19

Mustard

The sky did not fall. Lightning did not strike him down where he stood. Mustard could detect no scent of fire or brimstone.

But he’d said it.

Plum was standing there as if there was absolutely nothing wrong. Mustard didn’t know whether to run away or grab him again.

“Have you?” he choked out.

“No,” said Plum, pretty simply, and Mustard wished that lightning would hurry up and smite him. “I mean . . . I’ve kissed people before. But not—” He gestured to Mustard.

Oh no. No no no no no. “Right,” he managed. “So.”

“So.” Plum took a step forward, and Mustard stumbled back.

It had been that little kiss at the end that did him in. That soft press of Plum’s lips to the corner of his mouth. He’d never done that before. Never. That time—that other time—it had been hard and harsh, too. Like if it wasn’t overwhelming, they’d be in enough control of themselves to stop. Like they had waited too long already and they had no time to waste.

Less time than they’d even thought. Less time than they’d hoped for.

But no one would ever catch Plum and Mustard here, in this abandoned building, on this empty campus. He bet people hooked up in these flooded-out buildings all the time.

Just like they did in the secret passages.

“It’s okay,” Plum said.

It was not okay. It was never okay. But it felt good to hear Plum say it. Straight freaking Finn Plum.

Maybe straight. Who was Mustard to say?

A straight boy would not do that soft little corner kiss thing. Mustard would never do that soft little corner kiss thing.

Well, he’d want to.

He clenched his fists and breathed.

Plum stuck his hands in his pockets. There was a smile on his pretty face. “Just so we’re clear, you did not kill Rusty?”

Mustard glared at him. “What is wrong with you?”

Plum let out a short bark of incredulous laughter. “Many, many things. Ask anyone.”

He had. He’d asked both of Plum’s ex-girlfriends, and they’d both said he was a selfish, self-centered, backstabbing prick.

It had not helped Mustard as much as he’d hoped.

He didn’t know what to do, so he zipped up his jacket. “All right, well, you have your stuff. I’m going to go.” He headed to the window.

“Sam,” came Plum’s voice. “Wait.”

He paused at the sill. “Mustard,” he grumbled.

“I’m not calling you Mustard, you fool. I kissed you.”

He turned around and looked at the other boy. “You kissed someone named Peacock, too. Maybe that’s your thing.”

“But I call her Beth.”

Her.

What the hell was he doing? This was a mistake. This had always been a mistake. It had been a particularly bad mistake last time, when he’d been even more careless and had gotten caught. It might be a monumental mistake this time, because it was with Plum, and Plum was not a person to be trusted. Everyone said so.

But then there was that little corner kiss that Mustard figured he’d remember until the day he died.

Plum was still studying him in the dim light. His glasses were fogged up from cold, or maybe from heat—Mustard didn’t know. Plum was the chemist here.

“When was the once?” Plum asked.

“What?”

“You said you did it before once. When?”

Mustard gave a little shake of his head. “No way.”

Plum blinked. “Why won’t you tell me?”

“Because you collect secrets and use them as currency.”

Plum laughed again. “You’re the one who knows my secrets, Sam.”

Mustard. Mustard. He’d earned it. He wanted it used.

“You know about the dye.” He gestured to the backpack. “You went out of your way to get it for me.”

Oh. Realization washed over him. That’s what this was. Some kind of twisted thank-you. “Well, consider it even, then.”

“No. I mean—” Plum threw his hands in the air. “That wasn’t what I meant. I don’t want this to be currency.”

“It was stupid. It was a mistake.” He opened the latch.

“I’m obsessed with how hot you are.”

Mustard turned around again. “What did you say?”

Plum was walking toward him. “I used to think about it . . . a lot. And I thought it was because I was jealous. You could pick up Beth like she was a sack of potatoes. I could never do that. So I figured, you know, I was just thinking about it all the time because I wished I was as attractive as you.”

Mustard frowned. “Is that a compliment?”

“But now I think I was just . . . attracted to you.”

Mustard fought the urge to clap his hand over Plum’s mouth to get him to shut up. Or whatever else it took. “Got it. Glad we had this chat.”

Plum’s hand was on his lapel again, his fist tugging him forward. The first time Plum had grabbed him and pulled him off the path, Mustard had lost his breath. He wasn’t sure he’d caught it again.

