Jake backed out into the hallway, giving Becca room to get out the door. “Are you ready to go?”
It wasn’t too late to make an excuse and stay home.
And go right back to the kitchen to finish her conversation with her mom.
She gave Jake what she hoped was a convincing smile. “Ready when you are.”
“So,” said Jake over the low hum of conversation that filled Lucky’s Pizza, “what will it take to get you to believe that I’m not spying for Internal?”
Becca tensed before realizing that he had meant it as a teasing question, not a challenge. She forced herself to relax. She didn’t exactly have much practice with this kind of thing.
“You could start by telling me about yourself.” She kept her voice light.
The smell of pizza made her mouth water. Her stomach had stopped hurting the second she had left the apartment. Jake might be trying to get her to trust him so she would say something incriminating about Heather, but that was nothing compared to what her mom had done.
And being here with Jake, trying to figure out his true intentions, would keep her too distracted to think about Anna.
Almost every table at Lucky’s was full, but Becca only saw a couple of people she knew, and none of them were looking her way. Good. She didn’t need anybody to see her out with Jake. She didn’t know how they would twist this date into further proof that she was a dissident, but she knew they could find a way.
Wait. The woman at the next table over—was she watching them? Becca tensed and angled her body slightly to get a better view. The woman’s eyes flicked from their table to the one next to theirs, to one across the room, scanning each one for a few seconds before moving on to the next. She paused for a few seconds to take a halfhearted nibble of her pizza, then began again. Just a Monitor, then. Becca could see the glint of the pin now. Monitors were everywhere; unlike their counterparts in high school, adult Monitors got paid a small amount to watch their fellow citizens, so there was never a shortage of volunteers.
The woman’s eyes met Becca’s. Becca quickly looked away.
She had never been afraid of Monitors before.
“There’s not much to tell,” Jake was saying. “Grew up here, moved away, came back with my dad after my parents split up. Suffering through school until I graduate.” He shrugged. “I’ve lived a boring life.”
“That’s just what a spy would say.” She matched his teasing tone before she realized she was doing it.
“I could always make something up,” he offered. “Would it sound more believable if I told you I was raised by wolves for the first ten years of my life?”
“Maybe. It would depend on how convincingly you could howl.” An unexpected smile creased the corners of her mouth. Even with her suspicions, something about him put her at ease. The rhythm of his voice made her mind stop racing.
Of course, if he really was a spy, he was probably doing that on purpose. Her smile dropped away.
The waitress approached, pen poised above her pad. Becca and Jake looked at each other. “Pepperoni?” asked Jake.
Becca nodded. “And… anchovies.” Why make this easy for him?
Jake raised his eyebrows. “All right. Pepperoni and anchovies.” He passed their order along to the waitress. When she was gone, he tilted his head at Becca. “You don’t strike me as the anchovy type.”
“I’m full of surprises.” She smiled again without meaning to.
She wished he would quit talking to her like that, and quit looking at her like he was actually interested in her. This would be a lot easier if he’d start asking her questions about Heather instead. That way she’d know for sure.
But then he’d lose his chance to catch her off-guard, and she wouldn’t tell him anything. If he wanted to find out whether Heather was a dissident, it made a lot more sense for him to do what he was doing. Make her let her guard down. Get her to like him.
Jake rested his arms on the table and leaned closer. “So what about you? If having a boring life means I’m a spy, what makes your life so interesting?”
She bit her lip and frowned in an exaggerated look of concern. “Okay. You caught me. My life is as boring as yours. Does that make me a spy too?”
He laughed, and she smiled back. She tried to remind herself that she was only pretending to have a good time.
As they talked, Becca kept waiting for him to segue into a question about Heather. He didn’t. In fact, Heather’s name didn’t come up once in the conversation. They talked about school, and about the town where Jake had lived for the past couple of years, and about which of them had seen the most bad movies in their lifetime. Their pizza arrived, and they paused to scarf down two slices each—the anchovies actually weren’t so bad, and if they bothered Jake, he didn’t show it—and then they talked some more while munching on what was left.
Sometimes Becca almost forgot the real reason Jake had brought her here.
And when Jake still didn’t ask about Heather, she started to wonder if maybe he had been telling the truth after all.
Did she have any concrete reason to think he was a spy? She thought about it, but couldn’t come up with anything.
And then there was what he had done when Laine had gone after Heather. Maybe he hadn’t done it to make Becca less suspicious. Maybe he really had just wanted to help.
As Becca finished the final piece of pizza, Jake glanced down at his watch.
“I guess I really am that boring,” said Becca lightly. “I must be working for Internal.”
“What?” Jake frowned. “Oh! No, it’s just my dad. He doesn’t like me to be gone for too long.”
“The overprotective type?” Becca’s mom used to get like that, before she started spending too much time at work to be able to keep track of Becca’s whereabouts. Now, out of necessity, she pretty much trusted Becca to keep herself out of trouble.
At least, she had until she had decided Heather was a dissident.
“It’s not like that.” Jake’s whole demeanor had changed. He seemed to shrink, like he was collapsing in on himself. “When my mom died, he took it really hard. He’s still having a tough time. I stay home as much as I can, to make things easier for him.”
Becca opened her mouth to say something sympathetic—and stopped.
Something was wrong with what he had said.
It took her a few seconds to place it. “You said your parents split up.”
Seconds stretched by. Jake didn’t answer.
“You know what? Don’t bother coming up with an explanation. I don’t care.” Becca stood up. She pushed her chair in so hard it squealed against the floor.
So he had lied to her. No big surprise there. It wasn’t as if she had ever really thought he was interested in her as anything other than a source of information. Why did it make her so angry to find confirmation of what she had already known?
Jake started to say something. Becca interrupted. “I don’t want to hear it. Just take me home.”
When Becca came in, her mom was waiting for her. She set aside the papers in her lap as Becca closed the door behind her. “You’re back early.”
At the sound of her mom’s voice, Becca’s nausea returned. She wished she hadn’t eaten all that pizza. “I’m going to bed.”
Her mom’s eyebrows rose. “It’s not even nine o’clock.” She patted the spot next to her. “How about sitting with me for a while and telling me about this guy?”
“Not now, all right? I’m really tired.”
“If we’re going to fix whatever went wrong between us, we have to start somewhere.”
Becca’s stomach churned. “I don’t want to talk, okay? I just want to go to bed.”
“Your best friend is a dissident. You go on dates without telling me. Something is bothering you, but you won’t talk about it.” Becca’s mom stood up. “Something is wrong here. You know it as well as I do.”