I CALLED ELI, UNWILLING TO DEAL with the delay of texting on this. His voice was bland when he picked up. “How’s the party?”
“We need to talk. In person. Now.”
“Um, okay,” he said, wary. “Your house?”
“No way. Is there a place where we can meet?” The cold wind gusted, and it felt like getting slapped with an ice pack. “Someplace warm?”
A few minutes later I rolled into the desolate business district I’d found after my first day of school. Of the occupied storefronts, most were dark, with Closed signs facing the street. The exceptions were a pharmacy and a shop I’d missed before. RAGE AGAINST THE CAFFEINE—the caps lock is theirs, not mine. Its sign was airbrushed in neon reds, yellows, and purples, like graffiti. It was barely lit inside, but I spotted Eli in a window seat. I dropped my bike on the sidewalk next to a parked lime-green Volkswagen Beetle, and went in.
The blast of furnace heat was amazing, and I realized my hands had gone numb only when I sat across from Eli and couldn’t feel the table. There were seven seats in the whole place, and five were still empty. An elderly barista in young clothing shouted from behind the counter, “Get something started for ya?”
“Large hot chocolate,” I said, assuming it was on the menu.
She went to work and Eli said, “You forgot to ask for extra marshmallows.”
“What’s Whispertown?” I wasn’t in the mood for jokes.
He stiffened. “Did something happen at the party?”
“I didn’t go to the party. This doesn’t have anything to do with the party.” Another assumption. I had a bad habit with those. I said, “Tell me.”
He sipped from his own drink. Slowly. Gazed through the window. “No.”
“What?”
“I said no, Nick. I’m not going to tell you because you told me not to.”
“When did I—?”
“‘No secret schemes.’ Your words. I can show you the text. You didn’t want to be involved in my more . . . troublesome projects. Remember?”
My frustration spiked. Before it erupted in the form of foul language, the barista arrived with my drink. “Four fifty.”
I paid with a five and waved off her halfhearted effort to fish change from her pocket. When she disappeared into the back of the shop, I said, “Forget before, Eli. What’s so secretive about Whispertown?”
“Tell me why you want to know.”
I resisted another urge to curse. I still had the paper I’d taken from Dad on the city hall steps. Showing it to Eli wasn’t the right play. He’d want to know where it came from. How I got it. I couldn’t go there with him. Ever.
He said, “Now who’s keeping secrets?”
I tasted my drink. It was lukewarm and gross. I chugged it down anyway to avoid talking, reverting to a game me and my old babysitter played before she got fired.
It was called Keep Quiet. When two people were alone, the one who kept quiet the longest was the smartest in the room, she said. It was really her way of getting me to shut up when her favorite shows were on. That didn’t mean there wasn’t something to it.
Eli broke first. “Since you moved here, have you looked around? I mean really looked?”
I looked. At the tiny coffee shop, at the empty street. “I guess.”
“There’s something wrong with Stepton, Nick. No one’s talking about it. I’m trying to figure out why.”
“Wrong how?”
“There’s a guy on my street, Mr. Languiso, his house got burglarized last month. A week ago, a teacher’s car got stolen right out of her driveway, broad daylight. Two days ago, a couple of kids dealing meth on the west side of town got freaking shot, Nick. Shot!”
“That, um, sucks.” What was he getting at?
“Not sucky. Invisible. Like it never happened.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Did you know that most cities’ crime stats are public record? Like, if you wanted to buy a house you could go online and make sure the place you like isn’t in gang territory.”
I shrugged. I didn’t know that, but whatever.
He said, “The Stepton Police Department releases their stats online every month. None of those major felonies show up in the reports.”
“You just said two of the crimes happened in the last week. The month’s not over. How could they be in the reports?”
He shook his head. “Not those crimes specifically. Others like them. If you look at the available information, Stepton’s like the safest town in America. The crimes making the list for the last six months have been mostly misdemeanors, and those numbers seem exaggerated.”
“What does all this have to do with the high school paper?”
“Nothing, except I’m the only paper in town. The Stepton Chronicle stopped printing years ago. There’s no one else left to look into this but me. This isn’t about printing a few hundred copies for everyone’s homeroom. I’ve got bigger plans for this story.”
“Big plans? Yeah, right. Prove it,” I said, hoping he’d feel challenged and try to impress me.
He didn’t take the bait. Instead, he sat back like he was done talking. “Your turn to share. What’s got you so interested?”
I said the only thing I could say without revealing information that protected the lives of me and my family. “I don’t like to be half in. I want to learn everything. It’s not right that you have to carry the whole load of running the paper by yourself.”
He laughed. “I shouldn’t have tried to play you over the Dust Off, now that I know how crappy it feels.”
I played Keep Quiet again.
“Okay, here’s the deal,” Eli said. “I accept your offer.”
“You’ll tell me more about Whispertown?”
“No. Not until I see how serious you are about learning everything.”
I chewed the inside of my cheek.
“Hit the J-Room before and after school starting Monday so I can get you up to speed on some other parts of the operation.”
“How long is that going to take?”
“As long as it takes. Unless you want to tell me the truth about why Whispertown’s on your mind this evening.”
“I’ll be there, Monday.” I got up to leave.
“You want a ride home?” He pulled a set of keys from his pocket and pressed two buttons on a silver remote. Three seconds later the lime Volkswagen at the curb grumbled on, its headlights cutting the dark like blue lasers.
I said, “That’s you? I didn’t know you drove.”
“Never got around to taking my driver’s test. But laws seem to be more fluid around here these days. When in Rome . . .”
I didn’t feel like talking on the way home, but Eli wasn’t letting me off that easy.
“Your newfound dedication to the paper is admirable, Nick.”
“Glad you think so.” I wasn’t. I could feel the setup coming. What kind of reporter would he be if he didn’t keep pumping me for information on my interest in Whispertown? Well, he could ask all the questions he wanted, I wasn’t cracking.
That’s probably why he went with a different tactic.
“I’m sure Reya will forget about you blowing her off when she discovers your passion for reporting.”
“I didn’t blow her off,” I said, with more concern in my voice than I intended. “Let me out, I’ll go to Dustin’s now.”
Eli was a shark smelling blood. “Too late. Someone set a couch on fire. Party’s over. There are photos on Facebook if you want to see. That’s almost like being there.”
I stared through the window, playing it cool while cursing myself.
“We could explain it to her,” he went on. “Let her know it’s my fault you didn’t meet her at the party. She’d buy it. Thinking I’m somehow screwing up her life is like a hobby for Reya.”
He wanted me to talk about her, to ask for his help, give him some leverage. Nope.
“I’ll see her in school,” I said, knowing how unlikely that was thanks to my banishment to alternate schedule land. If I’d messed things up with her, I’d have to deal. Keeping my secrets was more important.
Eli nodded. “I understand.”
I detected grudging respect in his tone. Maybe he admired my play, too.
Outside my house, Eli popped the Beetle’s hatchback so I could retrieve my bike. When it was on two wheels again, I rolled it to the driver’s side window, gears clicking.
He lowered the glass with a mechanical hiss. “Yeah?”
“Those meth dealers you told me about, the ones who got shot, did they live?” I don’t know why I asked the question. I’d spend a lot of time thinking about it later, but not nearly as much as the answer he gave.
“They did. It was a good thing, too. The way things are going, if they’d died, it probably would’ve been ruled a suicide.” He laughed. “Mierda, bet you didn’t know I was such a cynic.”
Oh, I had a feeling. I slapped the car’s roof. “Monday, man.”
“Monday.”
He pulled off and left me in the cold.