“Stop.”

“Come on.” He tugged harder.

Mustard put both hands on Plum’s chest and shoved. The other boy stumbled back on his heels.

“This isn’t a game,” he growled. “You don’t have a clue.”

“Probably not,” he said with a shrug and a smirk. “Scarlett thinks I’m a total idiot about anything that doesn’t come in a test tube.” He hugged himself. “I didn’t know I liked doing what we just did until I did it.”

Exactly. Mustard felt hot red rage building behind his eyes. He was—this way—and he was not okay. And Plum—wasn’t gay?—and he was totally fine with kissing another boy. That wasn’t fair. That wasn’t right.

Just like his father said.

“Do you want to know what happened to Rusty?” he asked in a low, dangerous voice.

In the light from the streetlamp beyond the window, Plum’s face went pale. “What?”

“You think I’m a murderer . . .”

“No, I don’t—wait—” Now he looked scared. Good. Good. This was terrifying. “You’re not, are you?”

Mustard swallowed thickly. “I told you. It was a shakedown. Rusty said he couldn’t find all your stuff, and he’d need me to come with him. I thought he was after more money. So I went. He took me way out into the woods—”

Finn was shaking his head furiously.

“—to this tunnel thing. He let me in. It was really dark. I was . . . I got a bad feeling.”

“You got a bad feeling,” Finn repeated. “What kind?”

“The kind of bad feeling you get when you’re alone in the dark with a strange old man,” Mustard snapped.

“Oh,” said Plum, his voice flat. “That.”

“So I thought, I can navigate these tunnels, I can get there on my own, I can get your work and get out, and I won’t have to pay him.”

Finn had drawn closer again. “What . . . what happened to Rusty?”

What happened to Rusty? What happened to Rusty?

He’d been up nights wondering. Worrying. Too petrified to consider the truth.

“We weren’t alone,” Mustard forced himself to say. “In the tunnels. He must have brought some people from town. I didn’t know what they were going to do to me.” He clenched his jaw. All kinds of bad things happened to people like him.

“Mustard,” Plum breathed. “You saw them?”

He nodded miserably. “I spotted a guy in a mask. And I heard them, shouting at one other. They were going to get me. So I hid.”

He hadn’t been looking for Plum’s invention at that moment, just for a way to get behind a wall, away from whoever was searching for him, whoever was screaming and banging around the tunnels, promising severe retribution.

“Hid?”

“Yeah. I’m really good at hiding.”

The corner of Plum’s mouth turned up. “Apparently.”

“Shut up.”

“But you didn’t kill Rusty?” Plum pressed.

“No.” Mustard shook his head miserably. “Eventually, I got into the passages under Tudor House. I found the rest of your work, and I broke out through the lounge entrance. I had to sneak out. I didn’t go back.”

“So you don’t know what happened?”

“Of course I know!” Mustard hissed. “Rusty and whoever else was in the tunnel were a couple of small-town punks looking to start something. When I wasn’t available, they must have turned on him.”

Finn frowned.

It was the frown that did Mustard in. Of course he couldn’t convince someone else. He hadn’t believed it himself, not really.

Mustard dug into his eyes with the heels of his hands. He felt sick. “Or,” he said slowly, painfully, from behind his palms. The words were as thick as mud. “Or we interrupted a drug deal or something, and I wasn’t there to protect Rusty.”

Not very Leave No Man Behind of him. He was a failure all around.

After a minute, he felt Plum’s fingers on his wrists, gently tugging Mustard’s hands away from his eyes. Plum’s pretty face lay just beyond. He wasn’t smiling anymore, but his expression was gentler than Mustard had any right to.

“It’s not your fault,” Plum said.

That was not remotely true. “If I hadn’t suspected him of—I don’t know, being a creep . . .” He didn’t finish. If he hadn’t been so certain that creeps looked for people like him . . .

Wasn’t that what his dad always said? Everything would go wrong if he stayed on this path. Farthing was just the start. He would not have the career he wanted, no matter what the government’s current policies were. The military wasn’t policies, his father always said. It was people. And people did not find it okay.

Even if Finn Plum did.

“Or maybe they would have gotten you, too,” Plum said.

Mustard hung his head. Plum was still holding him by the wrists, and it was . . . surprisingly comforting. He took deep, gulping breaths, and then he felt it.

