Maybe I could go,” Mitchell said slowly.
“You?” Archie asked.
“Yeah,” he said, with more confidence this time. “I’d get Nick the Nurse to take me. I’ll tell him I need a refill for my asthma inhaler; my mom sent the prescription to the pharmacy in town just in case I needed more. She told me before I came.”
Oliver looked a little skeptical. “Nick is just going to say he can get it for you. He won’t take you with him all the way into town.”
But now Sasha spoke, and with such surety that Vivian looked at her with awe. “Mitchell can just say they need to make sure to get the right kind, that sometimes people mess it up—or he needs to ask the pharmacist a question about the dosages,” she said. “Trust me—I know all about allergies. Nick will do whatever it takes to make sure Mitchell has his meds.”
Vivian didn’t know what to say. If she’d learned anything in the past two days it was she she’d clearly underestimated Sasha. And Archie, for that matter. She looked around at the little group—they were all smiling and nodding at Sasha’s little plan. Had she also misjudged Oliver? And Mitchell?
For most of the summer Vivian had assumed that the other kids had no interest in being her friend, so there was no point in trying. But maybe the reason why she didn’t get along with the other kids wasn’t because they disliked her . . . but because she acted like she didn’t like them. It was an uncomfortable thought. But Vivian had been having a lot of uncomfortable thoughts lately.
Maybe that was the whole reason why she didn’t have anyone at school except Margot. Maybe it wasn’t because she was a terrible person, but because she wasn’t open to the people around her. People like Sasha.
“So I’ll get into the office tonight,” Archie said. “And get the Beaumonts’ address and print out all the pictures. Vivian and Sasha will need to get the letter together after lights out. Could you be ready to go tomorrow, Mitchell?”
Mitchell took a deep breath, and nodded.
“But why does he get to do everything?” Oliver asked. “I mean, this is serious stuff. If we mess this up, the whole plan is ruined.”
Mitchell and Sasha exchanged a look, one Vivian couldn’t decipher. Then Sasha spoke. “You guys are great at cons, there’s no contest there,” she said. “But maybe now’s different. Maybe now, for something like this you need people with different skills—people like me and Mitchell?”
Archie spoke up, and his voice sounded different somehow. Almost . . . nice.
“You may have a point,” he said. “Maybe it’s time for us to accept that you guys are the only ones who can really make this work.”