I walk in the door and immediately feel the tension. Dad’s got the newspaper up, covering his face. Mom’s facing the stove. The scene is like always, but this time there’s a brittle silence.
“Where’s Sammy?” I ask Mom.
“His room.” She looks up from the baingan bharta she’s making and gives me a tired smile.
If Sammy’s hiding, the parents have been fighting. “Is it me?” I ask him as I walk into his room. “They’re fighting because of me again?”
He looks up from his comic book. “Yeah. Mom wants to sell you to the neighbors, but Dad figures we can get a better price if he takes it international.”
“Lame.”
“Tell me about it. There’s 1.27 billion Indians in India. The market’s full of brown.”
“Ha-ha.” I shove him aside and flop onto the bed. “I meant your snark is lame. I already used the selling-to-the-neighbors line on you a couple of days ago.”
“Dang,” he says. “I thought it was weak when I said it. Now I know why. It came from you.”
“Was it bad? The fight?” I ask.
He shrugs.
Yeah, it was bad. “I’m sorry. What I did was totally stupid, and it’s screwing up everything—”
Sammy rolls his eyes. “You, doing something stupid. What a news flash.” He punches me on the arm. “Forget it. Okay?”
But I can’t. And now the shadow is getting darker. “Got a question for you. How would you—” Then I stop. He’s just a kid, and getting him involved in this mess feels wrong.
“Don’t leave me hanging. How would I what?”
I sit up. “Never mind. It’s stupid.”
“So are you, and yet, here we are. What’s going on? Is it the job?” He catches my stare of surprise. “You couldn’t lie to save your life,” he says.
No wonder Kevin saw through my lame ploy.
“What’s going on? The boss doing something he shouldn’t?”
I stare hard enough at him that I think my eyes are going to pop out of my head.
Sammy sighs. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“Let’s talk hypotheticals.”
Now it’s his turn to stare at me.
“What?” I say.
“Nothing,” he says. “Just surprised you know what hypothetical means… you do know what it means, right? You’re not just repeating words to seem cool?”
“Loser.”
He grins.
“I need to get someone to confess,” I say.
“Duh. Use the voice-record feature on your phone.”
“But they have equipment that detects stuff like that.”
“Oh. Well, that’s harder.”
“So, genius? What do you have?”
He leans back on the bed, closes his eyes. “What are they doing?”
“I don’t want to say.”
He opens his eyes. Watches me. “Sucks, bro. I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have anything to be sorry for. You didn’t do anything.”
“Still…”
“Thanks.”
“So is this what happens when you like a girl? You do dumb things to impress her?”
“You definitely do dumb things to impress girls, but what I did—it had nothing to do with her. I was stupid and macho, and she was totally pissed that I let her brother egg me on.”
“And now you’re stuck with a bad boss.”
“Something like that.”
“Can’t you just tell your probation officer?”
I shift and say nothing.
“Oh.” He closes his eyes again. After a minute, he says, “The boss is doing something bad, and the probation officer doesn’t care.”
“Yeah.”
“And you can’t go to the cops—”
“The word of an offender against that of an upstanding citizen, and I have no proof.”
“Why not?”
“Huh?”
“Why don’t you have proof?”
“He makes other people do the…uh, bad things.”
Sammy sits up. “Any way to make it look like he’s doing it?”
“Huh?”
“What’s he making you do?”
I hesitate.
“Javvan, come on. You’re already 98 percent in on this with me. Go all the way.”
I tell him everything and finish with, “Now they want me to steal.”
“And you have to do it or they say you violated your probation and frame you for theft.”
I nod. “Something like that.” I think about Mom and Dad, then force myself to stop thinking.
Sammy gives me a smile. “Sometimes you’re so dumb, it’s cute.”
“Wow. Thanks for the love, bro.”
“What you need to do is basic magic. Wear gloves—”
“Well, no duh—”
“—and plant his prints all over the stuff. Then report him.”
He’s got my attention. “What? How do I get his prints on stuff without cutting off his hands?”
“It’s super easy to do. Get something he touches. Lift his prints. Stick it on the stuff you’re supposed to steal. Go to the cops.” He frowns. “We’ll need to figure this out. A good trick is all about the magic.”
We. I love that word in a new way.
“We need to visit the magic shop.” Sammy hops off the bed. “So? We gonna do this or what?”
I grin and follow him out the door.