UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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I sat by my window on the night of the job, waiting for the signal. My fingers jittered against the windowsill and my feet sweated in my shoes, despite the cold outside. Dad snored in the room down the hall, and if he was snoring, that meant both he and my mother were asleep. In the room next to mine, Charlie mumbled something about sugarcoated chess pieces. All they had to do was stay asleep for the next two hours, and everything would be fine.
I’d double- and triple-checked with Art to make sure the job was (mostly) safe and would definitely be over in two hours. I still didn’t know exactly what the job was, or what I was supposed to do.
But then I realized I didn’t care. I was going to enjoy tonight’s adrenaline rush if it killed me. I wanted to be a teenager. I wanted to sneak out at night (not while under the impression I was being kidnapped by Communists) and do things I wasn’t supposed to. I wanted to do them with other people. Real people. People who knew there was something different about me and didn’t care.
Art’s van rolled up at the end of the street, flashing its headlights. As quietly as I could, I removed the screen from my window, set it against the wall, climbed into the flowerbed outside, and slid the storm window shut behind me. Just like a nighttime trip to Red Witch Bridge. I set off down the slush-streaked street, squinted to make sure it was actually Art in the driver’s seat, then climbed into the passenger side.
“Okay, now we have to go get Boss,” Art said.
I buckled myself in. “Where are we going?”
“Downing Heights.” Art smiled a little. “I know you love it there.”
“Oh, but I do,” I mumbled. “Tell me we’re not going to Celia’s.”
“Nope. But first we have to get Boss, and he definitely doesn’t live in Downing Heights.”
Silent houses flicked by. In the distance, expensive Lakeview houses rose like dark mountains. But around us, each house was less friendly than the last. Suddenly my dirt-colored hovel of a home seemed so much nicer than before.
We turned a corner and the houses became downright scary. Like, Bloody Miles trying to murder me scary. I wouldn’t have come down this way even at high noon.
Art stopped in front of a two-story house that looked like staples held it together at the corners. Shingles were missing all over the roof, half the windows had the glass broken out of them, and the porch sagged in the middle. Garbage littered a front lawn enclosed by a rusted chain-link fence. Miles’s blue truck sat in the driveway, next to an aging Mustang that looked like it might be worth a lot of money if anyone tried to take care of it.
I knew something here must have been a delusion. Something. The darkness made everything worse, but this place . . . no one could live like this. This had to be fake.
“Uh-oh—Ohio’s outside.” Art nodded toward the side of the porch, where a makeshift doghouse gave shelter to the biggest Rottweiler I’d ever seen in my life. It looked like the kind of dog that ate babies for breakfast, old men for lunch, and virgin sacrifices for dinner.
No wonder he was Miles’s dog.
“He lives here?” I leaned forward for a better look at the house. “How is this even habitable?”
“It’s not, I don’t think. His dad survives by constantly surrounding himself in a booze haze and setting the hell hound loose on the neighbors.” Art shuddered. “The first time we ever picked Boss up, Ohio was awake. I thought he would bite my head off, and I never got out of the van.”
I had never imagined big, bulky Art being scared of anything. I didn’t know what I’d expected, but it wasn’t this. So Miles wasn’t rich. I’d still expected something a little nicer.
“What does his dad do?”
Art shrugged. “I think he’s some kind of security guard downtown. There’s only the two of them, so I don’t think they’re hard up for cash. But no one takes care of the place.”
Movement on the second floor distracted me. The window on the far left slid open. A dark figure crept through the narrow opening like a cat and reached back in for a coat and a pair of shoes. He put the coat on but carried the shoes, then hurried to the side of the porch roof, lowered himself down the drainpipe like a ghost, and dropped silently on the balls of his feet, right on top of the doghouse.
Ohio gave a snort, but he didn’t wake up.
The figure climbed off the doghouse, padded across the yard, hopped the fence, and ran around to the back of the van. I forced myself to start breathing again.
Miles climbed in through the back, shaking slush out of his hair and socks. He shoved his feet into his shoes. Art pulled away from the house.
“Damn dog.” Miles flopped over, resting his head back. It was still weird seeing him this way. Jeans and an old baseball shirt under his bomber jacket. Boots that looked like chew toys. He raked his hair back, cracked an eye open, and caught me staring.
“I live in Shitsville, I know.” He looked at Art. “Did you get the stuff?”
“Behind me.”
Miles grabbed the black duffel bag stashed behind the driver’s seat and dumped the contents on the floor, where they rolled around.
A container of IcyHot, a bag of little black specks, five or six heavy-duty bungee cords, a screwdriver, a socket wrench, and a small sledgehammer.
“What’d you bring this for?” Miles asked, picking up the sledgehammer.
Art shrugged. “Thought it’d be fun. In case we need to smash anything.”
I snorted. Art’s hands were like two sledgehammers on their own.
“Don’t smash anything too expensive. I told Alex we weren’t committing any felonies.”
“Uh, Boss? What do you call breaking and entering?”
“A felony,” said Miles. “But it’s not breaking and entering if you’ve got a key.” He pulled a single key out of his pocket and held it up.
“Where the hell’d you get a key?”
“I’ve got someone on the inside. Turn here. He’s the third house on the left.”