Plum’s forehead against his. Not pressing hard, like Mustard had a few minutes earlier. Another soft, gentle touch. Reassuring. He was just there.

The other boy, at Farthing, hadn’t been reassuring. His father certainly hadn’t been. Mustard’s marching orders had been clear. He was supposed to come to Blackbrook and keep his nose clean, not get involved in two separate murders and make out with a cute guy in an abandoned building.

But Plum just kept being there.

Undeniable. Inevitable. Like lots of things were, he supposed.

He’d thought he could do this thing—that he could get Plum’s stuff for him, and it would be enough. That it didn’t mean anything, that it certainly didn’t mean he wanted more out of Plum. But, of course, it all went wrong. It always did.

“I have to tell someone.”

“Let’s not rush into anything,” Plum replied softly.

Mustard lifted his head. “Rusty was murdered. You were right about that. Not about Scarlett or me, but . . . it wasn’t natural causes or whatever stupid story Dr. Brown is peddling. I have to tell someone.”

Plum shook his head. His hands slipped down onto Mustard’s hands, and he squeezed. “You’re already in trouble with Dr. Brown. You really want her to know that you were sneaking around in the tunnels? Think this over.”

“I am thinking it over.”

“You’ll get expelled. Again.”

He flinched. And he’d deserve it. Again. “There’s a murderer somewhere under this campus. Or maybe even on this campus.”

“Stop trying to be Captain America,” Plum insisted. “Remember what happened last time you tried to stop someone you thought was a murderer.”

Yeah, because Plum had led him to think it. “I didn’t mean figure it out myself. I meant, like, call the cops.”

“How do you plan to do any of that without revealing why you were down there to start with?”

All at once, Mustard understood. He shook free of Plum’s hands and moved away. “I see. You’re still about protecting your precious dye.”

Plum’s mouth narrowed into a line. “Yes, of course I am. But I’d also like to protect you. You stuck your neck out for me. We’re a team. And—whatever this was—”

“Oh, God, stop talking,” he begged.

“Make me.” There was challenge behind those glasses, inside that smirk.

Mustard gave a hollow laugh. “You really are a jerk, aren’t you?” He pushed away from the sill, away from the light. “I’m not going to be talked out of doing the right thing.” Or—or kissed out of it, or anything else. “Keeping your invention secret was one thing. Covering up a murder is another.”

“I don’t want you to cover it up . . . exactly,” Plum said. “Look, I already got in trouble for being down there and finding the body. I can’t get in any more trouble. I’ll take the lead here. Share my concerns about what I saw that night. And I have the pictures. He was bleeding—we know that now. We can figure out a reasonable way to tell this story . . .” His face brightened. “We’ll ask Scarlett! Scarlett is great at figuring out angles. When we used to scheme together, she was the idea person. I just handled the tech . . .”

“We’re not telling Scarlett,” Mustard stated firmly. “Are you nuts? You want to tell her—what? This?” He gestured between them. “What happened with Rusty?”

“I want us to get help figuring this out.”

“There’s no us.”

Plum smiled crookedly. “Oh, there’s an us. We have secrets now, man. Lots of them.”

Mustard groaned. He was done for.

“Don’t worry. We’ll figure out how to fix it. I’ll keep you safe.”

“Really? The guy who lost his million-dollar dye in an underground tunnel? In a flood? You’re going to keep me safe?”

Plum clucked his tongue. “Million-dollar? Don’t lowball me like that. Ten figures, easy.”

Mustard’s eyes widened, and he looked over at the backpack full of Plum’s work. Seriously? And he’d left it underground? “You’re a bigger idiot than I thought.”

“So, what do you want to do?” Plum said, exasperated. “I know you—you aren’t going to cover it up. But you can’t confess the whole story, either. Let me help you.”

Every part of him wanted to say yes. But it was too dangerous, for too many reasons.

“All I need to do is say I saw a head wound on Rusty,” Plum argued. “That I’m worried there was foul play. After what happened with Headmaster Boddy, I’m sure that’s enough. Maybe the police even have a list of shady characters on Rocky Point. If it was a drug deal, like you think, it could be open and shut.”

Mustard thought this over. That was a good point. After all, whether from Blackbrook or Rocky Point, there weren’t a lot of people who could have been in those tunnels that night.