Staples’s car was gone the next morning when I got up. He must have come back to get it at some point. That was fine; I clearly wasn’t going to catch a ride with him to TV.

Twenty minutes later, after I’d called My-Me to call me in sick again, a small car pulled in to my driveway. I got in the passenger side.

“Hey, Mac,” Hannah said.

“Thanks for doing this for me,” I said.

She laughed.

“I’ll take any opportunity to borrow my dad’s car now that I have my license. And besides, you did say you’d make it worth my while.”

I laughed, too, and then handed her a twenty.

“So Thief Valley. What could you possibly have going on there?”

“It’s a long story,” I said, looking out the window.

“You know what? I don’t think I even want to know,” she said.

But I told her anyway, at least the short version.

“Well, serves you right, doesn’t it?” she said as we neared Thief Valley.

“Ouch.”

“I’m only kidding, Mac. But, really, I mean, if you want to keep yourself out of this kind of trouble, then you really need to let this business go. Completely.”

I nodded. I knew that now. I just wished I had known that two months ago.

I had gotten an email from Kinko Saturday night with brief instructions on how to get into her office without setting foot on school grounds. Just to avoid the sort of recess supervisor mishap that had occurred last time. I didn’t know how she got my email address, but I supposed I had my way of getting such things if I needed them, too.

Apparently most customers entered the tunnels using a secret door under the school’s stage. However, some entered using a secret passage in a crawl space underneath the school janitor’s equipment shed, which was located across the street from the school next to a few large industrial aluminum garages.

Kinko had told me that ten in the morning was the best time to sneak in. Her email said the janitor was usually cleaning one of the bathrooms at that time. I guessed their janitor was like most old people in that they kept to a pretty regular schedule.

I found the crawl space, then the trap door. The crawl space wasn’t as dirty as you might expect, but I guessed that made sense, considering how much use it was getting. I took out the small flashlight that I’d brought and climbed down the metal ladder into a narrow cement tunnel.

It didn’t take as long as I’d expected to navigate my way to the main chamber. I knocked on the steel door. It opened and I was suddenly facing the twins again. The guy smiled; the girl scowled.

“We’ve been expecting you,” he said.

They led me inside and once again escorted me to the door of Kinko’s office. The guy opened it and I stepped inside. The scene was nearly the same as last time: Kinko sat at her desk and Sue loomed behind her, leaning against a wall. But this time Michi Oba was also there, barely visible, standing in the shadows in the corner.

“Hi!” Kinko said, and then took a huge swig of Sprite.

“Hi,” I said as the door behind me closed.

Kinko pointed at the chair across from her. She put the cap back on her soda and then took out a phone and started typing into it. I sat down and waited. She finished typing, paused, giggled, and then typed in something else.

“So,” she said without looking up, “where’s the money? It’s hard to believe that you’ve got four grand just, like, crammed into the pockets of your jeans.”

“You must already know I don’t have it,” I said.

She laughed, but most of her attention still seemed to be on her phone. I just sat there.

“Sorry,” she said, nodding at her phone. “My friend is so funny.”

I nodded and tried to muster a smile. If she knew about the money, maybe she’d consider taking it easy on me. She hated her brother as much as I did at that point, after all.

“Is there any way we can get a second chance?” I asked. “I mean, can you show us a little mercy? Your brother was the one who stole it from me, anyway.”

She finally put her phone away.

“No, sorry,” she said. “No second chances. It doesn’t matter whose fault it was. What matters is that I still don’t have my money or school records.”

I nodded in defeat. I’d figured as much.

“We had it, though,” I said. “I mean, what good is destroying our school going to do now?”

“I’m not going to destroy it,” she said. “See, I own you now. You’ll be making money for me until I have to pay for college. That’s all I really want.”

“So you want me to keep running my business and cut you in? Is that what this is now?”

“Ha! You are smart. Except not cut me in . . . I want it all. Your portion of the profits will simply be that I won’t destroy your school.”

She took another swig of Sprite. Then she burped. Not like you’d expect a tiny third grader to, though. Instead she let loose a huge rippling belch like you’d expect your uncle to unleash after a giant Thanksgiving dinner. Then she started giggling as if burping was the funniest thing in the world.

Even Michi Oba giggled. I shook my head. Third graders.

“So anyway, like, what were we talking about again?”

“The weather?” I suggested. “Or maybe it was football. How about those Bears, right? They’re off to a good start this season.”

She rolled her eyes. “So that’s it, then. You’ll keep running your business for me?”

The answer was simple. I couldn’t go back to that life. Not after everything that had happened. It caused nothing but disaster.

“No,” I said.

“Are you sure you want to say no?”

I nodded.

“You know what I can do to you and your school if I want to, right?”

I nodded again. “Still, no. I’m out. Do your worst.”

“It’s too bad. I kind of like you. You sort of remind me of my older brother when he was younger.”

Great. That’s all I needed to hear. Someday I was going to turn into a sadistic jerk who liked to punch little kids on the arm and torture them psychologically and figuratively stab them in the back.

“Thanks?” I said.

Kinko laughed and then drank more Sprite. She opened a desk drawer and pulled out a Fruit Roll-Up, which she unrolled and ate. And she ate it like you’d expect a third grader to: she flopped it around and played with the shapes and put her grimy little hands all over it first. I watched all of this in silence. Then, when she was chewing her last bite, she finally spoke again.

“Well, I probably don’t even have to say how much trouble you’re in. And also, I can’t let you walk out of here totally scot-free either.”

I tensed in my chair.

“Mark him,” Kinko said.

Michi Oba started moving toward me in an instant. She was fast, faster than I’d have thought possible for a human being. I saw something large and black in her hand, and I rolled out of my chair instinctively. I got up to make a dash for it but then slammed into a wall and everything went black.