucks says there’s no girlfriend.”
“Find someone to bet that he did hook up or does have a girlfriend, and I’ll give you odds,” I say. “The house doesn’t bet.”
He nods and heads back to his table, looking disappointed.
I started being the school bookie back when Mom was in jail and there was no way I could afford all the little stuff that doesn’t come with the price of tuition. A second uniform so that the one you had could get washed more than once a week, pizza with your friends when they wanted to go out, plus sneakers and books and music that didn’t fall off a truck somewhere or get shoplifted out of a store. It isn’t cheap to live near the rich.
After Kevin LaCroix leaves, Emmanuel Domenech drops by. I get enough traffic to keep Sam and Daneca from being able to point out how obnoxious I’ve been. They spend their time writing notes back and forth in Daneca’s notebook as other students casually turn over envelope after envelope—each one, a brick rebuilding my tiny criminal empire.
“I bet Sharone Nagel will get stuck wearing the mascot fur suit to football games.”
“I bet the latin club will sacrifice one of its members at the spring formal.”
“I bet Chaiyawat Terweil will be the first person to get called into Headmistress Northcutt’s office.”
“I bet the new girl just got out of a loony bin.”
“I bet the new girl just broke out of a prison in Moscow.”
“I bet Mr. Lewis will have a nervous breakdown before winter break.”
I note down each bet for and against these in a code I created, and tonight Sam and I will calculate the first master list of odds. They’ll change as we get more bets, of course, but it gives us something to tell people at breakfast if they want to know where to throw their cash. It’s amazing how rich kids get itchy when they can’t spend money fast enough.
Just like criminals get itchy when we’re not working all the angles.
As we get up to go back to our rooms, Daneca punches my arm. “So,” she says. “Are you going to tell us why you’re such a moody bastard tonight?”
I shrug. “I’m sorry. I guess I’m just tired. And an idiot.”
She reaches up to put her gloved hands around my neck and mock-chokes me. I play along, falling to the floor and pretending to die, until she finally laughs.
I’m forgiven.
“I knew I should have brought a blood packet,” Sam says, shaking his head like we’re humiliating him.
It is at that moment that Audrey walks by, hand in hand with Greg Harmsford. Audrey, who was once my girlfriend. Who dumped me. Who, when we were dating, made me feel like a normal person. Who I could have, maybe, once, convinced to take me back. Who now doesn’t even look at me as she passes.
Greg, however, narrows his eyes and smiles down at me like he’s daring me to start something.
I’d love to wipe that smug expression off his face. First, though, I’d have to get up off my knees.
I don’t get to spend the rest of the night putting away my stuff or joking around in the common lounge like I planned, because our new hall master, Mr. Pascoli, announces that all seniors have to meet with their guidance counselors.
I have seen Ms. Vanderveer exactly once a year for all the time I have been at Wallingford. She seems nice enough, always prepared with a list of which classes and activities are most likely to get me into a good college, always full of suggestions for volunteer work that admission committees love. I don’t really feel the need to see more of her than I already have, but Sam and I, along with a group of other upperclass-men, trudge across the grounds to Lainhart Library.
There, we listen to another speech—this one on how senior year is no time to slack off, and if we think things are hard now, just wait until we get to college. Seriously, this guy—one of the counselors, I guess—makes it sound like in college they make you write all your essays in blood, your lab partners might shank you if you bring down their grade point averages, and evening classes last all night long. He clearly misses it.
Finally they assign us an order for the meetings. I go sit in Vanderveer’s section, in front of the screen that’s separating her from the rest of us.
“Oh, man,” Sam says. He sits at the very edge of his chair, leaning over to whisper to me. “What am I going to do? They’re going to want to talk about colleges.”
“Probably,” I say, scooting closer. “They’re guidance counselors. They’re into colleges. They probably dream of colleges”
“Yeah, well, they think I want to go to MIT and major in chemistry.” He says this in a tragic whisper.
“You can just tell them that you don’t. If you don’t.”
He groans. “They’ll tell my parents.”
“Well, what is your plan?” I ask.
“Moving to LA and going to one of the schools that specializes in visual effects. Look, I love doing the special effects makeup, but most stuff today is done on a computer. I need to know how to do that. There’s a place that does a three-year program.” Sam runs his hand through his short hair, over his damp forehead, like he has just confessed an impossible and possibly shameful dream.
“Cassel Sharpe,” Ms. Vanderveer says, and I stand.
“You’ll be fine,” I say to him, and head behind the screen. His nervousness seems to be contagious, though. I can feel my palms sweat.
Vanderveer has short black hair and wrinkly skin covered in age spots. There are two chairs arranged in front of a little table where my folder is sitting. She plops herself into one. “So, Cassel,” she says with false cheerfulness. “What do you want to do with your life?”
“Uh,” I say. “Not really sure.” The only things I am really good at are the kinds of things colleges don’t let you major in. Con artistry. Forgery. Assassination. A little bit of lock-picking.
“Let’s consider universities, then. Last year I talked about you choosing some schools you’d really like to try for, and then some safety schools. Have you made that list?”
“Not a formal, written-down one,” I say.
She frowns. “Did you manage to visit any of the campuses you are considering?”