“ALL RIGHT, PEOPLE, LET’S GET started,” Boz said as we all gathered in Conference Room A for the August meeting. “Let’s hear more about our infamous Mr. Winters, shall we? Hopefully we’re making some progress. Havisham, you go first.”
“Why do I always have to go first?” I asked.
Boz seemed taken aback. “It’s the natural order of things to go past, present, and then future, wouldn’t you say? It’s the way we always—”
“Yes, yes, it’s the way we’ve always done it, so we always have to do it that way.” I rolled my eyes. “Can’t we just change things up a little? Start with Blackpool for once?”
Boz frowned, but then he nodded. “Very well. Blackpool. Report on Mr. Winters, please.”
Blackpool glared at me. I smiled back at him. He glared some more.
“I’ve seen the Scrooge’s death,” he intoned finally. “That is all.”
O-kay. Way to contribute absolutely nothing, Blackpool. I wondered if he was still upset about whatever it was that he and Boz and Dave had been arguing about. All week I’d noticed a kind of tension in the air between Blackpool and Boz. Like they were in a silent but serious argument.
“All right; if that’s how it is, I won’t push you.” Boz frowned and turned away from Blackpool. “How about you, Copperfield?”
But Dave wasn’t ready, either. He rustled through his notes like he’d forgotten how to read. “Well—” He cleared his throat. “Um, yes. We’ve got Ethan’s schedule down—we understand his patterns fairly well by now. He goes to school, goes to the gym, goes home. He gets a phone call from his mother on Tuesday evenings. Plays indoor soccer on Wednesdays, that kind of thing. He goes to the occasional party on Saturday nights, usually with a different girl each time—no one steady.”
I was trying to subtly take notes on Ethan’s schedule. Indoor soccer—Wednesdays. Phone call—Tuesday night. Parties—Saturdays. But these were all places the company would be monitoring. All of that useful information about Ethan’s life—the exact whens and wheres I was missing—was locked away inside of Dave’s office. Which I didn’t have access to.
“No girlfriend?” Boz said. “I assume there’s a Belle lurking around somewhere in his life?”
“Not one that I’ve seen,” Dave said. “But that’s not really my department.”
They looked at me. I shrugged. “I don’t do the Belle until October.”
“True enough,” Boz said. “All in due time.”
The Belle was the Scrooge’s ex, the long-lost love, the happiness-that-could-have-been. I’d never seen Ethan goo-goo-eyed with a girl. In all the memory sifts I’d done, no girl ever stood out, but then, it didn’t necessarily have to be a romantic connection with the Belle. My own Belle had been Ro.
My throat tightened, thinking about Ro all grown up, oblivious and happy with her life. The very definition of the words alive and well.
“Last time, Copperfield, you reported that you and your team had identified the Portlies as that homeless man on Sixth,” Boz recalled.
“Yes, we have. That’s all set,” Dave said.
“So this month, have you worked out the details with the Fred?” Boz asked.
Dave scratched his beard. “We’ve been looking into the sister, Jack. She’s family, and that’s promising, but she doesn’t seem interested in making any connection with her brother at this point. But that could change, I guess. Or it could be the mother, or the maternal grandmother. Both of them invite Ethan to family events fairly regularly. Of course, he never attends. But they keep asking.”
It sounded like Dave had no idea who the Fred was.
“Hmm, I see. Keep watching it,” Boz directed. He turned to me again. “Are you willing to share with us now, Havisham?”
“Of course,” I said. Except I still didn’t have anything meaningful to share. I’d been what you might call preoccupied for the past week. I’d been trying to figure out how to see Ethan again without anyone at Project Scrooge knowing about it. So far I’d totally failed. I couldn’t meet him at his apartment or at his school—Dave’s team was watching both places practically every second. So I assumed my best option would be to go back to the New York Athletic Club—in fact, I’d already gone back and sat there stupidly by the pool waiting for, like, hours to see if he would randomly show, but he never did. I just didn’t know when Ethan was going to be where. I’d been trying to piece it together from Ethan’s memories, but that was also complicated, because we don’t recall our schedules the same way we remember specific moments in our lives, and we don’t exactly go into every memory thinking, Oh yeah, this is Tuesday, at 10:53 a.m.
I sighed. It’d been almost an entire week, and I still hadn’t seen him again. By now he’d probably forgotten all about me.
“And what is it you have to share?” Boz asked. “Tell me you have the Fezziwig.”
“I’m close. Any day now.” I didn’t care about the Fezziwig. I wasn’t remotely close to finding one, but Boz didn’t have to know that.
“Have you learned anything new?” he asked.
I’d learned lots of things. I’d been picking up all kinds of interesting tidbits of information in Ethan’s brain while I was trying to figure out his schedule. For instance: his favorite food was spaghetti, but he also liked pizza, with mushrooms and olives and green peppers. He brushed his teeth three times a day. And used mouthwash. And flossed. He was, like, the most kissable boy ever. And he was a Yankees fan, duh. He liked reality shows. He also liked watching soccer and golf, but hey, everybody has flaws. I could get past it. He actually enjoyed shopping for clothes—he liked building his image, piece by piece and item by item. His favorite color was black. Mine, too. He was a snob about the coffee he drank. Same. He also liked Perrier. God, it was like we were soul mates.
And most important, he liked me. And I liked him. I liked him so much it was kind of killing me.
I shook my head. “This Fezziwig’s a tough one.”
“Look at parties. You know the Fezziwig loves parties,” Boz advised.
I stared at him. “Yes, I know. This is not my first rodeo, Boz.”
“It seems that everyone is struggling a bit this month,” he said. Which, again, made me feel somewhat better. “We need to focus. Help each other. Work together.”
The meeting dragged on. Boz and Dave started talking about Jack, and how she may or may not be the Fred. I was hardly listening at this point. I was still thinking about seeing Ethan again. It felt nearly impossible, because he was under such constant surveillance. There were holes, of course, pockets of time when he wasn’t being watched as closely, but I didn’t know where and when those pockets occurred. Which brought me back to this simple fact: I needed to know what Dave knew. But I couldn’t just ask him, and it’d be suspicious if I started poking around in places I didn’t normally go. Even the Hoodie couldn’t help me, because I didn’t have access to Dave’s office. It required a badge swipe, and my security clearance wasn’t high enough.
I sighed. I was out of ideas.
“Can I get you a coffee?” whispered a voice right into my ear, and I nearly knocked heads with Stephanie. “You look like you need a pick-me-up,” she observed quietly.
“No. Thanks.”
I sighed again. Gosh, she was always just so helpful, wasn’t she?
And then I had an idea. A wonderful but maybe awful idea. It suddenly occurred to me that if I was going to do this—if I was actually going to pull off seeing Ethan in real life—I’d need help. Someone inside the company. A person I could get to do things for me so I wouldn’t draw attention to myself. Cover for me. Someone to watch my back.
Someone who, I just remembered, happened to mysteriously have full security clearance. “On second thought, I do have something you can help me with,” I whispered back to Stephanie.
“Sure. What is it?” she asked.
Boz stopped talking and turned to stare at me pointedly. “Wouldn’t you agree, Havisham?”
I had no idea what he was asking about. “Yes,” I said. “I totally agree.”
Boz and Dave went back to talking.
“Later,” I whispered to Stephanie. “I’ll tell you later.”
“Okay. I can’t wait to hear what it is,” she whispered back. “You know I’m always here to help.”
Which was just what I’d been hoping she’d say.