“Can you understand? Will you please just look at me?”
His silence was disorienting. I’d navigated my life by him. Had always counted on him swinging back to me, his true north. But he’d turned away, and wouldn’t look back.
Even as he said “I think you should leave.”
31
I spent Sunday morning with the shades drawn tight, sagging into our creaky dirt-brown sofa. I was still in my pj’s, buried under a faded afghan that smelled like mildew and cigarette smoke. The TV was bright in the dimly lit room. I poked the remote through a gap in the blanket where it was pulled up to my ears, flipping between channels with the sound muted so it wouldn’t wake my mother. News stations had footage from the Air and Space Museum on a loop, each showing different angles of the front of the building, rows of yellow buses, and flashing police lights. The police hadn’t released many details to the press, only that an unidentified minor was found dead during a school field trip, and police were investigating the possibility of foul play.
Possibility. No mention of how he’d been asphyxiated with his own shoelace, or the mysterious number left in stickers on his arm. Five.
Emily . . . ten.
Marcia . . . eighteen.
Posie . . . three.
Teddy . . . five.
I’ll put it all on the table for you.
I looked past the reporters’ faces searching for someone
familiar in the background, someone who might have a reason to frame me for murder. Someone who might stay through the chaos to see me carted off to jail. But the media was careful not to show any students on camera, and the police barricades kept the press from getting too close.
Who wrote the ads? What did he want from me and what was he trying to tell me?
I flipped the TV off and sat in the dark for a while, listening to Mona snore in the next room. Then I threw off the quilt, padded to my room, and flopped on my bed. Einstein stared back at me from the poster on my wall, as if to say: “Why the hell haven’t you figured this out yet? It’s four lousy numbers. Not the Theory of Relativity, for crying out loud.”
But those four numbers were impossible to solve. I had no idea what factor connected them. It’s like I was missing the value of x, because I couldn’t figure out what x was supposed to represent.
The phone rang on my nightstand and I reached to grab it before the second ring.
“What are you doing?” Anh asked before I could say hello. She knew I’d be the one to answer this early on a Sunday.
“Talking to Albert.”
“I bought you that poster to demonstrate the correlation between frizzy hair and scientific brilliance. Not so you’d become all codependent upon Our Holy Father of Modern Physics.”
“It’s Sunday. Let me worship in peace.”
“Fine, what are you doing after nerd-church?”
“Sleeping.”
“Want to study for finals?”
“Can’t. I’m out of bus money and I don’t have a ride.”
Anh sighed. “Jeremy’s just upset. He won’t keep you in pedestrian purgatory forever. You can walk.”
It felt wrong that Anh should be the one telling me how Jeremy was feeling. “I don’t feel like it.”
“Come on. I’ll bring lunch. I made hummus and glutenfree dippers.”
“No can do. My brain’s a carb- and fat-oiled machine. It runs on these crazy little alkaloids called theobromine and phenethylamine. They’re found in nature in something called Snickers bars. Maybe you’ve heard of them?”
“Very funny. Will you come if I promise to bring chocolate?”
I didn’t feel like leaving my room. All I wanted was to climb under my covers and try not to think about Teddy’s face in that bag, and the last words I’d spoken to Posie. But my stomach growled at me. I thumbed through the syllabus on my desk and grumbled, “Throw in a Coke?”
“Adding caffeine to your growing list of vices?” Anh chided. “Fine. I’ll stop at Bao’s and pick up chocolate and soda. And if your arteries haven’t spontaneously combusted by then, you can meet me at the library in an hour, where I expect to hear all the gory details of your scandalous affair with Mr. Scary Hot New Guy.”
“Fine.” I rolled my eyes, as if she could hear it through the phone. I was getting ready to hang up when something occurred to me. “Hey, Anh. What do the numbers ten, eighteen, three, and five have in common?”
Anh was quiet for a moment. I couldn’t hear anything but the rattle and drone of the small rusting air conditioner ducttaped to the frame of my window. “No idea. I need more information.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Me too.” Even if I wasn’t any closer to solving the numbers, at least I didn’t feel as stupid as I had a moment ago. Anh couldn’t see a connection either. I could only hope the next ad would reveal the missing link. And that I wouldn’t be too late to solve it.
I said good-bye to Anh, got dressed, and packed up my books. When I grabbed my hoodie off the back of my desk chair, something crinkled in the pocket. The torn page from the hospital log book still smelled like the inside of Reece’s jacket. I should have destroyed it or flushed it down the toilet, but I looked around my room for a place to hide it instead. I reached under my mattress and withdrew the plastic bag. It was the one place Mona was sure to avoid.
I put the hospital log sheet inside it, adding it to the old photo of my dads’ poker club. A mystery for another day. I shoved them all under the mattress. This week was all about being normal. Laying low. I threw my backpack over my shoulder and recited the rules that would get me through the next six days: No bad grades, no trouble, and no touching.
I’d wanted to get to Rankin’s class early on Monday, but that didn’t happen. I was still in purgatory. Jeremy hadn’t picked me up and I didn’t want to call Reece for a ride. Despite my best efforts, our kiss had landed him in suspension for another week and I didn’t need to give Romero one more reason to expel him. Reece had given me an alibi and confiscated the evidence from the hospital. I was safe at least for now. I just needed to keep a level head. To be on time when attendance was taken, and to be as shocked as everyone else when the rest of the school figured out that the unnamed minor found murdered in the planetarium was Teddy Marshall, and that Posie was dead too.
A reporter stood on the front steps of the school, holding a microphone and talking into a TV camera. School security guards and police flanked the front doors, and I slipped in with the last of the students to arrive.
Inside the lobby, a line of parents waited to speak with administration, talking animatedly to each other about emergency PTA meetings and the need for increased security at school events. The secretaries politely nudged them out of the office, telling them they’d have to schedule an appointment to speak with Principal Romero.
I dodged around the tail of the line and headed to my first class, trying not to notice the red personal safety flyers on every bulletin board I passed.
I flew into the chem lab as the second bell blared. No time to check Friday’s test scores, or the rankings for the week. Curious heads turned and followed me to my seat. Anh sat hunched over, her face uncharacteristically pale. She didn’t look at me when I sat down. My test lay facedown on the desk. I took a deep breath, turned it over, and felt Anh’s eyes dart to the score circled on top.