We were back in Downing Heights, winding our way up the road toward the super-fancy houses. We stopped in front of one that looked like it could have been Bill Gates’s second home. The front walk led up to a three-door garage and a huge porch with a stained-glass double door.
Miles shoved everything but the screwdriver, wrench, and sledgehammer into the duffel bag. “Art, you’ve got the car. Alex, you’re coming with me.” He checked his watch. “Hopefully no one wakes up. Let’s go.”
We got out of the van and jogged toward the house. Miles stopped beside the front door, flipped open the security keypad, and typed in a code. He turned to the door and unlocked it with the key. The doors swung open.
We stepped inside an entryway. Miles closed the door behind us and checked the other keypad inside the door, then motioned to another nearby door that must’ve led to the garage. Art headed through it with the screwdriver, wrench, and sledgehammer clutched in one hand.
This house belonged in Hollywood, not central Indiana. A huge staircase occupied the middle of the foyer (a foyer, they had a freaking foyer), splitting off in two directions upstairs. To the right of the foyer was a living room where the light from a TV flickered across the far wall. I hit Miles on the arm, pointing at the light. He shook his head and watched the doorway, and a second later a black-haired girl in paisley pajamas stepped into the foyer. She rubbed her eyes with one hand, staring straight at us.
“Hey, Angela,” said Miles, calm as could be. The girl yawned and waved.
“Hi, Miles. He’s fast asleep. I crushed those pills up in his dinner like you said.”
“Awesome, thanks.” Miles pulled out his wallet and handed Angela a twenty-dollar bill.
“Good work. He’s still in the same room, right?”
“Fourth on the right,” said Angela. “Mom and Dad are on the left, so you shouldn’t have to worry about them.”
“Thanks. Let’s go.”
The two of us set off up the stairs. At the top, we turned to the right and crept down a long hallway. It was all so disturbingly normal—besides the sheer amount of money that must have gone into it—that for a moment I thought the whole place might be a hallucination.
Miles stopped at the fourth door on the left, touched the handle hesitantly a few times as if he thought it’d be scalding hot, and then pushed the door open.
Whoever owned the room was incredibly disorganized. Clothes lay all over the floor. Papers and diagrams and maps of different places littered a desk against one wall. Models of cars and superheroes and mechanical animals covered the top of the dresser. Science posters were taped to every wall, including one of the periodic table that glowed in the dark.
The sleeper rolled over.
“Here.” Miles unzipped the backpack and pulled out the container of IcyHot. “Go to the dresser. Should be one of the top drawers—smear this in the crotch of every pair of underwear you find.”
“I—what?” I took the container. “That’s disgusting.”
“I’m paying you fifty dollars for this,” Miles hissed, turning toward the bed.
I went to the dresser and yanked open the top drawer on the left. Empty. Crisp white underwear and boxers filled the one on the right.
Well . . . at least they were clean.
I picked up the first pair of underwear and uncapped the IcyHot. As I worked, I watched Miles out of the corner of my eye as he yanked the bedcovers back and harnessed the sleeper to the bed with the bungee cords, from his shoulders to his ankles. Then Miles upended the bag of black specks—fleas?—over the sleeper’s head.
“Okay, I’m done,” I whispered. I slid the drawer shut again.
“Now pick up every pair of underwear you can find on the floor and shove them under the dresser.” Miles began setting the alarm clock on the bedside table.
With my index finger and thumb, I played a sort of crane game and picked up pairs of underwear, touching them as little as possible. I made a pile next to the dresser and shoved it under with my foot.
“The sleeping pills should wear off before the alarm goes,” said Miles. I handed him back the IcyHot. “All we have to do is get out of here.”
I crept over to the bed to get a better look at our poor, unsuspecting victim.
I froze.
“Oh my God, Miles.”
“What?”
“It’s Tucker!”
He looked so innocent in his Einstein T-shirt and pajama pants covered in atoms—and I’d put IcyHot in his underwear—
“Calm down!” Miles grabbed my wrist and pulled me out of the room. We hurried down the stairs and back into the foyer, where Angela waved to us from the living room. Then we were out on the porch. Miles locked the door and reset the security system, and we ran to the van. Art waited in the front.
“You dick!” I said once the doors were closed and Art stepped on the gas. I punched Miles’s arm with all the anger welling up in me. “You didn’t tell me it was Tucker!”
“Would you have done it if I had?” Miles asked.
“Of course not!”
“Yeah, but you’re fine doing it if it’s anyone else.” Miles shoved his glasses up to rub his eyes. “Bit hypocritical, if you ask me.”
“I didn’t ask you.” I crossed my arms and glared out the window. Awful guilt roiled in my stomach. “You should have told me.”
“Why? Because you feel bad for him? Because he follows you around like a dog? He’s never going to know you helped. He’s going to be flustered and uncomfortable, and you’ll be fifty dollars richer.”
Another flood of anger shot through my limbs. “It doesn’t matter—it’s the principle of the thing!”
“No it’s not, not when you suddenly decide it’s bad because it’s Beaumont!”
We glared at each other for a minute, until Art coughed. My arms tightened.
“You’re an asshole,” I said, looking away.
“Takes one to know one,” Miles muttered back.